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A Glorious Hindu Legacy: Indic influence in Southeast Asia.

Kalinga Dvipa - The Philippines

Kalinga Srisailam established the Sri Vijaya empire in Palambangu (Sumatra island). The first large empire to make Sumatra its home was Sri Vijaya in the 7th century, also the first Hindu kingdom of Indonesia. They controlled not only this empire but also most part of the Indonesia and Malay Peninsula. The empire of Sri Vijaya of Malacca (or Melaka) Malaysian archipelago was the largest kingdom in the Pacific. 

The Hindu Empire of Sri Vijaya of Malacca Malaysian archipelago was the largest kingdom in the Pacific.

(For more refer to chapters on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor).

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Philippines was for a time part of the Sri Vijaya Empire, which has been described by Filippino historians, as Hinduistic in culture. 

Indianization of Asia was entirely peaceful, never resorting to physical force or coercion to subvert local cultures or identities, or to engage in economic or political exploitation of the host cultures and societies. Its worldviews were based on compassion and mutual exchange, and not on the principle of conquest and domination.

The Philippines consists of a group of 7,000 small islands. We have found some literary evidence to show that there was Hindu Sanskriti in this area of about 11,500 square miles.In the central part of Sebu a bronze idol of Lokeshwar and a golden idol of a Garuda have been found. In south Luzan, an idol of Padmapni Avalokiteshwar has been found. It is inferred that the Funan, Shalendra, and Mahapahit kingdoms had relations with the Philippines.  

At present Manila is the capital of the Philippines. In the National Assembly Hall, behind the president’s seat, is a picture of Manu. Manu taught law to the Philippines, hence this picture. This shows the relation of the ancient Hindu culture to the Philippines. 

When the Philippines drafted its Constitution, it placed the statue of Manu (the progenitor and lawgiver of the human race) in the National Assembly Hall with this inscription on its base: "The first, the greatest and the wisest law-giver of mankind." Researches into the racial and cultural origins of the Philippines increasingly prove that it was colonized by some people in South India. In fact, the script of the Filipinos has some obvious similarities with that of South India. "Our dialects belong to the Dravidian family." says Justice Romualdez. "The names of some places on the shores of Manila Bay and the coast of Luzon show their Sanskrit origin."

Indian influence is most patent in handicrafts and the old names of coins used there. Many social customs current there show a likeness to the Indian ones. Saleeby says, "The head-gods of the Indian Triad and the earliest Vedic gods had the foremost place in the minds and devotion of the hill-tribes of Luzon and Mindanao. A Ganesha statue too was found there. Indeed as Beyer says, "India has most profoundly affected the Philippine civilization." Even the national flower of Philippines is the Indian champaka. The Indian influence on Philippines is explicable by the fact that it was that it was for 150 years a colony of a Java-based Hindu Empire of Sri Vijaya.   

(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 30).

According to Arun Bhattacharjee:  

"The unique feature of India's contacts and relationship with other countries and peoples of the world is that the cultural expansion was never confused with colonial domination and commercial dynamism far less economic exploitation. That culture can advance without political motives, that trade can proceed without imperialist designs, settlements can take place without colonial excesses and that literature, religion and language can be transported without xenophobia, jingoism and race complexes are amply evidenced from the history of India's contact with her neighbors...Thus although a considerable part of central and south-eastern Asia became flourishing centers of Indian culture, they were seldom subjects to the regime of any Indian king or conquerors and hardly witnessed the horrors and havocs of any Indian military campaign. They were perfectly free, politically and economically and their people representing an integration of Indian and indigenous elements had no links with any Indian state and looked upon India as a holy land rather than a motherland – a land of pilgrimage and not an area of jurisdiction."

(source: Greater India - By Arun Bhattacharjee - Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Private Limited, 1981, New Delhi  p. 2 - 3 and Indian Culture over the World - By S V Shevade p. 91 and The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p. 30 and Geopolitics and Sanskrit phobia - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com).

Philippines was for a time part of the Sri Vijaya Empire, which has been described by Filippino historians, as Hinduistic in culture. 

Dr Pardo de Tavera (1857 - 1925) has observed: 

“It is impossible to believe that the Hindus, if they came only as merchants, however great their number, would have impressed themselves in such a way as to give to these islanders, the Philippines, the number and the kind of words, which they did give. These names of dignitaries, of caciques, of high functionaries of the court, of noble ladies, indicate that these high positions, with names of Sanskrit origin, were occupied at one time by men, who spoke that language. The words of similar origin, for objects of war, fortresses and battle songs, for designating objects of religious beliefs, for superstitions, emotions, feelings, industrial and farming activities, show us clearly that the warfare, religion, literature, industry and agriculture were at once time in the hands of the Hindus and that this race was effectively dominant in the Philippines.”

One of the most ancient and most extensively studied Sanskrit inscriptions from the Indochina peninsula is the so called 'Vo canh' text, found near to Nha Trang. It came from the reign of King Bhadravarman I. of Champa (Vietnam). 

The Spanish tried to stamp out all examples of native scripts and literature for fear that Filipinos were using exotic symbols to foment rebellion.

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Royal archives of Panduranga, Vietnam. Seal with Sanskrit characters. 

(image source: Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa - By Emmanuel Guillon)

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(source: El Sanscrito en la langua Tagalag - By T H Pardo de Tavera Paris 1887; The Philippines and India - By Dhirendra Nath Roy Manila 1929 and India and The World - By Buddha Prakash p. 119-120). 

Philippine literature, stories, and folklore are traceable to India. The Maranawa epic - An adaptation of "The Ramayana," the 4th century Indian epic, as preserved by the Maranao people of the South Philippines. A story of the battle between good and evil, with love, deceit, heroism and triumph.

The Ramayana in the Philippines

Contacts between India and the Philippines could be traced back to Malay culture, which has a clear imprint of Indian influence. Archaeological evidence suggests that the two countries had trade relations as early as the beginning of the Christian era. Coinage of Indian origin going back to 1800 years, have been found in the Philippines. Sanskrit words are found in abundance in the local languages, indicating deep cultural and linguistic ties. Ramayana is still a popular play in some parts of the country.

The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic, but throughout the ages it has swept through Southeast Asia from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos right through to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, where the people have adopted it and made it part of their own culture, adapting parts of the story and changing the names of the characters, though Rama, Sita and Dasaghiri remain  the principal characters. It is a popular legend even today.

(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal  Part II p. 155 - 157 and filipinolinks.com).

Devi - A Goddess with Vajra in her right hand, while the left hand is in a mudra, a gesture in Hindu iconography often symbolizes the imparting of wisdom. The sculpture is a good example of the originality of so many of the images carved by the neighboring Champa sculptors.

(image source: Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa - By Emmanuel Guillon)

Spanish clergy were very destructive of local religious practices in the Philippines. They systematically destroyed indigenous holy places and 'idols', or statues and representations of indigenous spirits, gods or goddesses. 

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According to Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960), American anthropologist, and a major figure in the founding of modern anthropology, as well as author of Peoples of the Philippines (1919):

"Most of the folklore of the Philippines is of Hindu origin."

"There is no tribe in the Philippines no matter how primitive and remote, in whose culture today elements of Indian origin cannot be traced." Pre-Spanish Philippine society with its nobility, code of laws, and political procedure, was largely of Indian cast. Some years ago when a legislative building was put in Manila, the capital, four figures were carved on its facade illustrating the source of the Philippine culture, one of which is Manu, the ancient Indian lawgiver. Beyer, the first to conduct systematic archaeological investigation in the Philippines, finds formidable evidence to strengthen the view that there was pre-Christian contact between India and Southeast Asia. 

Seated Deva - The pedestal of this monolithic statue is carved on three sides with a kala head, and was situated in the inner Dong Dong enclosure of Champa/Vietnam.

Some years ago when a legislative building was put in Manila, the capital, four figures were carved on its facade illustrating the source of the Philippine culture, one of which is Manu, the ancient Indian lawgiver.

(image source: Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa - By Emmanuel Guillon).

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The Hindu element in the ancient Philippine religious beliefs, and in the names of old Philippine gods, and of legendary heroes is quite apparent. Several religious objects have been unearthed in the island of Mactan, including two images of Hindu deities. 

Two Filipino scholars, Tavera and Paterno, have concluded that about 25 % of the Philippine vocabularies can be traced to Indian influence. 

For instance: bahagi (part, portion), in Tagalog is bhag in Hindi,
katha (story, fiction) - katha;
diwata (god or goddess) is devata
dukha (poor, destitute) is duhkha
guru (teacher) is guru
mukha (face) is mukha
yaya (nurse) is aya and so on.

(source: Philippine Political and Cultural History - By G. F. Zaide p. 45).

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In 1521 a Spanish expedition led by explorer and navigator Ferdinand Magellan made the first recorded European contact with the Philippine Islands. Magellan was on a mission for Spanish king Charles I (also Holy Roman emperor as Charles V) to establish a westward route to the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands. It was ruled as a gobernación, a territory administered by a governor, and was officially subordinate to the Spanish viceroy of New Spain. Spain's objective in colonizing the islands: to provide a base from which to Convert Asians to Christianity, and to convert the people of the Philippine Islands.  The term "Filipino" is a result of Spanish colonization. The word "Philippines" was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain (1527 - 1598) it has no meaning for the inhabitants. King Philip was also responsible for the formation of an Inquisition in South America in 1569.

The Spanish-American War - In April 1898 war broke out between Spain and the United States over their competing imperialist interests. In May U.S. Commodore (later Admiral) George Dewey commanded the Asiatic Squadron into Manila Bay, where it easily destroyed the antiquated Spanish fleet at anchor there.  

Spain and Portugal spread Roman Catholicism to their colonies by converting the indigenous peoples. 

The legacy of Spanish Conquest and colonial rule in the Philippines, was a colonial attempts to 'master' or manage indigenous populations. Spanish clergy were very destructive of local religious practices. They systematically destroyed indigenous holy places and 'idols', or statues and representations of indigenous spirits, gods or goddesses. They also tried to stamp out all examples of native scripts and literature for fear that Filipinos were using exotic symbols to foment rebellion.

Spanish colonization used Christianity as an instrument for conquest.

Philippine literature dates from the era before the Spanish conquest. The early Tagalog and a few other groups had a script that they used in writing on strips of bamboo or palm. Most of these early writings were destroyed by the Spanish missionaries. Of what remained, few pieces survive because of the highly perishable materials on which they were written. The Philippines supplied some wealth (including gold) to Spain, and the richly laden galleons plying between the islands and New Spain were often attacked by English freebooters. There was also trouble from other quarters, and the period from 1600 to 1663 was marked by continual wars with the Dutch, who were laying the foundations of their rich empire in the East Indies, and with Moro pirates. One of the most difficult problems the Spanish faced was the subjugation of the Moros. Intermittent campaigns were conducted against them but without conclusive results until the middle of the 19th cent. As the power of the Spanish Empire waned, the Jesuit orders became more influential in the Philippines and acquired great amounts of property. It was the opposition to the power of the clergy that in large measure brought about the rising sentiment for independence. Spanish injustices, bigotry, and economic oppressions fed the movement, which was greatly inspired by the brilliant writings of José Rizal. In 1896 revolution began in the province of Cavite, and after the execution of Rizal that December, it spread throughout the major islands.

"Most of the folklore of the Philippines is of Hindu origin."

Sanskrit words are found in abundance in the local languages, indicating deep cultural and linguistic ties. Ramayana is still a popular play in some parts of the country.

(image source: Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa - By Emmanuel Guillon)

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American Imperialism:  Manifest Destiny and The Philippines  

“The moneyed elite in the United States have long coveted their neighbors' land, resources, and cheap labor forces. Eager to invade, annex, and exploit, the plutocracy began to disseminate the warped notion of Manifest Destiny in the Nineteenth Century. Purporting to have the unwavering support of the Almighty, the "superior" Anglo-Saxons rationalized slavery, the Native American Genocide, the conquest of half of Mexico, the annexation of Hawaii, and their eradication of over 300,000 "savages" in conquering the Philippines.”

(source: Hell Awaits, America - rense.com).

Manifest Destiny was a popular concept in the 1840s as both an encouragement to and a rationalization for the spread of the United States across the entire continent. Americans came to accept the ethnocentric idea that it was the divine mission of America to bring the benefits of Christianity and civilization and progress to all areas of North America. In addition an ideology combining Social Darwinism, Christianity, racism, and pseudoscientific theories were sweeping across Europe and America. These nineteenth century factor laid the basis for America's quest for empire. Anglo-Saxonism, the' Great Race': a corollary in the Social Darwinist imaginary is the ideology of Anglo-Saxonism: Teutons, Aryans are constructed at the apex of the pyramid of civilized peoples, the 'sliding scale' of races, with biologically inherited 'racial traits.' Teddy Roosevelt's history The Winning of the West (1907) is predicated on this notion, westward movement as "the civilizing conquest of the savage by the Anglo-Saxon democrat". Roosevelt openly admired various aspects of Gobineau's theories on racial inequality and H. S. Chamberlain's Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899), which later became the 'bible' for theorists of the German master race. Many US citizens wanted to "Christianize" the world according to their version of Christianity. In addition to helping the American economy and trade, American imperialism will allow America to carry out its noble god-given destiny of "regenerating the world." 

The Spanish-American War began in April 1898 and this war gave independence to Cuba in May 1902. America then turned her attention to the Philippines Islands. America viewed these islands as an ideal base from where American interests in China could be defended. In February 1899, the United States launched a campaign against the so-called insurgents in Philippines Islands. The war lasted three and a half years. According to American General Bell, who led the campaign, 100000 Philippines men were wiped out. 4000 American lives were lost. Then began the American occupation of Philippines which lasted till her independence after the II World War.

"The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." -wrote Mark Twain in Mark Twain and the Bible

American writer and journalist Mark Twain, (1835-1910) also known as Samuel Clemens, one of the most widely loved and celebrated American writers since his first books were released in the late 1860s.

Twain was morally outraged by the United States' brutal subjugation of the Philippines. His commentaries – a condemnation of United States' mission to "civilize" the Philippines. He felt strongly compelled to comment on the massacre Moro Massacre. The Anti-Imperialist League quickly published two leaflets about the massacre. General Leonard Wood slaughtered all 600 unarmed Moros, counting women and children, in the bowl of an extinct crater, near Jolo in South Philippines.

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer in the service of the Spanish King, celebrated the first Easter Mass on Limasawa island. From this beginning, the archipelago, later named Las Islas Filipinas after Prince Felipe of Asturias, became the only Christian country in Asia.

Senator Albert J Beveridge and other supporters of an American empire believed that America had a "divine mission" to bring our modern civilization, Christianity, our democratic institutions, and our culture to backward peoples.  

Philippines rebel leader being executed in Manila in 1899.

(source: American brutality recaptured - By V. Sundaram - newstodaynet.com).

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"God has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adept at government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man..."

(For more refer to Empire Beyond the Seas - By Richard A Silocka and to Mark Twain - On the Philippine-American War and The Founding Fathers were Not Christians  - By Steven Morris, in Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995). Refer to Pantheism in the Philippines and American Imperialism in the Philippines and Filipinos in the Debate About Imperialism).

President McKinley (1843 -1901) said on the Philippines: "When next I realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them......That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them as our fellow men for whom Christ also died." But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, President William McKinley annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. The United States then fought a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it had encouraged to fight Spain. The war dragged on for fourteen years. Before it was over, about 120,000 American troops were deployed and more than 4,000 died; more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. Thus began the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines.

There is one predominantly Christian country in all of Asia. The Philippines is approximately 85 percent Christian (mostly Roman Catholic) and yet one of poorest in the world. (The Philippines is one of the world’s poorest countries. This country has no national health service and people who fall ill are condemned. Because of poverty which affects most of the people, every year thousands of people die from quite ordinary diseases for which they cannot afford treatment or medicine. It is one of the places where the majority dies of hunger and healthcare is a privilege of a few, most people face problems every day connected with poverty, precarious living conditions, almost non existence of homes with sanitation, malnutrition, which promote diseases linked with the tropical climate. For most of them death is very often the direct consequence of not receiving proper care). 

"From George Washington to John Quincy Adams, the American way has been to avoid imperial adventures."  

John Quincy Adams' famous admonition that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Imperial Amnesia - The United States invaded a distant country to share the blessings of democracy. But after being welcomed as liberators, U.S. troops encountered a bloody insurrection. Sound familiar? Don't think Iraq-think the Philippines and Mexico decades ago. But, of course, the United States and Britain had always claimed the highest motives in seeking to dominate other peoples. McKinley had promised to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos.

(source: Imperial Amnesia - By John B Judis). Also refer to George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq' - guardian.co.uk and  How the Dominionists Are Succeeding in Their Quest for National Control and World Power - yuricareport.com and Christian Supremacy: Pushing the Dhimmitude of Non-Christians in America .

Forrest G Wood the author of Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction and Arrogance of Faith, is Professor of History at California State University, writes:

“Manifest destiny was a religious concept that was exalted by Americans of all social levels and had been an essential element in the adventures of every European colonial power.”

Among the justification for seizing the Philippines during the war with Spain in 1898 was the contention that the United States had a manifest right to civilize and Christianize “our little brown brothers,” who had suffered so long at the hands of the corrupt Spanish papists. The fact that the Filipinos were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic meant little to white Americans…The tunnel of piety was long and narrow. Religion is man’s search for God, Christians like to say, but Christianity is God’s search for man, a minder that the arrogance of faith is not easily set aside.

(source: Arrogance of Faith - By Forrrest G Wood  p. 22 - 23 and 216).

For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and How various parts of the world was converted to Christianity.

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Indian Cultural Influence in Southeast Asia

Prof. Reginald Le May author of The culture of South-East Asia;: The heritage of India, wrote: 

“The beginnings of Indian colonization overseas eastward go back a very long way in time and it is almost certain that the results seen today were, in the main, not achieved by military expeditions, but by peaceful trading and religious teaching – and thereby all the more permanent.”  

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The Indonesian nationalist leader Suharto Sukarno (1901- 1970) was the first President of Indonesia. He helped the country win its independence from the Netherlands. 

He echoed the same sentiments. In a special article in The Hindu on 4 January 1946, Sukarno wrote:  

"In the veins of every one of my people flows the blood of Indian ancestors and the culture that we possess is steeped through and through with Indian influences. Two thousand years ago people from your country came to Jawadvipa and Suvarnadvipa in the spirit of brotherly love. They gave the initiative to found powerful kingdoms such as those of Sri Vijaya, Mataram and Majapahit. We then learnt to worship the very Gods that you now worship still and we fashioned a culture that even today is largely identical with your own. Later, we turned to Islam: but that religion too was brought by people coming from both sides of India."

(source: Prospects for a Bay of Bengal community - By V. Suryanarayan).

The long- sustained process of Indianisation, for more than a millennium beginning from the early centuries of Christian era, was accomplished by Brahman priests, Buddhist monks, scholars and artisans who were introduced into the Southeast Asian native societies by Indian merchants time and again. This facet of history exemplifying the long-sustained trade and cultural contacts between India and Southeast Asia owes much to climatic changes characterized by reversals of the monsoon winds that facilitated navigation across the Bay of Bengal. The Arakan Yoma mountain ranges deterred any possibility of developing overland routes between the geographically proximate regions of Assam (northeastern India) and Myanmar. Re-invigorated by the Guptas in northern India, the Pallavas and the Cholas in Tamil country in southern India, Indian cultural expansion all along the maritime trade routes led likewise to the emergence of Indianized kingdoms in Southeast Asia during the first millennium of the Christian era.    

In fact, it was about 2000 years ago that the first navigators, Indian merchants and Brahmins brought to our ancestors their gods, their techniques, their organization.

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

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Obviously, all these early kingdoms were all based on the Hindu conception of royalty; but never had they become Indian colonies. Among Indianized states of this nature were the Funan, Champa, Langasuka (1-2 centuries AD), Mons of Thaton, Pegu and Pyu (until 6C), Chenla (7-8C), Angkor (9-15C), Sailendras in Java (8C), Sri Vijaya in Sumatra (8-13C) and Majapahit (14C). Many of these kingdoms had their cultural and diplomatic contacts maintained with Indian kingdoms on the sub-continent. For instance, Funan (3C), Champa (5C) and Sailendras (late 9C) had their cultural emissaries sent to the northern Indian kingdoms. The visits of Pagan rulers of Burma to India in the 12^th century facilitated the renovation of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya in Bihar. This had served as a cue for building similar monuments at Pagan and Xieng Mai (in Thailand). A Sri Vijayan ruler built a Buddhist monastery at Nagapattinam in South India (11C) which had enjoyed the patronage of Chola kings.

Personal names, too, such as, Rama, Norodom  Sihanouk, Sukarno, Suharto, Megawati, Mahathir, and Ranaridh testify to the Southeast Asian peoples’ ardent fascination for Indian culture.  

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The rulers of early Indianized kingdoms, who enjoyed pre-eminence and prestige, had never been deprived of the benefit of enjoying good neighbourly relations with India, notwithstanding its multitude of kingdoms. Such relations between India and the states of “South East Asia” cannot however be construed as a freakish historical phenomenon since the native rulers had displayed their penchant for having their names styled on those  in vogue in India as, for instance, Narawara, Narapati, Naradipati, Bhuvana, Nagara, and Rajadhiraja. ‘Varman’, the title of Pallava kings, had become an ornament to such rulers as Jayavarman, and so was ‘Candra’ adopted by the rulers of Arakan like Rajacandra.  These titles “entailed” the first part of the names which too recalled the nomenclature inherently based on Indian culture.  The intelligible similarity in the names was something like ‘borrowing words,’ which Wignesan prefers to term as “the primal proof of unidirectional influence” of the donor’s culture or language on the recipient’s. Even the Muslim rulers had their names suffixed with Bhuvana or prefixed with Raja. Likewise, Indian cultural efflorescence is vividly found in  place names like Srikshetra, Vyadhapura, Tambralinga, Dvaravati, Haripunjaya, Singapura, Bhavapura and Ayuthia.  In the same way as contemporary place names, such as, Malaya, Sumatra, Java, Bali and Cambodia, personal names, too, such as, Rama, Norodom  Sihanouk, Sukarno, Suharto, Megawati, Mahathir, and Ranaridh testify to the Southeast Asian peoples’ ardent fascination for Indian culture.

The Southeast Asian peoples jealously claim the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as  their own, as they consider their own territories as  the venue for all the  episodes  of the epics. Dedicated to Siva, Vishnu, Buddha, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses of Indian mythology, are the world famous Hindu-Buddhist temples —   Borobudur and Prambanan (Java), Angkor Wat and Bayon (Cambodia), Ananda and Mahabodhi (Myanmar) Mi-son and Po-nagar (Vietnam), Watphu (Laos), and Vat Chet Yat and Maha Tat (Thailand) — which stand as an animate though mute testimony of filial affiliation to a culture of great antiquity.  

Dedicated to Siva, Vishnu, Buddha, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses of Indian mythology, are the world famous Hindu-Buddhist temples —   Borobudur and Prambanan (Java), Angkor Wat and Bayon (Cambodia), Ananda and Mahabodhi (Myanmar) Mi-son and Po-nagar (Vietnam), Watphu (Laos), and Vat Chet Yat and Maha Tat (Thailand) — which stand as an animate though mute testimony of filial affiliation to a culture of great antiquity.  

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The common populace had naturally toed the religious path of the king who was looked upon as the manifestation of God on the earth.  In consequence, the wealth of Indian culture percolated down to the lowest rung of native societies with diversified cultural bases. The strong foundations laid by these Indianized states helped Indian culture to survive even after their decline and downfall following the arrival of Europeans into Southeast Asia, starting with the Portuguese in the early 16^th century. Equally fascinating it is to find that avenues, edifices, national monuments are named after the great personalities and events of Indian mythology.  

Garuda and Five headed Garuda from Vietnam.

(image source: Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa - By Emmanuel Guillon)

Standing Ganesha from Vietnam.

Recently an Ancient statue of Lord Vishnu has been found in Russian town of the Volga region. 

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A few other cases worthy of mention are the Garuda Airlines and Lord Ganesha-depicted currency notes exemplifying the fascination of the state for the culture of Indian origin.  

Many scholarly works have also testified to the legacy of Indian culture explicitly to be found in place and personal names.This glorious chapter of Indian influences in the Southeast Asian region was eclipsed with the penetration of Europeans into Southeast Asia from the beginning of 16th century.  

Graceful apasara (divine angels) carved in low relief on the pillars on the gallery in front of the Angkor Wat temple of (Kambhoja/Cambodia).

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Thanks to European diplomacy, geared to accruing – so to speak - the benefits of three Gs: Gold, Gospel, and Glory, Southeast Asia was dismembered into British colonies: Myanmar and Malaysia; French: the Indochinese states of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam; Dutch: Indonesia; and Spanish: the Philippines (which was later to become a US colony).  In this process, the pre-modern polities were totally obscured by these newly emerged colonial dominions which transgressed the facts of history and logic of geography. As Sukarno had once again, in July 1950, described the friendship and co-operation existing between the two countries as being of 'ancient origin', Malaysia, too, appreciably traced its ancient cultural connection with India to the beginnings of the Christian era.  

