h o m e

g l i m p s e s   -   I I I

c o n t e n t s

India: A Geographic expression?

"India is just a geographic expression. It is only the British who united us. We aren't even one nation - for a nation must have one language, one religion, one race." How often we hear that hurled at us!

Of some 180 countries in the world, notes Eric J. Hobsbawm, one of the world's foremost scholars on nationalism, not many more than a dozen states can plausibly claim that their citizens coincide in any real sense with a single ethnic or linguistic group."

Little do people know that the expression - "a geographic expression" - is Count Metternich's (1773-1859) description. Not of India, but of Germany! It is only in 1871 that 300 separate and practically independent feuding states and principalities were welded into one "Germany." Today "geographic expression" is a country and its reunification is hailed by our intellectuals as the erasing away of an artificial partition. But we, Indians have no business continuing as one!

A nation is one the people of which are from a common race? The Kings and Queens of England are a symbol of the oneness of that country - most certainly for the educated Indians. They would be surprised to read, that "...there has not been an 'English' dynasty ruling in London since the 11th century to read that Prince Albert, Victoria's consort, wrote to the King of Prussia as a German...," that it was only the anti-German sentiment which swept England during the First World War which forced "the British royal family to change the venerable dynastic name to Guelph for the less German-sounding Windsor"

The states in Latin America, the states which have resulted from even more recent settlement – Australia, and New Zealand – the states in the Middle East – Jordan, for instance are even more the constructs of colonial powers and the rest. Winston Churchill boasted how he had created some of the present states in the Middle East one afternoon holidaying on a beach, by just drawing lines on a map! The British decided that India and Pakistan shall be two, and so they are.  

The land, its mountains and rivers are venerated in the Rig Veda, in the Arthava Veda in the very way they are in Bankim’s Vande Mataram or Tagore’s Jana-Gana_Mana. The land is celebrated and venerated from those ancient times not just because of the great bounties it bestows on us but because it is seen as the Karma-bhumi, because it has been the place where the greatest souls revered by the people have performed great deeds – of nobility, of valour – where they have attained the deepest insights. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana describe warring states but they are the epics of one people. Adi Shankaracharya traverses the country. He is received with the same reverence everywhere – in Dwaraka in the West King Sudhanva attends his discourses along with his court nobles; when Shankara visits the royal court, the King washes his feet and makes him sit on an elevated dias; in Nepal in the North he is received as a royal guest; in Kanchi in the South he consecrates a yantra; his maths established in distant parts of the country remain places of pilgrimage throughout the centuries to this day.

Is a nation one the people of which have a common religion? Again the criterion does not hold. Christian states have been fighting each other since they adopted Christianity. The umma of Islam are killing each other to our day - West Pakistanis killing the Mohajirs in Pakistan, the Iranis and Iraqis killing each other, the Afghans - all of one religion. 

Is a nation one whose people have one language? Again Hobsbawn gives a number of examples. Philippines we learn is "a land of hundred tongues but not a single language." The new nation of Pakistan - did not have a common language - it had Urdu, Pushto, Baluchi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Bengali. It did not have a common history. Its people did not constitute a common race. 

And yet we are told that Indians have no business to continue as one!

(source: A Secular Agenda: For saving our country, For welding it - By Arun Shourie p. 3 - 11). (please refer to E. J. Hobsbawm - Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth and Reality Cambridge 1990). 

Note: There has been an often repeated prediction of the "Balkanisation" of India, and that India was an artificial nation created by the British and that it would inevitably break up. But India is still intact and has celebrated 50 years of freedom because of its democracy and pluralism. Till recently, American foreign policy agencies made no secret of their designs on India's unity. When she was US ambassador to the UN, Mrs. Jean Kirkpatrick once said that "the break-up of India is one of the goals of the American foreign policy." Patrick Moynihan, who had held the same job, said more recently, "After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the artificial state India is also bound to break up."

(source: Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar - By Koenraad Elst p. 59-60).

Representative Cynthia McKinney of Georgia was defeated in the primaries, also spoke about the imminent breakup of India because of its 17 separatist movements."

(source: times of india.com - October 4; 2002).

Neither Britain nor the USA wanted the creation of a large state like India. Nor were they in favor of a strong and powerful India. Look at the reaction of the white members of the Commonwealth to Pokhran II! And let us not forget that both the USA and the UK supported the independent movement of the Nagas and Sikh separatism. Even as late as 1995, the Labor Party passed a resolution in which it spoke of Kashmir as separate from India and supported a UN plebiscite. Gujral was so enraged that he called Britain “a third rate power.”

(source: Cut the cord that ties India to Commonwealth - By M.S.N. Menon - TribuneIndia.com).

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) scholar and late curator at the Boston Museum, has observed the following about Indian Nationality:

Two essentials of nationality there are - a geographical unity, and a common historic evolution or culture. These two India possesses superabundantly. 

The fact of India's geographical unity is apparent on the map, and is never, I think, disputed. The idea of social unity has been grasped more than once by individual rulers, - Chandragupta, Asoka, and Vikramaditya.  It was recognized before the Mahabharata was written; when Yudhishtira performed the Rajasuya sacrifice on the occasion of his inauguration as sovereign, a great assembly was held, and to this assembly came Subala (King of Gandhara), etc...and others from the extreme south and north (Dravida, Lanka and Kashmir). No one can say that any such idea as that of a Federated States of India is altogether foreign to the Indian mind. It is for nothing that India's sacred shrines are many and far apart; that one who would visit more than one or two of these must pass over hundreds of miles of Indian soil? Is the passionate adoration of the Indian people for the Ganges thrown away? How much is involved is such phrases as 'The Seven Great Rivers' (of India)! 

Om gange cha yamune chaiva godavari, sarasvati
narmade, sindhu kaveri jale smin sannidhim kuru

"Hail! O ye Ganges, Jamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada,
Sindhu and Kaveri, come and approach these waters."

(source: Essays on National Idealism - By Ananda K. Coomraswamy Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.1981 p. 7-8).

The most mischievous statement we have of the claim that India has no unity, it is not a nation, were made by the British. However, later, Sir Ramsey Macdonald, at one time Premier declares that India is one in absolutely every sense of the word.

"Political and religious traditions have also welded it into one Indian consciousness. This spiritual unity dates from very early times in Indian culture."

There is no greater uniting force known among people and nations in the world than religion. This applies with pre-eminent emphasis to India.    

(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland p. 238-289. For more please refer to chapter on European Imperialism). For more refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII).

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

Top of Page

Svetlana Stalin and Hindu philosophy

Civilizational traits of different races, their religious preferences, prejudices and cravings for riches are part of human complexities which go beyond any set doctrine. Even Stalin's younger daughter Svetlana took to astrology while deciding to marry an Indian Marxist ideologue, Brajesh Singh, elder brother of former External Affairs Minister Dinesh Singh. Their marriage was secretly solemnized in accordance with Hindu rituals. 

