Of God and Holy
Water
By Rajeev Srinivasan
http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/oct/25rajeev.htm
A lot of noise
has been made recently about an incident at the Guruvayur temple in Kerala. A
Congress politician, Vayalar Ravi, had the humiliating experience of the temple
authorities doing a punyaham (ritual cleansing of the premises with
holy water) after the wedding of his son Unny there. I certainly sympathise with
the man: this is highly insulting, being 'unclean' and 'impure'.
What makes this interesting is the fact that Vayalar
Ravi belongs to the 'backward-caste' Ezhavas, who are numerically powerful in
Kerala, and have been the mainstay of the Marxist party in the state. Many
Ezhavas have been agricultural labourers and tenant farmers who benefited from
the land-distribution and labour-friendly policies of the Left.
The Ezhavas also led the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 and
the struggle that led to the epoch-making Temple Entry Proclamation in 1936 that
threw open to all Hindus, regardless of caste, all of the-then kingdom of
Travancore's temples. This singular event enabled Ezhavas in particular and the
so-called 'lower-castes' of Kerala in general to gain self-respect, and to
participate fully in the economic and political life of the state.
Kerala had a history of extreme caste prejudice
concerning the 'pollution' of Nambudiri brahmins. There were detailed and
precise rules as to the proper physical distance from the brahmins to be
maintained by the different sudra castes such as Nairs, Pillais, Ezhavas,
Pulayas, Parayas et al.: something like five feet, 10 feet, 15 feet, etc. This
is so that they might not 'pollute' the brahmins by their shadows falling on
them.
Thus, the initial press reports about the Vayalar Ravi
incident were full of allusions to the bad old days of Kerala's caste-based
apartheid. The conclusion drawn was that a 'backward-caste' person being in the
temple caused it to be 'polluted'. But this is a very strange conclusion,
because thousands of 'backward-caste' Hindus visit the Guruvayur temple every
day. There is no way the temple can identify them as such, or require ritual
purification. There had to be something more.
Then came further information. The temple authorities
clarified that they did the ritual cleansing because the bridegroom was
suspected of not being a Hindu. It turns out that his mother, Mercy, is a
Christian. The Ezhavas are matrilineal, therefore the authorities felt that Unny
had to demonstrate his Hindu-ness, as he might be considered a Christian by
descent from his mother. They may have a point.
The Indian media dealt with this whole episode quite
predictably; as usual, the 'secular' 'progressives' waxed indignant at the 'casteist'
incident. Reams were written in high dudgeon about the obscurantist and
reactionary priests of Guruvayur. But the issue of the Christian mother scarcely
got any coverage. Railing about caste is more fun, I guess.
It is a fact that the Guruvayur temple takes a dim view
of Christians and non-Hindus in general. It explicitly forbids non-Hindus from
entering the temple. There is the famous case of the singer K J Jesudas who
wanted to sing inside the temple, but was prevented from doing so. Jesudas is a
practising Christian, but has sung a lot of devotional Hindu songs, including at
other temples.
I have heard many arguments about this. But I come down
on the side of the authorities: they have the right to restrict entry only to
Hindus. For, Hinduism is not looking to convert anybody, unlike the semitic
religions. Any non-Hindus coming into the temple, it can safely be assumed, are
not coming there to pray to the Hindu deity. They must be coming in as tourists,
to gawk. Since this is not a museum but a living place of devotion, I think the
authorities are right to insist that only practising Hindus be allowed in --
presumably they will pray.
In Jesudas' case, the question was not whether he
respects Hindu deities, but whether he is Hindu. Since he isn't, I think the
authorities are perfectly within their right to not allow him in. If Jesudas
really wanted to go to Guruvayur that badly, he could have converted to
Hinduism.
'Secular' 'progressives' will jump on me for this
opinion. They will crucify me for that oxymoron, 'Hindu fundamentalism'. But
wait, the very same Jesudas had trouble getting his son baptised by a Christian
church, because Jesudas sang at Hindu temples! Jesudas and his wife are
card-carrying Christians. But the Christian church balked at the ceremony of
sprinkling holy water on their son because Jesudas had committed the 'crime' of
singing Hindu devotional songs!
Thus these Christians should be tarred with the same
'communal' brush as the Guruyavur authorities. But of course not; in the lexicon
of the 'secular' 'progressives', only Hindus can be 'communal'.
Similarly, there was an incident in Pakistan after
Prime Minister Vajpayee's ill-fated trip to Lahore. He visited the Minar-I-Pakistan,
a tower in that city. I am told that there is some significance to this tower in
regards to the creation of Pakistan. It may well be that the call for a
"Pakistan" or land of the pure was first made at this tower. In any
case, I got the impression that Vajpayee being there was a significant and
explicit concession that Partition was irreversible.
