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Found and Lost: the Ayodhya Evidence

The North-Indian town of Ayodhya is scene to a controversy over a Hindu sacred site, the Rama Janmabhoomi or “birthplace of Rama”.  That is where a mosque, the Babri Masjid, was built in forcible replacement of an earlier Hindu temple, in 1528 under Moghul emperor Babar at the latest, and demolished by a Hindu crowd in 1992. The controversy pits Hindu activists against a combine of Muslim activists and the so-called “secularists”, an array of Hindu-born Marxists and US-oriented ‘globalists’ who share a hatred of Hindu assertiveness. 

Interestingly, the Jaipur royal family's Palace Museum has a rare, 300-year old cloth map of Ayodhya town, which depicts its key sites, such as the fort, the Janamsthan, Agni Kund, Laxman Kund, Janaki Kund, River Saryu, and so on. This clearly indicates that well before the British courts came into the picture, a place in Ayodhya was designated as the Janamsthan.  It is understood that a rare copy of this map was made available to the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao in 1992, and it is likely to figure as crucial historical evidence in the Allahabad High Court case as well.

Paradoxically, in the colonial period, there were no such doubts about the legitimacy of Hindu claims to the site. Faizabad district judge, Col Chambers who, in his ruling of 1892, stated: "I found that the masjid built by Emperor Babar stands on the border of the town of Ayodhya ... It is most unfortunate that a masjid should have been built on the land specially held sacred by Hindus. But ... it is too late now to remedy the grievance. All that can be done is to maintain the parties in status quo. In such a case, as the present one, any innovation would cause more harm and derangement of order than benefit."

Most Hindu intellectuals shy away from facing the fact that the Muslim community is even today using political power (through 'secular' political parties) to deny legitimate Hindu claims to the site. Even worse, Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders are jointly determined to perpetuate this profound spiritual and moral offence against Hindu dharma, and to maintain for as long as they can the already altered status quo over a site towards which they can have no real religious allegiance.

A Splendid Consensus

Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples to flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism.

(image source: The Splendour That Was 'Ind - By K T Shah).

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Actually, until 1989 there had been no question about the site’s history.  All the written sources, whether Hindu, Muslim or European, were in agreement about the pre-existence of a Rama temple at the site. “Rama’s birthplace is marked by a mosque, erected by the Moghul emperor Babar in 1528 on the site of an earlier temple”, according to the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry “Ayodhya”. In the 1970s, a team of the Archaeological Survey of India led by Prof. B.B. Lal dug out some trenches just outside the mosque and found rows of pillar-bases which must have supported a larger building predating the mosque.  Moreover, in the mosque itself, small black pillars with Hindu sculptures had been incorporated, a traditional practice in mosques built in forcible replacement of infidel temples to flaunt the victory of Islam over Paganism.

What is certain is that a major Hindu temple at the site was demolished by Islamic iconoclasm and replaced with a mosque symbolizing the victory of Islam over Infidelism.  Of that, evidence is plentiful and of many types. 

The JNU fatwa
 
Yet, in 1989, all this evidence was brushed aside by a group of 25 academics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), mostly declared Marxists, who issued a statement denying the existence of any evidence for the temple: The Political Abuse of History.  Not that they offered any newfound data to support this dramatic reversal of the consensus, all they had to show was some totally contrived reinterpretations of a few of the existing data plus the worn-out slogans against “Hindu communalism”.  But the sympathy of the Indian and international media for their purported motive of “upholding secularism” assured the immediate worldwide adoption of the new party-line as Gospel truth: the demolished Rama temple had merely been a malicious invention of the ugly Hindu nationalists.

The world media as amplifier of the secularist version

The Reuters despatch for 11 June 2003 is titled: “Dig finds no sign of temple at Indian holy site”.  More than 90% of the text rehashes the story of riots and other incidents that have punctuated the dispute. Note that the actual report is not quoted, merely what “a source” at the ASI has claimed about it.  Note also the slanted phrase about “nationalist claims of a Hindu temple”, as if there were anything typically nationalist about acknowledging historical facts.  The existence of that temple had been a matter of consensus among Muslims, Europeans and Hindus, both nationalist and anti-nationalist, until the JNU professors issued their fatwa to disregard the evidence and deny history.  Distorted or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism.  There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation.  No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindu nationalists. 

(source: Found and Lost: the Ayodhya Evidence - By Koenraad Elst and  Ayodhya as power struggle - By Sandhya Jain dailypioneer -  July 29 2003).  For more on Ayodhya refer to chapter Glimpses VII). Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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Eurocentrism and Science

Past universes are dismissed as religion by Eurocentric scientists. 

Cosmologist Edward Harrison has remarked: 

"Our universe is the only rational universe. Ones that came before us are mythologies. Contemporaries who disagree with our cosmology are crackpots. "

The notion that we have lifted all the veils, can’t be true. We would leave no new universes for our descendants to discover. Today we believe that past cultures were mistaken in their cosmologies; we ignore in doing so that those people believed in their universes just as firmly as we believe in our big bang universe."

The mathematical foundation of Western science is a gift from the Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Babylonians, and Maya. Our numerals, 0 through 9, were invented in ancient India; the Indians boasted geometry, trigonometry, and a kind of calculus. 

Yet Morris Kline, the best known modern historian of mathematics, has characterized Babylonian and Egyptian math as the "scrawling of children." He called the Indian mathematicians "fools."

Two hundred years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern India had understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and that therefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its center.

Yet, the hypotheses is that science was born in ancient Greece around 600 B.C. and flourished for a few hundred years, until about 146 B.C. when the Greeks gave way to the Romans. At this time science stopped dead in its track, and it remained dormant until resurrected during the Renaissance in Europe around 1500 A.D. The hypotheses assumes that the people who occupied India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, sub-Saharan Africa, China, the Americas, and elsewhere prior to 600 B.C. conducted no science. They discovered fire, then called it quits, waiting for Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, Democritus, and Aristotle to invent science in the Aegean. 

Twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton, the Hindu Rig Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together. The Sanskrit speaking Aryans subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth in an era, when the Greek believed in a flat one. The Indians of the fifth century A.D. somehow calculated the age of the earth as 4.3 billion years; scientist in 19th century England were convinced it was 100 million years. (The modern scientific estimate is 4.6 billion years). 

Skywatchers or Astronomers?

Hindu astronomer taught that the daily rotation of the earth on its axis provided the rising and setting of the sun. Indian proposed an atomic theory. Iron suspension bridges came from Kashmir, printing from India. 

Of the 96 achievements, only two are attributed to non-white, non-Western scientists: the invention of zero in India in the early centuries of the common era and the astronomical observations of Hindus and Maya in A.D. 1000. Even these two accomplishments are muted by the editors of Science. The Indians were given credit only for creating the "symbol for zero" rather than the concept itself. The Hindu and Maya "skywatchers" (the word astronomers was not used) made their observations according to the journal, for "agricultural and religious purposes only.

(source: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science - By Dick Teresi   p. 6 - 15 and 159 and 174 -212). For more refer to chapter on Hindu Culture1). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Hindus massacred on Maraad Beach 

• A group of Hindu fishermen sitting on the beach near a temple is attacked suddenly, without provocation or warning, by a mob of Muslims armed with swords. After a chaotic ten minutes, nine people are dead or bleeding to death on the beach. Many are seriously wounded. The attackers vanish into the night.
• A cache of swords and other sharp weapons, including blood-stained ones, as well as powerful country bombs is recovered from a mosque in the vicinity.
• Various politicians make soothing noises, 66 persons have been arrested in connection with the crime. A judicial inquiry has been instituted.
• The dead are: Gopalan, Chandran, Santosh, Madhavan, Asghar, Dasan, Pushparaj, Krishnan, and Prajeesh. One of them had been married for just five days.

I find the local media to be far more accurate and less prejudiced than the English language media in most cases. Consider the circumstances: the attack happened on a Friday, and it was directed at those sitting near a Hindu temple. First, almost all Muslim-initiated riots in India take place on Fridays, after the faithful have heard sermons in the local mosque.

Second, killing Hindus near a Hindu temple is guaranteed to be offensive; if there is any chance of a communal riot developing, this is an excellent way of triggering it.

This was a mini-Godhra: a murderous attack on Hindus. I have no idea who was behind it, perhaps Pakistanis, or perhaps it was merely local Moplah Muslims. After all, the Moplahs of Malabar did not need any Pakistani inspiration when they launched into the terrible riots of 1921 (the Moplah Rebellion) when they, without provocation, murdered, raped, and forcibly converted thousands of Hindus, just because distant Turkey had abolished the Caliphate.

Hindus in Kerala have declined in numbers, and this is what happens to non-Muslims when the Muslim population reaches a critical mass: decimation. When Semitic religions hold sway, they brutalise minorities. We have the examples of Muslim intolerance in Jammu & Kashmir and Christian intolerance in the Northeast. Hindus have a simple choice: convert, die or flee. And Kerala's Hindus are running out of places to flee to. We may end up in squalid refugee camps like the Pandits.

What was the objective this time? Possibly to create a communal riot along the lines of what happened in Gujarat in the wake of the Godhra massacre. Perhaps to emphasize that in Muslim-dominated Malabar, as in Bangladesh and Kashmir, it is just fine to murder Hindus. The perpetrators -- whoever they are -- are confident that there will be no consequences. What is likely to happen? Not much. Frightened Hindus will move some place safer, and one more piece of real estate will become dar-ul Islam, land of Muslims. This has been happening in other parts of Malabar, for example Muslim-majority Malappuram district, where Hindus are leaving for less dangerous places. Yes, the famed Nehruvian Stalinist 'secularism' in action, yet again.

Where is the outrage? Where are the cries for justice?

Furthermore, if by some miracle, Muslim perpetrators in Maraad are brought to book, Kuldip Nayar and Praful Bidwai will bestir themselves to defend them, along with SAHMAT, Teesta Setalvad, and Shabana Azmi. I wonder why it isn't clear to them that the human rights of the outlaw and the terrorist are not greater than the human rights of the ordinary citizen.

Indian fishermen - 

(image source: "Les Hindous" French early 19th century book written by Francois Balazar Solvyns).

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But I forget, Hindus are expendable. Hindus were expendable in Malabar during the Moplah Rebellion, part I...

Today, in Malabar there are large numbers of bearded men with skullcaps and women in all-enveloping black burqas. Astonishingly, even in southern Kerala, I have seen billboards advertising 'burqa fashions.'

I have also watched the growth of mosques in Kerala. In one stretch of the national highway between Kollam and Trivandrum, there are five huge mosques within the space of just one mile, and all but one have come up in the recent past, maybe ten years. You see scores of young boys with skullcaps and scores of little girls with headscarves going to the local madrassa, I imagine. Furthermore, enormous amounts of Saudi and other Muslim fundamentalist money have apparently come into Kerala. A banker I know told me of crores of rupees in transfers for instance to the Guruvayoor area (which, despite the Krishna temple, is heavily Muslim). He told me that nationalised banks in India are willing to provide Islamic banking to large customers: that is, they happily pay them no interest according to Islamic law, and are therefore quite content to ask no inconvenient questions.

***

The recent killings of innocent Hindu fishermen in Marad, Kerala, by Islamic terrorists have shocked the entire nation. The killings are reminiscent of the Mopla riots of 1921. The misuse of a local mosque for hiding terrorists, storing illegal arms and ammunition, and hatching conspiracies and the political support of the Muslim League. Marxists and the Congress, enjoyed by the murderers, make things worse.

(source: Marad is a Warning - By P Parameswaran - Hindu Vivek Kendra.org).

Scholarly silence on massacre in American academia

The riff-raff on RISA-L (Religion in South Asia Section (RISA) of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).  RISA participants are scholars interested in the academic study of the religious traditions of South Asia) suddenly seem to be tongue-tied. There has no mention about this atrocity. On the other hand, can you imagine the outcry if a bunch of Hindus had run a-mock?

(source: Moplah Rebellion, Part II: Hindus massacred on Maraad Beach - by Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and yahoogroups.com). For more refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari. For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Unethical Conversion by the Christian Church - By Francois Gautier

The biggest monotheist religion in the world - Christianity - continues to claim that its God is the only ‘true’ God and that those who do not believe in Him have to be converted to the ‘true’  religion by any means. But let’s face it: Christianity is dwindling in the West and the paedophile and sexual scandals which have also rocked the Vatican has eroded faith in Christianity. The Church is thus looking for new converts in the Third World, particularly in India, where people have such an innate tendency to spirituality. Indeed, the Pope has earmarked this new millennium as "the Evangelization of Asia".

Take, for instance, the forced conversions in the north-east. Christian missionaries, with active monetary and political support from the West, have been converting poor and innocent tribals in the north-east of India without any hindrance for the past 300 years. As a result, Nagaland is today 90 per cent Christian, Mizoram 86 per cent and Meghalaya 64.6 per cent.

This process is going on full speed at this very moment: There are now 1,20,000 Christians in Tripura, a 90 per cent increase since 1991. The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1,710 Christians in 1961, but 1,15,000 today, as well as 700 churches. All this is often done by means of ‘economic conversions’. 

"Miracle boxes" are put in local churches: The gullible villager writes out a request - a loan, a  pucca house, fees for the son’s schooling. A few weeks later, the miracle happens. And the whole family converts, making others in the village follow suit.

Is this ethical? No country in the world would allow this. France, for instance, has a minister in charge of keeping a tab on "sects". And sects means anything which does not belong to the great Christian family. Recently, two French schoolteachers were imprisoned by the police for a few days because they were Brahmakumaris and had used some Brahmakumari precepts in their teaching. 

What conversions do to the psyche of India is catastrophic. They threaten a whole way  of life, erasing centuries of tradition, customs, wisdom, teaching people to despise their own religion and look westwards to a culture which is alien to them. 

Look how the biggest drug problems in India are found in the north-east, or how Third World countries, which have been totally Christianized, are drifting away without nationalism and self-pride. "I was told after conversion that I should not wear a bindi on my forehead, as it is a heathen custom",  says Shanta (not her real name) of Agartala, whose family converted recently to Christianity. Her friend Sushma, who has come back to her original religion, says that one of the Indian missionaries from Kerala told her "that I would go to hell if I ever entered a temple again. But I don’t understand, she continues, when I was a Hindu, I found nothing wrong in going to a church, or to a mosque for that matter". 

(source: Erasing Age-old Traditions in Northeast - By Francois Gautier - timesofindia.com).

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A visit by Pope John Paul II in 1999 when he made his statement to attending bishops:

"The heart of the Church in Asia will be restless until the whole of Asia finds its rest in the peace of Christ, the risen Lord."

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No conversions, Israel warns its Missionaries
The anti-Christian offensive in Israel.

So-called "leaders" of the Christian evangelical movement have agreed to give up spreading the Gospel of Christ in the Holy Land in order to avoid being jailed under a proposed Israeli law aimed at stamping out Christian missionary work in Israel.

When I contacted the offices of Christian evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, both of whom are loud advocates of pro-Israel policy (despite the anti-Christian stance of the Israeli leadership), neither would comment on the anti-Christian legislation. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) another vocal supporter of Israel (and ally of the so-called "Christian Right" in the United States), likewise refused to provide me any comment on the anti-Christian offensive in Israel.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, the AJC's "director of interreligious affairs," said that the agreement is "a strong refutation of those Christians who sadly still target Jews as possible converts to Christianity." Rudin says that he hopes the statement will be "a model for others to emulate throughout the world."  Virtually the only national news publication in America to report on the Israeli war on Christianity was us on March 17, 1997.

(source: No conversions, Israel warns its Missionaries). For more refer to chapter on Conversion and Harvesting Our Souls - Missionaries, their design, their claims - By Arun Shourie.

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India and her Spirituality - By Sri Aurobindo

“Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, - and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, - that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organize the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, that there were other power behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the supra-sensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only recently begun to be see in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence. She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendors of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of science and organized method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way. Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy.

When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness. For three thousand years at least, - it is indeed much longer, - she has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an inexhaustible many-sidedness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences and creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces and temples and public works, communities and societies and religious orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, fine crafts, - the list is endless and in each item there is almost a plethora of activity. She creates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired; she will not have an end of it, seems hardly to need a space for rest, a time for inertial and lying fallow. She expands too outside her borders; her ships cross the ocean and the fine superfluity of her wealth brims over to Judea and Egypt and Rome; her colonies spread her arts and epics and creeds in the Archipelago; her traces are found in the sands of Mesopotamia; her religions conquer China and Japan and spread westward as far as Palestine and Alexandria, and the figures of the Upanishads and the sayings of the Buddhists are reechoed on the lips of Christ. Everywhere, as on her soil, so in her works there is the teeming of a superabundant energy of life.  

Young hermit - Ajanta Painting.

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But this supreme spirituality and this prolific abundance of the energy and joy of life and creation do not make all that the spirit of India has been in its past. It is not a confused splendor of tropical vegetation under heavens of a pure sapphire infinity. It is only to eyes unaccustomed to such wealth that there seems to be a confusion in this crowding of space with rich forms of life, a luxurious disorder of excess or a wanton lack of measure, clear balance and design. 

“India has been preeminently the land of the Dharma and the Shastra. She searched for the inner truth and law of each human or cosmic activity, its dharma; that found, she labored to cast into elaborate form and detailed law of arrangement its application in fact and rule of life. Her first period was luminous with the discovery of the Spirit; her second completed the discovery of the Dharma; her third elaborated into detail the first simpler formulation of the Shastra; but none was exclusive, the three elements are always present.”

(source: The Renaissance in India - Shri Aurobindo -  Arya Publishing House Calcutta. p. 9-16).  For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Monotheism vs. Polytheism – By A C Bose   
Monotheism   

1. To the monotheistic creeds God is a Person and not a metaphysical Essence.
2. As a Person the monotheistic Divinity cannot be conceived in any way one likes. For example, one who accepts a Single Divinity as Mother or Maiden is not a monotheist in the practical sense of the term. To the monotheist the Divinity is not only a Single Person but also a Masculine Person. Thus the distinction between polytheism and monotheism is not one of number alone but of gender also.
3. A monotheistic god cannot be any kind of male Person. He cannot, for example, be a Child or a Boy. He can only be a Father. One would not be a monotheist if one were to think of the Divine as Brother or any other relation. Thus, a monotheistic God is not only a single Person and a male Person, but He stands in a single relationship to man that of Father.
4. Even as Father He must be believed to be a very elderly Person; not only a Father but a Patriarch.
5. As a Person the monotheistic God cannot exist anywhere. He has His special abode – heaven. He is a Father who is in heaven. Heaven is His place of residence.
6. According to this cult while heaven is sacred, the universe is profane; while God and the angels live in heaven are holy, man who lives on the earth is sinful; while God is great, man is small. Polytheism finds the Divine in the universe and hence there is but a thin dividing line between the sacred and the profane, the human and the Divine, the mortal and the immortal. In fact polytheism contemplates heaven on earth and God in nature and among men. Hence while polytheism is attached to the earth, and thinks in terms of life and the joy of living, monotheism is attached to a hereafter and lives for heaven, looking upon earthly things. This trait of polytheism has been called Paganism.
7. Monotheism is not a simple belief in a God in heaven who is a Father. Its God, a Patraich, is a Ruler. He is the King of Heaven. And from heaven He also rules over the universe as its sole Monarch. Thus monotheism is monarchial theism. Hence the ideology of monotheism is the ideology of monarchy. Heaven is the royal abode. The King is seated on His throne. He has his servants and emissaries.
8. The monotheistic God has His perpetual Adversary or Enemy – Satan, who is a sort of Anti-God. Hence there is rivalry between God and Satan for the possession of the universe.
9. As monotheism centers on a Monarch, who is an absolute Ruler, the chief thing for His subjects is to know His Will. The Divine Will is the only guide for man in his conduct on the earth. Those men who are virtuous who bow to His will and make it prevail on earth as in heaven. Those are sinners who disobey or defy His will. The difficulty with monotheism is that its prophets are not universally accepted. As a result, there has been acute rivalry between monotheistic creeds and cults, each claiming an exclusive relation with the Ultimate Being.

