The Guru Granth Sahib contains around 15,028 of references to Hindu concepts and the names of Hindu gods.
A near-exact count is given in K.P. Agrawala: Adi Shrî Gurû Granth Sâhib kî Mahimâ (Hindi: “The greatness of the original sacred Guru scripture”), p.2, and in Ram Swarup: “Hindu roots of Sikhism”, Indian Express,
The name of the Hindu god Shri Ram, is recited 2,400 times, (the gods name whose constant repetition leads to salvation).
Hari (Vishnu) over 8,300 times, 630 times by Guru Nanak alone,
Parabrahman, 550 times, Omkara, (the primeval sound of OM) 400 times.
Please note the names of countless other Hindu gods are also mentioned and are one and the same.
In contrast the name Mohammed is never mentioned and the name allah is used but a couple of times, merely as an example. It is interesting to note that the Granth itself contains banis from seven of the sikh gurus, two muslim Sufis, but EIGHTEEN Hindu saints and pandits.
The religious source of Sikhism is Hinduism, Sikhism is a tradition developed within Hinduism. Guru Granth Sahib reflect Vedantic philosophy, the Vedanta of Rishi Vedvyas who wrote the Mahabharat. The Japji Sahib is based on Upanishads.
Summary :
IN 1500 , Guru Nanak Dev Ji ( 1469-1538 ad.), went to bathe in a stream and was missing for three days.His first statement when he came out was “neti, neti " (neither here, nor there from the Upanishads-Vedas) na koi hindu, na koi turkh, kudrat keh hain sab bandey".
...three days is a short time if you want to free yourself from acquired physics and start a new religion... the insight with which he came back with after three days retreat, as quoted by Khushwant Singh was entirely within Hindu tradition:
" their is no muslim, no hindu" it does not mean that I Nanak, am neither hindu or muslim, it means that the self ( atma , timeless indweller, the object of this mystical experience) is beyond worldly divisions....
”the self is neither black nor white, neither hindu nor muslim, neither this nor that : neti, neti ,” is the Upanishadic phrase from the Vedas, is as typically Hindu as you can get’’
Guru Nanak Dev Ji, continued the bhakti methods of the saints before him, starting with the oral repetition of the name "Rama Nama'
If Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s discovery " neither hindu nor muslim" had meant a positive conclusion, wouldn’t he have said: "neither Hindu, nor Muslim , sab Sikh?
It is strange that the statement used by many to say, he founded a new religion does not even mention this new religion?
Ek Om Kar, was already there in the Vedas - Hindu text, it is still there today. Ek = single OM = supreme being KAR= sound. Guru Nanak merely emphasised that particular path. Ek Om Kar is originally a Hindu concept. some Sikh separatists like to say EK ‘ON’KAR! what does ‘on’ mean?
Guru Angad was a devoted worshipper of the Goddess Durga. Every year he used to lead a group of devotees from Khadur Sahib, where he had settled, to the temple of Jwalamukhi in the lower Himalayas. In 1532 ad he met Guru Nanak at Kartarpur (pakistan) on his way to Jwalamukhi and became his disciple. Guru Nanak was most impressed with the devotion and selfless services of Lehna, that he proclaimed him as his successor guru in ad1539. As Nanak had previously embraced him, and because of the touch with his body e.g. "ang", he changed the name of Lehna to Angad, Guru Angad made Khadur sahib his headquarters. Humayun, the Mughal emperor called on him here and paid him homage.
Sikhs were always known as a sect of Hinduism, which is why they continued celebrating traditional Hindu festivals such as Rakhri, Diwali, Lohri, Vaisakhi, Dusshera and Holi. Unlike the Hindus who became known as muslims and started celebrating muslim festivals. If indeed the Gurus wanted to create a new religion, would they not have created religious festivals to coincide and mark this new religions separate?
The fourth guru, Ram Das (1574-1581a.d ), excavated a tank which subsequently became known as Amritsar (pool of nectar) and gave its name to the city that grew around it. in due course, a splendid edifice, Har-mandir (temple of Hari-Vishnu), rose in the middle of this tank and became the supreme centre of the sikh sect of hinduism
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Instead, All ten Gurus marriages were conducted by Hindu pandits and they were married within Hindu rituals, as were other Sikhs until the Anand Karaj Act was passed in 1909.
The Laava written by the fourth Guru Ram Dass were about mans spiritual union wiv god, which can never be BROKEN, not about a union between man and woman!
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Hindus and the Hindus who later became known as Sikhs, would worship together at Hari(Vishnu)-mandir Sahib, aptly named by the fourth guru Ram Dass,(1574-1581), it housed murtis of Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and the 6th Guru Harigobind until 1906 and is today known as the golden temple.
Some closed minded bigots refer to Hindus as Idol worshippers, but Idol worshiping is truly something that we do not do, we worship with great vigor, with heart and soul.
Idol-worshipping is an offensive and derogatory term used by the British during the British Raj through shear ignorance to degrade our ancient religion. We use Murtis to help us worship we do not specifically worship these images, we use these as focal points to help us worship god
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 03:04 PM
1. Page79 Line 4 Raag Sriraag: Guru Ram Das
hir rwm rwm myry bwbolw ipr imil Dn vyl vDMdI ]
har raam raam maerae baabolaa pir mil dhhan vael vadhhandhee ||
The Lord, Raam, Raam, is All-pervading, O my father. Meeting her Husband Lord, the soul-bride blossoms forth like the flourishing vine.
2. Page79 Line 7 Raag Sriraag: Guru Ram Das
hir rwm rwm myry bwbulw ipr imil Dn vyl vDMdI ]5]1]
har raam raam maerae baabulaa pir mil dhhan vael vadhhandhee ||5||1||
The Lord, Raam, Raam, is All-pervading, O my father. Meeting her Husband Lord, the soul-bride blossoms forth like the flourishing vine. ||5||1||
3. Page159 Line 15 Raag Gaurhee Guaarayree: Guru Amar Das
rwm rwm kriqAw suKu sWiq srIr ]
raam raam karathiaa sukh saanth sareer ||
Chanting the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, the body becomes peaceful and tranquil.
4. Page177 Line 19 Raag Gaurhee Guaarayree: Guru Arjan Dev
jip mn myry rwm rwm rMig ]
jap man maerae raam raam rang ||
Meditate, O my mind, on the Lord, Raam, Raam, with love.
5. Page218 Line 9 Raag Maajh: Guru Arjan Dev
hir rwm rwm rwm rwmw ]
har raam raam raam raamaa ||
The Lord, the Lord, Raam, Raam, Raam:
6. Page326 Line 15 Raag Gaurhee: Saint Kabir
rwmY rwm rmq suKu pwvY ]4]
raamai raam ramath sukh paavai ||4||
Chant the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, and find peace. ||4||
7. Page387 Line 1 Raag Aasaa: Guru Arjan Dev
rwm rwmw rwmw gun gwvau ]
raam raamaa raamaa gun gaavo ||
I sing the Praises of the Lord, Raam, Raam, Raam.
8. Page393 Line 8 Raag Aasaa: Guru Arjan Dev
swligrwmu hmwrY syvw ]
saalagiraam hamaarai saevaa ||
Such is the Saalagraam, the stone idol, which I serve;
9. Page393 Line 11 Raag Aasaa: Guru Arjan Dev
hwiQ ciVE hir swligrwmu ]
haathh charriou har saalagiraam ||
I hold in my hands the Saalagraam of the Lord.
10. Page409 Line 1 Raag Aasaa: Guru Arjan Dev
qij mwn moh ivkwr imiQAw jip rwm rwm rwm ]
thaj maan moh vikaar mithhiaa jap raam raam raam ||
Renounce pride, attachment, corruption and falsehood, and chant the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, Raam.
11. Page417 Line 10 Raag Aasaa: Guru Nanak Dev
rwmu n kbhU cyiqE huix khix n imlY Kudwie ]6]
raam n kabehoo chaethiou hun kehan n milai khudhaae ||6||
They never remembered their Lord as Raam, and now they cannot even chant Khudaa-i||6||
12. Page443 Line 3 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
rwmo rwm nwmu jipAw duK iklivK nws gvwieAw rwm ]
raamo raam naam japiaa dhukh kilavikh naas gavaaeiaa raam ||
I chant the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, which destroys my sorrows and erases my sins.
13. Page443 Line 9 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
rwmo rwmu rivAw Gt AMqir sB iqRsnw BUK gvweI ]
raamo raam raviaa ghatt anthar sabh thrisanaa bhookh gavaaee ||
The Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, is permeating my heart deep within, and all of my desire and hunger has disappeared.
14. Page443 Line 10 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
ijnI rwmo rwm nwmu ivswirAw sy mnmuK mUV ABwgI rwm ]
jinee raamo raam naam visaariaa sae manamukh moorr abhaagee raam ||
Those who forget the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, are foolish, unfortunate, self-willed manmukhs.
15. Page443 Line 14 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
rwmo rwm nwmu gurU rwmu gurmuKy jwxY rwm ]
raamo raam naam guroo raam guramukhae jaanai raam ||
The Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, and the Lord Guru, are known by the Gurmukh.
16. Page443 Line 16 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
rwmo rwmu rmo rmu aUcw gux khiqAw AMqu n pwieAw ]
raamo raam ramo ram oochaa gun kehathiaa anth n paaeiaa ||
So repeat continually the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam; chanting His Glorious Virtues, His limit cannot be found.
17. Page444 Line 6 Raag Aasaa: Guru Ram Das
rwmo rwm nwmu sqy siq gurmuiK jwixAw rwm ]
raamo raam naam sathae sath guramukh jaaniaa raam ||
True, True is the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam; the Gurmukh knows the Lord.
18. Page481 Line 3 Raag Aasaa: Saint Kabir
rwm rwm rwm rmy rim rhIAY ]
raam raam raam ramae ram reheeai ||
Remain absorbed in the Lord's Name, Raam, Raam, Raam.
19. Page484 Line 1 Raag Aasaa: Saint Kabir
ly rwiKE rwm jnIAw nwau ]1]
lae raakhiou raam janeeaa naao ||1||
but now she is called Raam-jannia, the servant of the Lord. ||1||
20. Page491 Line 1 Raag Goojree: Guru Amar Das
rwm rwm sBu ko khY kihAY rwmu n hoie ]
raam raam sabh ko kehai kehiai raam n hoe ||
Everyone chants the Lord's Name, Raam, Raam; but by such chanting, the Lord is not obtained.
21. Page501 Line 4 Raag Goojree: Guru Arjan Dev
rsnw rwm rwm rvMq ]
rasanaa raam raam ravanth ||
With your tongue, chant the Lord's Name, Raam, Raam.
22. Page502 Line 10 Raag Goojree: Guru Arjan Dev
jip rwm rwmw duK invwry imlY hir jn sMq ]4]
jap raam raamaa dhukh nivaarae milai har jan santh ||4||
Chanting the Name of the Lord, Raam, Raam, one's miseries are ended, as one meets the Saintly servants of the Lord. ||4||
23. Page555 Line 10 Raag Bihaagrhaa: Guru Amar Das
rwmu rwmu krqw sBu jgu iPrY rwmu n pwieAw jwie ]
raam raam karathaa sabh jag firai raam n paaeiaa jaae ||
The entire world roams around, chanting, ""Raam, Raam, Lord, Lord"", but the Lord cannot be obtained like this.
24. Page695 Line 7 Raag Dhanaasree: Saint Trilochan
dwDIly lµkw gVu aupwVIly rwvx bxu sil ibsil Awix qoKIly hrI ]
dhaadhheelae lankaa garr oupaarreelae raavan ban sal bisal aan thokheelae haree ||
Hanuman burnt the fortress of Sri Lanka, uprooted the garden of Raawan, and brought healing herbs for the wounds of Lachhman, pleasing Lord Raamaa;
25. Page695 Line 12 Raag Dhanaasree: Saint Sain
rwmw Bgiq rwmwnµdu jwnY ]
raamaa bhagath raamaanandh jaanai ||
Raamaanand knows the devotional worship of the Lord.
Last edited by Sikh scholar on Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:05 pm; edited 1 time in total
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 03:04 PM
. Page469 Line 15 Raag Aasaa: Guru Angad Dev
eyk ik®snµ srb dyvw dyv dyvw q Awqmw ]
eaek kirasanan sarab dhaevaa dhaev dhaevaa th aathamaa ||
The One Lord Krishna is the Divine Lord of all; He is the Divinity of the individual soul.
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 03:05 PM
1. Page2 Line 9 Raag Jap: Guru Nanak Dev
guru eIsru guru gorKu brmw guru pwrbqI mweI ]
gur eesar gur gorakh baramaa gur paarabathee maaee ||
The Guru is Shiva, the Guru is Vishnu and Brahma; the Guru is Paarvati and Lakhshmi.
