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A Glorious Hindu Legacy: Indic influence in Southeast
Asia.
Hinduism
in Nepal
India's immediate
neighbors Nepal and Tibet, owe much of their cultural
inheritance to contact with India. Originally the word Nepal
implied the Valley, which, surrounded by the peaks of the
Himalayas. The holy scriptures of the Hindu religion like
the Vedas, Brahmangranthas and
Upanishads are the common heritage of the Nepalese
and Indians.
The
Pashupatinath Temple
Skanda
Puran the ancient holy text of the Hindu religion,
describes the fame of Nepal as -
"in
the Himalayas there is a most auspicious blessed place, where
Shanker (the giver of joy) in the form of Pashupatinath
resides."
All ancient
Hindu religious text has described Himalayas as the abode and
activity of Lord Shiva in which Nepal remained the nucleus.
To
the west coast of river Bagmati, which arises from a sprout in
the Himalayas, is the revered seat of Lord Pashupatinath.
It is said that a holy bath in
the Bagmati river at this spot, praying with hymns of 'Rudri
Mantra', followed by worshipping Pashupatinath Lingum with
Panchamrita - curd, ghee (purified butter) sugar, honey and
milk, will render the person free from the cycle of births. So
is the magnanimity of Lord Pashupatinath in the minds of Hindus
the world over.
The rulers of
Nepal, over centuries made contributions in enriching and
beautifying this holy temple. According to Gopalraj
Vamsavali, the oldest ever chronicle in Nepal, this temple was
built by Supus Padeva, a Linchchhavi King who according to the
stone inscription erected by Jayadeva 11 in the courtyard of
Pashupatinath in 753 AD happened to be the ruler 39 generation
before Manadeva (464-505 AD). Yet, there is another
chronicle which states that this temple was in the form of Linga
shaped Devalaya before Supus Padeva constructed a five storey
temple of Pashupatinath in this place. As the time passed,
the need for reparing and renovating this temple arose. It
is learnt that this temple was reconsturcted by a mediaeval King
named Shivadeva (1099-1126 AD). It was renovated by Ananta
Malla adding a roof to it.
(source: shripashupatinath.org).
Refer to Constant
and Changing Faces of the Goddess: Goddess Traditions of Asia
- By Deepak Shimkhada and Phyllis K. Herman

Sleeping
Narayana from Budha Nilakantha, Nepal, circa 8th century. stone
more than life size.
Lord Vishnu
reclining on the coils of a cosmic serpent on the infinite ocean
from which the world emerges. The Lord is shown lying down on a
thousand-headed snake named Shesha or Ananta Nag - Timeless or
Ageless snake.
“This
primal insight into the dreamlike nature of the world of
appearances has an oddly contemporary resonance given the
direction of modern scientific thought. Long before
post-Newtonian physics “discovered” that matter is
essentially energy in drag – E =MC2 – the sages had already
intuited that the physical universe is an emanation of the
omnipotent Force, which they call Shakti.
photo
courtesy: Dr. Deepak Shimkhada.
(image
source: A
Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom spanning continents and
time about India and her culture - By Sushama Londhe).
***
Ramayana
In Nepal
The story of the
Ramayana has played a great part in bringing about cultural
unification. Among the Ramayanas in different Indian languages,
we have in Nepali the Mero Rama
and Nepali Adarsa Raghava Mahakavya.
Thus we can understand how this sacred epic and the story of
Ramachandra has affected the way of our thinking and life. We
can understand and observe the development of Ramayana tradition
in Nepali literature from the ancient period to the modern
age.
Being a sovereign
Hindu Kingdom, Nepal has kept the Ramayana tradition.
Sita
is revered in Nepal because she is regarded a daughter of Nepal.
Raja Janak, King of Mithila,
had his captial near what is now Janakpur in Nepal. Therefore
Janaki is worshipped annually during Dussera. Ramlila is also
staged during Dussera, which is the most important Nepali
festival held to celebrate Rama's victory.

Ravanaa
abducting Sita and killing Jatayu in the Ramayana.
Sita
is revered in Nepal because she is regarded a daughter of Nepal.
Raja Janak, King of Mithila,
had his captial near what is now Janakpur in Nepal. Therefore
Janaki is worshipped annually during Dussera.
The
Nepalis are very attached to this great Epic.
(image
source: Paintings
by Ravi Varma).
***
The
Nepalis are very attached to this great epic. To a great extent,
the society of modern Nepal follows the same tradition presented
in the Ramayana. It is still held true that a son's duty is
to obey his father unquestioningly and a brother's to honor his
elder brother. The wife's duty is to her husband to whom she
must be faithful.
The character of Rama, Sita, and Laksmana and
Bharata have a nobility and appeal that is universal. The
Ramayana strengthens the faith in the omnipotence of God and
serves as source of the ideals of even the simplest villager who
has heard the tales of Ramayana from the lips of others.
(source The
Ramayana Tradition in Asia - Written by Kamala Sankrityayan
and Edited By V Raghavan p. 348 - 384).
