Romas and Hindus

Madonna criticized for not doing enough for the Roma

Madonna can’t seem to catch a break over her support of the Roma community of Eastern Europe – Hindu leaders are convinced she should be doing more to help.

The pop superstar was booed at a concert in Bucharest, Romania in August when she called for tolerance towards the discriminated gypsies and has since donated a pair of Christian Dior shoes to an auction held to raise cash for a leading education charity aimed at raising funds for Roma children.

But, despite the gratitude of gypsy leaders, the singer has been attacked by Hindu groups for not doing more.

The religious leaders believe the Roma people migrated to mainland Europe from India in the 11th century; they are believed to have their roots in the Hindu culture.

Rajan Zed, the president of Universal Society of Hinduism, says, “Hindus are urging Madonna to wholeheartedly undertake the Roma cause and do substantially more than just donating a used pair of shoes for the Roma charity.

“Madonna is the highest-earning musician of the world, making around $110 million in a 12-month period; she should do more for the Roma people, who are facing apartheid conditions.

“She has promoted humanitarian causes the world over and Roma would be the next worthwhile cause for her to undertake… Madonna should not stay an apathetic and silent spectator when our Roma brothers and sisters were reportedly facing blatant injustice and discrimination in Europe.”

The pop superstar, who recently laid the foundations for a new school she is funding, was a big hit at the Halloween night Ovidiu Rom charity auction – her designer shoes sold for a reported $16,000.

A gold chain donated by British actress Vanessa Redgrave went under the hammer at the auction for $8,000.

Proceeds from the event will be used to buy clothes and school books for Roma children.

10 % of Srinagar Muslims are now Xians!

No Vande Mataram, but why Pakistan?        
Sandhya Jain   
 
Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray’s attack on the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind for opposing the singing of Vande Mataram, saying that those who oppose the National Song should go to Pakistan, misses the wood for the trees.

The point is not whether Muslims should sing this song, but whether they are legitimately entitled to Pakistan (and Bangladesh) as ‘homeland’ for the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent when Islam neither recognises nationalism, nor national boundaries, nor any concept of nationhood as understood by the modern world, nor any forms of government, barring the extinct Caliphate. 

The logic of the Muslim plea that they cannot bow to any form of divinity other than Allah is well-taken; if their religion prohibits it, so be it.

If devout believers wish to adhere by the tenets of their faith as best as they can in a land in which they constitute a minority (Allah be praised for this significant mercy), and if this involves keeping a sharp distance from the national ethos and majority community, it follows that Muslims must disengage from participation in the Indian polity.

Far from contesting elections by canvassing votes from the non-believing (Kafir) majority, much less demanding reserved seats in the Parliament and State Assemblies, Muslims must live only religious lives if they consent to be guided by an ulema that insists that Religion Alone defines their identity.

If Muslims cannot have multiple identities as believers and as secular citizens, professionals, and so on, this purely religious identity cannot be allowed to intrude upon the national sensitivities of other citizens. More specifically, it cannot be allowed to be projected publicly in a manner deemed offensive and insulting to Hindus who comprise the country’s majority and autochthonous religious and cultural group, its civilisational tradition, and foundational ethos.

More pertinently, Muslims thus defined by religion must cease and desist from making secular demands upon the secular State. Far from being entitled to the first claim on national resources, Muslims with such a pick-and-choose attitude to symbols of nationhood have no right to demand state support for their clergy-producing factories, segregated education for girls, reserved employment in public services, and so on. Defined and circumscribed by their own ulema, kept aloof from vibrant participation in national life, they should learn to fend for themselves as well.

Indians, particularly Hindus, do themselves no honour by decrying the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind as regressive for endorsing the Deoband Darul Uloom’s 2006 fatwa prohibiting Muslims from singing Vande Mataram even in its truncated form or ‘official’ version. The 30th general session of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind at Deoband aimed at de-linking Indian Muslims from an Indian national identity as a prelude to something grimmer, which will doubtless be unveiled in coming days.

What Jamiat achieved – and we must see it that way – was to release the rest of us from the burden of further accommodating Muslim separatism. We cannot tell Muslims how to live, and in any case, it would be far more rewarding for Hindus to resolve their own social problems like dowry and female foeticide before pontificating on the value or demerit of the Muslim veil. But we can refuse to permit the extension of mullah fiat in the national domain.

As a first step, Hindus must demand that Vande Mataram be restored to its full glory; the truncated official version must henceforth be equated with iconoclasm. The song is an ode to the Mother Goddess Durga and Bharat Mata, motherland of the Hindu people, and the Goddess and Land are one and indivisible. This subtle and profound multi-dimensional perception of divinity, a unique attribute of the Hindu people, must now be allowed to bloom in its full glory in its native land.

As a necessary corollary, the mollycoddling of minority separatism must stop forthwith. The forthcoming winter session of Parliament, where the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA is likely to bring in legislation to provide public sector job reservation for Muslims, will be crucial in the battle to defeat Muslim Separatism, Part II. 

Hopefully, the UPA’s Muslim Appeasement Agenda may be in some difficulty due to the presence of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram at Deoband, though it is true that he was not physically present when controversial Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind resolution was adopted. Neither Chidambaram nor the UPA have distanced themselves from the Jamiat decision, nor have they demanded due respect for Vande Mataram. This is equally true of every Congress or Communist state government and party apparatchik, and Hindus nationwide will have to take a call on how long they will accept to be led by political knaves who cannot even defend the National Song.

At Deoband on November 3, Chidambaram vacuously averred that it was the duty of the majority community to protect the minorities. He did not say what the offence-giving and aggressive minorities had to be protected from. Could it be Hindu assertion? Intoxicated by his own profundity, he said: “We must always remember that pluralism is our inheritance and strength… We cannot view Islam as an alien faith because this is the land of your forefathers; this is the land of your birth. It is a matter of our pride that Islam exists in India along with other major religions.”

It is impossible to fathom what he meant. Islam is alien – it was born in the sandy deserts of Arabia, as an expression of Arab nationalism. As the Arabs were a Bedouin people, it upheld the principle of expansion through acquisition of territory by conquest and conversion. Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam too has little affection for geographical boundaries – because its quest for expansion is infinite. The Prophet declared the unity and brotherhood of the believers, ummah, rather than the Arab tribes, and this has been a source of endless instability historically.

To call the existence of Islam in India a matter of pride in an era of unending jihadi homicides is cynical and irresponsible. Chidambaram must tell us why he went to Deoband in the first place – it was obviously to cut a deal of shameless realpolitik.   

As for the Jamiat brothers who wish to live by the true tenets of the true faith, do tell how the brotherhood of Islam that does not believe in the concept of nation-state, could stomach the indignity of the lands of the Prophet and the Revelation, the ancient, wise and humanist Arabia of legend, where men understood the language of the birds, to be rechristened ‘Saudi’ Arabia after a tribal upstart propped up by the British Empire to contain the Ottoman Turks? Is this proxy kingship in conformity with the tenets of Islam?

As for Hindus, it is time to insist that Pakistan (and Bangladesh) was an illegitimate creation of the British Empire, now being propped up by America. Pakistan has been a failed state from its very inception because Islam is definitionally incapable of welding Muslims into a nation.

We need to think up bold strategies of bringing these unhappy people back to the faith and culture of their ancestors, rather than let them wreak further ruin upon themselves. We must also immediately scrap the divisive Article 370 and stop pandering to the Muslim majority of Kashmir. Here again, it would be pertinent to note that if Christian missionaries can convert 10 percent of the Srinagar Valley to Christianity, this suggests that a huge population is waiting to abandon Islam. The task surely is to bring them back to the Hindu fold.

Finally, Hindus must insist that henceforth there will be no conversion in mixed marriages except to the majority faith, and no more ‘love jihad.’ In this context, BJP president Rajnath Singh recently called for a ban on conversions. This must be accompanied by monitoring funds received by minorities from abroad, and a strict vigil on the anti-national proclivities of myriad NGOs.

Jinnah still lives in India

Jinnah is alive  
Hari Om 

The father and founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, gave a concrete shape to his communal views on March 23, 1940, when he presided over the Lahore session of the Muslim League.

Delivering the presidential address, he said: “The Hindus and Muslims belong to two religious philosophies, social customs and literatures. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are mainly based on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their concepts of life and on life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Musalmans derive their inspiration from different heroes and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is the foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to a growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the governance of their common motherland”.  

The result of his no-holds-barred vicious propaganda, coupled with the evil designs of the British and the Congress’ muddled thinking and lust for political power, culminated in the establishment of Muslim Pakistan on August 14, 1947, displacement of millions of people and physical liquidation of thousands and thousands of people, as also in a situation under which women were maltreated, disgraced and sexually abused.     

People say that the votary of the pernicious two-nation theory, Jinnah, died immediately after the formation of theocratic Pakistan. They are wrong. He is very much alive and he is in India. No, not one, there are many Jinnahs in India who are openly propagating views similar to the ones Jinnah started preaching, particularly since 1928, with a view to ensuring the country’s partition on communal lines. “Noted jurist” and well-known India-basher AG Noorani and former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah are just two of them. Leave aside the Deoband Ulemas, who only the other day issued a fatwa directing Muslims not to sing the national song, Bande Mataram, because it is anti-Islam.    

No one can dispute that Noorani and Habibullah are carrying forward the legacy of Jinnah. The reason: Noorani, who has been preaching secession of Kashmir from India and opposing the extension of Central laws and institutions to Jammu & Kashmir, particular since 1954, has asked the People’s Democratic Party, the National Conference and the so-called moderate Hurriyat Conference of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to “build consensus” on “self-rule”. Besides, he has urged “practical steps” aimed at “redrafting Article 370 in the light of self-rule” so that the redrafted “document (is) made irreversible within the parameters of Indian Constitution”. (Ignore “within the parameters of Indian Constitution” because Noorani has scant regard for the Indian statue book).

Jinnah in Noorani does not stop here. He goes on to say: “Why I believe fervently that ‘self-rule’ is very good proposal is that it is the most practicable formula and will be acceptable to people in India, Pakistan and to people of Kashmir”. Further, he asked “all the mainstream parties to…have a united stand on it” (self-rule). Noorani said all this while addressing the People’s Democratic Party-sponsored seminar on self-rule at Srinagar on November 1.

It would not be out of place to mention here that Noorani is an ardent believer in the concept of talks with those firing on our soldiers. He has written in The Statesman and Frontline a number of times that “if you wish to forge a lasting peace, negotiate with those firing on your soldiers; never negotiate with those with no blood on their hands because they are irrelevant”. The context was Kashmir. 

That said, Noorani, who so far has been advocating greater autonomy for Kashmir and had on more than one occasion described the People’s Democratic Party’s self-rule doctrine as a replica of the autonomy concept being advocated by the National Conference, has, it is obvious, taken a complete u-turn. The reasons are not far too seek. The most important reason is that self-rule doctrine is similar to the former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s four-point Kashmir solution – self-governance, demilitarization, joint-management and porous borders.  

It needs to be underlined that Noorani had met Musharraf in Islamabad just before the latter’s downfall, discussed with him his Kashmir solution and thereafter wrote a very long essay in Frontline. His essay was nothing but an endorsement of the Musharraf line. He also extended unflinching support to the Musharraf solution because it was consistent with his patently sectarian approach to the so-called Kashmir problem. Significantly, like Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, he has good relations with persons in the right places. Habibullah has been holding similar views and consistently suggesting division of the Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir into five regions on purely communal lines.

Both Noorani and Habibullah enjoy official patronage and both, like mainstream separatists and others of their ilk controlling the separatist, terrorist and communal outfits in Kashmir as well as Pakistan, are staunch believers in the concept of Greater Kashmir comprising the now 100 percent Muslim Kashmir Valley and the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu and Ladakh, such as Poonch, Rajouri, Doda and Kishtwar in Jammu, and Kargil in Ladakh. Both want to divide Jammu in a manner that enables Kashmir and Islamabad to establish control not only over the strategic Himalayan region, which is highly rich in green-gold, but also over river Chenab, which has the potential of producing more than 15,000 MW of electricity every year.

Not just this, both want New Delhi to abandon four million Hindus and Sikhs or to throw in their political and economic lot with Kashmiri communalists. It would be no exaggeration to say that the likes of Noorani and Habibullah are acting as mouthpieces of Islamabad and Kashmiri communalists and separatists. 

Noorani’s support to the self-rule formula and the Habibullah formulations need to be viewed in this context. What Noorani said and what Habibullah believes in should clinch the whole issue, and establish that both of them believe that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together in one state and under the Indian Constitution.

A few words on the self-rule doctrine and what it envisages would be in order. What does the self-rule formula envisage or suggest? It suggests abandonment of the universally accepted “notions of sovereignty and national borders”; a “pan-Kashmir” approach; “autonomy from the nation-state of India”; “regionalization of power across J&K”; “sharing of sovereignty”; “economic integration that transcends borders”; a drastic change in the Indian Constitution that converts Greater Jammu & Kashmir into “a regional free trade area”; “dual currency system”; roll back of “Article 356” (under which New Delhi has the power to intervene if there is breakdown of constitutional machinery) and Article 249 (under which the Parliament exercises legislative jurisdiction over the state); withdrawal of the “All India Service Act, 1951” and all other Central Acts from the state; change in the nomenclatures from Chief Minister to Wazir-e-Azam and from Governor to Sadar-e-Riayast”, who shall be elected by the local assembly and who will hold office so long as he enjoys the confidence of the ruling elite in Kashmir (read committed Sadar-e-Riyasat); “establishment of “regional council of Greater Jammu & Kashmir” comprising representatives from India, Pakistan and both parts of the state; and division of Jammu province into “sub-regions” and establishment of “sub-regional councils”.

The self-rule formula further suggests: “Self-rule is aimed at providing the central element for a comprehensive architecture to be devised for the final and strategic settlement of the Kashmir issue. Self-rule will not be a mid-point into a journey or a tactical or evasive prescription. Instead, self-rule must also form the basis of relationship between the people of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan”.

It is hardly necessary to reflect on the implications of the People’s Democratic Party’s self-rule formula as everything is self-explanatory. Suffice it to say that the self-rule formula, if accepted and implemented, would automatically mean a step short of independence from India and once it happens, it will not be difficult for the separatists to achieve their 62-year-old goal. (PDP president Mehbooba Mufti herself acknowledged on November 2 that self-rule means full freedom from India and asserted that Jammu & Kashmir is an independent country.) The implementation of self-rule as demanded by the PDP would also automatically mean a spectacular victory of Islamabad and those taking recourse to terror tactics to achieve their sinister goal.

Unfortunately New Delhi is watching all these anti-India and communal activities in Kashmir as a mute spectator and allowing Jinnahs to pollute and vitiate the secular environment in India. Even more unfortunate perhaps, is the overt and covert support of the powers-that-be in New Delhi to such out-and-out anti-India outfits as the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party.

New Delhi must refashion its whole approach towards Kashmir taking into consideration the larger national interest. It must remember that the pan-Islamists would not stop their hate and break-India campaign and subversive activities even if Kashmir is handed over to Islamabad or Kashmiri extremists on a platter. Their target is Red Fort, their goal Indian balkanization, and their watchword theocracy and barbarism, Taliban-style.             

 The author is Chair Professor, Gulab Singh Chair, Jammu University, Jammu
 
 

Balraj Madhok’s Kashmir book

Professor Balraj Madhok’s book on Kashmir which not only offers a history of Kashmir but also an eye witness account of the Pakistani invasion and stupidities of Nehru. A must read.
http://ikashmir.net/storm/index.html 

The story of Kashmir is a long story of betrayal by our own leaders. All endeavors by our honest, hardworking patriotic men were nullified by treachery. The readers will read how Gopalaswamy Ayyengar’s brief for the dabate on Kashmir, in the United Nations, was leaked to his opponent, Zafrullah Khan of Pakistan, over and over again by Moslem agents of India’s Foreign Ministry – hired and promoted by Nehru himself

Xian symbology in Indian ads and music videos

Did you notice the sudden epidemic of Christian symbology in TV advertising and music videos on Indian channels? Keep an eye out, you will start seeing them — a cross strategically placed in the background, a man proposing to a woman under a cross, an actor wearing a huge metal cross around the neck, actors getting married in a church  with the bride wearing western white wedding dress, a priest running and jumping up and down with “kya idea hai sir jee” …. This trend I have been noticing since the last six months. This is happening everywhere, from ads of VIP suitcases to MoserBaer ads in a movie CD to music videos on Channel V, etc.

Somebody is definitely going around with a bag of cash and meeting directors and producers of advertising agencies and music videos. The idea is to subconciously keep bombarding Indian youth with Christian symbols so that these become accepted and fashionable.

It is really amazing the extent to which the peddlers of religion of love can go to manipulate humanity. Do they have some kind of office of psychological warfare? Their behaiour is like that of a salesman determined to use every trick to brainwash a customer and make a sale.

Why do missionaries insist on English?

Students speak Telgu, punished in English school

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government on Tuesday ordered a probe into an English medium missionary school for allegedly punishing two students for speaking in their mother tongue Telugu.

The two Class 3 students were allegedly made to go around in the school with slates hanging from their necks declaring “I’ll never speak Telugu”. Parents and groups working for the promotion of Telugu allege the St Joseph’s English Medium School in Mydukur town of Kadapa district humiliated the students on Monday.

Schoolvbq Education Minister D Manikya Varaprasad on Tuesday told reporters that he had ordered a probe into the incident. “If the management is found guilty, we will derecognise the school and if a teacher or principal is responsible, we will advise the management to sack him/her,” he said.

The two children’s mothers, who carried lunch for them, said they saw the children going around the school premises with the slates hanging around their necks. The two told their mothers that their teacher was angry at them for not following her order to speak only in English during the class.

Mandal (block) education officer Sukhavanam and other local officials rushed to the school and admonished the school authorities.

Meanwhile, the management of the school has tendered an apology to the parents of the two students. It also promised to take necessary action to prevent such incidents in future.

Telugu Bhasha Parirakshana Samithi, a group working for the protection and promotion of Telugu language, petitioned the State Human Rights Commission to intervene and take stern action against the school authorities.

Telugu is the official language of Andhra Pradesh, which has a population of about 80 million.

Any idea why missionaries do this? Why do they want to extinguish Indian culture, religions and langauges and even names and replace all of them with the White Man’s? Jesus used to speak in Aramaic, not in English (which was not invented until 1200 years after his death). So why would Jesus have a problem if Christians don’t speak English? Will heaven be denied to non-English speakers? If not, then why do missionaries punish Indians when they speak in any Indian language?

Is it true that the true objective of missionaries is to promote White Man’s culture in the guise of promoting Christianity, and turn the whole world into a carbon copy of White Man’s society? Is that why Whites give missionaries billions of dollars every year and send them to all parts of the world? Is “one religion, one culture, one language, one government for the entire world” the strategy?

Captive breeding cows of Islam

Love Jihad’s baby machines

Over 2,000 girls missing from different places in Kerala from 2005 onwards, may have been lured into marriage, converted to Islam and repeatedly raped to produce children a brood of at least four – say Hindu and Christian groups in south India.

Fundamentalist  Islamic body gets young recruits to allegedly lure, ‘love’, bed women to convert and make them breed a brood

The alleged plot, hatched by a group called Love Jihad, recruits young Muslim boys to make Hindu or Christian girls fall in love with them (in a time span of two weeks) and then convert them to Islam in six months.
 
If the recruits can’t make the girl fall in love in two weeks, they are told to move on to the next target.

A Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader who did not want to be named said, “There are over 2,800 girls who have gone missing from Kerala.

They want our girls to be converted and then made to bear children and then force them into terror activities.
 
We have been getting threatening calls from Saudi Arabia and Dubai for trying to rescue the girls.”

Case one

Two women ran away from the abuse and returned to their families.

They have also approached psychiatrists and priests for support. One of these women, Rosy Kurien (21, name changed), a copy of whose complaint to the Kerala High Court is available with this paper, said, “We fell in love with the boys, but came to know of the truth only after we ran away with them.

The boy I eloped with was a senior from my college.

During the courtship period he used to talk to me about Islam and make me read religious books. He told me that after the wedding I would have to convert to Islam.”

When asked, if she was sexually abused, the girl said she was and had been told that the motive behind the love affair was for her to bear children.

“His family kept watch so that I wouldn’t run away, but I managed after four months of virtual imprisonment,” she said. Luckily, Kurien is not pregnant.
 
Case two

The other girl, Latha Nair (23, name changed) from Pathanamthitta in Kerala, in her statement to the court writes, “I was a MBA student sharing a room with my best friend Anne.

I met a Muslim man, Shahenshah, a senior student, who was helpful and friendly. He became friends with both Annie and me.

“He took us home to meet his family and his mother taught us Islamic rituals. He used to talk a lot about religion and tell us how wonderful Islam was.

“On July 18, 2009, Anne and I ran away — she with another Muslim guy and I with Shahenshah.

We got married and then he forced me to convert. I heard that one of the girls we were staying with had been sexually abused.”

‘Sexually abused’

Dr Malika G S, director of Man Shakti counseling centre in Kerala said, “The two girls have been sexually abused, but do not want to admit to it.

When I spoke to them, I realised that the main intention of these people is to increase the Muslim population.

Last year, three girls who had committed suicide had eloped with Muslim boys. They had been then raped by their lovers and their friends.”

Jacob Punnoose, director general of Police, Kerala, in his statement to the court said, “It is not established that any particular organisation is actively engaged in religious conversions.

We have received two complaints of conversion and have registered cases and are investigating the matter.”

Not God’s Will

Maulana Mustakeen Azmi, Maharashtra President Jamait-ul-Ulema said, “I certainly condemn the forceful conversion of the girls into Islam. This is against God’s wish.

If one wants to convert of their own free will, that’s fine, but this is cheating, if the girls are being forced into conversion.”

This is why I take pity on Hindu girls falling for Muslim boys. They do not know that they are being set up as breeding cows of Islam. Some Hindu girls like Gauri, Shahrukh Khan’s wife, say “Oh, we have married Muslims but haven’t converted. We are still Hindus or Sikhs.” This is meaningless. Muslims are not after them but after their womb. Try bringing up your children as non-Muslims and see what happens.

Scholarly critique of Doniger’s “scholarship” and Outlook’s “reporting”

A scholarly critique of gutter scholarship of Doniger by Aditi Banerjee

Source: http://metastudy.blogspot.com/ 

Wendy Doniger (Mircea Eliade Distinguished Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School and in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago) was recently interviewed in Outlook with reference to her new book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. In the interview, she (1) falsely and unfairly brands all of her critics as right-wing Hindutva fundamentalists, and (2) grossly mischaracterizes (and misquotes) the text of the Valmiki Ramayana, calling into question her “alternative” version not just of the Ramayana, but also of Hinduism and Hindu history as a whole.

Doniger’s prominence and clout as a “definitive” authority in the discourse on Indian traditions and history give her views considerable significance. For, it is Doniger’s (and her colleagues’) versions of Hinduism and Hindu history (which are often at serious variance with traditional Hinduism as practised and understood by Hindus themselves) that form the curriculum of university courses, line the bookshelves of the “Hinduism” sections of bookstores (physical and virtual), and are given play in the Western and Indian mainstream press.

Accordingly, this latest “alternative” history could easily become known as the “canonical” history of Hinduism, because of the imbalance of power between the Western academy and the traditional institutions for learning about Hinduism (which have been marginalized and largely rendered inaccessible under British colonialism.)

Defamation of Critics

The introduction to the interview begins with a misleading quote:

“[Doniger] has continued to infuriate the Hindutva brigade with her unorthodox views on Hinduism and its sacred texts, earning for herself the epithet: “crude, lewd and very rude in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit academics.””

The quote attributed to the “Hindutva brigade” is actually from the BBC web site:

Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts ranging from Siva: The Erotic Ascetic to Tales of Sex and Violence…Never one to shy away from sex, she threw herself into the job of translating the [Kama Sutra] … She was particularly interested by the parts that justify adultery and the list of ways to get rid of a man … When she was translating it (over a period of a few years and numerous Sanskrit classes), she frequently found herself having to take cold showers. [1]

The false attribution of this quote to the “Hindutva brigade” sets the tone for the rest of the interview—heaping blame on a nebulous, undefined, straw man “Hindutva Internet Brigade” for the whole continuum of criticism of Doniger’s work—criticism that has come mostly from moderate and liberal Hindus, secularists, non-Hindu scholars and even one prominent Harvard Indologist who is not known for being friendly towards Hindus. Rather than confront the actual criticisms, Doniger pretends that her only critics are Hindu extremists, and by rebuking this “enemy” she tries to deflect any criticism of her work.

