"Admirers of India are unanimous in praising Hindu ' spirituality.' I cannot agree with them. To my mind ' spirituality' (ultimately, I suppose, the product of the climate) is the primal curse of India and the cause of all her misfortunes. It is this preoccupation with ' spiritual ' realities, different from the actual historical realities of common life, that has kept millions upon millions of men and women content, through centuries, with a lot unworthy of human beings. A little less spirituality, and the Indians would now be free-free from foreign dominion and from the tyranny of their own prejudices and traditions. There would be less dirt and more food. There would be fewer Maharajas with Rolls Royces and more schools. The women would be out of their prisons, and there would be some kind of polite and conventional social life-one of those despised appearances of civilisation which are yet the very stuff and essence of civilised existence. At a safe distance and from the midst of a network of sanitary plumbing, Western observers, disgusted, not unjustifiably, with their own civilisation, express their admiration for the ' spirituality ' of the Indians, and for the immemorial contentment which is the fruit of it. Sometimes, such is their enthusiasm, this admiration actually survives a visit to India."
--Jesting Pilot, 1926
On the turntable: Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks Vol. 33"
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