the-last-testament-vol-1-09

Shanti Prabhu
Osho Times, Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, United States
Osho,
It has been said that violence is as American as apple pie. Why is the United States – a country that prides itself as a land of freedom – such a violent place? Is there a relation between violence in America and its so-called freedom?
Violence in America has deep roots: it is the only continent in the world which is being ruled by foreigners. The native Red Indians, to whom this continent belongs, are almost finished; and the people who think they are Americans, none of them are American. They have all come from other countries, invaded the poor country, invaded the poor innocent natives. The roots of violence are there.
The people who had come into power over this continent through violence have remained in power through violence. Unless the continent is given back to its people, this violence is going to remain.
It is a strange phenomenon that the foreigners who are ruling the country are trying to prevent us from living here. We are not trying to rule the country, we are not invaders. They are trying to call us foreigners just because they came here three or four generations ago. Time makes no difference, they are all foreigners.
We are not rulers; we have not invaded the country, we have not killed its people, we have not destroyed its people’s integrity and spirit. We have purchased the land and we have purchased it for the right price. Do you know how much the invaders paid the Red Indians for the whole of New York City? Thirty dollars – the whole of New York was purchased for thirty dollars. This is not purchasing, this is cheating innocent people.
The people who came in the early days of America were really criminals: they were thrown out of their countries, expelled. Those criminals became presidents, those criminals became chief justices of the Supreme Court. They were expelled from their own countries for crimes which were so big that the countries could not tolerate them – either kill them or throw them out.
Then people from Africa were forced, bribed – persuaded and given great promises and hope that they were going to a rich world where they would receive all the facilities. What they found here was that they were sold in the marketplace just like cattle. Slavery had disappeared from the whole world, and it appeared just three centuries ago in America. And the slaves – although no longer called slaves – are still not first-class citizens.
This continent is based on violence. It has repressed the Red Indians in such ugly ways… It is difficult to imagine what man can do to man. Red Indians are living almost in concentration camps; of course, they are not called concentration camps, they are called reservations – especially reserved for Red Indians.
Why should Red Indians not be allowed to mix in society? It is their land, they have lived here for thousands of years. Now they are confined to forests and mountains, on reservations, and they are being given pensions. On the surface it looks humanitarian, that if we are ruling over their continent we are paying them, for generations we have been paying them. But to pay them salaries for no work is not humanitarian.
What will they do with that money? They will get drunk, they will take drugs, they will gamble, they will fight, kill each other. What else do they have to do? Money comes without any effort. They will go on creating more and more children because with each child comes more money. To give people money without work is to reduce them into drunkards, gamblers, murderers: you have taken their dignity.
On the surface everything looks so whitewashed, clean; it can be claimed that you are giving them money because you are using their land. But the real purpose is to keep them drunk, fighting, gambling, rowdy, and to keep them in such a state that they never again think of being free, that they never think of getting rid of all the invaders of this continent.
The whole society is interwoven with violence: the black people are downtrodden, there are thousands of people on the streets with no home – what do you expect them to do? They will do every kind of crime, they have nothing to lose. And America goes on pretending to the whole world that wherever there is any trouble, they are going to help. You can’t help your own people; twenty-five percent of Americans who are able to work are unemployed, and America goes to help Ethiopia!
In America, Ethiopia is spread everywhere – just thinly, but it is there – and violence will come out. These people who have lost everything, respect, humanity, integrity, they have been treated like animals – you cannot expect that the country can live without violence.
Basically, America is one of the most destructive powers in the world. The whole government is working with only one object: to win the Third World War. But they are simply fools, because nobody can win the Third World War, neither the Soviet Union nor America. The difference may be at the most ten minutes: whoever attacks first, it will take only ten minutes for the other party to attack back. Nuclear weapons are ready on both sides, so it is not a question of somebody getting defeated and somebody else becoming victorious. It is simply suicidal – both will be destroyed, and with them all life on earth will be destroyed.
If your great leaders, political, religious and others, are bent upon having a Third World War, if all your scientific and military efforts are aimed at just one point – how to destroy the Soviet Union and how to destroy communism in the world – who are you to take responsibility for the whole world? Who are you to decide that the Soviet Union should not be communist? It is none of your business.
Your government is utterly violent. The whole structure of society is violent; there are the super-rich and there are the super-poor in this country, the distance between the rich and the poor is too big. Naturally, the poor man becomes violent – he is angry. Your priests and bishops go on teaching the poor to be contented, but how long do you think you can keep poor people contented?
