Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to Management by Devdutt Pattanaik Read Free Book Online Page A

come back. This is the nature of nature. This is prakriti, which is visualized as the Goddess (feminine gender). The law of karma, according to which every event has a cause and consequence, governs prakriti.
The human mind observes nature, yearns for permanence, and seeks to appreciate its own position in the grand scheme of things. The human mind can do this because it can imagine and separate itself from the rest of nature, as a purush. As man realizes the potential of a purush, he walks on the path of his dharma.

    This is the Indian differentiator: the value given to imagination, to the human mind, to subjectivity. While truth in the West exists outside human imagination, in India, it exists within the imagination. In the West, imagination makes us irrational. In India, imagination reveals our potential, makes us both kind and cruel.
    In sanatan, fear of death separates the animate (sajiva) from the inanimate (nirjiva). The animate respond to death in different ways: plants grow, animals run, while humans imagine and create subjective realities.
    Of all living creatures, humans are special as they alone have the ability to outgrow the fear of death and change, and thus experience immortality. He who does so is God or bhagavan, worthy of worship. Those who have yet to achieve this state are gods or devatas.

    Since every human is potentially God—hence god—every subjective truth is valid. Respect for all subjective realities gave rise to the doctrine of doubt (syad-vada) and pluralism (anekanta-vada) in Jainism, the doctrine of nothingness (shunya-vaad) in Buddhism and the doctrines of monism (advaita-vaad) as well as dualism (dvaita-vaad) in Hinduism.
    With diversity came arguments, but these were not born out of scepticism but out of faith. The argumentative Indian did not want to win an argument, or reach a consensus; he kept seeing alternatives and possibilities. The wise amongst them sought to clarify thoughts, understand why other gods, who also contained the spark of divinity, did not see the world the same way. The root of the difference was always traced to a different belief that shaped a different view of the world in the mind.

    As one goes through the epics of India one notices there are rule-following heroes (Ram) as well as rule-following villains (Duryodhan), rule-breaking heroes (Krishna) as well as rule-breaking villains (Ravan). Thus, goodness or righteousness has nothing to do with rules; they are at best functional, depending on the context they can be upheld or broken. What matters is the reason why rules are being followed or broken. This explains why Indians do not value rules and systems in their own country as much as their counterparts in Singapore or Switzerland, but they do adhere to rules and systems when they go abroad.
Between 2002 and 2012, international observers noticed that when cases of fraud and corruption were raised in the UK and US, they were dealt with severely and a decision was arrived at in a short span of time. During the same period, the Indian legal system pulled up many Indian politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists for similar charges. Their cases are still pending, moving from one court to another. The Indian legal system is primarily equipped only to catch rule-breaking Ravans, not rule-upholding Duryodhans.
    That Ram and Krishna (avatars of Vishnu) are worthy of worship and Ravan and Duryodhan (sons of Brahma) are not has nothing to with behaviour. It has to do with belief. Why are they following or breaking the rule? The answer to this question is more critical than whether they are following or breaking the rule.
    Belief is forged as imagination responds to the challenges of nature: death and change. Fear contracts the mind and wisdom expands it. From the roots brah, meaning growing or widening, and manas, meaning mind endowed with imagination, rise three very important concepts in India that sound very similar: the brahman (pronounced by laying stress on