"I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human"

                                        ~ Hugo Grotius (1583- 1645) - Dutch legal scholar, playwright and poet. One of the pioneering natural rights theorists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Polytheism  - Spiritual Democracy

Polytheism finds many gods instead of just the One of monotheism in heaven. A monotheist sands or falls by one God: a polytheist, having several, may change one god for another. Thus for the monotheist, the only alternative to his faith is heresy or atheism; but for a polytheist the alternative is not the negation of God, but the search for a better and greater god.  Such was the polytheism of Egypt and Greece and Rome and such has been, with certain differences, the polytheism in some of the Indian Puranas. But there is a higher Polytheism in India which merges in Pantheism. The worshipper here comes to a point which he does not think of this god or that god but of the Divine Being, often most poetically apprehended. 

Whereas monotheism, being political in structure, needs the soldier to fight the battle of the Monarch of Heaven. Polytheism does not know any holy war; while it is a usual feature of monotheism.  

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1. Polytheism is poetic theism. It approaches the divine idea through poetry. Hence it delights in the glory of form and color; it touches the whole gamut of human emotions from the sublime to the tender. It includes the aesthetic as an essential factor.
2. Polytheism, being poetical, needs the poet and the artist to interpret it. Whereas monotheism, being political in structure, needs the soldier to fight the battle of the Monarch of Heaven. Polytheism does not know any holy war; while it is a usual feature of monotheism.
3. Polytheism in accordance with its innate tendencies, attempts to have its hold on the masses of people by poetical and artistic forms – by rituals and ceremonies, as well as by the appeal to music and song and of architecture, sculpture, painting, dancing etc. Monotheism, on the other hand, builds up a central authority and an institution with ramifications that penetrate into the entire life of the people, often to the rigid exclusion of some, if not most, of the arts.
4. Hence, the appeal of polytheism is like that of poetry and art – spontaneous, independent, unofficial. The appeal of monotheism is centered in the compulsion of an institution and its laws. It is, so to speak, the official pressure of the institution that maintains the attachment of its followers to it. Thus, while conformity is the fundamental condition of the existence of monotheism, non-conformity is part of the essence of polytheism. Hence, while there is uniformity in monotheism, polytheism is marked by variety. It is seldom that polytheism became a State religion; whereas monotheism is hard put to it to support itself.
5. Polytheism must be perpetually creative and vital in order to escape extinction. If Egyptian and Babylonian polytheism disappeared, it was because it was not creative enough. Greek and Roman polytheism, however, had not lost its creativity when it was superseded by Christianity. The creativity it possessed fertilized the Christian religion during the middle ages and at the end of that period it reasserted itself in its pagan form, bringing about a revolution in the intellectual and spiritual life of Europe and a rebirth (Renaissance) of man. Thus, while polytheism has owed its continued existence to flexibility and the capacity for change and adjustment, monotheism has derived much strength from orthodoxy and dogmatism, sometimes leading to the ruthless persecution and destruction of heretics and infidels. The difference lies in what Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888) Poet, Educator and Literary Critic, discovered between Hebraism and Hellenism. Monotheism is characterized by “strictness of conscience” or severe conformity, and polytheism by “spirituality of consciousness” or independent perception and expression.
6. God’s creation of the earth is an historical event that can be definitely dated. So is the birth of the Son of God according to monotheistic Christianity. No true Christian has attempted to interpret the birth of Christ or Virgin Motherhood as mere figure of speech or symbol. Thus, while polytheism flies on the wings of imagination, monotheism is pinned down to facts. Disbelieve one of the facts and whole structure of monotheism falls to pieces. But polytheism will remain unaffected by such attitudes. It makes no claim to historicity: it has nothing to do with facts and dates. Hence it has no quarrel with science, just as poetry has none. For example, Darwin’s theory of evolution is accepted, then the whole doctrine of creation as given in the Christian Bible will fall through and the religion itself will face annihilation. But it is not so in the case of polytheism which takes it imaginatively and symbolically.

(source: The Call of the Vedas - By A C Bose  p. 1 - 24). 

Monotheism and its discontents - By Gore Vidal 

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are literally, patriarchal - God is the omnipotent father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.The sky god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of policies that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any   movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, or master in the factory, one father-leader in the family home.

The founders of the United States were not enthusiasts of the sky-god. Many, like Jefferson, rejected him altogether and placed man at the center of the world. The young Lincoln wrote a pamphlet against Christianity, which friends persuaded him to burn. Many of the Christian evangelists feel it necessary to convert everyone on earth to their primitive religion, they have been prevented- so far- but they have forced most tyrannically and wickedly - their superstitions and hatred upon others. So it is upon account that I now favor an all-out war on the monotheists.

(source: Monotheism and its discontents - By Gore Vidal). Gore Vidal is an excellent writer and critic. He is America's great literary dissenter. He has written numerous books, including Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta. He has appeared on many TV and Radio news and talk programs.

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Religion and ethnicity - By T R Anandan 

In her article Hindutva and ethnicity (The Hindu, February 25), Ms. Gail Omvedt has made several statements which call for comments. 

About the physical features referred to by the author, it should be noted that Hindus of Nepal (a Hindu country) and some northeast States do have features similar to subjects of countries such as Japan, China, Korea, etc. They are freely admitted to Hindu temples. Therefore, the colour of the skin or even appearance is not considered a reason for barring entry and to consider Hinduism `racist' on that account is absurd. And to what nationality and country did Sister Nivedita, disciple of Swami Vivekananda or did the Mother of the Sree Aurobindo Ashram belong? David Frawley is a living example who has even adopted the name of Vamadeva Shastri. They were very much practising Hindus. Similarly there are many Hindus in countries such as Thailand and Bali who are not Indians. Where then does the question of racism or ethnicity come while considering their faith? Ethnicity or race has nothing to do with Hinduism as a religion.

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To give an ethnic colour to different religions as against the Hindus is a mischievous attempt. It is also not correct to say that none from other religions can convert to Hinduism. There are many instances of members of other religions having converted to Hinduism. The only position is that Hinduism is not a proselytising religion, like Christianity or Islam. This is because Hinduism considers itself as `Sanathana Dharma' or as of universal following which did not need the four-walled compartmentalisation of faiths. 

(source: Religion and ethnicity - By T R Anandan -  The Hindu - May 27 2003). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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The Infinite Grace of Images - By Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy

Few of those who condemn idolatry, or make its suppression a purpose of missionary activity, have ever seriously envisaged the actual use of images, in historical or psychological perspective or surmised a possible significance in the fact that the vast majority of men of all races, and in all ages, including the present, Protestants, Hebrews, and Muslims being the chief exceptions have made use of more or less anthropomorphic images as aids to devotion. 

To conceive of Hinduism as a polytheistic system is in itself a naivete of which only a Western student, inheriting Graeco-Roman concept of “paganism” could be capable. 

If we consider Indian religious philosophy as a whole….We shall have to define Hindu civilization as one of the least superstitious the world has known. As in India, it is precisely in a world dominated by an idealistic concept of reality, and yet with the approval of the most profound thinkers, that there flourished what we are pleased to call idolatry. Manikka Vashagar, constantly speaks of the attributes of God, refers to the legendary accounts of His actions, and takes for granted the use and services of images. Shankara himself, one of the most brilliant intellects the world has known, interpreter of the Upanishads and creator or the Vedanta system of pure monism accepted by a majority of all Hindus and analogous to the idealism of Kant, was a devout worshipper of images, a visitor to shrines, a singer of devotional hymns. 

True, in a famous prayer, he apologizes for visualizing in contemplation One who is not limited by any form, for praising in hymns One who is beyond the reach of words, and for visiting Him in sacred shrines, who is omnipresent. Thus the philosopher perceives the inevitability of the use of imagery, verbal and visual, and sanctions the service of images. God Himself makes like concession to our mortal nature, “taking the forms imagined by His worshippers,” making Himself as we are that we may be as He is. 

The Hindu Ishavara (Supreme God) is not a jealous God because all gods are aspects of Him, imagined by His worshippers; in the words of Lord Krishna: “When any devotee seeks to worship any aspect with faith, and when by worshipping any aspect he wins what he desires, it is none other than Myself that grants his prayers. Howsoever men approach Me, so do I welcome them, for the path men take from every side is Mine.” 

This was the Hindu method; Indian religion adapts herself with infinite grace to every human need.

The collective genius that made of Hinduism a continuity ranging from the contemplation of the Absolute to the physical service of an image made of clay did not shrink from an ultimate acceptance of every aspect of God conceived by man, and of every ritual devised by his devotion. A human necessity was recognized, the nature of the necessity was understood, its psychology systematically analyzed, the various phases of image worship, mental and material, were defined, and the variety of forms explained by the doctrines of emanation and of gracious condescension. 

(source: The Spirit of Modern India - Edited by Robert A McDermont and V. S. Naravane  p. 136 - 149). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Andrea Lafferty's comment on C-Span

Quite a number of people have tried to educate - Conservative Andrea Lafferty, Executive Director of a group called the Traditional Values Coalition - on what India is.

Re: Andrea Lafferty's Comments on Washington Journal, C-Span, July 13, 2003. "Christians are not allowed to worship in India and Pakistan"

"As a US citizen of Indian origin, a Christian by birth and a US Army Veteran, I am ashamed and embarrassed to hear and know of fellow-Americans like Ms. Andrea Lafferty whose ignorance of India and its treatment of religious minorities are stunning in this day and age despite the presence of many media portals for acquiring true facts about India. Obviously Ms. Laferty is one of those who has not taken advantage of such windows of opportunity to learn the truth about other cultures and religions that are
prevalent in other countries. 

Ms. Lafferty's allegation on C-Span's Washington Journal (July 13th) that "Christians are not allowed to worship in India and Pakistan" is not only false but offensive, at least as far as india is concerned. I cannot speak for Pakistan because I have never lived in that country. Besides, Pakistan is a theocratic state and I know that it accords a different status to non-Muslim faiths. But, India is a secular nation whose Constitution also separates the state from religion(s) just as vigorously  as our US Constitution does.

I was born in India, in a Christian community whose origins predate the spread of Christianity in Europe. I grew up amidst a predominantly Hindu community with Jews, Zoroastrians, Christians and Muslims all living amicably in India. I came to this country 41 years ago. But, I am in touch with the happenings in India. It is true that in recent years, there have been sporadic incidents of violence between Hindus, Muslims and Christians. In my view, they have all had their origins mostly as reactions to the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists' obsession to spread their faiths in a country which is predominantly Hindu. The recent surge of animosity towards Christianity in India is also the result of the actions of Christian missionaries and fundamentalists who are being bank-rolled and supported by the Churches here and in Europe.

Based on my life-long experience with Hindus in India and Christians here, I can affirm without any hesitation that the tolerance of the overwhelming majority of Hindus in India towards their Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Zoroastrian neighbors far exceeds the tolerance of the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims here towards their neighbors who follow non-Abrahamic faiths.

Hinduism not only concedes that "ultimate truth" can be found in all other religions but also accepts that all faiths are equally valid in seeking God. But, none of the avid practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths will accept either of the above statements. That is because the latter believe that theirs is the only reliable path to paradise. "

From - C. Alex Alexander, M.D. Colonel, US Army Retired. (source: Hindu Unity.com and Indiacause.com).

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While Pseudo-secularists accuse Hindus as being Fascists and Nazis. ... A Little History.

Indian Jews and their heritage

There is a growing concern about the declining demographic trends among the Jews: world Jewry is losing annually an average of 50,000 or 150 every day. In India presently, the Jewish population is estimated at 6,000.

Jews are the only people in the world who have been confronted with hostility in every country they have settled. Opposition to the Jews did not begin in Germany but dates back to 2,000 years before Christian era. The most distinctive aspect of the Indian Jewish experience is the complete absence of discrimination by the host majority. The only country in the world where the Jews could live without fear of persecution was India, because of the Indian tradition of Catholicism and assimilation.

There are several legends on the arrival of the first Jews on the west coast of India. One of them relates to the period of King Solomon, when there was trade in "teak, ivory, spice and peacocks between the lands of Israel and Malabar coast" and Jews arriving as merchantmen. Others date their arrival to 772 BCE, at the time of the Assyrian exile, Babylon defeating Judea in 568 BCE, or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. There is also a belief that 10 Jewish families released from jail by a Persian king in 605 BCE came to Kodungalloor on the Kerala coast. There were subsequent waves of migration in 369 AD. There are Biblical references on Jewish connections with India in The Book of Esther, citing decrees enacted by Ahaseurus relating to the Jews dispersed throughout the provinces of his empire from Hodu (India in Hebrew) to Kush. No reliable evidence exists, but most historians agree on the dates of Jewish settlements in India during the Middle Ages. The local rulers and populations did everything to befriend, protect and allow Jews to prosper.

There are three major groups of Jews in India: Cochin Jews, the Bene Israel (children of Israel who are the largest in number and said to be the "most Hindu-ised Jews) and Baghdadis, who were the last to arrive from Iraq and Syria. The earliest documentation of permanent settlement is that of the Cochin Jews. At the time of Indian Independence, there were 2,400 of them; their Pardeshi synagogue, established in 1568, which is a heritage monument, celebrated its 400th anniversary in 1968. Today, there are just 17 of them.

There were internecine quarrels after Vasco da Gama's arrival on the west coast. Jews from Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and other European countries and Syria came and settled in Cochin and came to be known as the white Jews and the local ones were called Malabari or black Jews and interestingly intermarriage did not take place between these communities. In 1524, on the pretext that Jews were interfering with the pepper trade, Moors attacked them, burnt their houses and synagogues. When the Portuguese arrived, they only found destitute Jews.

After the Portuguese, more Jews arrived fleeing persecution from the Middle East. Cheraman Perumal gave them special privileges and allowed them to build a synagogue next to his palace and adjacent to the temple. This synagogue is the oldest surviving one in the former British Empire. It contains gold and silver decorated Torah Scrolls, an Oriental carpet and crowns of solid gold set with gems by the Ethiopian emperor Hailey Selassie.

The Jews in India are a diminishing lot and their contributions to the land in which they live are substantive.

(source: Indian Jews and their heritage - hindu.com).

"In a recent report, UNESCO pointed out that out of 128 countries where Jews lived before Israel was created, only one, India, did not persecute them and allowed them to prosper and practice Judaism in peace. "

(source: Redefining India  - By Francois Gautier - dailypioneer.com December 11 '02).

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Gandhi and Jews and the Cooperation of the Victims

His statements about the Jews. “To be truly non-violent,” he said, “I must love [my adversary] and pray for him even when he hits me.” The Jews should pray for Hitler. “If even one Jew acted thus, he would save his self-respect and leave an example which, if it became infectious, would save the whole of Jewry and leave a rich heritage to mankind besides.”

I mentioned the subject to Gandhi in 1946 when Hitler was dead. “Hitler,” Gandhi said, “killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs… It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

As Adolf Hitler launched the campaign that started World War II, Mohandas Gandhi dismayed many by urging that Jews respond with passive resistance. But once Hitler had conquered the whole of Europe, Gandhi was moved to write an open letter to the führer pleading for an end to his "monstrous" campaign. The 1941 letter, excerpted here, offered the murderer of millions a public lesson in nonviolence.  

"Dear Friend, 

That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life for the past 33 years has been to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, color or creed.?"

(source: The Life of Mahatma Gandhi - by Louis Fischer). 

Gandhi's erratic policies were criticized by his contemporaries like Annie Besant, Sri Aurobindo, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and many others. And none of them went out to kill Gandhi, so there is nothing murderous about these arguments per se. They correctly predicted that under his irrational leadership, the strategy of mass mobilization and “non-violence” would yield very bitter fruits, as it did during the Khilafat riots circa 1922 and again during the Partition. Indologists like Alain Daniélou and historians like Paul Johnson have also demythologized the Mahatma. One of the perverse effects of the murder was precisely that in India this criticism of Gandhi suddenly became taboo, and that the myth of his centrality in the achievement of independence became unassailable.

(source:  An Interview With Koenraad Elst). 

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Columbus and Vasco da Gama

The not-so-gentle conquest and Christianization of the Americas has been commemorated on a very grand scale in 1992, on the 500 th anniversary of Columbus's landing. It so happens that 500th anniversary is approaching: that of Vasco da Gama's landing in India in 1498. Juridically and theologically, this event was the exact counterpart of Columbus's landing in America. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the Pope had allotted two halves of the world to Spain and Portugal, on condition that these Christian states organize the christianization of their respective colonies. Most of America and East Asia fell to Spain, while Portugal got the are from Brazil to China, including Africa and India. The Portuguese were less successful in India than the Spanish were in America, not because their intentions and methods were different, but simply because the power equation was different; the Indians were better equipped (cannon, horses, resistance to diseases) than the Native Americans, while the Portuguese were fewer in number than the Spanish. On a smaller scale, the Portuguese in India behaved just like the Spanish in America: forcible conversions, massacre of the native priesthood, destruction of places of worship.

***

In 1992, the Pope felt he couldn't ignore the painful anniversary, and in the name of the Catholic Church, he publicly apologized to the Native Americans. This was the result of a broad movement in public opinion, including the cultural sector and politicians from every American country. Is there any chance the Pope will feel sufficiently pressured to do the same thing towards the Hindus? Will there be any Christian soul-searching?

(source: Bharatiya Janata Party vis-a-vis Hindu Resurgence - By Koenraad Elst p. 108 -109 For more refer to chapter European Imperialism).

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Monopoly over God: Only Path to Salvation?

What Kanchi Paramacharya said when a couple of Westerners asked him about Christianity being the ONLY path to salvation:

"A true religion can never have its beginning at some point of time. What happens to those who were born before the arrival of Jesus? Are they denied salvation? Can salvation be arbitrary?"

***

"Conversion ends diversity, something beautiful that ought to be embraced." 