In a similar vein of appreciation, Norodom Sihanouk, Head  of the State of the Royal Government of Cambodia (1954-1970 and, again, since 1993) had on the occasion of the inauguration of the Jawaharlal Nehru Boulevard  in Phnom Penh, on 10 May 1955, traced the cultural evolution in Southeast Asia to the pervasive Indian cultural influence:   

“When we refer to thousand year old ties which unite us with India, it is not at all a hyperbole. In fact, it was about 2000 years ago that the first navigators, Indian merchants and Brahmins brought to our ancestors their gods, their techniques, their organization. Briefly India was for us what Greece was to Latin Orient. “  

(source: The Fossilized Indian Culture of Southeast Asia - By Y Yagama Reddy

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The Impress of India on Philippines

The empire of Sri Vijaya of Malacca (or Melaka) Malaysian archipelago was the largest kingdom in the pacific. Some say the Visayas region of the Philippines were once part of this empire hence the name Visaya derived from Vijaya? 

By the 12th century ad the powerful Sumatra-based Malay kingdom of Sri Vijaya had extended its considerable influence to the Philippines.

Filipino literature and folklore show the impress of India. The tale of the Ifugao legendary hero, Balituk, who obtained water from the rock with his arrow, is similar to Arjuna's adventure in Mahabharata, another Hindu epic.

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Filipino literature and folklore show the impress of India. The Maranao epic Darangan is Indian in plot and characterization. The Agusan legend of a man named Manubo Ango, who was turned into stone, resembles the story of Ahalya in the Hindu epic Ramayana. The tale of the Ifugao legendary hero, Balituk, who obtained water from the rock with his arrow, is similar to Arjuna's adventure in Mahabharata, another Hindu epic.

Many Filipino customs are of Indian origin. 

A placing a sampaguita flower garland around the neck of a visitor upon his arrival and departure as a symbol of hospitality and friendship.  Another Indian influence is seen in the decorative art and metal work of the early Filipinos, and in their use of brass, bronze, copper, and tin. The boat-lute, a musical instrument in southern Philippines, is of Indian origin. Finally, about 5% of the blood in Filipino veins in Indian.

Rajah Mangandiri is the Ramayana of the Philippines 

Rajah Mangandiri is the Philippine version of the great Indian story The Ramayana, as passed down through the centuries-old oral tradition of the Maranao people of the southern Philippines. From the 4th to the 10th centuries, the Philippines along with other southeast Asian countries was part of the Indian Shri Vidyayah empire. As a dance, musical, and martial arts drama, RAJAH MANGANDIRI blends traditional forms of Maranao court and secular dances, with live kulintang (gamelan) orchestral music, silat and kali martial arts, and a touch of the contemporary in a rich visual, aural, and performance tapestry....Like no other RAMAYANA, the Princess Sita can finally wield a sword.

(source: The Impress of India on Philippines

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Greater India - Global Expansion of Indian Culture

The voluminous output of evidence – Buddha image in Scandinavia, summary of the Upanishads in Rome, ivory statuette of Lakshmi at Pompeii, silver dish depicting Mother India at Lampascus, sheets of manuscripts of Aryaprajnaparamita in Romania, South Indian finds in Sudan, bronze image of an Indian danseuse in south Arabia, burial of south Indian people at Kalaly-gry-l in Khorezm, Sanskrit manuscript in three parts in a decorated vase at the site of old Merv in Turkmenia, remains of a silk bale bearing price in Brahmi script and the fragments of the Bower Manuscript and the dramas of Asvaghosha on the silk route in the Tarim basin, caves of thousand Buddhas on the frontier of China, Angkor Thom and Angkor Vat in Indo-china, Prambanam  and Borobudur in Indonesia, the temples and sculptures of Korea and Japan are sure proofs of global expansion of Indian culture. 

"The unique feature of India's contacts and relationship with other countries and peoples of the world is that the cultural expansion was never confused with colonial domination and commercial dynamism far less economic exploitation. That culture can advance without political motives, that trade can proceed without imperialist designs, settlements can take place without colonial excesses and that literature, religion and language can be transported without xenophobia, jingoism and race complexes are amply evidenced from the history of India's contact with her neighbors...Thus although a considerable part of central and south-eastern Asia became flourishing centers of Indian culture, they were seldom subjects to the regime of any Indian king or conquerors and hardly witnessed the horrors and havocs of any Indian military campaign. They were perfectly free, politically and economically and their people representing an integration of Indian and indigenous elements had no links with any Indian state and looked upon India as a holy land rather than a motherland – a land of pilgrimage and not an area of jurisdiction."

Reasons for the success of India and failure of China in establishing colonies in South east Asia:

It may be interesting to note that although China had commercial and diplomatic relations with the countries of South east Asia since the early centuries of the Christian era, her cultural influence over those lands was very little and negligible vis-a-vis the Indian influence over that area. 

This difference is well pointed out by George Coedes author of The Indianized States of Southeast Asia:

"The reason of it lies in the radical difference in the methods of colonization, employed by the Chinese and the Hindus. The Chinese proceeded with conquests and annexations: the armies occupied the lands and the officials spread the Chinese civilization. The Hindu penetrations and infiltrations seem to have almost always been peaceful and unaccompanied by those destructions, which disgrace the Mongol cavalcade or the Spanish conquest of America." 

Devi (Goddess) from Hong Que: sandstone, 10th century. Champa - (Vietnam).

"The unique feature of India's contacts and relationship with other countries and peoples of the world is that the cultural expansion was never confused with colonial domination and commercial dynamism far less economic exploitation."

***

The Hindus did not at all undertake military conquest and annexation in the name of the state or a metropolis, and the Hindu kingdoms that were formed out in Greater India in the early centuries had only the bonds of traditions with the reigning dynasties of India proper without any political dependence. The exchange of ambassadors between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal was done in a footing of equality whereas China always required of the "barbarians of the south" the recognition of her suzerainty which was expressed by the regular payment of tribute."

Prof. Reginald Le May author of The culture of South-East Asia: The heritage of India, wrote: 

“The beginnings of Indian colonization overseas eastward go back a very long way in time and it is almost certain that the results seen today were, in the main, not achieved by military expeditions, but by peaceful trading and religious teaching – and thereby all the more permanent.”

Arnold J Toynbee (1889 -1975) British historian said: 

“India is the central link in a chain of regional civilizations that extend from Japan in the far north-east to Ireland in the far north-west. Between these two extremities the chain sags down southwards in a festoon that dips below the Equator in Indonesia. It is not of course only in a geographical sense that India is in a key position. At the present moment, for instance, it is widely recognized that India holds the balance in the world-wide competition between rival ideologies."

(source: Greater India - By Arun Bhattacharjee - Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Private Limited, 1981, New Delhi  p. 7).

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Afghanistan's Historic Hindu Temples Busy For Navaratri

Kabul, Afghanistan. October 5, 2005: With the onset of the nine-day festival period of Navaratri, Kabul's ancient Hindu temples are buzzing with a record number of devotees of all faiths. The focal attraction is Asamai temple. 

Hundreds of Afghanistan's Hindus and Sikhs as well as Indians employed in reconstruction projects pay their obeisance there every day. The hill is named Asamai after Asha, the Goddess of hope said to be residing on the hilltop since time immemorial. Legend goes that the Akhand Jyoti or continuous fire there has been burning uninterrupted for over 4,000 years. Amazingly, both the temple and the jyoti have survived numerous bloody wars for supremacy over Kabul, says this article. Two large halls with a capacity of about 1,000 persons form part of the Asamai complex, commonly used for religious congregations on festivals like Navaratri and Diwali. 

The Asamai temple in Afghanistan - named after Asha - The Goddess of Hope. Legend goes that the Akhand Jyoti or continuous fire there has been burning uninterrupted for over 4,000 years.

***

Kabul boasts another ancient temple complex--Harshri Nath--with temples devoted to Hindu deities Siva, Saraswati and Ganesha. The Harshri Nath temple attracts several Hindu families who returned to Kabul over the past four years. Several Sikh families also visit the temple every week to pray alongside Hindus. Kabul's third temple is located in the Shor Bazaar area once the hub of the trade in clothes, currency and dry fruits that is dominated by Hindus and Sikhs. Dedicated to God Siva, the small temple miraculously survived severe shelling during the Civil War, even as the entire Shor Bazaar was reduced to rubble. Though the local Hindu and Sikh population has dropped to about 5,000 from close to 20,000, the temple is a favorite with scores of Indians currently engaged in reconstruction work.

For more about refer to Afghan Hindus - visit www.afghanhindu.info/ and www.afghanhindu.com/ . For Hindu Temple in Azerbaijan - refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII. 

(source: Afghanistan's Historic Hindu Temples Busy For Navaratri - hinduismtoday.com). For more refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught and Glimpses II

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A historical survey of India  - By John Woodroffe

India has produced all varieties of human character. India which is religious also produced the Charvakas and Lokayatas; materialists and sensualist who denied the existence of God, reviled the Vedas and the priests as frauds and cheats; sought enjoyment only in life leaving at death ”as many debts as possible.” India which produced ascetic fugitives from women also worked out a scientific Scripture of Erocticism – the Kama Shastra, wrote sensuously conceived literature, carved recondite obscenities on its temples, and painted similar scenes for the incitement of its passions, which it satisfied in many forms of sensual enjoyment both on this, and the superphysical plane. The same India which in the person of the sannyasi fled from the world to the forest, also glorified that world in sumptuous art. India was meditative and yet gave birth to men of action celebrated as warriors and statesmen, and a people who governed themselves practically and with success. Those who say that this country has never known Self-government do not themselves know their subject.  

As Jules M Barthelemy Saint Hilaire (1805 – 1895) French philosopher, journalist and statesman said (“L’Inde Anglaisse”) in 1887:

“In no country in the whole world has communal autonomy been so developed as in India."

 “Dans aucun pays du monde, l’autonomie communale n’a ete pousee plus loin.”

It was, as Professor Monier Williams said, Self government in all its purity.

This was the communal organization of the village with its headman, Panchayat or Council and its local officers and servants. Well developed also were the relations and functions of the people (Prajadharma) towards the King with his Councillors and of the King towards his people (Rajdharma). Some seem to think that because India had not the ballot-box and hustings and other paraphernalia of political Western life, it did nit know what Self-government is. The Hindu Kings were not autocrats. Their will was as much subject to the general Dharma as were the people. Ancient India possessed a notable substantive law and procedure, which, in particulars, have been found even superior to that which we possess today.  

Thus Sir William Markby (1829 -1914)  colonial jurist and author of Elements of Law: Principles of General Jurisprudence, was of opinion that the English Law, of Prescription should be remodeled on the lines of the Hindu Law, and the distinguished, and happily still living, lawyer Sir Rashbehary Ghose characterized the Hindu Law of securities “as a model of good sense and logical consistency.”

(source: Is India Civilized? - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John Woodroffe  p. 175 - 180).

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Secularism: A fraud on the Hindus

Infinite tolerance is the hallmark of Hinduism. Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891-1953) English philosopher and author, has said: "Such toleration is a very rare thing in the history of mankind, as rare as it is invaluable."

The first statement of tolerance in Hinduism comes from the Rig Veda: "The truth is one but the wise call it by many names"

Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita: "Whoever invokes a deity by whatever name, it is Me he invokes"

And the Bhagavad Gita: " Ye yathaa maam prapadyante Taamstathaiva bhajaamyaham." (In whatever way men approach me, even so do I reward them; my path do men tread in all ways, Arjuna!).

***

HINDU India was tolerant to every faith. Buddhist India was not different. Is this the tradition of the Semitic faiths? No. Hindu India kept politics and religion separate. Was this the tradition of the Semitic faiths? No.

It was the tradition of Rajadharma (Politics) to protect all people irrespective of their faiths. And be impartial in whatever the ruler did. Thus, Ashoka, the great Buddhist emperor, gave protection to all his subjects: to the Brahmanas, Sramanas and even the atheists. It was this impartiality which gave the Indian state its moral competence. It was from this that its authority flowed. Are these the traditions of the Semitic faiths? No. Then what is it that Hinduism has in common with Semitic faiths? Very little.

In Rock Edict XII, Ashoka says (2300 years ago): “A person should not make an exhibition of reverence of his own sect (religious group) and condemn another without good reason.” On the contrary, he says, “the other sect should be shown reverence. By so doing, a person exalts his own sect and does service to another's sect. By doing otherwise, he does harm to both.” This policy came to be known as sarva dharma samabhava (Equal respect to all religions). 

Does the Pope of Rome look upon other religions with ‘equal respect’? Do the American Methodists respect Hinduism? Does Islam respect other religions? The answer is: No, No, No!

(Note: Extra ecclesia nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation - says the Vatican). Refer to Religions aren't equal, Vatican says.

Then why was this doctrine of Samabhava imposed on the Hindus, when they needed no Jawaharlal Nehru to tell them of their ancient tradition? 

India will remain secular, not because of Nehru, but because freedom is at the bottom to tell them of their ancient tradition to tell them to tell them of their ancient tradition?

Both Christianity and Islam are proselytising religions. To denounce Hinduism is a daily routine with their missionaries. That is the traditional way to win converts. The Christians say that Hinduism represents ‘demonic forces’, while Muslims say it (Hinduism) is a ‘false religion’.

So, was it not a deliberate fraud on the part of Nehru to impose this doctrine of ‘equal respect for all religions’ on the Hindus alone? Didn't he know that Christianity and Islam, both foreign religions, are committed to convert India. Even a man of ordinary intelligence (and he certainly was not so ‘ordinary’) would have called for a ban on conversion to make his doctrine of samabhava meaningful. But he did nothing. He was as cussed to the Hindus as he was when he passed the Hindu Code Bill. 

Shyam Prasad Mukherjee declared: "Government did not dare to touch the Muslim community."

When the American colonies founded the United States, they declared themselves in favour of secularism. So, when the Mormons (an obscurantist Christian sect) insisted on retaining their Personal Laws including polygamy (as the Indian Muslims have been insisting on) they were told that admission to the Union would depend on their giving up their Personal Laws.

Was Nehru aware of this episode? Did he have the courage to follow the American example? Perhaps he was more comfortable with the adulation of the Muslims.

So, the appeasement went on. The Congress party continued to make concessions to the minorities for their votes. Nehru had little to say against minority fundamentalism, but much against Hindu fundamentalism. This suited the Muslims. But this does not suit the Hindus. They want this pseudo-secularism of Nehru to be scrapped.

Lord Vishnu 

Secularism was, therefore, designed to hold the Hindus in duress. In the event, it kept the fault lines open. To close these fault lines, the Indian people must go back to nationalism. 

***

The case against religion is that it is divisive. But by introducing the Parliamentary system, with unchecked growth of political parties, the Congress brought in the worst divisive form of government that one could think of. Race, religion, ethnicity, caste, language, region-all these became fault lines in the divisive process. The Indian polity is already highly fragmented. The damage has been done. Thanks to the Congress Party.

But what is one to make of Nehru, the ‘visionary’, the ‘builder of modern India’ when he went for the ‘first-past-the-post’ system of elections? Was this not done in the full knowledge of its consequences? Of course it was, but it helped the Congress to stay in power.

Secularism was, therefore, designed to hold the Hindus in duress. In the event, it kept the fault lines open. To close these fault lines, the Indian people must go back to nationalism. One simple way is to insist that the winner in an election must secure 51 per cent of the votes cast.

In a country of India's diversity, further fragmentation poses great danger. The time is, therefore, ripe for the reverse process. Only nationalism, modified to suit our times, can unite our people. Only nationalism can close the fault lines.

(source: Secularism: A fraud on the Hindus - By M S N Menon - organiser.org). Refer to Who Killed Our Culture? We Did - By Youki Kudoh - time.com  May 3 1999.

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Sanskrit Wisdom – By G R Josyer 

Galileo’s telescope is a fine invention. It would have got him a Nobel prize now. But it can probe only a limited horizon in the vast expanse of the Universe. But there is no telescope with which we could visualize the vast expanse of antiquity. Christ’s semi-historicity is as far as we can reach, and perhaps if we stand on tiptoe, and stretch our hands, we touch the cornice of the window-sill of Greece and Rome, with the aid of Plutarch! 

Prior to that, civilization may have risen and passed, nations may have progressed and become extinct, but to us they are simply “Dark Ages”. Occasionally one sees a vague and far away reference to Egyptians, Phoenician, Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations. All of them are dubbed in one sweep, “Dark Ages”! We mean that they were ages of ignorance. The ignorance, in truth, is ours! 

In the eyes of the English and Europeans, civilization started with Greece and Rome. They evolved from those civilizations. They come to India and conclude that what civilization they see here is also derived from Greece and Rome! They would even speak of Chinese civilization. But every one, Indians included, would seek to wriggle out rather than admit the antiquity of Indian civilization! 

In the eyes of the English and Europeans, civilization started with Greece and Rome.

Indian thought acknowledges many earlier civilizations, and the intellectual treasures that have come down today are to be derived from earlier ones by psychic comprehension. 

***

Every people endowed with human qualities soon evolve some measure of civilization, and if they are receptive borrow from those higher advanced. On this planet Earth, India seems to be most endowed with conditions productive of civilization. 

Civilization is not permanent or eternal. It is epochal, and has a life span, with a beginning, culmination, and decadence. And then, like a gaunt tree which puts out new shoots and foliage, there is a new growth, reflecting the old, or out of the remnants of the old. 

Indian thought acknowledges many earlier civilizations, and the intellectual treasures that have come down today are to be derived from earlier ones by psychic comprehension. 

Not only has it had resurgence in India itself from aeon to aeon, but its fragrance and luster have been wafted to other lands and people, Asian, African, European, American, to Aztecs and Incas of the Far West, and to the Thais, Malays, and Polynesians of the Far East. 

Hence was India the cynosure of all minds, those who coveted glory, coveted wealth, or coveted knowledge. Alexander invaded India, not in order to confer Greek civilization on backward India, but drawn by the fame of its wisdom and grandeur. Megasthenes and Houen-tsang came here as pilgrims in quest of knowledge, and not in order to bestow their Chinese civilization on India. Christ came here to slake his thirst for spirituality. Columbus started out to seek a fortune in India, but went astray. Vasco da Gama came to India and found it. 

This is proof enough of the glamour and antiquity of Indian civilization. If present day scholarship babbles about other civilizations and seeks to put the cart before the horse, it shows how superficial, how self-willed, how self-deceptive that scholarship is. The Greek philosophers were debtors to India. Much of modern European knowledge germinated from Indian seeds. Much of the present civilization of the Far East reflects Indian. 

Ten Nobel Prize poets together cannot equal Valmiki and Vyasa. Kapila and Gautama, Patanjali and Panini, Kanada and Jaimini were intellectual giants whose equals no nation has ever produced. 

***

Ten Nobel Prize poets together cannot equal Valmiki and Vyasa. Kapila and Gautama, Patanjali and Panini, Kanada and Jaimini were intellectual giants whose equals no nation has ever produced. 

These statements are made, not as a claim for pride, but as a cold record of facts. Those, who seek to burke them might examine themselves, or have themselves examined. Indian civilization is not alien in origin. It is Indian in origin. Many other civilizations also are of Indian origin. 

One of the main features of Indian civilization was Wisdom. Shakespeare or Emerson, Voltaire or Goethe, Homer or Virgil, Confuscius or Tolstoy, have not said anything nobler, more refined, more comforting, more delectable, or more inspiring than India’s rishis.

(source: Sanskrit Wisdom – By G R Josyer  International Academy of Sanskrit Research. printed at Coronation Press 1953 Mysore. p 1 - 5).

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Black Diwali - Terrorism's deadly blast hit Delhi

Two near-simultaneous blasts took place in markets in central and south Delhi, crowded with people shopping ahead of religious festivals of Diwali and Id next week. A day after the deadly blasts in Delhi, people are still trying to come to terms with what are being described as the worst attacks in the Indian capital.  This is one of the busiest times of the year, when Indians of all faiths are out shopping and celebrating ahead of two major religious festivals - Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and Eid, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Most of the residents of this bustling city of 14 million pored over newspapers and reports, trying to make sense of the violence.

Black Diwali: There is no political will in India to fight terror - says Chief Justice Lahoti

***

Enough is enough - say Indian newspapers

We can either dismiss what happened in Delhi on Saturday as just another in a long line of terror attacks on Indian soil, and pray that there’s at least a decent interval before we are hit again. Or, we can send out a hard-hitting, unambiguous message: that we are not willing to accept such outrages as part of our fate, and are determined to do whatever it takes to protect our citizens. This is no occasion to be genteel and ‘civilised’ in our response. It’s time we got angry. This is an act of war, doesn’t matter that it’s not been officially declared as one. It calls for a scale and intensity of response comparable to London’s, where the number of deaths was actually fewer than Delhi’s and far, far fewer than Mumbai’s in 1993. - Times of India.

Echoing the theme, The Pioneer argues the government should have done more in the aftermath of the bombs. "Mere words of sympathy could be no substitute for accepting responsibility and owning up to failure. "By calling for restraint and asking people not to get carried away, the prime minister and his men mock at the memory of those who perished on Saturday or have been maimed for the rest of their lives. "This battle against terror must be won, we cannot afford to lose it."

The Indian Express endorses this view: "How much more evidence does this country need that it is in the line of fire? "The resolve of terrorists can only be defeated if we display an even greater resolve to defeat them."  

***

What cross-border terrorism? Let's celebrate survival

" Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards," Mahatma Gandhi once said.

"Terrorism is a menace that we all have to face and fight together. This is not only a phenomenon here in our country. This is something that the whole world has to face. It is important that we all together fight it together,"      
 -  said Sonia Gandhi.

***

The custodians of national conscience have coupled their generous overuse of hoary adjectives like "heinous" and "dastardly" to appeal for calm, to praise our collective restraint and to assure us that India will not buckle under terrorism. There is no need, the UPA Chairperson has gratuitously informed us, to be either unduly perturbed or point an accusing finger at anyone. Terrorism, after all, is a "global phenomenon". 

The mood of forgiveness resonates throughout Lutyens' Delhi. Even as the Police speak of the terrorists' links across the Radcliffe Line, a decision is taken to declare Pakistan a non-issue. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be done to derail the "peace process". The Government is in denial. It doesn't want to accept that what happened in Delhi on Saturday was no freak show. The terrorists wilfully targeted the crowded pre-Diwali bazaars as a gesture of defiance, to show that they are still in business.

It is certainly time to be phlegmatic but it is also a time to be angry. For the narrowest of political compulsions, the Government has conveyed the impression that terrorism is a trivial act of deviancy and that the killers must be indulged and treated with kid gloves. The "soft state" is not merely a helpless Prime Minister, an inept Home Minister and a compromised External Affairs Minister. It is a mindset of squeamish appeasement guaranteed to ensure the victims of last Saturday's massacre won't be the last. 

Diwali commemorates Lord Ram's triumphant return to Ayodhya. This year we will be observing a collective delusion that evil is just an abstraction, maya. We are celebrating survival by pretending there is no war.

(source: What cross-border terrorism? Let's celebrate survival - By Swapan Dasgupta). Refer to She became loyal to India a trifle late, by 16 years! - By S Gurumurthy

Refer to chapter on Islamic Onsalught and Refer to My People, Uprooted: "A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal"  - By Tathagata Roy

***

Without political will to fight terror, we are finished.
There is no political will here to fight terror - says Chief Justice Lahoti

"Terrorism is a menace that we all have to face and fight together. This is not only a phenomenon here in our country. This is something that the whole world has to face. It is important that we all together fight it together," said Sonia Gandhi.

Sending a wake-up call to the Government, outgoing Chief Justice of India - Justice R C Lahoti said today that there was no “political will” in the country to fight terrorism, a crime that needed an “altogether new type of investigation.” 

Speaking to the press on his last day in office, Justice Lahoti’s remarks assume significance coming as they do two days after the worst terrorist strike in Delhi. And when the UPA government repealed the terror law citing its misuse and its commitment in the Common Minimum Programme. Has anyone thought why there has not been a single instance of terror in USA post-9/11 unlike India where such attacks occur almost every day? The difference lies in the desire to study the problem scientifically and take remedial measures,” Justice Lahoti said.

Subdued Diwali in bomb-hit Delhi - Hindus in India have been marking their main festival of the year, Diwali, amid fear and tight security in Delhi, three days after bombs killed 62 people. People are feeling very low. They don't want to celebrate Diwali they way they normally do."

For more refer to Worst Diwali since 1947, say agencies - http://www.indiareacts.com/nati2.asp?recno=3537 

(source: Deadly blasts hit Delhi - BBC and Black Diwali). Refer to chapter on Islamic Onsalught.

Why are Hindus so submissive?

After 9/11, Americans resolved to smash the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism. From London to Bali via Beslan, the rage of the civilised world is mounting against terrorists and their ideology.

Chief Justice RC Lahoti rightly diagnosed the government psyche as lacking in political will. The US took the 9/11 attack seriously enough to go to war in Afghanistan, the base of Osama bin Laden. Israel has a five-decade-old record of dealing with Arab terrorism. Thailand is sparing no mercy to prevent the Muslims of Pattani, the country's southern province, from getting away with secession.