Now old strategies won’t work. You have used this strategy for thousands of years in the whole world, but it is not going to work in America: it is a new country, it has only three hundred years’ civilization, which is nothing compared to countries like China or India with histories of thousands of years. This country is new and the poor have seen clearly that they have been exploited. In India they have never seen it clearly – they have been exploited for thousands of years. They don’t remember any time when there was not poverty, they have accepted poverty as a law of nature, the will of God.
But you cannot deceive the American poor. He has seen with his own eyes that those who were cunning and clever, have exploited and become rich. He has seen people who were criminals becoming rich; and he has seen simple, innocent people who were not criminals becoming poor. You cannot deceive the American poor, you cannot tell him that he is suffering from his past lives’ actions. He knows perfectly well that he is suffering from other Americans and their actions.
In such a small period of history – three hundred years – things are very crystal clear. They had all come to America, they were all equal: nobody was rich, nobody was poor. Then, suddenly, a few people started becoming richer and richer and richer, became the richest in the world, and a few people started falling down. They have seen with their own eyes how one becomes rich. It is not by right means; it is by exploiting, it is by cunning, by every kind of means – good or bad does not matter.
The American poor have a very different attitude from the poor in any other country, because all those countries are very ancient. They don’t remember their beginnings; they don’t know what happened in the beginning – that a few people became poor and a few people became rich. They think it has always been so. But the American poor have a unique situation, they know what has happened – they cannot forgive it, they cannot forget it. That brings violence.
Violence is the religion of America, and America is despised and condemned all over the world – even those countries where American help reaches are not sympathetic toward America. I know it: in India you will not find a single person who is sympathetic toward America. And America has been helping: whenever there is a famine or floods or no rain for years, and people are dying, America is always ready to help. But American help does not create sympathy for America. On the contrary, it offends, because they know what you are doing to your own poor.
Why are you helping others when you yourself are not doing anything for your own downtrodden? It is not compassion that you go on helping Ethiopia, India, wherever there is poverty and sickness; it is an effort to make ground for your armies, for your nuclear weapons. All those countries understand perfectly that this is simply business, not help.
America is the most condemned country in the whole world: America has no friends anywhere, for the simple reason that it is the most destructive power today. When your whole government and the energy of the people and the intelligence of your scientists are moving in only one direction – destruction – how can you avoid violence?
There is only one way, which is really difficult: give the country back to its native people. If they want you to remain here, you can remain here, but you will have to remain on reservations. If you don’t want to live here, that is far better – just go back to your own countries.
Somebody is from England, somebody is from Spain, somebody is from Portugal, somebody is from France, somebody is from Italy, somebody is from Greece: the whole of Europe has to take the responsibility to take these people back. Give the country to its own people. If they allow you to live here, you live, but you live under their rule, and violence will disappear. I don’t think Red Indians can even imagine about nuclear war.
When you are in power, and you are the greatest power in the world, you are not going to be human, to be considerate. So it is not a simple phenomenon; it is very complicated, and the violence has many aspects. In America, more rapes happen than anywhere else. Strange – in a country which is educated, rich, why should there be so many rapes? It is because your priests go on talking stupidities to the people. They go on talking about monogamy, they go on saying that if you are not married then any sexual relationship is sin.
I wonder how a marriage license transforms a sin into a virtue? Just a license, a paper, signed by a judge who may be committing adultery himself. In fact, sometimes I wonder from where this word adultery comes? It looks so simple – any adult is capable of it; the moment you are capable of adultery you are an adult. What other meaning can it have? From where can it come?
The women still are not free; protests go on happening in the name of liberation but the woman is not free, not equal. The woman is angry, and her anger is turning into a perversion. The American woman is educated enough, you cannot keep her repressed. She is not like the women of the East, of Arabia – uneducated, not knowing anything about the world.
The American woman is educated. If you want her to be a dependent partner in a marriage, she would rather move into lesbianism than become a slave of man. In America there are more lesbians than in any other country, and naturally, when women become lesbians, men start becoming homosexuals.
These are all different shapes of violence; your priests are responsible, your politicians are responsible. Do you know what happened in Vietnam? You forced your young people without understanding the fact that these young people are not soldiers as they exist in other countries. They were educated, highly qualified, and you forced them to kill innocent, poor Vietnamese for no reason.