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Terrorists in North-East India get support from America - By Kunal Ghosh

The recent terrorist strikes in the USA on September 11, 2001, in which the World Trade Centre and Pentagon were "crash-bombed" by large airplanes, have brought a new resolve in the global community to root out terrorism from all parts of the world. The Americans are playing a leading role in building a world coalition against terrorism. This is the best time to remind the Americans that Baptist Christian terrorists are active in India's North-East and they derive their financial support from the southern parts of the USA where the Baptist Church has a strong following. Funds are collected in the form of donations in various church establishments in the name of evangelical work. Some of this money is spent in true philanthropic work of spreading education and healthcare. However, it has been suspected for a long time that a part of this fund gets diverted for buying arms for the Baptist terrorists of the North-East. Our ex-Chief Election Commissioner, T. N. Seshan, gave voice to this suspicion in a television panel discussion on Doordarshan as early as in 1993. Our Army is baffled by the seemingly unending supply of sophisticated and expensive supply of arms and equipment flooding into our North-East. All terrorists of various hues, the so-called Darjeeling Gorkha, the so-called Kamtapuri, Bodo, Ulfa, Naga, Manipuri, Tripuri etc, are flush with automatic rifles, land mines, remote control devices and so on. Money generated by the local extortion of businessmen and citizens account for only a small fraction. Therefore the greater part must be coming from abroad. It is suspected that the funds come from Islamic sources such as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, the Gulf states etc. and Christian sources such as the Baptist Church in southern USA and the Presbyterian Church of the UK. 

The most prominent among the terrorist outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura). It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity (The Statesman 1999, 2000; Ghosh 1999) and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant) organisation. Whatever token non-Christian representation it had, it has lost recently. Nayanbashi Jamatiya, a Hindu leader, led a revolt against the policy of forcible conversion of the NLFT and left a rebel camp in neighbouring Bangladesh with his followers. On April 8, 2001, while his party was moving towards the Indian border, it was attacked by the main group; seven activists were killed and he himself was seriously injured and taken to a government hospital in Bangladesh. (The Statesman 2001a, 2001b).

(source: Terrorists in North-East India get support from America - By Kunak Ghosh - www.mainstreamweekly.com). 

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Buddhism, the Fulfillment of Hinduism  - By Swami Vivekananda
26th September, 1893

I am not a Buddhist, as you have heard, and yet I am. If China, or Japan, or Ceylon follow the teachings of the Great Master, India worships him as God incarnate on earth. You have just now heard that I am going to criticise Buddhism, but by that I wish you to understand only this. Far be it from me to criticize him whom I worship as God incarnate on earth. But our views about Buddha are that he was not understood properly by his disciples. The relation between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity. 

Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shâkya Muni (Buddha) was a Hindu. The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shâkya Muni as God and worship him. But the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies principally in this: Shâkya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfill and not to destroy. Only, in the case of Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realize the import of his teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfillment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the fulfillment of the truths of the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shâkya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the fulfillment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the religion of the Hindus.

The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks.

In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest may become a monk in India, and the two castes become equal. In religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution. Shâkya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the large-heartedness to bring out the truths from the hidden Vedas and through them broadcast all over the world. He was the first being in the world who brought missionarizing into practice — nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytizing.

The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy for everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some of his disciples were Brahmins. When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken language in India. It was then only in the books of the learned. Some of Buddha's Brahmins disciples wanted to translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly told them, "I am for the poor, for the people; let me speak in the tongue of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his teachings are in the vernacular of that day in India.

Whatever may be the position of philosophy, whatever may be the position of metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in the world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God.

On the philosophic side the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them, and on the other side they took away from the nation that eternal God to which every one, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At the present day there is not one who calls oneself a Buddhist in India, the land of its birth.

But at the same time, Brahminism lost something — that reforming zeal, that wonderful sympathy and charity for everybody, that wonderful heaven which Buddhism had brought to the masses and which had rendered Indian society so great that a Greek historian who wrote about India of that time was led to say that no Hindu was known to tell an untruth and no Hindu woman was known to be unchaste.

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realise what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation between the Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause of the downfall of India. That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggars, and that is why India has been the slave of conquerors for the last thousand years. Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmins with the heart, the noble soul, the wonderful humanizing power of the Great Master.

(source: Buddhism, the Fulfillment of Hinduism  - By Swami Vivekananda - Illumining Talks.org). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Disturbances of ecological balance 

As early as 1877, Sir John Strachey, the Finance Minister of the Government of British India, said quite bluntly that in his judgment there was no duty higher than the one he owed to his country, which was subordination of India’s interests to those of his! The interests of his country demanded exploitation of India’s natural resources for feeding the gaping jaws of the machine in his homeland, and this exploitation has gone one in an ever-increasing measure since then.

The immediate effect of emergence of machine and science in the West was that nature, animal and man were set in conflict with each other. India had a more or less balanced adjustment between the three agents before the advent of machine and science. But now all her resources became subjected to a severe strain and the whole of her ecology underwent a rapid transformation. Indian industries were systematically crushed by the rulers and India became one vast plantation for their purpose. Famines stalked the land and took away millions. All the natural resources came in for intense exploitation. The three independent units of human ecology became engaged in a mutually destructive combat as a result of this impact of technology from the West. 

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p. 200 -201).

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Indian court backs common code

The Indian Supreme Court says all citizens should be bound by the same laws in civil issues such as marriage, divorce and property rights. 

Holding there is no connection between religion and personal law in a civilised society, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said it favoured a Common Civil Code. These observations were made by a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice V N Khare.

Chief Justice Khare said, "We would like to state that Article 44 provides that the State shall endeavour to secure for its citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. The aforesaid provision is based on the premise that there is no necessary connection between religious and personal law in a civilised society. "It is a matter of regret that Article 44 of the Constitution has not been given effect to. Parliament is still to step in for framing a common civil code in the country. A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing the contradictions based on ideology," the Chief Justice said. The other two Judges of the Bench, Justice S B Sinha and Justice A R Lakshmanan, in their separate judgements, concurred with the Chief Justice's judgment striking down Section 118 and indicating the desirability of a common civil code.

The issue of a common civil code for all Indians is a deeply sensitive and controversial one as it would affect, for example, the right of an Indian Muslim man to have more than one wife.

The main party in the government, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), has long been pushing for such a law in the face of opposition from its coalition allies.

At present, the Indian constitution allows members of different faiths to follow their own religious laws.But in a ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court said a common civil code would help national integration in India. Any move to bring such legislation would have to be initiated and approved by the federal parliament. The court was ruling on a petition filed by a Christian priest relating to property rights. Under current law, Christians are forbidden from donating inherited property for charitable purposes.

The court pointed out that there is already legal provision for a uniform civil code in India. It said it was "a matter of regret" that it has not been enacted.  "A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing the contradictions based on ideologies," the court said.

In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled against the marital code for Muslims in a landmark judgement when it said a Muslim woman, Shah Bano, was entitled to alimony in a divorce case. But Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, faced with mounting anger from Muslim groups, used parliamentary procedures to set aside the court judgement. 

(source: Indian court backs common code - BBC news.com).

They want Court on Ayodhya, but not for the Uniform Civil Code.

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Uniform and loving it: Goa shows the way - By Navin Upadhyay

If Goa can have a Uniform Civil Code, why can't the rest of the country? 

This little-known fact about Goa's unique Portuguese legacy, has been deliberately overlooked by the 'secularist' lobby, which staunchly opposes any move to bring all religious communities under the umbrella of Article 44 of the Constitution. In the backdrop of the Wednesday's observation by the Supreme Court on the desirability of a uniform civil code throughout the country, Goa's case should be an eye-opener for the nation. 

On May 23, 1997, prominent judicial personalities once again echoed the same view at a conference organised by the Vaikuntrao Dempo Centre for Indo-Portuguese Studies along with Bar Council of Portugal and the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa. In his inaugural speech, then Chief justice of India J S Verma said: "India needs uniformity in laws though our society is of pluralistic nature. The rest of the country can learn from Goa. However, extension of these analogies to the areas of personal law needs higher degree of national consensus". Chairperson of the Press Council of India Justice P B Sawant favoured drafting of a uniform civil code incorporating different provisions of all personal laws. He said, "Personal laws don't belong to any particular community. But politicians raise a bogey of religion to foil attempts to amend them."

"Goa's civil code is worth considering for promulgation all over India as it provides for common ownership of property and equal treatment to men and women. We can avoid frequent breaking of marriages and wives being driven if this code is adopted," said then Chief Justice of Bombay High court M B Shah. With the Supreme Court once again galvanising the debate on the need for an uniform civil code, will the law-makers learn a lesson from the successful Goan experiment?

(source: Uniform and loving it: Goa shows the way - By Navin Upadhyay - dailypioneer.com July 25 2003).

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Why I support the Uniform Civil Code - By Tariq Ansari

I believe the most important demand that Muslims should make in secular India is that we are treated equally. That we have equal rights and opportunities as all other Indians and that the State will afford us the same protection of our rights and property as it would Hindus. I do not believe Muslims can make that demand when at the same time we want to be treated differently in matters of personal law. This is an unreconcilable inconsistency. At least half of all Muslims are badly served by the Muslim Personal Law. Triple talaq, no rights to maintenance (thank you, Rajiv Gandhi!) and subordinate rights of inheritance are all examples of how my Muslim sisters labor under an unfair and, dare I say it, unIslamic set of regulations. As an Indian Muslim I wholeheartedly support the idea of a Common Civil Code. It is a fair and equitable Directive Principle of the Constitution of India. 

One people. One law.

(source: Why I support the Uniform Civil Code - By Tariq Ansari - midday.com).  

“Our children to America and Europe,” a liberal Muslim who had opposed the Bill to overturn the Shah Bano judgement said the other day. “Do we demand of governments there that the children – being Muslim – must be governed by the Shariat, and not by the laws of that country?” Why do we insist on this matter in India alone?” 

(source: A Secular Agenda: For saving our country, For welding it - By Arun Shourie  p. 10).

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Hindu Revival movements in Java

Hindu empires had flourished in Java for a millennium until they were replaced by expanding Islamic polities in the 15th century, setting the stage for Indonesia becoming the world’s largest Muslim nation. In the 1970s, however, a Hindu revival movement began to sweep across the archipelago. Hinduism is gaining additional popularity at this time of national crisis, most notably in Java, the political heart of Indonesia. Based on preliminary ethnographic research in five communities with major Hindu temples, this paper explores the social dynamics and historical context of Hindu revivalism in Java.

Expectations of a great crisis at the dawn of new golden age among followers of the Hindu revival movement are an expression of utopian prophesies and political hopes more widely shared among contemporary Indonesians, expectations which are set to shape the prospects of Indonesia’s fledgling democracy. The paper will reflect on the historical conditions under which utopian movements may incite violent social conflict or serve a positive role in the creation or maintenance of a democratic society.

For Ancient Hindu influence in Java refer to chapter Suvarnabhumi - Greater India and Sacred Angkor

Islam and apostasy

Stephen Crittenden: You also talk about apostasy in West Africa, in Nigeria, in India, and in Indonesia, where you quote the work of an Australian academic – Dr Thomas Reuter, of Melbourne University – who talks about (and I had no idea about this) mass conversion to Hinduism on the Island of Java, tens of thousands leaving Islam for Hinduism in Indonesia over the past twenty years.

Ibn Warraq: Yes, many of these Muslims who converted back to Hinduism, of course, were originally Hindus. So they were sort of going back, as it were, to their ancestral faith.

(source: Hindu Revival movements in Java and The Religion Report). 

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Eswara museum at St Petersburg

It may sound quite strange and yet it is true. There is a museum named after Lord Eswara in Russia. This has come to the fore during the ongoing tercentenary celebrations of this city. 

The Eswara Museum has in its treasure trove over 35 paintings of Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich (1875-1947 born in St. Petersburg. According to one theory, the grandfather of Nicholas Roerich was a great admirer of India and had deep knowledge of this oriental country. That could be one possible reason for the museum being named after Lord Shiva. 

An authoritative source which was privy to bilateral discussions between Indian Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Russian President Vladmir Puttin, confided in Deccan Herald that the Prime Minister sanctioning Rs one crore for establishment of an art school named after Nicholas Roerich at Kulla in Himachal Pradesh came in for appreciation by the Russian President. The Russian museum itself has nearly 460 paintings of Roerich. 

(source: Eswara museum at St Petersburg - Deccan Herald -  Monday June 1 2003). For more on Nicholas Roerich, refer to chapter on Hinduisms Influence).

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The Source of Bias against Hindus - by George Thundiparambil 

This article was written as a response to the many reports of an obvious bias exercised by various "secular" agencies against Hindus, the recent instance being the half-hearted response of the Amnesty International when many Hindus were murdered in cold blood in Kashmir. As an Indian and an old student of religions, it has become very disturbing for me ever since I moved to Germany in 1997, to see or hear of injustice being done to my majority compatriots whose religion I have begun to look upon not only as my very own, but as the heritage of whole humanity. It is most disturbing because the conflict arises not only because of utter ignorance of Hinduism, but also due to stubborn reluctance on the part of the perpetrators to recognise, or to know, what real religion is. It is my contention that the western collective psyche is incapable of achieving objectivity, or true secularism, due to the fundamental flaw in their religious foundation.

***

The problem for the so-called "secular" western psyche is that it has not been able to replace its fundamental belief (which is Christian belief) with anything else. And Christianity as a religion is fundamentally flawed for the reason that it is not based on experience and knowledge.

My point is - western agencies and institutions (I'm not talking of individuals) can never be unbiased or true to their ideals when Hindus are involved, because of this vital flaw in their collective psyche.

For a Christian, a non-baptised human being is less than a baptised one.That is the basis of the western bias against anything Hindu, or for that matter any pre-judaic religion. The pope while apologising to the Jews, refused to do that to the Hindus. This Abrahamic affinity is reciprocal if there is no material or egoistical stake in it. The pope visited a mosque in Syria recently. Mohammed Khatami in an effort to win western support, recently proclaimed the unity with the west in the belief in one single god.

The seeming naiveness of the Hindus, to consider peoples of all faiths as the same, comes from their deepest part of their being, which their ancestors addressed as "Sanatana Dharma", and which they rightly believe is the substratum of all nature. Nothing can resist the force of knowledge, not even superstition. "Correct" knowledge should be directed against "incorrect" knowledge. This polarity can be observed in real terms in the old dictum printed on the Indian rupee in sharp contrast to the one on the US dollar - 'Satyameva Jayathe' against 'In God we trust'. Which god? What trust? Why should the God ban "knowledge" in the first chapter of the bible? Hindus should turn to Krishna, the Kaliyuga-guru, who has told them that offence is the best defense when upholding Sanatana Dharma. A wise and aggressive campaign to promote "right knowledge" conducted worldwide can educate the world slowly, but surely and win back for humankind Sanatana Dharma, the gene of eternal justice.

(source: The Source of Bias against Hindus - By George Thundiparambil - indiacause.com). For more refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari. For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Sri Lankan Buddhists welcome ruling against unethical conversions

Buddhist organisations in Sri Lanka have welcomed a Supreme Court decision to prevent proselytising or religious conversions and to deny legal status to two Christian organisations.

"The ACWBC has scored a tremendous legal victory over fundamentalist cults trying to subvert poor Buddhists and Hindus by offering financial and other allurements," said Buddhist activist Senaka Weeraratne. "We don't want to be misunderstood," said NJC secretary Piyasena Dissanayake. "We respect the right of an individual to change his or her religion, but it should not be as a result of financial or other material inducements." 

He said the majority of Buddhists had no problems with people of other faiths, but they were aware that organisations abroad were funding "unethical conversions". Buddhist organisations have been agitating against Christian groups and cults which they say are active in rural areas and offer people money, clothing and books in exchange for converting. Sri Lanka is a secular state, but the constitution grants a foremost place to Buddhism which is practised by nearly 70 percent of the 18.66 million population. Hindus make up about 15 percent while Christians and Muslims are about 7.5 percent each. 

(source: Sri Lankan Buddhists welcome ruling against unethical conversions - yahoonews.com).

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Untouchables – Sensational and inaccurate article?
Geographically Challenged Journalists - at National Geographic

According to Tom O'Neil of the National Geographic Magazine:  "To be born a Hindu in India is to enter the caste system, one of the world's longest surviving forms of social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years, the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. In the Gujrat city of Aoyoda, Hindu extremists had tried to build a temple on a site that was sacred to both Hindus and Muslims. Within a few days Muslims attacked Hindu pilgrims returning from the site. "

(source: Untouchables - National Geographic Magazine -  June 2003).

Lord Ram's departure from Ayodhya.

***

Some of the Outrage expressed on the National Geographic Forum:

Geographically challenged journalist who believes that Uttar Pradesh is in the state of Ayodhya and Gujrat city (sic) is in the state of Ayodhya wrote an article pointing fingers at another race. Coming from a magazine which kicked out Peter Arnett during the hate motivated war on Iraqis, it is a bit rich.

From the "field notes" of the "author": In the Gujrat city of Aoyoda, Hindu extremists had tried to build a temple on a site that was sacred to both Hindus and Muslims. Within a few days Muslims attacked Hindu pilgrims returning from the site. Umm, I last heard Ayodhya was in UP, not Gujrat. How credible this report on "untouchables" be when this reporter can't even get major fact like Ayodhya right? Also their knowledge of Geography is pathetic. Haven't you heard the quote "God created war to teach Americans geography". Missionary Tom needs a lesson in Geography. Frankly "Notional Geographic" where do you get your journos from?  

This premise that caste system is from Religion is absolutely absurd and reeks of yellow journalism.
It would be better if your editors and journalists, that don't have a clue about Hinduism, should study this great religion before slinging mud.

"National Geographic's myopic editors, Perhaps we should have modeled ourselves after the White-Anglo-Saxon trash that wiped out the native American Indians? Yeah, perhaps complete ethnic cleansing is the preferred way as then there's no occasion for social discrimination. At least India after being colonized by white-trash for centuries, had the moral uprightness to attempt to remove the wrongs of untouchability the moment it got independence, while it took the great United States no less than almost 200 years to legislate equal rights for blacks. How about a cover story on the deplorable conditions of blacks in the United States today? There's opportunity for some excellent glossy photographs of the inner cities and the project areas."

"Caste system is a mode of social unequality far less violent than the other civilisation have known, including ours. Ours is based on money and cunning, the Hindu caste system is more based on the inherited personality type, and the higher the caste, the more stringent the duties (especially as comes to eating: a Brahmin must be vegetarian and abstain from other luxuries considered as normal for lower groups) rather than the mere privileges. The reason why such a system was so enduring since the dawn of Indic civilisation is that is fosters less resentment than any other form of social hierarchy."

"For a society that practized slavery, it is laughable to hear talk about lack of egaliatarianism in "2500 years" of Indian culture, where "social classes were so low in rank as to be considered sub-human." Starting all the way from Aristotle to the founding fathers of America (where "All men are created equal" excluded blacks as not human and women as not men), egalitarianism has hardly been the bedrock of Western Civilization. This article views the situation in India from a typically stereotypical Western lens of superiority, looking down at other cultures, something deeply disappointing coming from the National Geographic." 

Sunday is the most segregated day in America. If not, how does one explain the need for English-speaking African-Americans and Hispanics of Christian faith to maintain separate places of worship."

