A WIDE CANVAS
WORLD ANTI-HINDU LOBBY-1
It is well known that Hindus lack unity, they cannot work together for long. Families split, parties split and splinter, religious mutts divide, there is dissidence everywhere. We read from history that when two kings quarrelled, they invited foreigners- Muslims and English colonials and ultimately both lost. We have not learnt any lesson.
Robert Clive receiving Mir Jaffer after the battle of Plassey,1757.Clive bribed Mir Jaffer against his king, Nawab Siraj ud Daula, the last Nawab of Bengal . Thus Mir Jaffer's betrayal laid the foundation of East India Company rule in India.But a hundred years later, in 1857, the British massacred the Muslims of Delhi, and imprisoned the last Mughal emperor and kept him in Burma!
Mohammad of Ghor who defeated Prithviraj Chauhan, the last Hindu ruler of Delhi in 1191. Though Prithviraj had defeated and wonded Ghor earlier, he let him go. In the second attempt. Prithviraj had to face the non-cooperation of Jaichand, the ruler of Kannauj; though he received help from the other rulers of Rajasthan. Mohammad Ghor attacked him before dawn- whereas Hindus used to fight only after sunrise, up to sunset. This surprise element undid him. Later, Jaichand too was defeated and killed by Mohammad Ghor. Thus Prithviraj-Jaichand rivalry facilitated Muslim conquest of India. After Ghor's death, his Turkish slave Qutb-ud-din Aibak ruled Delhi, establishing the Slave dynasty. .
Now we read that there is dissidence in some religious mutts and one section appeals to the govt to intervene! We knew how two sections of Vaishnavites went up to Supreme Court about putting some mark on the temple elephant! During our freedom struggle, our national and nationalist leaders like Sri Aurobindo asked us to settle our disputes outside the courts. It is a pity that even our religious leaders cannot follow this. What kind of religion will they teach people? Do they have any credibility?
In recent years, we saw how many leading business families split. The Ambanis top here too. Gurucharan Das has analysed this in his book 'The Difficulty of Being Good'.
Swami Vivekananda reminded us about another shortcoming of Indians- that we lack management skills, that our jealousies come in the way of our working together. Having lived and worked in 7 states speaking as many languages for 35 years, I know how now language is also an active factor in our disunity. With so much dissension and disunity among the Hindus, they are not able to see the danger surrounding them in the world. It is much worse now than at any time in history.
Islamic invaders and English traders captured our land and colonised us. Now the West has captured our mind. We have lost our head. That we now dress like the Westerners, copy their manners and customs even when we have our own equivalents or better is the least part. Poet Shailendra wrote in a song-
Mera jutha hai Japani
Ye patloon Engishtaani
Sarpe lal topi Russi
Phir bhi Dil hai Hindusthani
Our footwear may be from Japan, our pant and coat may be from England, cap may be from Russia, but the heart remains Indian! Now it is the Indian heart which is missing.
ACADEMIC SLAVERY
Take our academic field. In the hard sciences, we follow the Western - mainly American syllabus. This may be understandable because that is where original research is mostly being done and latest papers are available. But does it mean that India has not made any contribution at all?
What about social sciences- like economics, history, political science, sociology? Even here, we simply follow not only their material, but also their methodology- and also the underlying mentality!
Take a simple case in History. How did humanity evolve? Were we all primitive and then made advancement? What is advancement-Progress? Did we begin our journey from caves? From being hunter-gatherers? All evolved from apes? What is the evidence available? Are there alternative hypotheses? What is the view of the older civilisations? Why is it that all the ancient traditions of all the people of the ancient civilisations recall a golden age in the past? Is it all just bull shit? Who has examined it? What is his credibility? What is the evidence? Why is it that all the ancient traditions were oral, and in verse form? Is it possible that what we consider 'primitive' is not the state from which we began, but represents the state of those who were some how left behind, isolated? We do not examine any of these questions on our own, but simply accept what the Americans tell us!
Take psychology. The Westerners study animals like cats,dogs, monkeys and apply their theories to humans. Or they study abnormal individuals, undeveloped or deviant or deranged minds, and then try to derive theories applicable for normal human beings. Is this the correct or only method? Is man merely another animal? As Sri Ramakrishna said, can tasting thousand rotten mangoes give us the real taste of mango? Yet these are the standard Western teachings which we mindlessly follow!
Ivan Pavlov who experimented with dogs and formulated his theory of conditioning.
McLeod,S.A (2007) Pavlov's Dogs. Retrieved from:
http:://www.simply psychology.org/pavlov/html
Take humanities- language and literature. Here too we give importance only to English literature. Admitted that English is essential - I am always saying this- but does it mean we have to study their literature alone- and neglect our own? But this is what in effect we have been doing.