Contrast the Thai policy with New Delhi's handling of Jammu and Kashmir. In spite of Parliament passing a unanimous resolution that the entire J&K, including POK, was an integral part of India, the Prime Ministers of India, whether of the BJP or the Congress, merrily sit to negotiate what else to give up beyond insisting on the LOC. How China handled the secession by Xinjiang was interesting. Between 1911 and 1948, the writ of the central government did not run in this Turko Uygur province. Meanwhile, the Gandhians, the Leftists and their fellow travellers reflect a perversion in response to a long, collective oppression. The result is that Hindu elites run down their own community. It is difficult to think of another society whose intelligentsia indulges in so much self-condemnation.

(source: Why are Hindus so submissive? - By Prafull Goradia - November 5 2005 Op-ed daily pioneer.com).

Too much tolerance is cowardice! 

The blasts in Delhi on Deepavali eve should have been the last straw, but even ten days after that blatant and brutal assault on India, the tendency of our rulers is to wish it away, or rather wash it away, as just one of those usual accidents. In fact on that fatal day, the PM's first reaction could be had only four to five hours after the blast, which is ridiculous in these days of omnipresent and penetrative media. He probably was awaiting Sonia's nod because he spoke only after the lady did. And, when he did speak, it was the usual uninspiring stuff, offering neither comfort nor confidence. Pussy-footing on terrorism is nothing new to Indian leadership which in turn is probably reflecting a national malaise.

America crossed two oceans and two continents to secure itself against 'perceived' threats. To this day, not a shred of evidence has been produced to justify its war on Iraq nor has it got within even smelling distance of Osama whose captivity was the purpose of the attack on Afghanistan.  Britain sent its troops to the tip of South America to retake the Falklands from Argentina as the world watched the 'exploits' of the Royal Navy against a tiny nation. But no one bothered to ask what the UK was doing in such distant places.

Let alone crossing oceans and continents, India is not even supposed to cross the imaginary and largely invisible Line of Control, to secure itself against an open, blatant and real threat, a threat which has manifested itself every day for the last over fifty years. Four formal wars, including the Kargil one, have been fought. On every occasion Pakistan has been the aggressor. Each time the Indian army not only repulsed the enemy but was in a position to take back PoK, which we officially still claim as our own. And each time, like a rolling trophy being handed back to the organisers after a win, we frittered away the triumphs! 

Terrorism, particularly religious terror, is not new to India. We have faced it for over thousand years ever since the times of Khiljis, Gajjinis, Ghoris and Babars. And probably we have got numbed by it to the point of not only complete acceptance of the methods of the aggressors but also their rationale!

(source: Too much tolerance is cowardice! - By T W Jawahar - newstodaynet.com). Refer to chapter on Islamic Onsalught

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

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Sanatana Dharma and Persecutory ideology Cults ?

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity.  What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.  To support roguery and error all over the earth."                        

                         -  Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) Third President of US -  "Notes on Virginia" 

***

No Muslim will declare that all religions are equal and no Christian will ever concede that all religions are similar. Their prophets and books have indoctrinated that their god is the only god and other Gods are false and the followers of the false Gods are to be killed or converted. So, for them a question of equality in religions never arises. A thought that all religions are equal is itself a heresy or Kufr for Christians and Muslims. 

Ram Swarup’s statement that hatred for others is a theological requirement for them is very much true.

But a Hindu, without having good knowledge on Hinduism, and no knowledge on Islam and Christianity, will declare from the roof top that all religions are equal and they teach the same thing.

Today the best propagandists of Christianity and Islam are the Hindus of all kinds – politicians, academics, media persons, swamis, swaminis and most of the general Hindu population. By declaring all religions to be equal, these Hindus want to give equal respect to Islam and Christianity. That means one has to give equal respect also to an inferior teaching which the desert cults give. When Hindus look at these West Asian ideologies in an image of Hinduism, it is an act of promotion of a hostile and intolerant ideology.

The Hindus have fast forgotten that both Christianity and Islam have a very long, black and blood-soaked history of slaughtering millions of innocent Pagans and Hindus around the world. 

Despite the repeated Islamic invasions into India, the Hindus never tried to study the purpose of the invasions and the religious and ideological motives of the Islamic invaders. 

They thought that it is also one kind of a religion. However, as an exception, few persons like Bankim Chandra, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Vivekanand and Shri Aurobindo understood the nature of the prophetic cults, both Islam and Christianity.

But it was Shri Ram Swarup, who had the necessary scholarship and courage, examined these cults critically and found them simply to be an imperialist ideology meant to use in the conquest of the world under the cover of the name of god. He finds nothing comparable between Hinduism and these persecutory cults, intellectually or spiritually. Hinduism and persecutory cults of Christianity and Islam differ radically in their approach and ethos on most important questions relating to man, divinity, nature, ethics and moksha. There is no truth in prophetism’s claim that god can be known indirectly through a ‘pet go-between’, a ‘sole begotten son’ or a ‘last prophet’.

When Shri Sita Ram Goel was asked in an interview to compare Hinduism with Christianity he strongly refused to compare Hinduism with Christianity, as there was nothing to compare with. He said that Christianity could be compared only with Nazism and Communism. The central piece of the two creeds is ‘one true god’ of masculine gender who makes himself known to his believers through an equally single, favored individual, as Shri Ram Swarup states it. He further states that these creeds are the products of a fitful mind and can make only a temporary impression and their life could not be but brief.

(source: Sanatana Dharma and Persecutory Cults - hinduunity.com). Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero 

Why this war on Hinduism?- These two (Christianity and Islam) hostile ideologies, flawed because they are not based on human experience but on spurious and fantastic literature, are based on a priori illusion that human beings are genetically flawed and can be redeemed only by symbolic conversion and the acceptance of their bookish deity. For instance, if the Christian and Islamic clergy do not propagate and force their sterile ideologies down the throats of unsuspecting or helpless people through dubious means, or do not force them to stay on with censure and punishment, their religions would be wiped out in decades. Europe is a primary example.

(source: Why this war on Hinduism? - By George Thundiparambil - christianaggression.org). Refer to Truth can kill the West - By M.S.N. Menon - Truth can kill the West—the truth about Christianity. It is all in the Dead Sea scrolls. Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban and Christian Supremacy: Pushing the Dhimmitude of Non-Christians in America.  Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org. Refer to Christian Muslim bloodbath in Nigeria - time.com - February 24 2006 and Clash of Two Aggressive Religious Philosophies in the Middle East - By Hari Sud - saag.org.  Refer to Former Catholic Sister Says Even Mother Teresa Is a Fraud - By By Greg Szymanski June 6, 2007).

Recall the Goa Inquisition to stop the Church from crying foul

His Majesty the king has ordered that there shall be no Brahmins in his land and that they should be banished.'

'In the name of his Majesty I order that no Hindu can or shall perform marriages…'

'The marriages of the supplicants are superstitious acts or functions which include Hindu rites and ceremonies as well as cult, adoration and prayers of Hindu temples…'

'I order that no Hindu temples be erected in any of the territories of my king… and that Hindu temples which already have been erected be not repaired…'

Anybody familiar with the brutalisation of Hindu customs and practices, indeed Hindu faith and belief, could mistakenly believe these extracts have been taken from royal decrees issued during Muslim rule. The harshness with which suppression is prescribed in these decrees, the callous disregard that is advocated for the other's sentiment, the cruelty that is so palpable in both thought and action, suggest that these firmans could have been issued by one of the "shadows of god" who stalked this land, laying to waste Hindu lives and property.

But these are not extracts taken from firmans issued from the court of say, Aurangzeb. They have been taken from firmans issued by the Portuguese who ruled Goa and recognised no religion other than Christianity as the legitimate means of communion with god. It was no secular rule that they imposed, but a ruthless system of pillage disguised as trade and a cruel administration for whom the heathens, especially Brahmins, unless they embraced Christianity, were nothing more than "supplicants" to be crushed into submission or exiled into oblivion.

The horrors inflicted on Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition -- the Vatican has only recently admitted that the Church was wrong and Galileo was right -- are well known. Not that well-known, and tragically so, are the horrors inflicted by the Goa Inquisition. Every child reads about Galileo's trial and how it is symbolic of the triumph of science over blind faith. But there is no reference -- indeed, all reference is scrupulously avoided -- to the brutal attempts of the Church to triumph over Hinduism by seeking to destroy all that was Hindu in territories conquered by the Portuguese in India.

And this silence is not because there exists no evidence: There exist, in full text, orders issued by the Portuguese viceroy and the governor. There exist, in written records and travelogues, penned not by the persecuted but by the persecutors, full details of the horrors perpetrated in the name of Christ. Yet this silence has been maintained -- a silence willed by secular historians and politicians; an illegitimate silence legitimised by the popular belief that missionaries and their patrons were, and remain, a benign lot who could never hurt a fly. 

The Holy Inquisition.

Yet this silence has been maintained -- a silence willed by secular historians and politicians; an illegitimate silence legitimised by the popular belief that missionaries and their patrons were, and remain, a benign lot who could never hurt a fly. 

***

It is apparent from the resolution that the Brahmins stood as an obstacle between the Church and the masses, preventing the former from converting the latter by exhorting the people not to discard their ancient faith to embrace an alien god. However, to the great dismay of the Church, threats of banishment, loss of estates and forced slave labour on galleys did not quite break the spirit of the Hindus. So, the bishops, the viceroy, the governor and the prelates had to come up with something more draconian, something which would reduce the religion of the heathens into one that could neither be practiced nor preached. For this, they decided to ban all Hindu rites and rituals.

The Vatican has apologised for the agony inflicted on Galileo Galilei. But the terrible agony inflicted on the Hindus of India during the Goa Inquisition remain buried in the carefully crafted history of the Church as a benign institution. It is time India demanded and secured an apology from the Vatican for the Goa Inquisition. In fact, we should go a step further and demand reparation from Portugal.

(source: Recall the Goa Inquisition to stop the Church from crying foul - By Kanchan Gupta - rediff.com). For more on the Inquisition refer to The Pit and the Pendulum - By Edgar Allen Poe. 1843). Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban

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St. Francis Xavier - Whitewashing A Bloody Legacy in India ?

"Although the Bible says that "God is love," Christianity has shed more blood and perpetrated more cruelty than any other religion in the world."

                -  G W Foote and J M Wheeler, authors of Crimes of Christianity. Progressive Publishing Co. London. 1887.

***

"Scholars are generally agreed that the Inquisition of Goa had earned “a sinister renown as the most pitiless in Christendom.” 

"The story of the Inquisition in Goa is a dismal record of callousness and cruelty, tyranny and injustice, espionage and blackmail, avarice and corruption, repression of thought and culture and promotion of obscurantism."

(source: The Goa Inquisition - By Anant Kakba Priolkar  p. ix - 57).  Refer to Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel - says Novelist Richard Zimler

The Followers of the Prince of Peace and Love, as they called Jesus Christ, got busy with conversion of the Hindus, because they had been commanded by Jesus: Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Mt.xxvii:19). Therefore, they set up in Goa (A.D. 1560) the Inquisition to teach the Hindus the tenets of their religion which, they claimed, like the Muslims, was the only true religion in the world!. They called it the Holy Office; the Hindus who suffered at its hands called it the Bloody Inquisition. The followers of Jesus Christ made free and forcible use of the faggot, the thumbscrew, the whip, the stake and the scaffold to teach the Hindus what the true religion. 

(source: The Hindu - By Krishna Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti p.10). For more refer to Details of the Goa Inquisition

St. Francis Xavier - Whitewashing A Bloody Legacy?

***

Recently a leading US magazine (secular in the uniquely White American way) tried to whitewash Francis Xavier's bloody legacy and convince us that because hundreds of Christians (native and tourists) flock to his once-intact-but-since-disintegrated body, he was a great saint (figure that out, if you can). The Inquisition may have been excessive, but its noble objective was saving the heathens. 

The trouble with conversions is that, like a dog that runs after a moving car and wouldn't know what to do if he caught it, the missionaries appear clueless about what to do with the saved (sic) souls. In the West, Christians continued to mistreat their slaves after converting them to Christianity, which is why the liberated slaves are striking back through the Black Muslim movement. India's contemporary Dalit movement is in crisis because it is largely financed and indoctrinated by American and British proselytizers. It is heartening that a few intrepid souls are venturing to challenge these instruments of neo-colonial geo-politics and find their own voice. Though ignored by the secular media, they nonetheless have a case.

Refer to Missionary, Explorer, Hero - St. Francis Xavier was a failure, so why do millions of believers flock to see his remains in Goa? - By Alex Perry - Time and Chapter on European Imperialism and The Goa Inquisition and The Christianising of Europe and Heresy and the Inquisition VI The Spanish Inquisition. Also refer to Christian Atrocities - A River of Blood and Victims of Christian Faith). From those wonderful folks who brought you the Inquisition and The Destruction of The Tasmanian Aborginies.  For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and How various parts of the world was converted to Christianity.and Christian Supremacy: Pushing the Dhimmitude of Non-Christians in America.  Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

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Church flays film on Goa Liberation
Why is the Indian Church defending actions of Foreign rulers past and present? It is this positioning of loyalty which disturbs Hindus.  

"Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt."    

                                   --  Mark Twain (1835-1910) most widely loved and celebrated American writers - Reflections on Religion.  

"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ." 

                                      - Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) Third President of US - Deism and America

***

The Catholic Church in Goa has come out in protest against a government-sponsored documentary on the liberation of the state from Portuguese rule. The Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, which viewed the documentary, said the film, Goa Ka Swadhinata Sangram, produced by Ramesh Deo, was ‘‘highly communal’’. The Diocesan Service Centre for Social Action (DSCSA) and the Diocesan Society of Education (DSE), in a joint statement, also criticised the state government’s decision to screen the documentary in schools across the state.

‘‘The aim seems to fan communal hatred and draw a wedge among Goan communities living peacefully and in total communal harmony since hundreds of years,’’ they added. Fr Vaz further said the way things have been presented is wrong. ‘‘In the beginning, it is shown that Christianity was against the local culture. A rape is shown. Some atrocities might have occurred, but this is not the way to present them. It will only create hatred.’’

However, when contacted, a history lecturer, Prajal Sakhardande, in a local college, said there is no harm in showing anything which is a part of history. ‘‘It is shown that Catholic priests were behind The Inquisition, and it is a fact. Why should the church object to it,’’ he asked.

Ashok N.P. Dessai, Director Education, when contacted, extended support to the film, and said that the documentary was based on facts. Goa Electronics Limited has been awarded the contract of producing the CDs, and they would shortly distribute them among all the schools in Goa, Desai added.

(source: Church flays film on Goa liberation and Hindu Unity.com). Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero.  Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com).

Refer to Missionary, Explorer, Hero - St. Francis Xavier was a failure, so why do millions of believers flock to see his remains in Goa? - By Alex Perry - Time Magazine and Chapter on European Imperialism, The Goa Inquisition and The Christianising of Europe and Heresy and the Inquisition VI The Spanish Inquisition. Also refer to Christian Atrocities - A River of Blood and Victims of Christian Faith). From those wonderful folks who brought you the Inquisition  Refer to Truth can kill the West - By M.S.N. Menon - Truth can kill the West—the truth about Christianity. It is all in the Dead Sea scrolls.

For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and How various parts of the world was converted to Christianity.

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The Inquisition - Controlling the Human Spirit

“In West Africa, where the population was especially dense and from which the great bulk of slaves was secured, Christianity was practically unknown until the Portuguese began to plant missions in the area in the sixteenth century. It was a strange religion, this Christianity, which taught equality and brotherhood and at the same time introduced on a large scale the practice of tearing people from their homes and transporting them to a distant land to become slaves."

                  - John Hope Franklin (1915 -  ) African American historian and author of From Slavery to Freedom

(Note: Loss of Identity: Africans were stripped of their humanity through a systematic obliteration of their ancestral heritage, culture, language, and traditions. Only the black person was perceived in stark color terms. Southern slaves lost most of the vestiges of their African heritage because the oppressive institutional forces of Protestant Anglo-American society easily smothered them ).

(source: Arrogance of Faith - By Forrrest G Wood   p. xxi).

***

There has been no more organized effort by a religion to control people and contain their spirituality than the Christian Inquisition. Developed within the Church’s own legal framework, the Inquisition attempted to terrify people into obedience. 

As the Inquisitior Francisco Pena stated in 1578, “We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save soul of the accused but to achieve the public good. The Inquisition took countless human lives in Europe and around the world as it followed in the wake of missionaries. And along with the tyranny of the Inquisition, churchmen also brought religious justification for the practice of slavery.   

Medieval Spanish for "act of faith", the auto de fe was the ritual of public penance or humiliation of condemned heretics and apostates that took place when the Spanish Inquisition had decided their punishment.

***

Pope Innocent III (1116 - 1216) declared, “that anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of God which conflicted with Church dogma must be burned without pity.” Inquisitors believed the printed word to be a channel of heresy and so hampered the communication produced by the 15^th century invention of the printing press. With license granted by the Pope himself, inquisitors were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty. Dressed as black-robed fiends with black cowls over their heads, Inquisition invented every conceivable device to inflict pain. Many of these devices were inscribed with the motto “Glory be only to God.” The rack, the hoist and water tortures were the most common. Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Ovens built to kill people, made infamous in 20^th century Nazi Germany, were first used by the Christian Inquisition in Eastern Europe. Victims were thrown into a pit full of snakes and buried alive or in mass burning called auto-da-fe.  

By 1492 the Inquisition in Spain had become so virulent in its persecution of Jews that it demanded either their conversion to Christianity or their expulsion. Muslims experienced little better. Not surprisingly, Islamic countries offered far safe sanctuaries to escaping Jews than Christian lands.   

Genocide and enslaving of Native Americans. Columbus mistook the native inhabitants as "Indians".

The tyranny inherent in the belief in Singular Supremacy accompanied explorers and missionaries throughout the world. Columbus vowed aim to “convert the heathen Indian to our Holy Faith” that warranted the enslaving and exporting of thousands of Native Americans.

(image and text source: The Dark Side of Christian History - By Helen Ellerbe  p. 88 - 89).

***

The tyranny inherent in the belief in singular supremacy accompanied explorers and missionaries throughout the world. When Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) landed in America in 1492, he mistook it for India and called the native inhabitants “Indians.” It was his avowed aim to “convert the heathen Indian to our Holy Faith” that warranted the enslaving and exporting of thousands of Native Americans. That such treatment resulted in complete genocide did not matter as much as that these natives had been given the opportunity of everlasting life through their exposure to Christianity. The same sort of thinking also gave Westerners license to rape women. In his own words, Columbus described how he himself “took (his) pleasure” with a native woman after whipping her “soundly” with a piece of rope.  (For more refer to Columbus 'sparked a genocide' - BBC and The genocide and atrocious acts committed by the Spanish against the natives (the Tainos in particular) are well documented in terrifying detail by Bartolomé de Las Casas in his letters and book A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. 

The Inquisition quickly followed in their wake. By 1570 the Inquisition had established an independent tribunal in Peru and the city of Mexico for the purpose of “freeing the land, which has become contaminated by Jews and heretics. Natives who did not convert to Christianity were burned like any other heretic. The Inquisition spread as far as Goa, India, where the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries it took no less than 3, 800 lives.    

(source: The Dark Side of Christian History - By Helen Ellerbe  p. 76  - 88). Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero. Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com). Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

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The Goa Inquisition - Suppressing History for Political and Religious Agenda?

"The West won the World not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized Violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." 

          -  Samuel P. Huntington (1927 -   ) political scientist and author of Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

***

Banning and censorship are increasingly becoming a pernicious part of civil and political governance. History now seems to be under serious threat due to attempts to suppress it for political and religious considerations. A deliberate attempt is being made to make the future generation of students blind followers of the policies the political parties and religious powers wish to impose.

No rational thinking person would deny that the Portuguese rule in Goa was a rule of fanaticism and endless persecutions, that it was nothing short of a butchery lasting several hundreds of years and characterized by orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals and the cruelest pieces of legislations against inhabitants who were not even looked upon as humans.

Shri Mangesh Temple, Goa

Schooling is not meant to 'instill conformism' but to open up the minds of children and inculcate in them the questioning temper. Why then must one fear history, delete facts and suppress reason? 

***

The implications of deliberate attempts to "suppress" history with a politically and religiously motivated agenda are dangerous in many ways. Schooling is not meant to 'instill conformism' but to open up the minds of children and inculcate in them the questioning temper. Why then must one fear history, delete facts and suppress reason? Isn't the very premise of our education, which is based on an egalitarian precept, being questioned in the process?

Infringement of freedom of speech and discussion makes nonsense of education. Discussion and exploration of ideas are the primary functions of schooling. Children need be told objectively how their ancestors lived, how their social structure evolved and how it changed over a period of time. It is only through such a thorough understanding of how the present state of affairs came into existence can the direction of our future be changed.

Suppression of history due to 'religious considerations' will only harm our Nation. Religion has a very less role to play in Nation-building. We will always be a developing nation if we don't inculcate critical thinking. The mind needs to be cultivated to think critically, understand complexity, and value truth.

Do we wish to create an open, democratic, secular and progressive state or do we wish to create an insecure Nation like Afghanistan where true history is censored and religious fairy tales are being depicted as truths? Do we wish to create rational-thinking intellects or do we wish to create religious zealots?

(source: Opposition to Film on Goa Freedom Struggle - yahoogroup - IndianCivilization).  For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and How various parts of the world was converted to Christianity. Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

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Ford project to bring NASA scientists, Vedic scholars together

Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will join hands with Vedic scholars to explore mysteries of ancient Indian cosmology at a Vedic Planetarium about 100 km from Kolkata, once the initiative of Alfred Brush Ford, scion of the United States automobile giant Ford, bears fruit.

Planned at Mayapur, an ancient seat of Vaishnavism and global headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the plantarium forms part of a Rs 283-crore economic initiative by Ford, an ISKCON devotee. Ford's company, ABF International, will promote the project along with a village industries park and a tourism hospitality complex at Mayapur visited by lakhs of tourists each year from India and abroad.

"This will be unique project showcasing the scientific evidence on ancient consmological descriptions of space. We have conducted a series of research and found that the distance between planets, as mentioned in Vedic cosmology, are profoundly accurate with the findings of modern studies,'' said ABF International senior vice-president Alister Taylor.

Recalling that Mayapur was a famous seat of scientific and cultural learning in medieval Bengal, he said, "through our reasearch, we realised that something very interesting (cosmological studies) was happening here." "At the planetarium's research centre, we will have NASA scientists explaining the contributions of Vedic cosmology to the study of today's space science. There will be regular symposia on the subject by astro-physicists," Taylor added.

(source: Ford project to bring NASA scientists, Vedic scholars together - rediff.com).

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Neem tree and the patent war

Recently India has won a 15-year-old patent battle with the USA. The article highlights the importance of Neem.

According to the Shalivahan Shaka, the Hindu calendar shows the beginning of New Year from the first day of the first month of Chaitra, which is celebrated with great joy as the Gudi Padwa Day. The year begins in March-April and is determined by the date on which the sun enters the sign of Capricorn. The third new moon after this day is marked as the beginning of the New Year.  

Statues of Lord Ram and Sita from Indonesia.

***

According to legend, it was also a ‘Day of Return Home’ of the great King Rama of Ayodhya along with his wife Sita and brother Laxman after spending 14 years in exile. The people of Ayodhya were so happy that they celebrated the day by displaying gudi at the entrance of their houses. It was a very simple gesture to express their feelings—yet of a great significance! At the top end, a colored silk cloth is pleated and fixed with a silver or brass pot. It is then decorated with a small garland of flowers and twig of the Neem tree—the plant that purifies (Azadirachta indica or margosa). Well, the Neem has thirty-three different names!

A gudi is a long pole. At the top end, a coloured silk cloth is pleated and fixed with a silver or brass pot. It is then decorated with a small garland of flowers and twigs of the Neem tree—the plant that purifies (Azadirachta indica or margosa). Well, the Neem has thirty-three different names! The Neem tree also occurs on various amulets of early Indus civilisation found in Mohenjo-daro excavation. In the Jataka Tales of Buddhism, there is a mention of the Neem tree as nature’s bitter boon—highlighting humankind’s interdependence on natural environment and restoration of the ecological balance on Mother Earth.

The Neem tree also occurs on various amulets of early Indus civilisation found in Mohenjo-daro excavation. In the Jataka Tales of Buddhism, there is a mention of the Neem tree as nature’s bitter boon—highlighting humankind’s interdependence on natural environment and restoration of the ecological balance on Mother Earth. In India, it is a common belief that chewing a fresh leaf of Neem daily purifies the blood and strengthens the defence mechanism of the human body. In olden days travellers used to sleep under the Neem tree in the belief that it would keep them healthy during the journey.

In Ayurveda—an ancient science of life—Neem has been mentioned in the Charak Samhita as nimba and its mode of use as a ‘pest of decoction of all parts of the tree used in prescription for internal or external use as medicine for skin diseases, urinary diseases, fever and a large number of other ailments’. 