It is a proven fact that Valmiki,
the composer of renowned epic the Ramayana,
saw the light of the world within Nepal at Balmikinagar in
Bhisalotoan.

Hindu
Buddhist temple in Nepal
Nepal has never
known religious conflict and persecutions, and even today
Hinduism and Buddhism live together in complete harmony.
Refer
to Antiquity
and Origin of the Term ‘Hindu’
-
By Dr. Murlidhar H. Pahoja
***
Nepal has never
known religious conflict and persecutions, and even today
Hinduism and Buddhism live together in complete harmony.
Nepalese sculpture and painting is in a style derived from the
Pala art of Bihar and Bengal. Many of the laws of Nepal and its
social organizations naturally reflect Hindu models, and the
Nepalese language is very close to Sanskrit. But the Hindu
civilization in Nepal has evolved a distinct character of its
own, effected through a blending of its own traditions with
those of Tibet.
Lord
Gautam Buddha, the light of Asia, who was born in
Lumbini in Nepal, trekked down to the plains in India in search
of Enlightenment.
(source: Chapter
on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi).
Top
of Page
Caves
of Elephanta
- By Rev. John F Hurst
The
first view of the vast cave-temples is a most pleasing surprise.
The great portal bursts suddenly upon the eye. The vegetation,
which is luxuriant as in
Sri Lanka
, crowds from the hills down to the edge of the temples. Shrubs
and vines in great profusion hang over the entrance, and
surround it on all sides with a rich and varied drapery. There
is, first of all, the great façade to the main temple. It is
supported by two immense pillars and two pilasters. These make
three entrances to the temple. The great temple itself is one
hundred and thirty feet long, and one hundred and twenty-eight
feet broad. On either side there is a large chapel. The temple
proper has immense supporting columns, twenty six in all, with
sixteen pilasters. The temple, and even the columns and statues,
are cut out of the solid native mass of porphyry.

"Hindus
build like Titans, and finish like jewelers.”
- wrote Bishop
Reginald Heber.
***
A
peculiarity of every part of the structure is the variety of the
architecture. The columns vary in size, ornamentation, and
separating distances. Even the height differs slightly, the
distance from the ceiling to the roof ranging from 15 feet to 17
½ feet. Some of pillars are fluted and others square, and many
are surrounded by ornamental fillets. The capitals are overhung
with graceful leaves. The pillars are connected by beams, which
give unity to the whole interior.
These
immense spaces in the in the solid rock are the real wonder of
the caves of Elephanta. The sculptures form remarkable reliefs
upon the walls. All the figures are of colossal size. The day
when they were hewn by many hands, in the remote times was one
for great objects. Only the gigantic and preternatural were
aimed at. The caves of Elephanta are tributes to the Hindu
worship. The principle mural figure is of the three faced
Trinity of the Hindu triad. It is only a bust and yet is
nineteen feet high. The central face, with an exquisitely carved
jewel on the breast, represents Vishnu as the creative
principle.
The
caves at Karla
The
temple walls, and every part of their adorning sculpture, are
hewn out of the stone mountain. Were there no pagan deities in
stone, no reminders of any early worship, and were the country
any other than
India
, one would take this wonderful structure for a superb
cathedral. The only thing which is not of native rock is a
wooden covering or ceiling. This has been the puzzle of all the
toilers in Indian archaeology, and they seem today to be no
nearer a solution of the difficulty than when they began. The
entire immediate covering of the temple is of teak, a native
wood, almost the only one which resists the white ant and every
Indian insect. As you look up, and take in the whole nave, it
reminds you at once of the inverted hull of a ship.

Karla
caves.
One
thing is sure, that the idea of excavating the very mountains in
order to erect beautiful temples is of very early origin, and
that these cave-temples of
India
sprang into perfection at the very beginning of their
history.
***
The
cross-timbers and the boards have that appearance, and yet the
more one examines the whole of the wooden umbrella, and compares
it with the rest of the temple, the more exact is its
correspondence with the stone of which all the rest of the
sacred building consists. The finishing of the wood-work is of
the same style as that of the stone. As to the reason why the
wood was put above this wonderful cave-temple, no one can
answer. The ceiling was already of stone, and many a foot
beneath the roots of the trees which waved on the mountain-top.
Nothing could add to the massive and attractive character of the
whole. It is not likely that this wooden carving was added
later, long after the work was finished and the temple had been
used. On the other hand, Thomas, Burgess, and Fergusson, the
best researchers among the antiquities of
India
, began their interpretation of the Karla temple by supposing
the wood to be a later addition. But after their examination,
more closely conducted, they concluded it was put there at the
time the temple was excavated from the mountainside.

Karla
caves.
"Few
remains of antiquity have excited greater curiosity. The
engineering skills involved in excavating the cave temples of
western India suggested Egyptian involvement while their
sculptural elegance was ascribed to Greek influence. Not till
the 1830s was it acknowledged that they were in fact Indian.
(image
source: India Discovered - By John Keay).