Here is the reality:

1. "dalits" were provided full civil rights under the law two decades before Martin Luther King, Jr. famous march in America. 
2. India has likely the most aggressive affirmative rights program favoring dalit communities, with fixed minimum quotas in all government jobs and educational institutions. 
3. Dalit communities have gained tremendously in political power in just 50 years of independent India, with power in the most populous state in India in the hands of a dalit woman chief minister.
4. "Untouchability" when it exists has practically nothing to do with Hindu philosophy. Hindu sages from time immemorial have preached against t discrimination based on external identities (such as "caste", race, and even religion) is born out of avidya, or ignorance of our true nature. They have also taught -- "Sarva dharma sambhava" -- each persons role in society is of equal importance. 5. Nonetheless, as in all societies, social discrimination does exist in India. Poverty, rather than caste, is perhaps the biggest axis on which this discrimination occurs -- a rich dalit is far less likely to face discrimination than an "upper caste" rural poor.

Statements like "untouchables have been beaten, doused with acid, and even killed", are pure sensationalism.

"Yes, crime exists and criminal acts exists. Indian society has emerged into independence only the last 50 years from the depredations and rape of colonization that impoverished its people. The value of any human life in India today, whether "upper" or "lower" caste is less than in the West. The society understands its social issues and has worked aggressively on reform. Is the work done? No. What can an outsider do, this article asks? STAY AWAY from pontification and senastionalist half-baked analyses like this one."

Europeans being carried in India.

***

"It was truly appalling to read this report on the *presumed* situation of untouchables in India. This article merely reproduces the religious attacks of the Protestant colonials against what they saw as the idolatrous Hindu religion and its caste-system. If you think this kind of derogatory description gives us any knowledge of India and its culture, I suggest you'd better move back to the Christian fanaticism of the 17th century. This colonial humbug does not belong in the 21st century!"

" Even after multiple generations of conversion to Christianity, "dalit Christians" have segregated churches and burial grounds much like black churches in the US, and face discrimination from "upper caste" Christians in India."

The tenor of the National Geographic article is clearly to promote the Western missionary concept that Hinduism is decrepit and incapable of reform, and by implication that Christianity is its only salvation. I deeply regret to note that Tom O'Neill's report on the plight of India's "Untouchables" overlooks our own blemished record in rooting out racism and bigotry here in the US.India too has been struggling to change the plight of "Untouchables" just as we have been trying to weed out racism against nonwhites and prejudice against those who do not profess Judeo-Christian faiths.

The article barely mentions that a large number of high offices are occupied by members of dalits. During the last 56 years since India's Independence, the Indian Parliament elected two of their Presidents from the traditionally disadvantaged group of untouchables. In a predominantly Hindu India, its current President is a Muslim. Has'nt the Indian Republic fared a trifle better than the United States of America?  

"The day that the white races of Old Europe crossed the Atlantic to plunder the world, they lost their high moral ground to pontificate to others about inequality. The same race that overran the globe and decimated and subjugated entire races from Australia to the Americas, has no right to pass judgment on the evils of other societies. The Christian missionaries have consistently worked to show Hinduism in a negative light so as to seek fresh converts. If they are so interested in the abuse of the caste system, why don’t they help Hindus get rid of it without converting them? Why is that even after Dalits convert to Christianity and Buddhism, do they cling to the caste system? Some churches have also 'generously' built crucifixes, (miniature churches) in the vicinity of the main church for Dalits to make their appeals to the Creator. A majority of the clergy too belong to upper castes and so the Dalits are treated with scorn. Why are Dalits buried in separate burial grounds in India? Why did the Pope approve caste as a conversion strategy?"

(source: sulekha.com and National Geographic Magazine Forum. Refer to Ayodhya is NOT in Gujarat - By Vinod Negi. Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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Thoreau as a Yankee Yogi

Thoreau – his grand philosophic aloofness, his hatred of materialism, his society, his yogic renunciation and austerity, his lack of ambition, his love of solitude, his excessive love of nature, resulting his refusal to cooperate with a government whose policies he did not approve of, were certain extreme traits like to be misunderstood. Besides, he was a vegetarian, a non-smoker, and a teetotaler. He remained a bachelor, throughout his life, walked hundreds of miles, avoided inns, preferred to sleep by the railroad, never voted and never went to a church, derived spiritual inspiration from the Hindu scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita, and the laws of Manu living an extremely frugal and Spartan life.

From 1849-1854, he borrowed large number of Indian scriptures from the Harvard University Library and the year 1855 when his English friend Thomas Chilmondeley sent him a gift of 44 Oriental books which contained such titles as the Rig Veda Samhita, and Mandukya Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the Institute of Manu, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagvata Purana etc.  Some of the important books he borrowed from the Harvard University Library were the Mahabharata, Harivamsa, the Sankhya Karika, the Samved Samhita, the Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring and the Bhagavad Gita.  William Byssche Stein has prepared a scholarly bibliography of Hindu and Buddhist text which Thoreau had read till 1854. Thoreau was introduced to Indian scriptures by reading the Laws of Manu or Manu Samhita as it is known in India. It has a profound influence on him. Immediately after reading the book in 1841, he made an entry in his journal: 

“The impression which those those sublime sentences made on me last night has awakened me before any cockcrowing.” 

The following passage taken from Thoreau’s various writings suggest his admiration for the laws of Manu:

“I know of no book which comes to us with granter pretensions than the “Laws of Manu”: and this immense presumption is so impersonal and sincere that it is never offensive or ridiculous. Observe the modes in which modern literature is advertised, and then consider this Hindoo prospectus. Think what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it expects. What wonder if the times were not ripe for it.” 

“The laws of Manu” are a manual of private devotion, so private and domestic and yet so public and universal a word as is not spoken in the parlor or pulpit in these days. It is so impersonal that it exercises our sincerity more than any other. It goes with us into the yard and into the chamber, and is yet later spoken than the advice of our mother and sisters.” 

“The sublime sentences of Manu carry us back to a time when purification and sacrifice and self devotion had a place in the faith of men, and were not as now a superstition. They contain a subtle and refined philosophy also, such as in these times is not accomplished with so lofty and pure a devotion.” 

The Upanishads insist that the individual soul and the universal soul are one and the same. Jiva is not different from parama or as the Upanishads says, Tatvamasi, Thou art that. This idea, it seems, appealed to Thoreau very much. “There is something profoundly thrilling in the thought that this obedience to conscience and trust in God, which is so solemnly preached in extremities and arduous circumstances, is only to retreat to one’s self, and rely on one own strength.” 

The Hindu maxim atmadeepobhava, or be a lamp to thyself, embodies a concept. Thoreau wrote in his Journal in 1856: 

“It is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and travel totally new paths.” 

For Yoga, solitude is prime requisite. The Walden experience was primarily a search for solitude for the purpose of spiritual sadhana. 

“Simplify, simplify, simplify” was his motto. This philosophy he learnt from the Manu Samhita and the Bhagavad Gita. His life of simplicity and poverty and lack of worldly ambition can be best compared with the Hindu ideal of Vairagya (stoic indifference) and santosh (contentment). 

Thoreau’s criticism of industrialism and machinery is related to his contempt for materialism and commercialism. He was an animal conservationist. His concept of Ahimsa and vegetarianism which was tied with each other are influenced by Hinduism. By refraining himself from animal food Thoreau came very close to a Brahmin’s lifestyle. As an ecologist and a pioneer conservationist Thoreau loved nature. Nature helped him become a poet. He sought God in nature. Thoreau and Gandhi both believed in non-violence, had religious temperament, were vegetarians, and admired the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. The appreciated poverty and lived the simple life. Webb Miller in his book, I found no peace p. 240, wrote: “Gandhi received back from America what was fundamentally the philosophy of India after it had been distilled and crystallized in the mind of Thoreau.” 

(source: Hindu Scriptures and American Transcendentalists - By Umesh Patri   p 98 -135). For more on Thoreau refer to Quotes1-20. 

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'Crusading’ Do-Gooders - By Yoginder Sikand

In India, for instance, numerous evangelists are now engaged in articulating a ‘Hindu’ Christianity: Mother Mary abandons her long, flowing gown for a rich silk sari, Jesus is painted brown and the Om appears alongside the cross atop the steeple of the church, which is now made to look like a temple. The Time tells us of similar experiments being made by evangelists in Muslim lands. Some evangelists disguise themselves as Sufis and hope to be able to pass off as Muslim mystics; others set up what they call ‘Jesus mosques’; and yet others go to the extent of publicly reciting the Muslim creed: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His prophet”! 

(source: Crusading’ Do-Gooders - By Yoginder Sikand - Economic & Political Weekly).

***

Mary Masquerade?

The Subtle Mariolatry of Northwest India

A beautiful representation of British devotion to Mary in India is seen in the Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi. This magnificent brick structure, built around 1800, has two huge towers that can be seen all around the city. A five foot high statue of Mary wrapped in traditional Indian dress, called a sari, welcomes visitors. Candles burn before the idol which represents Mary as the mother of all Indians. The second shrine is in the form of an icon, presenting Mary with an Indian woman's face surrounded by adoring angels.

Because of the overwhelming Hindu idolatry in India, Rome has had to masquerade its own idolatry in the forms of education and charitable work. The long term plan of the Roman Catholic Church in India is apparent from a visit to the Mt. Mary Church in Bombay. This Bandra Fair displays what Rome would like to do not only in India, but worldwide. Rome wants to use Mary as the "Mother" to unite all people to God through the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

(source: The Subtle Mariolatry of Northwest India).

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Fifty-five years down, decades to go: a Sanskrit dictionary grows in India

Pune, India, July 22 — For three generations, they have compiled and argued, agonized and transcribed — toiling in monastic tedium to turn an intricate 44-letter language into six volumes, so far, of word after long-forgotten word.   

***

They have delved into the grammatical roots of ''antahpravesakama'' and debated the pun hidden in ''anangada.'' They've done a brain-numbingly complete dissection of ''anekakrta.'' Now, 55 years after a group of scholars began composing the authoritative dictionary of Sanskrit, the long-dead language of India's ancient glory, they are almost done — with the first letter. ''Sanskrit,'' sighed Vinayaka Bhatta, chief editor of Deccan College's dictionary project, ''is not easy to translate.''  No kidding.  The project has consumed the skills of more than two dozen scholars (so far), cataloged 9 million citations of Sanskrit terms and given the most thorough of definitions to thousands of words.  All this in a language glutted with puns, metaphors and multiple meanings that hasn't been spoken — barring religious rituals and a handful of academics — for centuries. The low estimate to completing the project? At least another 50 years. Like Latin in the medieval West, Sanskrit in ancient India was the language of the elite, largely limited to scholars, royalty and priests. The works they wrote, on everything from astronomy to the lives of Hindu deities, helped mold centuries of intellectual life and remained in wide use until about 1100 A.D.

(source: Fifty-five years down, decades to go: a Sanskrit dictionary grows in India - msnbc.com).

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Rival pastor 'may have killed Staines'

From correspondents in Bhubaneswar, India July 25, 2003

An Australian missionary allegedly murdered by a mob in eastern India could have been killed by a rival pastor, a defence lawyer alleged today in his closing arguments.

Graham Staines and his two younger sons, Philip, 10 and Timothy, 8 were burned to death on January 23, 1999 as they slept inside their vehicle parked near a church in Manoharpur, a remote tribal village in Orissa state. Fourteen men have been charged in the murder and face the death penalty if convicted. They have denied any wrongdoing. Shyamananda Mohapatra, one of the defence lawyers, alleged that Rolia Soren, a key prosecution witness and pastor of Manoharpur church, could have committed the crime.

"Mr Staines could have been a victim of rivalry and intra-community conflicts within the Christian community," Mohapatra told the court.

(source: Rival pastor 'may have killed Staines -  News.com.au).

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Christianity, an instrument of the State - by Kewal Motwani

The imperialistic nations of Europe made a tool of their churches and used them to break up the spirit of nationalism and culture of their conquered race. 

When the missionaries of the ruling race tried to improve education and render social service to their victims, it was with a view to expand commerce of their own countries, convert the people of Christianity, and to render them amenable to exploitation. Thus, with the establishment of political suzerainty of the imperialistic power in India, there began, what we might call in terms of modern warfare, a pinzer movement to strangle the spirit of Indian religion and culture. A highly-paid ecclesiastical department and subsidized missionary machine conducted on scientific lines formed the two flanks, while political favoritism of the Anglo-Indian and the convert formed the front. Thus, India did not come in contact with the teachings of Christ, but with a part of the ruler’s administrative machine in another form, the avowed purpose of which was the same that Macaulay had in view in formulating India’s educational policies, to bring into being a group of saboteurs of Indian culture. Annihilation of India’s religious unity was the direct result of this pinzer movement. It is important to remember that this Christianity of the nation-state that came to India was not a religion but a culture. It was a mode of life, not ethics, not a form of worship or a path of holiness. 

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) born in Bombay, a poet of the Empire, in 1887, he had concerns for the British Empire. 

He spoke only half truth when he said: “There a’int no ten commandments east of Suez”; they aren’t any where! 

India is justified in considering this Christianity as an agency of breaking up India’s spiritual integrity.”

These anomalies find their embodiment in the Indian Christian, who is neither fish nor fowl, neither fully Indian nor fully Western, who considers India, as his country but who owns spiritual allegiance to the mission offices in foreign countries that sent out the “dough.” The Indian Christian have become conscious of their position and are now employing techniques which, like those of the Jesuit, Robert de Nobilibus, verge on the deceptive.   

India has become a battle ground of many rival gospels, fighting for mastery. 

Lord John Lawrence statue in Lahore is badly worded. It should have been: “We have conquered you with the sword. Now, we shall conquer you with a pen.” Macaulay was shrewd enough to realize this when he wrote that the purpose of English education in India should be to produce Englishmen in every respect excepting the color of their skins! He was aiming at India’s cultural conquest. India’s political conquest was completed with the crushing of her last bid for freedom in 1857 and with the crowning of Queen Victoria as India’s Empress; but the cultural conquest of India by the technological culture of the West is still going on and bids fair to gather momentum with the passage of time. 

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p. 239 and 259-261).

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Gujarat’s ancient ports to be excavated soon

If India is grappling with globalization, the answers may be lying right here in Gujarat. A major project, to be undertaken by the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa, plans to excavate ancient ports submerged along the Saurashtra coastline and reveal to the world the country's maritime history and strong presence in international trade centuries ago.

Some startling findings in the Saurashtra region during underwater excavations in recent times, which include huge stone anchors used by ships, and land excavations that have revealed seals and shells, have led scientists of NIO, which is actively involved in excavation of the ancient site of Dwarka, to plan an expedition to gather data on ancient ports that were once key players in ushering economic prosperity.

The project was conceived after an NIO team stumbled on a rare find during an underwater expedition off Somnath, a cluster of about 20 to 30 ball-shaped anchors. About 120 to 125 anchors have been found scattered along the coastline till now.

“If anchors were found near Somnath, there might be more such contemporary sites. These anchors may be as much as 3,000 years old as such structures have been found near Cyprus during that period,” says group leader of marine archaeology in NIO, Kamlesh Vora, who was in the city to attend a discussion on active tectonics in western India.

“And, it is not just these anchors. Land excavations in Padri near Bhavnagar and Diu have revealed signs of extensive maritime activity Potteries have been found in Bet Dwaraka and seals with a three-headed animal have been found. We have evidence that numerous sites like Lothal, Padri, Nageswar, Kuntasi and Dholavira were once connected by maritime routes. A couple of years ago, a Roman period shipwreck near Bet Dwarka was indicated by excavations that revealed amphora shreds and lead ingots possibly of the Roman period,” adds Mr Vora.

(source: Gujarat’s ancient ports to be excavated soon - Timesofindia.com). For more refer to chapter on Dwaraka and Aryan Invasion Theory).

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Appointment of Marxist historian to Kluge Chair - Playing to the Western gallery?

According to a petition started by B. Parker: 

"It is a great travesty that Romila Thapar has been appointed the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress. In regards to India, she is an avowed antagonist of India's Hindu civilization. As a well-known Marxist, she represents a completely Euro-centric world view.

Romila Thapar: a well-known Indian Marxist, represents a completely Euro-centric world view of Indian history.

***

She completely disavows that India ever had a history. Just as the Europeans discredited the American Indian's land claims by ignoring that they represented a unique civilization with a wholesome variety of distinct linguistic and cultural traits, Thapar has long expounded the same ignorant view of India's unique history and civilization.

Why waste our American resources on a Marxist ideological assault on Hindu civilization? Hinduism is the world's most ancient, ongoing and largest cultural phenomenon. Such a long lived civilization surely has a lot to teach the world. So why support its denigration?"

(source: http://www.petitiononline.com/108india/petition.html). Refer to Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud is a book by Arun Shourie. - The book explains how a group of academic historians, of Marxist persuasion, has been tweaking Indian history and also lining its own pockets in the process.

Refer to US Congressman Response To Thapar Petition).

Comments from the Petition:

"America has some fine honest scholars like Diana Eck who appreciate that there is a mystical tradition that is valid, why don't you employ some one like her. This appointment smells of some pseudo Christian ploy to discredit the validity of other God given revelations. Even Christ said I have more to tell but you cannot bear it. America deserves better."

"Please understand that Ms Thapar has never been a historian. History is not bashing one side and eulogising other side. She should not be given this opportunity to further her communist thoughts."

Tulsi puja

(image source: The Splendour That Was 'Ind'  - By K T Shah).

***

"Our so called “eminent historians” try to belittle the achievements of Indian art and architecture in the ancient period - by insinuating that it was derived from other countries. The gods of the Hindus are "rowdy and amoral," with a "rather questionable personal record," they are just developments of primitive cults - animism, fertility, and the rest. At the academic level, Indian Marxists are welcomed in American seminars as privileged commentators on " Hindu communalism." 

It is ironic as well as disturbing that a movement which still swears by Lenin and Stalin, is hailed in Western universities as the guardian of a civil polity against the encroaching barbarism of Hindu revivalism."

Romila Thapar claims to be an expert on Vedic India; when she does not know a single word of Sanskrit.  It is certainly absurd that she was made a professor of ancient Indian history at JNU. 

To know more about Indian Marxist historians refer to  - Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud - By Arun Shourie and A Dictionary of Marxist Thought - By Tom Bottomore. For more refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari.

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Romila Thapar's 'Ancient India' [2002] –  A Review - By Kalavai Venkat

The first striking feature of this revised edition of Thapar's A History of India is that barring rare exceptions, none of the claims and sweeping generalizations she makes in this book, as in the earlier edition, is annotated by any references.

Thapar calls such historians of stature as K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and R. C. Majumdar "nationalistic" and whose interpretations she claims "were biased by nationalistic sentiments". The reader wishes that Thapar had at least meticulously backed her arguments with references to primary sources, as those historians did. For a serious student of history, this book would indeed be a disappointment because there is no way the reader could validate the often outlandish claims, by referring to the primary sources. For the history neophyte, this book could be dangerous, if students gulp it unquestioningly. Ultimately, it is not difficult to understand why Thapar hasn't bothered to provide corroborating references for her claims: many of her claims have no basis.

The very first chapter "Perceptions of the Past" reads like a political pamphlet...On the same page, she claims that the Hindus of the 1920s accepted Aryan Invasion Theory, because that helped the upper-caste Hindus to identify themselves with the British. It is not surprising that sections of colonized Indians accepted AIT, as it was the prevailing theory then. It would have been nearly impossible for most Indian academics to oppose AIT in a colonial India because many British academics didn't tolerate any opposition to AIT. At times, they even resorted to no-holds barred attack on the Indian scholars who challenged the imperialistic paradigms.

