England has no future

Beloved Master,

For centuries the British Bobby, with no gun, only a small truncheon, has been a symbol of the respect for law and order in a civilized country. Now rioters are attacking the police with shotguns and gas bombs. In the latest riot two hundred policemen were wounded and one killed with a hatchet. A senior officer said, “This is not England, this is madness. They are using my men for target practice.”

What is causing this surge of violence against law and order?

People in England were rich, not because they had produced the riches, but because they had exploited the whole Empire. They squeezed the last drop of blood from countries like India. Of course, England was happy — at the cost of millions of people dying in poverty. You have taken all their gold, silver, their diamonds, their mines. You have taken everything from them.

And England is a small country, not big enough even to be compared to a state in India. India consists of thirty states now — British India was even bigger, because now Pakistan is separate, Bangladesh is separate. But even now India is thirty times bigger than England.

England was a parasite. Of course, the British behaved well, they were very cultured; they were ladies and they were gentlemen. And what were they doing around the world? They never considered other human beings equal to them. All other human beings, whom they were exploiting and on whose blood they were living, were treated like animals.

All these riches pouring in from all over the world made England really beautiful, rich, educated, cultured. But now the Empire has disappeared. Now England is going down the drain. And now all those people whom England has trained to kill and murder are turning upon their own people. Every action has its reaction. You cannot escape from the basic laws of life. England will have to suffer.

You are asking me: Why is it that there were no riots in England before, and now hundreds of people are being killed, policemen are being killed?

There will be more riots, because England has become accustomed to all the riches which are no longer coming. It has become accustomed to having all the luxuries without producing them. Now from where can it get all those riches? Now it is the darkest and the most dismal country on the earth. But that’s how existence functions. If you do something wrong, you are bound to suffer. If you do something right, existence is very rewarding.

England has done so much wrong in the past three hundred years that it seems difficult for it even to survive. All that glory and glamour was borrowed, stolen; forcibly, violently taken away from others. Now that glory is gone; those beautiful days have become dreams. People are unemployed. England is becoming every day poorer and poorer. And the people have become accustomed to being violent, violent with others, in the past; now they will be violent with themselves, with their own. It is absolutely natural, and absolutely justified.

It is going to happen to all those countries which have been living on exploitation, whose culture depends on somebody else’s blood. It is bound to happen. It is simply the law of life. You cannot go on against the law for long. Sooner or later it takes you over.

Now England is just a pauper country. And there is no way to create the Empire again, those days are gone. England will suffer much violence in the future from its own people. It has done that violence to other people; the ghosts of all those people will follow it.

England has no future. Darkness and more darkness…. And all that old nonsense of being cultured and civilized is already disappearing; the barbarous reality is showing its face. This is going to happen almost everywhere, for different reasons.

Osho, From Bondage to Freedom, Ch 33