2. Page199 Line 6 Raag Gaurhee: Guru Arjan Dev
so bYsno hY Apr Apwru ]
so baisano hai apar apaar ||
Infinitely invaluable is that Vaishnaav, that worshipper of Vishnu,
3. Page274 Line 6 Raag Gaurhee Sukhmanee: Guru Arjan Dev
bYsno so ijsu aUpir supRsMn ]
baisano so jis oopar suprasann ||
The true Vaishnaav, the devotee of Vishnu, is the one with whom God is thoroughly pleased.
4. Page300 Line 12 Raag Thitee Gaurhee: Guru Arjan Dev
so surqw so bYsno so igAwnI DnvMqu ]
so surathaa so baisano so giaanee dhhanavanth ||
They are intuitively wise, and they are Vaishnaavs, worshippers of Vishnu; they are spiritually wise, wealthy and prosperous
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 03:08 PM
QUOTES FROM THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB
Generally, historians have their own personal views, agendas, spin and interpretations on things, I will therefore quote from the Primary, original sources only.
I present to you quotes, with page references from the GURU GRANTH SAHIB, written by the seven Sikh Gurus, eighteen Hindu saints and two Muslim Sufis. I will also provide quotes from the Dasam Granth, written by Guru Govind Singh Ji himself, and despite what some may say, the authenticity of this work has been proved BEYOND a shadow of a doubt, as the gurus work. The most damning proof being the fact that the original still lies in the Akhal Thakt to this day.
The Guru Granth Sahib contains around 15,028 of references to Hindu concepts and the names of Hindu gods.
A near-exact count is given in K.P. Agrawala: Adi Shrî Gurû Granth Sâhib kî Mahimâ (Hindi: “The greatness of the original sacred Guru scripture”), p.2, and in Ram Swarup: “Hindu roots of Sikhism”, Indian Express,
The name of the Hindu god Shri Ram, is recited 2,400 times, (the gods name whose constant repetition leads to salvation).
Hari (Vishnu) over 8,300 times, 630 times by Guru Nanak alone,
Parabrahman, 550 times, Omkara, (the primeval sound of OM) 400 times.
Please note the names of countless other Hindu gods are also mentioned and are one and the same.
In contrast the name Mohammed is never mentioned and the name allah is used but a couple of times, merely as an example. It is interesting to note that the Granth itself contains banis from seven of the sikh gurus, two muslim Sufis, but EIGHTEEN Hindu saints and pandits.
The religious source of Sikhism is Hinduism, Sikhism is a tradition developed within Hinduism. Guru Granth Sahib reflect Vedantic philosophy, the Vedanta of Rishi Vedvyas who wrote the Mahabharat. The Japji Sahib is based on Upanishads.
Guru Nanak Ji wrote in the Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Malaar, Pa.1279 thus:
‘BRAHMA, VISHNU, MAHESH [SHIVA] the three demigods were expanded into [by God].
He gave BRAHMA the VEDAS and involved them in it’s worship.
Ten Avatars did king RAMA [VISHNU] take.
He attacked and killed demons but all in accordance with God’s command.
God did SHIVA serve but he too did not find his limits.
Attaining true value he created his [heavenly] throne.
He has set the world to task and concealed himself.
He makes all function this Karma is divinely ordained.’
(‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Malaar, Pa.1279)
This is entirley reminiscent of what is stated in the Mahabharata, where it was written by Rishi Vedvyas Ji that God who is referred to as Omkar or Parbrahma, converted Himself into Lord Vishnu. Out of Lord Vishnu's navel came Lord Brahma and from His forehead came the Akal Pursh (otherwise known as Akal or Lord Shiva ) .
When Vishnu, Brahma and Akal combined their powers, or shaktis, to create the image of the Mother goddess it was Durga who came forth. Durga is also known as Shiva, Devi, Mata, Parvati, Chamunda, and Jwaladevi. Guru Govind Singh was a great devotee of Durga Mata, and wrote the prayer known as Chandi Ki Vaar in her praise.
Guru Nanak spoke to a Vaishnav Hindu (‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Thiti Gauri, Pa.300) thus :
‘He who focuses his mind on God is a Vaisnu [follower of VISHNU] He is a man of great knowledge.
He is a warrior of a high clan who worships Bhagwant [God/VISHNU].
Be they Khatri, Shudar, Vaise or a Chandal [Four castes of Hinduism] by contemplating God they are saved from vice.
They who ever have acknowledged God, Nanak asks for the dust of their feet.
(‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Thiti Gauri, Pa.300)
The third Sikh Guru Amardas said of a true Sanatan Brahmin (‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Gujri, Pa.512) thus:
‘He who appreciates BRAHM [God] call him a Brahmin, he day and night stays absorbed in Har [God].
He lives in accordance within the will of the true Guru, truth and Sanjam [self-restraint] he practices thus his ailment of ego flees.’ (‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Gujri, Pa.512)
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 03:09 PM
Guru Angad Dev said to a Brahmin (Guru Granth Sahib’, Sukhmani Sahib, Pa.274-275):
‘He is a true Pundit [Brahmin] who awakens his mind.
And searches for the Naam [ineffable name of] RAAM [God] in himself.
From the teachings of such a Pundit all beings find [spiritual] life.
He transplants the story of Har in their hearts.
Such a Pundit then never again is born.
He appreciates the fundamental truth [God] of the VEDAS, PURAANAS and SIMIRITIA [Hindu religious texts].
He appreciates the subtle/sublime within the great expansive World.
He instructs the four castes [without discrimination].
Such a Pundit say’s Nanak I always salute.’
(Guru Granth Sahib’, Sukhmani Sahib, Pa.274-275)
In the entire Guru Granth Sahib, the Vedas are respected and referred to as sacred.
Guru Nanak Ji said (Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Kanra, Pa.1309):
‘All ways be humble before the Bhagats being humble you will attain merit.
A evil person who slanders the Bhagats will be destroyed like Harnyaksh.
BRAHMA, son of a lotus [BRAHMA emerged from a lotus symbol of order out of chaos] VYAS [One of the greatest of Sanatan sages to whom were revealed the Sanatan scriptures VEDAS and Mahabharat epic with Bhagvad GITA. VYAS is also credited with the authorship of the oldest extent commentary on the source book of Hatha Yoga, ‘Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutra’, the, ‘Yoga-Bhashya’. In the Mahabharat he is recognised as the foremost master and expert on Yoga.] Born of a fish [Symbol of agitated mind] by devotion of highest God they themselves were worshiped.
Whoever are Bhagats respect them your great doubts and fears will thus flee.
Do not consider the cast of a Bhagat Sukdev [A Brahmin] grasping the feet of Jank [A Khashatriya king father of Sita hence lower cast than Sukdev] as Guru worshiped highest God.
Janak who sat on a throne on seeing the nine [Vedic] holy sages himself fell at their feet [Because they were Bhagats of highest God].
Say’s Nanak bless me oh bless me master [Va-eh Guru] make me the servant of your servants [The Bhagats such as PRAHLAD, BRAHMA, VYAS, SUKHDEV, JANK, nine sages etc.]
Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Kanra, Pa.1309)
Guru Ramdas ( wore the Vaishnav tilak) spoke of the Gurmukhs of the past thus:
‘The Sidhas [Holy Sanatan sages] meditated and contemplated [God] Sadik and Muni [both aforementioned are Sanatan holy men] contemplated [God].
Men of penance, sexual restraint and contentment contemplated [God] demigods such as INDRA [King of demigods] contemplated [God].
The Gurmukh who seeking God’s protection contemplates him attains salvation.
Oh my mind by contemplation of Gods Naam one is saved.
Dhanna a Jatt [Farming clan of northern India] and Balmikh [Composer of RAMAYANA] a highwayman becoming a Gurmukh was saved.
The demigods, Gan [Followers of Shiva], Gandarb [Beings between demigods and men who are believed to sing for the Indian demigods] contemplate [God] as well as even the poor Dharmraj [demigod who judges dead for God according to Indian religions].
SHIVA, BRAHMA all demigods contemplated with their mouths the name Har Har.
They who have been absorbed in God's name those Gurmukh attained salvation.’
(‘Guru Granth Sahib’, Raag Maru, Pa.995)
Shabads on Hanuman Ji inside Guru Granth Sahib Ji here is one. This shabad is by Bhagat Kabeer Ji in
Raag Basant on Pannaa 1193
PMIFQ JN MWQY PIV* PURWN ] PA(N)DDITH JAN MAATHAE PARRIH PURAAN ||
the pandits, the hindu religious scholars, are intoxicated, reading the puraanas.
JOGI MWQY JOG IDAWN ] JOGEE MAATHAE JOG DHHIAAN ||
the yogis are intoxicated in yoga and meditation.
SMINAWSI MWQY AHMMYV ] SA(N)NIAASEE MAATHAE AHA(N)MAEV ||
the sannyaasees are intoxicated in egotism.
QPSI MWQY QP KY BYV ]1] THAPASEE MAATHAE THAP KAI BHAEV ||1||
the penitents are intoxicated with the mystery of penance.
||1|| SB MD MWQY KOAU N JWG ] SABH MADH MAATHAE KOOO N JAAG ||
all are intoxicated with the wine of maya; no one is awake and aware.
SMG HI COR GRU MUSN LWG ]1] RHWAU ] SA(N)G HEE CHOR GHAR MUSAN LAAG ||1|| REHAAO ||
the thieves are with them, p****ering their homes.
||1||PAUSE|| JWGY SUKDYAU ARU AKURU ] JAAGAI SUKADHAEO AR AKOOR ||
sukdayv and akrur are awake and aware.
HXVMQU JWGY DIR LµKURU ] HANAVA(N)TH JAAGAI DHHAR LA(N)KOOR ||
HANUMAN WITH HIS TAIL IS AWAKE AND AWARE.
SMKRU JWGY CRN SYV ] SA(N)KAR JAAGAI CHARAN SAEV ||
SHIVA IS AWAKE, SERVING AT THE LORD'S FEET.
KIL JWGY NWMW JYDYV ]2] KAL JAAGAE NAAMAA JAIDHAEV ||2||
naam dayv and jai dayv are awake in this dark age of kali yuga.
||2|| JWGQ SOVQ BHU PRKWR ] JAAGATH SOVATH BAHU PRAKAAR ||
there are many ways of being awake, and sleeping.
GURMUIK JWGY SOEI SWRU ] GURAMUKH JAAGAI SOEE SAAR ||
to be awake as gurmukh is the most excellent way.
IESU DYHI KY AIDK KWM ] EIS DHAEHEE KAE ADHHIK KAAM ||
the most sublime of all the actions of this body,
KIH KBIR BIJ RWM NWM ]3]2] KEHI KABEER BHAJ RAAM NAAM ||3||2||
says kabeer, is to meditate and vibrate on the lord's name. ||3
"Guru Arjun Dev Ji , who compiled the Guru Granth sahib, writes in the fifth granth :
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 04:07 PM
why then do sikhs in the west say they have nothing to do with Hinduism and make fun of Hindu gods?
It is the mistake to Hindus that they do not spread or discuss this information
Arjun101
13th July 2007, 04:14 PM
thank god for hindusikh.org from which we have been able to learn such great historical information
Showing posts with label Hinduism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hinduism. Show all posts
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
SAFFRON PATRIOTISM !!!
By SADHU PROF. V. RANGARAJAN
Founder and Trustee
Sri Bharatamata Gurukula Ashram &
Yogi Ramsuratkumar Indological Research Institute
Sri Guruji Golwalkar Hindu Resource Centre
Sister Nivedita Academy , Sri Bharatamata Mandir, Srinivasanagar, Krishnarajapuram, Bangalore 560 036
(Phone 080-25610935; Cell: 9448275935, e-mail: sadhu.rangarajan@gmail.com
Website: sribharatamatamandir.org)
Bharat—the Mother of All Religions
Long before the dawn of civilizations in other parts of the world, the Vedic sages and seers of Bharatavarsha evolved a scientific, universal and eternal way of life, Sanatana Dharma or Hindu Dharma, which spread to distant continents. The rishis discovered that the source of all creation is a nameless, formless Supreme Being--Parama Purusha--whose Energy or Power manifests as the entire universe. Modern science agrees with the truth that the entire creation is manifestation of Consciousness or Consciousness - Force as Sri Aurobindo rightly calls. Sun, the source of material world and all forms of life was adored as Savitru -- the stimulator or one who vivifies--and His power, as Gayatri--that which protects those who live in tune with Nature. Sun, without which life is impossible, was symbolically represented in the Fire--Agni--and adoration of Fire-- Agnihotra -- came into existence. In Persia the Vedic worship of Agni created a religion called Zoroastrianism with its scripture, Zend Avesta, full of hymns borrowed from the Vedas. This Vedic religion of nature worship spread to Arab countries where the Sun God, Ravi , the One with the Fierce Force, became Ra--the Arabic Sun God. In Bharat, the sun which is nothing but a fierce form of energy--Aruna-- which transformed into matter-- the earth or the mountain-- Achala-- is worshipped as Arunaachaleswara--the Supreme God who transformed into material universe. After the advent of Islam in Arabia, the fierce God--Rudra Shiva--who was worshipped by early Arabs in the Kaba--the Holy Shrine of Kapaleeswara or Makka Maheswara--became the stone which is adored with perambulation in the Hindu style, even today, by Muslims from all over the world visiting Mecca. The power of the Ultimate Reality, viz. the Shakti or Kanya Kumari, the ever virgin mother nature, became the Mother Goddess, Umma or Ummi (derived from Sanskrit name Uma) flanked by two lions and worshipped in Babylonia, Greece and Crete and later became the Virgin Mary of Christianity. The Brahman meaning that which is spread everywhere or the Ultimate Reality or father of all creation became Abraham and Ibrahim in Semitic religions. Thus the concepts that arose in the Vedic spiritual culture of Bharata were accepted and adopted by all religions all over the world and Mother Bhaarat became the "mother of all religions" as Swami Vivekananda called Her. She became the abode of universal religion and human brotherhood. ( Jesus came to India at the age of fourteen and stayed for fifteen years, sitting at the feet of great Vaishnavite, Shaivite and Tantric masters at places like Rajgir and Varanai and practised Tantric Buddhism at Hemphis Gupha in Tibet . When he returned to Jerusalem to preach what he had learnt in India , he was put on the cross by the Romans, but he was saved by Mother Mary and Mary of Magdalene with the help of Eesanath Panthis (Essenes) and Theraputta Buddhists (Therauputs) and secretly brought to India . He settled down in Kashmir Valley and attained Mahasamadhi there. His Samadhi even today exists by the side of the Rose Bal Lake in Kashmir .)