***
One
thing is sure, that the idea of excavating the very mountains in
order to erect beautiful temples is of very early origin, and
that these cave-temples of
India
sprang into perfection at the very beginning of their history.
In no part of the land is one to be found which betrays an
apprenticeship.
(source:
Indika:
The Country and the people of India and Ceylon - By Rev.
John F Hurst p.
153 - 168).
Top
of Page
Indian
Media's War on Hinduism
***
The
Indian media: Its adverse role
There are many people in
India
who strongly feel that the so-called ‘secular’ print and
electronic media, at least a dominant section among them,
knowingly or unknowingly, is playing a very adverse and
prejudiced role, when it comes to the reporting of the Hindu
point of view. Suppressing or
misrepresenting tactics are being liberally used along with
admonitions and ridicules of the Hindus, ‘Hindutva’, and the
Hindu Dharma. At the same time, this secular section
appears to support the anti-Hindu forces in the country, which
are active with their alien and subversive ideologies. In
essence, it has come to mean that ‘secularism’ is nothing
but opposition to Hindus,
Hindustan
, Hindutva and the Hindu Dharma. This is quite ridiculous in a
country that is predominantly Hindu in its composition and
character. This situation is agonizing to many and confusing to
many more, since they would not get a true picture of what is
going on in the country because of the prejudice of the media.
The reasons for the selective propaganda by Indian media could
be: a) Many leading journalists and media barons are Christians
or Christian sympathizers; b) They are educated and
indoctrinated in Christian run institutes; c) The media
companies in India are completely under control of western
companies through cross holdings; d) The media is advertising
driven and almost all leading ad companies in India are foreign
subsidiaries of global ad companies.
In the
inimitable words of Sri V. Sundaram,
IAS (Retd.), renowned columnist of Chennai, “all the mainline
English Newspapers in
India
are deliberately Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting,
Hindu-hating and Hindu-baiting”. And, as revealed by Dr.
Subramanian Swamy, “Academia, NGOs and mass media are the
obvious instruments that are on the radar of anti-Hindu forces.
Which and who are these forces that are shaping the anti-Hindu
bias of the media? It is a coalition, not explicit but implicit,
of Communist, Christian missionary, Islamic fanatics and other
terrorist interests. Each of these interests has their own
specific agenda. The anti-Hindu mentality of the
English-dominated media in
India
is secured by the cozy nexus of media with academia and the
English-speaking governing elite”.
“The
Internet is full of anti-Hindu rubbish”, points out Swami
Devananda Saraswati who is well known for his
research on the ‘Myth
of St. Thomas’. "It is impossible to tackle head on and piece by piece by
individuals. We must set up a legal association like the Jewish
Defense League (DFL) in the
United States
, made up of Hindu lawyers. As soon as court cases start to be
foisted on these missionaries, their conduct will change if not
their attitude. But they have vast monetary resources behind
them. Which Hindu moneybags would finance a Hindu legal team?
Which Hindu lawyers (of which there are lakhs) would ever back a
dedicated Hindu cause? At the root of our problem is the Hindu
social and business elite class who could care less about their
Dharma though they make huge donations to Balaji at Tirumala. We
have to face this fact. We can do nothing until our own public
intellectuals and rich socialites and industrialist class are
behind us.”
Here
is a case study wherein the ‘Sify.com’,
a major online Indian media outlet is working with ‘World
Vision’, an evangelical body openly indulging in unabashed
proselytisation with huge funds at their disposal for this
purpose [Rs 256 crores this year according to Home Ministry
records]. Details about Sify.com’s partnership with the ‘World
Vision’, patently a missionary agency, are
online at: http://sify.com/news/antichildlabourday/
On this page, they are blatantly fundraising for them
without informing the Indian public that they are missionaries.
‘World Vision’ also regularly advertises on Sify. It should
be noted that the ‘World Vision’ has been implicated in
induced conversions in Orissa and in
Sri Lanka
during the Tsunami. Look at a quote from the World Vision's
website regarding their “noble” mission: “Wherever we
work, our prayer is that our efforts will be used by God to heal
and strengthen people's relationships with Him and with one
another. We do this by demonstrating God's unconditional love
for all people through our service to the poor — which
includes providing for daily needs, working to build peace and
promote justice, and partnering with churches and individuals to
encourage spiritual transformation.”
Using
Internet, ordinary individuals now have the same tools of
potential exposure on a scale comparable to large media
companies. Internet Media is the way to go.
Refer
to The
Great Joke that is
Indian Media and Who
controls the mainstream media in
India
?
***
The
Usurpation of Control of the Indian Media has been done by the
Americans
India happens to be one of the very few major countries in the
world whose dominant media is controlled directly or indirectly
by foreigners. The usurpation of control has actually been by
Americans, much of it through surrogates of evangelical
organisations that are in fact quasi-government agencies.
Paradoxically, Leftist Indian political parties supposedly
hostile to a
US
presence in
India
have been subdued with alacrity by these quasi-state religious
agencies, which have been operating effectively in other parts
of the world as well.
