1 Apr 2024

Serbia and the Bhagavad Gita: A reflection

Around 700 years ago, the Serbian empire was a significant European State covering all of what we now know as the Balkans, roughly coterminous with the former Yugoslavia

But Serbia seems to attract wars like magnets attract iron and the modern Serbian State has contracted to a small State of roughly 7 million people. Serbs have fought valiantly and have usually been the victims of attack rather than the attackers.

They have mostly been Orthodox Christians but Matthew chapter 5 in their Bibles has been lost on them, is it has on most Christians

Contrast that with India. The Bhagavad Gita tells Indians that when we are attacked, we should surrender rather than fight. It saves lives. And Indians have done a lot of surrendering. The result? India is a large and important country with a population of around 1.5 billion people. So who have been wisest? Serbs or Indians.

I greatly sympathize with Serbians for their sad history. Their losses of life have been awful and grievous. But they would probably have been wiser to heed their own Holy Book, in Mathew chapter 5. Indians have shown us the results of heeding similar advice. The Serbian empire was a multi-ethnic State, as was India, so the comparison is pretty fair, I think

The British have been wise too, but in a different way. Largely by securing the moral high ground, they have always entered into a lot of treaties and alliances. The result is that a lot of foreigners have always died to secure British independence. In WWII, countless Russians, Frenchmen and some Americans died to Britain's benefit. They have avoided the worst of the wars by getting other people to die for them. That is cleverest of all I think.

As Winston Churchill once put it: "For a thousand years Britain has not seen the campfires of an invader". Contrast that with poor Serbia