What Thapar fails to mention, rather conveniently, is that large sections of very influential Hindus of that period, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo for example, as well as several academics like A. C. Das had opposed AIT. Today, several archeological excavations  have established that there has been no Aryan invasion or break in India's civilization. Yet, it is the historians of the Marxist school of India, like Thapar, who still continue to propagate the myth of AIT.

(source: Romila Thapar's 'Ancient India' [2002] –  A Review - By Kalavai Venkat - indiastar.com). For more refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari. Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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Just say OM - by Joel Stein

Scientists study it. Doctors recommend it. Millions of Americans—many of whom don't even own crystals—practice it every day. Why? Because meditation works.  

Ten million American adults now say they practice some form of meditation regularly, twice as many as a decade ago. Meditation classes today are being filled by mainstream Americans who don't own crystals, don't subscribe to New Age magazines and don't even reside in Los Angeles. For upwardly mobile professionals convinced that their lives are more stressful than those of the cow-milking, soapmaking, butter-churning generations that preceded them, meditation is the smart person's bubble bath. 

And they no longer have to go off to some bearded guru in the woods to do it. In fact, it's becoming increasingly hard to avoid meditation. It's offered in schools, hospitals, law firms, government buildings, corporate offices and prisons. There are specially marked meditation rooms in airports alongside the prayer chapels and Internet kiosks. Meditation was the subject of a course at West Point, the spring 2002 issue of the Harvard Law Review and a few too many locker-room speeches by Lakers coach Phil Jackson. At the Maharishi University schools in Fairfield, Iowa, which include college, high school and elementary classes, the entire elementary school student body meditates together twice daily.  

In a confluence of Eastern mysticism and Western science, doctors are embracing meditation not because they think it's hip or cool but because scientific studies are beginning to show that it works, particularly for stress-related conditions. "For 30 years meditation research has told us that it works beautifully as an antidote to stress," says Daniel Goleman, author of Destructive Emotions. At Cambridge University, John Teasdale found that mindfulness helped chronically depressed patients, reducing their relapse rate by half. Wendy Weisel, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors and author of Daughters of Absence, took anxiety medication for most of her life until she started meditating two years ago. "There's an astounding difference," she reports. "You don't need medication for depression or for tension. I'm on nothing for the first time in my life." 

But meditation does more than reduce stress, bring harmony and increase focus. As the Beatles demonstrated in 1968 when they visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in his Himalayan ashram (they had met him in London in 1967), it can also give you much needed gravitas. 

Hillary Clinton has talked about meditating, and the Gores are converts. "We both believe in regular prayer, and we often pray together. But meditation—as distinguished from prayer—I highly recommend it," says the man who nearly became our President. Gore's TM mantra is not, as rumored, Florida. But the current interest is as much medical as it is cultural. Meditation is recommended by more physicians to prevent the chronic diseases like heart D, AIDS, cancer and infertility. Also to heal psychiatric disturbances like depression, hyperactivity..

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Vatican objects to Meditation

Last December the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of' the Faith warned about the dangers of blending Christian prayer and Eastern methods of meditation (e.g., Zen, Transcendental Meditation and yoga). 

The Vatican Thursday cautioned Roman Catholics that Eastern meditation practices such as Zen and yoga can ``degenerate into a cult of the body'' that debases Christian prayer. The 23-page document, signed by the West German congregation head Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was believed the first time the Vatican sought to respond to the pull of Eastern religious practices. By Eastern methods, the document said, it was referring to practices inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism such as Zen, Transcendental Meditation and yoga, which [may] involve prescribed postures and controlled breathing.

(source: Just say OM - By Joel Stein - time.com) and http://www.skepticfiles.org/rumor/vaticanz.htm and http://www.dotm.org/decelles-1.htm. For more refer to chapter on Yoga).

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Why Is it So Cool To Hate India? - Because It pays to hate India!

Why has it become so cool to hate India? An excellent question that has a simple answer: It pays to hate India. Most India haters are actually on the direct or indirect payroll of Western-Christian-Marxist-Muslim masters. Although the axis of these four masters may seem to be an unlikely one, but from the viewpoint of Chanakya, it is a very likely one indeed. All four hate anything Indian/Hindu from the depths of their guts, and they don't mind a tacit agreement amongst themselves to cut India to pieces in their own independent ways without interfering with one another! Of course they will fight amongst themselves often, but "Let us get rid of this big obstacle first of all, a giant called India that is inhabited by pacifist pagan non-believer polytheistic Hindus" is their common principle. Why is it their common principle? Because they surely realize, as Toynbee has pointed out in the last century in his famous World History, that "In the twenty-first century, India will conquer her conquerors."

From the Eurocentric theories of Aryan invasion of India, the theories that were supported by Western thinkers, to the ongoing soft conversion of Hindus to Christianity through symbols acceptable to Hindus such as modified Lotus with a cross on its petals rather than Brahma, to twisting of the Indian peasantry and labor class' mind through well thought out plans by JNU's Marxist thinkers, to organized en masse voting behavior of the Muslims spearheaded by Madrassas funded by foreign Muslim powers, India's internal geopolitical and academic situation is overshadowed by billions of Rupees that flow into India to support these four classes of the axis.

Their point of view is like this: "What has India given to us? India could not even give us jobs matching our qualifications -- that's why we are on foreign masters' payroll, Romilla Thapar being the latest success amongst us. And why not India be invaded by the USA? They will probably manage the country better..... "so on and so forth. The example of Romilla Thapar getting a good US position as a reward for hating India will make many other India haters even more vicious against India. They will now try to beat Romilla Thapar in how better they are in denouncing anything Indian. We have to remember that these are our own people, our own brothers, sons and daughters that have fallen prey to the anti-India designs of the Western-Christian-Marxist-Muslim axis. We have to be able to learn about their (India-hating Indians') psychological, social and financial needs.

(source: Why Is it So Cool To Hate India? - Because It pays to hate India! - By Dr. Anant Joshi - indiacause.com).

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George Harrison and The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali 

In his album Brainwashed, former Beatle, George Harrison’s answer is “God, God, God” and we eventually get a reading from How To Know God (The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali) and a chant seemingly called Namah Parvati performed along with his son Dhani. It is the perfect end to a final album of the man who took the world to the feet of the Maharishi and became Krishna’s most famous devotee. "Namah Parvati" was appended it as the album's spiritual benediction, a touching reminder that while musicians come and go, music can truly embody their spirit forever.     

The album is dedicated to the Yogis of Hinduism.

The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali 

Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare Mahadev 
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare 
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare 

Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva 
Hare Hare Hare Hare Mahadeva 
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva 
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva 

Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare 
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare 
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva 
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva 

For more on George Harrison refer to chapter on Quotes181-200).

Chants of India - By Ravi Shankar

One of the most soothing CD's you will every hear. It is a good introduction to many of Hindu India's most popular chants.   

Ravi Shankar's effort to set Sanskrit chants from ancient Hindu scriptures to music, and the result is a captivating mix of chant and music. 

Produced by George Harrison this collection of mantras and prayers from the Vedas, Upanishads, and other scriptures powerfully transports the listener to a place of peace where it's possible to be one with the universe. It's as if a heavy, enveloping cloak of serenity falls from the dark, floating sounds of cello opening the CD. Shankar employs flute, tamboura, harp, and other instruments to accent the mighty "Om" thread that weaves itself through the cloth of this album, bringing together deep, ominous voices with delicate, earthly instruments.

(source: Chants of India - By Ravi Shankar).  For  more on Pandit Ravi Shankar refer to Ravi Shankar Foundation.

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Biblical/Mosaic Chronology

According to this system of cosmogony, whatever the more ancient cultures had to say with regard to the cosmos was pure myth, whereas its own cosmogony was the highest fact. And moreover, instead of the ‘vagueness of the earlier systems, the Mosaic cosmogony substituted a precise period of cosmic evolution, compressing the entire process within a period of six days.  

And God saw everything that He had made and, behold it was good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. And the work of creation being over, He rested on the seventh day from all work, which he had made. 

And though the Genesis itself is silent with regard to the exact date of the creation of the earth, later theologians have ingeniously fixed the date of birth of the earth. Archbishop Ussher, in the 17^th century fixed the date as 4004 B.C. Later theologians however, not being content with the specifications of the year alone, added further refinements to their date-scheme and specified 9 a.m. of the 23^rd October, 4004 B.C. as being the exact hour, correct to the second, fixed in accordance to the present GMT. Christian theology has, therefore, succeeded in substituting extreme precision instead of the ‘vagueness’ of the pagan consmogonies. While we must certainly admire the daring and ingenuity of the theologians, we cannot but look askance at this cosmogony, not merely in the light of the hoary cosmogonies of the pre-Christian cultures, but also in the light of the modern scientific cosmogony as well. Nevertheless this cosmogonic dogma of Christian theology held a dominant place in Medieval thought even as late as the last century, due to the influence that Christian theology has had on contemporary thought. It was only in the latter half of the last century, that the overwhelming advances of science slowly but surely knocked the bottom out of this Mosaic/Hebrew cosmogony, till then regarded as the incontrovertible truth with regard to creation.

(source: Hinduism and Scientific Quest - By T R R Iyengar  p. 28 - 29). 

Most of the Occidental writers have unfortunately labored under the false deductions drawn by Archbishop James Ussher (1581 - 1656)  from his study of the Jewish chronicles.

According to Ussher, was a staunch Protestant, at one time Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, the world was created in 4004 B.C. and the Deluge took place in 2349 B.C. The influence of Ussher's conclusions is easily visible in the writings of later oriental scholars, such as Sir William Jones and Charles Wilkins, and it became stereotyped in the writings of later authors by subsequent pronouncements of Max Muller. 

With the view that Christian belief in Creation of the world had taken place at 9:00 a.m. on 23 October 4004 BC. 

The British Asiatic Researches wrote:

“The Hindoo indulge a boundless extravagance in their chronology. Indeed, not satisfied with arranging human affairs, they ascend to the abodes of the gods, write the histories of the celestial regions, and prescribe the bounds of existence to the deities themselves; hence they coolly and confidently assure us, that one day of the grand-father of the gods (Brahma) comprises 1,555,2000,000 years of mortals; and that the reign of this god extends through 55,987,2000, 000,000 of years.” 

(source: Asiatic Researches, volume ii and A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos - By William Ward volume I  p 40  London 1822). For more on Hindu Chronology refer to chapter Hindu Cosmology and Advanced Concepts of Hinduism).

Referring to the Myth of Aryan Invasion of India and the deep-rooted prejudice, Archibald Henry Sayce (1851-1940) British Orientalist says: 

“To a generation which has been brought up to believe that in 4004 B.C. or there about the world was being created, the idea that man himself went back to 100,000 years was both incredible and inconceivable.”

(source: Manu: A Study in Hindu Social Theory - By Kewal Motwani appendix and  http://www.hknet.org.nz/GP-Aryaninvasiondupe.html).

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Vitriolic attack on Vijay Singh and the Indian culture by American Media

While discussing Annika Sorenstam's participation in a PGA Tour event in Texas, Vijay Singh (born to Indian parents in Fiji) was claimed to have said "If women want to play the men's tour they should qualify to play like everybody else". After his comments entire USA media made a big hue and cry for Vijay Singh's comments calling him "Sexist" "Chauvinist" etc. According to one mail received, Chris Core of WMAL called Vijay Singh a "PIG" (Chris is said to have apologized later)

While reporting on this story 'USA Today' columnist went far too off to make a baseless comments on India and Indian culture. This is not only meaningless, but also racial when it was not at all called for.

USA Today's Jon Saraceno says in his column:

"I doubt she (Annika) possesses the same traditional male-female notions of Singh, born in Fiji to Indian parents. I don't know how much Singh was influenced by his ancestry, if at all, but this much I do know: The institutionalized subordination, exploitation and brutalization of women remains ingrained in that society. ("Bride burning" still occurs. From 1999-2001, a total of 6,347 Indian women were murdered by fire, according to Indian government statistics)."

British Sahibs carried in Palanquins in India.

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"..baseless comments about Indian culture by Jon Saraceno in his column about Vijay Singh. Are your columnists/editors aware that one of India's Prime Ministers was a Lady? Mrs.Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister of India for 16 years in 50+ years of the Indian Democracy.

Has America ever produced any Lady President in 200 years and out of 43 Presidents? The answer is 'BIG NO.' Therefore, do we call Americans as 'Sexist', 'Ignorant' and 'Backward'? Do you ever blame British culture for the killings happening in American schools frequently? Do you ever blame American ancestry for the child abuse being done in the American churches? Would your newspaper dare to make such stupid comments about other minorities in USA?"

(source: USAtoday.com and indiacause.com). 

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Indians embarrassed about success, says investment banker

A P J Abdul Kalaam, has recently highlighted this aspect in Hyderabad. Here is what Kalaam said: “Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second largest producer of rice.... There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.” 

Christopher Wood, chief strategist of investment bank CLSA, during a visit to India in March, felt so. His India report, “The tortoise and the hare”, released last month, said: “Indians at the national level remain hopeless at public relations. Indians like to talk about national failures, not successes.”

Indian commercial bankers and investment bankers, too, would like to share the same sentiment without batting an eyelid.

“This is despite the scepticism of many of the capital’s ultra-negative intelligentsia, who have inherited from the British a talent for cultivated cynicism.”

While India remains miles behind China in terms of the latter’s propensity for building fancy new infrastructure, and power remains a problem, India’s recent achievements are considerable given that they all have to be implemented via a democratic progress with all the resulting parliamentary check and balances, Wood said.

(source: Indians embarrassed about success, says investment banker - business-standard.com).

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What is Hindutva? - By N. S. Rajaram

The rise of Hindutva is the most important phenomenon of the 21^st century. It is therefore of great importance to understand its meaning and implication. India is unique as a civilization that embodies spiritual values reflecting its overriding concern for Dharma— or justice and righteous code of conduct. Of late, some politicians and intellectuals are holding up something they call ‘secularism’ as the foundation of the Indian nation. But secularism is a negative concept. All it originally meant is the negation of any role for organized religion, particularly intolerant and exclusivist religious beliefs, in the government. The same people deny also any role for India’s spiritual tradition (Sanatana Dharma) in national life. This is a deeply flawed vision, for secularism can never define a nation.  What defines a nation is shared history and tradition. In the case of India, this role is played by the Hindu Civilization founded on Sanatana Dharma. Hindutva is its present-day ideological offshoot. 

Hinduism is not a creed like Christianity or Islam, but a code of conduct and a value system that has spiritual freedom as its core. Any pathway or spiritual vision that accepts the spiritual freedom of others may be considered part of Sanatana Dharma. This is the foundation of Hindutva. First and foremost, Sanatana Dharma is anadi (without beginning) and also a-paurusheya (without a human founder). It is defined by the quest for cosmic truth, just as the quest for physical truth defines science. Its earliest record is the Rigveda, which is the record of ancient sages who by whatever means tried to learn the truth about the universe, in relations to Man's place in relation to the cosmos. They saw nature — including all living and non-living things — as part of the same cosmic equation, and as pervaded by a higher consciousness. This search has no historical beginning; nor does it have a historical founder.

(source: What is Hindutva? - By N. S. Rajaram).

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Haute Khadi Takes the Fashion World

Khadi is haute and happening. At the Singapore Fashion Week Giorgio Armani himself sang paeans to the stuff of which Indian nationalism is made. "The khadi made in India is among the most skin-friendly fabrics we know. In fact the day isn't far when khadi-based designs will rule the world," he says. No mean praise coming from the man who has defined style for well over four decades. First used by Mahatma Gandhi to make a strong statement of patriotism and self-reliance, hand-spun, hand-woven khadi is today the toast of fashion houses in France and Italy. "It was a Herculean task repackaging khadi for Indian and European tastes while preserving its essential appeal. Designers abroad were completely unaware that a quintessentially Indian material could be used for making Western clothes. Today after two years of rigorous effort, khadi has finally been accepted in the international markets. We now cater to front-line couturiers like Donna Karen, Gucci and Giorgio Armani," says J. Nagarajan, advisor to the Sarvoday Ashram, New Delhi. The ashram caters to over eighty percent of Europe's requirement of khadi. From being a dull, coarse material khadi today bears a multicolored look thanks to vegetable and chemical dyes and can be spun as fine as muslin by weavers in Andhra Pradesh and west Bengal. The West is slowly but surely waking up to the charms of this wonder fabric.

(source: Haute Khadi Takes the Fashion World - Hindustan Times).

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Ancient Hindu Total view of Life

Ancient Hindu view of life was a total view of life and therefore it included both knowledge and action as part of the same activity. The Greek distinction between science as ‘knowing’ and art as ‘doing’ did not dominate in the ancient Indian thought. As Gita said  “Yoga was dexterity in Karma (= action)”. Life was a perpetual Yoga or penance and meditation. This was based on the cosmo-centeric view of life. Every microcosm was a reflection of macrocosm. So when two Indians meet they greet each other by bowing or folding the hands, which means that everyone is revering the divine in the other living being. It was extended to all living creatures.  There are temples to live snakes in Kerala, and in a Devi temple in Rajasthan rats abound. Cow was the common object of worship, as she symbolized the Earth. And so were holy trees like peepul (Gita says that amongst the trees God is Ashvattha) and the plants bilva for Shaivites and tulsi for Vaishnavites. All the five elements become holy and so every river was a goddess; the sky was blue and so is Vishnu; and holy fire was continuously worshipped by the Vedic Brahmins called Agnihotris. 

Thus, man’s attitudes in India towards Nature and his own environment fundamentally differed from those in the West. The Western concept of conquering Nature, exploiting the products of nature, pioneering, cutting the forests and digging mines in mountains and oceans, and the multiple ecological problems that ensued from all these ‘civilizing’ acts were not the problems of India till the 19^th century. 

Nature for the ancient Indian was Prakriti. According to the Sankhya system of philosophy, she is the consort of Purusha (God). When both meet creation is possible and follow all the problems of mind, intellect and ego and their accompanying attributes. Prakriti is supposed to be consisting of three main qualities; Sattva (the pure, abstract, white), Rajas (the mixed, earthly, red), Tamas (the impure, dark, black). Their permutations and combinations make for the variety in man. As human beings are never fully equal or perfect, their ways of attaining the Divine are also never the same. Truth is One, but the wise men call it Many (ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti). God, according to Vedanta, is non-dualistic; the world is illusion or Maya. Slowly and gradually the Illusion becomes the Illumination. Here in the matter of methodology too, there is much reliance on Intuition (Anubhava or Prama of Shankara, or ‘inner voice’ of Gandhi). Intellect alone cannot achieve anything’ the Upanishads repeatedly say: medhaya, na bahudha shruten.