In
India, most English
language media outlets, are,
in effect, vying with each other to accelerate the fragmentation
of
India
in consonance with Anglo-American goals.
Viceroys to
India
in the decade before independence, Linlithgow, Wavell and
Mountbatten are destined to prove prescient about its innate
fractiousness. The alleged oppression of minorities is the
political bridgehead that modern evangelical organisations have
entrenched in the public consciousness, relentlessly distorting
its reality and using it ruthlessly to fuel discontent within
India
. By deliberately misrepresenting the Godhra communal riots as
genocide, though both communities suffered, the
media has gleefully incited Islamic terrorist attacks against
Hindus and harsh international condemnation of
India
. As a corollary, the rise of the BJP inspired them to
equate mundane nationalist aspirations with the oxymoron of
Hindu extremism.
(source:
Indian
Media's War on Hinduism - By Swami Jyotirmayananda
and The
Usurpation of Control of the Indian Media has been done by the
Americans - By Gautam
Sen
Donate
to worthy causes: California
Textbook Case
and IDRF
Top
of Page
It
is unfashionable to be a Hindu in India
Why
is Hinduism the favorite whipping boy of liberals and seculars?
***
Henry
David Thoreau (1817-1862) American Philosopher,
Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist and writer. It was
Ralph Waldo Emerson who aroused in him a true enthusiasm for
India.
The Concord
sage eloquently wrote:
"In
the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and
cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat
Geeta, since whose composition
years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our
modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.
"
"I
would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a
good book, read the Bhagvat-Geeta .... translated by Charles
Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by
Yankees...."Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare
seems sometimes youthfully green..."
***
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German
philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers
of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to
have access to translations of philosophical material from
India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly
affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes
a large part of his psychological theory from the writings of
Schopenhauer.
"From
every sentence (of the Upanishads)
deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is
pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit...."In the
whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as
that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to
become the faith of the people."
"
It has been the solace of my life -- it will be the solace of my
death."
***
The age-old
value system of Indian consciousness revolves around the
concepts of vasudhaiva kutumbakam (this
world is one family) and ekama sat
viprah bahudha vadanti (the universal reality is the
same, but different people interpret it by different names). Why
there are different yardsticks while dealing with religions?
B R Ambedkar wrote:
“It is said that Hinduism is said to divide
people and Islam is said to bind them. But this is only half-truth.
For Islam divides and inexorably as it binds. The brotherhood of
Islam is not universal brotherhood of man. It is brotherhood of
Muslims for Muslims only. Another defect of Islam is
that it is a system of social self-government and is
incompatible with local self-government because the allegiance
of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country of his
residence but on the faith to which he belongs.
(source:
Secular
Politics Communal Agenda: A History of Politics in
India
from 1860 to 1953 - By Prof Makkhan Lal p.
59). Donate
to worthy causes: California
Textbook Case
and IDRF.
Refer
to
The
Indian Jews - By Jakob de Roover - outlookindia.com and
Indian
Realist
Inspired
by The
Mahabharata
Jean-Marie
Gustave Le Clezio (1940
- ) French author
and Nobel laureate for Literature says:
"The
great Indian epic The Mahabharata
has been a sustaining factor in my life — not so
much philosophically but in seeking stories."
(source:
Le
Clézio inspired by The
Mahabharata -
tribuneindia.com).
Why
is Hinduism the favorite whipping boy of liberals and seculars?
For how long a nationalist is supposed to bend backwards to be
considered liberal and tolerant?.
Media
made me believe that Hindus, due to their majority status should
be more tolerant of minorities. Any terrorist act is a handiwork
of a few rotten apples, not the whole community and I agree with
it wholeheartedly. Then there is a constant stream of intellectuals,
liberals and self-important celebrities (Karan
Thapar, Shabana Azmi, Arundhati Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Burkha
Dutt, Sagrika Ghosh, Pranay Roy and others) who
repeatedly bash Hinduism on points like casteism,
lack of unity, superstition among others. I agree with them on
these too. So
called backward categories now enjoy almost 40 per cent
reservations. It’s the sins of their forefathers that upper
caste Hindus of current generation have to pay for now.
Refer
to The
Most Loathsome people in India 2008
But
why are there double standards
when our intelligentsia talks about Muslims?
In spite of so much violence based
on Islam (in India
only) how come they are always poor, under-represented,
righteous minority who deserve to be protected from Hindu
majority?
Let
me explain here in case of
Jammu and Kashmir:
1)
More than four lakh Kashmiri Pandits, living all over the
Kashmir division, were driven out of their homeland of thousands
of years after sustained violence that included rape, arson,
killings and robberies at gun-point. A large number of them are
still living in refugee camps in single room tin shacks or tents
even after 20 years of their displacement.

The
Glory of Angkor Wat - Temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu.
'Secularism'
is synonymous with 'anti-Hinduism'
in India.
Cowards
always Blame the Victims: Double
Standards of Indian English Media - A constant stream of intellectuals,
liberals and self-important celebrities (Karan Thapar, Shabana
Azmi, Arundhati Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Burkha Dutt, Sagrika
Ghosh, Pranay Roy and others) who
repeatedly bash Hinduism but act cowardly when it comes to
criticizing Islam and its holy Terror on innocent Indians.