But here the irony is that even about our literature, we are studying what foreigners are saying and writing. It is the foreigners who are telling us how we have to evaluate our own literature. Study of language and literature comes with their own ideological and theoretical package. Even Valmiki and Vyasa, Kalidasa and Kamban have to be studied according to western theories! To appreciate Indian drama, we should apply Aristotle's theories! Otherwise, it will not pass muster in the academies.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who derived his theories from studying mental patients! He considered almost all aspects of life from the angle of suppressed sexual instincts! Even the cigar was for him the symbol of the male penis! What a splendid foundation for psychoanalysis!
His one-time followers like Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Erich Fromm and others have differed from him, but they are not yet mainstream!
Hinduism- Made in USA
The problem has now swamped our religion and philosophy. A hundred years ago, we had Vivekananda. 50 years ago, we had a Radhakrishnan or Sri Aurobindo or a Tagore to take on the whole world. Today, our 'intellectuals' do not know Sanskrit which is the language of our religion and philosophy, and simply rely on translations by rank foreigners who have no first hand knowledge and experience of our traditions and do not have a living knowledge of our original works. Even the famed Max Muller could not understand spoken Sanskrit and he translated the Veda and Upanishad which are mainly shruti- orally heard and learned!
This has led to a curious and serious situation. In prestigious American universities where comparative religion is taught, every religion is taught by known practitioners of that religion. HINDUISM ALONE IS TAUGHT BY non-Hindus- WHITES- CHRISTIANS AND JEWS- WHO HAVE NO TOUCH WITH OUR LIVING TRADITION! And our people like Narayana Murthy give huge funds to such people and institutions to translate our works! It is always done with a western or Christian bias!
So a situation has come in our academics that even for purely Indian subjects, America is dictating to us what we should learn, and how to do it! Since our scholars also like to go to US for their advanced studies , doctorates, and jobs, they have to submit to their views and embrace their ideas. Most of them become de-Hinduised.
This is where American academic arrogance, hypocrisy, double-standards and money power are seen. They insist that only a Christian can teach the Bible. Then how can a non-Veda knowing White Christian or Jew teach Veda? Only a person who is sympathetic to the Bible can teach it- even though most educated Christians do not now take the Bible as the word of God. Then how can one who is hostile to the Vedic thinking teach it? American academics do not answer such questions- because they come from non-academics. We now know why groups operate, right from Alibaba's days.
A depiction of the 40 thieves.
But these academics do one more damage. Since they study our books in detail, they take the ideas from them, convert them into jargon and present it as their own idea! Since our people do not go to the originals, they applaud it ! East India company took our cotton, manufactured cloth and sold it to us. These academics take our ideas and concepts, clothe them in fancy names and market them in their name, with all the Intellectual Property Rights- ie dollars! They thus rob our Rishis!
Ken Wilber:By Kanzen Zen Centre ([1])
[CC BY 2.0 (http::// Creative Commons.org
Not an 'academic' but considered an 'integral thinker'; has written prolifically on mysticism, psychology, ecology, consciousness etc. It can be noticed by a deep student that many of his ideas are repackaged from Hindu sources!
American universities, except those affiliated or controlled by church groups are supposedly free. But religious groups do exert their influence in different ways. The Islamic lobby is so strong in the US that even Harvard does not dare to take them on! They do not allow negative criticism of Islam in the name of freedom of speech. Thus, when Subramaniam Swamy wrote an article in 2011 urging that Islamic terrorism should be wiped out, Harvard ignored terrorism, but cancelled two courses in economics which Swamy was teaching there! The Christian lobby is also strong; but Hinduism has no strong advocates to influence the academies.
The result is that quite atrocious things are routinely taught in respect of Hinduism: That Shiva is a womaniser, that Kali is a blood-thirsty woman who kills her husband, that Krishna is immoral,that Sri Ramakrishna is a pedophile, that Vedas advocate violence, etc. Many Hindu children who learned such things in school later refused to worship our deities even at home!
The point is , not that Christianity or Bible or even Christ are not criticised. But they are not criticised inside the classroom as part of formal teaching. Most Americans still believe in the Bible as the word of God, though not literally, and in the historical person of Jesus Christ. (However there is severe controversy raging about the historical Jesus). Christianity or Islam or Judaism is still taught in such a manner that the pupils' faith or respect is not disturbed; but these norms are not followed in respect of Hinduism!
You may wonder why I am harping on what is happening in American universities? There are two reasons.
1. America sets the standard for most things in the world today. Many of our youngsters go to the US for studies and employment and thus get exposed to overwhelming pressure to conform to their views. American academic standards are gradually spreading all over the world and are already making inroads into our institutions which have always lived on borrowed ideas. American textbooks or their imitations penetrate our market. Our academics are trained there and unload that baggage here. So we can reasonably expect that what prevails in the US academia will be accepted and imitated here soon.
