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Brutalities on Hindus in Bangladesh

Savage attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh -- usually regarded as a moderate Muslim land -- have raised fears that the country could go the way of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The festival of the Goddess Durga in October is normally the high point of the Bengali Hindu cultural calendar. But this year for thousands of Hindu families in Bangladesh, there was no festival and no rejoicing. Instead, gangs of Islamic extremists torched their homes, raped women, poisoned ponds and attacked temples.

At first, many explained the savagery as a post-electoral revenge spree. Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh typically support the Awami League party, which lost in October’s national elections. But the scale and ferocity of the recent violence — which has affected some 4 million people, according to the popular daily newspaper Janakantho — is raising the specter of Talibanization in a country usually regarded as a moderate Muslim land.

The new Bangladeshi government under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has deployed police and paramilitary forces, mostly in cities, to quell the violence. But rural areas have seen the most horrific attacks. Many villages can be reached only by boat or on foot, and information is slow to come out. Bangladeshi newspapers are beginning to reveal the scope of the attacks:

• Nearly 200 women, ranging in age from 8 to 70, were raped in one night in Char Fashion in Bhola.
• The Faizal Vahini, an extremist Islamic group, ordered minorities in Rauzan and Rangunia to pay a monthly “tax” in order to be allowed to stay in their ancestral homes.
• Gopal Krishna Muhuri, a veteran freedom fighter and college principal, was shot to death at his home in Chittagong while reading a newspaper.
• Some 15,000 Hindus took refuge in the village of Ramshil after their homes were destroyed and the women were abducted and raped.

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

"The true picture is not known to the outside world. It is a free for all so far it goes to torturing minority Hindus. Women and property are the prime targets - hundreds of Hindu women are hospitalised, many were killed after being raped," Bidhu Bhusan Das, one of the migrants from Barishal, who fled leaving behind his relatives said.

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

“Everyone is concerned about the rights of innocent people in Afghanistan, but nobody wants to know about what these Taliban are doing to Hindus in Bangladesh,” the spokesman said. The campaign by the group has, however, won support from Amnesty International. In a report released on Dec. 5, Amnesty cited several instances of Hindus being harassed in Bangladesh. “More than one hundred women are believed to have been raped, often in front of their husbands or fathers. A number of Hindu girls have been abducted,” the report said. Amnesty asked Dhaka to take urgent action to protect Hindus “following weeks of grave human rights abuses.” Amnesty said: “Successive governments have let down the Hindu minority in Bangladesh and the last two months show exactly how vulnerable the Hindu community is. The government must live up to its responsibility to protect all of its citizens.” Though a government committee had been set up to investigate the attacks, Amnesty said it was “not aware of any progress it has made.” The Forum for Minority Rights in Bangladesh says attacks on Hindus have picked up in retaliation for the United States-led bombing of Afghanistan and the support for it from India. It also stated that rapes, torture, destruction of properties, temples and killing of Hindus have been renewed since October.

(source: London group protests atrocities against Hindus - Desi Talk).

Despite Bangladesh's assurances to India to prevent attacks on Hindus, reports of atrocities on the community continue to pour in from across the country. The women's rights groups, however, said several persecuted families have fled to India. Many others have taken shelter with relatives. ``The minority Hindus have suffered harrowing torture, including rape of teenage girls, by gangs of supporters of the new Government,'' Ms. Rokeya Kabir, head, Nari Pragati Sangha, told presspersons.

What obviously frustrates the Bengali people in Bangladesh, India and America is the near total lack of attention the world is paying to their problems. The Palestine situation involving only 1.6 million Palestinian continually occupies both the world's press and diplomatic corps. Unless the world community quickly turns its attention to the situation in Bangladesh, we may see another catastrophic "war of liberation" such as has laid waste to Ireland, Cyprus, Lebanon, Palestine, the Punjab and northern Sri Lanka.

Ignored by the police, outnumbered by the Muslims, Hindus in 1992 for the first time in Bangladesh and Hindu history, performed Durga Puja without the Deity present in physical form--only a ghot or khumba (a coconut on a pot). In 1996, 20,000 pandals with Deities were set up across the country, a few more than the previous year. That year the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told devotees at the Dhakeswari temple in Dhaka, "You will have the equal rights to practice your respective religions with full dignity and honor and none to interfere in it." But in 1997, the Organiser newspaper from Delhi reported, "Gangs descended on puja pandals and demanded jazia [the Islamic tax on non-Muslims] from the puja organizers for performing 'idol worship' in Islamic Bangladesh. Since the pattern of attack was the same throughout Bangladesh, it is suspected that it was a well-planned operation, especially because no police help was available."

Senator Edward Kennedy's report on 1971 Genocide of Hindus:

Senator Edward Kennedy in his report gives the following details about the refugees from Bangladesh in 1971. As of October 25, 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. the average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day. Hence the total refugee population at the start of Indo-Pak war on December 3, 1971 was about 10
million. Sen. Kennedy further mentions that Government of India had set up separate refugee camps for Hindus and Muslims wherever possible, i.e., refugee camps of Hindus were located in Hindu majority areas and similarly Muslim camps were located in Muslim majority areas. The communal representation of refugees was 80 per cent Hindu, 15 per cent Muslim and 5 per cent Christian and others.  