Some years later when her husband passed away, she visited India to immerse her husband's ashes in the river Ganga. She was anxious to stay in India for a longer period having been attracted to Hindu philosophy. But the Russian embassy in Delhi would not consent to the extension of her visa, which was suspicious of her motives right from the start. 

(source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020208/edit.htm#3).

Top of Page

Pride in Hinduism   

Though Vivekanada was world famous as a "Hindu monk" he launched the still popular slogan:

"Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain.

"Say it with pride : we are Hindus", is what Swami Vivekananda taught his fellow Hindus. Some anti-Hindu people insinuate that this slogan implies a doctrine that Hindus are superior. In that case, Black is beautiful would mean that white is not beautiful; it would therefore be a racist slogan and quite reprehensible. In fact, every colour is beautiful in its own way, and it is quite alright to express pride in the long-despised black colour. And everyone is entitled to have and to express pride in his identity. Expressing pride is not a matter of superiority, but being denied the right to express pride, is very certainly a proof of an imposed inferiority. 

In order to instill a proper and well-founded pride in Hindus, it is (once more) most important to restore the truth about Hindu history, especially about Hindu society's glorious achievements. Pride in being Indian means, for 99%, pride in Hinduism...So, this legitimate pride has to be nourished with broad and in-depth knowledge of Hindu culture. The two enemies of this effort are the secularist morbidity that glorifies the destroyers of Hindu culture, denies the unity and integrity of Hindu culture, and discourages its study altogether.."

Much of India's backwardness has been created by the foreign occupies. This is not just a convenient allegation: in other countries too, we see the destructive impact of foreign occupation on the flourishing of arts and sciences. The flourishing of science needs a safe political as well as economical cradle. In India too, we see total stagnation in the sciences during the entire Muslim period, and a mere passive adoption of Western science under the British rule.

Of the British occupiers, it is known that they destroyed the existing system of education, that they dismantled industries and disturbed agriculture in order to integrate India into the colonial trade system. They also obliterated quite a chunk of Ayurvedic medical knowledge, by discouraging and sometimes even forbidding its practice and teaching. Earlier, the Muslims had destroyed many universities, and if Hindu pandits are such an obscurantist lot, it is largely because the academic framework that gave life to their scholarship, has been destroyed. Hindusthan was always a proverbially rich country. Now, mother Theresa has made it something of a synonym with poverty. But this poverty cannot be blamed on Hindu culture. 

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India Issues Before Hindu Society SKU: INBK2650 p. 349-353 and Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst  Publisher: Rupa ISBN: 81-7167-519-0  p.116).http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ayodhya/).

Microcomputer pioneer Adam Osborne thinks India has the potential to be the next Japan. Want he has in mind is technological achievement and a vibrant economy, nothing hazy and rapturous. But the clue to this very tangible kind of greatness is pride: "There is no doubt in my mind that India is one of the great financial success stories of the future. The curse of India is that Indians lack pride in being Indian. The moment they have that pride, India will be the next Japan." 

(source: Times of India, 7/12/1990). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Top of Page

Kashmir's Hindu past

Kashmir actually has been one of the major nurseries of Indian civilization. 

For millennia, it was known to be a Shivite centre, especially in the valley, which was considered to be the embodiment of Goddess Uma, wife of Lord Shiva.

Srinagar, situated on the banks of the Jhelum, finds mention in the Rig Veda. It is a known fact that Vedic Indians who settled along the banks of the Indus were very much familiar with the valley.

Kashmir has been an integral part of Indian civilization and culture. It is a symbol of secularism which is the very basis of the Indian nationhood. This secular legacy is visible even in the Amarnath temple tradition. The offerings there are shared by both the Hindu and Muslim custodians of the temple.

(source: Tribune India)

Long before there was a Pakistan and in fact long before a Muslim had ever stepped foot in Kashmir, the region was part and parcel of India and Hinduism’s golden heritage. Kashmir finds repeated mention in the Rig-Veda, the oldest philosophical treatise in the world dated to over 6000 thousand years ago, and in the Mahabharat, a subsequent epic that is itself dated to over 4000 years ago. The descendants of Arjun, the fearless warrior who turned the tide of the Kurukshetra war in the Mahabharat, settled down in Kashmir as rulers.

In 300 B. C., Kashmir was part of the Mauryan Empire of India. Ashoka, the greatest Mauryan ruler who united nearly the entire subcontinent, founded Srinagar, the current capital of Kashmir. Kashmir was part of the empire of subsequent great Indian rulers such as Kanishka and Harshavardhan. The region served as a fountainhead of Hindu religion and was an established center of education in the subcontinent. The marvelous Sun temple was built by King Lalitaditya, who ruled much of North India around 600 A. D. Some of the holiest Hindu shrines such as Amarnath in Kashmir valley and Vaishno Devi near Jammu are visited by millions of Hindu devotees every year.

In contrast to its glorious Hindu heritage, the Muslim history of Kashmir is full of violence, oppression, conversions to Islam and decimation of the Hindu population, its culture and its monuments. The first Muslim invasion occurred in the 12 century A. D. Within 200 years, only 11 Hindu families remained in Kashmir valley. The pogroms against Hindus continued until the British restored Hindu rule in the 19^th century.

(source: Kashmir Herald - Editorial).

The secularists in India, have generally kept quiet about the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, and, in fact, repeatedly extended support to separatist elements in the Valley in the garb of protection of human right

(source: Truth in Gujarat - By Balbir K Punj - Daily Pioneer.com April 25th 02). For more refer to Kashmiri Pandits and Communist Betrayl - Kashmir Wail of A Valley).

Kashmiri Hindus (Pandits) are in their eleventh year of exile after Islamic religious fundamentalists in the valley of Kashmir took to armed subversion and terrorism and drove them out of their centuries old habitat. 

(source: Panun Kashmir.org). Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal"  - By Tathagata Roy

Top of Page

English Educators of India

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) scholar and art historian, has written: 

" One of the most remarkable features of British rule in India has been the fact that the greatest injuries done to the people of India have taken the outward form of blessings. Of this Education is a striking example; for no more crushing blows have ever been struck at the root of Indian National evolution than those which have been struck often with other, and the best intentions, in the name of Education. It is sometimes said by friends of India that the National movement is the natural result of English education, and one of which England should be proud, as showing that, under 'civilization' and the Pax Britannica, Indians are becoming, at last, capable of self-government. The facts are otherwise. If Indians are still capable of self-government, it is in spite of all the anti-national tendencies of a system of education that has ignored or despised almost every ideal informing the national culture. 

The most crushing indictment of the Education is the fact that it destroys, in the great majority of those upon whom it is inflicted, all capacity for the appreciation of Indian culture. Speak to any graduate of an Indian University, of the ideals of the Mahabharata - he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare; talk to him of religious philosophy - you find that he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe a generation ago, talk to him of Indian dress - he will tell you that they are uncivilized and barbaric....He is indeed a stranger in his own land.