Violence and Bloodshed—the Characteristic Marks of Semitic Religions
However, the Roman Christians misappropriated the name of Jesus and produced a demonic religion called Christianity which came into existence during the period of King Constantine, four hundred years after the death of Jesus the Christ. Christianity attempted to wipe out the Jews and was at loggerheads with Islam which came into existence later. The Crusades were waged and millions of people perished in the wars. The Semitic religions under the control of fanatic and fundamentalist bigots unleashed reins of terror destroying human societies that pursued any path other than that preached by Christianity or Islam. Christianity wiped out Pagan religions which arose out of the concept of nature worship propagated by the Vedas in Europe, Australia and America . Islam, an Arab Nationalist Movement, was started by Mohammad who wanted to establish the rule of Qureshi tribe all over the Arab country and proclaimed himself as the Messenger of Allah, the only God, and waged war against all those who did not accept him as the sole representative of God. Later, Islam also went out on a spree destroying all those who did not accept Prophet Mohammad and Allah, condemning the non-believers as Kafirs. Islam spread to Persia and wiped out the religion there and later invaded India . Hundreds of temples in India were destroyed, Hindus were killed mercilessly and Hindu women were raped and children butchered in Jihad or holy war in the name of Allah.
Scheme to Disintegrate the Hindu Nation
Centuries later, the converted Muslims were induced to carve out a separate Islamic Nation called Pakistan out of Bhaarat and today attempts are made to usurp even the crown of Bharat, Kashmir, and annex it to Pakistan . The militant Muslims in Kashmir who are supported by Pakistan will not allow even the hoisting of the Indian National Flag in the Indian territory of Jammu-Kashmir and the so called secular leaders of India are prepared to compromise with the militants in denigrating the National Flag.. To destroy the Hindu nation further, Jihadi terrorist movements are encouraged in every nook and corner of the country. The Christian forces are also not lagging behind in the destruction of the Hindu Nation. Billions of rupees are flowing into the country through Christian proselytizing institutions from abroad to convert the poor and gullible people in the country into Christianity so that they could be encouraged to disintegrate the Indian nation and carve out a Christianistan in Indian territory . Christian countries make use of their scholars, universities and academic bodies to propagate an untruth that India has never been a nation. They have created the myth of Aryan and Dravidian races, the Aryan invaders conquering India and subjugating the Dravidian inhabitants, and also the theories that tribes in India like the Gonds are not Hindus. The militant forces in the North East of the country get direct support and encouragement from the Evangelical institutions in the west and from the World Christian Council to disintegrate and destroy India . Thus, mistaking the spirit of tolerance of the Hindu race to be its weakness, the rapacious onslaught on the Hindu nation by the Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fanatics still continues. Stooges of colonial powers are today at the helm of administration of Bharat, holding the country to ransom by systematically looting the wealth of the nation and hoarding it clandestinely in Swiss Banks and away from our Motherland. Some of the selfish and power hungry politicians among the Hindus, in whose blood there could be the mix up of the blood of the bastards produced by Islamic and Christian invasions of the land, claim themselves to be secular and lick the boots of the stooges of alien forces to claim a share in the loot of the country.
Attempts to Tarnish Image of Hindu Nationalists
After the Independence , the westernized political leaders of the country who came into power started a process of systematically destroying all the ethos of Hindu Nationalism from the face of the most ancient nation of the world. When nationalist forces in the country get awakened and try to raise their head, they are condemned as Hindu communalism to scare away the gullible Hindu population and the religious and spiritual leaders. The so called ‘secularists’ ruling the country, in order to keep themselves in power perpetually, have adopted a policy of appeasement of Muslims and Christians to win over their vote banks. When Islamic terrorists, supported by Pan-Islamic movements from outside the country, explode bombs inside the country and attack even the Parliament House and kill innocent people they are shielded with the claim that their acts are just reaction to the demolition of a non-existing Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and military action against the militants in Jammu and Kashmir. Talks are held with Christian militants in North East to arrive at a compromise with them. At the same time any talk of Hindu Nationalism is branded as communalism and any sadhu or sannyasi who comes forward to speak for the Hindu nationalist forces, expose the anti-national forces and save the Hindu society, is painted as saffron terrorist, rounded up and tortured. Dr. Subramaniam Swami, President of the Janata Party, has exposed the game plan of the Christian Missionaries in the accusation against Swami Aseemanand: “The accusation against Swami Aseemananda, alleged in the CBI’s FIR that he was the terrorist who organized the attack on Samjhauta Express, and on Malegaon & Hyderabad masjids, as well as other places, is getting to be absurd and inconsistent because it conflicts with the findings of other agencies at the international level. The US Department of Treasury earlier had imposed sanctions on the LeT because of the organization’s involvement in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express holding that four of its members had carried out these attacks. In a communication to the ‘1267 Committee’ of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the US Department of Treasury stated that the designated individual members of the LeT had not only carried out these terrorist attacks of train bombings in India, but also provided support to Al-Qaida in its nefarious activities. The UN Security Council 1267 Committee also issued a press release on June 29, 2008 stating that in the February 2007 Samjhauta Express bombing in Panipat, these persons were financed and helped by Dawood Ibrahim, the notorious gangster and proclaimed offender. The CBI too had registered a FIR, and had extracted a confession from a LeT operator by name Safdar Nagori, who owned responsibility for these attacks. What is the UPA Government explanation for these blatant contradictions? Well placed persons in Gujarat have informed me that Swami Aseemananda had been working amongst tribals and was very popular in Dangs district. His help to tribals made it hard for foreign Christian missionaries to carry out money-induced religious conversion of tribals in this district.” Subramaniam Swami has also appealed to the Prime Minister of India to probe into the connection of Sonia Gandhi with the Italian Missionaries and her efforts to withdraw the orders issued by various state governments to foreign missionaries doing proselytizing work in India to leave the country.
Saffron—the Colour of Patriotism and Sacrifice
Since times immemorial, saffron is associated with Bharatiya or Hindu Nationalism. All the kings and emperors from the most ancient period of history of this holy land had their flags in saffron. They were guided by the noblest preceptors, sadhus and sannyasins of the land. Vishnugupta Chanakya guided Chandragupta Maurya to resist the onslaught of the Greek invaders and build a powerful Hindu empire. Samartha Ramdas gave the ochre flag to Chhatrapati Shivaji and guided him to destroy the Muslim aggressors and re-establish the Hindu Pad Padshahi. In the south, Vidyaranya of Sringeri Peetha guided Harihara and Bukka to build the mighty Vijayanagara Empire. During the freedom struggle, Sister Nivedita made the children of her school design an ochre flag with the symbol of Vajrayudha inscribed on it with the slogans, “Vande Mataram” and “Yato Dharmastatho jayah” and presented it as the National Flag of India in the Congress Session at Benares in 1905. The saffron is the colour of patriotism and self-sacrifice. By dubbing Hindu sannyasins and nationalists as “Saffron Terrorists”, the treacherous and selfish stooges of European masters licking today the boot of an Italian mistress cannot extinguish the raging fire of Hindu nationalism which has now captured the hearts of billions of Hindu youth all over the country and abroad. The game plan of the anti-Indian forces and their stooges within the country will not continue for long. Bengal saw a Sannyasi Rebellion in 1773 in which the ochre robed sadhus took up arms and fought against the Navabs and the British colonialists and their saga is presented in the inspiring historical novel, 'Ananda Math', by Bankim Chandra Chatterji who incorporated his immortal song, Vande Mataram, in the novel. The First War of Indian Independence saw the role of Sannyasins like Swami Purnanand of Kankal, Hardwar, Swami Virajanand and Swami Dayanand, founder of Arya Samaj. The later revolutionary movements in Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and other parts of the country got inspiration from patriot saints like Swami Vivekananda who moulded his powerful shaft in India 's freedom struggle--Sister Nivedita--and produced nationalist spiritual leaders like Sri Aurobindo, Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, Swami Shraddhanand and Subramania Sivam. Tapasvins like Vasishtha Ganapathi Muni, Satyadev Maharaj, Motilal Roy and Sadguru Omkar invoked the Bharatashakti for the liberation of the Motherland. The talk of saffron terrorism will not scare away patriotic Hindu spiritual leaders from playing their role in saving the Hindu nation from anti-national politicians in the garb of secularists and from the Christian and Islamic fanatics and fundamentalists inside and outside the country. The time that these anti-national forces are wiped out and Hindu Rashtra re-established in Akhand Bharat is not far.
Founding of the RSS
During the period of India ’s Freedom Struggle, Dr. Keshav Baliarm Hedgewar, who was in Calcutta to pursue his medical studies, joined the Yugantar Movement of young revolutionaries fighting against the British rule. However, it did not take much time for him to realize that the freedom of the country could not be achieved simply by a few valiant and courageous youth taking to violence, throwing bombs, attacking the police stations and looting the treasuries of the British Government and it will only result in the vain sacrifice of the precious lives of the patriotic youth perishing like moths flying into fire. He then got involved in the Satyagraha movement of the Congress, but with his deep foresight saw that the Muslim appeasement policy of the Congress led by Gandhi by supporting the Khilafat Movement had already promoted the feeling among the Muslim converts in India that their political head was the Khalif of Turkey, that India had been an Islamic State before being conquered by the white race, and that, after Independence, the Muslims in India cannot get on with the majority of the Hindus and will have to vivisect the country. Therefore he founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to arouse the sleeping Hindus and awaken them to the fact that Bharatavarsha has always been an Akhand Bharat and adoration and worship of the Motherland must once again become the heart throb of every patriotic Hindu. He also evolved a system of daily congregation of the youth under the banner of the Saffron Flag—Parama Pavitra Bhagava Dwaj— where they will train up themselves as dedicated servants of the Motherland and carry the ideal of Akhand Bharat and Hindu Rashtra to every nook and corner of the country. The Sangh, which had a humble beginning in Nagpur on the Vijayadashami Day in 1925, grew in leaps and bounds due to the self-sacrifice of the Karyakarthas produced by Dr. Hedgewar and spread its wings to other provinces of the country. When Shyam Sundar Chakravarty, a former colleague of Dr. Hedgewar in the revolutionary movement came to seek the support of RSS for revolutionary activities, Doctorji made it clear to him that the RSS wanted not merely the independence of the country, but the building up of a powerful Hindu Nation and his plan of action was to achieve that highest goal. Doctorji never valued less the sacrifice of the revolutionaries and he even provided shelter to Rajguru, the colleague of Bhagat Singh who was hunted by the British police. However, he never wanted the Swayamsevaks to jump into the revolutionary movement and take to violence, destroying themselves in the conflagration. He wanted the Swayamsevaks to prepare themselves to the task of instilling in the entire Hindu society the spirit of patriotism, discipline and self-sacrifice in order to achieve their ultimate goal of Hindu Rashtra. Even Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose came to Nagpur and called on Dr. Hedgewar, but he could not hold any conversation with Doctorji as the later was in his death bed. Netaji then met Veer Savarkar at Mumbai and on the latter’s advice, left the country to organize the Indian National Army with the help of the Germans and Japanese. Even after the fall of Germans and Japanese in the war front and the mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas, the brave soldiers of the INA created revolt in the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force and forced the British to leave India . Though the country attained Independence , the work of the Sangh has still been continuing with the goal of establishing Hindu Rashtra once again on the soil of Bharatavarsha. It is in order to thwart this great goal of the Sangh and keep the country under the control of the alien forces that attempts are being made to malign the Sangh as a ‘Hindu’ or ‘Saffron’ terrorist outfit according to the adage, “Give the dog a bad name and kill it”. However, the opponents of Hindu Nationalism will soon realize that Sangh is not a helpless dog to be so easily killed but the mighty and valorous lion, the king of the forest. Today millions of Karyakartas of the Sangh are spread all over the country and even abroad among the Hindu Diaspora and to dream of the extinction the Sangh is like dreaming of the drying up of ocean.