In Ayurveda—an ancient science of life—Neem has been mentioned in the Charak Samhita as nimba and its mode of use as a ‘pest of decoction of all parts of the tree used in prescription for internal or external use as medicine for skin diseases, urinary diseases, fever and a large number of other ailments’. 

***

The pharmacological properties of the Neem tree are so popular in India that virtually it is playing the role of a village dispensary! Almost every part of the tree is used in one way or other: the twigs are used as toothbrush called datoon, to clean teeth. The juice of the twig is rather bitter in taste, but has germicidal and antiseptic properties. The decoction of leaves and bark is used as febrifuge to relieve fever. The bark and dry flowers are used as a tonic after fever. The leaves and bark are used to heal wounds, ulcer, jaundice and skin diseases. The fruits are used as a purgative, emollient (softens the skin) and anthelminthic agent. The oil of the seeds is used as medicinal hair oil and also for curing rheumatism and leprosy.

Two tragedies attracted the world attention towards Neem. In 1958, there was a devastating locust attack in Nigeria that wiped out every tree in the area, leaving only the Neem untouched! And the second was the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984 that killed thousands of people. Apart from this, the regular use of chemically-prepared pesticides such as DDT, BHC, malathion, carbofuran, carburyl, aldrin and dieldrin had created havoc by causing serious health hazards in human beings and severe environment pollution, accounting for about 3 million cases of poisoning. These pesticides are one of the most dangerous pollutants, resulting in 220,000 deaths each year according to a recent estimate by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Maneka Gandhi in her interview to BBC on February 17, 1992 had said that every year in India, 30,000 people die due to pesticides that farmers spray on their crops.

Thus began the intensive research all over the world for evolving a safer pest control agent and the Neem tree kindled a ray of hope in solving the problem. The medicinal properties of Neem have been known to traditional healers in India for thousands of years. Inspired by the importance of Neem tree, C.M. Ketkar, a posgraduate in agriculture and based in Pune, dedicated his life to the ‘Neem mission’ and since the last four decades has spread the message of Neem, ‘the plant that purifies’, the world over. According to a rough estimate, about 14 million Neem trees are under cultivation or growing wild in India. They yield about 83,000 tons of Neem oil and 330,000 of oil cake. Neem tree is considered to be a village dispensary in India. The Gujjar tribe of Rajastan worship Neem tree and calls it neem narayan (Neem God). Some of the places in Madhya Pradesh are named after Neem—like Neemach, Neemkheda, etc.

Prayer meetings by Gandhi at Sabarmati and Sevagram ashrams were conducted under the Neem tree. In south India many of the temple-compounds dedicated to a goodess have a Neem tree. Cutting of these trees is a taboo as it is considered akin to killing a young girl! (Bharatiya Sanskriti Kosh, Part 2, 26/27). Elizabeth Hoddy, head of the Asia Desk of Deutsche Welle’s in English Service on German Radio says, 

“The earliest mention of plants or those with pest control properties is found in the Indian Rig Veda, the classic book of Hinduism.”

(source: Neem tree and the patent war - By Prem Vaidya - oraganiser.org). For more refer to chapter on Nature Worship.

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Saffron used to treat mild depression

In test tube and animal studies, saffron has demonstrated cancer-preventing properties; in animal studies, the spice has shown the ability to improve learning and memory. In a recent preliminary clinical trial, a small daily dose of saffron showed promise in treating depression that is not severe.

The color of Buddhist monks' robes and the artist Christo's "The Gates," saffron is also the name for the spice derived from the dried stigmas of the crocus flower (Crocus sativus). Native to India and the near and Middle East, pure saffron is highly precious: A thousand flowers yield just a few grams. The higher the altitude in which it is grown, the more precious the carotenoid-rich spice is considered. For millenniums, the spice has been used to color and flavor foods and treat a variety of ailments.

(source: LA Times - June 21 2005). For more refer to http://www.itmonline.org/arts/saffron.htm

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Stereotypes in Schooling: Hinduism -  By Yvette C. Rosser (some excerpts)
Negative Pressures in the American Educational System on Hindu Identity Formation  

"The war against Hindus is a media war, beginning in textbooks, but global in its scale." - says George Thundiparambil    

    ***

“Too many Western students still leave high school clutching their Bibles believing that Judeo-Christian Mythology is the one true faith and all others are a religious mockery.”

(source: Hyper Multiculturalism - Encouraging Comparative Religion in Education - By Mark Liberator).

Tavleen Singh columnist with Indian Express has recently commented in her article A Dark and Distorted Hinduism:

"..American professors who have written scholarly tomes on Hinduism make Hinduism sound like a mix of voodoo and pornography. Hindu gods and religious symbols have been put through Freudian analysis to establish such bizarre conclusions as Ganesha’s trunk representing a “flaccid phallus” and his love of sweets as a desire for oral sex. He also has Oedipal problems! This Freudian analysis goes beyond the gods to actual Hindu religious practices, and it is then that these scholars show not just their abysmal ignorance but their deliberate distortion of reality. They teach students in American universities that Brahmins drink menstrual blood and other human fluids and that this is Tantra. They teach that Shiva temples are dens of vice where priests routinely murder and rape unsuspecting pilgrims."

Refer to A Dark and Distorted Hinduism and Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. 

***

Stereotypes about India and Hinduism when taught as fact in American classrooms may negatively impact students of South Asian origin who are struggling to work out their identity in a multicultural, predominately Anglo-Christian environment.

In American textbooks, Hinduism is referred to as one of the world's "five great religions" and yet paradoxically, Hindu beliefs and traditions are often represented as a superstitious localized collection of archaic cults. Hinduism is too complex, too dense, too unbelievable, on the level of Greek mythology but with too many gods who are even more bizarre than Zeus and the pantheon of Mount Olympus, who were at least the precursors of "Western traditions." During the impressionable teenage years, these negative portrayals can cause shame and embarrassment among Indian-American students regarding their ancestry and can engender a dislike for India. Students may also respond to these negative stereotypes by adopting a defensive posture vis-à-vis the teacher's presentation, as they feel compelled to correct misperceptions.

The Magnificent Angkor Wat: Temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu.

"At the sight of this temple, one feels one's spirit crushed, one's imagination surpassed. One looks, one admires, and, seized with respect, one is silent. For where are the words to praise a work of art that may not have its equal anywhere on the globe? ... What genius this Michalangelo of the East had, that he was capable of concaving such a work.'' wrote French explorer - Henri Mouhot

In American classrooms, Hinduism is taught as poverty stricken, superstitious, polytheistic, "caste ridden" Hindu "way of life". . . and then somehow magically culminates with a eulogy of Mahatma Gandhi.

"With all their orientation towards “culture” the Western Indologists positively dislike Hinduism when it stands up to defend itself. They prefer museum Hinduism, or an innocent Gandhian kind of Hinduism, and they readily buy the secularist story that an assertive Hinduism is not the “real Hinduism”.

(source: Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society - By Koenraad Elst  p 83).

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

***

This essentialist presentation of Indic Civilization can be summarized as the standard pedagogic approach which runs quickly from the "Cradle of Civilization"—contrasting the Indus Valley with Egypt and Mesopotamia—on past the Aryans, who were somehow our linguistic (and/or racial) ancestors—to the poverty stricken, superstitious, polytheistic, "caste ridden" Hindu "way of life". . . and then somehow magically culminates with a eulogy of Mahatma Gandhi.

Negativities may persist in classes at the University level, in which Hinduism is represented as myth, rather than a living tradition embodying universal truths—as Hindus would naturally perceive it. Wars, disease, population, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, female infanticide, flooding, and starvation." "India," stated another student was "only thought of as a third world country—considered inferior and totally ignorant of world events."

The majority of the informants' comments agreed with this list of essentialisms. Though most stated that "Hinduism, the caste system, poverty, third world country inferiority" were the aspects of India that were stressed, one student did state that her teacher "dealt only with the independence movement." One articulate informant complained that, in her classes, India was not depicted accurately and "only negativities were enforced, [India was not presented through] a wide picture." She continued by summarizing the gist of the treatment of India: "We all starve. We eat monkey brains. We worship rats. We worship cows." Ultimately she observed that "Only Gandhi and ancient India were covered with any respect." Another informant reinforced this assessment with his list of topics, which can be said to form the structure of most high school classroom presentations. He cited, "Indus Valley, British occupation, Gandhi," and then added, "That's it!"

One informant complained that "Hinduism" was described as "some sort of bizarre mystic religion in which people do dances and worship strange things. India is full of poor uneducated starving people, a country on the verge of collapse." Critical of the stereotype-as-fact orientation, another young man stated "The poverty of India was blown out of proportion and no Asian countries were credited with the artistic and literary contributions they made to the world. Islamic nations were presented as fanatical, China was the 'communist enemy', Japan was an economic and educational threat and India was overpopulated." The majority of the informants agreed that when India was studied, "Religion and the caste system were emphasized." Several noted that when studying Gandhi, in the context of Partition, "animosity between Hindus and Muslims" was discussed.

The textbook gives both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana paragraph-length descriptions which, considering space limitations, is at least adequate. The book explains that in the Bhagavad-Gita "doing one's moral duty according to one's responsibilities marks the highest fulfillment in life." It mentions Rama and Sita who "symbolize the ideals of Indian manhood and womanhood." The next statement is strange. It claims that from these epics and the

” Upanishads and the Vedas themselves, scholars have pieced together the origins of the two most important influences in Indian history—the caste system and Hinduism.”

This textbook, published in 1990, can not be expected to be free of Euro-centric jargon, but it should not perpetuate the patronizing perspective that scholars have "pieced together" the essence of India and through their reconstructions have discovered the origins of Hinduism, based primarily on the caste system. Though this may be a subtle complaint, it represents the overall tone found in this type of presentation of Indian civilization—the burden of preservation by occidental scholars. Though this makes reference to the work of scholars, this phrasing in no way offers insight into the processes of historiography.

Once again, in concluding, the authors state that: “the caste system and Hinduism ranked as the most important developments of Indian history. These two ideas become interwoven in the fabric of Indian society.”

The caste system has received far more space than anything else about ancient India. A total of nine paragraphs have been devoted to the topic of caste, to the exclusion of any mention of the famous poet Kalidasa, or ragas and rasas—systems of aesthetics, or statecraft. This book implies that nothing in India is more important than the caste system. The next heading, "Buddhism," begins after the four pages devoted to Hinduism stating that "Buddha did not accept the Hindu gods," and "Although he did not attack the Hindu caste system openly, he did not accept it."

Ganesha Buddha - He is also known as Shoden in Japan.

Biased and Shoddy Western scholarship -"Buddha did not accept the Hindu gods?" 

Ganesha holds an exalted position not only in Hinduism but also in Jainism and Buddhism. There are a number of gods and goddesses from the Hindu tradition who appear in the Buddhist context. The four high gods: Brahma, Indra, Shiva and Vishnu and their respective Shaktis are integrated into Buddhism.  

***

Indians should "hire a high-powered lawyer and sue textbook publishers for character assassination. How else could you get their attention so they would reconsider their treatment of South Asia except through a method that they all understand. Sue them for libel!" 

On page 213 the authors state that "Mathematicians of India developed the system of Arabic numerals, but the Arabs transmitted the system to the West. The Arabs also contributed the concept of zero to mathematics." This implies that zero was an Arab concept, though the authors previously mentioned that the Arabs had transmitted zero from India. Which is it? The text does say that Arab views of a spherical earth with hemispheres is attributed to a Hindu idea.

(source: Stereotypes in Schooling: Hinduism -  By Yvette C. Rosser - has an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in Curriculum and Instruction at that university).

Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com. For the past few months, an obscure debate has been raging on about California school textbooks, which actually boils down to a vexed and important issue: Do Hindus have the right to be treated as equals with followers of other religions, or are Hindus and Hinduism to be deemed, ipso facto, inferior and objects of scorn?  

Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan. I was once looking through the 'Great Books' series from Harvard University: this is widely used as reading material in college. In the introduction to the Bhagavad Gita, the compiler of the volumes says something -- I paraphrase -- to the effect that 'to western ears, this sounds primitive.' I was startled at the prejudice, for, to my eastern ears, the Christian Bible sounds like much blood and violence and God casually smiting people dead and full of implausible contradictions, but I would never say so lest it hurt people's sentiments. No such consideration, obviously, for Hindu sentiments from the 'Great Books' editor.

Sanu, in a forceful analysis of Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, which is widely used by schoolchildren, showed how the treatment of Christianity and Islam on the one hand, and Hinduism on the other, were like night and day. The former had reverential articles written by believers in those traditions, who went to great lengths to present even illogical beliefs in the most positive light. On the other hand, the article on Hinduism was written by a non-Hindu whose personal penchant for wild sexual fantasies and proclivity to see erotica everywhere had long been remarked upon.

For more on textbook changes refer to chapter on Aryan Invasion theory and Indian Identity in American Schools - By C. Alex Alexander. Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com). Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban. Refer to As America declines, the Bible thumpers take hold - By Ramesh Rao - indiareacts.com. Refer to Why this war on Hinduism? - By George Thundiparambil and American conspiracy against Hinduism!  - By V Sundaram - newstodaynet.com and Whose religion is it anyway? - By Ramesh Rao - indiareacts.com and The California Textbook Trial - By Kalavai Venkat - sulekha.com. Refer to Who Killed Our Culture? We Did - By Youki Kudoh - time.com  May 3 1999.

Refer to Hindus and Sikhs Protest Curriculum Changes in Calif. Textbooks - "Hinduism is not treated with the same respect as Christianity or Judaism," Dr. Mihir Meghani, president of the Hindu American Foundation, told the board. Unlike in those faiths, "the sacred scriptures of Hinduism are referred to as legends or myths." For more refer to chapter on Aryan Invasion Theory. For more refer to chapter on Quotes, Hindu Scriptures, Symbolism in Hinduism, Hindu Culture, Sanskrit, Yoga and Hindu Philosophy, Hindu Cosmology and Advanced Concepts of Hinduism.  Refer to Stop this anti-Hindu tirade! - hindustantimes.com.  Sign - End Harvard Association of Hate Groups! - http://www.petitiononline.com/stopIER/petition.html 

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For the love of India
A dhoti clad Englishman named B G Horniman

The air was reverberating with the chant of Vande Mataram. Protesters were marching despite police warning not to go any further. The police charged at the protesters. Among those who braved the lathi blows of the colonial police, while protesting against the partition of Bengal, was a dhoti-clad, bare-footed Englishman named B G Horniman. 

Horniman was later invited by Pherozeshah Mehta to take charge of his nationalist newspaper, The Bombay Chronicle. As a formidable editor of The Bombay Chronicle, he criticised the British authorities for their anti-India polices. He could see how the colonial authorities ignored India's interests to promote and protect the interests of their parent nation. The corrupt and insensitive administration was adding to the misery of the poor Indian masses. He spared none. To expose exploitation and corruption in the British administration, he wrote against several Government officials that included governors, police commissioners. Even viceroys were not spared.

Then came the draconian Rowlatt Act of 1919 - (authorised the government to imprison any person living in the Raj without trial on suspicion of being a terrorist).

Horniman offered satyagraha against it. He even condemned the Jalianwala Bagh massacre in strongest words in his columns. No wonder, the British Government viewed his writings incendiary and seditious in nature.

Seeing a barrage of anti-British articles in The Bombay Chronicle, the Viceroy sought the permission of the Secretary of State for Horniman's deportation to England. No sooner the orders came, ill and fever-ridden Horniman was dragged out of his bed and deported to England in 1919. 

But Horniman's soul was in India. So strong was his yearning to come back to this country that one day he booked a berth on a ship sailing for Colombo against the advice of the booking clerk, who was under obligation to inform the authorities in India about his departure to Colombo. On reaching Sri Lanka, he took a boat-train to India and then a mail train to Victoria terminus. 

As Horniman stepped on the platform and had barely gone a couple of yards, he was arrested despite his protest. Next day, he was produced before the judge. He looked fresh and agile, and greeted the judge in a voice that exuded confidence. The judge and his subordinate staff and all present took note of his unusual confidence. The court proceedings started with the judge asking Horniman about the reason of his visit to India, as it was a violation of the deportation orders. Horniman answered, maintaining his composure, that he had committed no offence by coming to the country he loved. It was the police who had committed offence by arresting him. The judge looked at him in bewilderment and asked: "Haven't you read the order?" "I have, sir. The concerned portion of the order reads that I am not suppose to land in India; and in Queen's English, one can land from a ship or a plane. I have come to India by boat-train, and to Bombay by mail train. One cannot land by train. One can only alight from train," Horniman said.

The judge was clueless. And Horniman won back his stay in India to pursue his honest efforts to serve the cause of freedom.

(source: For the love of India - By Vikram Kumar - dailypioneer.com  August 14 2005).

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Minority Religious Groups Call for Removal of Commandments

Arguing the Ten Commandments are a Judeo-Christian rather than universal code of morality, an alliance representing millions of Hindus, Buddhists and Jains is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to remove a controversial monument from government property.

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) made its position official this month (December) by filing a brief in a case in which the plaintiff aims to purge the Texas State Capitol grounds of a 6-foot-tall Ten Commandments monument. The Supreme Court in October agreed to review a federal appeals court ruling in favor of keeping the monument. The court will also hear a similar case from Kentucky. Decisions in both cases are expected sometime in 2005.

In submitting its brief with signatories from such groups as the Federation of Jain Associations in North America, the HAF said it was weighing in on behalf of millions of religious minorities.

"The brief makes it clear that the co-signatories regard the Ten Commandments with utmost respect," said Suhag Shukla, legal counsel for the HAF. "But the overtly religious monument is a blow to pluralism, and its prominent presence on Texas Capitol grounds implies political and social exclusion of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists alike. The district and appellate courts failed to consider the effect of the monument on those adhering to non-Judeo-Christian faiths."

The place of the Ten Commandments on government property has for years generated heated debate. The issue came to a head last year when the top justice of Alabama, Roy Moore, lost his job in a bid to keep a Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse rotunda.Now as the issue moves into the hands of nation's highest court, those outside the Judeo-Christian tradition are taking a higher-profile role. The American Humanist Association, representing some 7,000 non-theists, has also filed a brief urging that the Texas monument be removed.

The HAF brief argues that the Commandments are irreconcilable with beliefs of Jains and Buddhists, who recognize no "creator/controller God." What's more, the second commandment bans the worship of idols or graven images, a notion anathema to Hindus, who consecrate images in worship.

"The courts below (Federal Court of Appeals) completely ignored the effect of the Ten Commandments monument on non-Judeo-Christians," the brief said, "whose beliefs regarding the nature of God and the relationship between man and God differ greatly from those enshrined in the monument and for whom the monument is clearly and unavoidably `sectarian."'

(source: Minority Religious Groups Call for Removal of Commandments - Hindu American Foundation). Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com).

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US SC rules against Hindu body's plea

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a 6x3 foot granite monument of the Ten Commandments could remain near a Texas court though a dissenting opinion said it violated the rights of other religions such as Hinduism.

Ruling on two separate cases Monday, one in Kentucky where the court held the Ten Commandments could not be displayed inside the courthouse, the Supreme Court supported a Kentucky court decision that disallowed the display.

But in the Texas case, it upheld the ruling of the Texas Fifth Circuit that the granite monument could be displayed on government property. The monument was placed roughly 40 years ago unlike the Kentucky display, which was apparently just three years old.

"I think that the legal community was probably anticipating or hoping for some kind of standard that could be applied, some type of test, but again the Supreme Court has demonstrated that these types of cases would be looked at on a fact by fact basis," Suhag Shukla, legal counsel for Hindu American Foundation (HAF) that initiated the amicus brief in the Texas case, told IANS.

"But as a member of the Hindu American community, we are very happy to participate in this national dialogue and the HAF brief has been mentioned in the Texas case," she said.

In his dissenting opinion in the five-four decision, Justice Stevens says, "Even if, however, the message of the monument, despite the inscribed text, fairly could be said to represent the belief system of all Judeo Christians, it would still run afoul of the establishment clause by prescribing a compelled code of conduct from one god, namely a Judeo Christian god, that is rejected by prominent (religions).... Hinduism, Buddhism."

Last December HAF spearheaded the filing of an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the US Supreme Court in the Texas case in what became one of the most widely anticipated cases being heard in the Supreme Court this year.

(source: US SC rules against Hindu body's plea. For more refer to High Court Rejects Religious Right Demands To Scuttle Church-State Safeguards - au.org and Hindu American Foundation. Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban. Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com). Refer to As America declines, the Bible thumpers take hold - By Ramesh Rao - indiareacts.com.

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The Elephanta Caves - Gharapuri

Introduction:

According to French art historian, Rene Grousset (1885-1952) who speaks of the Trimurti statue at Elephanta Caves: 

"Universal art has succeeded in few materialization of the Divine as powerful and also as balanced. He believed that it is "the greatest representation of the pantheistic god created by the hands of man." He concludes with poetic enthusiasm: "Never have the overflowing sap of life, the pride of force superior to everything, the secret intoxication of the inner god of things been so serenely expressed." 

(source: The India I Love - By Marie-Simone Renou  p. 88-93).

Located on an island off Mumbai's eastern shore, the 6th century AD Elephanta cave temples, chiselled into a rocky cliff and dedicated to Shiva, contain some great masterpieces of Indian sculpture. Originally called Gharapuri or "Fort-city", the island was renamed by the Portuguese after a huge stone elephant that once stood there. This is now in the garden of the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai's Byculla area. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Elephanta cave temples can be visited on a day trip from Mumbai.

One of the most profoundly moving images of Shiva ever created. The 5.5 m (18 ft) colossal image of Maheshmurti dominates the cave temple.

This is the glory of Elephanta, and few visitors can fail to be moved by this powerful, compelling image hailed by art historian Percy Brown as "the creation of a genius". The three faces represent Shiva in his different manifestations. Here, Indian art has found one of its most perfect expressions, particularly the huge high reliefs in the main cave.

(iimage source: Ways to Shiva - Joseph Dye).

***

Frijof Capra (1939- ) the famous theoretical high-energy physicist has observed:  

" A superb sculpture of Shiva in the Hindu temple of Elephanta shows three faces of the god.....in the center the sublime union, of the two aspects in the magnificent head of Shiva Maheshvara, the Great Lord, radiating serene tranquility and transcendental aloofness. In the same temple, Shiva is also represented in androgynous form – half male, half female – the flowing movement of the god’s body and the serene detachment of his/her face symbolizing, again, the dynamic unification of the male and female."

(source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism - By Fritjof Capra p. 148-149). For more refer to chapter on Hindu Art

Maheshmurti

This is the glory of Elephanta, and few visitors can fail to be moved by this powerful, compelling image hailed by art historian Percy Brown as "the creation of a genius". The three faces represent Shiva in his different manifestations.  The central face with its towering, elaborate crown depicts Shiva the Preserver, sublimely serene and introspective. The one facing west represents Shiva the Creator, gentle, solicitous and graceful. The head facing east, with its cruel mouth, fiercely hooked nose and serpents adorning the hair, shows Shiva the Destroyer. On either side of the statue are other superb sculptures. 

Plan of Elephanta Caves and cave entrance.

The one on the east shows Shiva as Ardhanarishvara - the Lord who is Both Male and Female, and thus symbolizes the Divine Unity in which all opposites are resolved. The image on the west is of Shiva as Gangahara, helping the river goddess Ganga descend to earth while his consort Parvati and other deities look on. Contrasting images of peace and violence, joy and fury, can be seen in exquisite sculptures throughout the temple. Thus one sculpture near the Western Entrance lyrically depicts the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, while opposite it is a powerful panel showing Shiva brutally imapling the demon Andhaka. The Eastern Entrance has Shiva and Parvati contentedly playing dice in their mountain abode, as the demon-king Ravana tries to shake their mountain home in Kailash.

(source: India - DK Eyewitness Travel Guides London p. 461).

Thus one sculpture near the Western Entrance lyrically depicts the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, while opposite it is a powerful panel showing Shiva brutally imapling the demon Andhaka.

***

At Elephanta when the Portuguese discovered the caves they certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity.

When the Portuguese discovered the caves, these temples suffered in the hands of religious zealots as attempts were made to convert them into Christian churches. From G P Maffei (1588), the official historian of Jesuit missions, we learn that after purging one of the temples at Elephanta of all previous profanations Father Antoine had dedicated it to God. Presumably the building was aesthetically pleasing enough to be consecrated to God so long as it could be cleansed of its pagan associations. In midst of Jesuit hostility there are occasional grudging tributes to Elephanta. 

***

Joao do Castro, a remarkable man and Renaissance personality with wide ranging interests and accomplishments. 

Castro's navigational diary Roteiro de Goa ate Dio reflects a deep feeling of wonder on his part at the sight of the huge and magnificent temple at Elephanta, for he was thoroughly overwhelmed by the great 'boldness' of manner in which the whole edifice was hewn out of the hard, solid rock. 

A work of such magnitude and artifice, he declared could not have been produced by mortals and it must be regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Castro was so impressed by the sculptures that he stated that 'Indeed the proportions and symmetry with which each figure and everything else is made it would be worth the while of any painter to study it even if he were Apelles.'