Will
India
minus the K-word" (Kashmir) or A-word (Arunachal Pradesh)
or N-word (Nagaland) still be India
? No.
India
will not be
India
.
India
is much more than a mere geographical, sociological or
philosophical idea in the minds of the English-speaking
intelligentsia living in their gated communities.
India
is unlike any other nation, a nation so sharply divided and so
diverse, culturally, racially and linguistically, that the only
way the sufferings of millions of people can be mitigated, the
only way natural and manmade disasters can be confronted and
overcome is to keep
India
together ~ whatever it takes.
Watch
video Hindus
Under Siege and
India
under attack and Congress
: A Merchent of Death for Hindus in
India
/
Delhi
Blast and Secularism
in
India
exposed
Refer
to Deconstructing Arundhati Roy and her
tribe
- By
Professor N D
Batra - The
Statesman 9/3/2008
and
Secularism
has degenerated as the backbone of terrorists & evangelists
- By
Dr Gautam Sen
and The
Indian Jews - By Jakob de Roover - outlookindia.com
Watch video - Intellectual
Terrorism and Subversion in polity – By Radha Rajan and
Indian
Realist
Refer
to What
the Islamic Invaders Did to
India
– By Rizwan Salim
- islamwatch.org
***
Compare
the news space that the sufferings of four lakh Hindu Pandits
ges as compared to 3-4000 Muslims (more or less) of Gujarat.
2)
During the recent protests in J&K over the Amarnath land
issue, dozens of Hindu pilgrims were attacked and beaten up by
Muslim mobs in
Kashmir. Three Sikh truck drivers from
Jammu
region were critically injured in different places there. Thirty
buildings belonging to Hindus were burnt down in Poonch. There
were grenade attacks on Hindu processions in Kishtwar. Hindus
were attacked in Rajouri too.
3)
How many Hindu temples are left in
Kashmir
now? Of a few temples buildings still intact, how many are still
used as temples?
4)
Why Kashmiris are whining about azadi when J&K is one of the
richest states in India, receives more aid than many of states combined, has a separate
constitution, flag and article 370?
Why
don’t Kashmiris ask for Azadi of
Pakistan
occupied
Kashmir
(PoK) too?
5)
Hindu
extremists like VHP, Bajrang Dal etc are a nuisance at worst.
All they do is raise annoying protests against imaginary insults
to Hinduism like Valentine’s Day, some art etc. Students
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and related organisations on
the other hand are accused of treason and terrorist acts all
over India. Still there is a talk of lifting ban on SIMI and banning the
VHP, Bajrang Dal.
I
don’t have anything against any religious group. They are free
to practice their religion, as long as they are reasonable,
don’t force their ideology on others and respect sovereignty
of the nation. Is it too much to ask for? For how long a
nationalist who by chance happens to be a Hindu is supposed to
bend backwards to be considered liberal and tolerant?
(source:
It
is unfashionable to be a Hindu - merinews.com). Refer
to Who
are the British creationists? - BBC
***
The
Self Loathing Leftists and Liberals of India
Modern India’s modern myths
The
first of these myths is that India
itself is a myth. The
Mahabharata and the Ramayana
are myths that were written by men who lived in a place without
geography or history. Sanskrit came
from this same nebulous arena as did the Vedas and the
mathematicians who invented the zero.
The idea of India did not exist until the British created it is
the contention of India’s
self-loathing ‘liberals’. In the words of a historian
of recent celebrity, India is an ‘unnatural
nation as well as an unlikely democracy’. He
does not bother to explain what he means by ‘unnatural
nation’ since the nation state itself did not exist till not
very long ago. Long, long before that there was a country called
Bharat whose borders were clearly defined and whose certainty
continues to be perfectly understood by ordinary Indians across
India.
When a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu or
Karnataka sets off to attend the Kumbh
Mela in Allahabad, he does not
think that he is travelling to a foreign country. When
a family from Bengal travels to Banaras or Mathura to drop off
some inconvenient widow in one of the ashrams, there they do not
think they are travelling abroad either. The
only people who have a problem defining India are liberal,
English-speaking ‘secular intellectuals’ who usually don’t
speak even a single Indian language. They understand no more
about the idea of India than those intellectual refugees from
the West who make India their home and become ‘experts’ on
all things Indian. They belong to the same club because they all
make a living out of writing books, histories and articles about
this India that is so unnatural a nation, so accidental a
country.
The second myth perpetrated by the self-loathers is that there
is no such thing as Hindu India.
There is a ‘composite’
culture that is Hindu and Muslim and that is that.
Anyone who dares suggest that for many centuries before Islam
came to our shores India was a Hindu
country is instantly reviled as a rank ‘communalist’ of the
Hindutva kind. It is important to note here that the
self-loathing liberals have no problem describing a period of
Indian history as Mughul and
another period as British.