Appeal to Sadhus and Sannyasins
In the Arjuna Vishada Yoga, the first chapter of Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna leading the Pandava army stands facing the Kauravas in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Seeing his own grandsire, Bheeshma, and preceptor, Drona, and his cousins arrayed against him, for a moment he becomes confused and confounded, drops his Gandiva bow from his hand and refuses to fight against his own kith and kin. In the very opening words from the mouth of Lord Krishna in the next chapter, Sankhya Yoga, the Lord lambastes Arjuna: “Whence is this perilous strait come upon thee, this dejection, which is unworthy of thee, disgraceful, and which will close the gates of heaven upon thee, O Arjuna? Yield not to impotence, O Arjuna, son of Pritha! It does not befit thee. Cast off this mean weakness of the heart. Stand up, O scorcher of foes!” It is this message that the Sadhus and Sannyasins of the present day have to deliver to the Hindu society in this period of crisis. If they themselves get scared by the veiled threats of the so called secularists, agents of alien forces, sitting in the echelons of power in the country, and in order to protect themselves and their religious institutions remain mute spectators of all the atrocities committed on the Hindu society, they are unworthy of the ochre robe that they have wound around themselves. All their preaching of dharma, religious harmony and universal brotherhood become sham non-sense like the preaching of Ahimsa by a spineless coward. When their own brethren who belong to the order of sannyasins are threatened by people in power, the sadhus and sannyasins should not run away and seek shelter for themselves in their cozy and comfortable Ashrams and Mutts. It is time for them to come out and, true to the vow of Sannyasa that they have taken, be fearless, stand united and fight for the protection of their Dharma. They must remind themselves of the message of the Gita, “Yadyataacharati shreshthah, tattadevetaro janaah; sa yat pramaanam kurute, lokastadanuvartate”—“Whatever the men who are considered noble practise, the same is followed by the common run; that which they make authoritative, the world accepts.” It is the duty of the sadhus and sannyasins to come out boldly and guide the Hindu society in the task of protecting the Hindu nation and society. Posterity will never forgive them if they fail in their duty today and they will stand exposed before the society and the world. The Upanishadic call, “Utthishthata, jaagrata, praapya varaannibodhata”—“Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached” is meant for them and this should echo and re-echo from their bosom awakening the entire Hindu society to achieve the goal of Hindu Rashtra and Akhand Bharat. Vande Mataram!
Corrupt people get elected
we Hindus should think for a while about the election victories of anti Hindu leaders like Digvijay Singh , Mulayam, Mayavathi, Karunanidhi & other pro minority leaders.We Hindus have voted them !
All the minorities & their Hindu promoters have adopted a constant BJP bashing attitude for the party 's pro Hindu stance. It is time to forget the minor mistakes of the party to throw out UPA, the enemy of Hindus.
Founder and Trustee
Sri Bharatamata Gurukula Ashram &
Yogi Ramsuratkumar Indological Research Institute
Sri Guruji Golwalkar Hindu Resource Centre
Sister Nivedita Academy , Sri Bharatamata Mandir, Srinivasanagar, Krishnarajapuram, Bangalore 560 036
(Phone 080-25610935; Cell: 9448275935, e-mail: sadhu.rangarajan@gmail.com
Website: sribharatamatamandir.org)
Bharat—the Mother of All Religions
Long before the dawn of civilizations in other parts of the world, the Vedic sages and seers of Bharatavarsha evolved a scientific, universal and eternal way of life, Sanatana Dharma or Hindu Dharma, which spread to distant continents. The rishis discovered that the source of all creation is a nameless, formless Supreme Being--Parama Purusha--whose Energy or Power manifests as the entire universe. Modern science agrees with the truth that the entire creation is manifestation of Consciousness or Consciousness - Force as Sri Aurobindo rightly calls. Sun, the source of material world and all forms of life was adored as Savitru -- the stimulator or one who vivifies--and His power, as Gayatri--that which protects those who live in tune with Nature. Sun, without which life is impossible, was symbolically represented in the Fire--Agni--and adoration of Fire-- Agnihotra -- came into existence. In Persia the Vedic worship of Agni created a religion called Zoroastrianism with its scripture, Zend Avesta, full of hymns borrowed from the Vedas. This Vedic religion of nature worship spread to Arab countries where the Sun God, Ravi , the One with the Fierce Force, became Ra--the Arabic Sun God. In Bharat, the sun which is nothing but a fierce form of energy--Aruna-- which transformed into matter-- the earth or the mountain-- Achala-- is worshipped as Arunaachaleswara--the Supreme God who transformed into material universe. After the advent of Islam in Arabia, the fierce God--Rudra Shiva--who was worshipped by early Arabs in the Kaba--the Holy Shrine of Kapaleeswara or Makka Maheswara--became the stone which is adored with perambulation in the Hindu style, even today, by Muslims from all over the world visiting Mecca. The power of the Ultimate Reality, viz. the Shakti or Kanya Kumari, the ever virgin mother nature, became the Mother Goddess, Umma or Ummi (derived from Sanskrit name Uma) flanked by two lions and worshipped in Babylonia, Greece and Crete and later became the Virgin Mary of Christianity. The Brahman meaning that which is spread everywhere or the Ultimate Reality or father of all creation became Abraham and Ibrahim in Semitic religions. Thus the concepts that arose in the Vedic spiritual culture of Bharata were accepted and adopted by all religions all over the world and Mother Bhaarat became the "mother of all religions" as Swami Vivekananda called Her. She became the abode of universal religion and human brotherhood. ( Jesus came to India at the age of fourteen and stayed for fifteen years, sitting at the feet of great Vaishnavite, Shaivite and Tantric masters at places like Rajgir and Varanai and practised Tantric Buddhism at Hemphis Gupha in Tibet . When he returned to Jerusalem to preach what he had learnt in India , he was put on the cross by the Romans, but he was saved by Mother Mary and Mary of Magdalene with the help of Eesanath Panthis (Essenes) and Theraputta Buddhists (Therauputs) and secretly brought to India . He settled down in Kashmir Valley and attained Mahasamadhi there. His Samadhi even today exists by the side of the Rose Bal Lake in Kashmir .)
Violence and Bloodshed—the Characteristic Marks of Semitic Religions
However, the Roman Christians misappropriated the name of Jesus and produced a demonic religion called Christianity which came into existence during the period of King Constantine, four hundred years after the death of Jesus the Christ. Christianity attempted to wipe out the Jews and was at loggerheads with Islam which came into existence later. The Crusades were waged and millions of people perished in the wars. The Semitic religions under the control of fanatic and fundamentalist bigots unleashed reins of terror destroying human societies that pursued any path other than that preached by Christianity or Islam. Christianity wiped out Pagan religions which arose out of the concept of nature worship propagated by the Vedas in Europe, Australia and America . Islam, an Arab Nationalist Movement, was started by Mohammad who wanted to establish the rule of Qureshi tribe all over the Arab country and proclaimed himself as the Messenger of Allah, the only God, and waged war against all those who did not accept him as the sole representative of God. Later, Islam also went out on a spree destroying all those who did not accept Prophet Mohammad and Allah, condemning the non-believers as Kafirs. Islam spread to Persia and wiped out the religion there and later invaded India . Hundreds of temples in India were destroyed, Hindus were killed mercilessly and Hindu women were raped and children butchered in Jihad or holy war in the name of Allah.
Scheme to Disintegrate the Hindu Nation
Centuries later, the converted Muslims were induced to carve out a separate Islamic Nation called Pakistan out of Bhaarat and today attempts are made to usurp even the crown of Bharat, Kashmir, and annex it to Pakistan . The militant Muslims in Kashmir who are supported by Pakistan will not allow even the hoisting of the Indian National Flag in the Indian territory of Jammu-Kashmir and the so called secular leaders of India are prepared to compromise with the militants in denigrating the National Flag.. To destroy the Hindu nation further, Jihadi terrorist movements are encouraged in every nook and corner of the country. The Christian forces are also not lagging behind in the destruction of the Hindu Nation. Billions of rupees are flowing into the country through Christian proselytizing institutions from abroad to convert the poor and gullible people in the country into Christianity so that they could be encouraged to disintegrate the Indian nation and carve out a Christianistan in Indian territory . Christian countries make use of their scholars, universities and academic bodies to propagate an untruth that India has never been a nation. They have created the myth of Aryan and Dravidian races, the Aryan invaders conquering India and subjugating the Dravidian inhabitants, and also the theories that tribes in India like the Gonds are not Hindus. The militant forces in the North East of the country get direct support and encouragement from the Evangelical institutions in the west and from the World Christian Council to disintegrate and destroy India . Thus, mistaking the spirit of tolerance of the Hindu race to be its weakness, the rapacious onslaught on the Hindu nation by the Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fanatics still continues. Stooges of colonial powers are today at the helm of administration of Bharat, holding the country to ransom by systematically looting the wealth of the nation and hoarding it clandestinely in Swiss Banks and away from our Motherland. Some of the selfish and power hungry politicians among the Hindus, in whose blood there could be the mix up of the blood of the bastards produced by Islamic and Christian invasions of the land, claim themselves to be secular and lick the boots of the stooges of alien forces to claim a share in the loot of the country.
Attempts to Tarnish Image of Hindu Nationalists
After the Independence , the westernized political leaders of the country who came into power started a process of systematically destroying all the ethos of Hindu Nationalism from the face of the most ancient nation of the world. When nationalist forces in the country get awakened and try to raise their head, they are condemned as Hindu communalism to scare away the gullible Hindu population and the religious and spiritual leaders. The so called ‘secularists’ ruling the country, in order to keep themselves in power perpetually, have adopted a policy of appeasement of Muslims and Christians to win over their vote banks. When Islamic terrorists, supported by Pan-Islamic movements from outside the country, explode bombs inside the country and attack even the Parliament House and kill innocent people they are shielded with the claim that their acts are just reaction to the demolition of a non-existing Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and military action against the militants in Jammu and Kashmir. Talks are held with Christian militants in North East to arrive at a compromise with them. At the same time any talk of Hindu Nationalism is branded as communalism and any sadhu or sannyasi who comes forward to speak for the Hindu nationalist forces, expose the anti-national forces and save the Hindu society, is painted as saffron terrorist, rounded up and tortured. Dr. Subramaniam Swami, President of the Janata Party, has exposed the game plan of the Christian Missionaries in the accusation against Swami Aseemanand: “The accusation against Swami Aseemananda, alleged in the CBI’s FIR that he was the terrorist who organized the attack on Samjhauta Express, and on Malegaon & Hyderabad masjids, as well as other places, is getting to be absurd and inconsistent because it conflicts with the findings of other agencies at the international level. The US Department of Treasury earlier had imposed sanctions on the LeT because of the organization’s involvement in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express holding that four of its members had carried out these attacks. In a communication to the ‘1267 Committee’ of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the US Department of Treasury stated that the designated individual members of the LeT had not only carried out these terrorist attacks of train bombings in India, but also provided support to Al-Qaida in its nefarious activities. The UN Security Council 1267 Committee also issued a press release on June 29, 2008 stating that in the February 2007 Samjhauta Express bombing in Panipat, these persons were financed and helped by Dawood Ibrahim, the notorious gangster and proclaimed offender. The CBI too had registered a FIR, and had extracted a confession from a LeT operator by name Safdar Nagori, who owned responsibility for these attacks. What is the UPA Government explanation for these blatant contradictions? Well placed persons in Gujarat have informed me that Swami Aseemananda had been working amongst tribals and was very popular in Dangs district. His help to tribals made it hard for foreign Christian missionaries to carry out money-induced religious conversion of tribals in this district.” Subramaniam Swami has also appealed to the Prime Minister of India to probe into the connection of Sonia Gandhi with the Italian Missionaries and her efforts to withdraw the orders issued by various state governments to foreign missionaries doing proselytizing work in India to leave the country.