Diego do Couto, the Portuguese historian noted:

"It is constucted at the foot of a great Hill of Stone of light grey color; there is a beautiful Hall at its entrance, and in the yard that leads to the front back door, there are two human figures engraved on the same stone, twice as big as the Giants exhibited on the Procession of the Corpus Christi feast in Lisbon, so beautiful, elegant, and so well executed, that even in Silver they could not be better wrought and made with such perfection."

The conclusion he reached 'may certainly be reckoned one of the wonders - and perhaps the greatest in the world." He took elaborate measurements of the 'remarkable' and 'stupendous' temple, remarking that it was laid on a north-to-south axis. About the sculptures he made the general remark that 'not only the figures looked very beautiful, but the features and workmanship could be very distinctly perceived, so that neither in silver or wax could such figures be engraved with greater nicety, fineness or perfection."

The elaborate plastic treatment of Siva's matted hair with beautiful jewels set in it especially fascinated Couto who mentioned it admiringly on several occasions. His most important contribution was to leave an account of the great Maheshmurti group, generally regarded as the highest achievement of the Kalacuri period:

"From the pavement of this chapel issued a body from the waist upwards of so enormous size, that it fills the whole vacuum in length and breath of the chapel: it has three large faces, the middle one looks to the north, the second to the west, and other to the east. Each of these faces has two hands, and on the neck two large necklaces, wrought with considerable perfection. The figures have on their heads there very beautiful crowns."

Finally, from Couto we learn that the Elephanta interior was covered with a fine coat of lime and bitumen composition which 'made the Pagoda (temple) so bright, that it looked very beautiful and was worth seeing'. The colors have faded since in Elephanta, and only Couto's testimony remains to tell us how splendid it looked in the 16th century.

The Englishman John Ovington (1696) author of “A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, ”was specially fascinated by the animal sculpture in Elephanta: "Here likewise are the just dimensions of a Horse Carved in Stone, so lively with such a Colour and Carriage and the shape finisht with that Exactness, that many have Fancyed it, at a distance, a living Animal, than only a bare Representation.'

According to the Cambride man, Dr. Fryer, Elephanta too was a 'miraculous Piece hewd out of solid stone; it is supported with Forty two Corinthian Pillars, being a Square, open on all sides but towards the East; where stands a statue with three Heads, crowned with strange Hieroglyphics.' He noted with regret that the Portuguese 'strive to erase the reminders of this Herculean Work, that it may sink into oblivion of its Founders.'

Gemelli-Careri, the Italian (1700) took it to be the work of Alexander. "The Pagod or Temple....is one of the greatest wonders of Asia..."

(source: Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art - By Partha Mitter  p. 31 - 41).

***

Elephanta Caves - A Sixth Century Saivite Site Needing Better Care 

Mumbai, India. June 13, 2005: Ancient sixth century Saivite caves about seven miles from Mumbai on a quiet island have become a focus in India's political arena. 

The Elephanta Caves originally called (Gharapuri or Fort-city) boast a main cave that the news release says has a three-headed Sadashiva, a dozen highly detailed sculpture panels, and a Siva Lingam shrine, all patterned in a complex Hindu mandala geometry. Presently the caves have a meagre 320,000 visitors a year. Transportation to the island is via diesel powered boats that provide a rough ride and the subsequent train ride to the caves is less than comfortable. The article explains, "The caves remain only almost a world class tourist complex, while an exhaustive plan for the sustainable development of the entire 1.98-sq km island, prepared in 2003 by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), languishes on official tables. INTACH plans include drawing up a plan to fight seepage in the main cave hall and developing more aesthetic modes of transportation for tourists as well as providing shaded walkways, street furniture, memento shops and a better-kept museum."

The news release explains other challenges affecting the progress, "Waste from the JNPT's ships, ship-breaking activities, and oil and chemical industries along the Thane creek have almost killed the mangroves on one side of the caves. The longterm impact on the fragile caves and rock sculptures is anybody's guess. Also, for anybody working on Elephanta's development, logistics is a huge quandary. During the 1998-99 cleaning and restoration of the caves, if anybody forgot a roll of tape or a pack of nails, it meant a day's work lost, until the items could be fetched from Mumbai."

(source: Elephanta cave-in - indianexpress.com). For more refer to chapter on Hindu Art

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The predominance of Western culture in India
The tragedy of India in modern times

India is now a divided society. If you go into the family homes in the lesser cities, such as Bangalore or Madras and smaller towns such as Allahabhad, Benares, Lucknow or Jaipur you will see educated Indians working in the offices, factories, businesses and so on in a more or less western, modern industrialised style; but when they go home they will put on their dhoti and have puja at their home shrine. In their homes, particularly among the women, their Hindu culture is still intact. It can also be found in the temples, of which there are still hundreds and thousands, and new ones being built all the time. They don't want to leave it because emotionally they are attached to it - in their heart of hearts they know this is the secure womb, the place where they can feel happy and safe. But they suffer from an inferiority complex, because all the newspapers and modern books and all the industrialised world are telling them this is backward! They feel shy to admit that they have Indian culture and that they have their own tradition. So they will come out to the office in their suit and tie, even in the boiling heat of the summer. They will wear woollen three-piece suits - inside they are sweating - because unless they have these suits they will not be respected. This is the tragedy of India in the modern times.

This predominance of western culture, however, will probably be short-lived. The culture of the industrial world has no soul. It has no substance. It is a paper tiger, a balloon - one prick and it will burst. What that one prick is going to be we cannot know, but the industrial way of life and materialistic mode of education is not sustainable. Nor are there the natural resources, or more significantly the social and spiritual resources, to sustain it. It is all external. Modern industrial culture is very glamorous with its cinemas, televisions, supermarkets and airports and its tremendous military power. But inside it is hollow. On the other hand, the Hindu way of life and Hindu philosophy may look very modest from the outside, but inside it is very rich and solid and has thousands of years of maturity. It is not going to disappear very easily.

Temple town in South India.

Indians suffer from an inferiority complex of, because all the newspapers and modern books and all the industrialised world are telling them this is backward! 

They feel shy to admit that they have Indian culture and that they have their own tradition. So they will come out to the office in their suit and tie, even in the boiling heat of the summer. They will wear woollen three-piece suits - inside they are sweating - because unless they have these suits they will not be respected. This is the tragedy of India in the modern times.

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

***

It is a very sad thing that as a result of western influence the government of India is bent on achieving economic growth and high living standards at the expense of the quality of life and traditional values. Indian industrialists are building big dams, big industries, big roads and big airports; there is a tremendous amount of pollution and resources are being depleted; population and demands are growing; greed is growing; poverty is increasing; there are more poor now in India than there were at the time of independence. In the name of reducing poverty and hunger we are increasing them. Progress and development are actually causing hunger. If India could again practice yajna, dhana and tapas poverty could be cured.

Hinduism is a holistic religion. It is a way of life rather than a religion or a set of beliefs. It includes economic life, sexual life, political life - everything is part of Hindu religion. 'Religion' is a Western word, and so is 'Hindu'. A correct description is 'sanatan dharma'. Sanatan means eternal, and dharma means the true state. The dharma of fire is to burn; the dharma of water is to quench thirst. So 'sanatan dharma' means to find the true, everlasting state of being, the eternal path. Hindus (we call them Hindus, but we mean the Indian people) are searching for the dharma of the soul, the meaning of life. That is the quest.

The Isa Upanishad says it all. Nature is sacred, all life is sacred, the whole earth is sacred. That is the Hindu contribution. Western industrial life has become desacrilised. The only sanctity left is human life. We have to push the frontier beyond human and include the whole earth. Earth is our mother, earth is goddess, earth is Kali, earth is Parvati, earth is Sita, Earth mother - and she is the home of God.

(source: Hinduism and Ecology - By Ranchor Prime - Chapter Nine - Life of Sacrifice).  For more refer to chapter on Nature Worship

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India out to reclaim Yoga power

Indian Government's building database of 1500 postures to prevent patenting by US

India's more than 4,000-year-old Yoga tradition may witness some high-octane trade disputes sometime from now. The Union government is building its muscles to bust the market monopolies on yoga that Western practitioners have been securing through copyrights, trademarks and patents. Yoga is a flourishing $27bn-a-year business in the US.

To start with, the government is making a digital database of 1,500 yoga postures and their therapeutic properties that can be used to overthrow the 134 patents on yoga accessories, 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks the US Patent Office has granted so far, sources said.

This database, comprising body cleansing practices, breathing exercises, yoga symbols called mudras, postures and special practices such as floating in water, will be digitally documented in five major international languages so that it can be shared with prominent patent offices around the world.  

The Union government is building its muscles to bust the market monopolies on yoga that Western practitioners have been securing through copyrights, trademarks and patents. Yoga is a flourishing $27bn-a-year business in the US.  

***

This is to prevent the grant of trademarks, copyrights and patents on yoga in the future. The database would also help avoid costly litigation to reverse the rights already granted. To reverse them, India has to move the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

The National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCIR), under the science and technology ministry is developing this nearly one-crore page digital database for the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Sidha and Homoeopathy (Ayush) under the health ministry. The database will also cover ayurveda, sidha and unani medicines. Many of these rights have been secured by non-resident Indians like Bikram Chowdhury, who used a copyright on his book in which he described his sequence of yoga postures to prevent others from teaching them, although the postures themselves were not under any form of protection.

He got protection for a sequence of 26 postures called 'asanas' to be performed at a particular atmospheric temperature. While the postures are straight out of India's tradition, the temperature requirement, the ambience and accessories such as the mat spread on the floor are his own, as justifications for the protection, an official source said. The government now fears that someone may get market monopoly for the Buddhist way of meditation called 'vipassana' and transcendental meditation taught by UP-based Maharshi Vedic University. There is another problem the government is facing now, with no easy solution in sight. "There are instances where people have been registering yoga-related domain names only for selling them later at a huge profit," the official said.

(source: India out to reclaim Yoga power - By Gireesh Chandra Prasad - The Economic Times Date: June 8, 2005). 

India in a twist as West 'steals' yoga positions

Foreigners claim patents on ancient techniques. It is meant to engender feelings of peace and well-being, but yoga has become a battleground as India tries to stop its ancient heritage from being exploited by the West. The Indian government is furious that yoga practices dating back thousands of years are being ''stolen'' by gurus and fitness instructors in Europe and the United States. Foreign practitioners are already said to have claimed hundreds of patents and copyrights on poses and techniques lifted straight from classical Indian yoga treatises.

''Yoga piracy is becoming very common and we are moving to do something about it,'' says Vinod Gupta, the head of a recently established Indian government task force on traditional knowledge and intellectual property theft. ''We know of at least 150 asanas [yoga positions] that have been pirated in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Japan. These were developed in India long ago and no one can claim them as their own.'' In an effort to protect India's heritage, the task force has begun documenting 1,500 yoga postures drawn from classical yoga texts -- including the writings of the Indian sage Patanjali, the first man to codify the art of yoga. The data are being stored in a digital library whose computerized contents will soon be made available to patents offices worldwide.

According to one report, attempts have even been made in the United States to patent the syllable ''Om,'' the sacred sound with which Hindus begin their chants.

''No one should be able to claim ownership of these traditional postures,'' Dr. Gupta said. ''The information has been in the public domain in India for thousands of years. But, until now, it has only been available in languages which people in the outside world cannot understand.'' The government move is part of a larger project to document all sources of traditional Indian knowledge. The database contains details of thousands of herbal treatments drawn from age-old health systems. So far, 10 million of an estimated 30 million pages of texts in Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian have been translated and entered into the digital library. India was alerted to commercial exploitation of its national heritage in 1995, when a U.S. company was granted a patent on the wound-healing properties of turmeric. Two years later, another company was granted a patent on basmati rice. India successfully challenged both patents.

(source: India in a twist as West 'steals' yoga positions - By David Orr, The Sunday Telegraph - canada.com). For more refer to chapter on Yoga and Hindu Philosophy and Nature Worship.

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The my 'God is better than your God'  Madness - By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D
Fritz Ridenour Strange assessment of Hinduism

"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion"  

-  Thomas Paine (1737- 1809) - The Age of Reason.

***

"I knew that my God was bigger than his [a Muslim's]. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.  
  
- Lt. Gen. William Boykin.

That evangelical Christians claim they alone know "God," "His Will," and "The Truth" is not new. Nor is the attempt by evangelicals and their missionaries to "convert" those of other religious beliefs to Christianity, which is itself a form of bigotry and intolerance. 

The Christian way or no way.

It was none other than St. Augustine who first advocated forcible conversions. Since then pious Christians throughout history have damned and waged holy war against infidel Jews and Muslims, and slaughtered the New World natives who didn't convert. Sometimes they murdered them even if they did, ad majorem gloriam Dei. Interesting how those political facts are omitted from Christian writers' historical descriptions of their benign religion, such as those offered by Fritz Ridenour.

On May 28, 2005, James Dobson's Focus on the Family's (FOF) website featured the following item in the "Teen" section: What Goes Around Comes Around: What's Up With Hinduism? - By Fritz Ridenour. Reincarnation. Karma. Yoga. Familiar terms. But did you know they all relate to Hinduism? And how does this faith compare to Christianity?

Beginning with the pseudo-hip "what's up with" title, the article is a snide, sarcastic, pejorative, simplistic, and extremely biased rendering of one of the world oldest belief systems. It's difficult to see it as anything other than an attempt to foster religious bigotry and intolerance.

The FOF excerpt from Mr. Ridenour's "assessment" of Hinduism began with

All approaches to God are good and equal. In fact, you can be god, or at least part of god, if you search deep enough within yourself. Sound familiar? You might have heard these misguided thoughts from a friend, a popular band or even a teacher.

"All approaches to God are good and equal." That would seem a no-brainer, but only if everyone had exactly the same understanding of the word "God." Eastern beliefs have kept "God" as a concept capable of embracing differences. Western religions turned the Concept into a Being, and there can be only one Supreme Being. No differences allowed. Wars over whose "God" was God were inevitable.

The renowned Protestant theologian Paul Tillich (1886 - 1965) He studied theology at the universities of Berlin, Tubingen and Halle before being ordained as a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1912. After the war he taught theology in several universities until being dismissed in 1933 because of his opposition to Adolph Hitler. He emigrated to the United States and began teaching at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. This was followed by periods at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

He argued frequently and convincingly that:

"One of the worst mistakes made by Western religions was transmogrifying the Concept of "God" into a Being, which necessitated endless wars to determine whose Supreme Being was really "God."  

Left as a concept, "God" could embrace all representations, even those "made like to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things," which are common in Native American and Hindu representations as well as in Christian art where the "Holy Spirit" is most often depicted as a bird. As for blasphemous images "made like to corruptible man," virtually all Christian art does just that, whether it be the muscle-bound, perpetually stern-looking "God the Father" appearing in clouds or the meek and mild European-looking Jesus surrounded by children and animals, the representations are "made like to corruptible man" which, along with animal representations, are explicitly condemned in Romans 1.

Mr. Ridenour's remark about becoming "at least part of god" would seem at odds with evangelicals' claim to be united with the Holy Spirit and their becoming part of "the body of Christ." Metaphors may differ, but their message is the same.

Ridenour unctuously mocked the concept of Karma. Sadly, he failed to recognize Karma is but another expression of the biblical "reap what you sow" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." So what's the difference? 

The Hindu version lacks the "all Loving God" who damns some of his human creations to Eternal hell for being . . ."human." Not a very loving thing for a Father-Creator to do to His children, is it?  

(Note: Eternal Hell and Damnation seems profoundly unfair idea. Unceasing torment and eternal punishment in hell is cruel concept. This problem is magnified for religions which claim to be the only path to salvation, since it is clear that which religion a person subscribes to is largely a result of the culture they are born in. Suppose, for example, that one has to be Christian to avoid Hell. Many of the greatest and most moral human beings in history would be burning in hell because they weren't "Christians." Those condemned to hell would include Einstein, Socrates, Buddha, Gandhi, Homer, Confucius, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Geronimo, etc. Meanwhile "wonderful" people such as Oliver Cromwell, Cortes, Pizzaro, Caesar Borgia, Al Capone, the Inquisitors, virtually all of Hitler's generals, and most of Stalin's henchmen would be enjoying eternal bliss in heaven because they were "Christians.").

Ridenour also criticized anything that argued against the concept of "sin" as defined by Christianity. That's to be expected. After all, "sin" and its "forgiveness" are the most profitable parts of the Business of Christianity. Whether it be the medieval Church authorizing the selling of pardons and salvation, or today's evangelical leaders clamoring to exchange prayers for the flock's financial contributions, it's ultimately motivated by self-interest and political power. And in the case of Dobson and Focus on the Family, that political power is obsessively used to encourage intolerance, discrimination and legislation against gay and lesbian Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs.

To call Hindu beliefs "misguided" is the epitome of arrogance and bigotry, especially given the blood-soaked history of Christianity and the centuries of crimes against humanity committed in its name.

(source:  The my 'God is better than your God' madness - By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D). For a biased scholarship refer to An Investigation of Hindu Scripture - by Alden Bass -apologeticspress.org/). http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/. Christianity Dying In The West? - By M S N Menon - organiser.org. Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero and Christian Supremacy: Pushing the Dhimmitude of Non-Christians in America. 

Refer to America's Moral Decline and the Rise of False Christianity - by Karen Horst Cobb - Evangelical Christians are organizing and conspiring to manipulate governments to use weapons if necessary to kill some of God’s children so that prime real estate goes to people whom they believe God likes best.

Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com). Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban.  Refer to Truth can kill the West - By M.S.N. Menon - Truth can kill the West—the truth about Christianity. It is all in the Dead Sea scrolls.

Evangelism is the “steel hand of truth encased in the velvet glove of love.” (James S Dennis) 

The Reverend Jerry Falwell founder of the Moral Majority & Liberty University, and a prominent Conservative activist. He teaches that Jesus is “the way” and that people who do not accept Jesus as their Lord are in danger of failure and eternal damnation: 

“If you are not a Christian, it is truly a sad thing. It is sad because one day you will meet God, unprepared, and spend eternity in hell.” 

A cult frequently attempts to instill fear into their followers. The followers are taught constantly that salvation comes only through the cult. “If you leave us, you will lose your salvation” they say.  

(source: Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks – By Rod L Evans and Irwin M Berent  p. 17 – 18). Refer to Quotes from The American Taliban

Why this war on Hinduism?- These two (Christianity and Islam) hostile ideologies, flawed because they are not based on human experience but on spurious and fantastic literature, are based on a priori illusion that human beings are genetically flawed and can be redeemed only by symbolic conversion and the acceptance of their bookish deity. For instance, if the Christian and Islamic clergy do not propagate and force their sterile ideologies down the throats of unsuspecting or helpless people through dubious means, or do not force them to stay on with censure and punishment, their religions would be wiped out in decades. Europe is a primary example.

(source: Why this war on Hinduism? - By George Thundiparambil - christianaggression.org). Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

***

Russian Archbishop calls Lord Krishna 'Satan'
Lack of tolerance in Russia?

Hindus are shocked and outraged to read the views of the Russian Orthodox Church on Lord Krishna, who is revered by over one billion Hindus worldwide as the Supreme Lord, said an ISCKON press statement.

According to it, in a letter to the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, dated November 29, 2005, the Archbishop Nikon of Ufa and Sterlitamak from the Russian Orthodox Church called Lord Krishna "an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God", and "a livid lascivious youth".

Religious intolerance in Russia? Russian Orthodox Church called Lord Krishna "an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God", and "a livid lascivious youth".

***

The Archbishop further requested the Mayor to ban construction of the proposed Krishna temple in Moscow saying it would otherwise become "an idolatrous disgrace erected for the glory of wicked and malicious 'god' Krishna".

"Construction of the temple (a satanic obscenity destined to be built right in the heart of the Orthodox Christian country of Russia) to Krishna offends our religious feelings and insults the thousand-year religious culture of Russia where the overwhelming majority of people, Christians and Muslims including, consider Krishna an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God", said the Archbishops letter. Aside from displaying stunning ignorance of the world's oldest religion, it is also evident from the statement that the Russian Orthodox Church is still embedded in the dark ages of religious exclusivity, which has no place in today's increasingly pluralistic society. To call Lord Krishna 'satanic' is not only sacrilegious in the eyes of Hindus; it is also patently ridiculous as any student of Hinduism knows; for Krishna is famous as the slayer of demons, Bhagavad-Gita (4.7-8).

(source: Russian Archbishop calls Lord Krishna 'Satan' - christianaggression.org). Refer to Christian Supremacy: Pushing the Dhimmitude of Non-Christians in America. Protest Russian Taliban, Support Krishna temple - http://www.indiacause.com/cause/iv001_russia_temple.aspx

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Stretching for Jesus - Christian yoga is an oxymoron ?
Separating Yoga from its Hindu roots

The seeds of the yoga system may be discovered in the Vedic Samhita because the Vedas are the foundation of Indian culture philosophy and religion. In the Upanishads the term Yoga signifies the union of the personal soul with the soul of the universe.

Rishi Patanjali's Yoga sutra defines:

"Yoga is controlling the ripples of the mind."

Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) the eminent Swiss psychologist in 1935, described Yoga as

  'one of the greatest things the human mind has ever created.'

Hostility to Yoga in Catholic Church - A few years ago the Pope issued a proclamation telling Catholics, particularly monks and priests, to avoid yogic practices and mixing Catholicism with Eastern traditions like the Hindu and Buddhist. 

In the book Pope John-Paul II on Eastern Religions and Yoga: a Hindu-Buddhist Rejoinder (1995) was occasioned precisely by one of the Pope's statements (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 1994) condemning the incorporation of yogic practices in the spiritual discipline of Christian clerics and laymen.

Refer to Pope in 1989 - Eastern Religions are "Moral Deviations" - Chanting Om may cause moral deviation and refer to Vatican and Yoga - Hinduismtoday May 1990. 

Christian yoga is gaining a devout following--upsetting purists, Hindus and some Christians.

The yoga teacher sits in a lotus position atop a polished wooden platform. Behind her, verdant woods are visible through panoramic windows. Gentle music tinkles from overhead speakers. Two dozen students in spandex outfits, most of them women, settle onto purple and blue mats to begin the class with ujjayi, a breathing exercise. Their instructor, Cindy Senarighi, recommends today's mantra. "'Yahweh' is a great breath prayer," she says. "The Jesus Prayer also works. Now lift your arms in praise to the Lord."

The platform is an altar, the tinkly tune is praise music, and the practice is Christian yoga. Senarighi's class, called Yogadevotion and taught in the main chapel of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minn., is part of a fast-growing movement that seeks to retool the 5,000-year-old practice of yoga to fit Christ's teachings. From Phoenix, Ariz., to Pittsburgh, Pa., from Grand Rapids, Mich., to New York City, hundreds of Christian yoga classes are in session. A national association of Christian yoga teachers was started in July, and a slew of books and videos are about to hit the market. But the very phrase stiffens yoga purists and some Christians--including a rather influential Catholic--who insist yoga cannot be separated from its Hindu roots.

Yoga purists, while encouraging people of all faiths to practice yoga, recoil at the Christian co-opting of its ancient traditions--especially when used as a tool for evangelizing. "We shouldn't use yoga to sell our students anything," says Patricia Walden, a renowned disciple of Hatha yoga guru B. K .S. Iyengar. Moreover, others argue, Hinduism is not like a recipe ingredient that can be extracted from yoga. 

Says Subhas Tiwari, professor of yoga philosophy and meditation at the Hindu University of America in Orlando, Fla: 

"Yoga is Hinduism."

"Christian yoga is an oxymoron," agrees Laurette Willis of Tahlequah, Okla. She says yoga led her to dabble in a rootless New Age lifestyle until she became a Christian in 1987. Willis now speaks to Christian groups against yoga, offering instead a series of poses called PraiseMoves. 

Catholics face a more formidable skeptic. In 1989 the Vatican issued a document saying the practice of Eastern traditions like yoga "can degenerate into a cult of the body," warning Catholics against mistaking yoga's "pleasing sensations" for "spiritual well-being." It was signed by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger--now Pope Benedict XVI. In a 2003 document the Vatican further distances itself from New Age practices, including yoga.

(source:  Stretching for Jesus - time.com). Refer to chapter on Yoga and Hindu Philosophy  Refer to Truth can kill the West - By M.S.N. Menon - Truth can kill the West—the truth about Christianity. It is all in the Dead Sea scrolls. Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero. Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

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Mother Teresa's Legacy - A Human Rights Breach?

Five News exposes ill-treatment of disabled youngsters at Mother Teresa's care home

Five News has uncovered serious shortcomings at a care centre run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, it was announced today. 

This special investigation by Five's investigative reporter Donal MacIntyre, contains secret filming at the Daya-Dan centre, Mother Teresa's home for the learning disabled,  which is responsible for around 50 disabled children aged six months to 12 years. 

After hearing serious complaints from international aid workers, Donal filmed undercover in Calcutta for four days. He worked alongside other international volunteers, Missionary of Charity Sisters and local workers.  

On seeing footage of the children tied to their cots Martin Gallagher added: "As far as I'm concerned it's a breech of their Human Rights."