This means that 8 million of the 10 million refugees were Hindus. The other fact that corroborates this is that when Sen. Kennedy asked several chief relief officers in charge of refugee camps what was needed most urgently their reply was "crematoriums".

(source: Hindus Flee Bangladesh - Hinduism Today and Hindu Human Rights  and Repression and atrocities against the Hindu minorities in Bangladesh and Senator Edward Kennedy's report on 1971 Genocide of Hindus

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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

The selective amnesia of the English media in India is simply breathtaking. There appears to be a cardinal rule: Never publish anything that would be in the least bit negative about Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular; or about Christians; or about Marxists in general and the Chinese in particular. For instance, the Chinese genocide in occupied Tibet is glossed over, and an Indian English magazine's famous editor goes on a China-sponsored tour there and writes a glowing account of how life is beautiful.

Shabana Azmi and Kuldeep Nayyar and Human Rights Watch and the rest of the human rights cottage industry were very quiet. The US Council on International Religious Freedom was thunderously silent, too, which shows yet again that their definition of 'religious freedom' is rather unique: It means the freedom of American cults to propagate their bizarre ideas.

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The atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists, including ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir, and attacks all over India killing Hindus -- note the latest attacks just before Diwali and now on the Indian Institute of Science -- are trivialised by the chatterati with the usual cant about how the terrorists are misguided youths frustrated by lack of opportunities.

It appears axiomatic that to the media, the only good Hindu is a dead Hindu.

This is why the attack on a Hindu temple in Dera Bugti in Balochistan in March last year got absolutely no coverage in the Indian media and did not disturb Indian society in general.

Shabana Azmi and Kuldeep Nayyar and Human Rights Watch and the rest of the human rights cottage industry were very quiet. The US Council on International Religious Freedom was thunderously silent, too, which shows yet again that their definition of 'religious freedom' is rather unique: It means the freedom of American cults to propagate their bizarre ideas.

(source: Ignore this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com).

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RNI – Resident Non Indians 

RNI - Resident Non Indian is a convert to British imperialism through Macaulayte education. Macaulay, a Member of the Council of India wrote a Minute in 1835 designing educational policy with the objectives: (a) to create a class of subservient Indians to “be interpreters between us [British rulers] and the millions whom we govern.” Subservience required that these Indians fully accept British [or Western] interests as legitimate and supreme to which Indian interests have to be subjugated. (b) These subservient Indians form “a class of persons, Indians in blood and color, but English [Western] in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” They are fully alienated from their own, especially Hindu, culture.

RNI have three distinguishing characteristics:

(a) 'Acceptance' of Western racist-colonial-cum-imperialist objectives. 'Acceptance' means that they believe in “the white man's burden” to civilize the “vile native Hindoos” by colonial-cum-imperialist policies; such as divide and rule; severe punishment even genocide. Gandhi was pained by the description of Hindus “as vile” and wrote in his characteristic forgiving style: “One of the greatest Christian divines, Bishop Heber, wrote two lines [about Hindus] which have always left a sting with me: [namely] 'where every prospect pleases and only Man is vile.' I wish he had not written them.

b) 'Servitude' to Western interests, ideology, persons and values. 'Servitude' ensures that they don't question the validity of the Western ideology and its superiority to all things 'small'; and

(c) 'Alienation' from their own heritage. 'Alienation' results in “ethnic shame and guarantees their commitment to condemn and destroy any thing that smells of Indian nationalism; specially Hindu.

RNI conduct confirms psychological scars from both colonial and conversion impacts. Converts rarely achieve anything in life. Because of the need to follow, they have little capacity to think originally. 

RNI imagine themselves to be “white” even though they have brown skins and their grandparents were abused by the imperialist cum racist colonial whites. They copy everything Western -- dress, food, language. In their delusional state, they behave as if they are “white colonialists,” frozen in early 20th century, carrying on the “white man's burden” of civilizing the “vile Hindus. ”Following white racist colonial policy, they employ 19th century imperialist policy of “divide and rule” by (a) dividing and denigrating Hindus through the British use of caste system, (b) demonizing majority community, culture and lifestyle that poses a threat to this rule, and (c) creating and promoting minorities as a counter to this threat.

(source: India Ascendant - by Romesh Diwan - sulekha.com). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

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Hindus, the last of the Pagans?

Koenraad Elst writes: The term Pagan, is generally used for people not belonging to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Like its Germanic equivalent Heathen, the Latin word Paganus literally means: rural. Christianity started as a strictly urban movement, and only after it had taken power in the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. did it start to conquer the countryside.

Paganism sees the sacred in manifestations of cosmic order, cosmic power, cosmic beauty. The distinction which Hinduism claims is that through yoga, it has refined human sensitivity and made man receptive to subtler cosmic laws, such as the ultimate oneness of all sentient beings, hence the need for daya or karuna, compassion."

