Indra is the most invoked god of the Rigveda. He is described as a soma-drinking god who slays the dragons that hold back the waters behind stone walls. He is the lord of the heavens, a brave warrior king, and a god of strength and victory.
The way you worship him is through the fire of the yajna. He requires sacrifice, and in return you ask something of him: victory, rain, cattle, prosperity, protection. I seem to notice something with this type of worldview. It does not treat desire as a weakness to be overcome. It assumes that there are things worth wanting, and that obtaining them requires sacrifice, courage, and strength. Courage was almost like the highest virtue for these people.
The people of this age, when the worship of Indra was prominent, were willing to walk into certain death to protect their king, their people, and their honour.
In my view, courage being the important virtue is not just incidental but at the core of what built our civilisation. As Nassim Taleb once said, “Courage is the only virtue you can’t fake.”
The later myths and traditions seem to subvert him. They made him an insecure man, a guy easily intimidated by mere humans. This was made very explicit in the story where Krishna lifts the Govardhan hill with his little finger when Indra tried to pour rain on the village. In the story, the motivations ascribed to Indra are not noble; rather, they are portrayed as petty and puny acts of getting back at the people for stopping Indra worship.
The idea being conveyed here is very hard to miss. A great warrior king of the Rigveda is humbled by a later deity, and the deity is not even an adult. He is a child.
This kind of subversion of the nature and images of the deities is not uncommon in the Hindu pantheon of gods. But this exact instance is the most explicit and very striking. The great Indra, once the supreme heroic figure of the Vedic world, is reduced to a petty and humiliated god before Krishna. This feels like more than just the decline of a single god. It reflects a change in the worldview of the civilization itself.
I made this observation where the philosophies of the Vedic and the later gods are in direct conflict. The former feels like materialism, ambition, courage, and excellence. The latter was very ascetic and detached from the outcome and what comes later — still, Buddhism and Jainism take it to the next level.
I can’t help but imagine these philosophies emerging only in a thriving society, or perhaps a society reaching a saturation point on growth. The later philosophies were accommodating, or more socialist, let’s say. But the Vedic were very individualistic and emphasised ambition and desire.
The Vedas almost treated desire in and of itself as a virtue, where Buddha was the exact opposite. This guy literally said, “All suffering is rooted in desire,” and he hated suffering.
The reason this is significant is that the linear view of human progress is not true. There will be periods of oscillations and total paradigm shifts in society. The things people consider virtuous change. So usefulness comes first rather than the “Truth.” We should value usefulness first. That does not make truth unimportant. Truth is important precisely because truth is useful.
Core Framework
- Truth → What is ultimately real?
- Usefulness → What does this belief enable us to do?
- Civilizational Fitness → Is that usefulness what we need now?
And shifts in moral realities should be seen and judged with the above point in mind. They very much depend on the circumstances of the society: its people, their will, their economic condition, and their relations with other groups.
Bharat is a developing civilization. We have an enormous amount of ground to recover in many sectors: wealth, industry, tech, military, and most importantly, the spirit of our people. So the question we have to ask ourselves today is not, “Which god is mightier or which philosophy espouses the capital T ‘Truth’?” but “Which philosophy would enable us to do what we want?”
So my prescription for Bharat’s future would be to take a look at the older gods. This does not mean that later asceticism was wrong. It does not mean the Buddha and Mahavira are snowflakes. Quite the opposite. They gave us something very valuable. But something can be valuable without us needing it at that moment. Just like a hammer is useful, but not to tighten a screw.
The later philosophies worked for their time and served their purpose, but Bharat cannot deal with the beast of its own future with these ascetic values. We need to build. We need to grow. We need to prosper. We can respect asceticism for what purpose it served and be grateful for it — well, who knows, we very well may need it again in the future — but now Bharat needs the raw ambition and the willpower.
If Bharat is to rebuild what it lost, it needs the right tools.
It needs to wield the Vajra and slay the dragons on its path.