Just as some politicians resort to picking on their weakest critic to discredit all of their critics, Doniger picks one stray comment on the Amazon web site to characterize all of her critics—when asked to describe the Hindu-American response to her book, Doniger exclaims, “My favourite one on Amazon accuses me of being a Christian fundamentalist and my book a defence of Christianity against Hinduism. And of course, I’m not a Christian, I’m a Jew!”

Doniger ignores the prolific response to her work by the American Hindu community, including dozens of published articles, countless public conferences, repeated calls for debate and dialogue between the academy and the Hindu-American community, and a recently published book analysing the representation of Hinduism in American universities. It is totally irresponsible for such a prominent professor, whose career is built on writing about Hinduism, to stereotype and vilify the entire Hindu-American community on the basis of the actions of a few.

Doniger’s refusal to address her critics only worsens as the interview proceeds. When asked why Hindus object to her writings, she flippantly replies:

You’ll have to ask them why. It doesn’t seem to me to have much to do with the book. They don’t say, “Look here, you said this on page 200, and that’s a terrible thing to say.” Instead, they say things not related to the book: you hate Hindus, you are sex-obsessed, you don’t know anything about the Hindus, you got it all wrong.

This is a bald lie. The first Part of the book, Invading the Sacred, documents and refutes dozens of statements by Doniger, as illustrated by the following:

“Holi, the spring carnival, when members of all castes mingle and let down their hair, sprinkling one another with cascades of red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that was probably used in past centuries.” (from Doniger’s article about Hinduism in the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia—Microsoft Encarta subsequently removed her entry in 2004; while we do not know this for a fact, one can reasonably conclude that Microsoft Encarta came to an internal conclusion about Doniger’s lack of scholarship and objectivity).

From a newspaper article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dated November 19, 2000, entitled “Big-screen caddy is Hindu hero in disguise” written by David O’Reilly, Inquirer Staff Writer:

“Myth scholar Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago was on hand earlier this month to lecture on the Gita. “The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think,” she said, in a lecture titled “The Complicity of God in the Destruction of the Human Race.” “Throughout the Mahabharata, the enormous Hindu epic of which the Gita is a small part, Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war in order to relieve “mother Earth” of its burdensome human population and the many demons disguised as humans … The Gita is a dishonest book; it justifies war,” Doniger told the audience of about 150” (emphasis added).

Doniger may now claim that she was misquoted, but she has failed to obtain a retraction from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Prof. Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard University posted the following remarks about Doniger’s translations to a mailing list and called her translations “UNREALIABLE” [sic] and “idiosyncratic:”

Doniger’s “rendering of even the first two paadas [of the Rg Veda] is more of a paraphrase than a translation;”
“In this hymn (of 18 stanzas) alone I have counted 43 instances which are wrong or where others would easily disagree.”
“Note that all 3 translations are Re-translations. Mistakes of the type mentioned above could easily have been avoided if the work of our 19th century predecessors (and contemporaries!) had been consulted more carefully … Last point: Looking at the various new translations that have appeared in the past decade or so: Why always to Re-translate something done ’several’ times over already — and why not to take up one of the zillion Un-translated Skt. texts?” [2]

Is that specific enough?

Nor can Doniger claim ignorance of these examples, having been made aware of them through emails, various conferences, journals and mailing lists by many people, including university professors, fellow scholars, and students.

As a scapegoat tactic to discredit her critics, Doniger plays both the sex card and the race card, without offering any evidence for being discriminated against on the grounds of her gender or her race:

I think I have a double disadvantage among the Hindutva types. One is that I’m not a Hindu and the other is that I am not a male. I suppose the third is that I’m not a Brahmin, but I don’t even get there because I’m not a Hindu! I think it’s considered unseemly in the conservative Hindu view for a woman to talk about sex—that’s something men talk about among themselves (emphasis added).

But her critics have been concerned not with her gender or race but only with the content of her scholarship. Race and sex bias are the “cards” Doniger uses to distract readers who are unfamiliar with the details of the substance of the critiques against her.

Hindu society acknowledges and celebrates any genuine scholars of Hinduism, irrespective of their gender, race or caste. For example, the late Sir John Woodroffe / Arthur Avalon is regarded by even the most traditional and orthodox of Hindu acharyas, including the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri, as one of the great Tantric scholars of modern times—despite his being neither Hindu nor Brahmin-born.

In addition, Dr. Klaus Klostermaier, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba (Canada), is highly respected in Hindu circles. Linda Johnsen, neither male, Hindu, nor Brahmin-born, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism (2002) among several other books, is also highly regarded for her knowledge about Hinduism.

This respect is not just academic—non-Indian spiritual gurus have been revered by Hindus as well. Daya Mata (Faye Wright), another female, non-Hindu, non-Brahmin (by birth) of the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) was highly regarded by the most traditional and orthodox of Hindu leaders, including (I have been told) the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri, a great scholar and authority on Hinduism. Similarly, Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble), female, non-Hindu, non Brahmin-born, perhaps the most prominent of Swami Vivekananda’s disciples, has been revered as a true Hindu saint by many orthodox Hindus, including Brahmins; so also has Mother (Mira Alfassa), the Frenchwoman closely associated with (and successor to) Sri Aurobindo.

I could go on with a list of lesser known women of foreign birth who are equally acknowledged as true representatives of Hinduism. I have not even touched upon the scores of Indian women who have been revered by Hindus from the Vedic times to the modern day—e.g., Gargi, whose open debate with the great sage Yajnavalkya is prominently featured in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad.

Moreover, the idea that “it’s considered unseemly in the conservative Hindu view for a woman to talk about sex–that’s something men talk about among themselves” is another blatantly false stereotype by Doniger.

Doniger’s contention that traditional Hindu women are not allowed to talk about sex is directly refuted by the celebrated account of the debate between Ubhaya-Bharati and Adi Shankara, one of the great intellects of the world, sage from the 8th Century CE, and father of Advaita Vedanta as known today. Adi Shankara was challenged to a debate by Mandana Misra, a learned and well-known Purva Mimamsa scholar. They agreed that Mandana’s wife, Ubhaya-Bharati, a renowned scholar in her own right, would be the referee and that the loser of the debate would become the disciple of the winner.

After debating for many days, Mandana Misra lost and was about to become the disciple of Adi Shankara. However, Ubhaya-Bharati then challenged Adi Shankara to debate her, on the grounds that since she and her husband were one person upon being married, he would have to defeat both of them in order to win the debate.

Adi Shankara accepted her challenge. The debate went well for Adi Shankara until Ubhaya-Bharati began posing intricate questions on the science of erotics (well-accepted, in the appropriate context, as a topic of sacred discourse and knowledge in Hinduism). If it was “considered unseemly” per traditional Hinduism for women to talk about sex, the official version of the Shankara Digvijaya (accepted as authentic by the Sringeri Shankaracharya Matha) would never have mentioned Ubhaya-Bharati’s questioning of Adi Shankara. (Adi Shankara ended up satisfactorily answering the questions on eroticism, and Ubhaya-Bharati accepted her defeat.)

There is also the celebrated account given in the Yoga Vasistha of Queen Chudalai, an advanced yogini, who initiates her husband, King Sikhidvaja, as her disciple; she tests his renunciation repeatedly and instructs him on the proper attitude towards sexual union and sensual pleasure. Similarly, the famous Tripura Rahasya narrates Princess Hemalata’s initiation of her husband, Prince Hemachuda, into the secrets of samadhi and moksha. Finally, the Mahabharata recounts the famous interaction between Arjuna and Urvashi—when Arjuna rejected Urvashi’s frank invitation for sexual union, she pronounced the following curse: “Since thou disregardest a woman come to thy mansion … of her own motion—a woman, besides, who is pierced by the shafts of Kama, therefore, O Partha, thou shalt have to pass thy time among females … destitute of manhood and scorned as a eunuch.”

As these examples show, not only were women allowed to discuss sex, they had the authority and scriptural and social standing to challenge and teach the greatest of sages and the most royal of men with respect to all subject matters, including sex and eroticism.

Of course, it is unfortunate that the puritanical mores of Victorian British rule have corrupted modern Hindu society, restricting the open acceptance of sex and sexuality. However, the holistic acceptance of sex and sexuality (without gender or orientation bias) inherent to Hinduism is still vibrant and alive in traditional Hinduism.

In a personal context, I can say unequivocally that despite my birth and upbringing as an American and my liberal schooling in Boston and at Yale Law School, my most honest and open discussions of sex have been with the most orthodox and “traditional” of Hindu swamis and acharyas. They helped me unlearn the associative guilt and sexual repression of Western mores. They also taught me that sexual desire is, in the appropriate context, an integral part of life and that there is nothing sinful or shameful about it, and that heightened sexual energies are not antithetical to, but can be an integral part of, spiritual development for people qualified (adhikaris) for those types of sadhana or spiritual practice.

In short, playing this race and sex card may be an attempt by Doniger to elicit sympathy—but this cannot substitute for sound scholarship. In the traditions of true academic scholarship, Doniger should let her work stand or fall on its own merits and not hide behind false victimhood.

Misrepresentations of Valmiki Ramayana

Apart from unfairly stereotyping and insulting her critics, most of the rest of the interview concerns Doniger’s take on the Valmiki Ramayana.

The “Interpolation” of Ravana’s Curse

According to Doniger:

Things were added on in Ramayana’s first and seventh book later on. For instance, in the seventh book we have a story long before the story of Rama and Sita about how Ravana raped one of the great apsaras, Rambha … [Her husband] curses Ravana that if he ever touches a woman against her will, his head will shatter into a thousand pieces. So that story is then told in the Ramayana to explain why Ravana didn’t force himself on Sita despite keeping her in his house all those years. In the earlier Ramayana, there’s nothing about this … This is a later idea that creeps in.”

It is incorrect for Doniger to say that the curse upon Ravana was a “later idea that [crept in]” to explain Ravana’s unwillingness to rape Sita. The relevant incident is found in Book 6 (Yuddha Kanda), almost universally recognized as part of the original Valmiki Ramayana. (It is the first part of Book 1 (Bala Kanda) and all of Book 7 (Uttara Kanda) that are, debatably, later interpolations.)

The account is given by Ravana in Sarga (Canto) 13 of Book 6 (Yuddha Kanda):

Once I beheld (a celestial nymph) Punjikasthala (by name) … She was stripped of her garment and ravished by me. She then reached the abode of Brahma … Highly enraged, the creator forthwith addressed the following words to me: “If you (happen to) violate any other woman hence forward, your head will be forthwith split into a hundred pieces; there is no doubt about it.” Hence, afraid (as I am) of his curse, I do not violently put Sita, a princess of the Videha territory, on my charming bed by force. [3]

There is an account of Ravana’s rape of Rambha in Book 7 (Uttara Kanda)—but it is the incident recounted in Book 6 (accepted as part of the original Valmiki Ramayana) that is explicitly offered as the reason why Ravana did not rape Sita. The effect of the rape of Rambha is more generic: “[Ravana] felt inclined no more to copulate with women who were unwilling to approach him.” [4]

This is not mere nitpicking—the citation of the rape of Punjikasthala in Book 6 discredits Doniger’s contention that the curse on Ravana was a later interpolation interjected to conveniently explain why Ravana never raped Sita.

Rama as a “Sex-Addict”

According to Doniger, the concept of a “sex-addict” is introduced into the Valmiki Ramayana by Lakshmana calling Dasaratha kama-sakta, which she defines as “hopelessly attached to lust.”

It is not clear where Doniger picks up the term ‘kama-sakta’—the term does not appear upon a search of the text of the Valmiki Ramayana as given in the Titus online database, which is based on the following version of the text: G.H. Bhatt e.a., The Valmiki Ramayana, (Baroda 1960-1975), prepared by Muneo Tokunaga, March 12, 1993 (adaptations by John D. Smith, Cambridge, 1995.)

Further, neither the term nor its variants appear in the most logical place where Lakshmana would have used the words to describe Dasaratha, the passage in Book 2 (Ayodhya Kanda) when Lakshmana disparages the character of Dasaratha for banishing Rama. The relevant phrases that Lakshmana uses here are the following: nripah vipariitasheha (king with perverted mind), pradharshhitaH vishhayaiH (who is outraged by sensual enjoyments) and samanimadhaH (who is possessed of passion). [5] None of these terms translates even remotely as “sex addict / addiction”. Addiction is something more than just being overcome by lust: addiction is a “compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance…characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal.” [6]

However, for the sake of argument, I will give the benefit of the doubt to Doniger and assume that the term kama-sakta has been used by Lakshmana to describe Dasaratha in the Valmiki-Ramayana. That in and of itself does not imply that Dasaratha was “hopelessly addicted to lust.” Kama-sakta simply means an attachment (sakta) to desire (kama). Kama does not itself necessarily refer to sexual desire, or even erotic or romantic desire. Dasaratha’s reluctance to allow Rama to serve as guard over Vishwamitra’s yajna, for example, or Lakshmana’s unwillingness to be parted from Rama, could equally be characterized as kama-sakta. To assume it to mean “attachment to lust” is another in a pattern of Doniger’s ex-cathedra translations in variance with traditional Sanskrit nirukta (etymology) for which she has been repudiated before.

It has been brought to my attention that, subsequent to the original interview, as published in print and on this website, Doniger’s statements were corrected to carry the following version of Doniger’s quote on October 20: “Lakshman is the one who actually says it. He says the king is hopelessly attached to sensual objects. But Rama himself says (at 2.47.8) that the king is kama-atma, entirely consumed by kama.” The deletion of the term kama-sakta and the addition of the new reference is not explained, other than as a “typo”.

To offer Doniger leeway that she almost never offers her critics, I will accept the “corrected” statement—but her argument still fails. The relevant reference—found in Sarga 53 of the Gita Press, Gorakhpur version and in Sarga 47 of the Titus database version (mentioned above)—is part of a scene where Rama reminisces about his father to Lakshmana during the first night of his banishment from Ayodhya. Here is the exact reference:

anaathaH caiva vRiddhaH ca mayaa caiva vinaakRitaH | kim kariSyati kaama aatmaa kaikeyyaa vasham aagataH ||

vRiddhascha (aged); anaathashcha ((and therefore) helpless); mayaarinaacha (deprived of my presence); kim karishhyati (what will he do); kRitaH (dominated as he is); kaamaatmaa (by his passion (for Kaikeyi)); aagataH (and who has fallen); kaikeyiivasham (into clutches of Kaikeyi).

“Aged and (therefore) helpless, deprived of my presence, what will he do, dominated as he is by his passion for Kaikeyi and who has fallen into the clutches of Kaikeyi.”

As with the phrases described above (uttered by Lakshmana in anger), Kama-atma does not necessarily mean “entirely consumed by kama.” For example, the illustrious commentary on the Ramayana by Sivasahaya, Raamayana Siromani¸ gives the following example of using the term kama-atma in a non-sexual context: kaama aathmaa: kaama – abhishEka vishayiNi ichchhaa (desiring the matter of crowning) aathmaa – aathmani manasyEva yasya sah (one who had this in mind)—i.e., “the king who desired in his mind the crowning [of Rama].” [7]

Falling prey to love (Rama’s description) or being overcome by lust (Lakshmana’s description) does not make one a sex addict; if it did, then any of us could be accused of the same! Sex was explicitly discussed and celebrated in ancient Indian / Hindu texts, as an accepted integral part of life—discussions of being overcome by desire, therefore, do not automatically translate into one being characterized or condemned as a sex-addict.

These epithets were uttered in anger and anguish by Dasaratha’s sons at the time of their separation from their family and kingdom—the epithets are indicative of their pain and anger and are not meant to be psychoanalytical judgements of Dasaratha’s character, particularly in a socio-cultural context where intense sexual enjoyment was not viewed as a vice—c.f., the accounts of Karadama rishi and Devahuti in the Srimad Bhagavatam, Yayati and Sarmishta in the Mahabharata, and Kacha and Devyani in the Mahabharata, where long periods of intense sexual union were described without any condemnation or sense of shame.

In any case, it is not necessary to get entangled into the technicality of semantics to challenge Doniger’s central thesis, which is summarized in the following excerpt from the interview:

You also suggest that because Rama is afraid of turning into a sex addict like his father, he throws Sita out after enjoying sex with her?

You have a chapter in Valmiki’s Ramayana where Rama was so happy with Sita, they drank wine together, they were alone, enjoying themselves in every way, indulging in various ways, not just the sexual act. And in the very next chapter he says I’ve got to throw you out. So I’m suggesting: what is the connection between those two things? And what does it mean that Rama knows that Dasaratha, his father, disgraced himself because of his attachment to his young and beautiful wife. So I’m taking pieces of the Ramayana and putting them together and saying these are not disconnected.

So you are saying his fear of following in his father’s footsteps is making him betray his own sexuality?

Yes, I am. Or even of being perceived that way.

Note the internal contradiction in Doniger’s position—her characterization of Rama hinges on a passage found in Book 7 (Uttara Kanda), and she has elsewhere in the interview dismissed that same Book 7 as a later interpolation!

In any event, the passage describing Rama and Sita’s “indulgence” is from Sarga 42 of Book 7 (Uttara Kanda), where Rama and Sita are enjoying their reunion after Sita’s abduction. As described therein, during this period of two winters (i.e., two years, although in some versions, an additional half-shloka is included providing that this interlude lasted 10,000 years), Rama and Sita would spend the second half of every day together in Rama’s Ashoka-grove, enjoying heavenly music and dance and partaking of gourmet food and intoxicating drinks. Rama and Sita are compared to other divine couples:

Taking in his hand the pure nectar of flowers as intoxicating as the Maireyaka wine, Sri Rama … made Sri Sita drink it, just as Indra does Sachi … Seated in the company of the celebrated Sita, [Rama] shone with splendour like Vasishta seated along with Arundhati. Sri Rama, steeped in joy like gods, afforded delight thus day after day to … Sita, who resembled a divine damsel. [8]

Doniger conveniently leaves out the fact that it is in this chapter that Rama discovers that Sita is pregnant. Delighted at this revelation, Rama asks her to tell him which desire of hers he should fulfil. This is Sita’s response: “O Raghava! I wish to visit the holy penance-groves and to stay, O Lord!, at the feet of sages … living on the banks of the Ganga … This is my greatest wish that I should stay even for one night in the penance-grove of those who live only on fruits and (edible) roots.” [9] Rama readily acquiesces to this wish, promising that she will be taken for a visit there the very next day.

Doniger claims that “in the very next chapter [Rama] says [to Sita] I’ve got to throw you out.” This is another totally false statement by Doniger. It is in Sarga 45 (after two intervening sargas / chapters, wherein Rama learns of the negative gossip surrounding Sita and thus decides to banish her) that Rama orders Lakshmana to take Sita to the forest and leave her there. This is just one more instance of Doniger’s casual disregard of the facts, unbecoming of a distinguished professor with a named chair at the University of Chicago.

Of course, it is the two sargas / chapters that Doniger skips over in her “alternative” narrative that provide the reason for Rama banishing Sita: Rama is informed that he is being rebuked by the people of Ayodhya as follows: “Why does not Sri Rama censure [Sita], who formerly had been forcibly carried away by Ravana? … Such conduct of our wives shall have to be suffered by us also, since whatever a king does, the subjects follow.” [10] The pernicious rumours are about Sita’s chastity / purity, not about Rama’s excessive lust.

When this gossip is confirmed by others, Rama summons his brothers to him, and informs them of his decision to leave Sita, providing the following explanation for his decision: “As long as the word of infamy circulates, so long one does fall in the lower regions (hell). Infamy is censured even by the gods and fame gains credence in the world.” [11] It is the fear of losing his good name (as the result of the infamy surrounding Sita’s chastity by the gossip-mongers of Ayodhya) that impels Rama, not fear of being chastised as a sex-addict.

Nowhere is it mentioned that Rama feared he might fall victim to the “vice” of sex and that he therefore abandoned Sita – this again appears to be an example of the kind of fanciful creation for which Doniger and many of her students, now academicians at leading American universities, have become well-known. There is no connotation of illicit or excessive indulgence in the description of Rama and Sita’s blissful interlude together in Sarga 42—to the contrary, Rama and Sita are depicted as a divine couple with the dignity and radiance of Indra and Sachi, Vasishta and Arundhati. Rama is full of tenderness for Sita upon discovering her pregnancy. It clearly breaks his heart to send Sita away—after giving Lakshmana the command, “[Rama] the noble one with His eyes closed, taking leave of His brothers, entered His own apartment, with his heart agitated by sorrow, deeply sighed as an elephant.” [12]

In Doniger’s own words, she is “taking pieces of the Ramayana and putting them together” to come up with this far-fetched explanation. But, one cannot play connect-the-dots with various scenes from a vast text such as the Valmiki Ramayana, stripping out the proper sequence and removing the contextual background of the critical passages, and then call it a valid textual interpretation.

Even if Doniger is reading into the text certain psychological motivations she wants to attribute to the characters, her characterization appears to be illogical–if Rama sent Sita away simply because he didn’t want to become / be characterized as a sex addict, why did he not make arrangements to claim his future heir(s), whom he knew Sita carried in her womb?

Construction of Hindu Temples

Doniger suggests that Hindus did not have a prominent temple-building movement—because building temples requires “a lot of money, land, a whole system of building temples, which the Hindus did not have at first”—until the Bhakti movement gathered momentum “to organize Rama or Shiva worship.” She makes a superfluous reference to the fact that the Kama Sutra does not discuss temple worship—one wonders why the Kama Sutra would be a relevant reference for discussion of temple construction, but then one recalls the BBC quote at the beginning of this note about Doniger’s strange predilection for the Kama Sutra.

This is really the topic for another article, but it is worth quickly noting here that the Sathapatha Brahmana portion of the Shukla Yajur Veda, dating back to at least 1500 BCE, describes a special form of tabernacle, distinct from the Agni-shala of the household, for which a special fire-priest, the Agnidhra, was designated. Through the kindling of the fire, the tabernacle became the dwelling place of the Vishvedevas (all the gods). This is a prototype for later Hindu temples, where icons replaced the sacred fire as the focus of worship. In other words, if one wants to be polemical, one can definitely argue that the genesis of formal temple construction vidhis – rules and methods – certainly pre-dates the advent of Buddhism.

Further, details of (at least Vaishnava) temple construction, the consecration of images for worship, and the actual procedures and rituals for temple worship are set forth in the ancient Vaikhanasa and Paancharatra Agamas. The Vaikhanasa Agama dates back to at least the 3rd or 4th century CE, and its Kriyaa Paadha discusses temple construction and image consecration while its Charyaa Padhaa focuses on the associated rituals of worship.

There are many examples of temples from these ancient times. A few are quickly identified here: The early phase of Chalukyan temple building began in the last quarter of the 6th century and resulted in many cave temples, including a Vaishnava temple dating back to 578 CE. The second phase of Chalukyan temple building at Aihole, celebrated as one of the cradles of Indian temple architecture, dates back to approximately 600 CE. Similarly, the Pallavas constructed rock-cut temples dating from 610–690 AD and structural temples between 690–900 AD, including the rock-cut temples at Mahabalipuram, the Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram, and the Shore Temple built by Narasimhavarman II.

Doniger’s Larger Narrative about Hinduism

The story Doniger wants to tell about the Ramayana fits into her larger narrative about the character of Hinduism. Her overarching narrative is captured in her statement: “That’s why Hinduism is such a wonderful religion. It’s because people are allowed to have their own texts … there was no one who said there was only one way to tell the Ramayana … And no one would say that you got it wrong.”

Of course, there is great diversity in Hinduism—after all, over three hundred versions of the Ramayana co-exist peaceably within the pantheon of Hindu literature. There are no unnecessary battles about which version is the definitive version—Hinduism does not subscribe to the notion of One Book or One Prophet, which is the predominant characteristic of the Semitic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

It is misleading to say, in a scholarly context, that just because multiple versions of a story exist, “no one [can] say that you got it wrong.” For, there is a significant difference between creating a new version of a story—e.g., Tulsidas retelling the Ramayana in his Sri Ramacharitamanasa, which does not purport to be the “original” or “corrected” version of the Valmiki Ramayana—and offering an academic explanation or interpretation of an existing story (the Valmiki Ramayana) that takes liberties with and/or misquotes the text.

It is the difference between artistic interpretation and scholarly rigour. For a scholar, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that a constructed narrative or story is possible by stringing together disparate phrases and passages; rather, a scholar must show why her preferred version is more persuasive than other versions—why it is a more coherent narrative or a more insightful explanation. This is particularly important when the scholar’s preferred version sharply diverges from the canonical traditions of interpretation. This is not fundamentalism—this is what it means to be a scholar!