Who are you to interfere in the whole world? You want to put your nose in everywhere? It is Vietnam’s decision whether it wants to be communist or not. And what happened there? Thirty percent of the American soldiers did not kill anybody. They could see that this American violence was absolutely ugly, uncalled for. They could see that the poor Vietnamese have difficulty to arrange even two meals every day and you are bombing them, destroying their houses, burning their houses.
You are burning, destroying, bombing… Many American soldiers went insane for the simple reason that they could not believe that this was what their country stands for. Many of the American soldiers had to be treated psychologically when they came back home; they were so much disturbed they had to be rehabilitated psychologically. They were not like other countries’ soldiers – uneducated, unaware of what is going on – who when they come home, come with great pride. The American soldiers came back home with guilt and, you may know or may not know, many of the soldiers who were in Vietnam have never moved back into American society. They are hiding in jungles and mountains, in Alaska, living a very primitive life.
Many of them have been approached by their families and friends to come back home. They said, “We are finished with home, country, nation, flag, American Constitution, democracy – all nonsense. Just leave us alone. We would like to live here in complete isolation: at least we will not feel guilty. We will not be forced to do something violent, unnecessarily. Back home, they’re going to put us back into the army, prepare us again for the Third World War. We are not going.”
There are hundreds of young American men who were professors, doctors, engineers, living in the forest like primitive people, in caves. They don’t want to come back to America for the simple reason that this whole society is basically wrong. It is based in violence. Twenty percent of American presidents have been murdered – this is a record, in no other country has this happened. Once in a while a person may be murdered, but not twenty percent of the presidents. And if the president is so much unprotected – remember, the American president is the most protected man in the world – if the most protected man in the world can be killed by his own people, who else can be at ease? Even the president is not at ease: every moment, violence.
This is not something superficial. If we want to change the violent structure of America, there are three things to be done. One, the country should be ruled by its native people, it belongs to them. Anybody who wants to remain here should remain here, but he cannot remain here as a ruler. Secondly, America should stop bothering about other countries’ poor people: it should help its own poor people. Thirdly, it should stop piling up nuclear weapons. They are pointless, and so costly, and now so meaningless, because you already have enough to destroy the whole world, what more do you want?
America should declare, “We drop the whole idea of war, we destroy all our nuclear weapons. We drown all those weapons in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, we’re finished with it.” America should declare, “We will not have any defense department any more – it is just pointless.”
If America can do that, its people can be immensely rich, happy, and people who are happy do not do violence. It is out of misery, suffering, anger, that violence comes. When you are comfortable, happy, at home, and all that you need is available to you, you don’t want to be violent – because your being violent will destroy your cozy home, your beautiful surroundings, your love life. Your children, your wife, your parents will be lost. It is the people who have nothing to lose who become violent – and one cannot say to them, “Don’t be violent.”
I, personally, cannot say to them, “Don’t be violent.” On what grounds can I say it? They have been cheated of all that a man needs, and if they are revengeful, it seems logical. America should take care of itself, then unemployment is impossible, everybody can be comfortably rich. You just have to stop piling up nuclear weapons, and you can make this country actually, literally, a new world – by declaring that you are not going to defend.
Defense is meaningless. Even with all your nuclear weapons you can be destroyed, so what is the point of having all those nuclear weapons? It is a very strange fact that in the past weapons were significant; now they are no longer, but idiotic politicians go on following policies of the politics of the past. They don’t understand that the whole thing has changed.
Only a nation which is not burdened by the past can become the first nation in the world to declare, “We are no longer a separate entity, we are open and available to the whole world. We declare that we are not enemies to anybody. We declare friendship to be our basic policy, and we are ready to lose everything but we are not going to be violent.”
If these three things can be done, it wouldn’t harm America in any way. It would give America prestige, pride. America would gain sympathy from all over the world. America would become the beginning of the New World. Other nations would follow – they are following America now, they are starting to make nuclear plants, atomic plants; if America stops it, they will stop it too.
The whole world now has become free: the British Empire has disappeared. Only America has not been capable of freeing the people who are the real owners of this country. Give it back to them. You have reduced them to such a situation that they cannot even struggle for freedom: they are doped, drugged, they are almost asleep. They cannot fight for freedom, they don’t know what freedom is. And they don’t want it either, because this is going so well: no work, and money is available; no work, and alcohol is available; no work, and all drugs are available. Even those drugs which are prohibited to other people are available to the Red Indians, to destroy them, to destroy their spirit.