Lord Macaulay, a most pompous and self-important philistine, who believed that a single shelf of a good European library was worth all the literature of India, Arabia and Persia. England, suddenly smitten with the great idea of 'civilizing' India, conceived that the way to do this, was to make Indians like Englishmen. To this task England set herself with the best will in the world, not at all realizing that, as has been so well said by the Abbe Dubois:

" To make a new race of the Hindus, one would have to begin by undermining the very foundations of their civilization, religion, and polity, and by turning them into atheists and barbarians."

And no words of mine could better describe the typical product of Macaulayism. The government practices toleration - by ignoring Indian culture - and the Missionary practices intolerance - by endeavoring to destroy that culture, in schools where education is offered as a bribe, and where the religion of the people is undermined.

Sir George Birchwood truly says: "Our education has destroyed their love of their own literature, the quickening soul of a people, and their delight in their own arts and worst of all, their repose in their own traditional and national religion. It has brought discontent in every family so far as its baneful influences have reached." 

The root of the question is this,  that modern 'education' which Englishmen are so proud of having 'given' to India, is really based on the assumption - that India is a savage country, which it is England's divine mission to civilize. This is the more or less conscious underlying principle throughout. The fact were more truly realized by Sir Thomas Munro, when he wrote that "if civilization were to be made an article of commerce between the two countries, England would soon be heavily in debt."

In the words of Sir Henry Craik, it is necessary to abandon ..."the senseless attempt to turn an Oriental into a bad imitation of a Western mind. ...It is not a triumph for our education  - it is, on the contrary a satire upon it - when we find the sons of leading natives expressly discouraged by their parents from acquiring any knowledge of the vernacular...We must abandon the vain dream that we can reproduce the English public school on Indian soil. We must recognize that it is a mistake to insist that a man shall not be considered to be an educated man unless he can express his knowledge otherwise than in a language which is not his own.."

(source: Essays on National Idealism - By Ananda K. Coomraswamy Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.1981 p.96 -106). For more information on education refer to chapter Education in Ancient India).

Top of Page

Secularists be warned

Secularism in India smells of hypocrisy, cowardice, an attitude of holier-than-thou and a singular ignorance of history unparalleled in the annals of our sorry times. 

There were no secularists around when Ghazni invaded India 13 times, smashed the lingam in the Somnath Temple and took the pieces to be scattered in front of a masjid in his hometown for his kinsmen to merrily trample over. 

Nor were there any secularists living when, during the long Islamic reign in India, 3,000 temples were demolished. It was considered part of medieval behaviour and so to be taken in one’s stride.

If not Babar it was his general who destroyed a temple in Ayodhya, and despite the hysterical denials of our demented historians, a temple did exist where the Babri masjid once stood and there are enough records — and architectural evidence — to prove the fact. Only the determinedly blind will refuse to accept the testimony of writers like Mirza Jan (1856), Mohammad Asghar (1858), Mirza Rajah Ali Beg Sarur (1787-1867) and Sheikh Md Azmat Ali (1869) who have had no reason to tell a lie.

(source: Secularists be warned - By M V Kamath - Hindustan Times). For more refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught). 

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal"  - By Tathagata Roy

Our secularists are only fooling themselves if they believe that all the sinners belong to the parivar. The damage unwittingly being done to the Hindu psyche by the so-called secularists needs to be understood. It has so far gone unchallenged. The majority of the Hindus feels assaulted from all sides. The silent Hindu Majority is quivering with anger at the writings of some of our English national dailies and some of the television channels.

A foreign writer, Koenraad Elst has described this tendency among Hindus in India as 'negationism'. The Hindus revel in self-flagellation. It results in two developments: One, it encourages Muslims to extremism and unwillingness to compromise and two, it further deepens Hindu resentment against Muslims. We know with what disastrous consequences. It is very noble on the part of educated Hindus to take on all the blame for any rioting on themselves. But these educated Hindus rightly described as the chatterati totally divorced from reality - do something truly sinister they look down on those less fortunate than themselves attacking their religiosity in ways 'totally unbecoming. Here is an instance of action and reaction: the more the chatterati look down on the hurt feelings of those who strongly believe in their religion' and their gods, the greater is the reaction of the latter and the vicious cycle steadily gets enlarged until emotions explode in unmitigated fury. The truth is that all these years the Congress and the Englishspeaking chatterati - have refused to acknowledge that such a thing as minority communalism exists; it is easier to blame the Sangh Parivar than to do something to counter it.

(source: Blaming Modi is not just enough: what is Congress role in restoring peace? - By M V Kamath - Free Press Journal). 

***

As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of the Art of Living Center recently said in an interview: "In the Indian context, we have respect for all religions. Privilege for one religion above the other is not right. In our country the majority religion does not get facilities. Those people who go to the Kumbh Mela have to pay taxes whereas people are given a grant to go to Haj. These are disparities. That's why there is a sense of resentment in the majority community."  

This is only the beginning. As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar pointed out in the same interview:

"The minority community institutions are fully exempted from taxes whereas majority community institutions are not. In Karnataka, we have 40,000 temples. The income from these temples is Rs 40 crore. Only Rs 50 lakh is spent on the temples, the rest goes to the government. Whereas grants are given to the minority communities (to an extent of Rs 8 crore) while their income is only Rs 50 lakh. These disparities should go. Everybody should be treated equally."

Will someone please explain how diverting money from temples to mosques is 'secular'? This kind of discrimination against the majority-or giving privileges to minorities-extends to businesses also.

The situation gets even more confusing when we get to politics, which is only to be expected. Following the recent explosion in Gujarat, there have been cries from the 'secular forces' to remove its Chief Minister. Interestingly, there were no such calls after the burning alive of passengers on the Sabarmati Express, where the victims were all Hindus. There have been other such instances. A few years ago, more than a hundred pilgrims going to Amarnath were massacred. Over the past ten years, Hindus have been systematically eliminated in Kashmir, and lakhs of Kashmiri Hindus have been living as refugees in Delhi. Yet, there has never been call for the removal of the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

Incidentally, there is a simple if cynical way of answering all the questions posed and resolving the confusion: In India, secularism means minority communalism. Politicians and a part of the intelligentsia have been fooling the public by calling it secularism. This has now been unmasked, for as Abraham Lincoln once said, you cannot fool all the people all the time.

(source: Will someone please answer these ‘secular’ questions? - By Dr. K.S. Shadaksharappa).

Media Coverage of the Events in Gujarat

Even moderate, educated Hindus are beginning to tune out the blather emanating from India's established academics, editorialists, and the ever-ready-to-pander-to-the-Muslim-vote-bank politicians.