Saffron—the Colour of Patriotism and Sacrifice
Since times immemorial, saffron is associated with Bharatiya or Hindu Nationalism. All the kings and emperors from the most ancient period of history of this holy land had their flags in saffron. They were guided by the noblest preceptors, sadhus and sannyasins of the land. Vishnugupta Chanakya guided Chandragupta Maurya to resist the onslaught of the Greek invaders and build a powerful Hindu empire. Samartha Ramdas gave the ochre flag to Chhatrapati Shivaji and guided him to destroy the Muslim aggressors and re-establish the Hindu Pad Padshahi. In the south, Vidyaranya of Sringeri Peetha guided Harihara and Bukka to build the mighty Vijayanagara Empire. During the freedom struggle, Sister Nivedita made the children of her school design an ochre flag with the symbol of Vajrayudha inscribed on it with the slogans, “Vande Mataram” and “Yato Dharmastatho jayah” and presented it as the National Flag of India in the Congress Session at Benares in 1905. The saffron is the colour of patriotism and self-sacrifice. By dubbing Hindu sannyasins and nationalists as “Saffron Terrorists”, the treacherous and selfish stooges of European masters licking today the boot of an Italian mistress cannot extinguish the raging fire of Hindu nationalism which has now captured the hearts of billions of Hindu youth all over the country and abroad. The game plan of the anti-Indian forces and their stooges within the country will not continue for long. Bengal saw a Sannyasi Rebellion in 1773 in which the ochre robed sadhus took up arms and fought against the Navabs and the British colonialists and their saga is presented in the inspiring historical novel, 'Ananda Math', by Bankim Chandra Chatterji who incorporated his immortal song, Vande Mataram, in the novel. The First War of Indian Independence saw the role of Sannyasins like Swami Purnanand of Kankal, Hardwar, Swami Virajanand and Swami Dayanand, founder of Arya Samaj. The later revolutionary movements in Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and other parts of the country got inspiration from patriot saints like Swami Vivekananda who moulded his powerful shaft in India 's freedom struggle--Sister Nivedita--and produced nationalist spiritual leaders like Sri Aurobindo, Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, Swami Shraddhanand and Subramania Sivam. Tapasvins like Vasishtha Ganapathi Muni, Satyadev Maharaj, Motilal Roy and Sadguru Omkar invoked the Bharatashakti for the liberation of the Motherland. The talk of saffron terrorism will not scare away patriotic Hindu spiritual leaders from playing their role in saving the Hindu nation from anti-national politicians in the garb of secularists and from the Christian and Islamic fanatics and fundamentalists inside and outside the country. The time that these anti-national forces are wiped out and Hindu Rashtra re-established in Akhand Bharat is not far.
Founding of the RSS
During the period of India ’s Freedom Struggle, Dr. Keshav Baliarm Hedgewar, who was in Calcutta to pursue his medical studies, joined the Yugantar Movement of young revolutionaries fighting against the British rule. However, it did not take much time for him to realize that the freedom of the country could not be achieved simply by a few valiant and courageous youth taking to violence, throwing bombs, attacking the police stations and looting the treasuries of the British Government and it will only result in the vain sacrifice of the precious lives of the patriotic youth perishing like moths flying into fire. He then got involved in the Satyagraha movement of the Congress, but with his deep foresight saw that the Muslim appeasement policy of the Congress led by Gandhi by supporting the Khilafat Movement had already promoted the feeling among the Muslim converts in India that their political head was the Khalif of Turkey, that India had been an Islamic State before being conquered by the white race, and that, after Independence, the Muslims in India cannot get on with the majority of the Hindus and will have to vivisect the country. Therefore he founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to arouse the sleeping Hindus and awaken them to the fact that Bharatavarsha has always been an Akhand Bharat and adoration and worship of the Motherland must once again become the heart throb of every patriotic Hindu. He also evolved a system of daily congregation of the youth under the banner of the Saffron Flag—Parama Pavitra Bhagava Dwaj— where they will train up themselves as dedicated servants of the Motherland and carry the ideal of Akhand Bharat and Hindu Rashtra to every nook and corner of the country. The Sangh, which had a humble beginning in Nagpur on the Vijayadashami Day in 1925, grew in leaps and bounds due to the self-sacrifice of the Karyakarthas produced by Dr. Hedgewar and spread its wings to other provinces of the country. When Shyam Sundar Chakravarty, a former colleague of Dr. Hedgewar in the revolutionary movement came to seek the support of RSS for revolutionary activities, Doctorji made it clear to him that the RSS wanted not merely the independence of the country, but the building up of a powerful Hindu Nation and his plan of action was to achieve that highest goal. Doctorji never valued less the sacrifice of the revolutionaries and he even provided shelter to Rajguru, the colleague of Bhagat Singh who was hunted by the British police. However, he never wanted the Swayamsevaks to jump into the revolutionary movement and take to violence, destroying themselves in the conflagration. He wanted the Swayamsevaks to prepare themselves to the task of instilling in the entire Hindu society the spirit of patriotism, discipline and self-sacrifice in order to achieve their ultimate goal of Hindu Rashtra. Even Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose came to Nagpur and called on Dr. Hedgewar, but he could not hold any conversation with Doctorji as the later was in his death bed. Netaji then met Veer Savarkar at Mumbai and on the latter’s advice, left the country to organize the Indian National Army with the help of the Germans and Japanese. Even after the fall of Germans and Japanese in the war front and the mysterious disappearance of Netaji Subhas, the brave soldiers of the INA created revolt in the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force and forced the British to leave India . Though the country attained Independence , the work of the Sangh has still been continuing with the goal of establishing Hindu Rashtra once again on the soil of Bharatavarsha. It is in order to thwart this great goal of the Sangh and keep the country under the control of the alien forces that attempts are being made to malign the Sangh as a ‘Hindu’ or ‘Saffron’ terrorist outfit according to the adage, “Give the dog a bad name and kill it”. However, the opponents of Hindu Nationalism will soon realize that Sangh is not a helpless dog to be so easily killed but the mighty and valorous lion, the king of the forest. Today millions of Karyakartas of the Sangh are spread all over the country and even abroad among the Hindu Diaspora and to dream of the extinction the Sangh is like dreaming of the drying up of ocean.
Appeal to Sadhus and Sannyasins
In the Arjuna Vishada Yoga, the first chapter of Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna leading the Pandava army stands facing the Kauravas in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Seeing his own grandsire, Bheeshma, and preceptor, Drona, and his cousins arrayed against him, for a moment he becomes confused and confounded, drops his Gandiva bow from his hand and refuses to fight against his own kith and kin. In the very opening words from the mouth of Lord Krishna in the next chapter, Sankhya Yoga, the Lord lambastes Arjuna: “Whence is this perilous strait come upon thee, this dejection, which is unworthy of thee, disgraceful, and which will close the gates of heaven upon thee, O Arjuna? Yield not to impotence, O Arjuna, son of Pritha! It does not befit thee. Cast off this mean weakness of the heart. Stand up, O scorcher of foes!” It is this message that the Sadhus and Sannyasins of the present day have to deliver to the Hindu society in this period of crisis. If they themselves get scared by the veiled threats of the so called secularists, agents of alien forces, sitting in the echelons of power in the country, and in order to protect themselves and their religious institutions remain mute spectators of all the atrocities committed on the Hindu society, they are unworthy of the ochre robe that they have wound around themselves. All their preaching of dharma, religious harmony and universal brotherhood become sham non-sense like the preaching of Ahimsa by a spineless coward. When their own brethren who belong to the order of sannyasins are threatened by people in power, the sadhus and sannyasins should not run away and seek shelter for themselves in their cozy and comfortable Ashrams and Mutts. It is time for them to come out and, true to the vow of Sannyasa that they have taken, be fearless, stand united and fight for the protection of their Dharma. They must remind themselves of the message of the Gita, “Yadyataacharati shreshthah, tattadevetaro janaah; sa yat pramaanam kurute, lokastadanuvartate”—“Whatever the men who are considered noble practise, the same is followed by the common run; that which they make authoritative, the world accepts.” It is the duty of the sadhus and sannyasins to come out boldly and guide the Hindu society in the task of protecting the Hindu nation and society. Posterity will never forgive them if they fail in their duty today and they will stand exposed before the society and the world. The Upanishadic call, “Utthishthata, jaagrata, praapya varaannibodhata”—“Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached” is meant for them and this should echo and re-echo from their bosom awakening the entire Hindu society to achieve the goal of Hindu Rashtra and Akhand Bharat. Vande Mataram!
Corrupt people get elected
we Hindus should think for a while about the election victories of anti Hindu leaders like Digvijay Singh , Mulayam, Mayavathi, Karunanidhi & other pro minority leaders.We Hindus have voted them !
All the minorities & their Hindu promoters have adopted a constant BJP bashing attitude for the party 's pro Hindu stance. It is time to forget the minor mistakes of the party to throw out UPA, the enemy of Hindus.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Anti Hindus Who Speak of "Bhagwa Aatank" Should Answer These Questions?
by Amitesh Kumar on Monday, November 22, 2010 at 12:24pm
1. How long has been the so-called “Hindu Terror ”existed in India? On the other hand, how long has been the tyranny of Islam and Jihad activities been in existence not only in India but also Worldwide?
2. Did Hindus ever-hijack Aircrafts or blown up important building like Embassies worldwide?
3. How may hostages have Hindus Killed worldwide?
4. Can you really compare Jihad with Hindu Terror at all?
5. How long Hindus have been terrorized in their own country? * Be honest in your expression of events?
6. Did 9/11, 7/7, (US AND UK) and 17/08/04, 05/07/05, 25/10/05, 28/12/05 26/11/08, 27/09/08, 13/09/08, and many more attacks in India including the Indian Parliament attack on 13/12/2001 be compared?
7. Were those attacks by HINDU TERRORISTS?
8. There is ample evidence that Hindus have been Terrorized in India by the Jihadi organizations from the neighboring Islamic Nations.
9. One scooter disaster by Hindus has been blamed as Hindu Terror. How many Non- Hindus have been killed so far by so-called “Hindu Terrorists” until today?
10. The figure of Hindu victims of Jihadi terror attacks in India is there, if you need it for the record. I hope media takes the reality issues about the terror attack at least in India.
1. How long has been the so-called “Hindu Terror ”existed in India? On the other hand, how long has been the tyranny of Islam and Jihad activities been in existence not only in India but also Worldwide?
2. Did Hindus ever-hijack Aircrafts or blown up important building like Embassies worldwide?
3. How may hostages have Hindus Killed worldwide?
4. Can you really compare Jihad with Hindu Terror at all?
5. How long Hindus have been terrorized in their own country? * Be honest in your expression of events?
6. Did 9/11, 7/7, (US AND UK) and 17/08/04, 05/07/05, 25/10/05, 28/12/05 26/11/08, 27/09/08, 13/09/08, and many more attacks in India including the Indian Parliament attack on 13/12/2001 be compared?
7. Were those attacks by HINDU TERRORISTS?
8. There is ample evidence that Hindus have been Terrorized in India by the Jihadi organizations from the neighboring Islamic Nations.
9. One scooter disaster by Hindus has been blamed as Hindu Terror. How many Non- Hindus have been killed so far by so-called “Hindu Terrorists” until today?
10. The figure of Hindu victims of Jihadi terror attacks in India is there, if you need it for the record. I hope media takes the reality issues about the terror attack at least in India.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Ancient Indians called the Other Hemisphere Pataladesa
by Jyoti Prakash on Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 4:12pm
Ancient Indians called the Other Hemisphere Pataladesa
Dr. Balaram Chakravarti author of The Indians And The Amerindians has written:
It will be evident from a close study of the texts of Indian Astronomy that Latin America was known to ancient Indians, who called it Pataladesa. The Surya Siddhanta, a textbook of Astronomy, composed before 500 A.D. identifies and describes Pataldesa in very clear and definite terms in the chapter of geography (chapter xii).
The Surya Siddhanta categorically says that the Devas and Asuras live on the earth. The Devas live in the northern hemisphere while the Asuras live in the Southern hemisphere and have a tradition of enmity against each other. It further says that the ocean which surrounds the poles of the earth has divided the planet into two great continents, viz. the continent of the Devas and the continent of the Asuras. The Brahmanas of India write the epithet Deva-Serman after their names thus describing themselves as the Devas.
When the Sun is in the northern hemisphere eg. in Aries, he appears first to the Devas, and again when the Sun is in the southern hemisphere, he appears first to the Asuras. When the Sun is on the Equator both the Devas and the Asuras find the Sun in the middle and the days and nights are equal. As the Sun proceeds to the northern hemisphere, the Devas experience summer because of the directness and intensity of the solar rays, the Asuras do not get the rays so directly then and its intensity is also less, the sun being in the northern hemisphere. Hence they experience winter during this time. This obviously indicates that Pataldesa was South America.
The Surya Siddhanta explains how the people living on opposite ends of the globe consider themselves, wrongly, as living on the upper and lower part of the globe, though there cannot really be an upper or lower part, of the globe, which moves in vaccuum.
Maya, the author of Surya Siddhanta, also mentions the four great cities situated on the opposite ends of the world, equidistant from one another. 1. Yamakotipura in Bhadrasvavarsa (Indonesia?) in the east, Lanka in Bharatvarsa (India) in the south and 3. Rome in Ketumalavarsa (Europe) in the west and Siddhapura in Kuruvarsa (America?) in the north.
The celebrated astronomer Bhaskaracarya mentions the time difference between the important cities situated in different parts of the world in his Siddhanta Siromani(Goladhyaya) thus:
"When the sun rises at Lanka, the time as at Yakakotipura to the east of Lanka, will be midday. Below the earth at Siddhapura, it will be twilight then, and at Romakadesa in Europe, the time will be midnight."
From such location of places round the globe and the movement towards the east, it appears that many Indian merchants used to sail frequently and some even settled down in Indonesia and Indochina, who used to relay on to Polynesia and then further on to South or Middle America, may be not a single ship and in a single effort, but after stopovers at the important ports on the other islands-chain of which seems to have existed then and some of which submerged later because of tectonic movements. It seems that some contact with the cities mentioned by Bhaskaracharya might have existed till his time.