The diversity within Hinduism and Hindu society is one of its greatest strengths, but the danger of saying that there is no one Hindu identity is concluding that therefore there isn’t any Hindu identity. Diversity should not be falsely treated as a lack of unity; to the contrary, e pluribus unum (from many, one). Actually, in the Hindu framework, it would be from one, many—c.f., Bhagavad Gita (15:1): “There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down and whose leaves are the Vedic hymns. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas.” In other words, from One Truth flower many expressions of that same truth, from one root of dharma flower the hymns, traditions, philosophical doctrines and sacred lore that comprise the tree of Hinduism. Or, to give a musical analogy, within one scale or raaga, many variations may be improvised.

In concrete fact, unity underlies every instance of diversity in Hinduism over the eons—that is why, for example, Adi Shankara Bhagavadpada, spiritual titan and amongst the greatest intellects of the world established the four seats of his monastic order on the four corners of India—Jyotirmath / Badrinath in the North, Puri in the East, Dwaraka in the West and Sringeri in the South—he also installed Namboodris from the deep south of Kerala as officiating priests in the Himalayan temple of Badrinath (a practice that continues to this day).

In closing, there does exist an easily recognizable non-fundamentalist Hindu identity, built upon a body of history, sacred texts and philosophical and ritualistic traditions that span several thousands of years. This Hindu identity is diverse and multidimensional but also internally consistent—a consistent scale, as it were, upon which millions of Hindus improvise their own variations.

——————————————————————————–

Aditi Banerjee received a B.A. in International Relations, magna cum laude, from Tufts University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a practicing attorney in London and also co-editor, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America (Rupa & Co., June 2007)

Dark history of Vatican

Well researched website about the peddlers of religion of love and such fantastic spirituality as “our god is true, your god is false, and if you don’t agree, we will beat you.”

The Dark History of the Vatican
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_vatican.htm

The Gospel of Vivekananda

The Gospel of Vivekananda.

Nice book. Buy it if you can.

HINDU DHARMA VIS-a-VIS RELIGIOUS THEOLOGIES
 
“The religious theologies of two major aggressive traditions have brought about destruction to humanity much more than any other one culture or religion.”
– Swami Dayananda Saraswati
(Excerpted from: “Arsha Vidya Newsletter”, November 2003)  
  
There are a number of unique things in our culture. Everything about us is unique. The way we dress is unique. Our music is unique. Nowhere in the world, the music has defined rags. There are many forms of music all over the world, but nowhere are the ascending and descending notes as we have. Our indifference to our riches, of course, is unique! 
 
I have so much to talk about this uniqueness in our culture and today I would like to share with you what we call dharma. The world religions have no concept of dharma. It is startling. I have been attending the World Religious Conferences. 
 
During the middle of December, I will be going to Jerusalem to attend a World Religious Leaders’ Conference representing the Hindu religion. The Chief Rabbi of Israel and one or two other Jewish religious leaders, who are the members of this Council and some Muslim leaders are meeting at Jerusalem to find some solution to current problems. Do you think it is possible? I know it is not possible, I know it can never happen, but I cannot give up an attempt to make it possible. 

Only Hindu religion can make it possible. Others are all contending forces. The unifying force is only Hindu religion. It is startling. When I sat with all these religious leaders, I asked them, “Can you name a few values that are acceptable to all of us. Before forming the council of wold religions, let us identify some universal values”, I asked the leaders in the first meeting. They said, “Let us move to the next item.” This is because they cannot identify one thing common to all.  
 
I proposed ahimsa. For us, ahimsa is paramo dharma. It is not that somebody; gives a slap on your right cheek and you show the left one. That is not our ahimsa. That is why they do not follow anything. 

One fellow asked me this question, “Swamiji, you say, you are a Sadhu. Who is a Sadhu?” I said, “Sadhu is a saint.” “You are a Sadhu?” he asked. “Yes.” “Suppose somebody gives you a slap on your right cheek, will you show your left cheek?” Because somewhere it is said that when somebody gives you a slap on the right cheek, you are supposed to show your left cheek. “So, will you accept it?” 

Now I have a problem. I am a Sadhu; I have to prove myself to be a Sadhu. If I say ‘yes’, then he may try to prove whether it is true or not and I will be inviting trouble. If I say ‘no’, then I am not a Sadhu. This is really a problem. 

It is something like this. Somebody asked, “Will you go in front of a fool, or will you walk behind him?’ If you go in front, I am the leader. If I walk behind, I am a follower. It is a problem. 

This fellow was very clever. I told him, “I won’t get the first one. Why should I get the first one on my right cheek? I will behave in such a way I won’t attract the first one”. That is the answer. 

“Allowing people to trample upon our toes is not our concept of ahimsa. For us, this value is universal. We do not follow double standards. We do not have one type of value for Hindus and another type of value for non-Hindus. When hey do not follow the same thing that we have, then we are in trouble. That is what is happening to Hindus. We are in constant trouble because we follow universal values. And they go on trampling and bulldozing our culture wherever it is possible, and this kind of thing has been happening. 

When I asked them, “Can you accept ahimsa, not hurting? All of them were silent. There were big Muslim leaders. There were leaders from Jewish tradition; they accepted. Parsi leaders accepted it. So too some other leaders of small groups of people accepted. But the leaders of two aggressive traditions did not accept it. Catholic did not accept, Protestants did not accept, and Muslims did not accept. None of them accepted the universal value of ahimsa. It was startling to me.  

Then I tried another thing. “Will you accept mutual respect of religions?” I asked, because we are sitting in a world council, we are sitting at the same table. And they said, “We respect freedom of religion.” Think of that. Freedom religion means freedom to destroy me; that is the freedom. “We accept freedom of religion, but not mutual respect of religion.” It is because they have to convert. It is because they have to proselytize. It does not recognize other religions because God has given them the mandate. And so too, every denomination of Christianity. 

Why I am telling you this is because, for them, there is no universal value called Samanya Dharma. That was startling thing to me. I knew, but I thought that in the Council of World Religions, the leaders who are representatives of their religions would at least concede this mutual respect and ahimsa. They do not. Then, what is it that we are meeting for, I do not know. Mine was a lone pleading voice. Big voice I have got that is all; it was a lonely voice. Nobody else agrees, except a few leaders who themselves are converted people and who want to go back to their native religions. Such people are available here and there.  

We have Samanya Dharma. Samanya means samanam, (common) for the entire humanity. You talk to anybody, “Do you want to get hurt?” The reply is, “No.” “Do you want to be cheated?” The reply is, “No.” “Do you want to be robbed? Do your land to be encroached upon? Do you want to be lied to? And do you want to be exploited when you are in a weak situation?” The answer is always, “No, no, no, no,” from everybody. This is not taught by anybody. This is by common sense. 

This common sense born structure of value system has got to be there, in as much as human being has got choice. He has got a free will. If you have a free wheel, a lot of speed and a lot of power, you must have a gear and a brake system, correct? Sometimes you have to back up, sometimes you have to turn left; sometimes you have to stop. So, this break system is a must, a gearbox is a must. We have that brake system. We are endowed with the faculty of choice. We need to choose our food. What do you eat, when do you eat, where do you eat. How much do you eat, how often do you eat, how much do you eat? Everything, we have to choose. When there is a choice, I should say yes to something. Therefore, that capacity has to be from within, not from outside. Every individual has got a brake system given by Iswara. 

Religious theologies of the two major aggressive traditions have brought about destruction to humanity much more than any other one culture or religion. In fact, even the holocaust in Germany and Poland, is all because of religions. In Goa, millions were destroyed, you do not know. This is much more than the holocaust. Millions were destroyed and we are going to create a museum in this country about the holocaust that we had in Goa and other areas. It was religious genocide. There was total destruction much more than what happened in Europe during Hitler” rule. 

The destruction caused during Aurangazeb’s time is never talked about. Now it is all the more important for the Hindu voice to be heard than ever before. The Hindu voice is dharma. The two religious traditions do look upon the world as meant for human consumption. God created the world for man to eat it up. Animals can be eaten. They are meant for eating by human beings. Some are not eaten because the meat is not interesting, that is all – until you develop a taste for it. Nothing is prohibited. Anything that swims, that flies, that crawls, that walks can be eaten. Only that which talks cannot be eaten. That is because of the fear of criminal case. 

For us (the Hindus), this jagat is a manifestation of Ishwara. You talk to any villager in this country, “Hey, Arumugam, where is God.” He never went to school even for shelter during rains, because there is no school to go for shelter anywhere. We know it first hand. He will look at you up and down. He does not even understand the validity of the question. Where God is, not our question. Our question back is “What is not God?” That is Hindu religion. 

God cannot be sitting in one corner in heaven. They say that. Where is He? We look up. Then, I have to ask heaven should be a big place because all of us are going there. If we are all Hindus, we do not go. And all others are going there`, and if all of them end up in heaven, what is His address? It may be a huge planet and at the other end, He may be there. Then, I have to ask for locality. Then, afterwards I should ask for the street, house number, the floor and the apartment number. It must be a big apartment with so many rooms. Another interesting thing is, they say, He is formless. A formless person needs a location! They say the formless God is male!! This also I talked in the World Council of Religious Leaders. 

I say this all because you are bombarded every day and you need to know. I do not come and bombard you every day. I do not ask them, “Please give me time so that I can discuss with you about God.” They come and ask us. No physics professor goes and knocks at the doors of anybody asking for time so that he can discuss about particles. You should go and ask him what are particles. He does not knock at your doors. This is our tradition. We do not knock at others’ doors. 

That is why I want to tell you that Dharma for us is universal. It is the same for everybody. Whether you profess this faith or that faith, it should be common for all. I can grant freedom for you to believe whatever you want. I give you the freedom. But at the same time recognize dharma. It is very important. 

Everyone is a born consumer. Everybody, as a child, is a consumer and does not contribute anything. As an adult, you are not only a consumer but also a contributor. The Western society is indulging in consumerism. It gives a card. You need not have money, but you buy. And pay through you nose every month, and this is consumerism! This is not our culture. We earn, we save, we cut our coat according to the cloth and we try to slim, not to grow. Therefore, our culture is entirely different. Even economically, they are learning now. The economics of Hindu society are much more precious for the world to learn. Consumerism has brought in problems after problems. 

Growth lies in your contribution. This is our culture. You contribute more than what you consume. You are then a grown up person. Gandhiji was a great leader in our country because he tried to contribute more than what he consumed. We worship cows not just because we take its milk etc. Not only that. It consumes simple grass, and afterwards gives life-saving, nourishing milk. And, therefore, we say that is a symbol of our culture. Consume less and give everything. Correct? That is our culture. That is why the cows should not be allowed to be slaughtered. It is a symbol of our culture. We have a sentiment for that. And that inner growth does not happen, sir. You need to be a contributor. You need to grow and you will grow into the status of a contributor only when you do not grumble and come to know about yourself and your culture. You have to look into your culture, for there is so much to learn; there is so much to discover. Our own riches embarrass us. 
 
Be a contributor. In the process, you also grow. And you also help people who need to be cared, and in the process you get cared also. With this appeal, I just thank you all and I thank the Lord that we are able to do all this.
 

“Split India into 100 Hong Kongs”

South Asian Terrorism: All Roads Lead to the British Empire

by Ramtanu Maitra 

The growing violence throughout Pakistan since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001, the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and many other smaller terrorist-directed killings in India, and the gruesome killing of at least 70 top Bangladeshi Army officers in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month, were evidence that the terrorists have declared war against the sovereign nation-states in South Asia.

The only bright spot in this context is Sri Lanka, where a powerful terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, are about to lose their home base. That, however, may not end the LTTE terrorism, particularly since it is headquartered in London, where many South Asian terrorists are maintained in separate cages for future use by British intelligence, with the blessings of Her Majesty’s Service.

Since none of the South Asian countries, where the terrorists are gaining ground, have, so far, shown the ability to evaluate, and thus, eliminate, the growth of this terrorism, it is necessary to know its genesis, and how it has affected the leaders of the South Asian nations to the detriment of their respective security.

What is evident is that the South Asian terrorism has little to do with territorial disputes among nations, but everything to do with the past British colonial rule which poisoned the minds of the locals, so they have become disloyal to their own countries.

In this article, we will deal with the terrorism that continues to prosper in India’s northeast; and the terrorism in Sri Lanka, brought about by the British-induced ethnic animosity among its citizens.

This history is the narration of a tragedy, since those who fought for independence in these South Asian nations, made enormous sacrifices to bring about their independence; many of those heroic figures turned out to be mental slaves of the British Empire, and pursued relentlessly the policies that the British had implemented to run their degenerate Empire.

India’s Northeast

Six decades after India wrested independence from its colonial rulers, its northeast region is a cauldron of trouble. Located in a highly strategic area, with land contiguous to five countries—Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China—it is full of militant separatists, who take refuge in the neighboring countries under pressure from Indian security forces.

Since most of these neighboring countries do not have the reach to control the border areas, the separatist groups have set up armed training camps, which, over the years, have attracted international drug and gun traffickers. As a result of such unrelenting terrorist actions, and violent demonstrations over the last five decades, this part of India remains today a dangerous place.

These secessionist groups were not created by New Delhi, although New Delhi failed to understand that the promotion of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and tribal identities were policies of the British, who had come to India to expand their empire. The British Empire survived, and then thrived, through identification, within the subcontinent, of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups and their conflict points; and then, exploited those conflict points to keep the groups divided and hostile to each other. India and the other South Asian nations failed to comprehend that it was suicidal to allow a degenerate colonial power to pursue such policies against their nations.

As a result, they were carried out by New Delhi for two ostensible reasons: One, to appease the militants, and the other, to “allow them to keep” what they wanted— their sub-national ethnic identity. The policy deprived the majority of the people of the Northeast of the justification for identifying themselves as Indians.

The die was cast in the subversion of the sovereignty of an independent India by the British Raj in 1862, when it laid down the law of apartheid, to isolate “the tribal groups.” The British came into the area in the 1820s, following the Burmese conquest of Manipur and parts of Assam.

The area had become unstable in the latter part of the 18th Century, following the over-extension of the Burmese-based Ahom kingdom, which reached into Assam. The instability caused by the weakening of the Ahom kingdom prompted the Burmese to move to secure their western flank. But the Burmese action also helped to bring in the British. The British East India Company was lying in wait for the Ahom kingdom to disintegrate.

The Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 ended with a British victory. By the terms of the peace treaty signed at Yandaboo on Feb. 24, 1826, the British annexed the whole of lower Assam and parts of upper Assam (now Arunachal Pradesh). The Treaty of Yandaboo provided the British with the foothold they needed to annex Northeast India, launch further campaigns to capture Burma’s vital coastal areas, and gain complete control of the territory from the Andaman Sea to the mouth of the Irrawaddy River.

What were London’s motives in this venture? The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.”

The ‘Apartheid Law’

Following annexation of Northeast India, the first strategy of the British East India Company toward the area was to set it up as a separate entity. At the outset, British strategy toward Northeast India was:

• to make sure that the tribal people remained separated from the plains people, and the economic interests of the British in the plains were not disturbed;

• to ensure that all tribal aspirations were ruthlessly curbed, by keeping the bogeyman of the plains people dangling in their faces; and,

• to ensure the tribal feudal order remained intact, with the paraphernalia of tribal chiefs and voodoo doctors kept in place. Part of this plan was carried out through the bribing of tribal chiefs with paltry gifts.

Lord Palmerston’s Zoo 

The British plan to cordon off the northeast tribal areas was part of its policy of setting up a multicultural human zoo, during the 1850s, under the premiership of Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston. Lord Palmerston, as Henry Temple was called, had three “friends”—the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, and Whitehall.

The apartheid program eliminated the Northeast Frontier Agency from the political map of India, and segregated the tribal population from Assam, as the British had done in southern Africa and would later do in Sudan.

By 1875, British intentions became clear, even to those Englishmen who believed that the purpose of Mother England’s intervention in India, and the Northeast in particular, was to improve the conditions of the heathens.

In an 1875 intelligence document, one operative wrote: “At this juncture, we find our local officers frankly declaring that our relations with the Nagas could not possibly be on a worse footing than they were then, and that the non-interference policy, which sounds excellent in theory, had utterly failed in practice.”

Apartheid also helped the British to function freely in this closed environment. Soon enough, the British Crown introduced another feature: It allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize among the tribal population and units of the Frontier Constabulary.

The Land of the Nagas was identified as “virgin soil” for planting Christianity. “Among a people so thoroughly primitive, and so independent of religious profession, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful,” stated the 1875 document, as quoted in the “Descriptive Account of Assam,” by William Robinson and Angus Hamilton.

Missionaries were also encouraged to open government-aided schools in the Naga Hills. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of native Christians increased 128%. The chief proselytizers were the Welsh Presbyterians, headquartered in Khasi and the Jaintia Hills. British Baptists were given the franchise of the Mizo (Lushai) and Naga Hills, and the Baptist mission was set up in 1836.

British Mindset Controlled New Delhi

Since India’s Independence in 1947, the Northeast has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity, and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized. New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states.

Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil.

Two terrorist groups in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic front of Biodoland (NDFB) (set up originally as the Bodo Security Force), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas.

To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the NDFB have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur.

In 1972, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam through a peaceful process. Unfortunately, peace did not last long in this “abode of the clouds.” In 1979, the first violent demonstration against “foreigners” resulted in a number of deaths and arson. The “foreigners” in this case were Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis, many of whom had settled in Meghalaya decades ago.

By 1990, firebrand groups such as the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo People (FKJGP), and the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) came to the fore, ostensibly to uphold the rights of the “hill people” from Khasi, Jaintia, and the Garo hills. Violence erupted in 1979, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The last violent terrorist acts were in 1992.

Similar “anti-foreigner” movements have sprouted up across the Northeast, from Arunachal Pradesh in the East and North, to Sikkim in the West, and Mizoram and Tripura in the South. Along the Myanmar border, the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram remain unstable and extremely porous.

While New Delhi was busy maintaining the status quo in this area by telling the tribal and ethnic groups that India is not going to take away what the British Raj had given to them, Britain picked the Nagas as the most efficient warriors (also, a large number of them had been converted to Christianity by the Welsh missionaries), and began arming and funding them.

The British connection to the NSCN existed from the early days of the Naga National Council. Angami Zapu Phizo, the mentor of both factions of the NSCN, had led the charge against the Indian government, spearheading well-organized guerrilla warfare. Phizo left Nagaland hiding in a coffin.

He then turned up in 1963 in Britain, holding a Peruvian passport. It is strongly suspected that the British Baptist Church, which is very powerful in Nagaland, is the contact between British intelligence and the NSCN terrorists operating on the ground at the time.

‘Dirty Bertie’ and the Nagas

Once Phizo arrived in Britain, Lord Bertrand (“Dirty Bertie”) Russell, the atheist, courted Phizo, and became his new friend. Russell was deeply impressed with Phizo’s “earnestness” for a peaceful settlement. What, perhaps, impressed Russell the most is that Phizo had control over the militant Nagas, who had launched a movement in the mid-1950s under the Naga National Council (NNC) to secede from the Indian Republic.

In a letter dated Feb. 12, 1963, Sir Bertrand told IndianPrime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India.”

It is believed in some circles that New Delhi’s 1964 ceasefire with the Nagas might have been influenced by the letter from Russell that was handed to Nehru by Rev. Michael Scott. Scott later went to Nagaland as part of a peace mission, along with two senior Indian political leaders.

While Russell was pushing Nehru to make the Nagas an independent country through peaceful negotiations, British involvement in direct conflict continued. On Jan. 30, 1992, soldiers of the Assam Rifles arrested two British nationals along the Nagaland-Burma border. David Ward and Stephen Hill posed as members of BBC-TV, and were travelling in jeeps with Naga rebels carrying arms.

Subsequent interrogation revealed that both were operatives of Naga Vigil, a U.K.-based group. Both Ward and Hill claimed that they started the organization while in jail, influenced by Phizo’s niece, Rano Soriza. Both have served six-year prison terms for various crimes in Britain. Naga Vigil petitioned for their release in the Guwahti High Court. Phizo’s niece took up the issue with then-Nagaland Chief Minister Vamuzo.

Sri Lanka’s Violent Ethnic Strife

In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger terrorist group is in its last throes. Ousted by the Sri Lankan Army from almost all of its “claimed” territories, the militants are now holding on to about 19 square kilometers of land, with about 70,000 Sri Lankan citizens, mostly of Tamil ethnic origin, as their hostages.

It is evident that they will be totally routed by the end of this month. While the U.S. Pacific Command personnel in contact with New Delhi are formulating an evacuation plan for the hostages, London and the European Union are trying to protect the last vestiges of Tiger territory by urging Colombo to work out a cease fire with the terrorists.

The emergence of violent conflict between the Tamil Sri Lankans and the Sinhala Sri Lankans, which gave birth to the London-backed Tamil Tigers, was yet another product of the British colonial legacy. This ethnic conflict, which has engulfed this little island, and unleashed unlimited violence in the region for almost three decades, is, as in the case of Northeast India, due to the British mindset of the Sri Lankan and Indian leaders involved in “resolving “the crisis.

To begin with, Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon) had the misfortune to be colonized by three brutal European colonial powers—the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Nonetheless, it is to the credit of the locals that they withstood these brutes and prevented the break-up of the country.

After the Dutch ceded Sri Lanka in the 1801 Peace of Amiens, it became Britain’s first crown colony. Immediately, the British colonials started setting up the chess pieces. The ruling Kandyan King, of Tamil ancestry, was ousted with the help of local chieftains of Tamil and Sinhala origin. The coup set up the British crown as the new King.

As part of the “divide and rule” policy, the British colonials promoted the Buddhist religion, resulting in the 1817 Uva rebellion. The Buddhist religion was given protection by the Crown, and the people were told that Christianity would not be imposed on the unwilling masses as had happened during Portuguese and Dutch rule.

Following the quelling of the rebellion, the British did what they do best: They carried out one of the worst massacres of the 19th Century, wiping out all able-bodied Sinhalese men from the Hill Country, and 80% of the native population of able-bodied, according to one report.

The Kandyan Kingdom was the kingdom of both the Tamils and Sinhalas—both these groups came from India to settle on that island. One specific impact of the British colonial presence was the emergence of English as the local language, undermining both the Sinhala and Tamil languages.

According to one historian, the two most important effects observed during British rule were: one, by the start of 20th Century, the English language became the passport to getting employment; and those who had an English education became dominant in Britain’s handcrafted Sri Lankan society. Due to input of the Christian missionaries, more minority Tamils could read and write English, as opposed to the southern Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese.

The other observed impact on Sri Lankan society of British colonial rule, was the reconstituting of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly of 1921 had 12 Sinhalese and 10 non-Sinhalese, at a time when the Sinhalese constituted more than 70% of the population.

Things changed in 1931, when, out of 61 seats, the Sinhalese won 38. This troubled the Tamils, because they had had special privileges under British, and never wanted to accept the dominance of the Sinhalese majority.

In addition, the British also brought to the island amillion workers of Tamil ethnic background from Tamil Nadu, and made them indentured laborers in the Hill Country. This was in addition to the million Tamils already living in the provinces, and another million Mappilla Muslims, whose mother tongue is Tamil. Thus, the British sowed seeds of ethnic discord. During the colonial rule, the minority Tamils had a disproportionate representation in the bureaucracy.

The Role of British Assets in Independent Sri Lanka

However, when in 1948, the British finally left the island, they left behind their assets, in powerful places, many of whom were educated at Oxford-Cambridge, and some of whom had adopted Christianity, on both sides of the ethnic divide London had so carefully created.

Instead of seizing the opportunity to build the nation and set about undoing the misdeeds they were forced to carry out under British rule, beginning in the 1950s, Sinhalese-dominated governments implemented public policies that would institutionalize the majority community’s dominance.

Sinhala was declared to be the country’s sole official language; Buddhism was favored as the state religion; and the unitary nature of the state ensured Sinhalese political domination. Major Sinhalese-Tamil riots in 1956, 1981, and 1983 further heightened Tamil insecurities.

Meanwhile, the Tamils began to press for autonomy. Political parties, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), utilized conventional means, which included participating in coalition governments. Militant Tamils, the LTTE, sought the creation of an independent Tamil state, referred to as Tamil Eelam, which would comprise the North and East of the country.

Throughout the 1980s, various Tamil rebel groups engaged in attacks against the Colombo government and its security apparatus. However, the situation worsened on that island because of the British mindset of New Delhi, which made a number of attempts to intervene in the violent Sri Lankan situation.