(source: Media Coverage of the Events in Gujarat - By Ramesh N. Rao). Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal"  - By Tathagata Roy.

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Top of Page

So-called Indian intellectuals

The Hindus of this country gave sufficient opportunity to these pseudo-secularists to prove themselves. Jawaharlal Nehru was fond of saying that majority communalism is a greater danger than minority communalism. The Hindus accepted this thesis and voted for him. So secure were these pseudo-secularists of their own importance that when the BJP got only two seats in the 1984 general elections, they wrote obituaries of Hindutva. 

Chitra Subramaniam, in her book, India Is For Sale, writes:

 "India is probably the only democracy in the world where intellectuals wear their brain on their sleeves.  In other parts of the civilized world, thinkers draw attention away from themselves and light-seekers are identified for what they are.  In other parts intellectuals come from all walks and all sections of societies. In India they come from circles so closed and incestuous that ultimately they become irrelevant to the country's needs."  

In the process they have become alienated from the rest of the society.  And when the society started to reject them, they evolved the tactics of apportioning the blame somewhere else.  So we have statements like:

"The tragic legacy of Nehru era was that it made all sane Hindu voices of the intelligentsia deny their Hindu roots, speak in an alien voice not rooted in Indian society and inflict their imported notions of culture on the people in a most contemptuous way". 

(source: Amitabh Mattoo in The Independent, December 19,1992.)

"I really believe that one of the failures of Congress secularism was that it treated everything Hindu, thereby Indian, with disdain. 

(source: Tavleen Singh, "Forget the drivel, get fiscal", Indian Express, Oct 15, 1995.)

"The State's ostrich attitude towards God has led to the hijacking of the Hindu religion by illiberal men, and portions between faiths have hardened, perhaps irreparably." 

(source: Ramesh Menon, "Expelling God", Indian Express, Nov 19, 1995.)

India has remained a secular country - unlike its truncated parts - because it has a Hindu majority. 

M J Akbar in his book, India - The Siege Within ISBN 8174760768 Penguin, UK, 1985, p 24), wrote: 

"It needs to be pointed out that India remains a secular state, not because one-fifths of the population is Muslim, Sikh or Christian, and, therefore, obviously has a vested interest in secular constitution, but because nine out of ten Hindus do not believe in violence against the minorities.  If all the Hindus had been zealots, no law-and-order machinery in the world could have prevented the massacre of Muslims who are scattered in villages and towns all across the country." 

(source: Hindu Vivek Kendra). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

Indian Secularists and TV serials (Ramayana and Mahabharata)

Koenraad Elst has remarked: " The secularists had objected to showing of TV serials like Ramayana and Mahabharata, as "religious scriptures" of one community, and therefore their showing should be limited to places and channels of Hindus only! I am amazed at the crudeness in these secularists' understanding of religious and cultural matters. They just don't have the education, or the power of discrimination, to distinguish between cultural epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, and "religious Scriptures". The question has been put to secularists several times, but they have not come up with any trace of an answer: if Indonesian Muslims can venerate Ram, why can't Indian Muslims, as well as Indian secularists, do the same? 

Another non-Hindu tribe that has given a warm reception to the Ramayana and Mahabharat epics, are the European film and theatre audiences. Between 1985 and 1990, these epics have found their way to the public in Europe. they have been top of the bill at the Avignon theatre festival. The BBC has even broadcast the Hindi TV serials. The secularists in India like to portray themselves as the bringers of civilization from the West to obscurantist India. Well, let them not fool anybody. In Europe, not a single critic has come up with the idea that these epics could somehow be "communal". On the contrary, they have all stressed that these stories are about universal human values.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst - Voice of India. Issues Before Hindu Society  SKU: INBK2650 p. 215-216). for more on Indian Secularism, refer to chapter on Glimpses X). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com  

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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

Top of Page

Ramayana and Marxist agenda

Hindus have protested to the American Museum of National History here for exhibiting two documentaries, saying they distort the history of Hinduism and India and asked for their withdrawal.

 In a letter to Director of Public Affairs of the museum, Elaine Charnov, Parishad, Gaurag G Vaishnav says the documentaries - We are not monkeys and In the name of God, produced by Anand Patwardhan - would "not only mislead the viewer because of gross distortions of facts but also help advance politically motivated Marxist agenda."

Patwardhan, an egregious Marxists, attempts to demonstrate that Rama, the main character in the epic Ramayana, was an Aryan who enslaved Dravidian people and called them his monkeys. "Nothing is farther from truth. Not only this presentation tends to continue to advance the recently debunked colonialist theory of Aryans' invasion of India but it also tends to create artificial division among the people of India along imposed on racial lines," the letter released by the Parishad said.

In Indian history, it explained, the word 'Arya' has never referred to a race but rather to nobility of spirit, thought and deeds. "You may be aware that more than a dozen authentic, well-researched and respected classic commentaries are available on Ramayana and Mr  Patwardhan's documentary is certainly one of them."

Indonesian Muslims can venerate Ram, why can't Indian Muslims, as well as Indian secularists, do the same ? The well-informed Indonesians don't object to Ram as a communal character, as a god of one religion and therefore anathema to others.

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

***

Ravana was an Aryan Brahmin

Bishop Caldwell named the languages of the south as Dravidian. That Tamil or some old form of it was spoken throughout India is evident from Valmiki Ramayana where we find Sita conversing with Hanuman in a language different from Sanskrit, the language of the twice-born (Brahmin) in which Ravana spoke; and Sri Rama and his brother were conversing freely with Sugreeva and Vali. But the most surprising fact is that, according to Valmiki, Hanuman was a great Vedic scholar, well-versed in Vyakarana and in Sama Veda, an opinion expressed by Sri Rama also. These facts evidently show that throughout India, there were people who could freely speak both Sanskrit and Tamil, and that Vedas were studied throughout India by all communities from the remote past.  

(source: Perennial Hindu Culture and The Twin Myths – By M. Vaitialingam The Thirumaka Press. 1980 p. 58-67. 

For more refer to chapter on Aryan Invasion Theory). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

***

Where the Gods tread

Sorab Irani made a six part travelogue on the exile route taken by Ram, as a part of celebration for the 50th year of Indian independence. He recreates Lord Rama's journey from Ayodhya to Lanka which covers around 2,000 kms. The film shows fascinating stories of how Ram lives on near Hampi, where villagers pray to fossilised bones of Bali and Sugreev, and then there was the discovery of the Gupt Godavari, an underground spring that welled up in a cave at Chitrakoot, where Godavari, the myth goes, went in disguise to have a glimpse of Lord Ram.

Chitrakoot was a revelation for Irani. "If ever I believed that Ram walked on the earth, it was at Chitrakoot." The sensual flow of the Mandakini, the unspoilt greenery of the landscape, .....the most untouched spot in the entire journey and the most pleasurable." says Irani. 