Baron Robert Freiherr von Heine Geldern (1885 - 1968) and Gordon F. Ekholm (1909 - 1987) the world's leading anthropologists, have strongly supported the claim that Indian ships went all the way to Mexico and Peru centuries before Columbus.
In the "Civilizations of Ancient America" they state:
"There appears to be little doubt but that ship building and navigation were sufficiently advanced in southern and eastern Asia at the period in question to have made trans-Pacific voyages possible. In the third century, horses were exported from India to the Malay Peninsula and Indo-China, an indication that there must have been ships of considerable size."
(source: India: Mother of us All - Edited by Chaman Lal p. 43-44).
US Government recently adopted the ancient Indian catamaran-making technology to construct fast ships. The ships, built with technology adapted from ancient Tamil methods to make catamarans, can travel over 2,500 kms in less than 48 hours, twice the speed of the regular cargo ships. Refer to chapter on Seafaring in Ancient India.
For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock and Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.
Dr. Robert Heine Geldern anthropologist, has written that:
"Those who believe the ancient peoples of Asia were incapable of crossing the ocean have completely lost sight of what the literary sources tell us concerning their ships and their navigation. Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of southeast Asia in Mexico and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." "Ships that could cross the Indian Ocean were able to cross the Pacific too. Moreover, these ships were really large. The Periplus of the Erythraean sea mentions the large ships of Southern India which engaged in trade with the countries of the East. A Chinese source of the third century A.D. describes vessels from Southern Asia which were 150 feet in length, and had four masts and were able to carry six to seven hundred men and one thousand metric tons of merchandise when the Buddhist Pilgrim Fahien returned from Sri Lanka to China, in 414 A.D."
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) who spent fifty years doing research on Ancient America, said:
"It is surprising to find, toward the end of the fifteenth century, in a world that we call "New" the ancient institutions, the religious ideas, the forms of edifices which, in Asia appear to belong to the first dawn of civilization."
Those Indian ships that carried Fahien, the Chinese historian and scholar through stormy China waters could without difficulty proceed all the way to Mexico and other countries. A thousand years before the birth of Columbus Indian ships could carry hundreds of passengers.
Accurate time difference of places around the world found in ancient Sanskrit texts
(image source: The Indians And The Amerindians - By Dr. B. Chakravarti p. 34-110)
Ancient Indians called the Other Hemisphere Pataladesa
Dr. Balaram Chakravarti author of The Indians And The Amerindians has written:
It will be evident from a close study of the texts of Indian Astronomy that Latin America was known to ancient Indians, who called it Pataladesa. The Surya Siddhanta, a textbook of Astronomy, composed before 500 A.D. identifies and describes Pataldesa in very clear and definite terms in the chapter of geography (chapter xii).
The Surya Siddhanta categorically says that the Devas and Asuras live on the earth. The Devas live in the northern hemisphere while the Asuras live in the Southern hemisphere and have a tradition of enmity against each other. It further says that the ocean which surrounds the poles of the earth has divided the planet into two great continents, viz. the continent of the Devas and the continent of the Asuras. The Brahmanas of India write the epithet Deva-Serman after their names thus describing themselves as the Devas.
When the Sun is in the northern hemisphere eg. in Aries, he appears first to the Devas, and again when the Sun is in the southern hemisphere, he appears first to the Asuras. When the Sun is on the Equator both the Devas and the Asuras find the Sun in the middle and the days and nights are equal. As the Sun proceeds to the northern hemisphere, the Devas experience summer because of the directness and intensity of the solar rays, the Asuras do not get the rays so directly then and its intensity is also less, the sun being in the northern hemisphere. Hence they experience winter during this time. This obviously indicates that Pataldesa was South America.
The Surya Siddhanta explains how the people living on opposite ends of the globe consider themselves, wrongly, as living on the upper and lower part of the globe, though there cannot really be an upper or lower part, of the globe, which moves in vaccuum.
Maya, the author of Surya Siddhanta, also mentions the four great cities situated on the opposite ends of the world, equidistant from one another. 1. Yamakotipura in Bhadrasvavarsa (Indonesia?) in the east, Lanka in Bharatvarsa (India) in the south and 3. Rome in Ketumalavarsa (Europe) in the west and Siddhapura in Kuruvarsa (America?) in the north.
The celebrated astronomer Bhaskaracarya mentions the time difference between the important cities situated in different parts of the world in his Siddhanta Siromani(Goladhyaya) thus:
"When the sun rises at Lanka, the time as at Yakakotipura to the east of Lanka, will be midday. Below the earth at Siddhapura, it will be twilight then, and at Romakadesa in Europe, the time will be midnight."
From such location of places round the globe and the movement towards the east, it appears that many Indian merchants used to sail frequently and some even settled down in Indonesia and Indochina, who used to relay on to Polynesia and then further on to South or Middle America, may be not a single ship and in a single effort, but after stopovers at the important ports on the other islands-chain of which seems to have existed then and some of which submerged later because of tectonic movements. It seems that some contact with the cities mentioned by Bhaskaracharya might have existed till his time.
Baron Robert Freiherr von Heine Geldern (1885 - 1968) and Gordon F. Ekholm (1909 - 1987) the world's leading anthropologists, have strongly supported the claim that Indian ships went all the way to Mexico and Peru centuries before Columbus.
In the "Civilizations of Ancient America" they state:
"There appears to be little doubt but that ship building and navigation were sufficiently advanced in southern and eastern Asia at the period in question to have made trans-Pacific voyages possible. In the third century, horses were exported from India to the Malay Peninsula and Indo-China, an indication that there must have been ships of considerable size."
(source: India: Mother of us All - Edited by Chaman Lal p. 43-44).
US Government recently adopted the ancient Indian catamaran-making technology to construct fast ships. The ships, built with technology adapted from ancient Tamil methods to make catamarans, can travel over 2,500 kms in less than 48 hours, twice the speed of the regular cargo ships. Refer to chapter on Seafaring in Ancient India.
For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor and Seafaring in Ancient India. Refer to India once ruled the Americas! – By Gene D Matlock and Who Discovered America? - By Ricardo Palleres.
Dr. Robert Heine Geldern anthropologist, has written that:
"Those who believe the ancient peoples of Asia were incapable of crossing the ocean have completely lost sight of what the literary sources tell us concerning their ships and their navigation. Many of the peoples of Southeastern Asia had adopted Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilizations. The influences of the Hindu-Buddhist culture of southeast Asia in Mexico and particularly, among the Maya, are incredibly strong, and they have already disturbed some Americanists who don't like to see them but cannot deny them." "Ships that could cross the Indian Ocean were able to cross the Pacific too. Moreover, these ships were really large. The Periplus of the Erythraean sea mentions the large ships of Southern India which engaged in trade with the countries of the East. A Chinese source of the third century A.D. describes vessels from Southern Asia which were 150 feet in length, and had four masts and were able to carry six to seven hundred men and one thousand metric tons of merchandise when the Buddhist Pilgrim Fahien returned from Sri Lanka to China, in 414 A.D."
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) who spent fifty years doing research on Ancient America, said:
"It is surprising to find, toward the end of the fifteenth century, in a world that we call "New" the ancient institutions, the religious ideas, the forms of edifices which, in Asia appear to belong to the first dawn of civilization."
Those Indian ships that carried Fahien, the Chinese historian and scholar through stormy China waters could without difficulty proceed all the way to Mexico and other countries. A thousand years before the birth of Columbus Indian ships could carry hundreds of passengers.
Accurate time difference of places around the world found in ancient Sanskrit texts
(image source: The Indians And The Amerindians - By Dr. B. Chakravarti p. 34-110)
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Racism, Neo-Colonialism, and Pseudo-Intellectualism of America’s Hindu-Bashing Lobby
In response to protests this year from several faith based groups, the California Board of Education agreed to withdraw materials considered to be giving a distorted view of Christian and Jewish ideas. But Hindus, as is usual in these cases, were given short thrift.
In this article we examine some of the background to the Hindu objections to how their history and culture are taught in the USA and the rest of the world and will focus on some of the special interest groups campaigning for the status-quo.
Most racist and colonialist viewpoints of non-European cultures and history are now regarded as outdated. They are recognised as not giving an objective view consistent with responsible academic study, but merely the vehicle by which one was able to peddle the prejudices by what we can now see was a less enlightened age. On the positive side humanity can be said to have learnt from its mistakes – a century ago what would now be recognised as prejudiced and a prescriptive view of non-European and non-Western cultures nevertheless did lay the foundations of modern academia. Indeed it was those very tools which were later utilised to eradicate the respectability of scientific racism and denigration of ancient customs and beliefs, merely to satisfy a preconceived point of view. This was most evidently seen in the USA, a paradoxical country in many respects. While laying the foundations of what we now understand as democracy, a normative principle to which all civilised nations are said to aspire, the continuation of slavery for many years led to an unhealthy dose of extreme ethnic prejudice. Modern racism, as well as democracy, can also be said to be an American product, or in another rather better way, according to one caption describing a photographic exhibition of African-American victims of murderous lynching in the Deep South, “Racism is as American as apple pie”. Nevertheless if at one time American intellectual life was dominated in the early Twentieth Century by thinkers such as Madison Grant, Lothropp Stoddard and Ernest Sevier-Cox, whose racism was paraded as rational and scientific, it was also neutralised by the work of someone who is regarded as the founding father of anthropology, Dr. Franz Boas. Although Boas may yet again have had some facts not entirely correct, something more evident with his disciples Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, by the time Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo warned white America in 1946 to deport all blacks to Africa in order to save the white race of America’s founding fathers, such ideas, while permissible, were increasingly less respectable and harder to justify.
Bilbo had penned “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelisation” to ask white America to push for expulsion of all African-Americans to Liberia in order to stop America’s downfall by the mixing of the races. He claimed that Rome, Greece, Carthage and Egypt had befallen the same fate when the “white master race” in those ancient civilisations had mixed with the Negroid inhabitants and slaves. Interestingly he said the same thing about India, and was following in the footsteps blazed by the scientific racist writers such as Madison Grant. According to this gang, Hindu civilisation fell because the white master race of Aryan invaders, mixed their blood with the subjugated dark-skinned population, despite the rigorous attempts to outlaw miscegenation by means of the caste system. Now this was nothing unique as the whole idea of the Aryan Invasion myth had been manufactured by German Indologist Max Muller to satisfy his British imperialist sponsors during the nineteenth century. But unlike the scientific racists, Muller retracted his ideas and clarified that his references were to language groups, and not race. Nevertheless, in an age when Europe was becoming the world master, and the indigenous peoples of Australia, the Americas and southern Africa were being displaced, vanquished or exterminated by settlers of European origin, the idea that the same thing had been done in the distant past by the white master race fell on fertile ground, and were regarded as undisputable fact. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was therefore not anything unique in this respect, and only its practical application as witnessed by the horrors of National Socialism culminating in the Holocaust eventually led to a full rethink of where such uncontrolled mental gymnastics could lead to.
Unfortunately old prejudices die hard. In 1999, America’s most notorious National Socialist, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke published the updated version of a “Mein Kampf” more suited to the racist mentality of a new century. This book was called “My Awakening”. Duke’s thrust in the work is a polite and sugar coated academic version of an idea which he told an audience in 1976: “The problems of this country [USA] can be summed up in two words: Jews and niggers.” While the beginning of the book deals with how all people of African descent are genetically inferior than other races, and more prone to extremely high levels of violent crime and sexual promiscuity which are supposedly responsible for ruining white societies around the world, the second part of the book actually shows Duke trying to make common cause with hardcore ethnic nationalists from the black community. His reasoning as that they must face their common enemy in the form of Jewish supremacism, a sarcastic term in deference to the white supremacist terminology often associated with the former Klan leader. Nicely sandwiched in the middle of all this, in Chapter 29 to be exact, is David Duke’s commentary on how India became racially degenerate through the ethnic mixing of superior white Aryans with the indigenous darkies of India. When we at Hindu Human Rights came to know of this, we contacted Duke to see if he could explain himself and his use of this fraudulent pseudo academic myth. However, ironically enough it turned out he was in prison for fraud at the time and was not willing to talk openly for fear of his true identity becoming known in the midst of a riot by Mexican inmates. In any case, a refutation of Duke’s racist theories on India is something that has not even been taken up by normally anti-racist writers. Why is this? Could it be that Duke’s racism is actually respectable if it happens to victimise Hindus? What respectable academic, in this day and age, could possibly share these noxious and racist ideas? Well as it happens, quite a few actually.