I say these three things: the land has to go back to the real owners – those who are capable of living here under the Red Indians as rulers can remain, otherwise they should go back to their own country. America has to stop all interference with other countries and put its whole energy into changing the conditions of the poor, of the blacks, of women. And third, it has to drop the very idea of war, to become the first country in the history of the world to drop war, defense departments, armies, to become a precedent for others to follow.
I am perfectly convinced that if America can do that, soon other countries would have to follow, would certainly follow, because they are also suffering. Under the pressure of war effort, their whole economies are going down and down. But out of fear they cannot stop creating more weapons. These simple things just need a little understanding, and America can open a new dimension for the whole of humanity.
Osho,
You have said there is no God, only godliness; and there is no religion, only religiousness. Is there such a thing as a master, or is it masterliness?
There is no such thing as a master, but there is certainly something you can call masterliness. Not everybody can manage – even all the people who have become enlightened have not been masters.
To be a master, different qualities are needed than just enlightenment. You can become enlightened and nobody will ever know about it. To give the message – what you have got you have got – you need to be articulate, immensely articulate, because you are going to do something which is almost impossible: you are going to transform the experience of silence, wordlessness, into words.
You have to be a charismatic personality, so that people are automatically attracted toward you. No need for advertisement: mouth to mouth, people start hearing about you, that something immense has happened to a man… Not only that, the man is capable in some strange way to relate it to you. Through words, through silence, just by his presence, just by looking into your eyes, just holding your hand, something transpires. Something starts happening to you which you have never thought about, never dreamed about.
Yes, there is a certain quality which makes a man a master. But I say that there is no need of a master because people in their ignorance, in their unconscious state, start becoming dependent on the master. He becomes a father figure, and that is where everything goes wrong: he himself unknowingly destroys what he is doing.
I am here with you, and I say that I am not your master and you are not my follower – and you know perfectly well, I know perfectly well, that I am your master and you are my follower. But I go on insisting that you are not my follower and I am not your master – you are my fellow travelers – just so that you don’t become dependent on me, just so that you don’t start thinking it is my responsibility; you need not be worried: the master is there, he will take care, he is the savior. He will save you, you need not do anything.
No, I want you to be responsible. I want you to take all your responsibility on yourself. I can impart whatsoever has happened to me, and it is no obligation to you. I am not obliging you; I am simply enjoying sharing.
To have enlightenment is tremendous bliss, but it is nothing compared to when one starts sharing it, when one starts seeing the same flame in thousands of eyes, the same luster and glory around thousands of faces. No enlightenment can be compared to it. It transcends all bliss that you have known in enlightenment. That was an individual affair, small; a window had opened and you had looked through the window. The sky, the stars… But the frame of the window was there, your experience was framed. You have never been out of the house, naturally you will deduce that this is the sky – the frame of your window.
Yes, you are seeing real stars and the real sky, but you are confined, limited – your window is giving a frame to your experience. If you want to share with others, you will have to come out, you will have to seek people with whom you can share. You will have to go and knock on many doors to find people who are almost ready to receive it. And when you go out of the house searching for seekers and disciples, then you know the whole sky, the infinity of it, the unlimited number of stars. Now you know that sky you had seen was framed.
There is no frame, there is no boundary to existence. Sharing your enlightenment, you come to know there is no boundary to enlightenment either; it is not yours or mine, it is existential. This I call transcendence of enlightenment. This is the moment when the enlightened person becomes ordinary: he has transcended even that special-ness of becoming, of being enlightened. Now he is at ease with himself and his ordinariness.
But this ordinariness has an immense impact of its own, it has the charisma I am talking about; it makes the man a magnetic force. He becomes the very center of the whole existence, and all those who are in search – even groping in darkness – start moving toward him. But don’t give it a frame. When you call it a master, you have given it a frame. Let it remain a quality – masterliness.
There is no God, there is godliness. There is no religion, there is religiousness. There is no master, there is only mastery, masterliness. And as the master becomes a quality, immediately the disciple becomes a quality. Then there is no disciple, only discipleship.
Discipleship is a totally different thing: disciplehood, or to come to the exact right word, discipline. The word discipline means learning, the process of learning. There is no disciple, no learner, but there is a process of learning. There is no master who teaches you, but there is a master-being who shares that which he has found, and his treasure is infinite, inexhaustible.