The problem is ‘Hindu’ India because
the premise that there was a country called Bharat that was
entirely Hindu in ancient times is somehow offensive.
Modern India has given birth to modern myths. The most popular
myth among ‘secular liberals’ in these times of Islamist
terrorism is that the Indian state is so evil that the jihad is
a valid response. You would not think that there could be an alliance between
religious fanatics and those who believe they are intellectuals
of liberal, left persuasion but in India there is. This bizarre
alliance is so strong that Indian leftists have become the most
ardent spokesmen (and women) of the Islamists. They
find themselves in this extraordinary role because nothing
motivates them more than their passionate loathing of India.
May I suggest a cure. It is time for them to spend an extended
holiday in Pakistan or Bangladesh to discover what countries in
which history is myth are really like.
(source:
Modern
India’s modern myths - By Tavleen Singh -
indianexpress.com).
Top
of Page
The
Hindu Rate Of Wrath
***
When the Mahatma's cowards erupt in fury, it hurts. It isn't
terror.
Is
there such a thing as 'Hindu terrorism', as the arrest of Sadhvi
Pragya Singh Thakur for the recent
Malegaon
blasts may tend to prove? Well, I guess I was asked to write
this column because I am one of that rare breed of foreign
correspondents-a lover of Hindus!
A
born Frenchman,
Catholic-educated and non-Hindu, I do hope I'll be given some
credit for my opinions, which are not the product of my parents'
ideas, my education or my atavism, but garnered from 25 years of
reporting in South Asia (for Le Journal de Geneve and Le
Figaro).
In
the early 1980s, when I started freelancing in south
India
, doing photo features on Kalaripayattu, the Ayyappa festival,
or the Ayyanars, I slowly realised that
the genius of this country lies in its Hindu ethos, in the true
spirituality behind Hinduism.
The
average Hindu you meet in a million villages possesses this
simple, innate spirituality and accepts your diversity, whether
you are Christian or Muslim, Jain or Arab, French or Chinese. It
is this Hinduness that makes the Indian Christian different
from, say, a French Christian, or the Indian Muslim unlike a
Saudi Muslim. I also learnt that Hindus not only believed that
the divine could manifest itself at different times, under
different names, using different scriptures (not to mention the
wonderful avatar concept, the perfect answer to 21st century
religious strife) but that they had also given refuge to
persecuted minorities from across the world-Syrian Christians,
Parsis, Jews, Armenians, and today, Tibetans.
In
3,500 years of existence, Hindus have never militarily invaded
another country, never tried to impose their religion on others
by force or induced conversions. You cannot find anybody less
fundamentalist than a Hindu in the world and it saddens me when
I see the Indian and western press
equating terrorist groups like Islamist SIMI, which blow up
innocent civilians, with ordinary, angry Hindus who burn
churches without killing anybody.
We
know also that most of these communal incidents often involve
persons from the same groups-often Dalits and tribals-some of
who have converted to Christianity and others not. However
reprehensible the destruction of Babri Masjid, no Muslim was
killed in the process; compare this to the 'vengeance'
bombings of 1993 in
Bombay
, which wiped out hundreds of innocents, mostly
Hindus. Yet the Babri Masjid destruction is often described by
journalists as the more horrible act of the two. We also
remember how Sharad Pawar,
when he was chief minister of Maharashtra in 1993, lied
about a bomb that was supposed to have gone off in a
Muslim locality of
Bombay
.
I
have never been politically correct, but have always written
what I have discovered while reporting. Let me then be
straightforward about this so-called Hindu terror. Hindus,
since the first Arab invasions,
have been at the receiving end of terrorism, whether it was by
Timur, who killed 1,00,000 Hindus in a single day in 1399, or by
the Portuguese Inquisition
which crucified Brahmins in
Goa
.
Today,
Hindus are still being targeted: there were one
million Hindus in the
Kashmir
valley in 1900; only a few hundred remain, the rest
having fled in terror.
Blasts
after blasts have killed hundreds of innocent Hindus all over
India
in the last four years.
Hindus,
the overwhelming majority community of this country, are being
made fun of, are despised, are deprived of the most basic
facilities for one of their most sacred pilgrimages in Amarnath
while their government heavily sponsors the Haj.
They
see their brothers and sisters converted to Christianity through
inducements and financial traps, see a
harmless 84-year-old swami and a sadhvi brutally murdered.
Their gods are blasphemed. So
sometimes, enough is enough.
At
some point, after years or even centuries of submitting like sheep
to slaughter, Hindus-whom the Mahatma
Gandhi once gently called cowards - erupt in
uncontrolled fury. And it hurts badly.
It
happened in
Gujarat
. It happened in
Jammu
, then in Kandhamal, Mangalore, and
Malegaon
. It may happen again elsewhere. What should be
understood is that this is a spontaneous revolution on the
ground, by ordinary Hindus, without any planning from the
political leadership.
Therefore,
the BJP, instead of acting embarrassed, should not disown those
who choose other means to let their anguished voices be heard.