Besides helping the Tamils to get armed training and intelligence, New Delhi, under late-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, deployed around 50,000 Indian peacekeepers (IPKF) in Tamil areas in Sri Lanka to help ensure peace. In return, the Sri Lankan government agreed to devolve power to the North and East through the creation of autonomous provincial councils.

Neither Colombo nor the Tamil militants were sincere about the deal; both were looking at the Indian troops as the barriers against their independent state. The failure of the Indian intervention led to more deaths and the assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and India’s Rajiv Gandhi, among many other high-level Sri Lankan officials, by the terrorist Tamil Tigers.

London: Break Up India into 100 Hong Kongs

But, the British were in the middle of all this. Besides the fact that the LTTE was headquartered in London, and raising most of its illegitimate funds from Britain and its former colonies in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, within ten days of Gandhi’s death, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who would be assassinated by the LTTE in May 1993, forced the hasty departure from Sri Lanka of British High Commissioner David Gladstone. The charge was that Gladstone, a descendant of the Victorian-age Prime Minister William Gladstone, was interfering in local election politics.

But he had also been criticized earlier for allegedly meeting with known drug traffickers in Sri Lanka. Gladstone, who had previously spent years in the Middle East, was a known British intelligence link to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, which was involved in training both the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE. Britain’s continuing intent to break up India was also expressed openly in this political context.

On May 26, 1991, only five days after the British-controlled LTTE-led assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Times of London, the premier voice for the British Foreign Office, put forward this view in an editorial entitled “Home Truths”:

“There are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India, and most are being muttered too politely. The over-huge federation of almost 900 million people spreads across too many languages, cultures, religions, and castes. It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union, which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India. . . .“The way forward for India, as for the Soviet Union, will be to say a great prize can go to any States and sub-States that maintain order without murders and riots. They should be allowed to disregard Delhi’s corrupt licensing restrictions, run their own economic policies, and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like. Maybe India’s richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs.”

 

Old Fox and the Witch

Vinod Mehta — the communist editor of “Outlook” magazine and the despicable doormat of the Gandhi family (lovingly called Old Fox by Indians in India) — and the Hindu-phobic church agent Wendy Doniger — lovingly called the Witch by Indians in the US — have come together to declare Lord Ram as a debauch and a woman-hater. 

Yawn! This is just an incestuous foreplay between two old Hindu haters who lie together in bed for convenience and their shared hatred of the pagans. One has not forgiven the Hindus for rejecting the Lord God of the Whites and treat their land as holy in contrast to their own; the other has not forgiven them for rejecting the prophet of No God, Karl Marx, whose weed he used to smoke in his university days in the seventies.

“Ram was happy with Sita, indulging in every way, then he threw her out”

This is what I talked about in my recent post about Indian communists and White church agents having appointed themselves as interpreters of Hinduism on behalf of the Hindus. (“We will tell the world what Hinduism is, not the Hindus. And anyone who does not agree with our interpretation is a fascist.”)

The above link is a perfect example where this intellectual dishonesty is seen in action. Mehta and Dongier, both are not Hindus but are self-claimed authorities on everything related to the Hindus. These people often operate like a wolf pack and cooperate with each other.

Till Hindus keep taking this communist and church nonsense with their heads down, this trend of old, nostalgic and hairy Indian communists such as Mehta and church-appointed “scholars” from the White race will keep coming together to do this — the latter would generate “scholarship” while the former would offer the drivel publicity. Both are anti-India and anti-Hindu to the core. They are cowards too as they shy away from analysing Islam in the same way.

I have a feeling this interview was arranged by the US embassy, which has been trying to insert Wendy Doniger into India (or at least make her famous in India) for a long time. First the Americans tried their paid whore Rediff, but with not much success. Now this ‘Outlook’ thing has come out.

I am increasingly seeing a trend of Americans and Brits trying to push their professors and academicians into India to control the public discourse and influence how Hindus view their own country, history and religion and define their nationhood. India’s ageing communist “intellectuals” such as Mehta (who grew a pot belly dreaming of when the glorious revolution would happen) are merely useful idiots for the church agents.

Rajiv Malhotra rips apart the Witch in his scholarly critique. A must read!!

RISA Lila Part 1– Wendy’s Child Syndrome

 

Another good critique:

http://estheppan.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/mandhara-and-apes/

 

More on Love Jihad

The “Love Jihad”
By Stephen Brown

To the “hard jihad” of Muslim terrorism and the non-violent, “stealth jihad” challenging Western societies, the oxymoron “love jihad” can now be added.  But this latest form of Islamist aggression has nothing to do with love but rather, like its soulmates, with hatred for the infidel and women.

The love jihad’s modus operandi involves a heartless strategy of luring vulnerable girls and young women to convert to Islam by feigned love and promises of marriage. But instead of marital bliss, the girls unwittingly trapped in its deceitful web usually wind up in the hands of Muslim fundamentalist organizations.

The south-western state of Kerela in India is the latest place where this perverse practice has raised its ugly head. Authorities in this state of 32 million are holding in jail two young Muslim men who stand accused of “luring” two non-Muslim university students with promises of marriage “for the purpose of conversion.”

In court, both students testified the two men “trapped” them and forced them into converting. One told the court she fell in love with one of the men, a senior student at her college, and eloped with him. But instead of the expected marriage, she and the other woman were taken to a Muslim center where they were subjected to Islamic extremist propaganda.

The case has created such concern that Kerela’s High Court ordered the police to investigate the organization responsible for the conversions, the Campus Front, which serves as the student wing of the Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Popular Front of India. It is believed more than 4,000 Hindu and Christian young women in Kerela have converted to Islam in the last six months.

The Times of India reports that Kerela’s Hindu and Christian religious authorities are so alarmed at this development that they are cooperating to “combat the ‘social evil’ which. . .is hitting their respective communities hard.” It is suspected that college girls and working women are especially targeted.

“It’s shocking but it is happening. Many Christian families are getting affected,” said a member of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council.

One report states the “jihad Romeos” in Kerela are given cell phones, bikes and fashionable clothes to accomplish their sinister mission. They have two weeks to find a girl of another religion and six months to convert her to Islam. If the girl shows no interest within two weeks, they are to leave her and find another.

For every conversion, the men also receive a monetary reward. The money for the “love jihad” in Kerala is reported to come from “foreign sources.”

If a recruiter does marry his convert, he is encouraged to have four children with her. Some believe this capability to bear offspring is the reason why young women are targeted. With conversion, their reproductive powers are taken away from a competing religion and increase instead the Muslim extremist demographic.

But while the term love jihad may be new, the tactic is already a known one. In the 1990s, Sikhs in England believed young women in their community were being targeted for conversion. Young Muslim men looking for prey were even thought to have attended parties for young Sikhs, while pretending to be Sikhs themselves.

Sometimes, however, the jihad Romeos in England used a more brutal approach. A story in the Daily Mail two years ago stated that police were targeting such Muslim extremists and working with universities against “aggressive conversions.” These involved Hindu and Sikh girls being beaten up and terrorized by the Muslim men they were dating until they converted.

The Hindu Forum of Britain, the story says, claimed hundreds of Sikh and Hindu girls were victims of such vicious intimidation. Some even had to leave their university to escape their tormentors.

“Some girls are petrified because they are constantly being phoned up, having their door knocked on,” a Hindu Forum member said at the time.

But the best evidence that this form of jihad has been in operation for some time comes from a former Muslim extremist, who converted to Christianity. In the book, Why We Left Islam, a compilation of testimonies by former Muslims who left their faith, the unidentified apostate gives a powerful account of his days as a jihad Romeo in Egypt who targeted Coptic Christian girls.

Like in Kerela, the former Muslim testifies that money was paid for conversions and that it came from outside the country. And the higher the educational and social status of the victim’s family, the more money the jihad Romeo received.

Unlike in India though, the recruiters would parade the converted girl through the streets, playing music and waving flags, while yelling “Allah Akbar.” The goal, he said, was to humiliate the Christians, especially the men, and dishonor their families in a country where the women are the family’s honor. But such parades were banned in 1985.

All kinds of tricks, he writes, were used to convert the girls. From outright expressions of love and attending their churches to trapping them in moral scandals, everything was fair game. In this, the extremists were often helped by young Muslim women who identified likely targets, encouraged the Christian girl in the “relationship,” and would even help set up the morally compromising situations.

While ruining the lives of others, the former Muslim states he thought he was serving his religion, since Muslims “were in a perpetual war with the ‘filthy infidels’.” He lived for three years with one woman he had converted, tormenting her mercilessly, while converting seven other Christian women during that time.

In essence, the love jihad is a form of demographic aggression. Like the “stealth jihad”, which employs political activism to achieve Islamist aims in Western societies, it employs deception and is viewed as a useful tactic in bringing about Islamic world domination. That, however, is of little solace to the many precious young women whose lives it has destroyed.

Karnataka government has also woken up to this menace.

‘Love jihad’ worries Karnataka, govt calls meeting

Bangalore: A day after the Karnataka High Court directed the state and Kerala to probe the “Love Jihad movement” where young non-Muslim girls are allegedly trapped into marriage and converted into Islam, the government today decided to convene a meeting of top police officials soon to discuss ways of countering it.

About two to three ‘Love Jihad’ incidents had come to government’s notice and “it looks serious”, Karnataka Home Minister V S Acharya told reporters here.

 The meeting of police officials would be held either tomorrow or the day after, he said, adding, Karnataka has written to Kerala drawing its attention towards the ‘movement’ as it had inter-state ramifications.

The state High Court during a hearing on a habeas corpus petition filed by the parents of a girl, who allegedly married a Muslim boy after converting into Islam in Kerala’s Mallapuram district, yesterday directed Karnataka and Kerala to jointly probe the ‘love jihad movement’.

The girl’s father had alleged in his petition that she was confined in a madrasa after the marriage.

The court had asked police to submit a report on the episode within three weeks and said the girl should return to her parents in Chamarajanagar district in Karnataka by then.

Kerala High Court had also recently directed the state government there to provide information on ‘Love Jihad’, observing that there was a movement or project called ‘Love Jihad’ or ‘Romeo Jihad’ conceived by a section of Muslims in Kerala to convert girls from other religions to Islam.

From Indus to India

From Indus to India

Dilip K Chakrabarti Posted online: Wednesday, Sep 09, 2009 at 0243 hrs

Professor K. P.N.Rao and his associates assert, on the basis of their recently published computer studies on the Indus script, that this script has statistical regularities which are in line with other natural languages. Thus, the various signs of the Indus script cannot be explained away as only symbols of different sorts. The latter opinion was expressed by an American group sometime back and apparently taken seriously enough by Rao and his colleagues to undertake their own analysis.

That the Indus script represents a language is amply shown by the way its signs were found scratched from the right to the left on an inscribed potsherd from Kalibangan and the way in which the signs were arranged on the seals of Mohenjodaro. Further, the rarity with which many of these signs occur is almost a certain indication of the fact that much of the textual corpus of the Indus civilisation was written, on the analogy of the Indian tradition which continued down to the end of the nineteenth century, on perishable materials like palm and birch leaves.

The basic problem, however, lies elsewhere. There is a conscious attempt in certain quarters to disassociate this civilisation from the later mainstream tradition of Indian/ Vedic culture. Historically, the beginning of this attempt can be traced to the period around India’s Independence when Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the impetus for this civilisation came from Mesopotamia. Earlier, when India was a jewel in the British crown, there was no compulsion to depict it as an offshoot of Mesopotamian or other contemporary civilisations. The early excavators had no problem hypothesising that this civilisation was deeply rooted in the Indian soil and that many of its features could be explained with reference to the later Indian civilisation.

The current attempts to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition has assumed many forms. The term ‘Indus valley civilisation’, which is being increasingly common, suggests that this civilisation was primarily a product of the Indus valley alone, which is far from being the case. The civilisation is also bandied about as the product of what is dubiously dubbed as the ‘middle Asian interaction sphere’ and not as a product of a vast region of the sub-continent. Its chronology has been needlessly shortened, suppressing a long and continuous developmental span of about 2500 years in the modern Indian section of its distribution area.

The civilisation is also visualised at the end of a straight arrow-line of wheat-barley-based development beginning in Baluchistan at c.7000 BC, completely ignoring the contribution which came from the east — from the early farming and metallurgical developments in the Aravallis or from the rice-cultivating tradition that began in the Ganga plain and its Vindhyan periphery in the seventh millennium BC. The famous Sramana image from Mohenjodaro, which shows the bust of a shawl-wearing man with a meditative expression, is now advocated as belonging to an artistic tradition of north Afghanistan and beyond.

Notorious Hindu-baiters are aghast at the thought that anything related to Hinduism could occur in that civilisation, whereas the first excavators’ frame of reference for the study of the religion of this civilisation was Hinduism. That Siva was worshipped in this civilisation is proved not merely by the phallus-shaped stone objects found at Mohenjodaro and Dholavira but also by the find of an indisputedly Sivalinga set in a Yonipatta at Kalibangan. If anybody is interested, Bhang and Dhatura , both favourites with a class of Siva-worshippers, occur in the Indus civilisation.

The battle raging these days is whether there can be a relation between the life depicted in the Vedic literature and this civilisation. Without trying to pull down this debate to the all-too-common Indian level of ‘progress versus reaction’ syndrome which implies that that any talk in favour of Veda-Indus civilization relationship is a ‘right reactionary’ proposition ( a la Irfan Habib), we note that scholars of the stature of M.S.Vats, R.P.Chanda, B.N.Datta and P.V.Kane had no difficulty in arguing for a relationship between the two.

The opinions which we have noted above and which try to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition are endemic in modern First World archaeological literature on the subject and its followers in India. First World Archaeology, as my long familiarity with it tells me, suffers from a sense of inordinate superiority in relation to the archaeologists of the Third World. By allowing it to enjoy a free run in the country as the present archaeological policy of the government does and by allowing it to set up ‘Indus Centres’ in Vadodara or Pune, grievous damage is being caused to national archaeological scholarship in India.

The writer is emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology, Cambridge University.

Another “Hinduism expert” comes out of woodwork

Here comes another idiot to interpret Hinduism for all of us. Non-Hindus interpreting Hinduism for the Hindus and the world, is rapidly becoming a disease in India. It seems everyone is an authority on Hinduism except Hindus themselves!

Why Hindus should weed out Gita’s message

Communists as interpreters of Hinduism

Here  is an example of communists of JNU interpreting Hinduism for the world. This is what I talked about in my previous post.

A gender bender in the worship of Goddess Lakshmi

“Who was this goddess, the female counterpart of male deities, who did not allow mortal women to worship her freely without the mediation of men? It was only as I became a serious student of social sciences that I began to see the linkages between social perceptions of gender and the gods and goddesses that were part of the Brahminical religious traditions. Caste and community were major factors in her worship,” she says in her religious non-fiction volume, “The Book of Lakshmi”, published by Penguin-Books India this week.

The slim non-fiction book retells the myths surrounding the goddess through a series of illustrations and short stories and poses questions “on the gender bias in the worship rituals of the most feminine of all deities”.

“My interest in studying and understanding the goddesses can be traced back to the time, when as a young child I noticed numerous festivals that centred on the family’s ‘kula devi’. Kanchi Kamakshi, a variation of Lakshmi, generated much excitement among all members of the household,” the writer said, explaining what made her explore the deity.

“Why was my mother not allowed to be a part of the festivities on certain occasions and not allowed in the sacred areas? Why was it that all the ‘paattis’ (grandmothers) with shaven heads and crisp ochre-coloured ’saris’ were not allowed to enter the kitchen on these days? I was also affronted to see my favourite household help severely admonished for entering the house on such occasions,” she said, listing that subtle gender and class faultlines.

“Interestingly, in a number of folk rituals that I have seen, women have no male mediation at all in invoking Lakshmi. So much of female bonding happens on these occasions that the women forget about men,” she said.

According to the writer, “the Brahminical patriarchy creates problems for the goddess”.

In several Tamil Brahmin families, “a ritual called Pendukal is practised. Women in the family, who have died as ’sumangaliks’, that is before being widowed, all called from their heavenly abodes to bless the women of the family so that they may also also die before their husbands as ’sumangaliks’,” she said.

Anthropological studies reveal that in several parts of the Indian subcontinent, “women like to be identified more as Parvathi, Shiva’s consort”, she said.

“In the most popular of myths, Lakshmi is presented seated on a full blown lotus. She is the daughter of the ocean. She holds unfading lotus flowers in her hands,” Mahalakshmi said.

The mascot of the goddess is the owl.

The book, which is almost childlike in the lucidity of its “arguments and style”, is divided into seven chapters — “Lakshmi as the embodiment of wealth and beauty”, “Lakshmi as the daughter of the ocean”, “Sri Lakshmi and other deities”, “Symbols of Lakshmi”, “The Iconography of Lakshmi”, “Lakshmi Festival and Worship” and the “Ashta Lakshmi Stotram and the Kanakdhara Stotram sacred mantra”.

 What are the chances that this commie will write about the fact that in Christianity, God and his son, both are males and there is not a single female in God’s household. Any idea why these Indian communists never scrutinise Xianity or Islam, but only Hinduism?

1000 years of Hindu slavery: How true is it?

The myth of “1000 years of Hindu slavery”
M. R. Vaghela
Hindu Voice UK, 26 September 2009

One thousand years of slavery. Millennia of defeat and domination caused by a dogmatic adherence to the doctrine of ahimsa, preventing an effective resistance to foreign domination. This is what most Hindus are brought up to believe about their history.

These and other such theories are happily put forward as history of Hindus for the past 14 centuries and postulated by self proclaimed scholars from both within and without the Hindu fold. It was something I have heard from my youth and accepted without question.

However some thoughts rankled in my mind. If the Hindus were truly slaves for a thousand years plus, then how have we survived to this day with dignity and honour and with a spiritual tradition stretching back to the mists of time and beyond? Many other cultures, civilisations and spiritual traditions have been reduced to museum pieces, but the words of the Holy Vedas are recited in an identical fashion today as they were thousands of years ago when first revealed to the Rishis. This is no mean achievement. How did Hindus survive and manage to maintain a civilisational identity stretching into the dawn of human history? How was Sanatana Dharma kept alive as a living presence in the world, and indeed regenerated over time if the Hindus were slaves for so long? This impelled me to look for the truth myself, and undertake a study of the history of the Hindu people.

The beginning of Hindus’ “thousand years of slavery” is supposed to have begun with the overrunning of India by Muslims of Arab and Turkish origin. It is popularly believed that Hindus put up a feeble defence and that the Islamic armies had a cake walk through India. If we examine at what actually happened, however, we see that Hindus put up a huge struggle, which was eventually victorious.

Following the death of their founder, Muhammad we see the Arab Khilafat expand swiftly over the Middle and Near East, pouring over the deserts of North Africa and crossing the waters to begin a six century occupation of Spain and beyond. The combined might of Christian Europe struggled again and again to reclaim the ‘holy lands’ to end in bitter failure with the rise of the Ottoman Empire, who ruled over a large part of Eastern Europe for centuries.

On the other side, the lands of Iran, home of the ancient and historical Persian civilisation fell to the yet undefeated Arab warriors and within a short period the indigenous culture becoming extinct or expelled, today being largely the confine of museums and relics. The Arab hordes then pushed into the Indian Subcontinent, land of the Hindus, overwhelming the small desert region of Sindh and then attempted to push and conquer the existing Hindu kingdoms. Here however their advance was stopped. With the inspiration of Sant Gorakhnath the warrior clans of the Rajputs united under their legendary king Bappa Rawal and in a series of Battles known collectively as the Battle of Rajashtan inflicted a heavy defeat on the Arab invaders in 738 CE. Any further advances by the Arabs were repelled, impelling the formation of large organised Hindu states in the centre and west of India. Frustrated by their failures in India the Arabs turned northwards shortly after defeating the Chinese Empire in the Battle of Talas in 751 CE opening the gate for the Islamisation of Central Asia. India remained unaffected for another three hundred years. (the “thousand years of slavery theory” was beginning to shake)

The Islamisation of Central Asia began to grow apace and one by one the ancient Buddhist kingdoms began to totter and fall as tribe after tribe joined the ranks of the growing Muslim religion. The destruction of Buddhism and its centers in the region prompted an exodus towards India, and the conversion of the remaining clans to Islam. The Muslim armies were expanded, filled with the zeal and energy of new converts, who were sent spiraling towards the Middle East to fight the advancing Crusaders under the leadership of Saladin. Another wave of attacks poured towards India resulting in large scale damage and loot from the subcontinent under the leadership of Mahmud of Ghazni around 1000 CE.

Two further centuries passed as further advances were resisted until a breakthrough around 1200 CE allowed the invaders access to the North Indian plains. The remaining Buddhists were slaughtered or converted in an unprecedented orgy of violence and horror. The majority Buddhist regions of Afghanistan, Kashmir and West Punjab joined the crescent banner of Islam. However the conversion of Hindus was slower and the resistance was more fierce. Hindu warrior clans kept up a relentless resistance fighting from the deserts, the mountains and the forests. The heavy cavalry of the Muslim Turks which had proved fatal to the Crusaders of Western Europe were victorious on the plains of North India but this did not prevent an endless cycle of attack and counter attack by the Hindus.

It took nearly another hundred years under the leadership of the infamous Aladdin Khilji for the Muslims Empire firmly established itself in India. This mantle was inherited by the Tughlaqs only to lead to a revival from the Hindu population.

The religious traditions of India had been severely mauled by the endless bloodletting over the past two centuries. Many important institutions and temples were destroyed. Prosperity suffered, as it tends to in times of continuous war. This created a certain weakening of Hindu society. Religion became preserved in rituals which were less and less understood. Sanskrit learning was on the decline. Caste became more rigid.

However, a religious renewal took place in the form of the “Bhakti movement”. A simplified form of Hinduism particularly suitable to the times emerged. A new wave of spiritual teachers preaching that simple devotion and love of God and love of all people and creatures is the simplest root to salvation. A message of defiance and brotherhood from saints and rishis from all corners of India emerged. From Tukram and Namdev from the west of India, from Nanak in Punjab, from Chaitanya in the east and Kabir in the north plus many others, the message of dharma revived itself in the teeth of an implacable enemy. The fearless postulating of the brotherhood of all mankind defied the savagery raging around them as the Turks endeavoured to convert the entire subcontinent to Islam and the Hindus fighting tooth and nail to resist. The Muslim empire seemed to rest on specified military encampments and cities surrounded by a sea of hostile Hindus usually left to their own devices. Hundred of Rajahs and Maharajahs dotted the nation living in virtual independence from the central authorities in which traditions of culture and religion were maintained unchanged through the centuries.

Other larger organised resistance emerged in the Vijaynagara Empire of South India around 1336 CE which consolidated Hindu resistance for over two centuries. In the north the revival of the Rajput kingdoms and the defiance of kings like those of Orissa under the Gajapati Kings, the hills of Punjab under Jasrath Khokhar and the rise of neo Hindu kingdoms in the north east of India along with the entire hill region signaled the revival of Hindu rule over vast tracts of India.

A steady period of Hindu growth then ensued until by the dawn of the 1500’s the southern region of India was dominated by the mighty king of the Vijaynagara Empire, Krishnadevarya and the north by the revival of the valiant Rajputs under the charismatic leadership of Rana Sanga (grandfather of the equally illustrious Rana Pratap).

The tides of history however turned again – with the influx of cannons and other artillery utilised by Babur the Mughal entered into the Indian subcontinent against which the wild charges of the Rajputs and Pathans had no answer. The reckless disregard of their own lives in the defence of dharma saw a series of battles in which the Hindu forces fought quite literally to the last man woman and child, most famously the siege of Chhitor in 1567.

The utter refusal of the Hindus to surrender in the century old tussle with Islam for political control over the subcontinent was a lesson not lost by the new Emperor Akbar. He instead moved away from the tenets of Islam to a new faith of the Din i Ilahi. By following the age old traditions of religious toleration in India he endeared himself to the majority population and through a period of compromise and alliance brought a brief period of peace to the troubled land.

This tenuous alliance was shattered by his descendant Aurangzeb who in his zeal for the establishment of an Islamic state caused an upheaval which left the Mughal Empire fall beyond all hope of repair.

The renewal of the civilisational Hindu-Islam conflict saw the rise of a generation of Sants and holy men inspiring the people for the defence of dharma which saw the might of the Mughals humbled by Rajputs, Marathas, Jats, Satnamis, Ahoms, Sikhs, Bundelas and others. In a cataclysmic wave of defiance the Mughal Empire lay broken and on its ruins rose a number of Hindu states competing for space in the subcontinent.