What is called paganism, heathenism, and polytheism is in fact the Natural religion of humanity. In areas where it has survived the onslaught of anti-human ideologies with their ego gods, it has retained its self-respecting name. In Japan it is Shinto, in Taiwan
Confucianism And Taoism, and in India as Hinduism.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constatantine, the natural humanistic beliefs were proscribed. With the spread of Christianity after the fall of Rome, the story was the same across Europe, the Maghreb and the former Roman Middle East. The high philosophy of the Greeks, the ancient beliefs of ancient nations like the Armenians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Celts, Teutones, Norse, Slavs, and last of all, right up to the thirteenth century, the Lithuanians, fell to the rapacious jaws of iconoclastic and dogmatic Christianity. Under both the dominant Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, manifestations of the natural religion was condemned as sorcery, Satanism, and witchcraft.

India is the spiritual mother of natural religion. Without India the natural beliefs of humanity can never be fully realised.

Can the pagans of Europe thus sit back and let happen in India what they have taken almost two thousand years to throw off themselves? These are not issues for the next few years, but ideas long overdue for now. It must be understood that a renewed fundamentalist church in India would threaten the physical existence of neo-pagans of Europe. The battle between rationalism and dogmatism is not yet over.  

(source: Hindus, the last of the Pagans? - Hindu Human Rights.org and Who is a Hindu? - Koenraad Elst p. 37 - 39 and  An European Pagan and Non Western Perspective – by Von Christopher Gérard

Conversions have an unedifying history. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, “Christianity from its beginning, tended towards an intolerance that was rooted in self-consciousness. Christianity consistently practiced an intolerant attitude in its approach towards Judaism and paganism as well as heresy in its own ranks.” The advent of Christianity into entire continents, the Americas, vast parts of Africa, some parts of Asia razed local cultures to the ground.

(source: Conversions! - By Dasu Krishnamoorty - sulekha.com). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

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Pagan Worship?

Catholics Protest Hindu Worship at Fatima Shrine in Europe

Fatima, Portugal. June 15, 2004: HPI received a couple of reports regarding the visit of a group of Hindus from Lisbon to the famed Catholic shrine to Mother Mary at Fatima. The first, dated May 22, reads in part: "Last October The Portugal News reported on the Interfaith Congress held at Fatima, one of Catholicism's most sacred sites, where representatives of the world's leading religions allegedly explored the possibility of opening the shrine to a whole variety of faiths. While the newspaper received many letters and emails congratulating it for reporting on the congress, it was also criticized by some groups who claimed that Fatima would remain exclusively Catholic.

The Portugal News' October report. Sixty Hindus led by a high priest had travelled from Lisbon to pay homage to the Goddess Devi, the divinity of nature. SIC's reporter described how before leaving Lisbon the Hindus had gathered at their temple in the city to pray to and worship various statues of Hindu gods. Arriving in Fatima the pilgrims made their way to the Chapel of the Apparitions, where from the altar a Hindu priest led prayer sessions. A commentary on the service was given by the TV reporter who explained: 'This is an unprecedented unique moment in the history of the shrine. The Hindu priest, or Sha Tri [probably Shastri], prays on the altar the Shaniti Pa [probably Shanti mantra--sahanavavatu...] , the prayer for peace.' The Hindus can be seen removing their shoes before approaching the altar rail of the chapel as the priest chants prayers from the altar's sanctuary."

A report at fatima.org is subtitled, "Another interfaith outrage blessed by shrine rector." It is very strongly opposed to the Hindu visit and reads, in part, "Saint Francis Xavier said, 'All the invocations of the pagans are hateful to God because all their gods are devils.' Saint Francis Xavier wrote these words to Saint Ignatius about the pagan religion of Hinduism. Francis Xavier, writing from India at the time, merely restates the truth from the infallible Sacred Scriptures: 'The gods of the gentiles are devils.' (Psalm 95:5) Yet on May 5, 2004 -- the Feast of Pope Saint Pius V -- the Little Chapel of the Apparitions at Fatima was allowed to be used for a pagan Hindu ceremony.

One of the Hindus is reported to have said that they go to Fatima because there are many gods, and the gods have wives and companions who will bring good luck. This is a blasphemy against the Queen of Heaven as it places Our Blessed Mother on the same level as some sort of 'wife' of a false god. Thus, the Hindus did not even come to Fatima to learn of, or take part in, Catholic prayer. Rather, they folded the holy event of Fatima into their own superstitions and pagan myths. It is reported that pilgrims who witnessed the event at Fatima were scandalized, but Shrine Rector Guerra defended the use of the Marian Shrine for pagan worship."

The recent Hindu ceremony at Fatima shows how fraudulent are Fr. Fox's assurances. It also means that Fr. Fox and EWTN are guilty of neutralizing the healthy resistance that Catholics should mount against these interfaith outrages.

(source: Catholics Protest Hindu Worship at Fatima Shrine in Europe - hinduismtoday.com and http://www.fatima.org/060304rit.htm). For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism).

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UK Hindus irked over panel report

London (June 10):A serious controversy has erupted following the release of a report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences from Westminster.

