A different kind of superpower

JRD Tata, whose family built the basic foundations for Indian industry, was once asked if he wanted India to become an economic superpower. He replied, ‘No, I do not want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country.’ So I do not want India to be a great power; I do not want any country to be a great power. Rather than being a great power, I want every country to be a powerhouse of wellbeing for everybody who lives there.

This aspiration that you want your nation to be a superpower is a very silly and childish aspiration which has caused immense damage to the planet. Today there is a whole argument in the world that without nuclear weapons there will be no peace, which is unfortunately true right now. Me holding a gun to your head, you holding a gun to my head and both of us did not shoot – this is not peace, this is madness. Someday, somebody will shoot, isn't it?

I don't want India to become a superpower. Our aspiration should be to become a sensible, gentle nation, which is wellbeing for itself and as far as possible, wellbeing for everybody in the world. I want India to be a country of wellbeing, where our standards of wellbeing are different from just a vulgar sense of wealth and conquest. Conquest and robbery are not two different things. If it is done by an individual, it is called burglary. If it is done by a nation, it is called conquest or regime change.

We have spent thousands of years evolving a spiritual ethos in this nation. India as a nation is very unique. It has an ethos and a quality that you can find nowhere else. There has been a certain dimension to this mass of people which we right now refer to as India, there has been a certain basic ethos, a certain sense of awareness and wisdom which is very hard to find anywhere else.

You may find it in individual people, but a large mass of people having a certain unconscious awareness of many aspects of life is there nowhere else in the world. So it would be horrid for Indians to aim nuclear weapons at every nation and say, ‘We are a superpower.’

Power does not mean having the biggest army in the world. Power means that everybody in the world looks at you for guidance if they want to live well; this is power, isn’t it? People always looked east when they thought of living well. This culture has always had this power. India should aspire to make every nation meditative, isn't it?