The inspirational rise of the Maratha king Shivaji and his bold defiance of the Mughal empire in the noontide of its realm is an apt example.

Who did the British wrest control of India from?

When the British came on the Indian scene, it is thought or assumed by many people that he British took control of India from the Mughals. This is not true. In fact, by the time that the British emerged as a major force in India, the Muslim political power in the subcontinent had been virtually cast down.

The situation is best defined by a British author, H.G.Keene

The idea, however, that the British have wrested the Empire from the Mohamadans is a mistake. The Mohamadans were beaten down — almost everywhere except in Bengal — before the British appeared upon the scene; Bengal they would not have been able to hold, and the name of the “Mahratta Ditch” of Calcutta shows how near even the British there were to extirpation by India’s new masters. Had the British not won the battles of Plassey and Buxar, the whole Empire would ere now have become the fighting ground of Sikhs, Rajputs, and Mahrattas and others. Except the Nizam of the Deccan there was not a vigorous Musalman ruler in India after the firman of Farokhsiar in 1716; the Nizam owed his power to the British after the battle of Kurdla in 1795), and it was chiefly British support that maintained the feeble shadow of the Moghul Empire, from the death of Alamgir II. to the retirement of Mr. Hastings. Not only Haidarabad but all the other existing Musalman principalities of modern India owe their existence, directly, or indirectly, to the British intervention.
The march of western civilisation ended the Hindu revival at a time when Hindus exercised control over almost the entire subcontinent. But it took Three wars with the Marathas, Two wars with the Sikhs, two wars with the Gurkhas, war with the Jaats, also smaller ranging wars with the Santhals, Sanyasis and many others – all Hindu rebellions.

Hindus unwillingness to surrender culminated in the huge uprising from the predominantly Hindu sepoys in 1857 which almost brought the British Indian Empire to a swift conclusion being the largest anti colonial uprising in history. The end result was 90 years of imperialist rule. This was matched by a concerted disarming of the population by the British rulers, leaving only select regions free from the disarming which were perceived as loyal to the British under the flawed marital race theory. This theory propagated by the forerunners of the concepts of eugenics and Nazism believed the Indian races could not match the British combination of physical and mental facilities. Thus a large percentage of Hindu population, despite holding sway of almost all of the Indian subcontinent were delegated into the non martial section by the British. Other sections believed to be of sufficient physical abilities (but not mental development) were delegated by the Imperialists as ‘martial races’

This flawed theory was propagated as an absolute truth (still followed by some) and together with the disarming of the population led to the diminishing of the martial spirit amongst Hindus.

However the theories propagated by the British found challengers from the Hindus. Spurred by a revaluation of their history and the knowledge of western theories a new revival began to take fruit. From the universal preaching of Swami Vivekananda to the guns of the Anushilan Samiti the Hindus were at the forefront of a growing anti colonial challenge to the most powerful empire in the world. Finally finding control of the subcontinent untenable in the teeth of endless opposition the British Indian Empire collapsed in a wave of unprecedented bloodshed which has seen a slow and steady spread and reach of the Hindu world.

So again, I was stumped by this ‘thousand years of slavery’ theory. I was even more surprised to find this postulated by otherwise very earnest Hindus in the mistaken belief of their own history.

When examining our history I saw a spirit of defiance stretching over a thousand years in the face of implacable and merciless enemies, who put an end to many other cultures and civilisations. The same forces which had overcome virtually every indigenous civilisation in the world had thrown their entire might against India – and failed.

Attack after attack was defeated. Horrific massacres did not force the people to abandon their religion and identity. The destruction of holy places did not see dharma die but rise again and overcome their opponents with the power of truth. The banner of freedom was raised generation after generation despite the best attempts of some vested parties to blur the truths and sacrifices made again and again.

So 150 years of effective rule by the Muhamadans and 90 years of British rule was suddenly expanded into ‘one thousand years of slavery’ an utterly absurd contention is being bandied about like an absolute truth but has failed to hide the facts that remain unaltered in history.

Ancient faiths like Buddhism and Zoroasterism were almost obliterated from the Middle East, Central Asia and India but the Hindus rose in defiance to emerge even stronger at the end of the blood soaked millennia.

Even well wishers of Hindus, lost in their Victorian outlook on India have propagated the same absurdities in total insult of the enduring Hindu spirit. The spirit is best exemplified by the renowned historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar when talking of the legendary Maratha king Shivaji:

He [Shivaji] has proved that the Hindus can still produce not only clerks and soldiers but rulers of men. (…) Shivaji proved that the tree of Hinduism is not really dead – that it rose from the seemingly crushing load of centuries of attack and put forth new leaves and lifted its head to the skies.

Why the Church hates Hinduism

The reason why the church hates Hinduism is that the depth of Hindu philosophy — with its spiritual insights collected over 5,000 years by thousands of meditative sages, its universalism, its tolerance, its vastness of scope, its democracy of thought – offers a formidable threat to the simplistic and shallow “true god, false god” philosophy on which Chritianity and Islam are based.

Hinduism has no founder. It is merely a collection of deep spiritual insights collected since 4000 BC by thousands of sages who sharpened their mind and intellect through yoga techniques. After decades of practice, gradually their mind developed a penetrative power to absorb the nature of the ultimate reality. They began to get flashes of insight with their eyes closed. That is why the central percept of Hinduism is: “Close your eyes and see. The truth you long for is inside you.”

Hinduism is thus nothing but what thousands of yoga practitioners over thousands of years have discovered on their own about who we are, where we are going, why were we born, what happens to us after we die and why some people suffer while others enjoy. The answers are found in Hinduism but it may take a lifetime of study.

As you go deeper into Hindu philosophy, a strange kind of peace and contentment takes over which makes you self-satisfied and indifferent to pleasure and pain. You live in this world but the world does not live in you. Hinduism uplifts you and you are contented to stay alone, savouring the inner quiet and peace. This is why Hindu sages never look for a mass of followers. They prefer to retreat to the forests and stay alone. Spiritual peace is their best company. 

 Hinduism appeals to sophisticated minds while Christianity and Islam cater to primitive minds which can only bear the burden of their existence by creating comforting delusions. The Semitic faiths appeal to the poision that exists in the psyche of all of us in which you consider everyone else as beneath contempt . As people evolve, liberate themselves mentally and learn to think freely without any self-imposed limits, the philosopy of Hinduism begins to appeal to them. Like what is happening in America today.

America, a Hindu nation?
By Brad Pfeiffer/ Progressive Voice
The Sun-Times
Sat Sep 19, 2009, 05:00 PM CDT

Heber Springs, Ark. -

Out at the dance hall a while back, a friend told me that he used to be religious until he took a philosophy course in college. I could relate to that. History and cultural studies often have a similar effect. All those early Greek and Roman gods must have been pretty important at one time, but most of us pass them off as mythology these days. In fact, I’d say that most of us are atheists when it comes to gods and goddesses like Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, etc. Over the history of man, I suppose that thousands of different religions have come and gone.

In the August 24 & 31, 2009 issue of Newsweek, I was drawn to an article by Lisa Miller titled “We Are All Hindus Now.” Hindus believe there are many paths to God. By Ms Miller’s interpretation, America has conceptually become more of a Hindu society than a Christian society. She refers to a 2008 Pew Forum survey which shows that 65 percent of us believe that many religions can lead to eternal life. The survey showed that 37 percent of white evangelicals claim to believe that, too.

I’m really not surprised by that last fact, although I wonder if we’d get the same results if the poll were to be taken here in Heber Springs. Around here, there seems to be an abundance of shirtsleeve Christians who preach that the only way to get eternal life after death is by believing in Jesus. In fact, these zealots say that you will burn in hell if you don’t believe in Jesus.

I don’t claim any personal knowledge about these things, and of course, religious matters are beyond the realm of scientific testability. So it’s certainly understandable why rationalists tend to shrug their shoulders and move along with eyes glazed over.

Nevertheless, religion is undeniably important because, for one reason, it is so often used by politicians to manipulate behavior.

According to Ms Miller, “Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the ‘self,’ and that at the end time they will be reunited in the Resurrection.” OK, maybe I slept through that part of my Lutheran indoctrination. But Hindus believe no such thing, Ms Miller explains, and burn the dead body on a pyre. The spirit escapes and gets reincarnated in different bodies. Since 24 percent of Americans now say they believe in reincarnation and more than a third of Americans now choose cremation (up from 6 percent in 1975), Ms Miller sees more evidence that we are becoming more like Hindus.

I told my wife that if I die before her, she should cremate my body or donate it to one of the medical schools. If I could be ground up and converted into some kind of feed, fertilizer or clean-burning fuel that would be fine with me, too.

I just want to be useful after my death. These ideas aren’t based on any religious belief, but rather my very conservative nature. I know that’s a damaged label these days, but I’m talking about “conservative” in the proper and good sense of the word.

You see, I think I will hate waste as long as I exist. I’m the guy who gets ticked off when my guests throw away perfectly good food or drink. So I can’t see why my wife should spend lots of money over my death, putting thousands of dollars into a grave plot, stone, casket, service, etc. I’d rather see her use our money to help her sustain a comfortable lifestyle—something she deserves from years and years of hard work and putting up with me.

Though I won’t give two hoots to support anyone’s superstitions, I try to be respectful (as you can tell) since religious matters are very important to many people.

I’ve thought for a long time that we can learn and open our minds by studying various cultures and religions. America, after all, still thrives on cultural and religious diversity—in spite of the Religious Wrong culture warriors. It seems to me that those who try to impose their own cultural narrowness on all of America do us no favors.

My impression is that cultural hardliners—such as those who wish to impose one religion on all of America—are often struggling with some kind of personal insecurity, are politically or financially motivated, or are just confused or manipulated. I see cultural and religious diversity as a strength.

If more Americans are turning to Hinduism, maybe it’s a good thing: The Hindus I’ve met are all very kind, humble and polite people. In contrast, it seems that I’m too often snubbed and/or called nasty names by self-identified Christians who clearly project an air that they are too good to associate with me.

Of course, there are all types of Christians and I certainly would not condemn an entire religion based on some very rude people—no more than any rational person would condemn all of Islam because of the bad apples that hit us on 9-11. But I do remember from Lutheran school that we were taught to be civil and well-behaved because our behavior, we were told, was a reflection on the church—a valuable lesson.

(Brad Pfeiffer of Heber Springs is one of the local contributors to Progressive Voice, a “liberal viewpoint” column which runs each Friday.)

The church was spooked by the Hare Krishna movement that swept the West in 60s and 70s, the visit of Vivekananda to America and the admiration of Western intellectuals in 19th century when the Hindu sacred literature was first translated into English. To counter the appeal of Hinduism to White Christians, the church developed a strategy — it tried to become the main source of information and interpreter about what Hinduism is. 

The church has funded and put in place a range of hitorians, anthropologists and “experts” who write books and explanations about Hinduism. These are then pushed into libraries, bookshops and universities of the West. This odious lieterature of bogus scholarship — with misinterpretations,  wrong conclusions and outright lies — is written in such a way as to create contempt in the minds of the readers about Hinduism and give an impression that it is something primitive and uncivilised which they should steer clear of. This is the main trick of the church that it has been playing to kill Hinduism. The westerns are simply being lied to.

People like Michael Witzel and Wendy Dongier and even Discovery and NatGeo channels — the “experts” and “interpreters” of Hinduism — are a part of this network.  This is why their output constantly outrages the Hindus, forcing them to sue.

(Hindus worship cows, Ganesha’s trunk represents a limp phallus, Shiva Linga is a penis, Ganesh has sexual design on Paravati, Rama Krishna Paramhansa was a gay, caste system is a part of Hindu religion, etc. — this output is generated by the church agents acting as historians, experts, linguists, etc. and then dished out with a flourish to Westerners.) 

Have you wondered why American universities appoint communist professors such as Romila Thapar as visiting professors of Indian history and Hinduism, and why do they never approach the learned Pandits of Varanasi for the post? Why do they choose leftists / communists and shun the real pandits who are an authority on Hinduism? Most American universities have a heavy influence of Christian bigots and they play the same trick of choosing the “right interpreters.”

Hindus should interpret Hinduism to other people themselves, and not allow church agents and their hired Indian communist professors to interpret Hinduism on their behalf to the world. “Learn Hinduism from the Hindus, not from the church” should be the sales pitch. Just tell the world about the spiritual insights of our sages, and that should be enough.

One of the best resources for beginners to know what Hinduism is all about is http://www.hinduwisdom.info/contents.htm

Religion of Love doing What it Does Best

This must be an example of the famous “Christian persecution” in Orissa.

Two arrested for throwing beef at idol

Rourkela, Oct 4 (PTI) Two persons were arrested for allegedly throwing beef at an idol of Goddess Laxmi at a community puja pandal in Orissa’s Sundargarh district today, police said.

Fransis Ekka and Ajit Munda were arrested for their alleged involvement in the incident at Bolonda village about 25 kms from here, they said.

According to police, the two men along with one of their friend had slaughtered a cow before throwing its meat on the idol.

Police have recovered about two kg of beef from the pandal.

Earleir, a large number of locales blocked a road for several hours to protest against the incident.

Security has been steeped up at the village to maintain law and order and efforts to nab the third culprit were on, police said.

Jihad in Gita: TOIlet’s latest salvo against Hinduism

A Devious Attempt to Equate Gita with Quran       

By Ram Ohri

Recently a very clumsy attempt was made to downgrade the Gita during an interactive discourse organized by  Times of India on a quixotic topic, ‘Jihad in the Gita and the Quran’. The title of the debate implied that the doctrine of jihad has been preached both in the Gita and the Quran  -  something totally false and highly offensive to Hindu ethos.  The participants were Maulana Wahiduddin and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, while the well known columnist, Narayani Ganesh,  acted as moderator.
First things first. The scriptural soul of Hinduism, the Gita, does not preach, nor even remotely mentions, anything comparable to the Islamic doctrine of jihad which is  a permanent holy war against all non-Muslims, as ordained in Islamic scriptures.  It is difficult, nay impossible, to fathom the intent of Times of India group to select such a wonky theme suggesting that jihad has been sanctioned in Hindu scriptures, too !. There is no moral equivalence between what Gita preaches and what Quran ordains. The choice of the subject of the discourse shows total mental bankruptcy because it tries to equate the two incomparable scriptures.  Apparently the leading lights of Times of India group as well as Narayani Ganesh  have neither read the Gita, nor Quran. Otherwise they would not have ventured to wade into the minefield of  jihad which has tormented  innumerable civilisations and countless countries for centuries and taken toll of crores of  innocent lives. The attempt to underline some kind of  spiritual equivalence between the Gita and the Quran is nothing short of  an affront to sacred Hindu beliefs, nay to the Gita, itself.

It is a pity that Sri Sri could not see through the clever game being played by the sham-secularist newspaper to bring down Gita to the level of jihadi orthopraxy, enshrined in the Quran. Nor could he rebut the inane profanity hidden in the theme. The Gita does not command Hindus to kill all non-Hindus, or for that matter, not even atheists. Sri Krishna advised a wavering Arjuna at Kurukshetra to wage war in the cause of righteousness and justice, and nothing more. Even after explaining the import of ‘dharma’ and righteousness, Sri Krishna left the final choice about taking up arms to Arjuna, saying that it was for him to make the correct decision, in accordance with ‘dharma’.

On the other hand,  Jihad is not, repeat not, merely a struggle with one’s self, as claimed by Maulana Wahiduddin. It is Islam’s holy war against ‘kaffirs” (in Indian context read Hindus) as ordained in the Quran  Importance of  jihad has been highlighted by M.J. Akbar, in his tome, The Shade of  Swords, where in the Introduction itself he has reiterated that “jihad is the signature tune of Islamic history”1.  Elaborating the Islamic doctrine he says that  though the Prophet did say that the ‘greater’ jihad (i.e., jihad-e-akbar) was the struggle to cleanse the impurity within,  it was the lesser jihad (i.e., jihad-e-asghar) which had “powered the armies of  Islam and made them all conquering”.2   For Muslims, M.J. Akbar, continues, jihad is not  merely a question of  cleansing the inner spirit;  it is also a call for  holy war  regularly heard since the beginning of  Islam.  He has drawn pointed attention to the saying by the Prophet himself  that  “Paradise comes under the shade of  swords”3.  A similar message was conveyed to his jihadi hordes by Osama bin Laden during an interview on CNN news channel on May 10, 1997, when he proclaimed  that the acme of  this religion (i.e., Islam) was jihad.  M.J. Akbar’s exposition of  jihad is a clear rebuttal of  the falsehood being preached by Maulana Wahiduddin and several others to hoodwink the gullible Hindus.

The claim of Maulana that jihad has nothing to do with the concept of holy war against infidels is again comprehensively rebutted by the well known exposition of jihad by  Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid (a former Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia) in  his commentary titled, ‘Jihad in  the Quran and Sunnah’. The learned scholar, an acknowledged authority on Islam, emphasizes that  Allah has ordained that Al-jihad (i.e., the holy fighting in Allah’s cause) should be carried out by  the following three means :

•·         with the heart (i.e., intentions or feelings) ;

•·         with the hand  (ie., with weapons, etc.) ;  and

•·         with the tongue (i.e., by speeches and preachings, in the cause of Allah). 
Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid further elaborates that Allah will reward all those who participate in jihad with lofty dwellings in the Garden of Paradise.3   He  clearly states that jihad, or fighting in the cause of Allah, is superior to non-obligatory prayers, fasting, Zakat, Umra and  even Haj.  As explained in Sahi Muslim No. 4696, Abu Huraira, an important companion of  the Messenger of Allah, had emphasized that the Prophet had declared that  a Muslim who  died, but did not fight in the way of Allah, nor did express any desire or determination  for jihad died the death of a hypocrite.4   A similar message for waging a holy war against infidels  is contained in  Verse 74 of  Surah Nisi which says that whosoever fights in the way of Allah, be he slain or victorious, on him we shall bestow a vast  reward.  Logically a taqiyah practicing cleric like Maulana Wahiduddin should have been confronted with Verse 8.12 and Verse 74 which openly preach jihad through terrorizing the so-called infidels. But unfortunately Sri Sri failed to do so perhaps because of  his lack of  knowledge about the Quran and the doctrine of jihad. The conceptual framework of jihad has been lucidly enunciated in Surah Anfal, namely the eighth Sura (i.e., chapter and 9th Surah titled ‘Taubah’ of  the Quran, although this holy war has been enjoined on the faithful in many other chapters also. In fact, there are more than 200 verses in the Quran exhorting the Muslims to wage a holy war against the infidels.

More importantly the doctrine of jihad has at least four major components, e.g., forcible conversion of  the so-called ‘kaffirs’ on pain of death, the scriptural sanction for ‘slaughter in the land’ in verse 8.67 after defeating the kaffirs and recourse to ghanima which means plunder and seizure of the property of the vanquished kaffirs, including carrying away of their women and children. A typical example of the ‘slaughter in the land’ was the beheading of  nearly 800 Jews, chained and menacled, under supervision of Prophet Muhammad, in the public square of  Medina in the year 627 A.D., after the Battle of  Ditch.  Another example  is from Indian history when after Muhammad bin Qasim’s victory over Raja Dahir of  Sind, when  Hajjaj reminded  bin Qasim of  the Prophet’s commandment :”Give no quarter to infidels but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God. You shall not be  too ready to grantprotection, because it will prolong your work”.5    The fourth important component of jihad is the imposition of ‘jiziya’ or  poll tax on the so-called ‘dhimmies’, i.e., non-Muslims living under protection of  the Muslim rulers. Originally meant for only Christians and Jews (the people of the Book) later on it was extended to ‘kaffir’ Hindus also. Otherwise the Quranic punishment for  ‘kaffirs’ is death and destruction.

The scriptural sanction for enjoying the spoils of war, including carrying away of  women and children of  the vanquished ‘kaffirs’ is accorded in verse 8.69 of  Surah Anfal which says “Eat ye the spoils of war.  They are  lawful and pure”. Thus the Quran proclaims that there is nothing improper about  plunder and enjoying the spoils of war; it is a mujahid’s  prerogative. The only condition imposed is that ‘holy’ one-fifth of the spoils of  war (including the captive women) must be sent to the Prophet,  and after him, to the Caliph as his share of the war booty.  The command about treatment to be meted out to the plundered womenfolk is contained in  verse 4.24 which asserts :  ” All married women are forbidden  (to you) save those (captives)  whom your right hand possesses.”6     Obviously, they are to be used as concubines, as indeed they have been throughout history..  

Interestingly, Islam has a doctrine of using deception and telling lies to further the cause of Islam. It is called “Taqiyah”, or recourse to deception, which is duly sanctioned in Verse 16.106, which approves that under certain circumstances and Muslim can tell a lie (in the cause of Islam) for which no action will lie against him. ‘Taqiyah’ is also approved  in many more Verses , namely 16.106, 3.28, 2.225 and 66.2. Explaining the utility of taqiyah Sahi Bukhari recounts the assassination of a poet, Ka’b bin al-Ashraf under orders of the Prophet.7 The men who volunteered to murder Ka’b used deception to gain the poet’s trust by pretending that they had turned against Prophet Muhammad in order to draw the victim out of his fortress  and then killed him.  Sahi Bukhari 84:64-65 categorically affirms that Hazrat Ali had confirmed that lying is permissible in order to deceive the enemy.8 .  No wonder Maulana Wahiduddin and many others like him keep on confounding gullible Hindus, even Hindu seers, through their lectures laced with taqiyah.

Sadly the wayward discourse clearly highlighted that Sri Sri  Ravi Shankar has not read the Quran at all.  More importantly the discourse further showed his astonishing inability to comprehend what Sri Krishna had preached at Kurukshetra which was in no way comparable to the doctrine of jihad enunciated in the Quran.  He failed to point out that Gita preaches the concept of righteousness while doing one’s ‘karmic’ duty, above everything else. But Gita does not sanction the  senseless killings of  the kind which are ordained in innumerable verses of  the Quran. Nor does Gita sanction plunder after victory, nor the carrying away of the hapless women and children of those vanquished in war and sharing them as ‘war booty’.

Perhaps due to his inadequate knowledge of  the Quran and the Hadith, or sheer timidity, Sri Sri could not rebut the bogus contention of  Maulana Wahiduddin that  jihad means nothing more than trying to control one’s desires and that  some Muslims presently  engaged in “violent activities which they claim to be jihad”  should be ignored because “these people belong to non-governmental organizations”.   How is it that all these non-State actors like Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Jasih-e-Muhammad, Taliban, Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, etc., responsible for killing thousands of innocents, are a speciality of  Islamic States like Pakistan, Iran,  Syria, Palestine, etc ?   What is most important is that all these non-state actors are the creation of various Islamic governments who invariably support them in their nefarious activities.

Before closing  this rejoinder it must be pointed out that the notorious July 2008 e-mail circulated by Indian Mujahideen had quoted verbatim three Ayats of Quran (in Arabic along with English translation) exhorting the faithful to kill the infidels. After pouring enormous ridicule on Hindu Gods and Goddesses, they had  commanded the Hindus to convert to Islam failing which they shall be slaughtered as surely as their forbears had been by Muhammad bin Qasi, Mahmud Ghazanvi and Muhammad Ghauri in the past. And within four months Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s ten fidayeens carried out the notorious Mumbai Massacre of  26 /11 in which nearly 180 innocents were slaughtered, a ghastly event about which a threat had been duly administered by Indian Mujahideen.  That shows the ugly face of  the  Islamic doctrine of jihad. It is a shame that the preaching of  righteous war by Sri Krishna at Kurukshetra is sought to be  equated by Times of  India group and  Narayani Ganesh  with  what  Indian  Mujahideen had  vowed to do the killings and which hey actually did, in accordance with the Quranic verses.  

A much greater shame, however, is the gullibility of Hindu preachers like Sri Sri to acquiesce in the falsehood being propagated to equate the Gita, both morally and spiritually, with the Quran.  My humble advice to Sri Sri and other Hindu seers is that either they should read in great detail the Quran and the Hadith along with two authentic commentaries, Sahi Bukhari and Sahi Muslim, or  they should scruplously refrain from participating in such weird discourses often organized by the sham-secularist groups and individuals to denigrate Hindu ethos and morally equate “adharma” with ‘dharma”.

Bigotry of Italians

In Rome, Durga is not welcome

Kanchan Gupta

What does it mean to celebrate Durga Puja in Rome? It means to be humiliated, harassed and hounded by city officials who happen to be pious Christians. Alright, I could be utterly wrong in presuming they are pious since I have no independent confirmation of their piety or otherwise. But let’s get back to the question with which I began. Late Thursday night I was at the park near my house where the local Bengalis organise Durga Puja every year. It’s a raucous celebration of faith and culture. The food stalls are invariably hugely popular and there I was with my nine-year-old daughter, standing in a queue for kathi rolls. After what seemed like an interminable wait, it was our turn to be served. Just then my BlackBerry beeped. Balancing the piping hot rolls, dripping oil, tomato ketchup, green chilli sauce and lemon juice, in one hand, I tried to read the e-mail on my handset.