After the attack on Pearl harbour in 1941 and the entry of America into the Second World War on the side of the Allies, the entire ethnic Japanese population of the country was imprisoned and suspected as a potential fifth column of the Axis. However, no such fate befell the even larger numbers of Americans who were of Italian or German descent. Indeed as shown by the example of Eisenhower, having a Teutonic name would not necessarily even hamper a career at the very apex of the Allied military machine. Moving to the year 2005 it would seem that California, a state now led by a man who not only speaks English tinged by his native German but whose father served in the Waffen SS, has found a new community to treat on an unequal level. In response to protests this year from several faith based groups, the California Board of Education agreed to withdraw materials considered to be giving a distorted view of Christian and Jewish ideas. But Hindus, as is usual in these cases, were given short thrift. Not only that but an unhealthy array of anti-Hindu extremists has built up to warn of the danger posed by so-called “Hindutva” supporters and the “Saffronisation” of Indology – reminding us of parallel verbiage used to indoctrinate fear about the so-called Zionist lobby and Mossad. Instead of sinister yarmulke clad figures examining the globe in a menacing manner to make logistical plans for their nefarious designs, we now have the myth of some amorphous saffron mass doing exactly the same thing with Indological studies. Although it has not gone as far as the myth generated in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at least not yet, the seeds have been planted that respectable academia should keep its distance from these weeds in the garden. The demolition of the racist Aryan invasion myth is seen as the most dangerous example of “saffronising” Indology and related subjects. So who are these people who inject anti-Hindu venom into mainstream academia?
Judging by their sympathy of the Aryan Invasion Myth, one could safely assume they were closely associated with the likes of Duke, the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist neo-Nazi militias. But this would be where one would initially at least be mistaken. In fact they often parade themselves as anti-racists and social liberals. On the surface they may seem at polar opposites but on issues such as Hindus, they are united with Duke and the Klan, although they put across their ideas more convincingly. Prominent among the anti-Hindu group is Michael Witzel, an American professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, who has the support of a number of academicians including Indian historians Romila Thapar, D.N.Jha and Shereen Ratnagar. In the light of what has just been written it is very interesting finding Thapar in this as she built her career in India based upon her unshakable belief in scientific Marxism, as opposed to a backward, obscurantist and ultimately socially evil Hinduism. Then, in the well worn path of pseudo-academics who constantly berate the West for its capitalism and exploitation, she went to take up a plum well-paid position in that great counter-revolutionary, reactionary, capitalist whore of Babylon, the United States of America itself.
From his ivory tower, Witzel surveys the scene of Hindu protestors just as Mahmud Ghazni did before he attacked and desecrated Somnath. He can brush them off just as Hitler and Stalin did to the Poles in 1939:
“The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature, and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise,"
Well if the demands are of a political nature then what of his own sidekick Romila Thapar? By trying to impose a Marxist-Leninist social model on Indian history is she not more guilty of this, especially since the reality of the proletarian paradise came crashing down in Eastern Europe in 1989, and in the former Soviet Union in 1991? The humanities in India have long been dominated by pseudo-academics with Stalinist sympathies who have about as much objectivity towards Hindu culture as Comrade Joe had in dealing with the Ukrainian kulaks. Thapar is herself a product of this environment, one of the most damaging legacies of what can accurately be termed as Nehruvian National Socialism which was and continues to be responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Hinduism across the Indian-subcontinent.
The California Board of Education should objectively look at all the facts. Why are Jewish, Christian and Islamic perspectives on their own respective cultures taken as legitimate, while Hindus are denied equal treatment in this? Why are Witzel and his Klan allowed to mock and denigrate Hindus in a manner which if applied to any other community, culture or belief system would be denounced as bigoted, prejudiced and racist? In fact why is the Witzel SS Legion going unchallenged when it supports a racist idea, namely the Aryan Invasion Theory, yet ironically slams anyone opposing it or bringing evidence to the contrary as some sort of Hindu fascist. Judging by the similarity Witzel has in this sphere with David Duke, perhaps the fascist is within the self and not in some imaginary external entity. When we examine how Hindu Dharma is taught, and how Hindus are portrayed in American academia, it seems as if Dr. Boas had not even existed. The ideas of Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Ernest Sevier-Cox, and Theodore Bilbo lie triumphant. However it is not David Duke championing these ideas within academia, although he is trying very hard to. It is supposedly respectable scholars such as Witzel and Thapar. In “My Awakening” Duke praises Bilbo for his ideas. In changing the substance but not the title, perhaps Americans had indeed take their choice. Will it be to look at other cultures objectively and make their intellectuals act with some responsibility towards their fellow human beings? Or will it be to allow Witzel, Thapar, and the rest of the same Klan to be the window for which the ideas of Duke can actually gain greater mainstream acceptance, as they have done with the continued respectability of the mythical Aryan Invasion in the highest echelons of American academia? Will America live up to ties democratic ideals, or will Hindu-bashing become as American as lynching once was, and as apple pie continues to be?
While it commendable that many Hindus and Hindu groups are taking up this issue in California and elsewhere, we remind all concerned individuals, organisations and academics that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg. Pseudo-academics who continue to peddle and romanticise the residues of Nazi fantasies and wet-dreams of a super-human Aryan Master Race need to be exposed wherever they lurk.
In this article we examine some of the background to the Hindu objections to how their history and culture are taught in the USA and the rest of the world and will focus on some of the special interest groups campaigning for the status-quo.
Most racist and colonialist viewpoints of non-European cultures and history are now regarded as outdated. They are recognised as not giving an objective view consistent with responsible academic study, but merely the vehicle by which one was able to peddle the prejudices by what we can now see was a less enlightened age. On the positive side humanity can be said to have learnt from its mistakes – a century ago what would now be recognised as prejudiced and a prescriptive view of non-European and non-Western cultures nevertheless did lay the foundations of modern academia. Indeed it was those very tools which were later utilised to eradicate the respectability of scientific racism and denigration of ancient customs and beliefs, merely to satisfy a preconceived point of view. This was most evidently seen in the USA, a paradoxical country in many respects. While laying the foundations of what we now understand as democracy, a normative principle to which all civilised nations are said to aspire, the continuation of slavery for many years led to an unhealthy dose of extreme ethnic prejudice. Modern racism, as well as democracy, can also be said to be an American product, or in another rather better way, according to one caption describing a photographic exhibition of African-American victims of murderous lynching in the Deep South, “Racism is as American as apple pie”. Nevertheless if at one time American intellectual life was dominated in the early Twentieth Century by thinkers such as Madison Grant, Lothropp Stoddard and Ernest Sevier-Cox, whose racism was paraded as rational and scientific, it was also neutralised by the work of someone who is regarded as the founding father of anthropology, Dr. Franz Boas. Although Boas may yet again have had some facts not entirely correct, something more evident with his disciples Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, by the time Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo warned white America in 1946 to deport all blacks to Africa in order to save the white race of America’s founding fathers, such ideas, while permissible, were increasingly less respectable and harder to justify.
Bilbo had penned “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelisation” to ask white America to push for expulsion of all African-Americans to Liberia in order to stop America’s downfall by the mixing of the races. He claimed that Rome, Greece, Carthage and Egypt had befallen the same fate when the “white master race” in those ancient civilisations had mixed with the Negroid inhabitants and slaves. Interestingly he said the same thing about India, and was following in the footsteps blazed by the scientific racist writers such as Madison Grant. According to this gang, Hindu civilisation fell because the white master race of Aryan invaders, mixed their blood with the subjugated dark-skinned population, despite the rigorous attempts to outlaw miscegenation by means of the caste system. Now this was nothing unique as the whole idea of the Aryan Invasion myth had been manufactured by German Indologist Max Muller to satisfy his British imperialist sponsors during the nineteenth century. But unlike the scientific racists, Muller retracted his ideas and clarified that his references were to language groups, and not race. Nevertheless, in an age when Europe was becoming the world master, and the indigenous peoples of Australia, the Americas and southern Africa were being displaced, vanquished or exterminated by settlers of European origin, the idea that the same thing had been done in the distant past by the white master race fell on fertile ground, and were regarded as undisputable fact. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was therefore not anything unique in this respect, and only its practical application as witnessed by the horrors of National Socialism culminating in the Holocaust eventually led to a full rethink of where such uncontrolled mental gymnastics could lead to.
Unfortunately old prejudices die hard. In 1999, America’s most notorious National Socialist, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke published the updated version of a “Mein Kampf” more suited to the racist mentality of a new century. This book was called “My Awakening”. Duke’s thrust in the work is a polite and sugar coated academic version of an idea which he told an audience in 1976: “The problems of this country [USA] can be summed up in two words: Jews and niggers.” While the beginning of the book deals with how all people of African descent are genetically inferior than other races, and more prone to extremely high levels of violent crime and sexual promiscuity which are supposedly responsible for ruining white societies around the world, the second part of the book actually shows Duke trying to make common cause with hardcore ethnic nationalists from the black community. His reasoning as that they must face their common enemy in the form of Jewish supremacism, a sarcastic term in deference to the white supremacist terminology often associated with the former Klan leader. Nicely sandwiched in the middle of all this, in Chapter 29 to be exact, is David Duke’s commentary on how India became racially degenerate through the ethnic mixing of superior white Aryans with the indigenous darkies of India. When we at Hindu Human Rights came to know of this, we contacted Duke to see if he could explain himself and his use of this fraudulent pseudo academic myth. However, ironically enough it turned out he was in prison for fraud at the time and was not willing to talk openly for fear of his true identity becoming known in the midst of a riot by Mexican inmates. In any case, a refutation of Duke’s racist theories on India is something that has not even been taken up by normally anti-racist writers. Why is this? Could it be that Duke’s racism is actually respectable if it happens to victimise Hindus? What respectable academic, in this day and age, could possibly share these noxious and racist ideas? Well as it happens, quite a few actually.
After the attack on Pearl harbour in 1941 and the entry of America into the Second World War on the side of the Allies, the entire ethnic Japanese population of the country was imprisoned and suspected as a potential fifth column of the Axis. However, no such fate befell the even larger numbers of Americans who were of Italian or German descent. Indeed as shown by the example of Eisenhower, having a Teutonic name would not necessarily even hamper a career at the very apex of the Allied military machine. Moving to the year 2005 it would seem that California, a state now led by a man who not only speaks English tinged by his native German but whose father served in the Waffen SS, has found a new community to treat on an unequal level. In response to protests this year from several faith based groups, the California Board of Education agreed to withdraw materials considered to be giving a distorted view of Christian and Jewish ideas. But Hindus, as is usual in these cases, were given short thrift. Not only that but an unhealthy array of anti-Hindu extremists has built up to warn of the danger posed by so-called “Hindutva” supporters and the “Saffronisation” of Indology – reminding us of parallel verbiage used to indoctrinate fear about the so-called Zionist lobby and Mossad. Instead of sinister yarmulke clad figures examining the globe in a menacing manner to make logistical plans for their nefarious designs, we now have the myth of some amorphous saffron mass doing exactly the same thing with Indological studies. Although it has not gone as far as the myth generated in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at least not yet, the seeds have been planted that respectable academia should keep its distance from these weeds in the garden. The demolition of the racist Aryan invasion myth is seen as the most dangerous example of “saffronising” Indology and related subjects. So who are these people who inject anti-Hindu venom into mainstream academia?
Judging by their sympathy of the Aryan Invasion Myth, one could safely assume they were closely associated with the likes of Duke, the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist neo-Nazi militias. But this would be where one would initially at least be mistaken. In fact they often parade themselves as anti-racists and social liberals. On the surface they may seem at polar opposites but on issues such as Hindus, they are united with Duke and the Klan, although they put across their ideas more convincingly. Prominent among the anti-Hindu group is Michael Witzel, an American professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, who has the support of a number of academicians including Indian historians Romila Thapar, D.N.Jha and Shereen Ratnagar. In the light of what has just been written it is very interesting finding Thapar in this as she built her career in India based upon her unshakable belief in scientific Marxism, as opposed to a backward, obscurantist and ultimately socially evil Hinduism. Then, in the well worn path of pseudo-academics who constantly berate the West for its capitalism and exploitation, she went to take up a plum well-paid position in that great counter-revolutionary, reactionary, capitalist whore of Babylon, the United States of America itself.
From his ivory tower, Witzel surveys the scene of Hindu protestors just as Mahmud Ghazni did before he attacked and desecrated Somnath. He can brush them off just as Hitler and Stalin did to the Poles in 1939:
“The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature, and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise,"
Well if the demands are of a political nature then what of his own sidekick Romila Thapar? By trying to impose a Marxist-Leninist social model on Indian history is she not more guilty of this, especially since the reality of the proletarian paradise came crashing down in Eastern Europe in 1989, and in the former Soviet Union in 1991? The humanities in India have long been dominated by pseudo-academics with Stalinist sympathies who have about as much objectivity towards Hindu culture as Comrade Joe had in dealing with the Ukrainian kulaks. Thapar is herself a product of this environment, one of the most damaging legacies of what can accurately be termed as Nehruvian National Socialism which was and continues to be responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Hinduism across the Indian-subcontinent.