Osho,
In the past, monarchs, statesmen and politicians always looked toward the wise enlightened men for their advice in affairs of state. Would it be a boon to mankind if Ronald Reagan sought your advice? What would you say to him?
In the first place, the politicians of today are not so wise as some emperors in the past have been. The emperor was born an emperor, so sometimes there were idiots who became emperors, mad, crazy people who became emperors. Once in a while, there was a person who was wise enough and yet became an emperor. Augustus in Rome and Ashoka in India were such emperors. They went to seek advice. They knew there are people who knew much more; they knew there are people whose word is truth.
But today’s presidents and prime ministers are going to be just third-rate cunning politicians. It is impossible for a wise man to become the president of a country, for the simple reason that he is wise. He cannot lie, he cannot give you promises which he knows can never be fulfilled.
He will tell you things which will hurt you. Just think of me: in the first place I cannot run for the presidency of a country, because I don’t like running. I can drive in my Rolls Royce, so my campaign for the presidency will not be running for president, but driving for president.
My whole life I have been practicing a certain art: how to influence people and create enemies. This is not a way to become a president or a prime minister. No wise man can even think of it, because he cannot fulfill the basic conditions of a politician.
And you are asking me if a president – for example, Ronald Reagan – came for my advice, would I give it to him? Of course: if I can give advice to you all, why can’t I give advice to Ronald Reagan? But he will have to come not as a president but as a disciple, because unless you come to learn I cannot teach you.
If he comes as a president, he cannot get an appointment from Sheela; but if he comes just as a human being he is welcome. Any politician from any country is welcome, but he should come just as a human being; otherwise it is useless, wasting my time and wasting his time.
So from my side, I am clear. But your question is only “if” – you should not forget, no president is going to come, no president has the guts to come. I am not just saying something without any support from my experience: it is my whole life’s experience.
I knew Jawaharlal personally: he was a man of great aesthetic, poetic qualities – the first prime minister of India – but still he had not the guts to accept my advice. He said, “You are right, but you don’t know this dirty politics. If I start doing things the way you are suggesting, I will simply lose my premiership. I will not be able to do what you are saying – I will just lose my power, my prestige. I will look crazy. And I say to you that what you are saying is right.”
His successor, Lalbahadur Shastri, was immensely interested in me. He died with one of my books on his chest: he was reading it and must have fallen asleep, had a heart attack and died. He was in Tashkent, Russia, for a summit meeting – the Russian president, Pakistan’s president, and himself. These three were there to settle matters about Kashmir, because a part of Kashmir was occupied by Pakistan.
Pakistan’s army had been standing ready for almost forty years, the Indian army was ready, confronting Pakistan’s army for forty years – and the U.N.’s army was just standing in between at the cease-fire line. Now, how long is it going to be there, this cease-fire line? Forty years is too long a time. They had gone to settle it, but Shastri died.
He lived to be the prime minister for just one year. He was very simple in a way, and it was by chance that he was chosen prime minister. No one could have thought that he could win the race, but in the political game it sometimes happens. He was the most unexpected candidate.
The commanding, ruling party of the country was very much afraid of Morarji Desai, because he was the most stubborn type of person. Once he became the prime minister, he would not care a bit about the committee who had chosen him. The committee was afraid to choose him, for the simple reason that they knew that man. Once he had power in his hands, he wouldn’t care even about those who had given him power.
So on the one side was Morarji Desai, on the other side was Indira Gandhi. They were afraid to choose Indira Gandhi because in the whole political atmosphere there was the idea that it seems India is not a democracy but a monarchy. Jawaharlal was the first prime minister; now his daughter will be the second prime minister. They wanted to avoid Indira, because turning it into a family affair would bring condemnation to all of them and would make the opposite parties more powerful.
Certainly it has turned into a family affair. After Indira, her son has become the prime minister. For forty years one family has been ruling, except for that one year when Lalbahadur was chosen. He was chosen because he was a very simple and weak person. The committee knew perfectly well that even if he were the prime minister, they would remain the masters, the kingmakers. He would be only a puppet. Whatever they wanted, he would do.