No luck. I got shoved around, nearly dropped both rolls and my phone, and decided to let the e-mail wait. Later, away from the crowd, I checked the e-mail and it was a fascinating story. Since the identity of the person who had sent the mail is not really relevant, let me reproduce the text: “The Municipal Police authorities of Rome have today withdrawn permission, granted three weeks ago, to celebrate Durga Puja in Rome. The cancellation came a few hours before the Ambassador of India was scheduled to inaugurate the Puja at 8 pm local time. No acceptable explanation has been given. This has caused the local Indian community the loss of thousands of Euros spent in preparatory arrangements. The same thing was done in the same manner in 2008 also. Please monitor developments.”

Now that’s awful, I told myself, here I am having kathi rolls and there they can’t even celebrate their own festival. On Friday, I called a friend in Rome who provided me with the latest details. Our Ambassador, Mr Arif Shahid Khan, a feisty man who has in the past taken up the issue of Sikhs being forced to take off their turbans at Italian airports, campaigned throughout the day, calling up officials, including the Mayor of Rome, and contacting members of the ‘Friends of India’ group in the Italian Parliament, arguing with them why permission for the Puja should be restored. By evening, the authorities had reversed their order and permission was granted to celebrate Durga Puja, which will now begin on Saturday, Ashtami — a full 48 hours behind schedule. Provided, of course, there is no last minute cancellation, as it happened on Thursday. Mr Khan will inaugurate the Puja, an honour he richly deserves.

The story behind the cancellation needs to be told, if only to point out that Christian countries in the West, whose Governments so blithely criticise the ‘lack’ of ‘religious freedom’ in India, have no compunctions about trampling on Hindu sentiments at home. After last year’s experience, when permission for celebrating Durga Puja in Rome was abruptly withdrawn by officials who cited specious reasons to justify their grossly unfair decision, the organisers, led by Mr Rajesh Sahani, a Sindhi from Kolkata who speaks flawless Bengali, took ample precautions this year. They were given permission to organise the Puja at Parko Centocelle, a public park on Via Cailina, Torpignattara. Three weeks ago, permission was granted for the Puja at the park and necessary formalities were completed.

Early this past week, the Puja organisers were told they could not use the park as a crime had been committed there and the location posed security-related problems. The organisers agreed to change the venue. Another park was selected, permission was given to celebrate Durga Puja there, and the preparations began all over again in right earnest. Then, like a bolt from the blue, at 4 pm on Thursday came the withdrawal of permission by the Municipal Police. The organisers were bluntly told to pack up and leave hours before Durga Puja was scheduled to begin with Akal Bodhon in the evening. Why? No reason was proffered.

Some officials are believed to have told the organisers that the cancellation of permission at the eleventh hour, both last year and this year, was meant to be “retaliatory action against the persecution of Christians in India”. It may be recalled that the President of Italy, Mr Giorgio Napoletano, has been vociferous in demanding that Europe should do more in support of Christians in India and to help them ‘affirm their right to religious freedom’. The Government of Italy has in the past summoned the Ambassador of India to convey to him that it has “deep concern and sensitivity for the ongoing inter-religious violence… that has caused the death of many Christians.” The Pope has been no less harsh in denouncing India.

There could be another reason, apart from its “deep concern” about the welfare of Christians in India, for Italy’s callous disregard of the sentiments of Hindus in that country. Although the Italian Constitution guarantees religious freedom, under the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, Italy recognises only the three religions of Semitic origin — Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All other religions are no more than paganism and are to be shamed and shunned. The Vatican would not countenance any open breach of the Lateran Treaty; Italy would not want to be seen as recognising Hinduism.

“It’s only natural that Italy should have a surfeit of churches. But it’s the rejection of any other faith than Christianity, Judaism and Islam that explains why there are so many mosques but virtually no temples in Italy although this country has a large Hindu expatriate population,” my friend told me while regretting the attitude of the Government and the local authorities. According to him, there are only three temples in Italy: One in a garage in Venice; another at Frescolo and the third at Reggio Emilia. These survive at the mercy of local zoning officials.

But for Mr Arif Shahid Khan’s pro-active involvement — most Ambassadors tend to stay aloof from community affairs — this year too there would have been no Durga Puja in Rome. Indians in Italy owe him a debt of gratitude. So do Bangladeshis who are equal participants in this annual celebration of dharma’s victory over adharma, of the triumph of good over evil. Cultural and linguistic affinities unite Bengalis, irrespective of whether they are from the west or east of Padma, during this autumnal festival celebrated around the world.

Meanwhile, let’s not get carried away by the West’s bilious and bogus criticism of ‘lack of’ religious freedom in India and indulge in self-flagellation. Let the West look at its own ugly, septic warts. If Christians can celebrate Christmas in New Delhi, Hindus have the right to celebrate Durga Puja in Rome. This is non-negotiable.

Aryan-Dravidian racist theory trashed again by genetic evidence

Aryan-Dravidian divide a myth: Study
TNN 25 September 2009, 01:16am IST

HYDERABAD: The great Indian divide along north-south lines now stands blurred. A pathbreaking study by Harvard and indigenous researchers on ancestral Indian populations says there is a genetic relationship between all Indians and more importantly, the hitherto believed “fact” that Aryans and Dravidians signify the ancestry of north and south Indians might after all, be a myth.

“This paper rewrites history… there is no north-south divide,” Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study, said at a press conference here on Thursday.

Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.

The study analysed 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups from 13 states. All the individuals were from six-language families and traditionally “upper” and “lower” castes and tribal groups. “The genetics proves that castes grew directly out of tribe-like organizations during the formation of the Indian society,” the study said. Thangarajan noted that it was impossible to distinguish between castes and tribes since their genetics proved they were not systematically different.

The study was conducted by CCMB scientists in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Medical School,
Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It reveals that the present-day Indian population is a mix of ancient north and south bearing the genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations – the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI).

“The initial settlement took place 65,000 years ago in the Andamans and in ancient south India around the same time, which led to population growth in this part,” said Thangarajan. He added, “At a later stage, 40,000 years ago, the ancient north Indians emerged which in turn led to rise in numbers here. But at some point of time, the ancient north and the ancient south mixed, giving birth to a different set of population. And that is the population which exists now and there is a genetic relationship between the population within India.”

The study also helps understand why the incidence of genetic diseases among Indians is different from the rest of the world. Singh said that 70% of Indians were burdened with genetic disorders and the study could help answer why certain conditions restricted themselves to one population. For instance, breast cancer among Parsi women, motor neuron diseases among residents of Tirupati and Chittoor, or sickle cell anaemia among certain tribes in central India and the North-East can now be understood better, said researchers.

The researchers, who are now keen on exploring whether Eurasians descended from ANI, find in their study that ANIs are related to western Eurasians, while the ASIs do not share any similarity with any other population across the world. However, researchers said there was no scientific proof of whether Indians went to Europe first or the other way round.

Migratory route of Africans

Between 135,000 and 75,000 years ago, the East-African droughts shrunk the water volume of the lake Malawi by at least 95%, causing migration out of Africa. Which route did they take? Researchers say their study of the tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands using complete mitochondrial DNA sequences and its comparison those of world populations has led to the theory of a “southern coastal route” of migration from East Africa through India.

This finding is against the prevailing view of a northern route of migration via Middle East, Europe, south-east Asia, Australia and then to India.

It is only a matter of time before it is proved that it is actually Indians which went from India to Europe and not the other way round. When that happens, the foundations of Western civilisation will shake. The Witzel and Romila Thapar school of charlatans is fighting a losing battle against modern science.

Gandhi didn’t have a monopoly on India’s freedom struggle — there were others too

More Than Just The Mahatma

By Sanjeev Nayyar in ‘Hindustan Times’ Mumbai, 24/9/2007

Savarkar, Subhas Bose and Bhagat Singh left a legacy that India can be proud of. A re-evaluation of Gandhi’s role in India’s independence is necessary to give other leaders due credit.

IN HIS article, ‘Our violent streak’ (Sept 7), Ramachandra Guha would have us to believe that India got freedom because of Gandhi’s Ahimsa, that violent revolution is bad and its advocates-cum-practioners, Veer Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, though adored by large sections of today’s society, were mere revolutionaries who could not have brought the democratic reforms that non-violent politicians brought to independent India.

This article contradicts Guha’s rendition of history. It tells you why the British gave India freedom, enunciates (i) the philosophy of Ahimsa, (ii) Veer Savarkar’s contribution to freedom struggle and his vision of India. It looks at the contribution of Bose and Savarkar factually and not through the prism of the left or the right.

Firstly, did Ahimsa give India independence? No.

It was none other than Lord Clement Atlee, the British Prime Minster responsible for conceding independence to India, who shattered the myth that Gandhi and his movement gave India freedom. Chief Justice P.B. Chakrabarty of Calcutta High Court, who had also served as the acting Governor of West Bengal in India, disclosed the following in a letter addressed to the publisher of Dr. R.C. Majumdar’s book ‘A History of Bengal’. The CJ wrote: “My direct question to him was that since Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji. Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee’s lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, “m-i-n-i-m-a-l!” ((Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army, and the War of India’s Liberation-Ranjan Borra, Journal of Historical Review, no. 3, 4 (Winter 1982)).

Atlee’s thoughts were echoed by Mr. Fenner Brockway, political secretary of the Independent Labor Party of England, “There were three reasons why India became free. One, the Indian people were determined to gain independence. Two, was the revolt by the Indian Navy. Three, three Britain did not want to estrange India, which was a market and source of foodstuffs for her”.

By the way, what did the concept of “Ahimsa” as expounded by Gandhi mean? “When a person claims to be non-violent, he is expected not to be angry with one who has injured him. He will not wish him harm; he will not cause him physical hurt. Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives”. (History and Culture of Indian People Vol 11).
 
Sri Aurobindo said on Ahimsa, “You can live it in spiritual life, but to apply it to all life is absurd”.

Gandhi did precisely that and more by stretching the ideology of Ahimsa to a ludicrous extent. Few know that when Great Britain braced itself to face a German invasion in the mid-1940 Gandhi published an ‘open letter’ to ‘every Briton’ urging “cessation of hostilities”. Excerpts: “No cause, however just, can warrant the indiscriminate slaughter that is going on minute by minute…I do not want Britain to be defeated, nor do I want her to be victorious in a trial of brute strength…I want you to fight Nazism without arms”. (H.M.Seervai, noted constitutional authority, in “Introduction” pp. 143-144 of his book “Constitutional Law of India”, Supplement to Third Edition, 1988)

Speaking on the Defence Budged in the Lok Sabha in 1957 noted Gandhian Acharya Kriplani said in the Lok Sabha, “The mounting expenses on the Army must be cut down. The followers of Gandhi and adherents of universal peace should not increase military expenditure”. What followed was the humiliation of 1962 in the war against China’s invasion of India.

Now turn to Savarkar whom Guha portrays as a violent revolutionary and nothing more.  In reality, Veer Savarkar was a strategic thinker, author, social reformer and rationalist.

It was Savarkar who, during World War II, encouraged Indians to join the army, firmly convinced that Indians must be strong in military terms. In a manner of speaking, he was the forerunner of Bose. It was he, not Gandhi, who first lit the swadeshi bonfire of foreign clothes in Pune on 7th October 1905. (Ironically, Gandhi criticized that action from far away in Phoenix, South Africa although he himself did precisely that 16 years later.)

 To pull down the steel walls of orthodoxy, Savarkar brought untouchables into the hall of the Vithoba temple in Ratnagiri district. Being a rationalist he asked Indians to test the knowledge of their ancient books on the touchstone of science. If modernists love him, as Guha concedes, it is not because of Savarkar’s violent defiance of the British rulers but because he suffered unimaginable mental and physical torture as their prisoner in the cellular jail in the Andaman Islands; it was suffering of the kind that Gandhi never had to undergo. Even after the British left, Nehru was grossly allergic to the man and falsely implicated him in the Gandhi assassination case without even prima facie evidence.

It is because Indians admire courage and bravery that Savarkar, Bose and Bhagat Singh continue to be revered. Our failure to admire them would mean disowning the legacy of Chandragupta Maurya (a Jain), Maharana Pratap, Shivaji, and Guru Gobind Singh!

Guha makes it out that leaders like Savarkar and Bose had narrow views on democracy or economics. Excerpts from Savarkar’s writings on independent India show that he was a realist and democrat, “In India, all citizens would have equal rights and obligations irrespective of caste, creed, race or religion provided they avow and owe an exclusive and devoted allegiance to the State. The key industries or manufactures and such other items would be altogether nationalized if the National Government could afford to do so and could conduct them more efficiently than private enterprise”. Veer Savarkar by Dhananjay Keer.
 
Bose was more than a thoughtless, violent revolutionary as Guha implies. Wish he had read Mihir Bose’s biography on Bose titled “The lost hero: A biography of Subhas Bose” Quartet Books (1982). The author shows that of all the leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, it was only Bose who had the foresight and vision to think of a viable liberation struggle and plan for the country’s development in the post-independence.  

Gandhi had admirable qualities but the problem was that he wanted to be everything to everyone. With Tilak’s death in 1920 he assumed leadership of the Hindus. Through the Khilafat Movement in 1921 he tried to enlist the Muslims. When Ambedkar championed the cause of the Depressed Classes he sought to become their leader too, coined the term Harijan. For a brand to be successful the consumer must be clear about its attributes, what it stands for. So also for a leader!

The real reason for Kanchi seer’s arrest

Secular assault on the Sacred        
R Vaidyanathan 

 There was a small news item dated 4 August 2009 in some newspapers, stating that the prosecution witnesses in the case pertaining to the Kanchi seer are turning hostile and the case itself might be revealed to be a foisted one. The time period for which a sacred institution has been humiliated and the assault the state conducted on an age old tradition needs introspection by us all.

The day I read a news item that Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Sarasvati entered a Harijan slum, I commented to a friend, ‘he has written his own arrest warrant.’ My friend did not understand. Many of us are totally ignorant about the functioning of the Secular State in a country like India, a point we shall return to later.

There was a debate on his arrest on the NDTV show “We the people,” anchored by Ms. Burka Dutt on 5 December 2004. It was pathetic to see the audience pleading that the Swamiji be treated like Pappu Yadav or Taslimuddin, that law is the same for every one. One “rationalist” suggested the seer be permanently parked inside Vellore Jail as a devotee said the seer’s presence would purify the jail.

This attack on this sacred institution must be understood in the broader context of the threat to Hindu civilization from the so-called neutral secular state.

Is this attack a stray case? Indications are that it is not. There is a demand that the Pejawar Mutt at Udupi be taken over and the Sri Krishna Temple be administered by the government.

The demand is due to the claim that the memory of Kanaka Dasa, a sixteenth century poet and devotee of Sri Krishna, belonging to the Kuruba community, has been insulted by the Matham. Again it is pertinent to note that the Pejawar Swami mingled with Harijans and is a major campaigner for social harmony and removal of untouchability. He is active in the fields of education and in the forefront of the movement to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya.

When the Mulavar becomes Reformer, fear grips the State

In our tradition, there are two types of Mathams. One is what we can loosely call the Mulavar or similar to the God in the garbha griha, and the other is Utsavar or similar to the God who is taken in procession around the temple. The Utsavar is well dressed and the presentable face of Hindu sampradayas. The second category of Seers will know English, will know how to handle the press, how to give television interviews; sometimes they are also globe-trotters.

They represent the “brand image” of the Santana Dharma, if one may use the term. In a sense, they are secular and would most often talk of the “oneness” of all religions, without knowing the implications. Some, due to their secular dealings, get into problems with the State either in India or abroad, as in the case of Rajneesh. One can categorise Ammachi, Sri Sri, Rajneesh and Mahesh Yogi in this category.

The former category is the Mathams like that of Sankara or Madhava, which till recently were completely unconcerned about this-worldly issues and focused only on the Dharma. Mathams like in Sringeri or Kanchi or Udupi derive their strength from a long lineage and the original founders like Adi Sankara or Madhavacharya

The secular state was tolerant of these sacred symbols as long as these were separate from the laukika issues. This is because these mathams derived their legitimacy from their position and not to any secular support. Once some Mathams began to get into social reform or education or health care, the secular state was upset because the actions of these seers carries phenomenal conviction among the poorer strata and de-legitimizes the hegemony of politicians and bureaucrats over poverty or caste-oriented issues. In the case of the secular-Utsava seers, the state is not unduly concerned as they are mostly individuals with charisma but do not have a hoary tradition and thousands of years of legitimacy.

Conversion or Casteless

This is the backdrop in which the Kanchi Seer tried to solve secular problems using his sacred institution. When he tried to reach out to Harijans, exploring the possibility of a dignified life for them, the political class was disturbed. The secular state was worried since the accepted model in the political discourse for “liberation” of Harjans is either conversion to other religions or a possible overthrow of the caste system.

Swami Jayendra Sarasvati’s model postulates the possibility of their being within the system, but treated with dignity and equality. The SC politicians and secular state satraps whose staple diet is conversion or the destruction of the caste system found it difficult to accept his actions.

Interestingly, some of the orthodox in the Matham system also opposed his approach, believing that being exclusively in the garbha griha or Mulavar position preserves legitimacy. Any deviation to work for this-worldly salvation of people was looked upon with disdain and considered apostate. In a curious coincidence, the orthodoxy attacked the Matham for the same reasons for which the secular political forces were upset! It was, in political parlance, an alliance of the left extreme with the extreme right, to neutralize the middle.

If the State is not secular or neutral, but protective state of Hindu Dharma, this issue would have been dealt with in a different way. The State would have reprimanded the orthodoxy or even punished it for being obstructionist. But the secular State is presumably neutral, but in practice against Dharmic institutions which derive their legitimacy from thousands of years of tradition.

Invite by China

The invitation to visit China was a major turning point in the affairs of our civilization and this Matham. The concerned NGO in China would not have invited him to visit that country without a clearance from the top political authority, knowing how China functions in these matters. It is fascinating that the Chinese authorities that prohibit taking the Bible into their country for preaching and who have refused the Papal visit, invited the head of a Hindu sampradhaya to their country.

Whatever the author could infer from interactions with scholars in India and China, one could surmise that China welcomes the presence of a non-incursive or inclusive religion, and that could be the Sanatana Dharma. There is an ancient Chinese belief that the best rebirth is in India, as it is a Dharma Bhumi. The experience of China with Falung Gong, perceived to be sponsored by the CIA, and the problems with the Dalai Lama, has made Beijing consider other options in terms of religion, which Chinese society needs.

Any other Government would have jumped at this prospect and tried to arrange the Seer’s trip as a geo-strategic move. But the Indian State did not encourage this historic opportunity to foster civilisational bonds through authentic and legitimate institution like the Kanchi Matham, but prevented the effort by not reining in the orthodoxy who protested in the High Court about the “pollution” involved in crossing shores.

The Indian State’s neutrality is a threat to the existence of legitimate Dharmic institutions. Incidentally, this neutrality is only with reference to Indic institutions since the Abrahamic faiths terrorize the State to achieve their ends. At the time of independence, the State should have taken over the land and property allocated to the Church at free or throwaway prices by the erstwhile colonizers, but it did not do so.

The desert traditions can intimidate the State as they have global backup and protesters. The second child of Abraham globalizes local conflict using global networks, while the third child localizes all global conflicts. Witness the death of five people in Mumbai because Jeremy Falwell, a televangelist in USA, called the Prophet a “terrorist.” Witness the outpouring of anger and protests – at the global church level – to the (false) attack on nuns at Jhabua by “Hindu fanatics,” when actually it was the work of rowdies from the same faith.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s diatribes will be picked up by our English media to castigate the Hindu majority. Witness the violence against the arrest of suspects in a criminal /ISI related case (2004) at Hyderabad, where even the Chief Minister had to observe why the arrests were made in a holy month of Ramzan. But the Kanchi Acharya could be arrested on Diwali day! Remember the global hue and cry when the UP police searched the religious school at Nadwa, and how the Prime Minister intervened and expressed regrets?

Obviously, the State can be secular or neutral only with respect to Indian religions, which are non-intimidating, and not with respect to the desert faiths. That is why we encounter such absurd observations like, there has not been any large-scale violence against the arrest of the Kanchi seer so this does not hurt the public.

We have come to a tragic situation, that unless the State is terrorized it does not care. That is all the more reason why the Sanatana Dharma needs the protection of the State or what one may call a Kshatriya State. That State will protect all ancient Sampradayas and sustain the sacredness of the Indic civilization in letter and spirit.

 The author is a Professor of Management; the views expressed are his own

Great news! Hindus will no longer be asked to pay money to Christians to build churches

In an allegedly secular country, churches were going to be built by government’s tax revenue! This is how Congress hides its anti-Hinduism under the shroud of phoney secularism. Only people as inert and disinterested as the Hindus would have accepted this kind of devious logic and humiliation without complaining. And there will be million more blind Hindus who will line up next elections to vote for Congress. Thankfully, the court stepped in to save Hindus from the consequences of their political blindness and ignorance about what is happening outside their day to day life.

HC stays govt funds for church repairs

A two-member bench of the AP High Court on Monday directed the authorities to maintain status quo on government funds for building or repairing  churches. The bench of Chief Justice Anil R Dave and Justice C V Nagarjuna Reddy was hearing a writ petition filed by Tripuraneni Hanuman Chowdary complaining that the state government was engaging itself in the promotion of a religion contrary to court injunctions. He listed 49 GOs, placing 150 Christian institutions as beneficiaries of state aid.

The petitioner argued that there were no legislative sanction for the said expenditures and thus illegal. Listing various GOs between December 2001 and March 2009, he said the state was promoting Christian related activities in the guise of SC/ST welfare. He said the state was getting involved in a systematic manner for promoting church-related activities.

The petitioner had earlier filed a writ challenging the action of the government in granting funds for Christian pilgrimage. A two-member bench by an order dated July 22 had suspended the GO granting such allowances. 

The problem is that unlike the Jews, the Hindus don’t sue enough for attacks on their faith and traditions and use thier tax money to create an army of anti-Hindus in their own country. Sue the bastards, is my advice to the Hindus. It is a cheap and efficient way to cook the goose of these Congress thugs and left-liberal mafia.

By the way, the brainchild of this “build churches by government money” scheme was that soon-to-be-sainted goon of AP, YSR.

Missionaries: The spies and saboteurs of White Christians

The Conversion To Intolerance

How the Missionaries are destroying the ancient Hindu Culture

 by Raju Peddada 

“Religious intolerance was inevitably born with the belief in one God.”
—Sigmund Freud

“The oldest aspects of Hindu mythology give place to the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of ultimate reality, it is in itself a liberal education in humility, tolerance and suspense of judgment.”
—Aldous Huxley

 

Catapult over the decades and into our trip last year, these same villages, we enjoyed in the decades prior, have become battle zones for conversion, Christian missionaries converting the guileless Hindus right under the Hindu noses. The proselytizers have built huge incongruent whitewashed churches, that scream for attention, in every emerald village spewing out disquieting sermons in local dialects drowning the golden sunsets in their flood lights, obscuring and obfuscating the melodious soul soothing conversation of leaves and wind at bed time, and basically obliterating the natural rhythms of life with loud, presumptuous and boisterous religiosity polluting the very essence of Hindu culture…an existence in silent reverence and in sync with nature. Whether it is Annadaverapeta, Ragolapalli, Tallapudi or Velangi, all familiar comfort zones for us in the past have been reduced into circuses at night with large food lit assembles and amplified singing forced on the sleeping all night long. In the land of tolerance, intolerance is taking root with devastating results. Secularism, pluralism, diversity, and tolerance are being rapidly, insidiously, deviously and inexorably being supplanted with menacing dispassionate monolithic intolerance. The warm rain forests of diversity are being replaced by the frigid bristling pine forests of rigidity.

http://www.swans.com/library/art15/rajup18.html

From Indus to India: So near yet so far

From Indus to India
Dilip K Chakrabarti

Professor K. P.N.Rao and his associates assert, on the basis of their recently published computer studies on the Indus script, that this script has statistical regularities which are in line with other natural languages. Thus, the various signs of the Indus script cannot be explained away as only symbols of different sorts. The latter opinion was expressed by an American group sometime back and apparently taken seriously enough by Rao and his colleagues to undertake their own analysis. That the Indus script represents a language is amply shown by the way its signs were found scratched from the right to the left on an inscribed potsherd from Kalibangan and the way in which the signs were arranged on the seals of Mohenjodaro.