Many prominent leaders of the UK Hindu community are now irked over a statement made by a member of the Committee, the Earl of Mar and Kellie, that has been published in the minutes of the oral evidence given by the Hindu community to the Select Committee in November 2002.

During an oral evidence before the members of the Select Committee, Ramesh Kallidai, speaking on behalf of the Hindu Community, pointed out an article by the Christian Medical Fellowship's Pastor Juge Ram that claimed that Hindus were lost and spiritually blind and that Hinduism was a false religion.

Responding to this statement, the Earl of Mar and Kellie said, "They (the Christian Medical Fellowship) were not actually telling any lies about the Hindu religion in the sense that they were not actually putting out any false remarks which were possibly going to distort people or mis-educate them."

A few leaders pointed out that historically, the Houses of Parliament have witnessed earlier attempts to vilify Hindus. Lord Macaulay had made a statement in the 19th Century at the House of Commons to say that all the ancient books of wisdom from India could not compare with the one shelf of books from England. "Dr J C Sharma, Director of the UK Council of Hindus said, " I'm surprised that thinking like Lord Macaulay's still exist in modern Britain."

(source: UK Hindus irked over panel report - hindustantimes.com). For more on Lord Macaulay refer to chapter FirstIndologists).

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Heal yourself first, your Holiness

Pope John II is peeved and perturbed but obsessively persistent -- about his declared mission of harvesting umpteen souls in India. According to an Associated Press report from Vatican City published in The Times of India, Mumbai, on June 4, 2003, he told a group of visiting Indian bishops to 'courageously' proclaim the gospel in India notwithstanding --

• 'Increased activity of a few Hindu fundamentalist groups which are creating suspicion of the church and other religions'
• 'Unfortunately, in some regions the state authorities have yielded to the pressures of these extremists and have passed unjust conversion laws, prohibiting free exercise of the natural right to religious freedom'
• 'State support has been withdrawn for those in the Scheduled Castes who have chosen Christianity'
• 'People experience animosity, discrimination and even violence because of their religious or tribal affiliations.'

Reliable reports say that attendance at churches in the West is dwindling, that churches are being sold away. According to that multi-disciplinary scholar, N S Rajaram, even in Rome, the home of Christianity, church attendances are down to six per cent or less. (The Organiser, May 4, 2003, page 4). So why then is the Vatican not concentrating on retaining its flock instead of trying to harvest more and more souls in India and the rest of Asia?

(source: Heal yourself first, your Holiness - By Arvind Lavakare - rediff.com).

Does the Pope want to convey the message that Indian citizens following Catholicism should indulge in conversion even through unfair means? Does he realise that by supporting conversion through fraud, coercion or allurement, he is inviting violence in Indian society?

Different religions are different paths to the goal of realising the Absolute Truth. The resolution was only a reiteration of the Hindu doctrine, “Ekam sadviprah bahudha vadanti”.

The ink on the resolution had hardly dried when the pontiff gave his assent to a 36-page report prepared by a committee of Vatican bishops. The report postulated that the non-Christian religions are gravely deficient as they did not accept Jesus Christ as the only son of god. Simultaneously, it stated that the other Christian churches too have defects because they do not accept the primacy of the Pope. The idea of equality of all religions is, therefore, totally unacceptable to the Church.

(source: Losing my religion - By Balram Mishra - hindustantimes.com June 24 2003).

Jaya raps Pope's remarks on conversion

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa condemned the statement of Pope John Paul II, critical of the Anti-Conversion law in Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa told reporters that the Pope could be a religious head, but he had no right to react to or criticise a legislation enacted by a democratically-elected government in any state in India. She also refuted the Pope's assertion that there was no religious freedom in India. Asserting that there was indeed religious freedom in the country, she said the law was only against forcible conversions.

(source: Jaya raps Pope's remarks on conversion).

Remark on Pope irks bishops

Chennai, June 14: The Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council took exception to Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s remarks against Pope John Paul II that the pontiff had no business to comment on anti-conversion laws enacted by democratically elected governments in India.

“We, the Catholic Bishops of Tamil Nadu, express our hurt over the disrespectful criticism against the Pope by the Chief Minister,” the council said. “As the worldwide leader of Catholic Christians, he has the right to express his concerns over the difficulties Christians face in certain parts of India,” it said, adding the Pope had only raised his voice against an “obvious violation of human rights regarding religious freedom.”

(source: Remark on Pope irks bishops - deccan chronicle). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

He is upset. Understandably

The Pope has genuine problems. The Papacy was born to convert the world to the only true religion, Christianity. This Pope merely continues this 2000 year tradition to cleanse the world off ‘false faiths’. Turn it exclusively Christian. The plans are backed by meticulous research costing billions to stratify global societies, to trap them into the only true faith. Like business plans they look at the position now with a 25 year projection. The Pope knows how cheap our market is for his harvest. Perhaps, he will not mind if the high-cost US, not the low cost Indian states, pass such a law. In India he can count heads for God at 1/700 of the cost he has to pay in the US. When Jaya and Modi pass laws to stop low cost head hunting will the Pope not be upset? He will be and he is, understandably. 