There are about a billion Hindus, one in every six persons on
this planet. They form one of the most successful, law-abiding
and integrated communities in the world today.
Can
you call them terrorists?
(source: The
Hindu Rate Of Wrath – By
Francois Gautier -
outlookindia.com National/Opinion November
10 2008). Visit Francois
Gautier
Refer
to Analysis
of Saadhvi Pragyas Case as projected by Media – By
Chanchal Malviya
- indiacause.com and
and
After
Haj, it is Christian pilgrimage - crusadewatch.org
and
The
Indian Jews - By Jakob de Roover - outlookindia.com and
By
Bandyopadhyay
Arindam
Also
refer to Hindu
terrorism’ – See the writing on the wall - By Radha
Rajan - vigilonline.com. Refer to Islamic
terrorism in
India and What
the Islamic Invaders Did to India - By Rizwan Salim and
History
of Jihad against the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
(638 -- Ongoing).
Donate
to worthy causes: California
Textbook Case
and IDRF.
Refer to
Indian
Realist
Refer
to What
the Islamic Invaders Did to
India
– By Rizwan Salim
- islamwatch.org
Refer
to Christian
Terrorists threaten to kill Puri Shankaracharya
- odishatoday.com
The Jews like
the Hindus are born into their religion; like Hindus they do not
convert others to their faith and like Hindus again, possess a
sense of homeland. Both Hindus
and Jews
realize now, after immense suffering and deprivation that Islam
and White Christianity have caused them both, that
neither they as peoples nor their religion can survive without
territory that is theirs by right and by a sense of historical
belonging.
Top
of Page
The disadvantaged Hindus,
pampered Minorities
Secularism
is for idiot Hindus. Minorities get to destroy the Hindu faith
thru jihad, self-determination, evangelizing and US State dept.
Add UN to the list.
***
Anti-Brahminism
and Anti-Semitism: Two strains of the same deadly virus
Anti-Brahminism and anti-Semitism are two forms of
the same ethno-religious prejudice directed at an accomplished
minority group who are perceived, wrongly, to be the cause of a
nation's social and economic ills, or, otherwise, to be
controlling a nation's religious, cultural, political, or
economic destiny from behind the scenes in their own interest.
Dr. Koenraad Elst, in Indigenous
Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar, writes, "In
fact, apart from anti-Judaism, the anti-Brahmin campaign started
by [Christian] missionaries is the biggest vilification campaign
in world history."
Anti-Brahminism has become the dominant theme in the
speeches and writings of Indian secularists of all sorts.
(source: Anti-Brahminism
and Anti-Semitism: Two strains of the same deadly virus)
***
"Muslims
say they are proud to be Muslim, Christians say they are proud
to be Christian, Sikhs say they are proud to be Sikh, and Hindus
say they are proud to be ... secular."
***
India
’s putrid political dispensation, sham-secularist politicians
take sadistic pleasure in heaping scorn and calumny on the
religious icons of the majority community, namely the Hindus.
Articles
29 and 30 ostensibly incorporated for protecting the
cultural and educational interests of minorities, fly in the
face of the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution.
They
have been the source of promoting divisiveness between the
majority and the minority communities thereby delivering a body
blow to the ideal of unity and integrity of the Indian nation.
This
invidious constitutional provision has placed the Hindus at a
serious disadvantage, not only vis a vis the minorities, but
even in terms of the secular ideal professed by the
Indian
State
. If
we compare the theory and practice of democracy and secularism
as practiced in
India
with the British parliamentary system, considered to be the role
model for our country, we find that the two systems are poles
apart. In the United Kingdom
uniform civil and criminal laws are enacted and enforced for all
citizens, irrespective of their religious beliefs, creed or
gender.
Barely
6l years after
Independence
once again the Indian nation stands at the crossroads of
history. The ideal of evolving a common nationality by
assimilating different religious identities into a national
identity, that is the Indian identity, has remained a pipedream.
The reasons for this abject failure to weld all citizens into
Indians first and Indians last are many and varied. The most
important reason for this monumental failure is that the
post-Independence political leadership of
India
has remained a prisoner of the same grievance centric minority
politics which had led to Partition of the country in 1947.
For
the last six decades the same divisive ideology, nurtured in the
garb of secularism, has remained the dominant theme of Indian
polity. The situation was further exacerbated by the insertion
of secularism in 1976 as an essential feature of Indian
Constitution during the Emergency which gave a cross-eyed slant
to the Indian polity.
History
is an eloquent witness to the fact that the Hindu
civilization has always been exceptionally tolerant
and peaceful, both by scriptural tradition and ethical training.
But during the last few decades the belligerence
of the largest minority, namely the Muslims, has
begun to bedevil the Indian state much in the same manner as it
did in the pre-Partition era. Unfortunately the old mindset of
minority-appeasement continued to dominate the Indian leadership
even after
India
attained
Independence
.
It was
prominently reflected in the incorporation of Articles 29 and 30
in the Constitution which conferred certain extraordinary rights
and privileges on minority communities thereby elevating them
the status of some kind of ‘super
citizens’ because no comparable rights were allowed
to members of the majority community. These two discriminatory Articles, ostensibly
incorporated for protecting the cultural and educational
interests of minorities, fly in the
face of the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution.