What was quite interesting was that after Vajpayee left
the tower, a group of Muslim fundamentalist Jamaat-I-Islami activists descended
upon the place and cleansed it with holy water! I guess this was because
Vajpayee was an 'infidel' kafir even though a missionary religion
should welcome infidels to come there to be converted to become one of the
faithful.
Once again, there was deafening silence from the
'secular' 'progressives' in the Indian media about this act of Muslim extremism.
I am not surprised. This is to be expected.
The lengths to which these 'secular' 'progressives' go
was demonstrated tellingly recently. The motley crew named SAHMAT protested
vociferously at the Millennium Peace Summit in New York City that the Vishala
Hindu Parishad, those dreaded communalist-divisive-fundamentalists, were allowed
to co-sponsor the event. Fair enough.
But a couple of days later, the Catholic Church came
out with the 'Iesus Dominus' document, which states that Catholics have an
exclusive hotline to heaven, and that all other religious paths are false,
including their fellow Christian sects. This is a document of truly breathtaking
chutzpah, obtuseness and arrogance, especially in this sceptical world of today.
Naturally the Vatican has no proof for their direct line to their God, or even
for the existence of their God: it is pure blind dogma. And the Vatican makes no
apologies for this extremely divisive document. Of course, SAHMAT did not find
it in their hearts to protest against the Catholics, who also co-sponsored the
Summit! By 'secular' definition, Catholics couldn't possibly be
communalist-divisive-fundamentalists.
It just goes to show, there just isn't enough holy
water going around to drown all these communalist and hypocritical fools
collectively.
Postscript
Sushama Londhe has an impressive site called a Tribute
to Hinduism which is a veritable treasure-trove of information about the
religion. I found it very interesting to browse through.
The BBC
reported on October 2 that a group of Christian terrorists, the National
Liberation Front of Tripura, has 'banned' the Hindu festival Durga Puja in
Tripura. They have warned any tribals that those celebrating this festival will
be shot. They declare that they want all of Tripura to be Christian.
It is the same terrorists who shot and killed a Hindu
priest a few weeks ago, in his own temple. Similarly, Bineshwar Brahma, a Hindu
Bodo activist and litterateur, was shot dead by Christian militants in Guwahati
in August, explicitly based on his religion. None of these incidents has been
reported widely, or at all, in the Indian print media. I read about them at the
BBC's online site.
Christians are on a rampage in the Northeast, indulging
in ethnic cleansing and religious violence, killing Hindus, supported by white
fundamentalist churches, especially American ones. The human rights of Hindus
are being violated: for instance, there are the Reangs who have been ethnically
cleansed from their homes. But this is not news for the 'secular'
'progressives'.
There seems to be a conspiracy of silence in the Indian
print media about the activities of the Christian Taliban of the Northeast. I
wonder, is this silence being bought with cold cash? Or is it purely
ideological? Why isn't anyone demanding the kind of action that was taken when
that Australian Christian missionary was murdered? Am I wrong in concluding that
the life of a white Christian is worth far more than the lives of religious
Hindus?
The assault on Hinduism continues elsewhere, too. Here
is an e-mail that reader Sridhar forwarded me. I have not verified these facts
about the books mentioned, I am merely forwarding the message.
September 27, 2000
We are enclosing the following information that has
appeared in the `Letters to the Editor' column of Hinduism Today.
Please lodge your protest with Encyclopedia Britannica. We also urge you to
forward this message to as many persons as possible requesting them to lodge
their protests.
Yours in the Lord
Swami Gautamananda
President
Sri Ramakrishna Math
Mylapore, Chennai-600 004
India.
September 27, 2000 Encyclopedia Britannica
If you boot up the Ramakrishna
Page of the Encyclopedia Britannica
online, you can see that Kali's Child (whose
thesis is that Ramakrishna was homosexual) is the first book recommended and
also the fourth book recommended. Narasingha Sil's appalling book Ramakrishna
Revisited is number two. While we find
these two books offensive, we nevertheless are not requesting that they be
stricken from their list. What we would like is a representative list of the
books concerning Sri Ramakrishna. Naturally we would hope that they would
include the basic source books concerning Sri Ramakrishna: The
Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna: The Great Master
and The Life of Sri Ramakrishna
along with more contemporary books such as Christopher Isherwood's Ramakrishna
and His Disciples or Richard Schiffman's
Sri Ramakrishna: Prophet for the New Age. I'd
like as many Hindus as possible to respond en masse the Britannica's
site (editor@britannica.com). While they can ignore 20 letters from irritated or
offended Hindus, they might not be as cavalier with 1,000 letters. I would like
ideas and lists of Hindu organisations or individuals that might be interesting
in responding to this issue. It's bad enough that Kali's Child was
highly touted in academia and assigned in college classrooms, having it
recommended (twice!) by the Encyclopedia Britannica
on their website is even worse!
Vrajaprana vraja@west.net
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