(source: Where the Gods Tread - The Sunday Review - Times of India August, 7' 1997. Please refer to Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana Through India - By Jonah Blank).

Top of Page

Social Order in Hinduism

The social order in Hinduism is designated, by its integration of functions, to provide at the same time for a common prosperity and to enable every member of society to realize his own perfection. 

Sir George Birchwood remarks in his Sva, 1915, p. 83-5:

"The enactments embodied in the Code of Manu, and cognate law books of the Hindus, have achieved this consummation from before the foundations of Athens and Rome...we trace there the bright outlines of a self-contained, self-dependent, symmetrical, and perfectly harmonious industrial economy, deeply rooted in the popular conviction of its divine character, and protected, through every political and commercial vicissitude, by the absolute power and marvelous wisdom and tact of the Brahmmanical priesthood. Such an ideal social order we should have held impossible of realization, but that it continues to exist, and to afford us, in the yet living results of its daily operation in India, a proof of the superiority, in so many unsuspected ways, of the hieratic civilization of antiquity over the secular, joyless, inane, and self-destructive modern civilization of the West."

(source: Hinduism and Buddhism -  Edited by K. N. Iyengar and Rama P. Coomaraswamy p. 36-37). 

Top of Page

Song of Ganga

They call her sursari, river of the gods. 

From the lotus feet of Brahma to the sage Bhagirath, to the matted locks (jataa) of Shiva from where she emerged as Bhagirathi. She traverses the mountains, singing tuneless songs, unknown lilts, accepting waters from known and unknown tributaries, stopping for none and carrying all with her without discrimination.

Not very far from Gaumukh where the Bhagirathi descends upon the earth from among the heights of the Himalayas, between the Nar and the Narayan peaks, from the bowels of the earth, bubbles up another river - the Alaknanda. Full of fun and frolic, she hurtles down the mountains, under the rock bridge built by Bhima, kissing the feet of the Lord of Badrinath and the temple of Adi Sankaracharya devastating all with her beauty and speed. At Vishnu Prayag, she finds a friend, the Ghagharia which brings with it news of the Valley of Flowers and the lake at Hemkunt Saheb.

Together, like chattering sisters, they continue on their way, laughing, talking, rushing to be on their way. The trees and the flowers, the stones and the sand, the mountains and the sky smile as they watch over their progress.

When they reach Nand Prayag, their circle expands as they receive in to their midst the Nandakini. Soft and dainty, the Nandakini comes tripping over the rocks and boulders like a fairy. On its banks smile exquisite flowers while there is nary a soul to sully its purity.
The Alaknanda, now the elder sister, welcomes the new entrant, carrying her in her arms. The journey is still long.

Cutting through the mountains, pushing through the rocks, they gurgle and gush, sometimes lapping gently, sometimes roaring furiously. Till they reach Karna Prayag where they meet the Pindar Ganga, a river of some stature. It is a dignified and mature meeting, which adds to the status of all.

Amicably they continue on their way. The mountains have been left behind somewhat and so has the haste. The Alaknanda is calm and unhurried when it meets the Mandakini at Rudra Prayag. The Mandakini flows from a glacier by the temple to Lord Shiva at Kedarnath. The beauteous Mandakini is a maiden whose grace and loveliness belong in myth and legend. Its clear waters and white untouched foam, its frolic on the rocks, its frills and flounces on its banks, all at glacial temperatures and dangerous speeds, it leaves one speechless.

At Sone Prayag the Mandakini is joined by the Sone which adds stability to its wayward prettiness. But at Rudra Prayag, its clear, delicate green waters are swallowed up by the travel-weary, muddy Alaknanda. It is a large, placid river that leaves Rudra Prayag on its way to the vast plains of North India.Meanwhile, the Bhagirathi too has traversed the mountains, past town and village - Uttarkashi, Dharasu, Tihri, before it reaches Dev Prayag. Here in a great embrace the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda merge and submerge, and from their confluence is born the Ganga.

Stately and majestic, she proceeds on her way, carrying the diverse with her, accepting all in her indivisible oneness.

(source: Song of Ganga - By Bela Lal -  Times of India 2/27/02).

Top of Page

Chaphekar brothers - June 22, 1897. A hundred years later, the memories live on

The year was 1897. Date June 22. Walter Charles Rand, the special officer for plague, was returning after attending a function at the government guest house.

Ganeshpind road on which his carriage was to pass was deserted. Hiding in the forest nearby were the three Chapekar brothers -- Damodar, Vasudev and Balkrishna -- and their associates. As a carriage passed by, Vasudev ran after it shouting, ''Gondiya ala re.''

It was a signal for Balkrishna to finish off Rand, the infamous British officer who had created much distress among the masses with his tactless handling of the Pune plague. Fired with revolutionary zeal, Balkrishna boarded the covered carriage and shot the occupant dead. Suddenly he found that it was Lt Ayerst, an associate of Rand.

Realising the folly, Damodar, the eldest of the three, jumped on to the carriage carrying Rand and fired, killing the British officer on the spot, the first act of revolutionary terrorism in British India.

The killings shook the British empire and the government announced a reward of Rs 20,000 for anyone who helped track down the killers, who had added a colourful chapter to the history of the freedom movement. Exactly 100 years later, people of independent India will witness the shooting acted out by 35 actors of the Krantiveer Chapekar Samarak Samiti as a tribute to the Chapekar brothers.

After the killings, the Chapekar brothers fled the city, but two of them were arrested following a tip-off by the Dravid brothers. The two informers paid with their lives for their act of betrayal when Vasudev and Ranade shot them at their Sadashiv Peth residence after posing as messengers for the British officer investigating the Rand killing. Damodar was tried for the crime in the sessions court which ordered his execution on March 2, 1898. He was hanged on April 18. Vasudev was hanged on May 8, 1899, Ranade on May 10 and Balkrishna on May 12. Lokmanya Tilak was accused of sedition for inciting the Chapekar brothers in his articles and sent to jail.

Chapekar Wada, the house the brothers lived in, was turned into an illicit liquor den after their death. The same house, now in a dilapidated condition, has been bought by the Samiti which will use two of its rooms as a museum to store revolutionary literature while the other rooms will be converted into a vyayamshala -- a gymnasium -- as a tribute to Damodar who was a bodybuilder. The Samiti also plans to hold a seminar on April 18, 1998, the day Damodar was hanged 100 years ago, by inviting surviving freedom fighters along with the grandsons of the Chapekar brothers, says Samiti secretary Girish Prabhune.

(source: http://www.rediff.com/news/jun/20pune.htm. For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism).