(source: He is upset. Understandably - by S. Gurumurthy).  

The holy double-cross

The Niyogi Committee which went into the activities of the missionaries in the wake of tensions owing to conversions in Madhya Pradesh had not minced words on such extra territorial loyalties and what it portends for India. Here are some of the observations: 

...the idea of change of religion as bringing about change of nationality appears to have originated in the Missionary circles..the missionaries by converting them give them a separate nationality, so that they may demand a separate state for themselves.

The separatist tendency that has gripped the mind of the aboriginals under the influence of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Missions is entirely due to the consistent policy pursued by the British government and the Missionaries. After a villager is converted to Christianity, it is easy to alienate his mind against his society as well as his country and State ...Christian convert changes his style of dress and assumes the air of a foreigner.

The supremacy of the Christian flag over the national flag of India was also depicted in the drama which was staged in a school in Jabalpur. The expression 'Jai Hind' was substituted with 'Jai yeshu'..

Evangelisation in India appears to be part of the uniform world policy to revive Christendom for re-establishing Western supremacy and is not prompted by spiritual motives. The objective apparently is to create Christian minority pockets with a view to disrupt the solidarity of the non-Christian societies, and the mass conversions of a considerable section of Adivasis with this ulterior motive is fraught with danger to the security of the State..

The allegations by missionaries that they are being harassed by Government officials is part of the old established policy of the Missions to overawe local authority and to carry on propaganda in foreign countries...And the joke is on India on another count too. These franchisees of faith are deemed minorities in this country while they have none less than the Pope with all his mammoth army of minions, muscle, money etc, etc at his disposal to back them. The law of the land is acceptable only so long as it is subservient to their oath of allegiance to the Vatican. Heads win, Tails win! What a double-cross!

(source: The holy double-cross - By T R Jawahar - newstodaynet.com June 20 2003). For more refer to Indians Against Christian Aggression).

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

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Secularism', Colonial Hegemony and Hindu 'Fanaticism'

Why, in a world where proselytizing is banned by virtually every Islamic country, where Hindus have been virtually 'cleansed' out of Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Kashmir valley, are Hindutvaadis singularly such a key target of the world press? Why, in a world where the Pope – the official head of the largest Christian denomination of the world – talks about “harvesting Indian souls” is it that there is such a concerted effort by the popular media worldwide to demonize aggressive Hindus – and only Hindus – as 'fundamentalists'?

That the effort by the media to taint the emerging 'vocal' and 'public' Hindu as a fanatic is a concerted one hits one smack in the face every time one reads anything on this issue. By the choice of words (Gujarat 'pogroms'). by the selective focus on victims (Dalits, Muslims, missionaries, but never a Kashmiri pandit or Hindu worshipper); by the number and prominence of articles focused on 'Hindu fanaticism' (front page news) versus 'other fanaticism' ('40 pilgrims gunned down” blurb half way down on page 26 of your local newpaper).

A good way to contextualize this battle is to look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was first adopted by the U.N in 1948 and is to this day a standard bearer of what should constitute genuine humanistic principles. The Christian worldview, with its predilection to proselytize and convert others into its fold has chosen to focus on only one element amongst all those present in the three articles listed above; namely the freedom to change one's religion or belief and made that the cornerstone of their 'religious freedom index'. In other words, those cultures and societies that allow active proselytizing and conversion are considered more 'religiously tolerant' and open societies.

With their fundamental belief in the absolute uniqueness of Christ as compared to the rest of us mortals and sinners, and thus the path to salvation, a believing Christian has no choice but to consider all other spiritual paths and religions as being confused at best and minions of the devil at worst.

(source: 'Secularism', Colonial Hegemony and Hindu 'Fanaticism- by Arjun Bhagat - sulekha.com). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

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

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Smelling British sahibs learnt to bathe in India

The first Englishmen who came to India as servants of the East India Company were bewildered by many of our customs. Many of them commented on, in their letters home, the habit, among certain classes of the Hindus, of taking a daily bath.

The early factory-hands of John Company in India may have been somewhat scandalized by the fact that Hindu men and women of good families should not mind taking their baths in full view of others, what they found even more strange was that they should be washing their bodies at all.

For the British, the process of washing the body entailed lying prone in a tub half full of hot water. And how many houses in pre-Industrial England could have had metal containers large enough to accommodate grown men and women, and, even more, the facilities to heat up enough water? The conclusion was inescapable. For most Englishmen of the 17th and 18th centuries, a bath must have been a rare experience indeed, affordable to the very rich, who perhaps took baths when they felt particularly obnoxious, what with their zest for vigorous exercise, such as workouts in the boxing ring or rowing or riding at the gallop over the countryside. What a sensual pleasure it must have been to lie soaking in a tub full of scalding hot water? But such indulgences were possible only during the few weeks of what the English call their summer. For the rest of the year, the water in the tub could not have remained hot for more than a couple of minutes, and from November through February must have gone icy cold as soon as it was poured in. Brrrrr!

