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Found and Lost: the Ayodhya Evidence

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

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

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

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

A Splendid Consensus

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

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

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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

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

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

The world media as amplifier of the secularist version

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

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

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

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Eurocentrism and Science

Past universes are dismissed as religion by Eurocentric scientists. 

Cosmologist Edward Harrison has remarked: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skywatchers or Astronomers?

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

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

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

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

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Hindus massacred on Maraad Beach 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indian fishermen - from "Les Hindous" French early 19th century book written by Francois Balazar Solvyns.

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

Scholarly silence on massacre in American academia

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

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

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Unethical Conversion by the Christian Church - By Francois Gautier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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India and her Spirituality - By Sri Aurobindo

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

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

Young hermit - Ajanta Painting.

***

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

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

(source: The Renaissance in India - Shri Aurobindo -  Arya Publishing House Calcutta. p. 9-16). 

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

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Monotheism vs. Polytheism – By A C Bose   
Monotheism   

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

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

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

Polytheism  - Spiritual Democracy

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

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

***

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

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

Monotheism and its discontents - By Gore Vidal 

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

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

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

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

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Religion and ethnicity - By T R Anandan 

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

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

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

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

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The Infinite Grace of Images - By Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Andrea Lafferty's comment on C-Span

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indian Jews and their heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Gandhi and Jews and the Cooperation of the Victims

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

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

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

"Dear Friend, 

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

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

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

(source:  An Interview With Koenraad Elst). 

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Columbus and Vasco da Gama

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

***

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

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

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Monopoly over God: Only Path to Salvation?

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

(source: Terrorists in North-East India get support from America - By Kunak Ghosh - www.mainstreamweekly.com). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the philosophic side the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves against the eternal rocks of