Top of Page

Studies on Early Krishna Worship

One of the earliest and the most important of the Puranic religious systems to emerge  was Bhagavatism which came to be described at a comparatively late date as Vaishnavism. In the Puranas and the Mahabharata it centers around the worship of the Sattvata chief Vasudeva – Krishna. It has enjoyed and still enjoys immense popularity among the masses. It has attracted the attention of Indologists from the very beginning of the study of ancient Indian religions in the modern period. Unfortunately, however, their attitude towards it has not always been objective. As this religion betrays several common features with Christianity – such as belief in the grace of god, efficacy of faith and devotion, value attributed to prayer, doctrine of incarnation etc. – Western scholars, with their conviction in the theory of the White Man’s Burden, found it difficult to resist the temptation of assuming that Krishna worship was nothing but a plagiarism of Christianity. Some of them, such as Pavie even thought it humiliating for Christianity to be compared with the Krishna cult, while people like H. H. Wilson pleaded for the study of Vaishanvism and other Hindu religions if only to prove  the falsity and persuade the Hindu intelligentsia to adopt the Christian faith. 

***

Christian Bias in the Historiography of Early Krishna Worship 

The theory that Krishna worship originated as a distorted form of Christianity and that the name of Krishna itself is only ‘a corruption of the name of the Savior’ was first advanced by P. Georgi as early as 1762. It found a number of adherents among Western scholars, though many of them conceded that Krishna was an ancient god of India whose worship was radically transformed under the impact of Christianity. Albercht Weber, who wrote his famous on ‘An Investigation into the Origin of the Festival of Krsna Janmastami ‘ in 1874, that is more than a century after Georgi, gave a new impetus to this theory. In this and many other articles he argued that the transformation of the personality of Krishna from the ‘eager scholar’ of the Chandogya Upanishad and the brave hero of the early portions of the Mahabharata into a deity can be explained only on the supposition of an eternal influence which in the circumstances could be no other than Christianity. He also stated his conviction that the theory of avatara originated as an imitation of the Christian doctrine of incarnation. 

Weber thesis was supported mutates mutandis by Hopkins, Macnicol, Grierson, Kennedy, Lorinser etc. and on some Western scholars are still trying to flog a dead horse. The attempt of Allan Dahlquist, a Swedish scholar, is a case in point.

(source: Bias in Indian Historiography - By S. R. Goyal  p. 120-130). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Top of Page

Distortions of Hinduism

David Frawley (Vamadev Shashtry) has observed: " Hinduism, without doubt the most denigrated and misunderstood of the major world religions, if it is recognized as a world religions at all. It is common to look down on Hinduism as primitive and those who call themselves Hindus, as backward or obsolete. Instead of looking at Hinduism in terms of its profound philosophies and deep mysticism, it is associated with idolatry, caste and various social evils, as if there was nothing more to it. Many of them complain about the primitive idol worship in Hindu religion. After all, Hindu gods like Hanuman and Ganesha have animal face and forms. Such people are offended to see an animal face on God, though they eat animals, and their God with his wrath often has traits that would be regarded as tyrannical or egoistic in a person.

This denigration has occurred largely because Hinduism has borne the brunt of missionary propaganda, perhaps un paralled by any religion in the world.  

Hinduism represents the survival of the very type of traditions that the conversion-based religions have tried so hard and so long to stamp out. 

While the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Pagan Arabs have all long fallen to the missionary assault, Hinduism has survived remarkably the onslaughts of both missionary religions for a period of over a thousand years! And to their dismay in the modern world HIndu teachings are spreading again and getting revitalized. 

Indian Marxists have even formed a common front with the missionaries to eliminate Hinduism, their common enemy. Now that Marxism is dying in the world, Indian Marxists are becoming more strident, trying to hold on to their last bastions of power in the intellectual realm, which only make their anti-Hindu propaganda more shrill and more irrational.

The Catholic Church has spread its tentacles into India, hoping like what it did to ancient Greece to subvert the profound philosophies of the region into tools of the Christian faith, reformulating the Hindu Upanishads like the Aristotelian philosophy of the Greeks into a form of Christian theology. Evangelical Christians in America like the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant sect in America, are targeting India with cruder but more forceful and vitalistic creed, preaching of hell, fire, damnation and the impending end of the world. 

Asia is still recovering from Marxism and Colonialism, which makes the poor and uneducated, who are basically looking for social upliftment, vulnerable to missionary work which promises that as a by-product of conversion. They don't realize that Evangelical Christianity with its rejection of the theory of evolution, which they want removed from the schools, represents one of the most regressive trends in American culture and is largely a religion of the farm belt ridiculed in the universities.

The most devout Catholics in the world are the poor and uneducated Catholics of the Third World, not the scientific or intellectual elite of the West that is largely agnostic. Asian countries that accept Catholicism are more likely to end up poor like the Philippines, the main Catholic country in Asia, not developed like Japan which did not accept Christianity as part of modernization but relied on its own warrior spirit instead.

(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup - Forward by David Frawley p. xii-xvi). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists). for more refer to chapter on Quotes 181_200).

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com  

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Biased reporting

Hindus cannot help it that the Non-Hindu politician Adolf Hitler did them the injustice of misinterpreting "their" swastika as a symbol of racial purity, a meaning it never had for its Hindu-Jain-Buddhist users, neither in the past nor in the contemporary Hindutva movement. But that does not keep India reporters from exploiting this opportunity for engineered misunderstanding to the fullest.

Thus, reporting on the million-strong demonstration for the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, (Delhi, 4 April 1991), Brian Barron of BBC, showed a monk carrying a saffron-colored flag with a white swastika. And for the less perceptive viewers, he added in so many words that the Hindu movement "carries the swastika." For Hindus, the swastika is an age-old symbol of good fortune (sanskrit swasti = well being" freely anlayzable as su asti, "it is good").

***

Victimization of Hindus in South Asia has been internationally ignored. The governments of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh discourage serious research into the Hindu death toll in order not to foster anti-Muslim feelings. Moreover, with Pakistan being a Western ally, the powerful Anglo-American media have apparently chosen not to pay too much attention to the massacres of the East Bengal Hindus. The net result is that the victimization of Hindus remains unknown and all spotlight can be focused on the sparser cases of the "poor hapless Muslim minority's misfortunes."

(source: The Saffron Swastika - By Koenraad Elst - Voice of India ISBN 8185990697 p. 30 and 809-810). For more refer to chapter on Quotes 201_220). Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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

Top of Page

Has the World Ended Before?

Charles Berlitz, author of several books, including The Bermuda Triangle, was the grandson of the founder of the world-famous Berlitz schools, wrote:

"If atomic warfare were actually used in the distant past and not just imagined, there must still exist some indications of a civilization advanced enough to develop or even to know about atomic power. One does find in some of the ancient writings of India some descriptions of advanced scientific thinking which seemed anachronistic to the age from which they come. 

The Jyotish (400 B. C) echoes the modern concept of the earth's place in the universe, the law of gravity, the kinetic nature of energy, and the theory of cosmic rays and also deals, in specialized but unmistakable vocabulary, with the theory of atomic rays. And what was thousands of years before the medieval theologians of Europe argued about the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. 