Then again, even those who thus bathed their bodies a few times every summer seem to have been careful to, as it were, keep their heads above water. In other words, a bath did not also involve a hair-wash. Otherwise there doesn’t seem to be any reason why they should have found it necessary to coin—or adopt—a special word to describe the process of bathing hair: shampoo, which, ‘Hobson Jobson’ tells us is derived from the Hindi word, champi, for ‘massage’. Why a word which normally described the process of muscle-kneading should have been picked on to explain a head-wash, is not at all convincing. It seems that the Company’s servants used to send for their barbers every now and then to massage their heads with oil and then rinse off the hair with soap and water. So the head-champi, became ‘shampoo’.

Which may explain why G M Trevelyans’s English Social History does not so much as mention the word ‘bath’. In the pre-industrial age it was, at best, an eccentricity indulged in by exercise-freaks in the summer months, and a head-bath was even rarer.  English royal court felt compelled to post in 1589: "Let no one, whoever he may be, before, at or after meals, early or late, foul the staircase, corridors, or closets with urine or other filth."

But, out in the tropics they must have gone about smelling quite a bit. In fact, the Chinese, when they first encountered the White man described him as "the smelly one".

According to William Dalrymple, in his book White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

"Indian women, for example, introduced British men in the delights of regular bathing." And again:

"Those who had returned home and continued to bathe and shampoo themselves on a regular basis found themselves scoffed at as ‘effeminate’."

(source: Smelling sahibs learnt to bathe in India - by Manohar Malgonkar - tribuneindia.com).

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Early Christians took a dim view of bathing.  St. Benedict in the 6th century declared that "to those who are well, and especially the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." In the early 1200s, St. Francis of Assisi declared personal uncleanliness a sign of piety. Europeans have an interesting history of bathing. Long before they turned Christian, Scandinavians and Germans bathed naked in lakes and rivers during the summer months, and in public baths during the winter. With the advent of Christianity nakedness came to be associated with vulgarity, lascivious thoughts and, therefore, sinful. St Agnes (d. 1077) never took a bath; St Margaret never washed herself; Pope Clement III issued an edict forbidding bathing or even wetting one’s face on Sundays. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the practice of bathing in rivers was frowned upon. In 1736 in Baden (Germany), the authorities issued a warning to students against "the vulgar, dangerous and shocking practice of bathing." 

(source: The importance of bathing - by Khuswant Singh - tribuneindia.com). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Hinduism - A scientific religion

It is often said that Hinduism is a Scientific religion. The Sanskrit word for Science is 'Shashtra.'  Because Shastra means a Science, or exact knowledge. Because of this reason we find in Hinduism a number of Sciences or Shastras, as Sanskrit calls them. When we say that 'Hinduism is a Scientific Religion', it means more. It means that Hinduism teaches certain Universal Truths and Laws of Nature, just like a Science. A Universal truth does not change from Religion to Religion, or from man to man or nation to nation. 

Hinduism is Scientific, in another sense too! It is a Science of mental development. It prescribes certain mental disciplines like Yoga, besides, Physical, Moral and Spiritual disciplines which are necessary for every man for his improvement irrespective of his race, creed, nation or status of birth. It gives us a Technique. It gives us "The Science of Living.'

The Bhagavad Gita is thus a Universal Book, in the above sense. It gives a philosophy that any man can adopt, without forsaking his "religion." It gives certain exercises, like the Yoga exercises for controlling the mind, controlling the breath, achieving concentration and reaching a state of oneness with God (while still alive, in the body). This is a Science. All can follow this Science. It is thus even the people of the West, in America and Russia have taken to the study of Yoga. Even "Christian Yoga" has made its appearance too now a days! Similar is Sufism which is like Advaita among the Muslims.

(source: Hinduism in The Space Age - By E. Vedavyas p. 127-132). For more information on Yoga refer to chapter on Yoga and Hindu Philosophy). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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The Call of India

Many Westerners have traveled to India to be taught by Vivekananda, Gandhi, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, and a great many others. It must be emphasized that this acceptance remains valid only within the restricted boundary of the ashram itself. The moment a foreigner emerges into the world again, he becomes once more the “barbarian” he has never ceased in the Hindu eyes, and reverts to being a pariah among pariahs. However, the fact that so many Westerners still make the journey is not without significance. It is a sign that Hinduism, particularly in the form of yoga, is answering a need. …Quite the contrary is true; “the call of the East” dates back for centuries. From the Greeks to Marco Polo, from Vasco da Gama to Dupleix and Warren Hastings, the West has never ceased to dream of the treasures of Golconda, of the land of spices….and of the wisdom of the Brahmins. 

One has to think, for instance, of the 18^th century craze for printed calicoes (the French called them indiennes) and of the fact that the fundamental Hindu scriptural texts actually became accessible in translation during the last years of the same century. Their impact was prodigious: the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and later the Bhagavata-Purana produced a tremendous intellectual ferment particularly in Germany and France. 