Morarji Desai could not be chosen. He wanted to be chosen; he was forcing the committee, “I am the most experienced, the most senior person, why are you not choosing me?” Against him was standing Indira Gandhi. She had her reasons: she had lived with her father, she had seen the whole freedom struggle, its problems. She had seen the beginnings of the independence of India, its complexities, its problems. She knew every in and out of all the politicians of the country. Nobody else had such knowledge.
“Morarji Desai might be senior, but that he knows nothing about all the chief ministers of the states, all the governors, he knows nothing. I have all the files of my father and his whole experience, and I was living with him. I knew everybody – who is dependable, who is not; who is reliable, who is not; who is certain to betray the country.”
Both had their claims, but the committee persuaded Lalbahadur, who was a very small-sized man, and was very afraid: “Forgive me, I cannot manage, I am a simple man.” He had never been in the public eye, he was not a national figure. Just because Jawaharlal loved him for his sincerity, truthfulness, reliability, he was in the supreme commanding committee of the ruling party – Jawaharlal had put him there.
The committee – the whole committee unanimously – chose Lalbahadur. It sometimes happens… He was very available to me, but even he was not courageous enough to come to see me. He managed a lunch, in a political way, in the home of one of his cabinet ministers. This man, Karan Singh, was interested in me: he was the king of Kashmir, and because Kashmir became dissolved into India, he was immediately taken into the cabinet. Naturally he had to be given something; he was the first to join India and give his whole country to the union.
He was very much interested in me, so Lalbahadur said, “This would be good. You call him and me for lunch, so we meet just casually and discuss. My going to him will be dangerous to my career.” And he confessed it to me that this is how diplomacy works. Nobody knows – just a casual, accidental meeting. And before lunch, after lunch, for almost three hours he was listening to me about every problem that he was facing.
But I told him it would be good if he came to my place and lived a few days with me; everything could be cleared. He said, “That is impossible. If people come to know that I have gone to you for advice, I am finished. You have so many enemies in the country, in my party, in my cabinet, that I cannot take that risk. And I am simply a weak man – I have been chosen for my weakness.” But he was sincere.
Indira, the third prime minister of India, was very much interested in me, but not courageous enough to come to Pune. She was continuously telling Laxmi, “I want to see Osho, I want to come. And next time when I come to Mumbai or anywhere nearby, I am going to come to the ashram.” And she came twice to Pune itself, but she could never gather courage to come to the ashram.
Political fear… Just to be associated with a man like me needs courage, because all those who are my enemies will become your enemies. And all those who are your friends may stop being your friends just because you are associated with me. The last time she came to Pune, she told Laxmi, “This time, whatsoever happens I am going to manage to come.” But when Laxmi went to see her, she said, “There are so many engagements, I cannot find time.”
And this was a lie, because she went to Kohlapur – four hours drive – to meet the shankaracharya, the head of the Hindus like the pope is the head of the Catholics. She found time to go to the shankaracharya – four hours going, four hours coming, and just two minutes to touch the feet of the shankaracharya. But that was politically helpful.
Thousands of Hindus had gathered for the shankaracharya. He was an old man from the south, very much respected by the Hindus because he was absolutely fulfilling all their demands of how a religious person should be. He was an ascetic, a masochist – those were the qualities that Hindus were asking for: intelligence has never been asked. Scholarship, yes: he could recite Hindu scriptures without reading, he knew them by rote. He was very much respected and he was very old, eighty or eighty-five.
Now, Indira lied that she had no time but the reality is that she had no courage – even to meet the person who was the only one who supported her when she was defeated and lost her premiership. The whole country was against her, it was a tremendous defeat, and when she stood in a by-election, I was the only man to bless her. No shankaracharya blessed her, not even Vinoba Bhave, who was her political guru, blessed her. Now they were afraid: to bless her means to lose many friends.
She went to the shankaracharya again to get his blessings; he did not speak a word, she was told that he had taken silence for the day. This was simple diplomacy: if he has taken silence, good, when she touches his feet he can bless her with the hand – that is not breaking your silence. But no, he remained sitting just like a statue – because it was a problem for him too. If he blessed Indira, then all the Hindus who were against Indira would be against him. It is a simple rule: the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
So I would like to say to you that your question is only “if” – Ronald Reagan cannot come, cannot have the courage. But from my side I have no ifs, no buts. If he wants to come, he is welcome; but he has to remember that here he is not the president. He has come here to seek advice, to learn something. He has to be here like a disciple. If that much humbleness is there, then certainly my advice can reach to his heart, otherwise, it is meaningless.