(source: Hinduism: Its Contribution to Science and Civilization - By Prabhakar Machwe p. 2 -4). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Prosperity and well-being in Ancient India

According to Megasthenes: " The inhabitants of India, having abundant means of subsistence, are of unusual height and bulk of body. They are also found to be well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale a pure air and drink the very finest water. And while the soil bears on its surface all kinds of fruits which are known to cultivation, it has also under ground numerous veins of all sorts of metals, for it contains much gold and silver, and copper and iron in no small quantity, and even tin and other metals, which are employed in making articles of use or ornament, as well as the implements and accoutrements of war."

***

Megasthenes mentions the great number of rivers and the quantity of cereals. "It is accordingly affirmed that famine has never visited India and that there has never been a great scarcity in the supply of nourishing food....since there is a double rainfall in the course of each year." He also notes another reason for this prosperity. "Whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides, they never ravage an enemy's land with fire, nor cut down its trees."

(source: A Brief History of India - By Alain Danielou  p. 106).

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Water clocks in The Classical Age of Ancient India

Water clocks were used in various places and institutions. The clock consisted of a small pot, kept floating in a larger vessel filled with water. The pot could be filled in 24 minutes (ghatika) by water slowly coming into it through a hole made at the bottom. At attendant was necessity to empty it out and float it again the moment it was filled.

The social condition of the period show us a people happy, well placed in life and fond of the good things of life. To quote Fa Hien, the Chinese traveler, visiting India in the days of Chandra Gupta II. "The people are numerous and happy. They have not to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules. The king governs without decapitation or other corporal punishment. People of various sects set up houses of charity where rooms, couches, beds, food and drink are supplied to travelers."

(source: India's Culture Through the Ages - By Mohan Lal Vidyarthi p. 131- 132). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) inventor of the wireless was not admitted to the membership of the Royal Society of Great Britain for nearly twenty years. The reason was that he was a botanist, a physiologist, a psychologist and a philosopher, rolled into one, while a scientist, in the strict sense of the word, was meant to be only one and nothing else.

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p. 239).

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Patit Pavan Mandir and Savarkar

Patit Pavan Mandir. Maharashtra’s famous temple-builder, Bhagoji Baloji Keer, in deference to Savarkar’s wishes, built this temple in Ratnagiri where all Hindus, irrespective of caste, could assemble for prayers. Dhananjay Keer, biographer of Savarkar, Ambedkar, Gandhi and Tilak, notes: ‘‘Acharyas, Shankaracharyas, pundits and patriots declared Ratnagiri a place of pilgrimage. In fact, as one speaker then put it, Ratnagiri became the new Kashi of the re-awakened, purified and unified Hindudom where a Hindu scavenger acted as a priest, persons from the so-called depressed classes delivered sermons, Mahars read the sacred Geeta, Brahmins garlanded and bowed before these priests; and a Brahmin youth ran a Pan-Hindu hotel. Indeed, the Patit Pavan Temple came to be the university of Pan-Hindu movement’’ 

Since 1925, Savarkar clashed swords with orthodox Hindus over temple-entry rights of ‘‘untouchables’’. ‘‘He is not God who can be desecrated’’ was his epigrammatic reply to orthodox Hindus. Removal of untouchability, he held, implied purification and salvation of misguided orthodox ‘‘touchables’’. He transformed the Ganesh Festival started by Tilak into a pan-Hindu festival. By and by, the orthodox hold slackened and ‘‘untouchables’’ were allowed to enter the hall of Vithoba temple, the most important shrine in Ratnagiri. During that time, Savarkar was the only leader who intrepidly and whole-heartedly supported the Dalit liberation movement launched by Ambedkar.

(source: Veer Savarkar - By Dhananjay Keer p.185 and Defending Savarkar’s Bharat - By Balbir Punj - indianexpress.com).

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Hinduism Invades America – By Wendell Thomas 

"An old faith is now invading a new country. The new country is the United States of America. The old faith is Hinduism. The invasion began when the first Christian colonists from Europe set forth on the American continent, for there are tracts of Hindu sentiment in both Catholic and Protestant creeds. As soon as students in America began to study Plotinus, Thoman Acquinas and Spinoza, Hinduism began to spread, and when Emerson and his like minded friends received a generous hearing Hinduism became more firmly established in America than in Europe. 

Theosophy, Christian Science and similar religious movements further extend its sway, and when Hindu swamis and yogis themselves began to appear on the horizon in robes of the color of sun, Hinduism suddenly advanced in all its pristine glory. 

But the end of invasion is not yet in sight, for apart from the swamis and yogis, a godly throng of academic lecturers and organization directors are slowly but surely conducting Hindu ideas into the very center of American culture."

(Note: Swami Vivekananda's epoch making speech at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, stirred strong thought currents in the American intelligentsia. Vedanta with its intrinsic implication of universal brotherhood  appealed to the head and heart of the American people, and left an indelible imprint on the American society for decades to come.  As a response to this development, Wendell Thomas wrote this book in 1930.

(source: Hinduism Invades America - By Wendell Thomas  p. 13  published by The Beacon Press Inc. New York City 1930). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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University Education – By Sir John Woodroffe 

The fundamental fact is that a government alien in race, habits, thoughts, feelings, religion and general culture controls the education and essays to teach the people of this country. It has been well said that probably in the world there are not two more dissimilar persons than an Englishman and a Hindu. The position is unnatural, and injurious to the true interests of this country. This control may be, and I think has been, directed by self-regarding political motives. There are some (the foremost of whom may be called Missionaries of Race) who, sincerely believing in the superiority of Western Civilization, think that it will be for the benefit of India to impose it on the East. The product of this system is Macaulay’s “Colored Englishman.” The drift of Education has been in this direction. As my friend Mr. Havell (formerly Principal of the Calcutta School of Art) has rightly said, the fault of the Anglo-Indian Educational System is that, instead of harmonizing with, and supplementing national character, it is antagonistic to, and destructive, of it.  

The education system that it “has destroyed in Indians the love of their own literature."

***

Sir George Birchwood says of the system that it “has destroyed in Indians the love of their own literature, the quickening soul of a people, and their delight in their own arts, and worst of all their repose in their own traditional and national religion, has disgusted them with their own homes, their parents, and their sisters, and their very wives, and brought discontent into every family so far as its baneful influences have reached.” 

Sir Subrahmania Aiyar says that the aim and end of British tutelage in India is to westernize its children…to sap all true life and initiative natural to the people as a distinctly Eastern race destined to evolve on lines of its own….the object of the present rule seems intended to metamorphose the Indian into “a quasi-English breed.” Such a breed I may add is likely to lead to half-thinking inefficient action, and worse. 

Let us recognize the strength, persistence, and value of the racial characteristics of the Indian people, who have survived in a way, and to a degree, which is not seen in the case of any other country in the world. It is not necessary to enquire into the question of the respective superiority of the civilizations of East and West. It is sufficient to hold that Indian civilization is the best for the people whose forefathers have evolved it. Let us stop all attempts, direct or indirect whether political, or religious, to impose our beliefs and practices on a people to whom they are foreign. Let us admit and give effect to the claim of the true Indian patriot that his language, history, literature, art, philosophy, religion, general culture and ideals should be given the primary place in the prescribed courses of study. 

(source: Bharata Shakti – Collection of Addresses on Indian Culture - By Sir John Woodroffe  75-80). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Science in Ancient India 

All sciences were closely linked with each other in India, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, astrology, biology, physiology, anatomy, psychology, ethics and philosophy, formed one organic whole. They merged into one another, moved about freely into one another’s domain, enriched each other’s content. Life was seen as an organic whole. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge was considered a futility. 

All these achievements of India in the realm of science, as well as art and philosophy, migrated along with her merchandise to various parts of the world. Thus, Indian manufactured commodities and Indian art, philosophy and science went together, and one of the western nations to profit there from was Greece.

The Greeks, according to an English scientist, (Sir Oliver Lodge 1851-1940) were not interested in solving the mystery of the universe. They were ‘pirates turned merchants’, and they wanted to acquire ‘by fair means and foul all the technique of the ancient world’ to serve their practical interests. They have contributed little to the philosophic thought and scientific achievements of mankind, and it was not long before the study of science was discouraged as being a study of ‘what comes for a moment into existence and then perishes.’ 

Islam took up the role of Greece and became a bridge between India and the West. The Arabs ransacked not only the Indian kingdoms, but also Indian philosophic thought and scientific achievements. They took Algebra, Chemistry, Alchemy and other industrial arts from India and gave them to Europe. But they did not make much headway in the Europe of the Middle Ages that was ‘still barbarous’. The Church offered strong resistance, and a comparatively stable social order discouraged scientific research. But rapid rise in trade and accumulation of wealth displaced feudalism and gave birth to Renaissance and to a renewed interest in science and philosophy. 

(source: Science and society in India – By Kewal Motwani p. 11 -13). 

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Arundhati Roy: Defaming Hinduism?

Arundhati Margaret Mary Roy, Indian Christian and winner of the Booker prize for God of Small Things, an outspoken critic of India's nuclear weapons testing, is a woman on a mission. The mission is to defame, ridicule and nullify the national culture and heritage of India.

By now of course the Indian public has gotten used to her hysterical outbursts against the "imperialistic state" and her calls for anarchy. Perhaps her book sales weren't really as good as projected and therefore she feels the urge to force herself into the public eye. The Indian English media has practically fallen all over itself to disseminate reverent stories about the newest "Selfless social activist" on the block.

"....But of course Ms. Roy didn't stop there, she went further and in her unbounded sarcasm, ridiculed the Hindu scriptures as well.

"Yes, I've heard - the bomb is in the Vedas [ancient Hindu scriptures]. It might be, but if you look hard enough you'll find Coke in the Vedas too. That's the great thing about all religious texts. You can find anything you want in them - as long as you know what you're looking for. "

Considering the fact that she doesn't know a word of Sanskrit, who the hell is Ms. Arundirty Roy to mock what is in the Vedas. Is it so impossible to believe that ancient Hindu culture could have been technologically advanced?

(source: Arundhati Roy - Social activist of a different kind - SOT). 

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Indian Idealist Metaphysics  - By Paul Brunton

The ancient Hindus took their philosophic statements in the nature of a revelation from on high, as issuing forth from their seers as a result of a personal self-experience in the spiritual domain. Our Western scientists have no such experience, and if they are approaching similar conclusions, it is because they are working their way from the profoundest depths of this material world up to its farthest frontier where the ions elude them and vanish into mystery……the wisest men of the ancient East and the modern West…are beginning to arrive at precisely the same conclusions. 

This Indian doctrine declares human cognition of the entire manifold universe to be illusionary in character. The vast multitude of tangible objects and tangible creatures which we so plainly witness around us were said to be the product of the constructive imagination of the One Hidden Self. Man and his material environments were but finite dreams passing through the mind of the Infinite Dreamer. Consequently all that we know of the world is nothing more or less than a series of idea held in our consciousness. Thus we arrive at a completely idealistic metaphysics which, because of its very nature, must apparently remain for ever purely speculative and beyond the scope of the finest instruments which can be devised to prove or disprove. Nevertheless the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the doctrine fascinated the Indian mind to an amazing extent. That this early foreshadowing of modern idealistic philosophy was not merely a worthless superstition is evidenced by the fact that some brilliant minds of the West have been equally fascinated and perplexed. 

This doctrine, curiously enough, hardly rears its head in The Vedas but appears with strong bold outlines in the post-Vedic books such as The Yoga Vasishta, in the Buddhist philosophical scriptures, and in the numerous writings of Shankara, the father of the grandest Hindu philosophical revival of ancient times. 

The earliest Vedic mention is in the Svetasvarara Upanishad, where the following lines occur: 

“Now one should know that Nature is illusion,
And that the Mighty Lord is the illusion-maker.”

The Aitareya Upanishad says: 

“Creatures, plants, horses, cows, men, elephants, whatsoever breathes, whether moving or flying and, in addition, whatsoever is immovable – all this is led by mind and is supported on mind. Mind is the final reality.”   

The basis of this doctrine is that things cannot exist independently of the perceiver's mind, that the entire phenomenal world of experience is a creation within the perceiving mind, as is a dream, and hence, from the highest metaphysical standpoint, an idea or mental appearance. The author of The Yoga Vasishta presents the teaching in another way, asserting that the world is relative to the mind and must therefore be mental in character if the possibility of its being known is to be achieved. 

"The subject cannot be aware of the object unless they are related. And there cannot exist any relation between two heterogeneous things. Relation implies identity, for it cannot be possible between two utterly different objects. The cognition of the object by the subject therefore establishes their substantial identity. If they were utterly different from each other, knowledge would not have been possible; the subject would ever remain unaware of the object as a stone of the taste of sugar." "The whole world is merely ideal. It does not exist except in thought. It arises and exists in the mind. The whole universe is the expansion of the mind. It is a huge dream arisen within the mind. It is imagination alone that has assumed the forms of time, space and movement."

"The reality of things consists in their being thought. The objective world is potentially inherent in the subject, as seeds of a lotus exist in the flower, as oil in sesamum seeds. All objects are related to the subject from which they proceed. They appear to be different from it, but are not so in reality. The world experience is nothing in reality but a dream."

The author of Yoga Vasishta realizes that such a solipsism is difficult to maintain and so lends his support to the Upanishadic assertion that "the Mighty Lord", God, is the true illusion-maker, and that the idea of the created world is put into our minds by the Divine One.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote the following verse: 

“Illusion works impenetrable,
Weaving webs innumerable,
Her gay pictures never fail,
Crowds each other, veil on veil,
Charmer who will be believed
By man who thirsts to be deceived.” 

Bishop George Berkeley (1865-1753) Famous Irishman and bishop of the Church of England and a prominent empiricist philosopher, in The Principle of Human Knowledge, proceeds to claim that the universal creation being mental, must have been brought into being within the mind of a Cosmic Thinker, thus strangely echoing a passage already quoted from the Indian Yoga Vasishta. 

Arthur Schopenhauer, who in his turn developed the same theme in the vigorous volumes of The World as Will and Idea. He says: 

“He to whom men and all things have not at times appeared as mere phantoms of illusions has no capacity for philosophy…” 

“The world is my idea – this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness…” 

Coming to more recent times, we find echoes of the familiar Hindu comparisons of the dream and waking worlds in the writings of F. H. Bradley, E. Douglas Fawcett, Dr. F.C. Schiller, and Lord Bertrand Russell.   

One of the greatest 19^th century scientists was Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) physiologist, anatomist, anthropologist, agnostic, educator, distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, the following quotations from his work, Collected Essays vol. VI, serve to show how much ancient Indian philosophy anticipated modern Western thought.   

"To sum up. If the materialist affirms that the universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, Berkeley replied, 'True; but what you call matter and motion are known to us only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or known; and the existence of a state of consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, is a contradiction in terms. I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable.

“…the simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts, beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot.” 

Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) important astrophysicists of his time, wrote in Time, Space and Gravitation: 

“All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the furthest, the mind has but regained from Nature, that which the mind has put into Nature. 

Sir James Berkeley writes: 

“The Universe can be best pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what, for want of a wider world, we must describe as a mathematical thinker.” 

Hyman Levy (1889-1975) Mathematician, philosopher and humanist, in The Universe of Science, declares that “the underlying reality of the universe is never perceived. A mere appearance is experienced so that what the mind pictures is not reality but its superficial structure.” 

While Western psychologists carry out most of their experiments upon other persons, the proponents and exponents of Indian system are expected, and do, carry out their experiments upon themselves first and foremost. And because man is a key to the universe, because the mind of man is somehow linked with the Mind behind creation, the way to understanding of the universe must finally embrace the thorough understanding of the mystery behind man. 

(source: Indian Philosophy and Modern Culture - By Paul Brunton  London Rider & Co. Paternoster House, E. C  p 1-92). For more on Paul Brunton refer to chapter on Quotes271-300). 

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Babur's memoirs

Though Babur captured Hindustan, he did not love it. He wrote in his Memoirs:

"the country and towns of Hindustan are extremely ugly. All its towns and lands have a uniform look; its gardens have no walls; the greater part of it is a level plain. He found the plains monotonous after the mountain scenery of Kabul. "Hindustan is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society. They have no genius, no intellectual comprehension, no politeness, no kindness or fellow-feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in planning or executing their handicrafts, no skill or knowledge in design or architecture. They have no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazaars, no baths, or colleges, or candles, or torches - never a candlestick!

He had made sweeping and wholly unjust condemnation - almost like Macaulay did centuries later at the height of the British Empire!

Yet he did admit that it was a big country with plenty of gold and silver. He died in 1530 and he lies in peace in his grave in the garden on the hill at Kabul. 

(source: History of India - By A V Williams Jackson volume 3  p. 220 - 222).

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The modern western culture 

The modern western culture is essentially mental, aggressively masculine. Its intellectual expression is science, with emphasis on search for the secrets of the phenomenal. Control of nature is a religious creed with this culture. Its method is classification, compartmentalization, division, analysis. Intellect emphasizes individuality, self-centeredness. It is aggressive, acquisitive and has no argument excepting its own. Winston Churchill and Smuts can indulge in the pleasant pastimes of waxing eloquent for the human rights and freedoms and signing Atlantic and U.N.O. Charters, while, with an amazing feat of facetious logic, they resort to policies of ruthless repression of the weaker races in their empires and still retain a unity of mind and peace of conscience! The mental culture is commercial; it peddles its wares throughout the world, even at the point of the bayonet. Baccy, beer, bayonet, and Bible sum up its salient features. Its arts are for profit and sensuous pleasure; it makes a business of pleasure. Its political expression is the fiction of democracy, arrogant nationalism, state sovereignty and imperialism. Its religion is a struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, the supremacy of the economic over the spiritual. Conformity is its code of honor. Such a culture carries in itself elements of self-destruction. 

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p. 173-174).

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Science and racial arrogance?

“It is possible that Indian thought influenced the schools of Asia Minor, and through them those of Greece, and it is certain that, at a later date, during Arab domination in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, traces of the mathematics and medicine in India mingled with the learning saved from Greece and Rome, and re-entered the schools of Western Europe by way of Spain and Contantinople. This explains the fact that, when the Indian scheme of notation replaced the clumsy Roman figures, the primary sources of the numerals was forgotten and they were misnamed Arabic.” 

The Buddhist missionaries from China took the decimal system to their country, and Mahmed Ibn Mossali Khwaja Nizami took it to Baghdad in 850 A.D. 

The writings of western historians of science suffer from an air of racial arrogance and they do not hesitate to suggest that everything began with Greece, excepting the laws of nature. Even so a thorough a scholar as Sir William Dampier gives one paragraph to India's contributions to science.  

(source: Science and Society in India - By Kewal Motwani p. 4 15 and A History of Science - Sir William Cecil Dampier  p. 10).

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World history wiped out

When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history.  Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world.

Not since the Taliban embarked on their orgy of destruction against the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the statues in the museum of Kabul ­ perhaps not since the Second World War or earlier ­ have so many archaeological treasures been wantonly and systematically smashed to pieces.

The museum housed items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There were also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery.  Iraq, a cradle of civilisation long before the empires of Egypt, Greece or Rome, was home to dynasties that created agriculture and writing and built the cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon -- site of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.  

On the eve of the invasion in March, archaeologists around the world had warned the US government it had a responsibility to ensure the safety of Iraq’s heritage, of the remnants of the Mesopotamian civilization. To no avail.... 