Schopenhauer was fond of saying that the first intuition of the work he was to do came to him while reading these texts, of which he was later to say that they had been “his life’s consolation.” Herder, Schelling, and Hegel and the Romantics were passionately interested in finding out all they could about Indian literature and thought. If one wishes to form an idea of the fervor that things Indian created in Europe at that time, then one has only to read what Goethe, Hugo, Nerval, Lamartine, Blake, Shelley, and many others had to say on the subject. There was not an important work that did not refer in some way to the Indian tradition.

(source: Yoga and the Hindu Tradition - by Jean Varenne p. 186 - 187). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Gujarat bans conversions through bribes, force 

Gujarat's state assembly passed a bill on Wednesday banning religious conversions through use of force or bribery.

Officials said anyone wanting to change religion in the state must now seek the permission of district collectors.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had promised in the election campaign that swept it back to power last December a law to ban conversions. The legislation carries penalties of up to three years imprisonment and a 50,000-rupee fine.

Christians in Gujarat condemned the law, saying it was targeted at their religion and would deny people freedom to practise the religion of their choice.

"We will oppose this draconian law as it's against the spirit of India's constitution which allows freedom to propagate and practise any religion," said Samson Christian, a spokesman for the All India Christian Council.

A BJP government official said the law was not directed against any religion. He said its aim was to ensure the right of people to practise their faith free of any pressure to convert.

(source: Hindustan Times - http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_221877,000900040003.htm).

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Ayodhya is a National Symbol – by N S Rajaram 

Ram Janmabhumi is a national symbol, while the Babri Masjid is a symbol of Babar's imperialism.

The basic problem is that the concerned parties have avoided such fundamental issues. Instead of trying to understand what Ram Janmabhumi and Ayodhya mean to the Hindus, the Babri Masjid advocates have been trying to present it as a dispute over a piece of real estate and a structure in brick and mortar. Every living nation has national symbols and Ayodhya is India's. A young American - a former student of mine - recently asked me why building the temple at Ram Janmabhumi was so important. I asked her if Americans would let stand a mosque built by someone like Osama bin Laden after demolishing Mount Vernon (George Washington's home) or the Statue of Liberty. Similarly, the Westminster Abbey in London is more than a Church, for it is inseparably bound with English history and tradition. This is how the people of India also look at Ram Janmabhumi: it is a sacred spot for Hindus for historical, cultural and nationalistic reasons - and not just because it is a place of worship. Many like me who never go to a temple still hold it sacred for cultural and historical reasons.

From Babar to bin Laden

To highlight this point: can the terrorist warlord Osama bin Laden claim the ideological right to demolish the Venkateshwara Temple in Tirupati or the Golden Temple in Amritsar and build something else in their place to mark the triumph of his 'faith'? These, like Ram Janmabhumi, the Westminster Abbey, and the Statue of Liberty, are not pieces of real estate that can be bartered - or forcibly occupied and demolished.

When put in this light, the Secularists will scream that Babar cannot be compared to a terrorist warlord like Osama bin Laden. Hasn't Nehru told us that Babar was both charming and tolerant - a true 'Secularist'? Like most things that Nehru wrote it is nowhere near the truth. Babar was as much a religious fanatic as bin Laden. He saw himself as a Ghazi - an Islamic warrior - on a jihad to uproot infidelity. Jihad was Babar's ideology, the same as bin Laden's. Here are his own words from the Babarnama:

"Chanderi had been in the daru'l-harb [Hindu rule] for some years and held by Sanga's highest-ranking officer Meidini Rao, with four or five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28], through the grace of God, I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred the infidels, and brought it into the bosom of Islam ..."

This was the real Babar - in his own words. When in a particularly jovial mood, he composed the following poem happy for having become a Ghazi (religious warrior):

For the sake of Islam I became a wanderer;
I battled infidels and Hindus.
I determined to become a martyr.
Thank God I became a holy warrior.

This was the man who gave India the Babri Masjid - at the spot held sacred by Indians. He and his successors did not build it to be a place of worship- they saw it as a mark of conquest. Ideologically, Osama bin Laden is a modern day Babar - a Ghazi. And yet Nehru praised Babar as:

… one of the most cultured and delightful persons one could meet. There was no sectarianism in him, no religious bigotry, and he did not destroy as his ancestors used to."

(source: Ayodhya is a National Symbol - by N S Rajaram). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

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Pillar Found at Site of India Mosque

Lucknow, India - Archaeologists have uncovered a broken pillar with a carving of a lotus flower at the site of a destroyed 16th-century mosque claimed by both Hindus and Muslims, a government official said Tuesday.

The significance of the discovery was still unclear, but officials hope it will eventually help settle the impassioned debate about what was originally built on the site.

(source: Pillar Found at Site of India Mosque - By V J Bandopadhaya - Associated Press).  

Watch History of Ayodhya - videogoogle.com.

Either by instinct or consensus, India's uniquely secular national press simply ignored the recent discovery of a broken pillar with a lotus carving at the site of the erstwhile Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Such negation cannot, however, diminish the significance of the finding. As senior Government administrator R M Srivastava observed, "The finding of a pillar and a multi-layered flooring suggests there exists a permanent structure beneath the soil. At this point we can only say that remains of a permanent structure lay buried in the soil. It could be anything - a temple, a mosque or even a kitchen structure" (Associated Press, April 1, 2003).