***

The shocking footage reveals that despite receiving millions of pounds in donations every year, there is little evidence of its investment at the centres Donal visited. While at Daya-Dan Donal filmed several children being tied-up as poorly-trained workers attempted to feed them. There was evidence of low-levels of hygiene, including the head of the unit stirring medicine with her finger. And, in one sequence, a group of six disabled children are left on the toilet, unattended, for over twenty minutes.  Filming after hours at the Daya-Dan centre Donal found the children tied and tethered by their ankles to their cots. The report shows the distressed children crouched in their cots, with ropes around their ankles.

Martin Gallagher, former Operations Director of MENCAP UK, who appears in the film, said: "My overall impression of the pictures you've shown me from this centre is that the standard of care is shoddy and haphazard. I think abandoning someone on the toilet for that length of time is shoddy practise. This is a threat to their hygiene. It's also a threat to their dignity."

On seeing footage of the children tied to their cots Martin Gallagher added: "As far as I'm concerned it's a breech of their Human Rights."

(source: Mother Teresa's Legacy - For more refer to Italian Neurologist: Sodomy "Common" in Mother Teresa's Orphanage and chapter on Conversion and Christianity Dying In The West? - By M S N Menon - organiser.org.

Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero. Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com).

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The Doctrine of Reincarnation – By Sir John Woodroffe   
An obstacle in the way of the Christianization of India?   

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1774) France's greatest writers and philosophers, was a theist, and a bitter critic of the Church, which he looked upon as the instigator of cruelty, injustice, and inequality, wrote, 

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once."  

And the British philosopher David Hume stated that reincarnation is "the only system to which Philosophy can hearken." 

Among famous Westerners who have subscribed to this doctrine, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected, wrote: 

"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life." 

Interest in reincarnation and Indian philosophy ran strong among the American Transcendentalists, including Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) an author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister who lectured on theology at Harvard University, wrote: "It is a secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again...Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise."

From the Katha Upanishad, one of the many books of ancient Indian philosophy in his library, Emerson quoted, "The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone....Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, thought the body is slain."

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)  American philosopher of Walden Pond, wrote, "As far as back as I can remember, I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence." Another sign of Thoreau's deep interest in reincarnation is a manuscript, discovered in 1926, entitled "The Transmigration of the Seven Brahmanas." This short work is an English translation of a story about reincarnation from an ancient Sanskrit history. The transmigration episode follows the lives of seven sages through progressive incarnations as hunters, princes and animals. 

And Walt Whitman (1813-1892), who championed American intellectual independence, his poem "Song of Myself," writes, 

I know I am deathless..
We have thus far exhausted
trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and 
trillions ahead of them."

In France, famed author Henry Balzac wrote an entire novel about reincarnation, Seraphita. There Balzac states, "All human beings go through a previous life...Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the vestibule of spiritual worlds?"

In Russia, the eminent Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a champion of nonviolent protest, wrote," As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of the many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other, more real life...and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real life - the life of God." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832) one of the greatest German poets, also believed in reincarnation and may have encountered the idea in his readings in Indian philosophy. 

Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903) West's most influential artists, wrote that when physical organism breaks up, "the soul survives." It then takes on another body, Gauguin wrote, "degrading or elevating according to merit or demerit." 

The artist believed that the idea of continued rebirth had first been taught by the West by Pythagoras, who learned it from the sages of ancient India.

Henry Ford U.S auto magnate once told a newspaper interviewer, "I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was 26 years old." "Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives." In a similar fashion, US general George S Patton believed, that he had acquired his military skills on ancient battlefields. 

Carl Jung used the concept of an eternal self that undergoes many births as a tool in his attempts to understand the deepest mysteries of the self and consciousness. "I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me." he said. British biologist Thomas Huxley noted that "the doctrine of transmigration" was a "means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man," and warned that "none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity."

(source: Coming Back: The Science of Reincarnation - ISCKON  p.1 - 19).

The doctrine of Karma and Samsara, which missionaries commonly regard as their greatest obstacle in the way of the Christianization of India.  

The philosopher David Hume and if I remember rightly Ralph J Cudworth English religious philosopher, metaphysician, and scholar; he is considered the leading seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist. also, considered the Reincarnation Doctrine the most rational theory of immortality. For as Professor William Knight wrote: “ Pre-existence (a doctrine which assumes several forms) has fewer difficulties to face than the rival hypothesis.”   

David Hume, Ralph J Cudworth and Cardinal J H Newman.

Reincarnation Doctrine is the most rational theory of immortality.

***

Cardinal John Henry Newman, an admittedly subtle mind, said in his Apologia that there was not a Christian dogma which was not infested with intellectual difficulties, and that speaking for himself he could not solve any of them. Theories with such abundance of difficulties cannot, it will be said, be rational. It may seem, even to those who are not its adherents, that there is a truth underlying this reincarnation doctrine, whether or not its Indian form of Karma and Samsara fully, and in every respect, correctly expresses it.  

Once practically the whole world embraced it, as the greater number (nearly two-thirds) of the Earth’s people now do. It has been known since the dawn of history and has been held by both primitive peoples and the highly learned. It is said to have been held by the ancient Egyptians, by some of the Greeks, notably by Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato and the Neoplatonists; it was also held by some of the Latins, and by the Gauls, the Druids, and followers of the Edda. It occurs in primitive Christianity; such as in Origen. It fact some contend that the Christian Gospels when rightly interpreted assumes it. Reincarnation appears sporadically again in Europe in the Middle Ages. What however resisted this belief was the Semitic Judaism and its two Semitic offshoots, Christianity and Mohammedanism. Christianity, (an historically) aggressive and persecuting religion, either largely drove it out of Europe or prevented its adoption there. Mohammedanism worked with the same effect in those parts of Asia which underwent its influence. Nevertheless, in Europe the doctrine has never entirely disappeared and in recent times has gained a number of adherents.   

Giordano Bruno, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Sir David Brewster all believed in Reincarnation.

***

Among those who believe in reincarnation may be counted the grand Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, burnt alive by the Church as a heretic; the German philosophers, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, (1775-1854) Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 - 1814) (younger), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646 - 1716), Schopenhauer, and the great poets and writers Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729 - 1781); the English Christian Platonist, Dr. Henry Moore and others; and the philosophers Ralph Cudworth, and David Hume; the French and English scientists Camille Flammarion (1842 -1925), Louis Figuier, Sir David Brewster; and the Modern Christian Theologians Julius Muller (1801 - 1878) August Dorner. Johann August Ernesti, Ruckert, Edward Beecher and W R Alger.  

A recent work is that of the metaphysician Professor J M E (John McTaggart Ellis) McTaggart (1866-1925) who in his Essay on Pre-Existence argues that the Immortality of the Soul involves its pre-existence. 

(source: Is India Civilized - Essays on Indian Culture - By Sir John Woodroffe  Ganesh & Co. Publishers 1922  p. 252 – 258).

At the Renaissance we find the doctrine in Giordano Bruno, and in the 17th century in the Theosophist Van Helmont. During the classical period of German literature metempsychosis attracted much attention: Goethe played with the idea, and it was taken up more seriously by Lessing, who borrowed it from Charles Bonnet, and by Herder. It has been mentioned with respect by Hume and by Schopenhauer. Modern theosophy, which draws its inspiration from India, has taken metempsychosis (or rather reincarnation as a cardinal tenet; it is, says a recent theosophical writer, "the master-key to modern problems," and among them to the problem of heredity.

The Encyclopedia Britannica calls Origen "The most prominent of all the Church Fathers with the possible exception of Augustine." Origen of Alexandria (185 - 254) wrote, of reincarnation, 

"Is it not reasonable that souls should be introduced into bodies in accordance with their merits and previous deeds?"

Many early Christians - including Origen, the most famous Church Father of them all - accepted reincarnation as a fact. In 553, however, Christian theologians at the 5th Ecumenical Council in Constantinople formally banned the doctrine of reincarnation.

Jalalu 'D-Din Rumi (1207 - 1273) a famous Sufi poet, writes: 

"I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as a plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was a man,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying."

(source: wikipedia.com and Hinduism - By Linda Johnsen p. 88 and Coming Back: The Science of Reincarnation - ISCKON  p.1 - 19).

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This Chinese sings in Sanskrit

What has amazed and gladdened me is this young man's love for our music. It has brought him here, far from his country, and that alone makes me happy. He is intelligent, has excellent diction, and grasps everything I tell him perfectly. Moreover, he is willing to work very hard, which is what I like about him.'

The person describing her disciple in such glowing terms is the legendary D K Pattammal, one of the greatest singers in Carnatic music. And the person at the receiving end of all that praise 

-- 22-year old Chong Chiu Sen is a young Chinese lad from Kuala Lumpur.

"He calls me Paatti (Grandmother)," says Pattammal, smiling, "and says he is my grandson. I also treat him as such. I admire his devotion to our music. Initially, he just followed what I taught him, but he now uses mano dharmamam (improvisation). I am sure he will improve with time. I want him to be a professional singer. He has my blessings."

Chong Chiu Sen no longer uses his given name. He is now Sai Madana Mohan Kumar, and introduces himself as such.

Thanks to his parents being staunch devotees of Satya Sai Baba, Mohan's association with music started at a young age.

Though he was familiar with Chinese religious songs, he was drawn towards Sanskrit bhajans. With the intention of improving his diction in Sanskrit, he tried basic Carnatic music lessons from Tamil teachers in Malaysia, but soon found them inadequate. In his search for 'pure' music, then, Chennai was where the answers lay.

(source: This Chinese sings in Sanskrit - rediff.com). For more refer to chapter on Sanskrit and Hindu Culture and Hindu Music

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Western Indology versus the Indic Tradition

The sad fact is that after nearly two hundred years Western Indology has still failed to understand India, her culture, her soul or her history. 

It has progressed little beyond Eurocentric and missionary stereotypes, only adding Marxist, Freudian and other modern stereotypes to these, naively believing that these western ideologies are somehow dramatically enlightening to India and its profound spiritual culture, when they are usually irrelevant or inferior and have already failed in the West. Meanwhile it has discovered little more in the vast treasures of Vedic culture than any primitive culture.

Western Indology does not understand the philosophy of India, its emphasis on dharma and karma, liberation and enlightenment, or its great traditions of Yoga and meditation. It does not acknowledge the value of its rishi/yogi culture and its Vedic origin. Nor does it recognize any such higher yogic spiritual tradition as behind any ancient civilizations or behind humanity as a whole. From its perspective, Indian spirituality is a self-serving fantasy hiding what is unscientific, inhumane or archaic.

Yet even more sadly Western Indology does not want to recognize that India as a unique civilization really exists. It fails to see any real identity to Indic civilization prior to British rule or any real continuity to it from ancient times.

***

Yet even more sadly Western Indology does not want to recognize that India as a unique civilization really exists. It fails to see any real identity to Indic civilization prior to British rule or any real continuity to it from ancient times. Rather it views India as a melting pot of invading cultures with no overriding political or cultural background or unity. It was Karl Marx who said that India has no history, and what is called history “is the record of successive intruders.” This is the position still taken by Western Indologists and their counterparts in India, particularly Indian leftists who treat the words of Marx almost like a scripture. They fiercely resist the suggestion of any advanced indigenous civilization in India.

Western intellectual culture is quite critical of the Indic tradition and rejects most of it as unscientific or erroneous. It styles Indic thought as mystical, irrational, superstitious or even absurd. We could, therefore, easily describe the main approach of Western Indology as one of negationism, denying something outright in order dispose of it altogether. This failure of Western Indology is nowhere more evident as in its treatment of the Vedas. The monumental literature of the Vedas—the largest of the ancient world and given a spiritual and cultural reverence throughout India throughout its history—is reduced to the record of illiterate invading hordes or pastoral nomads which really didn’t deserve to be preserved. Vedic literature is not examined in depth but simply explained away by such negationist theories, as something of no consequence that need not be taken seriously.

Western Indology first viewed Vedic literature as the record of invading/militant Aryan hordes from Central Asia as they destroyed the sophisticated Dravidian urban culture of Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Now that the Harappan culture has been shown to have not ended in violence but in geological and river changes, they haven’t given up their old views but simply modified them, without even acknowledging their previous distortions. They now see the Vedas as the record of a pastoral culture that gradually infiltrated its way into India after 1500 BCE and, in some unknown way, subverted the language and literature of the land, though no real evidence for this or record of it has remained.

Such views do not explain the Vedic literature, its extent, sophistication or continuity. Ruthless hordes would not produce such a literature or be able to continue it through the centuries. Pastoral infiltrators would be less able to do so. No subcontinent would carry on such a vast literature as a great spiritual legacy that represents small groups of intrusive peoples that had no real civilization! To carry on such a vast literature, particularly one that requires very elaborate and expensive rituals, would require a royal patronage and from an early period.

(source: Western Indology versus the Indic Tradition - By Bharat Kumar). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism and Aryan Invasion Theory and Quotes and Hindu Culture and Hindu Scriptures.

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Colonial Michief: The De- linking of Tribes by the British Empire
Adi Deo Arya Devata – By Sandhya Jain - excerpts

During the freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi and other nationalist leaders expressed displeasure at the mischief perpetrated by colonial administrators among backward and disadvantaged sections, and stoutly affirmed that tribals constituted an inalienable part of Hindu society. 

Colonial rhetoric not withstanding, tribals have never been passive recipients of Hindu upper class (what Max Mueller labeled as Brhamanical) cultural models, but have rather contributed actively and enormously to the infinite variety of India’s civilization from its primordial beginnings. The colonial state insisted that Brahmins, peasants, untouchables and tribals were separate groups with distinct customs and beliefs, and that Brahmins sought to subjugate all others to establish their hegemony. Special attempts were made to delink tribals from the main body of Hindu society through imposition of racial categories and subterfuges in Census classifications. 

The nationalists (anthropologists Verrier Elwin, Sarat Chandra Roy, G S Ghurye and K Suresh Singh) emphasized the strong affinity between the tribal concept of divinity and Hindu dharma, as evidenced in practice, mythology and recorded history. 

The agility with which tribal gods overcame their native forest or mountain environment and acquired all-India eminence symbolizes an eternal verity of the Hindu spiritual traditions. Notable examples of this outward mobility include the pan-India tribal phenomenon of worshipping snakes (naga, nag devata) and the Earth Mother (Devi), which permeates equally the forest community, village, regional and classical ethos. The Mother Goddess is variously worshipped as Prithvi Mata, Dharti Mata, Kail, Parvati, Durga et al.  

Nag Panchami in the month of Sravana commemorates society’s enduring attraction for the strength and wisdom represented by the serpent.

***

Nagas are even worshipped today in several temples and places, and the special festival of Nag Panchami in the month of Sravana commemorates society’s enduring attraction for the strength and wisdom represented by the serpent. The naga in Hindu mythology is an attribute to Shiva, a god with strong tribal links. Ancient Indian literature, from the Vedas to the Mahabharata and the Puranas, and even the Jataka tales, confirm the widespread nature of snake worship, as also the existence of a powerful tribe or group of tribes known as Nagas.  In Bengal, live snakes are worshipped in several reputable Shiva temples. This is also the practice in Shiva temples in Thirukalacheri near Tranquebar in Kerala. In many places in eastern India the snake goddess Manasa Devi is worshipped as the daughter of Shiva. So integral are snakes to the Hindu notion of divinity that Vishnu is also intimately linked with them. 

Balrama seated with snake hood. bronze. 8th-9th century. The mighty serpent Sesha, on whom Lord Vishnu rests during the intervals of creation, is reputedly a form of the god himself (Sesha-Narayana), though he is also identified as Balarama (Baladeva), elder brother of Lord Krishna. 

Animism was another disparaging term, coined by the Colonial British in India, used to denote the worship of spirits and forces of nature as opposed to a ‘true’ (monotheistic) God.

***

The mighty serpent Sesha, on whom Vishnu rests during the intervals of creation, is reputedly a form of the god himself (Sesha-Narayana), though he is also identified as Balarama (Baladeva), elder brother of Krishna. The Mahabharata says Balrama’s head is protected by snakehoods, and that when Balrama died, his soul took the form of a snake and exited through his mouth. One of the most popular tales about Krishna centers around his battle with the snake Kaliya, who poisoned the waters of the Yamuna and caused the death of precious cattle.  

The serpent also has intimate links with Krishna, who also has impressive tribal credentials. In Bauddha and Jaina traditions, which too have tribal links, the snake is the guardian diety of the Buddha and the Tirthankaras. As is well known, Gautam Buddha hailed from the Sakya tribe while Vardhaman Mahavira was scion of the Jnatrikas. Cult and sect have negative connotations in Christian tradition and were used by missionaries and colonial administrators to belittle native gods. Yet, the worship of Devi and naga is so pervasive on a pan-India basis that it is hardly possible to demarcate specific as tribal or classical.  

For millennia, tribals and caste Hindus alike have worshipped the powers of the universe in the form of the sun or fire (Savitur, Agni), forest powers (Vandevi, elephant, lion, eagle), plants (tulsi), sacred trees (papal), river waters and natural springs. Shiva and Vishnu, two of the greatest gods of the Hindu pantheon, exhibit strong traces of tribal origins. Shiva was worshipped by forest-dwelling communities in large parts of the country. Vishnu’s incarnations as Varaha (boar) and Narsimha (lion) bear the strong impress of the forest and reinforce tribal inputs into classical dharma. Vishnu is generally held to have evolved out of several distinct deities. These include Vasudeva, supreme lord of the Vrishni/Satvata tribe, whose worship was recorded by the grammarian Panini as early as the 5^th – 6^th centuries BC; Krishna, deity of the Yadava clan; Gopala, god of the Abhira tribe; and Narayana, lord of the Hindu Kush mountains. Yet, Vishnu also has a solar origin (Vishnu Divakara) and among Vedic deities personifies the light and the sun.  

Jagannath: Tribal God Par Excellence:   

Jaganath Puri temple and Wooden images of Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra, Lord Jagannath
       & Chakra Sudarsan

***

Jaganath Puri’s tribal origins are undeniable, though the god is today inseparable from the ‘high’ Hindu panorama and is key constituent of Orissa’s regional identity. The tribal-Hindu dynamic achieved its most glorious fruition at the Jaganath temple of Puri, where the wooden images of the gods and the traditional priests (daitas, daityas) bear testimony to the deity’s archaic origins. These tribal images, rituals and priests coexist peacefully with a classical Hindu iconology, ritual, and Vedic Brahmin priests giving rise to a truly composite spiritual tradition that has elevated a tribal god of obscure origins to regional icon and all-India eminence.  

Creating a Division in Hindu Society
Animism  - Disparaging terms to denote Nature Worship?

Colonial anthropologists introduced a division in society by designating or ‘scheduling’ whole groups as tribes. Disregarding centuries-old intimate ties between caste Hindu and casteless tribal society, they classified the tribals as ‘Animist’. Animism was another disparaging term, used to denote the worship of spirits and forces of nature as opposed to a ‘true’ (monotheistic) god. 

This bias persists in Western thought to this day, and rather than being debunked as a phoney concept, animism is even now described as the belief that natural phenomenon are endowed with ‘life’ or ‘spirit,’ and as the tendency to attribute supernatural or spiritual characteristics to plants, geological features, climatic phenomena and so on.  

Little wonder then that Mahatma Gandhi bemoaned: “We were strangers to this sort of classification – animists, aborigines, etc., but we have learnt from the English rulers.” When the missionary Dr. Chesterman queried if this objection applied to the ‘animist’ aboriginal races of the Kond hills, Gandhi insisted, “Yes, it does apply, because I know that in spite of being described as animists these tribes have from time immemorial been absorbed in Hinduism. They are, like the indigenous medicine, of the soil, and their roots lie deep there.”  

In 1901, the British government directed census officers to designate the religion of Adivasis as “animism.” Census officers found that it was virtually impossible to distinguish between an animist and a Hindu in practice, as they all worshipped God in many forms. The result was that a community was listed as “animist” in one census and as “Hindu” in another. H H Risley concluded that it was impossible to differentiate between Hinduism and Animism as each merged imperceptibly into the other. Hinduism itself was animism more or less transformed by philosophy.” E A Gait observed in his 1901 Report on the Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories: “The dividing lines between Hinduism and Animism is uncertain. Hinduism does not, like Christianity and Islam, demand of its votaries the rejection of all other religious beliefs; and …amongst many of the lower castes of Hindus the real working religion derives its inspiration, not from the Vedas, but from the non-Aryan beliefs of the aborigines…” 

Tormented at the near impossibility of such an endeavor, Sedgwick, Superintendent of the Census of 1921 for Bombay, asserted: “I have, therefore no hesitation in saying that Animism as a religion should be entirely abandoned, and that all those hitherto classed as Animists should be grouped with Hindus at the next census.”

(source: Adi Deo Arya Devata – By Sandhya Jain p. 2 - 235). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism and Aryan Invasion Theory and Conversion and Nature Worship. For more on Sandhya Jain refer to chapter on Quotes. Also refer to Christianity Dying In The West? - By M S N Menon - organiser.org.

Also refer to Towards Balkanisation, V: Adivasis - By Varsha Bhosle - rediff.com). Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero

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Mohenjo Daro – An Ancient Feat of Civil Engineering

Since indoor plumbing did not arrive in modern societies to any extent until the 20th century, and urban planning has still not been adopted much to this date in history, what we find in the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro is anomalous indeed.

This city in the Indus Valley was built on a grid system about 4,500 years ago, obviously planned out and drawn up before the first brick was laid. It had houses, some with indoor plumbing, a granary, baths, an assembly hall and towers all made out of standard size bricks. The streets were about eight to ten feet wide on average, and were built with well-engineered drainage channels.

A Computer-generated reconstruction has brought a small area of Mohenjodaro back to life. 
(source: Lost Civilizations - By Austen Atkinson p. 179 - 188).

We should wonder how an ancient culture of which nothing is known, not even their language, created this sophisticated city at a point in time many thousands of years ahead of the curve? Civil engineers do not crawl out of thatched-roof huts able to draw up plans for a complex urban environment.

***

Mohenjo Daro was divided into two parts; the Citadel was on the upper level and included an elaborate tank called the Great Bath that was made of fine quality brickwork and drains. The Great Bath was 40 feet The Great Bath was made watertight by the use of two layers of brick, lime-cement and then finally sealed with bitumen (tar). The bath included a shallow section for children.

We should wonder how an ancient culture of which nothing is known, not even their language, created this sophisticated city at a point in time many thousands of years ahead of the curve? Civil engineers do not crawl out of thatched-roof huts able to draw up plans for a complex urban environment. We need to address the following question to archaeologists and historians:

1. Where are the cities that demonstrate the path of urban development, social and technical organisation, leading to Mohenjo Daro?

2. How do you explain the sudden emergence of a complex society when 99.99% of the rest of humanity were living primitively?

These issues cannot be brushed aside with some arrogant pretence that the questions have already been addressed and answered by digging up and labelling pottery shards and other artefacts. We have been and are being overly indulgent with our "soft sciences" regarding their cavalier assertions about having all the answers. In fact, they have very few, so why are they throwing stones at independent researchers from behind glass towers?

***

These issues cannot be brushed aside with some arrogant pretence that the questions have already been addressed and answered by digging up and labeling pottery shards and other artefacts. We have been and are being overly indulgent with our "soft sciences" regarding their cavalier assertions about having all the answers. In fact, they have very few, so why are they throwing stones at independent researchers from behind glass towers? Extraordinarily little is known about the Indus Valley civilization that once spanned nearly a thousand miles with other cities matching the description of Mohenjo Daro.

We file this under our list of great enigmas and challenge orthodox scholars to prove differently as with the first two of our mysteries. 

(source: Mohenjo Daro – Civil Engineering

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Namaste versus The Handshake

Many historians believe the tradition of shaking hands began in medieval Europe, where a person (typically a man) would offer a newly met stranger his right hand to show it held no weapon.  

About 1,500 years ago in medieval Europe, the handshake emerged as a peaceful alternative to stabbing someone in the neck with a concealed dagger. In humanitarian terms, this was progress. As time passed and Europe became more civilized, the gesture turned from meaning, "I'm not going to carry on this hapless blood feud and slay you," to, "Ah, my good friend Gerald the moat-cleaner. So nice to see you've survived the plague."

***

Never Shake Hands With God

"Shake hands and come out fighting." It's the referee's final counsel to two pugilists about to beat each other's brains out with clenched fists. Even outside the ring, a handshake can be a little off-putting. When one returns to the West from an extended sojourn in India or elsewhere in Asia, the hand suddenly thrust forward can seem more ominous than friendly, especially if the hand offered is that of a stranger. Of course, one soon acclimates and the menacing aspect of this salutation subsides.

Perhaps that moment of intimidation derives from the history of the handshake. According to one anthropologist, the handshake evolved in medieval Europe, during the times of knights. It seems not all were laudable Lancelots or gallant Galahads. More than a few would approach opponents with concealed weapons and when within striking distance do the needful, driving dagger or striking sword into the unguarded paladin. To fend off the fear of a foe's foul foil, knights took to offering their open and visibly empty hand to each other. It was a kind of surety, a gesture of trust which said. "See, I am unarmed, so you may safely let me approach." As the story goes, soon the gesture itself took on meaning and the less noble, less lethal man on the street adopted the handshake as the proper way to greet others.