Further, the rarity with which many of these signs occur is almost a certain indication of the fact that much of the textual corpus of the Indus civilisation was written, on the analogy of the Indian tradition which continued down to the end of the nineteenth century, on perishable materials like palm and birch leaves.

The basic problem, however, lies elsewhere. There is a conscious attempt in certain quarters to disassociate this civilisation from the later mainstream tradition of Indian/ Vedic culture. Historically, the beginning of this attempt can be traced to the period around India’s Independence when Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the impetus for this civilisation came from Mesopotamia. Earlier, when India was a jewel in the British crown, there was no compulsion to depict it as an offshoot of Mesopotamian or other contemporary civilisations. The early excavators had no problem hypothesising that this civilisation was deeply rooted in the Indian soil and that many of its features could be explained with reference to the later Indian civilisation.

The current attempts to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition has assumed many forms. The term ‘Indus valley civilisation’, which is being increasingly common, suggests that this civilisation was primarily a product of the Indus valley alone, which is far from being the case. The civilisation is also bandied about as the product of what is dubiously dubbed as the ‘middle Asian interaction sphere’ and not as a product of a vast region of the sub-continent. Its chronology has been needlessly shortened, suppressing a long and continuous developmental span of about 2500 years in the modern Indian section of its distribution area.

The civilisation is also visualised at the end of a straight arrow-line of wheat-barley-based development beginning in Baluchistan at c.7000 BC, completely ignoring the contribution which came from the east — from the early farming and metallurgical developments in the Aravallis or from the rice-cultivating tradition that began in the Ganga plain and its Vindhyan periphery in the seventh millennium BC. The famous Sramana image from Mohenjodaro, which shows the bust of a shawl-wearing man with a meditative expression, is now advocated as belonging to an artistic tradition of north Afghanistan and beyond. Notorious Hindu-baiters are aghast at the thought that anything related to Hinduism could occur in that civilisation, whereas the first excavators’ frame of reference for the study of the religion of this civilisation was Hinduism.

That Siva was worshipped in this civilisation is proved not merely by the phallus-shaped stone objects found at Mohenjodaro and Dholavira but also by the find of an indisputedly Sivalinga set in a Yonipatta at Kalibangan. If anybody is interested, Bhang and Dhatura , both favourites with a class of Siva-worshippers, occur in the Indus civilisation.

The battle raging these days is whether there can be a relation between the life depicted in the Vedic literature and this civilisation. Without trying to pull down this debate to the all-too-common Indian level of ‘progress versus reaction’ syndrome which implies that that any talk in favour of Veda-Indus civilization relationship is a ‘right reactionary’ proposition ( a la Irfan Habib), we note that scholars of the stature of M.S.Vats, R.P.Chanda, B.N.Datta and P.V.Kane had no difficulty in arguing for a relationship between the two.

The opinions which we have noted above and which try to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition are endemic in modern First World archaeological literature on the subject and its followers in India. First World Archaeology, as my long familiarity with it tells me, suffers from a sense of inordinate superiority in relation to the archaeologists of the Third World. By allowing it to enjoy a free run in the country as the present archaeological policy of the government does and by allowing it to set up ‘Indus Centres’ in Vadodara or Pune, grievous damage is being caused to national archaeological scholarship in India.

The writer is emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology, Cambridge University.

For India’s survival, Hinduism has to prevail

Foriegners seem to have better insightss into the foundation and character of India than Indians themselves.

For India’s survival Hinduism has to prevail
By Alexander Zinoviev

In Europe and all over the world nowadays it is very popular to speak and discuss about Indian culture, ancient Indian philosophy and the glorious past of the country. In everyday life Europeans constantly hear or read in the media about some new yoga seminar being organised, or about the appearance of a new guru in Western countries, drawing the public attention. They hear superlatives about ancient Indian culture over and over again from different places and in different contexts.

But what is worth so much activity, so many words, and do they really help people understand the actual state of modern Hinduism and the challenges that stand before it? I would say?not at all!

The truth is that the situation of modern Hinduism, of all India, is far from perfect. In fact, it is alarming, if not altogether catastrophic. Even if some Indians?the so-called ?secularists??do not realise that, it is more than obvious that Hinduism is fading in obscurity, its relative influence in Asia is decreasing with every month, with every day. Perhaps we are living at the last centuries of Indian civilisation and the situation of today?s Hindus is very similar to the Iranians from the late Zoroastrian age or Ptolemaic Egypt. Drastic steps must be undertaken very soon, or Hindus will share the fate of these great nations of the past.

What’s the problem?

About one thousand years ago, a horde of savage tribes rushed down from the wild Bactrian Mountains (modern Afghanistan) and occupied the Indus Valley, bringing a new aggressive religion of non-Indian origin?Islam. In the course of the next centuries, this new religion?with violence or persuasion?continuously expanded its territory and increased the number of its followers. In 1000 the relative share of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent was around zero per cent, in 1400 they were already around 3.5 per cent, in 1700, 10 per cent, in 1890 about 20 per cent, in 1945, 25 per cent, and now they are more than 31 per cent, or one-third of the population. In this long process of Islamisation of India, two characteristic patterns can be distinguished. First, it is a slow process, and second, it is relentless. Unlike the Middle East and Iran, where this religion managed to very rapidly displace the local cults and traditions, completely stifling them for just several decades, in India the propagation of Islam was gradual, extended throughout many centuries, even a whole millennium.

But there is no place for illusions about the processes, taking place on the subcontinent. The truth is that, in India, Islam has never yielded a position once taken, it never withdrew from territories once conquered, and it spread out on the Indian subcontinent relentlessly, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, in what is maybe the most uncompromising, prolonged, and merciless expansion in the history of religions. It looks like India and Hinduism are doomed, and there is nothing to be done against this unyielding conquest, this tireless offensive, there is no way to reverse things in their advantage. Indeed, if Islam continues to propagate with the same rate?to increase in numbers with 1-1.5 per cent per decade?in the first half of the next century Muslims will already be the majority of Indian population. Secularists think that one or two hundred years are too big a period and there is no need to worry about the distant future. But the truth is that in terms of the five millennia of Indian history one or two centuries are nothing, they will pass in a blink. Men of wisdom in India say that the human soul is reborn in a new body every few hundred years. So, even in our next life, in our next reincarnation, India will have already ceased to exist.

My views may seem too pessimistic, but the picture is too grim. In fact, what I fear the most is that providence, the supreme spirit, or the force of history acts against Hinduism. Maybe the historical processes lead to such a state of things, when on the planet only the so-called ?Abrahamic? religions will continue to exist?Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Maybe the fact that the great religions of Egypt, Babylon and Persia died out a couple of millennia ago is not accidental. But I would like to believe Hinduism is too valuable for humanity, and sacred Indian books contain too much precious and unique knowledge that it will not sink in oblivion. I?d like to believe that the principles of Indian philosophy and religion are much more in agreement with the needs for the future than any other religion in the world, in agreement with the tendency, known in Western countries as New Age. It?s my deep belief that without India the world will sink in spiritual darkness and ignorance.

In this long process of Islamisation of India, two characteristic patterns can be distinguished. First, it is a slow process, and second, it is relentless. Unlike the Middle East and Iran, where this religion managed to very rapidly displace the local cults and traditions, completely stifling them for just several decades, in India the propagation of Islam was gradual.

So, what must be done in order to save Hinduism and stop the Islamic flood? There is only one way and it is called mass conversion of Muslims into Hinduism. If Hindus want to survive, they must convert. They must adopt the strategy of Catholic missionaries and Muslim mullahs. I don?t mean only conversion of one-time Hindus that only recently adopted other religions. Hinduism must convert also people of non-Hindu origin. The fact that they live in India is enough because all Indians, notwithstanding their religious affiliation, had once had Hindu ancestors. If a problem arises, in which caste to enlist the newly converted Hindus, that can be determined by lots. This kind of assignment is by no means accidental; it can be regarded as the will of providence, the voice of fate, and it is not surprising that this method was so widely used in antiquity?in Greece and Rome.

There is another question: is it possible to convert Muslims into Hinduism? Because, as it is well known, the followers of this religion hold firmly to their principles, and it is very difficult to change their views. There is a theory that Muslims would never desert their religion, this is absolutely impossible. But this is just a myth. There is a good example from our recent past.

In one neighbouring country to Russia?Bulgaria?there is area called Rhodopa mountain, populated with Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. Bulgarians, in principle, are Christians, pertaining to the Greek-Orthodox Church. But this very area is populated with Muslims due to the strong Turk influence in the past. In the 15th century Turks forced the local population to renounce Christianity and to adopt Islam as their religion, and defiance was brutally punished. When, in 1526, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent began his campaign against Western Europe, he said: ?I want my soldiers, in their way to Vienna, to pass through Muslim lands only, and this corridor to go up to the very Austrian border.? And his desire almost came true.

But what happened some ten years ago?in the mid-1990s? The local population in the Rhodope Mountains with Bulgarian ethnic consciousness, being well educated and well aware of their history, suddenly decided to re-embrace Christianity. A remarkable man came forward on the religious scene?Father Boyan Saruev. With his charisma and his unique gift to persuade people, this man of great spiritual power succeeded in converting several hundred Muslims. For a period of seven or eight years between two and three thousand people?mainly from the young, educated generation?adopted the Greek-Orthodox creed. This event was so astonishing precedent that it stunned European public, and journalists from many countries came in person to see with their own eyes that it was true.

Obviously, the claim that Muslims can never be persuaded to adopt another religion is nothing but a myth. Under certain conditions, this is quite possible. Very soon such conditions will be present in India, too, because with higher education Muslims will realise that Hinduism is the innate religion of their native country, and Islam is an alien creed forcefully imported from outside. Similarly with the situation when, 600 years ago, during the Renaissance, Western Europeans realised that they were successors of ancient Rome and Greece, and embraced their culture, which for long centuries was being condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as ?pagan? and ?non-Christian?, one day the Muslims on the Indian subcontinent will understand that they are inheritors of a great civilisation completely different from that of Arabs and the Middle East. This is a problem of education and knowledge.

(The writer is a Russian sociologist and works in Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been many times in India and interested in Indian culture. He has written this article exclusively for Organiser. He can be contacted at zinoviev555@yahoo.com)

Impressing the Whites

“Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery”

Nice book by Richard Crasta. Buy it if you can. You will understand what people like Arvind Adiga, Mira Nair and Medha Patkar are all about.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
  I: WHITE – ALL RIGHT
Impressing the Whites: The International Dynamics of Race Today
The Occidental Cow and the New World Order
Daddy, Am I A Black? An Almost-Impressing-the-Whites Essay
The Twelve Commandments of Indian and Nonwhite (Male) Success
Monica Lewinsky’s Thong Underwear,
or Black and White
II: BROWN – STICK AROUND
Salman and Me
The New Spiritual Colonialism
How to Be an Invisible Author
How to Win the Booker
Impressing White Tourists in India
The Role of Ethnic Shame in the Colonial Agenda
Impressing the Reincarnated Whites
Shame and Public Schools

III: BLACK – GET IN BACK
Divided, We’re Screwed
Roy, Rushdie, and Seth: Spokespersons
What to Do, Bhai
No More Head
A Political Correctness Primer: How to Behave Towards Brown People

EPILOGUE: The Bad Boy’s Preface
Notes
A Glossary for the Confused and the Innocent
Acknowledgments

NDTV: An American Whore in India

NDTV is a whore of US, fully paid for by Uncle Sam. It is an anti-national, anti-Hindu propaganda medium, regardles of its liberal airs, sophisticated English accents and news anchors who look like they have just landed in India from New York.

Its discussions are carefully contrived set-ups with the audiences carefully screened for correct views. In one of these NDTV “we the people” discussions, the audiences overwhelmingly voted to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. It is nothing but a Kangaroo court.

I am surprised some people take NDTV seriously because the channel does not even pretend to be neutral. It has gone so far only because Indians are impressed with any fellow Indian who looks Western and speaks English with American accent. Pranoy Roy exploits this.

Don’t take NDTV seriously. Use it only for some comic relief and laugh a lot while watching its antics. Let the Yanks waste their money.

CNN-IBN is another “woman of the right hand” of Uncle Sam, and deserves the same treatment by Indians.

This is from Asian Age:

NDTV gave away kashmir to pakistan on live telivision

New Delhi, Aug. 23, 2003: The popular Question Time India produced by NDTV and telecast over BBC on Friday night used a select audience as a representative audience to give the impression that the Kashmiris wanted independence through a plebiscite.

The anchor, Vikram Chandra, repeatedly put leading questions to the small audience, drawn largely from urban Srinagar through special invites, asking them to raise hands on highly sensitive questions ranging from independence to pinpointing the government — India, Pakistan or the leadership in Kashmir — responsible for the trouble in the Valley.

This episode of Question Time India was recorded in Srinagar. The panel was largely outvoted by the belligerent audience with Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed steering a cautious course, People’s Conference leader Sajjad Lone appearing more as the man in between two opposing sides, BJP state president Dr Nirmal Singh unable to contribute significantly and the Vice-Chancellor of Jammu University, Dr Amitabh Mattoo, not his usual articulate self. In fact, it was left to National Conference leader Omar Abdullah to point out that the audience in the room was not representative of Jammu and Kashmir, and that he had found that those in rural Kashmir were more concerned about their day to day life than about independence per se.

The programme was highly volatile and if it had been produced by the BBC, it would have elicited strong remarks from the government of India. At one stage the anchor, for instance, conducted a spot poll, as has now become the custom in all television talk shows, asking the audience to identify who was responsible for the Kashmir problem. “Is it India,” he asked and the entire audience raised its hands. “Is it the leadership of Kashmir,” and more than half raised their hands. “Is it Pakistan,” and only a handful of persons raised their hands, perhaps just eight, and after looking around most of them lowered their hands.

Mr Omar Abdullah told The Asian Age that these kind of programmes gave the wrong impression, and that obviously there had been no effort to bring a moderate and more representative opinion into the audience. He said that he was not against such snap polls provided the audience was drawn scientifically to constitute a sample representing the entire state and all sections of opinion within. The entire programme gave the impression that there was one, a Kashmir problem; two, it was not created by Pakistan but by India; and three, that plebiscite and independence were the only solutions. It also sought to stress the supposed preoccupation of the Kashmiris with independence with little being said about the other issues affecting the entire state. As Mr Abdullah pointed out, “Even the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir will not mention Pakistan as a source of the trouble in the Valley for obvious reasons, so how could they have expected the audience to say so?”

Question Time India on Friday, part of a special series, did raise questions about television talk shows where select audiences are asked to vote on issues of national import, with the projection that this somehow represents the general point of view. It is a dangerous trend, particularly when issues like Kashmir, communalism and national integration are being put up for quick votes. Questions like “Those who want independence for Kashmir please raise your hands” legitimise select responses that might or might not reflect the true situation on the ground. As Mr Omar Abdullah said, this can send out a “terrible message,” particularly when the programme, as in this particular case, reaches a wide, international audience that includes Pakistan.

Srinagar is not representative of the entire Valley. It might be recalled that the call by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference to boycott the Assembly elections was effective in Srinagar, which registered very low polling. However, areas outside the capital witnessed moderate to heavy polling, with the people making it clear that they wanted a government that was responsive to their needs and aspirations. The villagers defied the threat from the militants and came out to vote, taking active part in election meetings and campaigns in several constituencies despite the continuing terror attacks.

http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/08/6907.shtml

When you watch NDTV, be clear in your mind that you are actually watching the propaganda of the Church and the US State Deptt. Only the front-end is made up by Americanized Indians. The back-end is in Washington and Vatican.

NDTV is another proof that the Westernized Leftist Liberals of India (often called Champagne Liberals or Limousine Liberals because of their five-star tastes and foreign trips) are merely White Man’s props and owe their money, recognition and fame to White Christians alone. They get their approval not from Indians, but from the Americans and British.

In God’s Home, they are all Men. So who does the laundry?

Where do these jokers come from? Does the church mean that only organisms with balls can be worthy of worship? No wonder, women can never become priests or Pope in the church and God has only a son, not a daughter. I hope Vatican gets sued by some women empowerment groups for blatant anti-women policies and peddling dubious philosophy based on hatred of all women.

The Pope rules out feminist theology

The Vatican has cracked down on feminist interpretations of the liturgy, ruling that God must always be recognised as Our Father.

In a move designed to counter the spread of gender-neutral phrases, the Holy See said that anyone baptised using alternative terms, such as “Creator”, “Redeemer” and “Sanctifier” would have to be re-baptised using the traditional ceremony.

 

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said yesterday: “These variations arise from so-called feminist theology and are an attempt to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistic.”

Instead, it said that the traditional form of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” had to be respected.

The alternative phrases originated in North America and started to become popular only in the past few years.

The new phrases are particularly popular in the Church of England. It was recently reported that guidelines to bishops and priests advised them to avoid “uncritical use of masculine imagery”.

The Catholic Church and the Church of England are split over feminist issues.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Pope, met in Rome last year, but admitted that the ordination of women priests was a “serious obstacle” to closer ties.

The Pope, who wrote the latest ruling, has been a strong opponent of feminism in the Catholic Church.

In his book, The Ratzinger Report, he wrote: “I am, in fact, convinced that what feminism promotes in its radical form is no longer the Christianity that we know; it is another religion.”

Rosemary Radford Ruether, a professor of feminist theology at the Graduate Theological Union in California, said that among “liberal” Catholics, the Pope “is not our Pope”.

The Vatican said anyone baptised under the feminist terms could invalidate their marriage. Cardinal Urbano Navarrete, who wrote a formal commentary on yesterday’s ruling, gave warning that anyone who attempted to baptise someone with a gender-neutral form would be penalised. “It is seriously illegitimate and unjust,” he said.

Monsignor Antonio Miralles, a professor at the Pontifical Holy Cross University, said the new baptism “subverts faith in the Trinity” because it does not make the relationship between the three persons clear. “God is eternally Father in relation to His only begotten Son, who is not eternally Son except in relation to the Father.”

Meanwhile, the Pope also spoke out against gay marriage and abortion before his first trip to the United States before Easter. He praised Americans who respected the “institution of marriage, acknowledged as a stable union between a man and a woman”.

The “South Asian” Subversion

Indians, especially NRIs in the US, are being encouraged to call themselves as not Indians but “South Asians.” Pakistanis are also being encouraged to call themselves not as Pakistanis but as “South Asians.” Bangladeshis are also being encouraged to call themselves as South Asians and not Bangladeshis.

What gives?

This “South Asian” thingie has its origins in US think-tanks. Be very careful of it. It is meant to denationalize Indians and benefit Pakistanis. All these “south Asia TV” and “South Asia forums” and “South Asia Times” and “South Asia cultural festivals” have mostly US funding. Pakis are a side show. The agenda of Americans is quite sinister if you think it through. This “South Asia” business is psyops on a national scale to the detriment of Indians. The Yanks have already erased the “Indian Subcontinent” word from everywhere and replaced it with “South Asia.”

My advice to Indians: Assert your Indian nationality at every opportunity and flatly deny that you are a South Asian. The Pakis will try to introduce you to others in a gathering as “both of us are South Asians.” Your response should be: “Actually, I am an Indian. He is from Pakistan.”

For Pakis all over the world, their nationality has become a burden and they now hide behind the “south Asian” label to keep the other confused about their true identity. There is no reason why Indians should agree to do the same.

But this is not the agenda of American thinktanks which have coined this strategy of popularising the “South Asian” word. They have a more sinister agenda of screwing the Hindus. They want to dilute nationalities of both Indians and Pakistanis and eventually merge them. In short, the Americans know the projected population of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent 30 years from now, and are making plans for reunification of India and Pakistan where Hindus will drown under an overwhelming Muslim mass. This reunification is the hottest topic of debate currently in the drawing rooms of Pakistani elite.

The antidote to this South Asian psyops? It is simple. Wear your Indian nationality on your sleeves, proclaim it loudly everywhere you go and make it a point to clearly distinguish yourself from the Pakistanis. And refuse to go to any function or event with the word “South Asia” in its name. Keep repeating to everyone that you are an Indian, not a South Asian.

Here are views of Radha Rajan, editor of Vigil Online, about this South Asia nonsense.

The “South Asia” Subversion

The third idea they are propagating is the concept of South Asia. This concept of South Asia which has no legitimacy is a political construct with its origins in American think tanks where they seek to subsume — Please understand one thing. If there is one thing both Islam and Christianity are afraid of, it is Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalism poses the biggest threat to both Islam and evangelical church. They are propagating the concept of South Asia where they hope that India’s territorial borders and her Hindu identity will be subsumed in the larger Muslim-dominated region of Pakistan and Bangladesh. When they say South Asia, I don’t think they have Bhutan and Sri Lanka in mind. When they say South Asia, they primarily mean India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

It is humiliating to find average Indians so woolly headed and gullible like innocent babies. It is amazing how other more shrewd races manage to fool and decieve them again and again. Did these idiotic “south Asian” Indians pause even for a moment to think what accepting this label of South Asia as our primary identity would mean for us and Pakistanis, and how one would gain and the other would lose, and what is in it for us and who is making all this noise about “south Asia,” and which behind-the-scenes force is pushing us in the direction of shedding our national identity and taking on a geographical one instead? The idiotic Indians start walking in any direction they are lured into.

It is demeaning to think that we are no better than guinea pigs and truly behave like them, almost begging thugs of the world to come and fool us and take away what belongs to us. Not for once can we guess the intent of the enemy and plot counter-moves. It is a sad commentary on our race, the inheritors of the wisdom and shrewdness of Chanakya.

If Indians were smart, they would have never agreed to accept the term “South Asia” as replacement for “Indian Subcontinent.” It is only a matter of time before Indian Ocean becomes “South Asian Ocean.”

I will agree to call myself as a South Asian only after all Americans agree to not call themselves Americans anymore but call themselves as “earthlings.” The conversation will go something like this:

“Hey American, yo there! Where are you from?”
“Oh, I am not an American. I am from the earth. I am an earthling and this Mexian standing next to me is also an earthling. Both of us are earthlings and both of us are same people with same culture. Our ancestors came to this continent on boats and slaughtered all Red Indians. Both of us have this shared history and culture. Would you like to come to the Earthling Spellling Bee contest we are organising? Since the last five years, it is being won by earthlings, most of whom are from New York.”

Love spread by the Vatican

Here is a catalogue of the love spread by the church all over the world:

http://notachristian.org/christianatrocities.html

It is about time this vendor of love was given an indecent burial to save humanity.

Here is another very very interesting website:

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

I hope more and more people are saved from this devlish cult that has given us nothing but dark ages, Inquisition, superstitions, thought control and eclipse of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisatons.

History of Kashmir

Great website on the history of Kashmir that calls a spade a spade. You can also download the book in pdf format.

http://ikashmir.net/pastpresent/index.html

Kangaroo Court

Surpassing Goebbels

By Sandeep B

US uses fiction to slam freedom in India

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s India Chapter report on the extent of religious freedom in India released last week was an unwelcome ‘gift’ to India on the eve of its 62nd Independence Day. The report deserves to be flung into the nearest trash bin not because its prejudiced contents are predictable but because it’s the latest instance of America’s self-arrogated right to meddle with a sovereign republic’s internal affairs.

India firmly refused to issue visas to the USCIRF team despite recurrent requests earlier this year. This is entirely consistent with our time-honoured tradition of disallowing such intrusive adventures by foreign powers. The fact that the USCIRF’s India Chapter has released its report without first-hand experience of the situation here further bolsters its non-existent credibility.

The 14-page report mentions the visa denial in a footnote, a clever ploy to make it appear as if the team studied things on the field. Perusing the report confirms suspicions: It is based on a mix of hearsay, biased media reports, ‘verdicts’ of the Gujarat NGO cottage industry, and exhibits a total absence of the historical sense required to analyse socio-religious dynamics.

Which makes it cushy to draw this conclusion: Hindu organisations are always the perpetrators of every act of societal conflagration. The USCIRF seems to have drawn this conclusion first and then sewn the ‘facts’ to arrive at it. A news report in May had predicted that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was a likely target of the USCIRF’s visit. The report doesn’t disappoint. It dedicates an entire page to chastise Mr Modi, based on untrustworthy media reports.

The USCIRF relies on Tehelka to “(reveal) the complicity of Mr Narendra Modi…” and calls upon the Government to “Ensure that any efforts to bring a case against Mr Modi are allowed to proceed in accordance with the law.” It is important to note the USCIRF’s duplicity here: The Indian Government is yet to take an official position on Tehelka’s “revelations” on Mr Modi. But the USCIRF decides that it is gospel truth!