A mosque is simply untenable. Even die-hard Islamists have not claimed that a mosque existed at the site prior to the arrival of Babar's general, Mir Baqi, who was appointed Governor of Ayodhya. What is more, no medieval mosque has ever incorporated sacred and popular Hindu motifs in its decorative patterns, unless it was built by appropriating the materials of ransacked temples. 

Eminent historian Irfan Habib has signalled the Muslim determination not to settle the dispute honourably, by claiming that the excavations are a "post facto rationalisation of what was done on December 6, 1992" (Indian Express, March 12, 2003). Habib claims that archaeological finds are open to several interpretations. But what is germane in the current dispute is only whether or not a temple existed at the site prior to the erection of the Babri mosque. As Ayodhya has from time immemorial been associated with the story of Sri Rama, this would be regarded as convincing evidence by all fair-minded persons.

(source: Footprints in earthly paradise - By Sandhya Jain - dailypioneer.com April 8, 2003).

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Uddalaka Aruni: The First Natural Scientist   

Mythological literature of India tells us a story of the ocean being once churned by the gods (devas) and demons (asuras). As a result there emerged both nectar and poison. 

In a sense, this also happens in the philosophico-scientific tradition in ancient India. Out of the ocean of the intellectual turmoil there emerged a remarkable person whose teachings were both nectar and poison. It was nectar for science and science-orientation and poison for its opposite – for myths, religion and the hangover of magical belief. 

His name comes down to us as Uddalaka Aruni. It has become an accepted convention that science began in ancient Greece by one of the reputed sages called Thales, who lived in the 7-6^th century B.C. But we come across in our early texts certain trends of thought that are scientifically significant  and to a person – Uddalaka Aruni of the Gautama clan – as having been the initiator of this new direction of systematically investigating nature. The science intoxicated Uddalaka must have been earlier than Thales whose actual teachings moreover give us the impression of having been far more profound from the viewpoint of science-potential than all that we know about Thales. 

But historians of science remain unaware of the very name of Uddalaka Aruni. Internally, in his own country, his views are subjected to almost endless distortions, energetic efforts being made for centuries to make him appear as a religion-oriented extreme idealist philosopher. Externally, most of the historians of science have so far worked under the spell of what is often described as Euro-centrism – that science is an essentially European phenomenon. 

J D Bernal goes to the extent of using the rather exasperated expression “arrogant ignorance” as forming the main prop of this Euro-centrism. 

With pronounced bias for Euro-centrism, the otherwise admirable French historian, Arnold Reymond claims that nature science owes its origin to the peculiar genius of the Greeks, or more simply to some kind of “Greek miracle”. Who then is the miracle maker and what were his achievements? Since Thales himself leaves for us nothing in writing and since we are confronted with all sorts of floating legends about him – one example, wanting us to believe that as an idle star gazer he fell into a well, another insisting on his practical wisdom enabling him to earn a lot in olive business. That on May 28 585 BC. He predicted an eclipse of the sun which put an end to a battle between the Lydians and the Medes. Not that he understood the real cause of eclipses. How, then could he predict it?

(source: History of Science and Technology in Ancient India - By Debiprasad Chattopadhya chapter 7 p. 89-148). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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Tribal Rage in Kerala

In much of the world, tribal societies have been decimated, their cultures devastated, and their members enslaved. Native Americans (Dee Alexander Brown's classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee), Maoris (the 1995 film Once Were Warriors), Australian aborigines (the 1978 film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith) have all been subjected to extreme duress. The same thing has happened in India as well.  

Decimation of Tribal Culture in India 

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

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The recent incidents at the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala's Wyanad district need to be seen in this context. Dispossessed tribals, who have seen their lands and their way of life being destroyed before their very eyes, are fighting back with the only weapons they have available to them: agitations and violence.

Kerala has pockets of tribals in its dense Western Ghats forests who have lived unmolested for centuries or even millennia. Recent genetic data has suggested that some of them might go back to the very first wave of out migrants from Africa: truly ancient genes. The sheer inaccessibility of the Western Ghats allowed tribals to live there without outside interference, using sustainable forest produce. Besides, I understand at least some of them were quite capable of defending themselves: for example, the anti-British campaigns of Pazhassi Raja were spearheaded by an army of Kurichya tribal archers. All this changed in the last hundred years. It is the oldest story in the book: land-grab and greed. Lowlanders, mostly from Central Kerala, started encroaching onto the mountains.

This invasion, which mirrors on a much smaller scale the white conquest of North America and Oceania, is documented in S K Pottekkat's novel Vishakanyaka ('Poison maiden') about how the virgin forest is a dangerous adversary; and in O V Vijayan's epic Thalamurakal ('Generations'), the old feudal landlord finds one fine day that enterprising settlers have taken over his lands by the simple expedient of bribing the land title recorder.

The white Christian authorities (ruling directly in Malabar, and with heavy influence on Travancore and Cochin) encouraged all this, partly because white planters too were coming in and setting up tea and coffee estates, and partly because the vast majority of small-