For Hindus, of course, the greeting of choice is namaste, the two hands pressed together and held near the heart with the head gently bowed as one says, "Namaste." Thus it is both a spoken greeting and a gesture, a mantra and a mudra. The prayerful hand position is a mudra called anjali, from the root anj, "to adorn, honor, celebrate or anoint." The hands held in union signify (he oneness of an apparently dual cosmos, the bringing together of spirit and matter, or the self meeting the Self. It has been said that the right hand represents the higher nature or that which is divine in us, while the left hand represents the lower, worldly nature.

In Sanskrit namas means "bow, obeisance, reverential salutation." It conies from the root nam, which carries meanings of bending, bowing, humbly submitting and becoming silent. Te means "to you." Thus namaste means "I bow to you." The act of greeting is called namaskaram, namaskara and namaskar in the varied languages of the subcontinent.

Namaste has become a variable icon of Indianness. Indeed, there must be an Indian law which requires every travel brochure, calendar and poster to include an image of some one with palms pressed together, conveying to the world India's hospitality, spirituality and graceful consciousness.

In the West we are more outgoing, forceful, externalized. We are told by Ma Bell to "Reach out and touch somebody." We are unabashedly acquisitive, defining our progress in life by how much we have - how much wealth, influence, stored-up knowledge, status or whatever. Every culture exhibits such traits to some extent, but in the East Mother is there to remind us, "Reach in and touch the Self." Here we are taught to be more introspective, more concerned with the quality of things than their quantity, more attuned with the interior dimension of life. So there you have it, the whole of Eastern and Western culture summed up in the handshake which reaches out horizontally to greet another, and namaste which reaches in vertically to acknowledge that, in truth, there is no other.

Namaste is cosmically different. Kings do namaste. Sat Gurus namaste and mothers namaste to their own family. We all namaste before God, a holy man or even a holy place. The namaste gesture bespeaks our inner valuing of the sacredness of all. It betokens our intuition that all souls are divine, in their essence. It reminds us in quite a graphic manner, and with insistent repetition, that we can see God everywhere and in every human being we meet. It is saying, silently. "I see the Deity in us both, and bow before It. I acknowledge the holiness of even this mundane meeting. I cannot separate that which is spiritual in us from that which is human and ordinary."

This form of acknowledgement is so lovely, so graceful. Just look at two people in namaste and you will see so much human beauty and refinement.

(source: Never Shake Hands With God - hinduismtoday.com).

Albert Einstein was fascinated by Mohandas Gandhi. He watched newsreel after newsreel of Gandhi's doings in India. Having seen Gandhi greet people in the street with his hands placed together, as if in prayer, and  with a bow,  he  wondered what  Gandhi was saying. (Newsreels had no sound in those days).

Einstein wrote to Gandhi. The reply: "Namaste". He then wrote again to ask the meaning of this Hindu word.

The reply:

I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you of light, love, truth, peace and wisdom.
I honor the place in you where, when you are in that place, and I
am in that place, there is only one of us.

(source: http://www.nedeldredge.com/index.html?namaste.html).

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Sanskrit chants at MIT graduation
Can this happen in 'Secular' India ?

Boston: Amid chants of Sanskrit prayers on a bright and sunny morning, some 2,300 students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) received their graduate and undergraduate degrees in Cambridge.

Swami Tyagananda, the institution's Hindu chaplain, offered an invocation in the language of the gods to reflect the large international crowd's spirit of unity and goodwill at one of the best-known educational campuses in the US.

Lord Brahma - Chandella period.

Sanskrit chants at MIT graduation - Can this happen in 'secular' India ?

***

"May we come together for a common purpose - common be our prayer, common our goal," Tyagananda, who also quoted from Swami Vivekananda's works, told the institution's 139th commencement exercise.

"May the one and the same divine reality lead us. May we be granted clear understanding and the courage to pursue the goals of social justice, non-violence, harmony and peace," he said.

"Peace. Peace. Peace be unto all."

(source: Sanskrit chants at MIT graduation - timesofindia.com).

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India to deport US missionaries for Visa violations

Four American missionaries have been asked to leave India for what police say is a violation of visa regulations.

The missionaries were attacked by a Hindu mob in India's western city Mumbai (Bombay) on Saturday evening during a Bible reading session. Police said three of them were treated for bruises and cuts in a hospital.

One of the assailants was released on bail after allegedly abducting one of the missionaries who are accused of trying to convert local Hindus. Police told the BBC that the men entered India on tourist visas, but were found preaching religion. They say two of them have already left Mumbai, and the other two are waiting to catch the next available flight. Police say a group of local Hindus beat up the missionaries, because they angered over their attempts to convert local Hindus. 

(source: India to deport US missionaries for Visa violations - BBCnews.com.  Refer to chapter on Conversion and Indians Against Christian Aggression). Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero

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Goddess Island - Mumbai's patron Goddess 
Who gave Mumbai (Bombay) the name it has today'?

Introduction: Who gave Mumbai (Bombay) the name it has today'? The legends speak of a goddess with a nose stud and a mighty giant who roamed the islands

The Mumbadevi temple is historically the most important heritage land­mark (II-B) in the Kalbadevi area. The original temple stood at the Phansi Talao (Gibbet Tank) on the Esplanade, on a spot within the current limits of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and gave the main island its name-Mumbai.  

Goddess Mumba and temple. Maa Mumbadevi temple is another Sakthi temple situated in Bombay. The name of the city Bombay (now correctly called Mumbai) is derived from Maa Mumbadevi. 

The temple contains a stone image of the goddess dressed in a robe and bodice with a silver crown, a nose stud and golden necklaces, seated under a canopy of wood covered with silver plates.  Although the Mumbadevi Temple is not as striking as others are in the city, its resident deity, Mumbadevi, is the city's patron Goddess

***

This temple miraculously escaped destruction during Muslim and Portuguese rules.

But in the mid-18th century, the British authorities demol­ished the original temple to provide additional space for the fortifications. A goldsmith named Pandurang Shivaji Sonar financed the construction of the present temple and the Mumbadevi tank was built some decades later, in 1830, with funds provided by a Vani lady named Putalibai.

According to Marathi writers, Acharya and Shingne, however, the old temple was demolished only in 1803 and the tank was built by Sheth Nagardas Navlakhya, a Kapol Vani.  

The temple contains a stone image of the goddess dressed in a robe and bodice with a silver crown, a nose stud and golden necklaces, seated under a canopy of wood covered with silver plates. On the left is a stone figure of Annapurna, who is worshipped with Mumbadevi and on special days sits on a stone peacock. In front of the shrine is a brass tiger, the vahan or carrier of the goddess, which was presented by a pearl merchant in 1890.

Other shrines within the Mumbadevi complex are dedi­cated to Ganesh, Maruti, Mahadev, Indrayani, Murlidhar, Jagannath, Narsoba and Balaji. How did the name Mumbadevi originate? Acharya and Shingne state that there was a general belief that the goddess was installed some time around the late 14th century by a Koli. Mumbadevi was the kulade­vata of the Kolis. Names such as Munga, Shimgi, Mauna and Mongu are popular among Koli women. It seems likely that a Koli woman established the original temple and named it after herself. In time, Munga may have become Mumba and the name came into popular use.

K Raghunathji, a scholar and city historian of the late 19th century, wrote of the Mumbadevi Puran in Sanskrit, in Hindu Temples of Bombay, 1900:

"It is stated therein that in times of yore, there lived in this island a very powerful and mighty giant bearing the name of Mumbarak, and the island had derived its name from him. "By means of austerities he pleased Brahmadev and prayed to him to be favoured with a blessing that he would be inca­pable of meeting with death at anybody's hands, and that he would ever prove successful.

"Having once secured the blessing, he set out to harass both people and the Gods on earth. All the Gods therefore proceeded en masse to Vishnu to seek his protection and prayed to him to destroy their foe. "Upon this, Vishnu and Shiv extracted a portion of lustre, each from his own body, and made of it a goddess or Devi for the giant. The goddess then beat Mumdarak almost to death and threw him down on the ground and told him to ask for a blessing. He entreated her to join his own name with her's and to perpetu­ate that name on earth. "The goddess accordingly granted his prayer and named herself Mumbadevi. The giant may perhaps be Mumbarak (Mubarak) the first, and the Mumbadevi Puran may have been composed in this way.

(source: Goddess Island - By Sharada Dwivedi - expressindia.com).

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To follow or to lead?

What is the question before India: whether to lead or to follow?

For a thousand years, India led the world. For the next thousand years, India was on the tow. What is in store for India in the future?

Vishnu Seshnag - Thailand.

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

***

For six centuries we lived in a world of Islamic terror and anarchy. For two centuries, in a Euro-centric world, we had no say in either of them. Now we are under American dispensation. Again, we have no say in how the world is run.

Fifty years ago, Jawaharlal Nehru said: ‘We would not accept this as a fait accompli.’ But what have we achieved? Nothing. The world is still run by the West.

But why? Because we are not ready to challenge the hegemony of the West. Because we are still under the spell of Western civilisation. Because we are still ignorant of the strength of our own civilisation.

Who is responsible? Our educational system. It was designed to keep us weak, to make us ashamed of our past. Did we want to change it? No! Why? Because we are like zombies today.

Why can’t we re-write our history? Because we can never agree on anything. We glorify in our Hindu past. It was no Golden Age, say the Muslims and Dalits. It was an oppressive age, they say. To the Muslims, it suits to say so to justify their conversion and to Dalits, to justify their present aggressive posture.

But the country is marching ahead, and it may well be a super power in half a century. Are we ready to play the role of a super power with Lalu Yadav around? No way. And we are doing nothing to prepare the country and its people for this role. Hence, it has become necessary to call up our nationalism. Only the Parivar is committed to do so.

It is said that the Western civilisation is materialistic, that ours is spiritualistic. “I do not deny,” says Prof. Max Mueller, the Vedic scholar, “that the manly vigour, the silent endurance, the public spirit and the private virtues of the citizens of European States represent one side—it may be an important side—of the destiny, which man has to fulfil on earth.” But there is another side of our nature, and possibly another destiny open to man. And that destiny, he says, belongs to the East, to India, in particular.

  Fitjoff Capra and S Radhakrishnan.

This one-sided development of the West has reached an alarming stage—a crisis of social, ecological, moral and spiritual dimension, according to Fitjoff Capra, the famous scientist. In fact, it has suffered from cultural disintegration, says Dr S Radhakrishnan.

***

Western civilisation is thus activist; Indian is contemplative. The West has been exploring the external world. The Hindu has been looking inward upon himself. This one-sided development of the West has reached an alarming stage—a crisis of social, ecological, moral and spiritual dimension, according to Fitjoff Capra, the famous scientist. In fact, it has suffered from cultural disintegration, says Dr S Radhakrishnan.

India has had a measure of success. Max Mueller says: “If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life and has found solutions to some, I should point to India.”

The West has put material production at the heart of the human evolution, as if what you eat is what guides the future evolution of mankind! It is a stupid thought. Gandhiji asks: “What mark of civilisation is it to be able to produce a 120-page newspaper in one night when most of it is either banal or actually vicious with no two columns worth preserving?” We have to put man at the centre of the human evolution if we are to make progress; not consumerism.

Darwin and Einstein have together torn up the innards of the Semitic faiths. Their creation myth has become a fairy-tale. And their belief in a dualistic world—a world of God and Satan, matter and spirit—has crumbled. It was the mechanistic view of the universe, which gave rise to the monarchic God, who ruled the world from above by imposing his divine laws on it.

In contrast, India believes that the forces of change and motion, light and heat and sound are inherent in matter. This was proved right when man split the atom in 1945. So the Indian image of the divine is that of a principle—of atman—that controls everything from within. The West has since abandoned its worldview.

When it comes to Western life, it is based on competition, therefore on strife. By giving up ethics in the economic life, the West has created a life of constant anxiety.

There is thus a feeling in the world, more so in the West, that the Western way of life is doomed. Western thinkers agree. They say that life in the West is “joyless and self-destructive”.

There is search for an alternative. The Indian civilisation is the only one which has so far merited attention. It is founded on freedom, and therefore on diversity. It is tolerant and therefore humanistic. It alone responds to the uncertainties of a post-modern age. Its multi-cultural society is its first great success. Its continuing commitment to peace is another. It has, therefore, much to give to the world. Which is why India should be among the leaders of the world.

We, the human family, are like pilgrims on a long march. The vigorous will take the lead. The exhausted will be thrown to the rear. This is how it is going to be. Let us be ready to take the lead.

(source: To follow or to lead? - By M S M Menon - organiser.com).

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Time to learn the necessary lesson - By Francois Gautier

If one were to carefully read the history of India - and particularly of Hindus - one will notice that no invader, whether Greek, Muslim, Dutch, British or Portuguese, was ever able to entirely subjugate the people of this landmass. Yet, at the same time, one will also see that whenever Hindus suffered a military defeat, it was always because of Hindus who had betrayed Hindus. Who can forget that the last great Hindu empire, Vijaynagar - a wonder of architecture, of refinement of culture and an abode of spirituality that radiates even today in spite of the massive destruction - was betrayed to the Muslims invaders by Lingayats? 

The reality is no different even today. The greatest enemies of India are not White missionaries or Chinese Communists but Indians who continue to spout Marxist jargon when it has lost credibility all over the world. Then there are second generation converts who espouse a fundamental Christianity which is no more prevalent even in the West. Also there are academics in the US who rant in mainstream American papers against Hindu fundamentalism.

Why do Hindus often attack their best friends, as with Mr Joshi and today Mr Advani? They even assault the very few who defend them! Recently, they were all over the Net, going after Koenraad Elst, the only Western historian who does not denigrate Hinduism, or P N Benjamin, one of the few Christian intellectuals who is trying to build a bridge with Hindu organisations. 

Mr Advani is not the enemy and neither is Mr Sudheendra Kulkarni. There are 800 million Hindus today, who still form an overwhelming majority. What greater proof of secularism does India need with a Sikh Prime Minister when Sikhs constitute only two per cent of the country's population; a Muslim President when Muslims are only 12 per cent; a Communist Speaker of the Lok Sabha when Communism is moribund the world over; and a Western/Christian supreme leader, when Westerners constitute only 0.0001 per cent and Christians three per cent? Where are the poor Hindus?

(source: Time to learn the necessary lesson - By Francois Gautier - June 18 2005 - daily pioneer.com). For more on Francois Gautier refer to chapter on Quotes and visit his website -  Francois Gautier). Refer to The Swami Devananda Saraswati Interview with Rajeev Srinivasan - christianaggression.org.

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From blue eyed American to Indian ‘naga’ Sadhu
Rapid Decline of Sadhus in India?

Many people in United States dropped out of normal life in the 1960s as the country became involved in the Vietnam war and major cities became engulfed by race riots.

Rampuri went a big step further -- he disappeared into rural India and became a naked “Sadhu”!

For 21 years, he wandered holy outposts and smoked pot from a clay pipe called a “chillum”, learned the rituals of “sadhus” -- Hindu devotees covered in sacred ashes and sporting dreadlocks -- from a guru and, along the way, abandoned his western name and severed contact with his family in Beverly Hills.

The wandering years are the subject of his book, Baba -- Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi. Rampuri, 54, says he is a rare western witness to the demise of the ancient “sadhu” culture in India.

According to him, as a foreigner, he could never fully understand the ways of the vast country, but, equally, he could never rejoin western culture back in the United States.

The traditions of “sadhus” in story telling, Ayurvedic medicine, Yoga and in giving “aashirvad” (blessings) played an important role in India`s ability to withstand 20th century commercial trends as many people found the holy men a potent reminder against middle-class desire, Rampuri says.

"But the “sadhus” who were plugged into that -- that`s coming to an end. This is what really impressed me. These were people who could basically wander the country with no clothes, no money -- nothing between you and the Earth. That is now in a tremendously rapid decline," he says.

Middle-class India ignores holy men  

Sadhus have been around for thousands of years in India with an estimated four to five million now, according to Dolf Hartsuiker, author of Sadhus, Holy Men of India. They can be called naga babas (naked holy men), yogis (a term of reverence) or the more generic sadhu. Hartsuiker says the number of sadhus has declined from a century ago when Indian society was more organized to support the holy men who are not supposed to work. A central feature of sadhu existence is the dhuni or sacred fire which is regarded as a home and temple for daily rituals and ascetic exercises.

Sadhus, who normally wear just a string around the waist, regularly smear the ashes from the dhuni on their bodies to indicate rebirth. But as India liberalised its economy to imports and became a hub for outsourcing, Rampuri says he noticed that people chasing the new affluence increasingly ignored the holy men and found their practices out of touch.

“I’ve seen it as devastating. We used to walk into a village trailed by kids waiting to hear our stories. Now there’s no one waiting,” Rampuri says.

“They are not listening to the stories. TV now replaces the living babas. The smarter ones are now running businesses. They have learned to buy and sell. The ones who have understood all this change are the ones that have prospered. The ones that did not understand have been impoverished and their ancient knowledge is on the decline.”

Sadhus are organized into various sects to pass on wisdom such as yoga and usually live in small groups or by themselves on the fringes of society in devotion to a deity -- such as Shaivas who follow the Hindu god Shiva and Vaishnavas who who worship Vishnu or incarnations such as Rama Krishna.

Foreigners like Rampuri are rare among sadhus but not unknown, Hartsuiker notes, and can be found at festivals that take place every three years at alternate sites such as Allahabad, Ujjain, Hardwar and Nasik.

Known as Kumbh Melas, the festivals draw millions of Sadhus who gather to take a dip in sacred river waters.

Rampuri says the melas used to be sacred events but the last few have witnessed billboards for soft drinks and seen luxury tents erected for curious onlookers including newly affluent Indians.

“The perception of India has changed in the last few years -- many Indians don’t understand what’s happened,” Rampuri says. “But they embrace Coke and Pepsi. The idiot box has replaced word of mouth. It’s a pivotal moment. People have money now. It was never really needed before -- a little income was enough. I see myself now as a witness to this.”  

Middle-class India ignores holy men. Sadhu seeking spiritual enlightement through detachment from the material world.

”Knowledge is now Google and television commercials. It’s an imperial culture and it prevents you from seeing the world in a different way.” He also said the free spirit of the 1960s he found in India has changed.  

***

“I came to India because I wanted to have some measure of my own culture,” Rampuri says. “There were many people like me that were attempting to understand the clash of our own affluence and how the rest of the world lived. I took it to an extreme by joining a particularly esoteric aspect of another culture -- 100-fold removed from the modern world. I was living 1,000 years ago. I was very much out of the western community for a number of years.”

He now runs an ashram in the northern Indian temple town of Hardwar that has enabled him to earn a living and participate in the country’s growing affluence such as buying a jeep and flying to the US to promote his book. But he said that he realized back in the United States that he could never return to a life of office work or talk with people about everyday life. 

“I can see we’re (the US) becoming illiterate,” Rampuri says. ”Knowledge is now Google and television commercials. It’s an imperial culture and it prevents you from seeing the world in a different way.” He also said the free spirit of the 1960s he found in India has changed.

“That is all gone now,” Rampuri says. “I don’t think people can find that in India anymore. In the 1960s you know people could come to India with very little money and be welcomed anywhere.”

He said the recent yoga craze in the United States is an example of how India is now perceived. “Indian culture has been sensationalized. It’s part of the new age business,” Rampuri says. “Twenty million people doing yoga for for 10 to 20 dollars a lesson - This is a huge business. That’s fine. It’s all business out there and these people are trying to make people feel good. But I just want to emphasize this comes from something that wasn’t a business. It wasn’t packaged and sold .”

He says his remains in India, though he now faces the challenge of making a living like anyone else.

“All my prayers are on the book,” Rampuri says. “I run a small place with no other place to go, no other options. People come and we give them a connection with the Earth - give blessings for prosperity, health and stability.”

(source: From blue eyed American to Indian ‘naga’ Sadhu - khaleejtimes.com).

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India: sanctified landmass (punyakshetra) 

According to the Bhagavata Purana (5:17.12), the landmass of India (Bharatvarsha) alone is the land of action and labor. It routinely describes India as the land of moral action and righteousness (dharmabhumi) dividing it into two categories: the realm of work (karmabhumi) and the realm of pleasure and enjoyment (bhogabhumi). The equation of the landmass of India and sacredness has become axiomatic in Hinduism and its vast expanse has been organized into a network of pilgrimage centres paralleling the network of crisscrossing rivers. 

The ideal of every Hindu is to undertake a ritual circumambulation (pradakshina) of the sacred land of India in the auspicious, clockwise direction around the four divine abodes (dhamas), which stand at the compass points of the territory of modern India: Badrinatha in the Himalayan mountains in the North, Jagannatha Puri in the East on the Bay of Bengal, Rameshvaram in the South with an opening to the Indian ocean, and Dvaraka in the West touching on Sindhussgara (the Arabian sea).

Since in reality only a few Hindus of means can expect to accomplish such a feat in their lifetime, it can be achieved symbolically by visiting some of the more easily accessible sacred complexes where replicas of the four dhamas have been conveniently produced under one roof. One such modern complex, called Muktidham, has been built recently in the ancient holy city of Nashik in Maharashtra. On a raised platform at the center stand the images of Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu), Lakshmana (his brother), and Sita (Rama's consort).

Replicas of the four divine abodes (dhamas) as well as dozens of statues or images of various gods, goddesses, male and female saints, line individual alcoves and panels running in a clockwise direction around the main altar. Symbols identifiable with Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism are also included with a view to transmit the Hindu belief that the sacred is universally approachable and that access to it cannot be denied on account of creed or dogma. 

(source: India: sanctified landmass (punyakshetra) - By Srinivas Tilak - swaveda.com).

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The dispossession of the Hindus

Hindus wanted a united India; they voted against Partition but Partition did happen. They wanted to retain Kashmir, the land of Maharishi Kashyap and seat of Sharda Vidya, but two-thirds of Kashmir was snatched from them and from what remained, Hindus were driven out, thus dispossessing them of their home and hearth in a truncated, nay, Independent India.

They had three great deities -- or rather three dreams -- in the words of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia -- Ram, Krishna and Shiva. All the three holy places associated with them, had mosques built over them by the invaders.

After Independence, the Hindus naturally wanted to have their places of worship returned to them as a goodwill gesture by Muslims who otherwise got India partitioned and had no qualms razing mosques for roads and hospitals in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Gangotri, visited by lakhs from all over the world, does not have power supply even today or a workable telephone connection. Ayodhya, Mathura and Vrindavan are the filthiest towns and its temples remain badly mismanaged under government control. Though they demand that Hindu temples be freed from State control, not a single Hindu nationalist state government has yet started a plan to de-control Hindu temples in their states and make them a 'shining example' of their 'vision, agenda, programme' and all that which gets an entry into their idea of Ram Rajya.

Vedic school in south India.

The conversion from Hinduism to other faiths is hailed as a hallmark of secularism and fair governance, but any effort to 'bring back' the converted is opposed as blatant communalism and an affront to minority rights.  

***

The conversion from Hinduism to other faiths is hailed as a hallmark of secularism and fair governance, but any effort to 'bring back' the converted is opposed as blatant communalism and an affront to minority rights.

Hindus have become so dispossessed of their self pride that an assault on the Shankaracharya, disapproved by the highest court of the land, is seen as something against Brahmins alone and the mastermind behind it celebrates it with an electoral win.

(source: The dispossession of the Hindus - By Tarun Vijay - rediff.com). Refer to Who Killed Our Culture? We Did - By Youki Kudoh - time.com  May 3 1999.

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Manusmriti still relevant

The former Bihar Governor, M. Ramajois, said here on Sunday that despite the propaganda against it, the Manusmriti remained a source of eternal values for humanity.  

At a popular lecture on the role of professionals in enforcement of contractual obligations in the construction industry, Justice Ramajois said the good points in this ancient law text must be taken and the irrelevant and unsuitable ones discarded. He opined that Manusmriti elaborated on the "right to happiness" which contained within its ambit all other rights developed by western jurisprudence.

Manusmriti spoke of contentment as the root of happiness but enjoined that pursuit of wealth and fulfilment of desires should only be within the ambit of `Dharma'. He warned against the present trend of professional competence without ethics and argued that this was the cause of much social malaise.

Book released - Earlier, K. Rama Swamy, former Supreme Court judge, released a book, "Ancient Indian Law: Eternal Values in Manusmriti". In his address he said some of the ideas presented in this ancient book are relevant even under the present Constitution and urged upon people to study and understand this.

The function was organised jointly by the Institution of Engineers and the Bharat Vikas Parishad. 

(source: Manusmriti still relevant - hindu.com).  

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Secular Principles

In India, secularism is defined as religious neutrality, which is translated as dharma nirapekhsa. This translation itself is wrong. Dharma does not mean a specific doctrinaire religion, but a set of universal principles, which any human should observe. The reason Swami Vivekananda has declared Hinduism as the universal religion is that dharma of Hinduism can be cultivated by a person of any religion, not necessarily a Hindu. If a person wants to be neutral from dharma, one would cease to be a human. The intended meaning of dharma nirapekhsa is either complete separation of the government from any religion or equal treatment of all religions.