2. We Indians are used to a sort of double existence. We have been taught in our schools even here that Aryans are invaders, that Vedas are primitive poetry, that Vedas are full of animal sacrifices , that priests controlled and dominated society for profit,that Ramayana and Mahabharata are stories,etc. But we have practised our religion and its rituals and gods and know that they speak of higher truth, that they speak in symbols, that Rama and Krishna are Avataras who walked on this very earth, and celebrated their birth day every year. We even know astronomically when exactly they were born and when they died. We had to write some nonsense in the exam to pass the test and obtain some paper certificate but our heart and soul were fulfilled by our religion. But with increasing globalisation and speeding up of life and mechanisation of its processes, our youngsters are increasingly exposed to the American way of life and thinking. Naturally, what they think of our religion will come to prevail here too. This is but an indirect way of undermining our religion, making our people soft targets for conversion!
Perversion in the name of PhD.
The PhD is taken as the ultimate stamp of academic achievement. It has become the fashion there to debunk traditional wisdom or conventional knowledge in the name of modernism. We are not against criticism- but what is happening in the name of academic research is not just criticism, but viewing traditional matters out of the historical contest. Was India one country? Was it at least a civilisation? Was Hinduism a religion at least?No! You have to show that these were wrong notions to obtain your degree. India had no sense of a nation. it was a hotch-potch of disperate peoples. Hindu religion was a recent invention- of some foreigners and fanatics like Vivekananda! So you apply modern theories and notions like Marxism, Freudian analysis, Feminism, some such thing and show that what is traditionally held is wrong.
Once the west thought that the Greek epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were imaginary stories. Then somebody went to the areas described and showed some ruins; then they found that there was indeed a Troy and that something did happen there. But the same approach is not followed for Indian Itihasas- they are not mere epics. Now, radio- activity has been detected around the areas where the battle of Kurukshetra took place: after all, Astras were used in that war, which were not conventional weapons. Could they have been some sort of nuclear device? Otherwise, why radioactivity in those areas?
Saraswati river, mentioned in the Veda, was once said to be imaginary; now satellite photography has established the course of such a mighty river, which has since dried up. Teams of marine archaeologists have discovered an ancient town submerged under the sea off the coast of Dwaraka- as described in the Bhagavatam and Mahabharata. Our historians will not approach them scientifically, look at the available evidence and write about them in our text-books. If you want PhD, you have to say they were all stories and imagination, evidence or no evidence.
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Walls of Troy, Hisarlik, Turkey, identified as the site of the Trojan war, 1200BC
Cherry X per Wikimedia Commons
CC BY-SA 3.0 http::// creative commons.
Diana L.Eck, a professor from Harvard writes in her book: India, A Sacred Geography,p.382:
Between 1985 and 1989, nine marine archaeological expeditions were mounted; there, beneath the sea, they found remains of old ramparts, buildings and streets. Some of the remains could be dated to the age of the Mahabharata in the second millennium B.C.E...Even earlier materials were also found.
Yet, our official (left-loaded) historians will dub the historians engaged in this work as Hindutva forces; though this is more than 25 years old, it is yet to find mention in our official text-books! Such is the spirit of 'research' in India in respect of its ancient history!
Some of the finds at under-sea Dwaraka!Accessed from ISKCON site. Thanks.
The Western universities will not honour our traditional scholars; they will honour only those perverts who debunk our wisdom and join the ranks of Hindu-haters, de-Hinduised Indians.
All this raises one question: Why is the West so afraid of Hindus? Hindus who have never gone out and conquered any other nation, coveted any one else's wealth, converted any other people? Hindus who have been the target of Muslim invasions for a thousand years, of sustained Christian vitriol and conversion for over 300 years? Hindus who have always given shelter to all religious groups on their soil and treated them with respect and honour? It is sad that Uncle Sam who saw two towers disappear on 9/11 does not understand what the Hindus have undergone for the last 1000 years, even though their own Will Durant wrote about it in 1934! And authors like Wendy Doniger, whose Jewish people faced a Hitler and experienced the Holocaust, killing some 6 million Jews , do not understand the agony of Hindus
who suffered- 80 million deaths at the hands of Muslim invaders! How sad indeed! And Doniger, sitting in an American university, compares Hindus to the Nazis! How sadistic!
NOTE:
Some people may feel that unpleasant historical events of the past should not be recalled now ie history should be 'sanitised'. This is not a scientific way to deal with the past. All peoples and nations have made mistakes and they admit it too. American historians write about how the Native Indian was treated. British statesmen like Edmund Burke were aware of the wrongs committed by their own Governor General in India, and impeached him. Jomo Kenyatta, President of Kenya once said that when the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and people had the land, and that after some years, people had the Bible and the church had the land! Such things have happened.
As K.M.Munshi wrote, the history of the invaders was written as the history of India by the colonial power. This has to be corrected, but without hatred, or hard feelings. In spite of everything, Indian civilisation has continued. This is the history of India!
The following books may be seen in this regard:
Krishnan Ramaswamy & others: Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America; Rupa&Co, 2007.
Rajiv Malhotra: Being Different:Harper India, 2013.
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