The California Board of Education should objectively look at all the facts. Why are Jewish, Christian and Islamic perspectives on their own respective cultures taken as legitimate, while Hindus are denied equal treatment in this? Why are Witzel and his Klan allowed to mock and denigrate Hindus in a manner which if applied to any other community, culture or belief system would be denounced as bigoted, prejudiced and racist? In fact why is the Witzel SS Legion going unchallenged when it supports a racist idea, namely the Aryan Invasion Theory, yet ironically slams anyone opposing it or bringing evidence to the contrary as some sort of Hindu fascist. Judging by the similarity Witzel has in this sphere with David Duke, perhaps the fascist is within the self and not in some imaginary external entity. When we examine how Hindu Dharma is taught, and how Hindus are portrayed in American academia, it seems as if Dr. Boas had not even existed. The ideas of Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Ernest Sevier-Cox, and Theodore Bilbo lie triumphant. However it is not David Duke championing these ideas within academia, although he is trying very hard to. It is supposedly respectable scholars such as Witzel and Thapar. In “My Awakening” Duke praises Bilbo for his ideas. In changing the substance but not the title, perhaps Americans had indeed take their choice. Will it be to look at other cultures objectively and make their intellectuals act with some responsibility towards their fellow human beings? Or will it be to allow Witzel, Thapar, and the rest of the same Klan to be the window for which the ideas of Duke can actually gain greater mainstream acceptance, as they have done with the continued respectability of the mythical Aryan Invasion in the highest echelons of American academia? Will America live up to ties democratic ideals, or will Hindu-bashing become as American as lynching once was, and as apple pie continues to be?
While it commendable that many Hindus and Hindu groups are taking up this issue in California and elsewhere, we remind all concerned individuals, organisations and academics that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg. Pseudo-academics who continue to peddle and romanticise the residues of Nazi fantasies and wet-dreams of a super-human Aryan Master Race need to be exposed wherever they lurk.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Vivekananda, Gandhiji and their concept of service-oriented Hinduism
By Jagmohan
On Swami ‘Vivekananda's’ birthday, January 12, it may be both interesting and instructive to recall how he and Mahatama Gandhi viewed Hinduism as a service-oriented cultural force and how virtual abandonment of their views by the Indian State and society have cost the country dearly.
Both Vivekananda and Gandhiji had an original and powerful mind and also an innate faith in the inherent strength of Indian culture. Both believed in practical Vedanta and considered Hinduism as nothing but spiritual secularism based upon the highest principles of ethics and morality. Both argued that a great social and moral order could be built on the shoulders of great individuals alone. “If there is no purity, fairness and justice in your heart, these qualities will not be in your home; if they are not in your home, they will not be in your society; and if they are not in your society, they will not be in your State.”
Both Vivekananda and Gandhiji, in essence, presented a new design for life, a model of contentment, compassion, balance and harmony. They wanted to create an Indian nation that could teach the world, as Will Durant believed “tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things”.
In order to elaborate Vivekananda and Gandhiji’s belief that Hinduism was a positive and elevating force, it would be best to let them speak for themselves. S Radhakrishnan, in connection with his study of religion, posed three questions to Gandhiji. These questions were: “What is your religion? How are you led to it? What is its bearing on social life?”
Gandhiji replied to the first question thus: “My religion is Hinduism which, for me, is the religion of humanity and includes the best of all religions known to me.”
In response to the second question, Gandhiji said: “I take it that the present tense in this question has been purposely used, instead of the past. I am led to my religion through truth and non-violence. I often describe my religion as religion of truth. Of late, instead of saying God is Truth, I have been saying, Truth is God…Denial of Truth we have not known…We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as yet unknown Truth, which is God. I am daily led nearer to it by constant prayer”.
To the third question, Gandhiji replied: “The bearing of this religion on social life is, or has to be, seen in one’s daily social contact. To get true to such religion, one has to lose oneself in continuous and continuing service of all in life. Realisation of Truth is impossible without a complete merging of oneself in and identification with this limitless ocean of life. Therefore, for me there is no happiness on earth beyond or apart from it. Social service here must be taken to include every department of life. In this scheme, there is nothing low, nothing high. For all is one, though we seem to be many.”
Gandhiji went on to elaborate: “The deeper I study Hinduism, the stronger becomes the belief in me that Hinduism is as broad as the universe… Something within me tells me that, for all the deep veneration I show to several religions, I am all the more a Hindu, nonetheless for it.”
Gandhiji also made it clear: “My devotion to Truth has drawn me to politics… Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
For Vivekananda, too, religion in India was a pivotal force. He said: “Each nation, like each individual has one theme in life, which is at its centre. If any nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, that nation dies. In India, religious life forms the centre.”
The first observation which Vivekananda made on December 25, 1892 after meditating deeply on the Kanyakumari rock for three days was: “Religion is the blood of the nation’s body; the impurities of the blood are responsible for all our great maladies, and the nation can rise again if this blood is purified.”
Vivekananda’s message is simple. Jiva is Shiva—in the service of man lies the service of God. One must not forget that if one serves the sick, the poor or any other person in distress, one would be following ‘practical Vedanta’ and offering prayers to God in the highest form.
Vivekananda gave pre-eminent place to the idea of serving “the outcast Narayanas, the starving Narayanas and the oppressed Narayanas”. He posed the question to his own class: “What have we done, we the so-called men of God, the sanyasis? What have we done for the masses?” He bewailed: “India’s doom was sealed the very day it coined the word melechha”. He also criticised the common folk for being fatalist. He urged them to have faith in themselves. “The old religion said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself…It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate.”
Tragically, apart from paying lip-service, the post-1947 India has all but forgotten what Vivekananda and Gandhiji stood for. Consequently, today the Indian State is a soulless entity and the society is riddled with superstitions and caste and communal prejudices. The rich have become excessively rich and the poor have largely resigned themselves to what they call is their fate. The spiritual vacuum has rendered almost all the organs of governance weak, wayward, casual and even callous and corrupt. The country is facing a huge moral deficit. The conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that there is one molestation case every 15 minutes, one rape case every 29 minutes, one dowry death every 77 minutes and one case of sexual harassment every 53 minutes. Is it not time that the nation should attend to what Vivekananda and Gandhiji had preached and practiced and rebuild itself on the basis of ethics, morality and spiritual secularism which they embodied? If we continue with the business as usual, whatever little remains of Indian culture and civilisation would be extinct, sooner rather than later.
(The writer is a former governor of Jammu and Kashmir and former Union Minister)
Hindus: Time you woke up!
By MSN Menon
The most vital issue of our age, says Aurobindo, is whether the future progress of the humanity is to be governed by the materialist philosophy of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided and uplifted by a spiritual culture? India can make a major contribution here.
For a thousand years, the Hindus were under foreign rule—first under Muslims and then under the relatively civilised rule of the British.
This is unprecedented in human history. No people—certainly no great civilisation—have been kept in bondage for so long! The march of a great civilisation was arrested. Its roots were cut. And the memories of that age were lost. They were almost ready to embrace Islam. It is said that India would have been Islamised had it not been for the British advent.
Are the Hindus aware of the great damage those thousand years have done to their civilisation, to their quest for the meaning of life and to their outlook? They are not. Alas, even to enquire into it is taboo in this country! Why? Because it is pleaded that this will “offend” our Muslim “brothers”! Should our history then be based on falsifications.
Of course, both the Muslims and the British rulers were opposed to a Hindu awakening. For similar reasons. Gandhi and Nehru opposed a Hindu awakening as a price for Muslim support to the freedom movement.
With what result? Did Muslim support the freedom movement? No. Did they accept the objective of Hindu-Muslim unity? So we got nothing for the concessions we made.
Hope of winning over the Muslims never deserted the Congress. It tied the hands of the Congress leaders. They were incapable of even defending the long-term interests of the nation. Thus they could not warn the Muslims where they were in a minority, that they would be forced to leave India if they supported the two-nation theory. I am convinced that this would have been like a death-blow to the Muslim League.
But even partition and its horrors did not lead to an awakening of the Hindus! Why? For two reasons: 1) because the Hindus were already de-nationalised and 2) the need for Muslim votes compelled the Congress to follow the same appeasement policy. Today the vast majority of Hindu know almost nothing of their great past, that only the Hindu civilisation has an enlightened policy. That is why they were ready to accept Western leadership of the world and the Western way of life. So, are we Hindus to be the Caliban—the eternal follower? Can India never head? Has it no message for the world? Can it never be an alternate model for the world? It can. But for that we need new generations of Hindus who are committed to the greatness of India—generations that are profoundly inspired by nationalism.
But why should we know our history? Because history alone can inspire us to scale greater heights, because the tragedies that befell us should never again visit us.
If India has come up so fast in the post-Independence period and made a deep impression on the world community, it is because we are the children of a great civilisation. Our genes have gone through a process of civilisation for ten thousand years. There is nothing comparable. The Hindu civilisation is the mother of all civilisations. Our ancestors have put us ahead of all others.
But that is not enough. We have more work to do. Let us renew our great journey. This is our civilisational mission. The Christians and Muslims will not and cannot join us in this quest for the ultimate truths, for they claim that the ultimate truths are already in their Holy Books. So they will continue to mark time. They prefer the repetitive life. They cannot march with us without causing immense damage to their religious beliefs. What is more, they cannot change their tribal gods either. It is too late in the day to do that.
The most vital issue of our age, says Aurobindo, is whether the future progress of the humanity is to be governed by the materialist philosophy of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided and uplifted by a spiritual culture? India can make a major contribution here.
Hinduism is not a proselytising religion. Yet it has carried it message to the far corners of the world without any violence. What it lacked was a proper concern for the State. Which explains why we were under foreign rule for so long. We must not allow this weakness to continue. Hindus must be wise, but strong.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Random thoughts on God and religion By MSN Menon No religion has been able to convert the world to its way of thinking. Why? Because it is not in the
By MSN Menon
No religion has been able to convert the world to its way of thinking. Why? Because it is not in the nature of man. One sees God according to one’s own nature. This is called “Ishtam” (desire).
Any attempt at representation of God is as futile as efforts to picture an electron. The electron is inconceivable. So is God.
People of the Semitic faiths says that man was made in the image of God. The Hindus believe in a God without form and with form. Both Saguna (with form) and Nirguna (without form) are, however, equal in the eyes of the Hindus. To those who says that God cannot have a form, Vivekananda has a question: who is it that has taken all the forms that exist?
The Semitic gods are tribal gods. They are naturally fierce. Here, man is in absolute subjection to God. Which is why the Semitic gods are at a great distance. As against this, Hindus have gods who are both near and far.
Those who meditate have no need for the proximity of God. But the Bhaktas want their gods near them. And there is no God closer to man than Krishna.
Tagore says: “God with us is not a distant God. He belongs to our homes as well as to our temples.”
But not all men have felt the need for a god. The Jain thinkers believe that man can attain divinity and that God is only the highest, noblest and fullest manifestation of all the powers that lie latent in the soul of man.
On why we want a form for God, Vivekananda says: “We all believe that God is without form or shape, but as soon as we begin to think of Him, He acquires name and form.”
Tantrism says that external worship of the image of a deity is designed in some human situations. Shankara almost agrees with this.
Monotheism (one God) is intolerant of other forms. Whole civilisation—Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Aztec, Inca, Maya and others have been destroyed in the name of one God. It is based on Biblical exclusiveness—that there is no alternative to Christianity and that only through Jesus Christ one can attain salvation. The point is: others can make equally forceful claims.
Judaism banned the making of images. But the Catholic Church never accepted the Jewish arguments. In the Illustrated Old Testament, God is shown standing on clouds and directing the universe!
In the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican (holy of holies), we have the painting of God and Adam by Michael Angelo (1475-1560). The painting, called “the Creation of Man” depicts God as an old man, with a powerful build, reaching out his hand to touch the extended hand of Adam.
Why should God created the universe? He could not have done it for His own sake, for he does not need anything for Himself. It is said that this is His sport (leela). God cannot have “sport” at the expense of the suffering of His creation.
And if the idea is that God will overcome evil one day, this too is a cruel hope, for it means generations have to be sacrificed before God is able to overcome evil.
Over time, the absence of the long-dead Mahavira was keenly felt by his followers. They called for a visual representation of the Jain prophet. The Jains were thus the first to produce a visual representation for worship. Soon, Emperor Kanishka (lst c AD) ordered a Greek artist of his court to produce a statue of the Buddha. As the viharas multiplied, so did the images. When the Hindus saw how popular these images were, they too followed the example, although the Manu shastra was against image worship. Dr S Radhakrishnan says that man cannot think of God in the abstract.
The cross, symbol of Christianity, was introduced into Christian life in the 6th c AD. The church was reluctant to use it as a symbol because of its pagan association.
It is said that this spell was broken when the cross on which “Jesus was crucified” was “discovered” by a Roman empress in the Holy Lands.
Religions have blinded men. How? Freud says “Religion is the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.” It is a disease of the mind. Otherwise one can never understand how sensible men of reason put their blind faith on dogmas.
In spite of their best efforts, however, no religion has been able to convert the world to its way of thinking. Why? Because it is not in the nature of man. One sees God according to one’s own nature. This is called “Ishtam” (desire).
“Would to God”, says Vivekananda, “that religions multiplied until everyone has his own religion, quite separate from all others.” But such a thing can happen only in a tolerant Hindu society.
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