However, the India government is not “religious neutral” at all in any sense of the term. The government does not treat all religions equally either. 

Iftar parties 

Religious schools receive generous grants. Purely religious education in madrasas are considered equivalent to standard secular education. Hindus were expelled from Kashmir by Muslims. Buddhists were expelled from both Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh by the tribal Christians. Efforts are going on in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala to have positive discriminations for Muslims. Indira Gandhi started the practice of giving Iftar parties for Muslims during Ramadan. Now political leaders compete against each other to throw lavish parties at national and state capitals. Zakir Hussein has established a mosque inside the presidential palace.

Thus, in no sense India has religious neutrality in the affairs of the government. A few countries like the USA, France, Turkey are officially declared secular, but a closer examination may reveal that these countries are not that religious neutral either. In the United States, the constitution explicitly calls for the separation of church and state. However, the overwhelmingly Christian population allows some lapses in this policy: for example, money bears the words “In God we trust”, and the Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “under God”. There are traces of non-secular legal systems in the states of the US. In the South Carolina Constitution, Protestantism is specifically noted as their state religion, and even election of clergy as part of a state election process. The Pennsylvania constitution advocates religious work for building human virtues. 

In England, there is a close alliance between the Church and the state. The Church of England became independent of the Pope in the 16th century and is the official Church of England. The monarch of England is the head of the Church. Though there is religious freedom in England, the Church of England has a special status inasmuch as the monarch of England must join in communion with the Church of England. A Catholic or anyone who marries a Catholic cannot be the monarch of England. It is probable that a Catholic may not even be Lord Chancellor.

(source: Secular Principles - thestatesman.net). Refer to Who Killed Our Culture? We Did - By Youki Kudoh - time.com  May 3 1999.

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The British origin of Cow slaughter

Of all beings the cow is treated in India as the most sacred, auspicious and sanctified. Since about 1860 AD British and European scholarship started a new school of vedic interpretation to impress on the westernised class in India that the ancient Vedas, and allied texts also advocated, celebrated, and feasted on the flesh of the cow, or bullock, on special occasions. This book traces the British Origin of Cow-slaughter in India from the 18th Century. It also has British Origin of Cow-slaughter in India from the 18th Century. It also has British documents on the Anti-kine killing movement from 1880 - 1894. 

This latest book by Dharampal is about one of the most significant movements in India, against kine-killing by the British, during the nineteenth century. The enormity of this movement and the threat it posed to the British may be gauged by the statement of Viceroy Lansdowne when he said that:

  "I doubt whether, since the Mutiny, any movement containing in it a greater amount of potential mischief has engaged the attention of the Government of India." 

While it may be generally known that a very large number of the cow and its progeny were daily slaughtered by the British for their army and civilian personnel in India from about 1750 onwards, very little is known, even to most scholars and historical researchers on India, about this India-wide anti-kine-killing movement against the British during 1880-1894. Even those among the few scholars who have taken some note of this movement have treated it as a Hindu-Muslim conflict. But such was not the case, as the documents presented in this book show that many prominent Muslims as well as the Parsis and Sikhs actively participated in the movement. The fact that the movement was directed against the British and not against the Muslims, as commonly believed, was very clear to Queen Victoria and her high-ranking officers. 

Queen Victoria says in a letter to Viceroy Lord Lansdowne, "Though the Muhammadan's cow killing is made the pretext for the agitation, it is, in fact, directed against us, who kill far more cows for our army, etc., than the Muhammadans."

(source: The British origin of Cow slaughter).

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Angkor Wat - The Lost Empire

"Angkor is utterly transforming. The jungle and the ruins intertwine in beautiful and mysterious harmony. Sunset from the top of Angkor Wat has to be one of the most extraordinary experiences any traveler could possibly have."

    -  Earl A. Powell III, Director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  

***

Visitors are amazed at the scale of Angkor City. The complex covers around 400 square kilometers and comprises over 100 monuments and edifices of temples, sculptures, statues and incomparable bas-relief that have withstood the ravages of time.

The enormous temple complexes had been expanded to the large area by successive kings. The architectural style of Angkor is largely based on Indian (Hindu) cosmology to symbolize the center of the universe and mixed with local architecture. At the fall of the Empire, the jungle reclaimed the decaying ruins until being rediscovered in 1861.

No photograph can quite capture the immensity of this monument. Some of the apparent grandeur of the complex is due to clever perspective. The tip of the central tower is only 65 meters high. However, many of the other statistics of the temple are still quite impressive. The temple is surrounded by a 200 meter wide moat (that's more than two football fields to you Americans). The main temple is built on three levels. The first level consists of an open gallery, with the inner wall continuously covered with bas-reliefs depicting the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and other stories from the Hindu pantheon. Its nearly a kilometer walk to see the whole thing, but its worth it.

Angkor Wat was built at the height of Cambodian political power in the late 8th century by King Jayavarman II (802-834), a fervent follower of Hinduism, he dedicated the temple to God Vishnu. The temples were designed to represent Mount Meru, The name "Angkor" is derived from the Sanskrit word nagara meaning "city", successing kings continued the practice of building temple mountain at the heart of their capital. Angkor Wat is the largest religious building in the world, it measures more than a half mile long on each side. Angkor was a metropolis of a million or so people, the capital of Khmer kingdom, which flourished for 500 years, peaking in the 12th century. Angkor Wat is the most perfect of the Angkor temples. Built in monumental proportions on three levels, its symmetrical five tower layout symbolizes the peaks of Mount Meru and were designed to be a microcosm of the Hindu universe. There is not only the grandeur, for every spot in the temple is ornamented with sculptures and bas-reliefs of wonderful detail.

Visitors are amazed at the scale of Angkor City. The complex covers around 400 square kilometers and comprises over 100 monuments and edifices of temples, sculptures, statues and incomparable bas-relief that have withstood the ravages of time.

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

***

If you are looking for Hinduism’s patrimony at its most magnificent, you won’t find it within our borders. For that, you’ll have to take a flight to Bangkok. From there, it’s a short hop to a rural town in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia. Here in an area that stretches 25 km east to west and 10 km north to south, the local Hindu kings built a hundred or so temples in praise of Vishnu and Shiva a thousand years ago. The temple at Angkor Wat is the center piece. It rivals the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome and is the largest religious structure in the world. Angkor Wat is impressive for its majestic scale as well as for exquisite, intricate details. There are bas-reliefs of scenes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. An entire stretch of wall has the Kauravas and the Pandavas in furious battle. On another wall, Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Lakshmi and even Hanuman make an appearance at the churning of the oceans.

Despite all the reading and photos, noting prepared me for just how huge Angkor Wat really is. As we were driving, we saw a body of water that I thought must be a river, but as we rounded the corner, I realized it was a moat. The temple complex itself is enormous, each passageway leads to even more. It felt like a maze. We spent three hours there looking at the beautiful bas-reliefs, admiring the architecture, soaking up the atmosphere.

(source: online sources).

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The Hinduization of America

Like so many Americans who like to play “Indian”, Indian-Americans too have been traversing America’s sacred landscape without connecting with the deeply held beliefs of its ancient inhabitants, the American Indians.But not anymore. They are becoming grounded on American soil. And from Hindu temples in Juneau, Alaska, to Tallahassee, Florida, and to Kauai, Hawaii, they are chanting praises such as this: America vasa jaya govinda or Victory to Govinda who lives in America That’s because there is an ongoing process of Hinduizing the American sacred space. Hindu Americans have begun to cultivate the strains within their own religious tradition that foster a sense of the sacred earth through myth, ritual, ceremonies, and spirit power that more or less reflects Native American or American Indian cultures. Indeed, Hindu Americans would not be doing this if they did not realize the land was sacred in some intrinsic way, something the Native American Indians knew for thousands of years.

Now, Hindu Americans are locating, establishing and embellishing sacred spaces in America by co-mingling the waters of the Ganga and the Kaveri with the Mississippi and Rio Grande, and by invoking the holy Indian rivers into the local waters. Even if this ritual is not viewed as purifying one of all sins it is a palpable affirmation of an emerging Hindu cosmology transplanted in America.

At the simples level there is a notion of transference – an idea that the sacredness attached to the India’s sacred rivers will physically attach itself to the local rivers. It’s a pattern that has grown with the earlier diasporas in Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad, and the later migrations to Australia, Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States. Perhaps the stage was set when Hindu culture spread to Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia in its earliest phase.

Sacred Land

In America itself the phrase "sacred land" is used frequently, but it’s meaning remains elusive to many non-Natives, who relate to land mostly through property lines or hiking trails. This difference highlights perhaps the widest gulf between the two cultures – Native Americans and European Americans. On the one hand is the Judeo-Christian belief that humans were meant to have dominion over nature; on the other is the belief in land as a living network, not as fragments they could purchase. "How can you 'save the Earth' if you have no spiritual relationship with the Earth?" asks Tonya Gonnella Frichner of the Onondaga Nation. "There is an intellectual abstraction about the environment but no visceral participation with the Earth.”

Sacred rivers

Hindus think of rivers as capable of spiritually cleansing all those who bathe in them. But why should they mingle the sacred waters brought from India's rivers with the local waters of the Mississippi and the Suwannee? On the simplest level, the belief is that the sacredness of the Ganga, the Kaveri and other rivers will physically attach itself to the local rivers of America. But there is more going on here than just spiritually or physically invoking the holy Indian rivers into the local waters. Just as the supreme being makes itself accessible through an incarnation or manifestation on earth, the sanctity of the remote site in India is made accessible in this country to the devotees, claims Prof. Naryanan.

(source: The Hinduization of America - By Francis C. Assisi - indolink.com).

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Cooper Madison, disciple of Sai Baba, loves Indian music 

Cooper Madison gave up singing Western music after his encounter with Indian spiritualism. After coming in contact with Sathya Sai Baba, Madison began singing bhajans, qawwalis and semi-classical film songs, according to news reports.

Madison is planning to put the music that he will sing for the South Asian program on his Web site, www.coopermadison.com. Madison, who works as a computer consultant in New York City, performs at religious congregations in India and North America, teaches budding singers and musicians. He is also working on his own album.

Madison Cooper left, performing on traditional Indian instrument.

***

The seeds of spiritualism were sown in Madison when his mother started looking for a guru in their hometown of Orlando. After visiting several swamis, Madison settled down for Swami Ramnarine, who was from Trinidad. The swami was instrumental in Madison giving up smoking, meat and fish. It was at this swami’s place, Madison saw Sathya Sai Baba. Immediately after that he went to India to visit Sathya Sai Baba.

After his meeting with Sai Baba, he claims, according to news reports, his attitude to music changed. Madison learnt vocal singing from an Indian physician in Orlando, Dr. Iyengar. To understand the lyrics, Madison learnt Hindi and Tamil. He claims he learnt a lot of music listening to tapes and CDs. He doesn’t say he is a scholar in Indian music but when he sang the Subbulakshmi devotional at a Hindi film music gathering recently, many listeners complimented him on his pronunciation of Tamil words.

Madison is married to actress Kavi (who has appeared in a ‘Law & Order’ segment as well as other shows), and is also a Sathya Sai Baba devotee.

(source: Cooper Madison, disciple of Sai Baba, loves Indian music - desitalk.newsindia-times.com).

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What happened to India's Chitrashalas? By M.S.N. Menon

WE don't know. Perhaps, we don't care?

India had a long tradition of painting. It was one of the 64 kalas (arts). In his commentary on the Kamasutra, Yasodhar gives a detailed exposition on paintings. It shows that the art of painting and murals was already well advanced in India. Paintings are mentioned in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Kings, who were patrons of painters, also had chitrashalas in their palaces. Ellora and Ajanta paintings mark the highest perfection of this art.

Paintings are mentioned in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Kings, who were patrons of painters, also had chitrashalas in their palaces. Ellora and Ajanta paintings mark the highest perfection of this art.

***

What happened to all these priceless paintings? They were destroyed by the Muslim invaders. They forced the Hindu kings to destroy the chitrashalas. Never had bigotry and ignorance combined to wreak such great destruction.

Islam was opposed to reasoning as also to arts. For example, to painting, sculpting, music, dance and drama. Thus, it blocked the intellectual and aesthetic development of its followers, which is reflected in its civilisation. It is said of music that it disturbs their preoccupation with God. Indeed very strange, when every other religion considers music an aid to devotion! Why, even the Sufis, a Muslim sect, say that music is a bridge between man and God.

During the 700-800 years of Muslim rule in India, the painters were a despised lot. It was a major setback to the development of Hindu art. It meant centuries lost to the Hindus. 

But the mischief has been done. India lost priceless paintings to religious bigotry. In the opinion of Vincent Smith, the historian, (Akbar, the Great Mughal) Indian paintings “have perished almost without exception, and but for Abul Fazl's express testimony, the continued existence of Hindu schools of paintings throughout the ages would have been a matter of faith and inference rather than of positive certainty.”

During the Mughal period, there was an effort to revive Indian painting. But why? Because, although the Mughals were Muslims, they chose to follow a different tradition. They drew their inspiration from Bukhara-Samarkhand, where there was a flourishing colony of painters of Iranian, Chinese and Indian origin. The Mughals invited them to Delhi to do court paintings—especially of court events, including shikharas. 

Aurangzeb, the bigot, personally destroyed many paintings. He even ordered a whitewash of Akbar's tomb to conceal some of the paintings on it. He also banned music, and asked his spies to raid houses to destroy the musical instruments. He also disliked dancing, although he used to sneak into harem quarters to see the dancing girls.

It is said that the Prophet of Islam had an intense dislike for music. But, then, he disliked poetry too. According to Prof. P.K. Hitti (History of the Arabs) Mohammed declared the musical instrument the ‘devil's muezzin’. Compare this with the Hindu tradition. The Hindus consider Shiva the supreme patron of arts and Saraswati, the goddess of learning, is associated with the veena.

Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan and Temple of Borobudur in Indonesia. 

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

***

Today, Muslims are reconciled to the arts—to music, dance, painting, poetry and so on. But not one word of regret has come from any enlightened Muslim quarter for what the Muslim invaders had done. Nor is there an awareness among them of the need to prevent such vandalism in the future. Which is why a cabal of terrorists was able to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. The vandal's spirit is not dead. In fact, M.F. Hussain pours scorn and ridicule over Hindus, as his ancestors had done, by drawing Hindu goddesses in the nude! One may well ask: Who is to pay for Islam's historical follies?

This is why any sign of bigotry and intolerance should be stamped out in any civilised society. Let us not assume that the vandals are dead and gone. They are not. Not long ago, the Islamists in Indonesia threatened to blow up the Temple of Borobudur, one of the wonders of the world. We cannot allow these demented creatures to assume that they know better than God how the world is to be constructed. 

(source: What happened to India's Chitrashalas? By M. S. N. Menon - organiser.org). For more refer to chapters on European Imperialism and Islamic Onslaught and Suvarnabumi

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The British Raj and the famines of good governance

Between 24 million and 29 million Indians died in famines in the era of British good governance. In fact, barring the scale, it all sounds depressingly like the present. In terms of ideology and principle at least. 

NO OTHER country in the world was quite as fortunate as ours, a Times of India editorial gushed in 1841. Talk of luck. Not only were we ruled by White Gentleman, the Times pointed out, we were ruled by White English Gentlemen. (It could have been the Dutch, you know.) So committed were these Gentlemen to the governance of this heathen land, they "would do the utmost to protect our independence... " And this was not "superhuman or romantic.' After all, our rulers merely "act[ed] like English gentlemen of good common sense." For the enslaved to choose between colonialisms is for the chicken to choose the sauce it prefers to be cooked in. Yet, some still cling to the notion that British colonialism was more benign than others.

This week we mark our escape from good English common sense. As smart a time as any to review its legacy. When the Times (then called the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce) ran that edit in 1841, it was, after all, owned by other White English gents. When brown Indian gentlemen echo those views 164 years later, it is worth revisiting. 

When the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does not "entirely reject" British claims to good governance, it becomes pressing.

That governance was certainly good for the British. Tax collections rose even as millions died of man-made famines. Like Bengal of 1770-72. The East India Company's own report put it simply. The famine in that province "exceeds all description." Close to ten million people had died, as Rajni Palme-Dutt pointed out in his remarkable book, India Today. The Company noted that more than a third of the populace had perished in the province of Purnea. "And in other parts the misery is equal." Yet, Warren Hastings wrote to the directors of the East India Company in 1772: "Notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of this province, and the consequent decrease in cultivation, the net collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of [pre-famine] 1768." Hastings was clear on why and how this was achieved. It was "owing to [tax collection] being violently kept up to its former standard." The Company itself, as Palme Dutt observed, was smug about this. It noted that despite "the severity of the late famine and the great reduction of people thereby, some increase has been made" in the collections.  

Famines in India under the British Raj.

***

Between 24 million and 29 million Indians, maybe more, died in famines in the era of British good governance. 

Many of these famines were policy-driven. Millions died of callous and wilful neglect. The victims of Malthusian rulers. Over 6 million humans perished in just 1876 — when Madras was a hell. Many others had their lives shortened by ruthless exploitation and plunder. Well before the Great Bengal Famine, the report of that province's Director for Health for 1927-28 made grisly reading. It noted that "the present peasantry of Bengal are in a very large proportion taking to a dietary on which even rats could not live for more than five weeks." By 1931, life expectancy in India was sharply down. It was now 23.2 and 22.8 years for men and women. Less than half that of those living in England and Wales. (Palme-Dutt.)

Mike Davis' stunning book, Late Victorian Holocausts, also ought to be required reading in every Indian school. Davis gives us a scathing account, for instance, of the Viceroy Lord Lytton. 

Lord Lytton was the most ardent free-marketeer of his time — and Queen Victoria's favourite poet. He "vehemently opposed efforts ... to stockpile grain or otherwise interfere with market forces. All through the autumn of 1876, while the kharif crop was withering in the fields of southern India, 

Lytton had been absorbed in organising the immense Imperial Assemblage in Delhi to proclaim Victoria Empress of India." The weeklong feast for 68,000 guests, points out Davis, was an orgy of excess. It proved to be "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history." Through the same week as this spectacular durbar, "100,000 of the Queen Empress' subjects starved to death in Madras and Mysore" alone.

(source: The British Raj and the famines of good governance - By P Sainath - hindu.com). For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

***

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on mat for lauding British Raj

The BJP on Saturday demanded an "apology" from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "praising" British rule in India as "good governance." Calling it an "insulting statement," the party also questioned whether the Congress and its president Sonia Gandhi approved of the Prime Minister's views.

"No Indian can describe the British rule in India as good governance as it was full of atrocities and barbarism," BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said in a statement. 

"Describing British rule in India as good governance is an insult to crores of Indians, particularly freedom fighters who shed their blood to gain freedom for the country," Mr Naqvi said, reacting to Mr Singh's statement in London. 

The Prime Minister, while receiving the Honourary Doctorate at Oxford University on Friday, had said that even at the height of the campaign for freedom from colonial rule, "we did not entirely reject the British claim to good governance. We merely asserted our national right to self-governance."

"He (Dr Singh) is the first Prime Minister to praise British colonialism... His statement is insulting. He must apologise to the nation," the BJP leader said.

(source: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on mat for lauding British Raj - saag.com). For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

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Evangelists Now Targeting Jain Community in India 

Besides the rampant conversion drives targeting Hindus and Muslims in India, International Missionary Board initiative seeks to destroy the peaceful Jain community. A recently launched website (http://www.jaindisciples.org/ ) carefully details the population distribution of Jains and conversion techniques.

Jainism originated in India about 500 BC at almost the same time and place as Buddhism. The founder of Jainism (Mahavir) is reported to have interacted with the founder of Buddhism. There is some evidence that Jainism is even older (9th century BC) than this. Jains have their own unique sacred scriptures in the Prakrit language and according to Jains their religion is traced to the beginning of time. Jains have contributed much to the arts and sciences of India. Today the adherents of Jainism are about 3.5 million.      

Besides the rampant conversion drives targeting Hindus and Muslims in India, International Missionary Board initiative seeks to destroy the peaceful Jain community. 

New Online course Fall 2009 - Jainism and Non Violence - From Mahavira to Mahatma Gandhi-  North Carolina University - Dr. Pankaj Jain.

***

According to a sermon on conversion tactics http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=61939&ContributorID=7352  by B. D. B. Moses, missionaries have chosen to prey on Jains because they are “a very isolated community… they do not often have exposure to the Gospel. There are factors that keep Jains from interacting with Christians on a social level. One of the factors that keep Jains isolated from believers in Christ is the vegetarian diet of the Jains. Jains find it difficult to interact with Christians who are mostly non-vegetarians.” The guide continues on to suggest that missionaries should attempt to convert a handful of Jains and then train them as missionaries to further propagate Christianity. They guide explains this by concluding “In this way the Jains keeping isolated from other communities does not keep Christ from the Jains but encourages the Gospel to move within the Jain community, Jain to Jain.”  

(source: Evangelists Now Targeting Jain Community in India - Indians Against Christian Aggression). Refer to VINDICATED BY TIME: The Niyogi Committee Report  On Christian Missionary Activities - Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 and The Sunshine of Secularism.  

Refer to Can Hinduism face the onslaught of Project Thessalonica? - By Alex Pomero

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This village speaks gods language

Siddique Ahmed and Kysar Khan, both Standard IX students of Sharada Vilas School, recite shlokas effortlessly along with their classmates. Even after lessons, whether they are at play or back home, they slip into Sanskrit. Indeed, they are even teaching their parents the language. "Our elders began with a smattering hold over it but can now manage to talk," they say.

Walk down a few paces from the school where you touch the Ratha Beedhi (Car Street) and graffiti on the wall grabs your attention: 'Maargaha swacchataya viraajithe, gramaha sujanai viraajithe’ (Cleanliness is as important for a road as good people are for a village). Other slogans such as 'Keep the temple premises clean’, 'Keep the river clean’ and 'Trees are the nation’s wealth,’ in Sanskrit are painted on walls everywhere.

That Sanskrit is the language of Gods need not apply to Mathoor. It is the vernacular of a majority of the 5,000 residents of this quaint, sleepy hamlet situated a little over 4 kms from Shimoga. Away from the hustle-bustle of the district headquarters, Mathoor sits pretty with a garland of arecanut and coconut plantations along the Tunga river, which has now been swelling thanks to a good monsoon.

At the door of K.N. Markandeya Avadhani, a well-known Vedic scholar, a sticker in Kannada greets you: 'You can speak in Sanskrit in this house’. He says, "This is to tell visitors that in case they are fluent in the language, they can converse with us in Sanskrit."

At the crack of the dawn, the village resounds with Vedic chants in the many Brahmin households. (Homes are named Trayi, Pavanatmaja, Chintamani, Prasanna-Bhaskara Nilayaha.) in pursuit of higher education. Some are teaching Sanskrit in universities across the state and many others have found jobs as software engineers.

Avadhani recalls the names of many foreign students who stayed with them in true guru-shishya tradition to take crash courses in Sanskrit — "Rutger, Kortemgorst and Vincent came down from Ireland last year". Vincent, he says, surprised everyone by speaking in Sanskrit at the farewell function. And as people go about their daily routine soon after, there’s more Sanskrit to be heard. At times, the whole village seems like a pathashala — everybody, children and menfolk alike, dressed in white dhotis and angasvatra greeting each other with 'Hari Om’ (hello) and 'Katham aasthi?’ (How are you?).

Samskruta Bharati, a New Delhi headquartered association involved in promoting the language, has a branch here and Srinidhi, its secretary, runs the show. The organisation teaches functional language for day-to-day conversation.

At dusk, the melodious chanting of the Vedas emerges from around the banks of the Tunga. The river is unusually calm. And the stillness removes one from modernity to another era when Sanskrit reigned and when there were no mobile phones. Or, as the residents of Mathoor would put it, when there was no "nishtantu dooravani"!

(source: This village speaks gods language).

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Did You Know?

A Hindu wrote Pakistan's first national anthem 

"Aey sarzameen-i-pak Zarrey terey hein aaj sitaron sey tabnak Roshan heh kehkashan sey kahin aaj teri khak."("Oh land of Pakistan, each particle of yours is being illuminated by stars. Even your dust has been brightened like a rainbow."'). These are lines from Pakistan's first national anthem — written by Jagannath Azad, a Lahore-based Hindu, acceding to the wishes of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country's founder and first Governor-General. 

The national anthem written by Jagannath Azad was sent to Jinnah, who approved it in a few hours. It was sung for the first time on Pakistan Radio, Karachi (which was then the capital of Pakistan). Meanwhile the situation in both east and west Punjab was becoming worse by the day. The same set of friends told Azad in September 1947 that even they would not be able to provide him protection, and that it would be better for him to migrate to India. He followed their advice. The song written by Jagannath Azad served as Pakistan's national anthem for a year and a half. After Jinnah's death, a song written by the Urdu poet Hafiz Jallundhari was chosen as the national anthem.  

(source:  A Hindu wrote Pakistan's first national anthem - by Luv Puri - hindu.com).

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Updated - October 28, 2008