Presently
the Indian political system is choc-a-bloc with unprincipled
busy bodies who consider minority-centric vote-bank politics,
deceptively woven into the fabric of secularism, as passport to
power. In no other country the word secularism is misused in
such a devious manner as it is in our country. Interestingly
most politicians wearing secularism on their sleeves are either
casteist leaders or leftover leftists of yesteryears who have
lost their secular moorings. Indian political theatre has an
overwhelming presence of unprincipled politicians who consider
minority-centric vote-bank politics the easiest passport to
power.
They have
no moral compunction in singing paeans to secularism while
donning skull-caps for attending Iftar parties, or haranguing in
caste-based congregations of Brahmins, Yadavs or Rajputs in a
brazen bid to ride to political power. Surprise of surprises,
most of them defend with great gusto the grant of religion
specific dole called Haj subsidy, but oppose enactment of a
common civil code as envisioned in Article 44 of the
Constitution!
Despite tall claims
often made by politicians and orchestrated by the mainstream
media, the fact remains that today
India
is anything but a secular democracy.
The Indian
political system fails to fulfil the two most important
prerequisites of a secular democratic nation. First, the Indian
Constitution falls short of the basic postulate of uniform
application of all laws to its citizens, irrespective of their
caste creed, religion or gender. Absence of a common civil code
is a glaring example of non-application of uniform laws in the
matter of marriage and inheritance. It is well known that the
Muslim women, constituting nearly 7.5 per cent of the
country’s population, continue to be denied the right to
equality because of strident opposition by the community’s
clerics and community leaders. The second pre-condition for a
country’s claim to be a democracy is the principle of equality
before law. As mentioned above, Articles 29 and 30 of the Indian
Constitution are a flagrant violation of the principle of
equality before law. Even Article 370 conferring a special
status on the state of Jammu & Kashmir is an aberration
because it does not gel with the right to equality enshrined in
the Constitution. For instance, under Article 370, no law
enacted by the Indian Parliament is applicable to the state of
Jammu & Kashmir, unless it is duly approved by the state
legislature. Even the Governor of J&K state takes oath of
his office under the separatist constitution of that state,
while Governors of all other states take oath under the Indian
Constitution. By allowing a federating state, and only one
single state, to have a separate Constitution is a wanton
violation of the principle of one nation, one country.
It
is antitheatical to the very idea of national unity.
As
highlighted by K. Subrahmanyam
in a very perceptive article, (Forces
of Fragmentation, Behind the Fig Leaf of Secularism,
The Times of
India
,
New Delhi
, April 18, 2002) “No country
can call itself democratic or secular unless it has a common
civil law.” Democracy implies that all citizens have equal
rights and are to be treated equally under the rule of law.
Allowing different personal laws is a negation of both
secularism and democracy because it means that a person’s
religion determines the laws by which he or she is to be
governed.
For
that reason
India
cannot be termed either as a secular state or a democracy.
If we
compare the theory and practice of democracy and secularism as
practiced in
India
with the British parliamentary system, considered to be the role
model for our country, we find that the two systems are poles
apart. In the
United Kingdom
uniform civil and criminal laws are enacted and enforced for all
citizens, irrespective of their religious beliefs, creed or
gender, without making any exception. But not so in
India
. Unfortunately that ideal of uniform application of all laws to
every citizens, the quintessential hallmark of secularism, is
totally missing in the Indian system. The recent decision of
Government of India to send a 15-member delegation led by its Labour
Minister, Oscar Fernandes,
to Va
tican
to participate in the canonization of Sister
Alphonsa by Pope Benedict XVI, exposes the ugly face
of Indian secularism. Not to be left behind in the race for
vote-banks, the CPM-supported Kerala government also sent a
delegation headed by a minister to Vatican.
Interestingly
the same politicians had no qualms in filing a derogatory
affidavit in the Supreme
Court denying the existence of Sri Ram in a bid to destroy the
Ram Sethu.
Interestingly
the British commitment to secular ideal has not deterred the
UK
government from declaring itself a Christian
nation. Upon ascending the throne, the monarch
invariably assumes the title “defender
of the faith”, and all important state functions,
including the coronation and inauguration of the Parliament
session are accompanied by a Christian prayer, often led by the Archbishop
of Canterbury himself.
In sharp
contrast, in
India
’s putrid political dispensation,
sham-secularist politicians take
sadistic pleasure in heaping scorn and calumny on the religious
icons of the majority community, namely the Hindus.
No wonder, the ideal of forging a common nationality has eluded
the Indian nation. We have remained a nation divided against
itself entirely due to serious flaws in
our Constitution and weird machinations of
self-serving politicians.
(source: The
disadvantaged Hindus, pampered Minorities
- By
R K Ohri
IPS
Retd).
Refer
to
The
Indian Jews - By Jakob de Roover - outlookindia.com and
|