(source: Large traces of Iraqi, world history wiped out - by K S Dakshina Murthy and A Civilization torn to pieces - Independent. co.uk). 

King Aubbiluliuma signed in 1380 BC at Boghazkoy, invokes not only ... the treaties, but Mitra, Varun.a, Indra, and Na_satya  
For more information refer to http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/monographs/scriptandlanguage.pdf 

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Hinduism and Indian secularism

Hinduism applauds diversity and consequently accepts that people of different temperaments, circumstances and levels of understanding develop different viewpoints and different forms to express event the same viewpoint. 

The fundamental mistake of Indian secularism is that Hinduism is put in the same category as Islam and Christianity. The definition of “religion” which is implied when we call Islam and Christianity religions, may well not apply to Hinduism, and vice versa. Islam and Christianity are defined, by believers as well as by informed outsiders as belief systems; Hinduism is not so defined (except by incompetent outsiders and some of their neo-Hindu imitators who try to cast Hinduism into the mould of Christianity. Islam’s and Christianity’s intrinsic irrationality and hostility to independent critical thought warranted secularism as a kind of containment policy. By contrast, Hinduism recognizes freedom of thought and does not need to be contained by secularism.

Historically, Hindus have quickly recognized Islam and Christianity as mleccha, barbaric predatory religions, not as instances of Dharma to which any respect is due. Until Swami Dayananda Saraswati, they didn't even consider these religions as worthy of a detailed critiuqe. Hinduism as a whole gives a place in the sun to all. It never was anti-logical nor anti-realistic; therefore, it never required people to muzzle both their rational faculty and their temperamental inclinations. 

The Christian Church must be counted among Hindutva's most determined enemies. Much of the negative image which the BJP has acquired internationally is due to the lasting powerful impact of the Churches on the information stream concerning the Third World. In quarrels between the Hindutva forces and the Muslims or the secularists, the Christian institutions are invariably on the anti-Hindu side. There are also Christian armed separatist movements in Nagaland and Mizoram, which are openly supported by the World Council of Churches and by a number of Catholic institutions. 

(source: Bharatiya Janata Party vis-a-vis Hindu Resurgence - By Koenraad Elst p. 9-10 and 105). For more refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari.  

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Jinnah and India

Christian missionary has said that nationalism has been the undoing of Christianity in mission lands. According to him.. "the surrender of the Church to the rising powers of nationalism is the major betrayal of Christ." Missionaries want to defeat and if possible expurgate, the Hindu of nationalism so that it might become easier to destablize Hindustan. Muslims too have extraterritorial loyalties. Jinnah had made it clear in January 1940 that “India is not a nation, nor a country. It is a sub-continent composed of Nationalities, - Hindus and Muslims being the two major nations: 

(source: The Hindu?  - By Krishna Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti).

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Sita - of feminine virtue

“Could a group of western women name their ideal woman, I wonder. In India the answer would spring instantaneously from a hundred and twenty million Hindu women – Sita. Sita is not merely a legend, but a living force in India..she is the undimmed, unchanged Hindu ideal of womanhood. The epic poetry belongs as much to the illiterate masses as to the scholars of India, and under a village tree or within the mud walls of a humble village home, all the trials and triumphs of life are vividly projected in stories of heroes and heroines, real and imaginary, peopling this ancient land. These furnish a never ending source of instruction and inspiration.” 

(source: Voiceless India – By Gertrude Emerson Sen p. 374 –5 and 345).

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Did Rama exist?

***

Ayodhya is in the headlines every day. One would have to be an ostrich to avoid the subject. Was there a temple before the mosque? Archaeologists would have to answer that. Was Rama born there? The answer is a matter of belief. Did Rama exist? Yes, I am quite sure he did. Rama’s life was a fact. His divinity is a matter of faith.

To doubt the existence of Rama is to doubt all literature. There is no archaeological or epigraphic evidence for either Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohammed, who are known only from the Bible and Koran respectively. Does it mean they did not exist? If Rama performs miracles such as liberating Ahalya, the Biblical story of Jesus walking on water or the Koranic tale of Mohammed flying to heaven on a horse are equally miraculous. Such stories reinforce divinity, not fact.

The Ramayana is geographically very correct. Every site on Rama’s route is still identifiable and has continuing traditions or temples to commemorate Rama’s visit. Around 1000 BC, no writer had the means to travel around the country inventing a story, fitting it into local folklore and building temples for greater credibility.

In 1975 the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) unearthed fourteen pillar bases of kasauti stone with Hindu motifs near the mosque at Ayodhya; reports of the excavations are available with the ASI. Rama was born in Ayodhya and married in Mithila, now in Nepal. Not far from Mithila is Sitamarhi, where Sita was found in a furrow, still revered as the Janaki kund constructed by her father Janaka. Rama and Sita left Mithila for Ayodhya via Lumbini. 

In 249 BC, Ashoka erected a pillar in Lumbini with an inscription referring to the visits by both Rama and Buddha to Lumbini. Ashoka was much nearer in time to Rama and would be well aware of his facts. Rama’s memory lives on because of his extraordinary life and his reign, which was obviously a period of great peace and prosperity, making Ramarajya a reference point. People only remember the very good or the very bad. Leftist historians have chosen to rubbish archaeology, literature and local tradition. So how do we prove that Rama did exist?

(source: Did Rama exist? - By Nanditha Krishna - newindpress.com). For more on Ramayana and excavations at Ayodhya refer to chapter on Hindu Scriptures and GlimpsesVII).

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Karl Marx and Ancient India

In the year 1857, Karl Marx wrote about India:

"India was a prosperous civilization. It had a very high standard of living. Their productivity was higher. India was an economic giant." 

"This was a great civilisation which had produced prosperous communities." It was so. If you look at the statistics in 1820, India’s share of world production was 19%, and England’s share was 9%, please note that Britain was deep into the industrial revolution at that time. 18% of the world trade was in Indian hands at that time whereas 8% was the figure for Britain and 1% for US. When 80% of the American population was engaged in agriculture, India had 60% of the population engaged in non-agricultural occupations. This is supposed to be an index of development. All these statistics can be found in Paul S. Kennedy’s ‘Rise and fall of great powers".

(source: Karl Marx and Ancient India). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Thought Phobia in India?

Sri Aurobindo, the Freedom Fighter and philosopher, said:

"I believe that the main cause of India's weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think - incapacity of thought or 'thought phobia'. The great ailment of India today is the decline in thinking power. The crudeness of contemporary political thought in India, once the cradle of pioneers in abstract and social sciences, is a sad sight, especially considering that in other fields, such as business and the exact sciences, Indians are already recovering their ancient greatness in showing their acumen again.

(source: Bharatiya Janata Party vis-a-vis Hindu Resurgence - By Koenraad Elst p. 57-58).

***

"Atheism is a necessary protest against the wickedness of the Churches and the narrowness of the creeds. God uses it as stone to smash these soiled card-houses." - Sri Aurobindo.

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Clarisse Bader and Women of Ancient India

Mlle. Bader' work, La Femme dans l'Inde antique was published in 1867, and was awarded distinction by the French Academy. She was perhaps a little before her time in her interest in Sanskrit literature, for its untold wealth had hardly at that time entered the consciousness of general readers either in France or in England. 

Ms. Bader (1840-1902) was a devout adherent of the Roman Catholic Church in France and she concludes her book in a typical Eurocentric view: 

“…This decadence continued to increase, until the day came when India, debilitated, corrupted by the Krishna cult, yielded to the enerating influence of Islam, and showed to what a depth of physical and moral degradation the most gifted people could fall….In such a society what must be the position of women?   

Eurocentric view of Indian women - Paintings by Rao Bahadur M V Dhurandhar

(image source: The Splendour That Was 'Ind'  - By K T Shah p. 25 - 29).

***

“It is Christianity which must vivify by its generous sap the dead letter of the ancient Sanskrit traditions; it belongs to Christianity to reveal to the Indians, in their sacred poems, the germs of the sublime truths it was their part to propagate. The spiritual tenderness of their race have not sufficed to preserve them from the attack of passion; inaction has ruined them; belief in fatality has bent them under the hand of Destiny, which, in fact, has no power beyond that which man himself gives it. May the practical spirit of Christianity save them (Hindus), and its moral liberty revive them. It is not sufficient only to gaze heavenwards; the march which will lead to heaven must be begun and continued on earth. May this people seize the torch, whose bright light their ancestors saw; it will not only guide them to heaven; but will also light their way to it. 

This great work is reserved for the powerful nation in whose hands rest today the destinies of India. The regeneration of the conquered is the solemn ratification of conquest. By women alone can the work of salvation be accomplished, and she must be prepared for her mission."

(source: Women in Ancient India - By Clarisse Bader  p. 331-334 ). 

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Distortion of Hinduism

Researches into the antiquity of Man in the last few decades have totally exploded the Darwinian and Biblical dates for the Origin of Man. Man is now known to have been in existence on earth for several millions of years at least. It has believed by orthodox Pleonology an anthropology, that Man was in existence not from the Pliocene or Miocene age but much earlier – all of which explodes the Bible’s date of Creation of 4004 B.C. as a kindergarden tale. 

The earliest records of Hinduism in this respect too give the entire history of the several human. Races that have appeared on the Earth one after the other and how each of them have been wiped out by some catastrophic changes on the earth, of course, of cosmic dimensions. The story of several Manus, each being the originator and the Father of a different human race is clearly described in everyone of the Puranas. 

To imagine that all this is Myth or a story produced purely from imagination by the ancients who took such enormous pains to write and preserve these records of history only to fool themselves, cannot be any longer seriously considered.   

***

Ours is an age of crisis when the message of Hinduism is an urgent need. 

But so far Hinduism is largely considered from the standpoint of the Christian missionary and the merchant sailor, who came to India in the days of the East India Company. It has been studied with the mind of the Christian missionary. This becomes obvious even from a cursory perusal of the writings of the 17^th and 19^th centuries. 

When one looks at the publications that purport to write about Hinduism, for nearly two centuries one is struck with the surprising absence of a book which correctly depicts the spirit of this great religion as it is known to those versed in Sanskrit tradition and the living conventions of that great Religion. The absence is almost total. 

When one sees the flood of books, articles and other writings which literally pour into the market one is appalled at the horrifying distortion as each writer wishes to cater to a particular lobby, or gallery of readers on which he has set his eyes. Some for instance, emphasize sex as Tantra, eroticism and phallicism, while other paint a picture of Hindu India with snake-charmers, cobras and the rope trick. Some others speak of Sati, Child marriage, widow marriage, or the sadhu on the nails and the like while still others bewail of the backwardness of women. The latent fashion however is to play up untouchability and inter-caste friction; all features based on a political, racial and sometimes religious slant. 

This is the kind of magnified distortion that has always represented Hinduism.  

The result is a most unfortunate situation. But the reason is obvious. Hinduism so far has largely been considered from the angle of the Christian missionary and the merchant sailor who first came to India. India’s history too has suffered a similar distortion. 

The result is that 5000 years of Hindu chronology is condensed into 2000 years based on an obsession originally based on Bible’s Creation (4004 B. C). This happened right from the days of Sir William Jones till today.  All our dates are fitted into this well tailored Western suit! 

It is not with the Bible and its sublime theme that the fault lay. It is with the misuse of Bible, out of a blind love of it by men, who least understood its mystical teaching – not rooted in Archaeology and astronomy. 

Every archaeological evidence, every ancient document, like Dead Sea scrolls, the Gilgamesh Epic and the Gnostic writings have all proved that beyond the Old Testament’s chronology, lies millions of years of Earth’s history. 

(source: Hinduism in The Space Age - By E. Vedavyas p. 635 – 633). 

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Back to the Vedas, with Unesco help - by Akshaya Mukel    

This could well be the second call for getting back to the Vedas, complete with the gurukul system.

Concerned with what it calls ‘‘the declining Vedic heritage’, especially its oral tradition, the department of culture has applied for funds to Unesco under its ‘Preservation and Promotion of Intangible Cultural Heritage’ programme. The application has been routed through the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA). Officials are confident the grant will be approved by November.  

The proposal — ‘The Oral Tradition of the Vedas and Vedic Heritage’ — draws up a five-year action plan to safeguard, protect, revitalise and disseminate the cultural expression of the Vedas. According to a culture ministry official, emphasis would be on preserving vedic chanting. He says there are four branches of vedic recitation which need immediate attention. 

These are: 

The Paippalada Sakha of the Atharva Veda, which is extinct except for one or two practitioners in a remote Orissa village.The Maitrayani branch of Krishna Yajur Veda, which barely survives in Maharashtra’s Nasik and Kandesh. Jaiminiya Sama Veda, which is confined to some villages in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Ranayaniya, which is being practised in Karnataka. These four schools of recitation would be strengthened by setting up about 15 ‘‘pathasalas’’ (traditional schools) in regions where families or persons are capable of giving training to students.  

Ministry sources dismiss allegation of promoting the Vedas amidst so much resentment among the Dalits against the Vedic system of learning. ‘‘The Vedas’ oral tradition belongs to India and its people, not to any caste and class,’’ they say.

(source: Back to the Vedas, with Unesco help - Times of India Tuesday May 20 2003). 

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Establishment of British power 

Europe had been dazed by India’s splendour, spiritual and physical, and cast a covetous eye on her across the seas and the deserts. Upto the time of Alexander’s invasion, the contacts between India and Europe were mostly commercial and cultural; Alexander’s was a hit-and-run type of visit to India. He blazed the trail over the land, while Vasco da Gama, about seventeen hundred years later, came by way of sea, and after a voyage of eleven months from Lisbon, landed at Calicut on the west coast. For one hundred years, the Portuguese went about India, spreading Christianity at the point of the sword. The Dutch arrived early in the 17^th century; France was already established on the eastern and the western coasts of India. The German Empire sent its Ostend Company in 1772; Prussia, its Emden Company in 1774. Britain formed a company, with a charter from Queen Elizabeth. These Christian, commercial competitors fought savagely, embroiled the native rulers in their affrays, their chief concern being to fill their pockets, to levy taxes on the people, to enrich their national coffers with the stolen booty and to “civilize the heathens.   

Doorga Das - Rajput Warrior

(image source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod).

***

The fundamentals of Indian culture were better understood and appreciated by the German scholars than by the British. Science and technology, that have come to India through her alliance with Britain, would have come as a part of the world cultural change. Japan, China, Turkey, and Persia accepted science and machine, without receiving them as gifts from alien rulers. Traits of culture migrate with the same speed as the mechanisms of transportation. Indeed, it is NOT altruism that made Britain introduce science and machine in India; two wars have been necessary to reveal to her the disastrous consequences of her policy of obstructionism. But in the failure of Britain to understand and appreciate India’s spiritual contributions and the purpose of her link with India has lain the tragedy of the western world.  India’s resentment at the British rule is born of this deep sense of frustration of the very purpose of her being, which, as we have tried to sense, is unity. Her rulers were mere birds of passage, just shop-keepers.  

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p. 35-40

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Crowds flock to yoga festival in U.S.

Seattle: People of all backgrounds and ages flocked to a yoga festival here organised by an American couple and that included performances by classical musicians Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma.

Joseph Rodin organised the NorthWest Yoga Festival. "People came from India, Australia and Europe to participate," Rodin told Seattle based media India HQ.

The first such festival, it was a veritable celebration of all things yoga.

It became a convergence point for teachers and yoga students of all ages and experience, from children to seniors and cautious beginners to serious practitioners. The festival also had exhibits, merchandise and food.

Rodin and his wife Holly have had the idea of this festival for a while now.

"In India you have the Kumbh Mela, where people come together to learn about the truth. I wanted to simulate a similar experience for people here.

"Most yoga conferences here in the U.S. are exercise based, there is a huge demand for that so I have a lot of that here but I wanted it to be more like a festival and celebration. This isn't the end of my vision but a good start."

(source: Crowds flock to yoga festival in U.S. siliconindia.com Tuesday, May 20, 2003).

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Light or Coincidence in Ancient India?

Dr. Subhash Kak is the author of The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization has written:

"One such book is the celebrated commentary on the Rigveda by Sayana (c. 1315-1387), a minister in the court of King Bukka I of the Vijayanagar Empire in South India. In a hymn addressed to the sun, he says that it is ``remembered that the sun traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha.''

"With deep respect, I bow to the sun, who travels 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha."

A yojana is about nine American miles; a nimesha is 16/75 of a second. Mathematically challenged readers, get out your calculators! 2,202 yojanas x 9 miles x 75 - 8 nimeshas = 185,794 m.p.s.

Basically, Sayana is saying that sunlight travels at 186,000 miles per second! How could a Vedic scholar who died in 1387 A.D. have known the correct figure for the speed of light? If this was just a wild guess it's the most amazing coincidence in the history of science!

The yoga tradition is full of such coincidences. Take for instance the mala many yoga students wear around their neck. Since these rosaries are used to keep track of the number of mantras a person is repeating, students often ask why they have 108 beads instead of 100. Part of the reason is that the mala represent the ecliptic, the path of the sun and moon across the sky. Yogis divide the ecliptic into 27 equal sections called nakshatras, and each of these into four equal sectors called padas, or "steps," marking the 108 steps that the sun and moon take through heaven.

Each is associated with a particular blessing force, with which you align yourself as you turn the beads.

Traditionally, yoga students stop at the 109th "guru bead," flip the mala around in their hand, and continue reciting their mantra as they move backward through the beads. The guru bead represents the summer and winter solstices, when the sun appears to stop in its course and reverse directions. In the yoga tradition we learn that we're deeply interconnected with all of nature. Using a mala is a symbolic way of connecting ourselves with the cosmic cycles governing our universe.

The distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 108 times the sun's diameter. The diameter of the sun is about 108 times the earth's diameter. And the distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times the moon's diameter. Could this be the reason the ancient sages considered 108 such a sacred number? If the microcosm (us) mirrors the macrocosm (the solar system), then maybe you could say there are 108 steps between our ordinary human awareness and the divine light at the center of our being. Each time we chant another mantra as our mala beads slip through our fingers, we are taking another step toward our own inner sun.

As we read through ancient Indian texts, we find so much the sages of antiquity could not possibly have known-but did. While our European and Middle Eastern ancestors claimed that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago, the yogis have always maintained that our present cosmos is billions of years old, and that it's just one of many such universes which have arisen and
dissolved in the vastness of eternity.

In fact the Puranas, encyclopedias of yogic lore thousands of years old, describe the birth of our solar system out of a "milk ocean," the Milky Way. Through the will of the Creator, they tell us, a vortex shaped like a lotus arose from the navel of eternity. It was called Hiranya Garbha, the shining womb. It gradually coalesced into our world, but will perish some day billions of years hence when the sun expands to many times it present size, swallowing all life on earth. In the end, the Puranas say, the ashes of the earth will be blown into space by the cosmic wind. Today we known this is a scientifically accurate, if poetic, description of the fate of our planet.

(source: Light or Coincidence - By Subhask Kak and yahoogroups.com). For more refer to THE WISHING TREE: The Presence and Promise of Hinduism - By Subhash Kak).  