Indian philosophers of the Vaisesika school were discussing atomic theory, speculating about heat being the cause of molecular change, and calculating the period of time taken by an atom to traverse its own space.

  Readers of the Buddhist pali sutra and commentaries, who studied them before modern times, were frequently mystified by reference to the "tying together" of minute component parts of matter; although nowadays it is easy for a model reader to recognize an understandable description of molecular composition."

(source: Doomsday 1999 - By Charles Berlitz p. 123-124. For more on Charles Berlitz, refer to chapter on Vimanas and Advanced Concepts). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Top of Page

Dalits eye new rites in UP...

In a few days from now, another - the last and most decisive - bastion of the Hindu upper castes is set to fall in Uttar Pradesh. With the graduation of the first batch of curriculum-trained priests in the state, several Dalit pundits will be ready to offer their services for the entire range of traditional Hindu rites.

The class of 2002 in the UP Sanskrit Sansthan's paurohitya (priesthood) course includes several Dalit and other non-Brahmin students. The three-month course that was started in February, aimed at training students in the range of karmakand rites from mundan and vivah sanskar (marriage) to vrats (fasts) and tyohar (festivals).

The students have been trained by priests who were picked from a large pool of Sanskrit scholars in the state.

The scholars were given extensive training before being asked to fan out in the districts to impart their knowledge to priesthood-hopefuls. With the course now nearing completion almost everywhere, lists of successful trainees have begun to come in - they will receive certificates, and will be recognised as 'registered pundits' qualified to perform karmakand rites.

The course attracted 35 students on an average in each of the 70 districts where it was offered. It was welcomed enthusiastically at some places, and received a lukewarm response at others.

The maximum number of Dalit trainees in a district was five - in Varanasi. There were four in Lalitpur, three each in Gorakhpur and Unnao, two each in Mirzapur, Lucknow and Chitrakoot, and one each in Jaunpur, Deoria, Mau, Ambedkarnagar and Kushinagar.

"We had kept the course open for everyone, as we wanted the knowledge to be made available to all," said Dr Sachidanand Pathak, director of Sanskrit Sansthan.

"But we had no idea that we would receive such a good response from castes other than Brahmins as well."

(source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/080502/detnat01.asp).

Top of Page

Development of Aldous Huxley's thoughts

Huxley is one of those who enriched the West greatly with the wisdom of the East. Though he came late on the scene, his influence was nonetheless real and deep. Huxley always distrusted monotheism from the earliest days of his intellectual life. In an article 'One and Many' written in an early phase of he says that 'monotheism, as we know in the West, was invented by the Jews." Living in a desert, they found nothing in the surrounding bareness to make them suppose that the world was richly diverse. And their belief in monotheism "prevented them from having any art, any philosophy, any political life."

He observed that while historical religions have been violent, eternity-philosophies like Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism, which has gone hand in hand with the political and economic oppression of the colored peoples." 

He tells us how the time-worshipping Catholicism institutes Inquisition and how it "burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastical-politico financial organization regarded as necessary to men's external salvation."; he tells us how "Bible-worshipping Protestant fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times."

Unity of all religions has been a special infirmity of the Hindu mind. It has its doctrinal and historical reasons. Brought up in his own religious tradition, a Hindu could not even conceive that a religion could teach persecution. And though its continuing victim for a thousand years, he thought there was a mistake somewhere and its perpetrators had not understood their own religion. 

(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p. 126-150). For more refer to chapters on Hindu Art and Quotes 1_20).

Top of Page

The Raj and the Reich

Michael Portillo, a Conservative Minister for Kensington and Chelsea in the British government, in early 1995 compared one-time British government in India - the so-called 'Raj' - with the Nazi regime. 

The fact remains that British rule in India was largely rule with an iron fist, even though it may most often have been in a velvet glove. As an conquering and occupying power, the British East India Company were largely free from legal control from Britain and could virtually make their own laws to subdue, divide and rule these states and their peoples. These laws were made just as draconian as the demand for control of India's resources, draining its economy for huge profits and ensuring the ascendancy of the British white man demanded.

After the so-called 'Mutiny' the British lived more and more as an isolated ruling caste, with all too widespread disdain and hardened attitudes towards most peoples in the sub-continent. The British thought and behaved as a 'master race' towards their subordinates. Among the many sins of the British was the recruitment under false pretences and promises of Indian workers to labor in their other colonies in Africa and the West Indies. Their exile was permanent as they could not get the means to return to India and were exploited thoroughly - bonded laborers under virtual slavery in all but name, often held in their places by systems of unjust debts.

In Place of Slavery - Indentured laborers

Slavery was abolished in Suriname in 1863. Between 1873 and 1940 more than 34,000 British Indians entered Suriname and effectively replaced the former slaves. Deplorable condition of Indian labor: 

"Under the colour of a Bill for protecting the Indian labourers, it is proposed to legalize the importation of them into the colonies." "Hundreds of thousands of poor helpless women and children are now to be abandoned to want, that the growth of sugar in the West Indies may not languish."  Indentureship recruitment, the Indo-Trinidadian scholar Kenneth Permasad reminds us, "took place in an India reeling under the yoke of colonial oppression." Colonialism induced massive transformations in Indian economy and society, and the increase in famines under colonial rule, the destruction of indigenous industries, and the proliferation of the unemployed all attest to the heartlessness of colonial rule. From Calcutta and Madras Indian men, and a much smaller number of women, especially in the first few decades of indentured migration, were herded into "coolie" ships, confined to the lower deck, the women subject to the lustful advances of the European crew. Sometimes condemned to eat, sleep, and sit amidst their own waste, the indentureds were just as often without anything but the most elementary form of medical care. Many did not survive the long and brutal "middle passage"; the bodies of the dead were, quite unceremoniously, thrown overboard.

Discipline was enforced with an iron hand, and the whip cracked generously: as a number of Indian laborers in Surinam were to state in a complaint in 1883, "if any coolie fails to work for a single day of the week, he is sent to jail for two or four days, where he is forced to work while day and night kept under chains. We are tortured very much. For this reason two to three persons died by swallowing opium and drowning themselves." Indians are apt, like many other people, to associate the phenomenon of slavery solely with Africans, but it is not realized that indentured labor was only, in the words of Hugh Tinker, "a new form of slavery".

(source: Manas - Indentured Labor). For more information please refer to the chapter on European Imperialism).

Top of Page

Nostradamus (1503-1566) of France and Hindu Destiny?

Quatrain 96, Century X

Religion du nom des mers vaincra,
Contre le sect fils Adulancatif,
Sects obtinee deploree craindra,
Des deux blessez par Aleph and Aleph

Religion named after the seas (Hindu Mahasagar - Indian Ocean) will be victorious,
Against the sons of the Caliph's adalat or rule.
Obstinate deplorable sect will greatly fear, 
The two religions injured by Alif and Alif.

