Osho,
From Morarji Desai’s government through to Rajiv Gandhi’s, you have only ever been a critic. Do you, however, have a particular viewpoint or answer of your own for solving the problems of this country?

The problems of this country are bigger than this country itself. And my criticism is not negative. It is a positive approach toward solving these problems.

For example, when a surgeon operates on someone’s cancer, would you call the operation negative? It appears to be negative, but in reality it is positive. And before an old building is demolished and a new building can be raised, it is necessary to make people alert that it is dangerous to live in that old building, it can destroy life.

I have never criticized anybody in my whole life, but this is a fact that cannot be helped: that when there is a thorn stuck in someone’s foot it has to be prised out with another thorn. That other thorn is not an enemy, it is a friend – although it too is a thorn.

So the first thing that I want to make very clear is that I am not a critic. My viewpoint is creative, but before creating, demolition is a must. And thousands of years of old rotten traditions, superstitions, that are heavy on our backs and do not allow this country to move ahead…as long as we do not get rid of them, no positive, no creative reconstruction is possible.

The problems are so many that they cannot even be counted. Here I will discuss only the basic ones. But remember, it is not criticism, it is not negative. I do not believe in “no.” I call “yes” religiousness.

The first challenge facing this country is to free itself from its past. And your politicians cannot do it, because the politician has to beg for votes from the very people whose past it is. Understand it this way: when a child is born, it has only the future and no past. When it is a youth, it has the present. When it is old, it has only a past. A country that has only a past has become old. It is on its deathbed; it will be in the coffin any day.

For example, Mahatma Gandhi, wanted no railway trains, no telephones, no telegraph, no electricity, no machines…no dimensions of technology in this country. For him, the progress of the world stopped at the spinning wheel. But this human race cannot survive with just the spinning wheel. If a man were to work only on the spinning wheel every day, eight hours a day continuously spinning yarn, then he could create clothes just for himself for the whole year – nothing for his wife, nothing for his children, nothing for his parents. But you cannot eat clothes, you cannot drink clothes. And if for eight hours a day you were only to spin a wheel, you would be the greatest dimwit. From where would you get your food? From where would you get clothes for your wife and children? How would you build your house? Hence, I have made the observation that until this country becomes free of Mahatma Gandhi’s noose, it has no future.