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Srinivas Ramanujan:  A Life of the Genius

Srinivas Ramanujan Iyengar (1887-1920) Eighty years after his death, mathematician Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan is still surrounded in mystery. Ramanujan is one of India´s great intellectual heroes, a brahmin who defied tradition to travel to England in order to study at Cambridge; a mathematical genius who attributed his brilliance to a personal relationship with a Hindu Goddess. 

His work has been used to help unravel knots as varied as polymer chemistry and cancer, yet how he arrived at this theorems is still unknown. It is the friendship between Ramanujan and his British benefactor, mathematician G.H. Hardy,

The naive, inexhaustible Ramanujan was an observant Hindu, adept at dream interpretation and astrology. His work was marked by bold leaps and gut feelings. Although he managed to convince the vehemently atheist Hardy otherwise, Ramanujan was a devout man. Growing up he had learned to worship Namagiri, the consort of the lion god Narasimha. Unbeknown to Hardy, Ramanujan believed that he existed to serve as Namagiri´s champion. Hindu Goddess of creativity. His grandmother had had a vision to that effect, and his mother believed it was through Namagiri´s agency that she was finally able to get pregnant. In real life Ramanujan told people that Namagiri visited him in his dreams and wrote equations on his tongue; in the play, she decides she doesn´t have enough to do in India so she accompanies Ramanujan to Cambridge to keep an eye on him.

Ramanujan was born in Erode, a small, rustic town in Tamil Nadu, India. His father worked as a clerk in a cloth merchant's shop. his namesake is that of another medieval philosophical giant -- Ramanuja -- a Vaishnavite who postulated the Vedanta system known as "qualified monism." the math prodigy grew up in the overlapping atmospheres of religious observances and ambitious academics. He wasn't spiritually preoccupied, but he was steeped in the reality and beneficence of the Deities, especially the Goddess Namagiri. Math, of course, was his intellectual and spiritual touchstone. No one really knows how early in life ramanujan awakened to the psychic visitations of Namagiri, much less how the interpenetration of his mind and the Goddess' worked. By age twelve he had mastered trigonometry so completely that he was inventing sophisticated theorems that astonished teachers. He was an impoverished Brahmin who died of tuberculosis at 32,

(source: Ramanujan and Computing the Mathematical face of God).

Late in WW-I, a young Indian, Srinivas Ramanujan, lay ill in a London hospital. G.H. Hardy, the leading mathematician in England, visited him there. "I came over in cab number 1729," Hardy told Ramanujan. "That seems a rather dull number to me.""Oh, no!" Ramanujan shot back. "1729 is the smallest number you can write as the sum of two cubes, in two different ways." You or I would use a computer to figure that out. Ramanujan did it from his sickbed without blinking.

Ramanujan was born to a poor family in South India in 1887. He was clearly smart, but he couldn't afford an education. His teenage math training consisted of reading two books. One was a standard trigonometry text. The other was a handbook of 6000 theorems -- stated without proof! 

Mathematicians have mined his theorems ever since. They've figured out how to prove them. They've put them to use. Only recently, a lost bundle of his notebooks turned up in a Cambridge library. That set mathematics off on a whole new voyage of discovery. And where did all this unproven truth come from? Ramanujan was quick to tell us. He simply prayed to Sarasvathi, the Goddess of Learning, and she informed him. The unsettling thing is, none of us can find any better way to explain the magnitude of his eerie brilliance.

(source: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi495.htm ) John H. Lienhard (source: The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - by Robert Kanigel)..

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Mahatma Gandhi on The Missionaries of India

He claimed:  "I am a proud staunch Sanatani Hindu." and when asked what was the contribution of Christianity to the national life of India? Gandhiji remarked:

"Aye, there lies the rub. Unfortunately, Christianity in India has been inextricably mixed up for the last one hundred and fifty years with materialistic civilization and imperialistic exploitation by the stronger white races of the world. Its contribution to India has been therefore largely of a negative character." 

(source: Christian missions in the eyes of Gandhiji - Jagarana Prakashana p. 5).

Mahatma Gandhi called religious conversions a fraud on humanity. "If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing". "I resent the overtures made to Harijans." "Stop all conversion, it is the deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth." Poverty doesn't justify conversion. 

(source: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Volume 46. p.110 and Volume 61, p. 46-47  volume 64, p. 37 and 400 New Delhi 1968).

Mahatma Gandhi characterized religious conversions as "pure commerce". "This proselytization will mean no peace in the world. Conversions are harmful to India. If I had the power and could legislate I should certainly stop all proselytizing.'' He told the Christian missionaries "it is no part of your call, I assure you, to tear up the lives of the people of the East by the roots."  

(source: Mahatma Gandhi's His Life and Ideas - By C. F. Andrews, p. 96).  For more refer to Mahatma Gandhi on The Christian Missionary Menace - Compiled by Swami Aksharananda).

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Mahatma Gandhi on The Missionaries of India

I disbelieve in the conversion of one person by another. My effort should never to be to undermine another’s faith. This implies belief in the truth of all religions and, therefore, respect for them. It implies true humility. (Young India: April 23, 1931)

I believe that there is no such thing as conversion from one faith to another in the accepted sense of the word. It is a highly personal matter for the individual and his God. I may not have any design upon my neighbor as to his faith which I must honor even as I honor my own. Having reverently studied the scriptures of the world I could no more think of asking a Christian or a Musalman, or a Parsi or a Jew to change his faith than I would think of changing my own. (Harijan: September 9, 1935)

I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and that whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian. (Young India: January 19, 1928)

As I wander about throughout the length and breath of India, I see many Christian Indians almost ashamed of their birth, certainly of their ancestral religion, and of their ancestral dress. The aping of Europeans on part of Anglo-Indians is bad enough, but the aping of them by Indian converts is a violence done to their country and, shall I say, even to their new religion. (Young India: August 8, 1925)

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world’s progress towards peace … Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man? (Harijan: January 30, 1937)

I am not interested in weaning you from Christianity and making you Hindu, and I do not relish your designs upon me, if you had any, to convert me to Christianity. I would also dispute your claim that Christianity is the only true religion. (Harijan: June 3, 1937)

I regard Jesus as a great teacher of humanity, but I do not regard him as the only begotten son of God. That epithet in its material interpretation is quite unacceptable. Metaphorically we are all sons of God, but for each of us there may be different sons of God in a special sense. Thus for me Chaitanya may be the only begotten son of God … I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. (Harijan: June 3, 1937)

I consider western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ’s Christianity. I cannot conceive Jesus, if he was living in flesh in our midst, approving of modern Christian organizations, public worship, or ministry. (Young India: September 22, 1921)

When the missionary of another religion goes to them, he goes like a vendor of goods. He has no special spiritual merit that will distinguish him from those to whom he goes. He does however possess material goods, which he promises to those who will come to his fold. (Harijan: April 3, 1937)

The first distinction I would like to make … between your missionary work and mine is that while I am strengthening the faith of the people, you (missionaries) are undermining it. (Young India: November 8, 1927)

If I had the power and could legislate, I would stop all proselytizing … In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink … (Harijan: November 5, 1935)

Only the other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. (Harijan: November 5, 1937)

Conversion nowadays has become a matter of business like any other … India (Hindus) is in no need of conversion of the kind … Conversion in the sense of self-purification, self-realization, is the crying need of the times. That however is never what is meant by proselytizing. To those who would convert India (Hindus), might it not be said: Physician heal thyself. (Young India: April 23, 1931)

I hold that proselytizing under the cloak of humanitarian work is unhealthy to say the least. It is most resented by people here. Religion after all is a deeply personal thing. It touches the heart. Why should I change my religion because a doctor who professes Christianity as his religion has cured me of some disease, or why should the doctor expect such a change whilst I am under his influence? (Young India: April 23, 1931)

Christianity in India has been inextricably mixed up for the last one hundred and fifty years with British rule. It appears to us as synonymous with materialistic civilization and imperialistic exploitation by the stronger white races of the weaker races of the world. Its contribution to India has been therefore, largely negative. (Young India: March 21, 1929)

(source: http://www.sulekha.com/allcomments.asp?type=column&cid=305819).

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Indian Christianity 

C. Alex’ Alexander’s thesis is that Indian Christianity of old times is fundamentally different from the modern proselytizing varieties that have descended upon India like intellectual invaders. He says that the Indianized variety respects the native traditions of India, and does not seek to proselytize by trying to falsify them.

2) This led many here to raise the question: Why is Indianized Christianity more tolerant than Western Christianity? Many responded that it was the positive influence of Hinduism.

3) From the above, it follows that: So long as an Indian Church reports to a foreign nexus, just as subsidiaries report to their headquarters, the Indianization cannot occur. Therefore, if Indianization is the road to tolerance, this umbilical cord must be cut.  

(source: http://www.sulekha.com/allcomments.asp?type=column&cid=305819).

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Cow before country for couple -    Americans seek asylum in India after animal ‘intolerance’

Washington, June 6: An American couple in Angelica, a rural town in New York state, is seeking political asylum in India, accusing the US of “government-sponsored terrorism” against them for their attempts to protect cows.

Stephen Voith and his wife Linda have written to the Indian ambassador in Washington asking for asylum after the New York State Supreme Court ordered the couple to remove one cow and three oxen from their property by May 22. The Voiths are appealing the decision at a higher court in Rochester, New York state.

Pending a decision on their appeal, the couple is making arrangements to move the animals and seek temporary refuge in a cow shelter in eastern Pennsylvania run by Sankar Sastri, a retired engineering technology professor in the City University of New York.

The travails of the couple and their proposed temporary refuge at Sastri’s non-profit organisation, Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary Inc, are drawing attention once again to an issue which is periodically volatile in America: cow protection.

Some time ago, McDonald’s was dragged to court by an Indian-American lawyer who accused the fast food giant of using ingredients from beef in French fries purportedly sold in the US as vegetarian food.  

***

Voith, 47, is a devotee of the Hare Krishna Movement and has adopted two children from Calcutta. His wife, too, is a convert to Hinduism. Talking to The Telegraph about the sequence of events which have led to his asylum request, Voith complained that Hindus have nowhere to go when they are persecuted. “The Jews can go to Israel, the Muslims go to Mecca. India should open its arm to American Hindus,” he said.

When Sastri heard about their predicament, he met the Voiths and offered to give shelter to their animals. A meeting resulted in a decision that the entire family will move to Sastri’s 42-acre sanctuary for cows in Bangor, Pennsylvania. Sastri, who studied at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and at Columbia University in New York, retired as dean of the New York City Technical College. In addition to the cows, he has a tailless cat and a deaf and blind dog in his shelter. “Hinduism stresses kindness to all living beings,” Sastri said.

In Moundsville, W.Va., 24 cows are protected on a 160-acre farm run by William Dove, also known as Balabhadra das. He incorporated the farm as the International Society for Cow Protection.

"They only see them as meat," he said. "Animals have a soul, personality, they interact. Unfortunately people don't see that." 

(source: Cow before country for couple - Americans seek asylum in India after animal ‘intolerance’ and Cows, considered holy by Hindus, safe in U.S. sanctuaries - By Jason Straziuso - AP).

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A church at cross purpose

It is a flagrant encroachment, allege residents in Perambur colony. Many residents of the Jamalia Nagar Cross Road in Perambur are, these days, pretty cross. Over what? Er, a church that is coming up on that 40-feet road.

According to the long-time residents, the church's construction is in flagrant violation of rules and a brazen encroachment on the road. And despite the efforts of the residents and also 'instructions' from civic officials and police authorities, those behind the church, christened Annai Velankanni Chitralayam, have been going ahead with their plans.

Yesterday, based on a case filed by the residents of the area, a Court Notice was also served on the Parish priest of Lourdess Shrine, Soundaraju, and a few others who are believed to be in-charge of the construction. But yesterday itself fresh loads of stones arrived at the construction site for further work. A DIFFICULT CROSS TO BEAR FOR THE LOCALS: Construction work for the church is on at Jamali Nagar. Residents allege that the construction is not only a case of encroachment but also is proving to be a risk for them as it has dug out underlying power and telephone cables The locals point out that those behind the construction are carrying on with their work in the hope that once a permanent construction comes up it will be difficult to pull it down.

Jamalia Nagar Cross Road Citizens' Association secretary Sivanarayan says the construction is obviously in violation of law. 'It is a clear case of encroachment. We have been running from pillar to post to get them stopped. But the construction of pillars and posts is not stopping. Once it becomes a formal place of worship, it will be impossible to demolish it.' 

More than the encroachment itself, many residents openly allege that there is a concerted plan in the construction of churches in the locality. 'This is one of the rife grounds for conversions. Missionary workers are pretty active in this area,' says one resident. This upcoming church itself is in the place of a small niche on which an idol of Mary had been placed.

(source: A church at cross purpose - News Today Date: June 8, 2003).

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Hindu history of Afghanistan

Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan"  Raja Jaya Pal Shahi, Ruler of Punjab bore the brunt of the Islamic Onslaught.

The year 980C.E. marks the beginning of the Muslim invasion into India proper when Sabuktagin attacked Raja Jaya Pal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is today a Muslim country separated from India by another Muslim country Pakistan. But in 980 C.E. Afghanistan was also a place where the people were Hindus and Buddhists. 

The name "Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan" which means in Sanskrit "The place inhabited by allied tribes". 

This was the place from where Gandhari of the Mahabharat came from Gandhar whose king was Shakuni. The Pakthoons are descendants of the Paktha tribe mentioned in Vedic literature. Till the year 980 C.E., this area was a Hindu majority area, till Sabuktagin from Ghazni invaded it and displaced the ruling Hindu king - Jaya Pal Shahi. 

The place where Kabul's main mosque stands today was the site of an ancient Hindu temple and the story of its capture is kept alive in Islamic Afghan legend which describes the Islamic hero Sabuktagin who fought with a sword in every hand to defeat the Hindus and destroy their temple to put up a Mosque in its place.

The victory of Sabuktagin pushed the frontiers of the Hindu kingdom of the Shahis from Kabul to behind the Hindu Kush mountains Hindu Kush is literally "killer of Hindus" - a name given by Mahmud Ghazni to describe the number of Hindus who died on their way into Afghanistan to a life of captivity . After this setback, the Shahis shifted their capital from Kubha (Kabul) to Udbhandapura (modern Und in NWFP). Sabuktagin's son Mahmud Ghazni, kept up the attacks on the Shahis and captured Und. Subsequently, the Shahis moved their capital to Lahore and later to Kangra in Himachal.

***

The recovery and significance of the inscription, telling a story of the Hindu ruler Veka and his devotion to lord `Siva', was told by leading epigraphist and archaeologist Prof Ahmad Hasan Dani of the Quaid-E-Azam University of Islamabad at the ongoing Indian History Congress here.

If historians, preferred to revise the date of the first Hindu Shahi ruler Kallar from 843-850 AD to 821-828 AD, the date of 138 of present inscription, if it refers to the same era, should be equal to 959 AD which falls during the reign of Bhimapala'', Dani said in a paper `Mazar-i Sharif inscription of the time of the Shahi ruler Veka, dated the year 138'', submitted to the Congress.

The inscription, with eleven lines written in `western Sarada' style of Sanskrit of 10th century AD, had several spelling mistakes. ``As the stone is slightly broken at the top left corner, the first letter `OM' is missing'', he said.

According to the inscription, "the ruler Veka occupied by eight-fold forces, the earth, the markets and the forts. It is during his reign that a temple of Siva in the embrace with Uma was built at Maityasya by Parimaha (great) Maitya for the benefit of himself and his son''.

Dani said ``the inscription gives the name of the king as Shahi Veka Raja and bestows on him the qualification of `Iryatumatu Ksanginanka'.... and (he) appears to be the same king who bears the name of Khingila or Khinkhila who should be accepted as a Shahi ruler''.

Dani further said ``he may be an ancestor of Veka deva. As his coins are found in Afghanistan and he is mentioned by the Arab ruler Yaqubi, he may be an immediate predecessor of Veka deva...... Both the evidences of inscription and coins suggest that Veka or Vaka should be accepted as an independent ruler of northern Afghanistan.

"Thus we find another branch of the Shahi ruler in northern part of Afghanistan beyond the Hindukush. Veka is said to have conquered the earth, the markets and the forts by his eight-fold forces, suggesting that he must have himself gained success against the Arab rulers of southern Afghanistan''.

Dani observed that going by the findings it seemed that during the rule of the Hindu Shahi ruler Bhimapala there was a break in the dynasty -- one branch, headed by Jayapala, ruled in Lamaghan and Punjab, and another branch, headed by Veka, ruled in northern part of Afghanistan.

"The northern branch must have come to an end by the conquest of Alptigin in the second half of tenth century AD'', he said.

(source: Inscription throws new light to Hindu rule in Afghanistan - indianexpress.com). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

***

India has developed a highly constructive, imaginative reconstruction strategy for Afghanistan that is designed to please every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with the Afghan people, gain the maximum political advantage with the Afghan government, increase its influence with its Northern Alliance friends and turn its image from that of a country that supported the Soviet invasion and the communist regime in the 1980s to an indispensable ally and friend of the Afghan people in the new century.

(source: Trying to ‘Indianise’ Afghan problem - By Ahmed Rashid The Daily Times).

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Did You Know?

Buddhist shrine keeps tryst with Hindu goddess

In the land of enlightenment, it's worship for the  goddess of learning. At Bodh Gaya, 113 km from Bihar capital Patna,  adjoining the massive pagoda shrine with its giant statue of the  praying Buddha, a tiny Hindu temple has emerged.

It's dedicated to the goddess Bagga, another name for Saraswati, the  goddess of learning. With celebrities like Richard Gere taking to Buddhism and flying down  to India several times a year, Bodh Gaya, the faith's holiest site is  fast becoming an international city complete with scores of air- conditioned Internet cafes and luxury hotels that attract hordes of  foreigners throughout the year. 

Tucked in a corner, with mud steps and a cave like entrance, the  temple seems gloomy and emits a scary power compared to the cheerful  spaciousness and serenity of the Buddhist shrine. Inside the oil lamp  lit temple, the idol is carved in the wall and half covered by blood  red cloth.

It has none of the brightly lit splendour of the Buddha shrine, with  its ancient pond with the beautifully painted floating Buddha statue,  but even then, the temple, which only came up in the 1600s, is managing to carve out its niche identity. That, the priests of the temple say, is because locals believe it was only due to a vision from the goddess Bagga that Buddha was able to  attain nirvana.

"It is said that when Prince Siddhartha (Buddha before enlightenment) was looking for the truth, he one day had a vision where he saw the  goddess telling him - 'go to that tree and under it you will find  your answers'," said temple priest Kamlesh Kumar, looking as brooding  as his idol, bare-chested and in a red dhoti, with a streak of  vermilion on his forehead. "And he went to the tree and found his answers. This temple is to  celebrate the goddess who showed Lord Buddha his way."

Gokul Maharaj: "We can worship the Buddha and  Hindu gods. After all, god is the same and so all his names and forms  are the same," said Shilesh Mishra, a visitor. For Kumar, it's a sign of coexistence. "It shows us that all paths to  god are the same. Buddha is nothing without Bagga and vice-versa."

(source: Buddhist shrine keeps tryst with Hindu goddess - hvk.org). 

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Updated - October 28, 2008