Hansaduta nodded. "Imperceptibly they introduced this."
"Hm. That is their administration. And that was going on for the last two hundred years. So India lost its culture, educated persons they lost. And the mass of people, they were not educated. They have not lost, but they don't find any good example by the leaders. They are simply staying somehow or other in their original culture, but there is no encouragement by the leaders. Just like Jawaharlal Nehru, he was a complete rascal about Indian culture. He did not think that Indian culture has any value. Therefore he wrote the book, Discovery of India. You know that? It is little popular. Discovery of India; 'For so long India was not discovered' -- by opiate or something like, as the Russians say -- 'Now it is discovered.' And that its leaders have to become Anglicized or Europeanized-industry, the Western way of living, eating, and everything. Pollution, everything. Otherwise, we have seen in our childhood how happy people were. Simple. If one has five rupees income per month he's happy. I've seen it. Husband, wife, a small family. If he has got five rupees income, they can maintain very nicely, happily."
He calculated how three rupees was sufficient to purchase a month's supply of vegetables. "I have seen it. Fresh vegetables, rice, this and... Just like with banana leaf. The pots were of earthen, the wife is cooking and she's utilizing dry foliage as fuel, a little temperature, everything is cooked. The husband takes one banana leaf and spreads, and the wife gives sufficient rice, vegetables. And things were so cheap, I have seen it. And fresh, everything fresh. Any cultivator, he has got little land surrounding his house and he's growing vegetables like squash, chilies, and some spinach, eggplant, and this banana. So whatever he's grown he takes in a basket, goes to the market, immediately sold. And they're all fresh. Collected in the morning, and it is sold by eight o'clock-all fresh vegetables.
"There was no export, there was no facility of transport. These rascals introduced big scale transport, this railway. There was no railway. So transport means this villager, instead of selling locally or one mile away, he will dispatch in Calcutta. The Calcutta people, they are sitting on table and smoking and printing paper money and exploit."
Hansaduta was nodding in agreement. "When we were traveling with our bus from Calcutta to Vrndavana, we would want to buy watermelon from people who were growing right on the bank of the river, and he would have huge piles. And he would say, 'No, I'm not selling. I'm transporting these to Delhi, where one cannot get watermelon.' He's getting five times the price he would get in his local..."
"So the transport is a dangerous thing," Prabhupada concluded. "A local man cannot get. He's starving. And the man in big cities, he's doing nothing, he simply has got paper to sign and paper money. He's attracting all production, and they are starving. This is modern civilization. Otherwise, within the village you can get everything. Village economy, everything very cheap. And as soon as they got these transport facilities, the local men, they could not eat, and these lazy rascals, they are getting everything. Big, big cities like Calcutta, Bombay, they [have] millions of population. They are not producing anything. The producer is different man. They are simply artificially cheating them by paper money and they take. This is modern civilization."
Hansaduta observed that, on the basis of transporting of food, other artificial industries grow. "Like for instance packing. Sometimes the package costs more than the item which is being packaged."
"Especially in your country," Prabhupada said, "Packing is more important than the [goods]. Now it has become a problem how to throw these packings."
"Yes," I agreed. "Plastic they can't dispose of, glass."
Prabhupada sighed, and rose from behind his desk. "Simply creating problems. This modern civilization, they could not make any profit. They have created some problems, that's all. Very dangerous civilization." Then he went into his prasadam room to take his breakfast of fruits.
- From "A Transcendental Diary Vol 4" by HG Hari Sauri Prabhu
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