(source: Hindu Destiny in Nostradamus - By G. S. Hiranyappa Bangalore 1986 p. 6-9).

Top of Page

Katherine Mayo's Hatred For Hindus

Katherine Mayo (1867-1940 ) was ardently Anglophile and believed in Kipling's doctrine of the White Man's Burden. Behind much of her advocacy, however, lay her own preoccupations with Anglo-Saxon racial superiority.

She wrote couple of books starting with Mother India, Slaves of the Gods and Isle of Fear, the Truth about the Philippines

She wrote a book on American rule in the Philippines called the Isle of Fear in which she painted a lurid picture of the Philippines and their culture. These two elements and the love for the British and their empire and her distaste for Asians, needed only the third element to prepare her to write a book on India. That third element was the British interest in her work on the Philippines and a wish that she could do a similar job in India.

Mother India begins with a description of the sacrifice of a goats at the Kali temple and then goes on into villages and cities. It is replete with quotations and statistics which Miss Mayo could have scarcely have collected on her own. She criticizes Gandhi for whom Mayo had nothing but disdain. She criticizes the Hindu religion, its gods, its social code, its rituals, its castes and the debilitating ethos...She remarks that "If only Gandhi and his agitators are kept away the Indian villagers would live in paradise indeed." Mayo's book on the Slaves of the Gods deal with the institution of the Devadasis - or temple dancers. 

She came out to condemn India and she succeeded marvelously in shaping the image of India in the average American mind. 

In fact her book is the most negative of all writings by foreigners on India.

Miss Mayo forgot that every civilization has its own skeletons in its many cupboards and India is no exception. The British were mightily pleased with here efforts and were delighted with what she had to say. Miss Mayo confirmed and made explicit Western racism in aspects of thinking about the non-West."

Manorangan Jha in his Katherine Mayo and India (New Delhi 1971) has done an impressive piece of work in marshalling circumstantial evidence to point a finger of suspicion at British complicity in Mayo's visit to India. In the 1920's with a rising tide of Indian nationalism, the British in London and New Delhi were becoming sensitive to American critical interest in the nature end effect of British imperial rule. The British wanted to project an image of India and the Indian people as basically not ready for Independence and the necessity of Britain continuing her good work to lift the Indian masses out of their self-made morass of debilitating Hindu religion, its cruel customs, and abominable ritual and social hygienic practices. 

(source:  India in the American Mind - By B. G. Gokhale p.44-48).

She holds Rabindranath Tagore to ridicule by quoting him, out of context, in such a away to make him appear as an advocate of child marriages. She has nothing but sarcasm for Gandhi. In tune with the British policy of pitting one against another, Mayo highlights the passionate monotheism of Islam and the vitality, sturdiness and practical-mindedness of  the Muslims as against the 'degenerate materialism' of the Hindus which 'masquerades' as spiritualism. Mayo completely absolves the British of any responsibility for the ills of India or for India's political backwardness and squarely lays it at the door of the Indians themselves. 

Complicity of the British in Mayo's Work - To Secure American Support for the British

The news of the publication of Mother India reached India toward the end of July 1927, and it immediately raised a storm throughout the country. The Indians felt that it was a scandalous libel on their civilization and character. Moreover, they suspected the hand of the British in the publication, and felt that the aim of the book was to discredit India. When Mother India came out speculation was rife as to what impelled Mayo to mount such a scurrilous attack on Hinduism and Indian nationalist forces. One reason given was that she wanted to counteract the anti-British propaganda that was being carried on in America by the Indians as also to expose their statement claiming spiritual supremacy for India. 

Gandhi was painfully wrote to Mayo: "I am sorry to have to inform you that the book did not leave on my mind at all a nice impression." He asked the publishers of Young India to send her a copy of his own review of the book entitled "A Drain Inspector's Report."

To what wicked length Mayo and her British collaborators went in their hatred for Hinduism is illustrated by the papers in the Mayo Collection. 

The motives for publishing of Mother India were primarily political; to win American support for the British cause in India. To frighten even British liberals into giving up the constitutional reforms that they envisaged for India. The British masters of India were anxious to win American opinion in their favor and cleverly used American journalists, writers, publicists and propaganda men to work which would serve the British interest. And who better to pick than Katherine Mayo who had written The Isles of Fear? 

Indian Reaction: Hundreds of meeting were held in India against the British officials of nefarious plots against India. Incidents, big and small, of Negro lynching, moral deviations, sexual aberrations, and other forms of corruption in the social and political life of the United States were grabbed by the journals and editorials under heading like, "Pot Calls the Kettle Black" and "Glass Houses and Stone Throwing." etc.  Kanhaya Lal Gauba wrote a book on the United States titled -  Uncle Sham: Being the Strange Tale of a Civilization Run Amok  Claude Kendall Publisher Place of Publication: New York, NY 1929). 

No abatement in Mayo's Hatred for Hindus. 

In fact, Mayo was so consumed with hatred for the Hindus that she returned to her pet theme again and again. In her next book, Slaves of the Gods (1929), she narrates twelve stories that she claims to have taken from 'real life.' The last in the series was The Face of Mother India published in 1935. This was a pictorial book containing about 400 hundred photographs showing various facets of the land of India and her people. The picture section was proceeded by a long introduction in which Mayo traced Indian history from about A.D. 1000, when Mahommed Ghazni, began his raids in north-western India, the temple of Somnath being his special target. As regards to her bias, F. H. Brown, who reviewed the book in The Observer:

"It is to be regretted that so suitable a Christmas gift of well-planned pictures should be introduced by a polemical dissertation which shows that these eight years have brought little or no abatement of Miss Mayo's sharply contrasted dislike of and contempt for the Hindu, the male Hindu at least, and her praise for the Moslem "the purest of Monotheists." In her judgment the Hindu has a double dose of original sin. If there is a hero of the story it is Mahmoud Ghazni, of whom she writes exultingly that he destroyed many great Hindu temples, shattered many idols, and took back to Ghazni many thousands of slaves and much precious treasure - "but never did he linger in the land of the idolator."

It is interesting to note the infatuation of the British with Mother India while they banned books written by Gandhi - Hind Swaraj and Will Durant -  A Case For India. Durant held the view that no part of the world suffered so much poverty and oppression as India did and that this was largely due to British imperialism. 

Another book that was banned by the British was India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom published in 1928. The author was Rev. Jabez Sunderland, a countryman of Katherine Mayo. The central theme of the book was that the British rule in India was unjust, that the Indians were abundantly competent to rule themselves and that America should support the cause of Indian nationalism. The book appeared to be so seditious to the British authorities in India that it was not only proscribed, its publisher was arrested and proceeded against under the Indian Penal Code. (For more about these book please refer to chapter on History of Hinduism).

(source: Katherine Mayo and India - By Manorangan Jha People's Pub