Second, how does the USCIRF assume the right to dictate the Indian Government to ensure that a case is framed against Mr Modi? The report also repeats the same falsehoods about the Gujarat episode:   A fire on a train resulted in the death of 58 Hindus returning from Ayodhya. It appears that the compartment lit itself!   2,000 Muslims dead in the riots.

It’s hard to believe that the USCIRF hasn’t heard of Mr Sri Prakash Jaiswal’s (then Union Minister of State for Home) May 2005 report, which gives the following numbers: 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead, and 223 injured.   No rehabilitation of riot victims: The Gujarat Government has published detailed figures explaining the nature and amount of compensation provided to riot victims irrespective of religion. 

The USCIRF follows the secular script in writing on the Hindu-Christian violence in Orissa and Karnataka. This script has some of its roots in the Graham Staines case, where Staines was painted as a sainted martyr with Dara Singh as his heartless butcher. No mention of the disruptive effect of wanton conversions as the cause for fake martyrdom. But opposing licentious conversions violates religious freedom!

Understandably, the report devotes over two pages to this. To its eternal disgrace, the USCIRF actually blames Swami Lakshamananda Saraswati for “fomenting and encouraging… violence against Christians…” Can we interpret this to mean “and, therefore, he deserved to be murdered?” What Orissa and Karnataka continue to witness is a widely-repeated phenomenon: Societal violence eventually occurs wherever Evangelists accelerate their conversion efforts. When they wean sufficient numbers away from their ancestral faith, they pit these neo converts against members of their erstwhile faith. 

But the USCIRF pontificates on religious freedom while studiously ignoring real evidence from the other side. The 58 Hindus roasted alive, tribals coerced into Christianity, and Hindu gods abused as prostitutes’ sons have neither rights nor religious freedom. Therein lies the true story of the USCIRF. The USCIRF was set up in 1998 by Mr Bill Clinton who gave in to the pressure of the powerful Christian evangelical lobby.

Most of the USCIRF appointees have the direct blessings of these evangelist groups. Its definition of ‘religious freedom’ includes unimpeded rights to convert populations at will without any respect for local customs and laws. Therefore, it is entirely consistent that one of the stronger recommendations of the India Chapter report urges the Indian Government to relax or do away with anti-conversion laws. It is also not coincidental that Pakistan and China don’t figure on the USCIRF ‘watch list’. India shouldn’t recognise the self-righteous pronouncements of an agenda-driven body.

One of the USCIRF’s goals is to give policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress. At best, the report is another method to gather intelligence about other countries. India’s response was predictably weak. The right response was to give it the drubbing it deserves. But we have a vacillating Prime Minister who seeks US sanction for every action. Ironically, many Indian leaders turn to eminence in the US who have links with the USCIRF worthies for ‘advice’ on national security! Communal violence in India is real but we don’t need ill-informed report writers in the US to tell us about it or what we need to do about it. 

There is a comment published below this article in the newspaper by N.S. Rajaram:

By N.S. Rajaram on 8/19/2009 6:56:18 AM

Please note that the UDCIFR’s statement was crafted by some Indian Christian leaders testifying before it. It was led by one John Dayal. This is according to those present at the hearings.

Can people who owe their ultimate allegience to structures outside the borders of India be trusted? If yes, then what is John Dayal, this brown convert, doing grovelling before the Whites and being their informant on happenings inside India? How much time would Dayal have lasted in a Muslim country? He is abusing the freedoms Hindus have given him and spitting back on them.

Suu Kyi and the White Christians

U.N. council delays statement on Suu Kyi sentence

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Western nations pressed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a statement condemning a detention sentence passed on Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, but other countries stalled for time.

A council meeting called by France to discuss the verdict ended without result and was adjourned until Wednesday, the president of the 15-nation body, British Ambassador John Sawers, said.

Do you know why Goras are rooting for her? She is a Western mole. She has subverted her Burmese nationality and reigious and cultural legacy by marrying a White Christian Britisher, Dr. Michael Aris. (He is dead now.) She has two children, both White Christians, who live in London. Deliberately, her British husband and Whtie christian children are never mentioned by the AngloSaxons. It is very difficult to find information about her children living in the UK. This is kept under wraps lest the game is given away and Burmese people start having doubts. One of her sons is named Malcolm, I think. She has also developed a habit of quoting from the Bible on and off.

She has no credibility to begin with. She is a stupid progeny of a great father who has allowed herself to be used by a hostile vicious race to gain entry into her country. At no cost should Burmese people allow her anywhere near political power. She will hand over reigns of the country to Goras. The moment she married a White, she became eligible for Western awards such as Nobel.

These are the awards that she has recieved until now. Almost all of them are Gora awards, which shows a clear attempt by Goras to raise her profile (much like they use Magsaysay and Booker to raise the profile of leftist/liberal anti-Hindu Indians).

Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize (1990)
Sakharov Prize (1990)
Nobel Peace Prize (1991)
Simon Bolivar International Prize (1992)[115]
Jawaharlal Nehru Award (1993)
Prize For Freedom of the Liberal International (1995)[116]
Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (1996)[117]
Freedom of Dublin City, Republic of Ireland (1999)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000)[118]
UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance & Non-Violence (2002)
Gwangju Prize for Human Rights (2004)[119]
Olof Palme Prize (2005)
Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2004)[120]
Freedom from Fear award (2006)[121]
Honorary Canadian citizenship (2007)[122]
Honorary President of the LSESU (2007)[123]
Doctorate of Letters (honoris causa) from Colgate University (2008)[124]
Congressional Gold Medal (2008)[125]
Premi Internacional Catalunya (2008)[126]
Freedom Of Glasgow (2009)[127]
Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation (2009)[128]

Infiltrating White Christians into ruling families of pagan lands is an old Anglo-Saxon trick, that has already been successfully tried in India. It was tried in Sikkim too, but Indira Gandhi invaded immediately. Little did she know that her own family will be the target of this trick and that one by one all her family members will be bumped off, including herself, till the half-white Christian Gandhis become the natural rulers of India.

The moment Suu Kyi is allowed to become ruler of Burma, she will be bumped off after some years by the Goras and her half-White Christian son will be projected as the natural ruler of Burma (like Rahul Gandhi). Burmese have to be very careful. The fate of their country hangs in balance. It may be recolonised again by the Whites peacefully through Suu Kyi. And the stupid Buddhist monks of Burma would be well-advised to next time steer clear of any orange revolution engineered by the Goras.

Aryan Invasion of California

 Interesting article by N.S. Rajaram about the Aryan antics of racist professors of the West who are drunk on Christian evangelical bigotry.

ARYAN INVASION OF CALIFORNIA: GLOBAL BACKGROUND
N.S. Rajaram

Fall of the Third Reich did not put an end to academic race theories that formed the core of its ideology. In various guises, their legacy continues in Western academia as well as in the politics of countries formerly under European rule. While avoiding overtly racial terms, scholars in disciplines like Indo-European Studies continue to uphold scientifically discredited and historically disgraced theories built around the Aryan myth. Some academics have resorted to media campaigns and political lobbying to save their theories and the discipline from natural extinction— a tactic that came to the fore when California education authorities attempted to remove these theories from their school curriculum. The legacy of racism persists in sectarian politics in South India, and most insidiously in Africa where it gave rise to the horrific Hutu-Tutsi clashes in one of the worst genocides in modern history. A singular feature of this neo-racist scholarship is the replacement of anti-Semitism by anti-Hinduism.

Mutated racism

In a remarkable article, “Aryan Mythology As Science And Ideology” (Journal of the American Academy of Religion1999; 67: 327-354) the Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson raises the question: “Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with ‘Aryan’ religions.” We may rephrase the question: “Did the end of the Nazi regime put an end to race based theories in academia?” An examination of several humanities departments in the West suggests otherwise: following the end of Nazism, academic racism may have undergone a mutation but did not entirely disappear. Ideas central to the Aryan myth resurfaced in various guises under labels like Indology and Indo-European Studies. This is clear from recent political, social and academic episodes in places as far apart as Harvard University and the California State Board of Education.

Two decades after the end of the Nazi regime, racism underwent another mutation as a result of the American Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, Americans were rightly made to feel guilty about their racist past and the indefensible treatment of African Americans. U.S. academia also changed accordingly and any discourse based on racial stereotyping became taboo. Soon this taboo came to be extended to Native Americans, Eskimos and other ethnic groups.

In this climate of seeming liberal enlightenment, one race theory continued to flourish as if nothing had changed. Theories based on the Aryan myth that formed the core of Nazi ideology continued in various guises, as previously noted, in Indology and Indo-European Studies. Though given a linguistic and sometimes a cultural veneer, these racially sourced ideas continue to enjoy academic respectability in such prestigious centers as Harvard and Chicago. Being a European transplant, its historical trajectory was different from the one followed by American racism. Further, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which had mass support, academic racism remained largely confined to academia. This allowed it to escape public scrutiny for several decades until it clashed with the growing Hindu presence in the United States. Indians, Hindus in particular saw Western Indology and Indo-European Studies as a perversion of their history and religion and a thinly disguised attempt to prejudice the American public, especially the youth, against India and Hinduism to serve their academic interests.1

The fact that Americans of Indian origin are among the most educated group ensured that their objections could not brushed away by “haughty dismissals” as the late historian of science Abraham Seidenberg put it. Nonetheless, scholars tried to use academic prestige as a bludgeon in forestalling debate, by denouncing their adversaries as ignorant chauvinists and bigots unworthy of debate. But increasingly, hard evidence from archaeology, natural history and genetics made it impossible to ignore the objections of their opponents, many of whom (like this author) were scientists. By the turn of the millennium, there was an uneasy stalemate, with science chipping away at the edifice of the Aryan theories with its advocates tenaciously clinging to them and postponing the inevitable. But in November 2005, there came a dramatic denouement, in, of all places, California schools. Academics suddenly found it necessary to leave their ivory towers and fight it out in the open, in full media glare— and under court scrutiny. This is what we may look at next.

Aryans invade California

To summarize the California invasion by ‘Aryan’ academics: Aryans, a mythical race of people which science and the defeat of Nazi Germany had consigned to the fringes of academia and politics found a temporary refuge in the history texts to be used in California schools. Led by the Harvard based linguist Michael Witzel, a motley group of mostly European scholars successfully lobbied the California State Board of Education (CSBE) to save the theory of an ‘Aryan’ invasion of India from being removed from schoolbooks. It was to prove a Pyrrhic victory and a public embarrassment; California education authorities were soon forced to retract Witzel’s ‘expert’ suggestions. They also had to face lawsuits from which they came out badly bruised.

This was the aftermath of an acrimonious editing process in which Witzel, with possible support from the California Education Secretary Alan Bersin, put pressure on California officials to have this scientifically discredited theory included in textbooks. This curious affair raises doubts about the role played by Secretary Bersin who serves also on the board of the Harvard Corporation which employs Witzel. Willingly or unwittingly, Bersin came to be seen as the fulcrum of support for Witzel and his colleagues in their dubious campaign that went on to embarrass both Harvard and the California Department of Education.

While the media covered the story as a case of newfound assertiveness on the part of the Hindus, Witzel and his colleagues claimed they were motivated solely by objectivity and scholarly integrity. According to them it was a case of faith against scholarship. The cloud of controversy though tended to obscure the real story— of a desperate campaign by Witzel and his colleagues to save the Aryan myth, which happens to be central to the academic discipline known as Indo-European Studies. Indo-European is a politically correct euphemism for Aryan. (Another is Caucasian.)

It all began innocently enough, when Grade VI textbooks used in California schools came up for revision in 2005. Some Hindu, Islamic and Jewish groups objected to the way their religions were depicted in some of the textbooks. Hindus objected also to the history portion for including the scientifically discredited, nineteenth century theory of the Aryan invasion of India. California school authorities asked the Hindu groups along with others to suggest suitable changes.

After some discussions, mostly with regard to the format, the California Department of Education (CDE) released a memorandum detailing the changes submitted to the State Board of Education (CSBE) on November 8, 2005. It was at this point that Michael Witzel intervened uninvited. On the very next day, November 9, CSBE President Ruth Green read out a petition submitted by Witzel and co-signed by 46 other scholars claiming to be experts on India, objecting to the edits suggested by the Hindu groups charging they were unscholarly and politically motivated. Changes submitted by Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups were passed without discussion, but Green withheld those submitted by the Hindus. She went a step further and appointed Witzel to a super-committee, to review the changes relating to Hinduism and India. All its members had actively colluded with Witzel in his propaganda and lobbying campaign.

It was a mystery how Witzel, within a day, could get so many signatures from all over the world. Most petitioners were from Europe with nothing at stake in what California schools teach their children. A few (non-Europeans) later retracted. This suggests that Witzel’s move was pre-planned, helped by insiders and not a 24-hour wonder. It was soon apparent that the signatories, including Witzel himself, had not read the changes they were objecting to. He was coy about it when questioned at a public meeting in Harvard, claiming that the subject was sub judice. (This was because of law suits filed against the CSBE’s ‘flawed and illegal’ review procedure.)

The next meeting in January 2006 was held in secret, from which Hindu groups were excluded. Witzel took advantage of the secrecy to reverse many of the changes. While some of it related to Hinduism, it became clear that his real concern was saving the Aryan invasion theory from being axed. Witzel trumpeted the outcome as a victory, but the celebration proved to be premature. The unusual procedure by which it was done and Witzel’s own unscholarly language and rhetoric landed the California Department of Education in several law suits. A judge hearing the case slammed the CSBE for following ‘underground procedures’ using ‘hostile academics’. Witzel too paid a heavy price, being increasingly seen as less a scholar than a propagandist and political lobbyist. His credibility as scholar stood shattered.

Given Education Secretary Bersin’s position at Harvard, Witzel’s immediate appointment to the super-committee with virtual veto power over the contents comes as no surprise. The real question is what Witzel and Bersin hoped to gain by having the disgraced Aryan theories taught in California schools. To see this one needs to recognize the precarious state of the discipline called Indo-European Studies. It is a nineteenth century European creation that has been losing ground to science. Witzel and his European colleagues are among its last holdouts. Both students and funds have been declining in the department where Witzel teaches. As a member of the Board of Overseers of the Harvard Corporation Bersin has responsibility for fund raising.

Ever since Witzel moved to Harvard from Europe (he is German by birth), its Department of Sanskrit and India Studies has been in a state of turmoil. He was forced to step down as department chairman in 1995, following student complaints about his conduct. Enrica Garzilli, whom Witzel had brought in as a faculty member was fired by Harvard as unqualified. She sued the university. Witzel himself threatened to sue a student for asking some questions. Now Hindu parents and groups have sued the State of California for violating their children’s civil rights. Curiously for an academic, legal troubles seem to dog Witzel wherever he goes.

We may never know who initiated Witzel’s California campaign— whether Alan Bersin gave Witzel a chance to redeem himself following his disastrous performance at Harvard, or if Witzel saw an opening to get students and funding with Bersin at the helm of the Department of Education in California. Email traffic surrounding IER (Indo-Eurasian Research), an Internet group co-founded by Witzel, suggests that the idea came from some of its members, possibly one Steve Farmer, Witzel’s closest associate following Enrica Garzilli’s expulsion from Harvard. Farmer lives in California from where he has been reporting on developments in the state.

Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. Several ‘Indology’ departments—as they are sometimes called—are shutting down across Europe. One of the oldest and most prestigious, at Cambridge University in England, has just closed down. This was followed by the closure of the equally prestigious Berlin Institute of Indology founded way back in 1821. Positions like the one Witzel holds (Wales Professor of Sanskrit) were created during the colonial era to serve as interpreters of India. They have lost their relevance and are disappearing from academia. This is the real story, not teaching Hinduism to California children.

Witzel’s California misadventure appears to have been an attempt to have his version of Indian history and civilization introduced into the school curriculum in the hope that some of them may later be drawn into his department when they graduate. Otherwise, it is hard to see why a senior, tenured professor at Harvard should go to all this trouble, lobbying California school officials to have its Grade VI curriculum changed to reflect his views.

To follow this it is necessary to go beyond personalities and understand the importance of the Aryan myth to Indo-European Studies. The Aryan myth is a European creation. It has nothing to do with Hinduism. The campaign against Hinduism was a red herring to divert attention from the real agenda, which was and remains saving the Aryan myth. Collapse of the Aryan myth means the collapse of Indo-European studies. This is what Witzel and his colleagues are trying to avert. For them it is an existential struggle.

Americans for the most part are unaware of the enormous influence of the Aryan myth on European history and imagination. As previously observed, while the defeat of Nazi Germany put an end to its political influence, it has survived in various guises in Western academia under the umbrella of Indo-European Studies. This was the point raised by scholars like Stefan Arvidsson cited earlier. Central to Indo-European Studies is the belief—it is no more than a belief—that Indian civilization was created by an invading race of ‘Aryans’ from an original homeland somewhere in Eurasia or Europe. This is the Aryan invasion theory dear to Witzel and his European colleagues. According to this theory there was no civilization in India before the Aryan invaders brought it— a view increasingly in conflict with hard evidence from archaeology and natural history.

The politics of Aryanism

Given the Aryans’ importance to their worldview, it is extraordinary that after two hundred years of voluminous outpourings, these scholars are unable to identify them. Originally they were claimed to be a race related to Europeans but science has discredited it. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, scholars avoid overtly racial arguments but the basic idea of an invasion by Europeans bringing civilization to India is retained even if they acknowledge that ancient Indian records know nothing of any such invasion. All we have are dogmatic assertions of their central belief. According to the late Murray Emeneau, a leading figure in Indo-European linguistics: 2

At some time in the second millennium B.C., probably comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of speakers of an Indo-European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes. This is our linguistic doctrine which has been held now for more than a century and a half. There seems to be no reason to distrust the arguments for it, in spite of the traditional Hindu ignorance of any such invasion. (Emphasis added.)

This is typical of the field, with arguments closer to theology than to science. Aryans are needed because there can be no Aryan invasion without the Aryans and also no Indo-European Studies. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Scientists had long ago dismissed the idea of the Aryan race. As far back as 1939, Sir Julian Huxley, one of the great biologists of the twentieth century wrote: 3

In England and America the phrase ‘Aryan race’ has quite ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge, though it appears occasionally in political and propagandist literature…. In Germany, the idea of the ‘Aryan race’ received no more scientific support than in England. Nevertheless, it found able and very persistent literary advocates who made it appear very flattering to local vanity. It therefore steadily spread, fostered by special conditions. (Emphasis added.)

These ‘special conditions’ were the rise of Nazism in Germany and British imperial interests in India. Its perversion in Germany leading eventually to the Nazi horrors is well known. The fact that the British turned it into a political tool to make their rule acceptable to Indians is not generally known. A recent BBC report acknowledged as much (October 6, 2005): 4

It [Aryan invasion theory] gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British Raj, who could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans had done thousands of years earlier.

That is to say, the British presented themselves as ‘new and improved Aryans’ that were in India only to complete the work left undone by their ancestors in the hoary past. This is how the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put it in the House of Commons in 1929: 5

Now, after ages, …the two branches of the great Aryan ancestry have again been brought together by Providence… By establishing British rule in India, God said to the British, “I have brought you and the Indians together after a long separation, …it is your duty to raise them to their own level as quickly as possible …brothers as you are…”

All this makes abundantly clear that theories based on the Aryan myth are modern European creations that have little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Its meaning is obscure but seems to refer to members of a settled agricultural community. It later became an honorific and a form of address, something like ‘Gentleman’ in English or ‘Monsieur’ in French. Also, it was nowhere as important in India as it came to be in Europe. In the whole the Rig Veda, in all of its ten books, the word Arya appears only about forty times. In contrast, Hitler’s Mein Kampf uses the term Arya and Aryan many times more. Hitler did not invent it. The idea of Aryans as a superior race was already in the air— in Europe, not India. 6

Indo-Europeans: elusive or non-existent?

To understand Witzel’s California campaign we need to place these Aryan theories in their historical context— as part of some European thinkers’ striving to give themselves an identity based on their history and folklore. In his recent book Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science (2006, University of Chicago) Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson tells us:

For over two hundred years, a series of historians, linguists, folklorists, and archaeologists have tried to re-create a lost culture. Using ancient texts, medieval records, philological observations, and archaeological remains they have described a world, a religion, and a people older than the Sumerians, with whom all history is said to have begun.

These are the mythical Aryans, now being called Indo-Europeans. After two hundred years of intensive search, they remain elusive, while science has shown them to be non-existent. But Indo-European scholars have not given up on them. Just as they created an Aryan invasion without Aryans they have created Indo-European Studies based on the non-existent Indo-Europeans. As Arvidsson observes:

No objects can definitely be tied to them, nor do we know any ‘Indo-European’ by name. In spite of that, scholars have stubbornly tried to reach back to the ancient ‘Indo-Europeans,’ with the help of bold historical, linguistic, and archaeological reconstructions, in the hopes of finding the foundation of their own culture and religion there.

The only literature we have that goes back to such antiquity is Indian literature. But Europeans of the colonial era could not conceive of an Indian source for their culture. India was taken out of Indo-European Studies, and made the recipient of European thought, culture and even language via the Aryan invasion. In Arvidsson’s words: “The theory about India as the original home of the Indo-Europeans, and the Indians as a kind of model Aryans, lost supporters during the nineteenth century, and other homelands and other model Aryans took their place instead.” (Emphasis added.)

The Aryans (or Indo-Europeans) and their homeland were gradually moved westward until they were made to settle in Eurasia and even Germany. In the hands of German scholars, Aryans and their language became “Indo-Germanische.” It is this worldview, and its academic incarnation calling itself Indo-European Studies that Witzel and his colleagues are fighting to save from extinction.

To summarize, the goal of Indo-European studies is not so much to understand India as it is to “show that there existed a rich ‘German’ mythology that could successfully compete with classical Judeo-Christian traditions.” It is hardly surprising that anti-Semitism was tied up with it. Now anti-Hinduism has now taken its place. This anti-Hinduism too is more cultural than religious, like anti-Semitism in pre-War Europe. Its goal is to detach their mythical Indo-European ancestors from India, just as pre-war Aryan theories sought to erase the Judaic heritage of Christian Europe. This lies at the root of the ‘ideological abuse’ (in Arvidsson’s words) that Indo-European Studies has been guilty of:

There is something in the nature of research about Indo-Europeans that makes it especially prone to ideological abuse— perhaps something related to the fact that for the past two centuries, the majority of scholars who have done research on the Indo-Europeans have considered themselves descendants of this mythical race.

This ‘ideological abuse’ reached its climax in the Nazi regime. The recent California campaign must also be seen in the same light: ideological abuse in the name of scholarship to support a worldview combined with a concern for survival.

For a brief, transient period, advocates of the Aryan myth succeeded in saving their theory from being axed, but in the process they have undermined the credibility of the textbooks and public confidence in the California education system. The wide publicity that their campaign received and the law suits that followed have dealt a severe blow to teacher morale. The real victim in this farcical tragedy is not Hinduism, which will survive the assault, but the children of California who have been used as pawns in the struggle for survival of a discredited academic discipline and its priesthood.

An African tragedy: Tutsi invasion theory

While race theories have led to stereotyping and academic and ideological abuse, they are also guilty of horrendous crimes. The Nazi Holocaust is justly infamous, but not many are aware of their contribution to the more recent Hutu-Tutsi conflicts in Africa. What Indologists could not do in India with their Aryan theories, ethnologists succeeded in doing in Africa with their race-based Tutsi invasion theory— trigger genocide. Here is the story in brief.

When we look at the map of middle Africa, we see two little countries named Rwanda and Burundi, bordering on Zaire (or the Democratic Republic of Congo). Few Indians know the recent history of these unfortunate countries or the cause of the recent catastrophes that engulfed them. As reported in the Western media, these countries are inhabited by two supposedly different ethnic groups, the so-called Hutus and Tutsis. The ethnic composition of these two countries is as follows.

Rwanda: Hutu 84%, Tutsi 15%, Twa (Pygmies) 1%

Burundi: Hutu 85%, Tutsi 14%, Twa 1%

In other words, their compositions hardly differ at all. But according to Western anthropologists, mainly colonial bureaucrats and missionaries, the Tutsi are supposed to be a Hamitic people, a race that was often intermixed with the whiter races of the North, notably from Ethiopia and Egypt, which in their turn were intermixed with some West Asiatic people, mainly the Hittites, by repeated invasions from the North. These people, the Tutsis, are supposed to have arrived from the North and not native to Rwanda. The analogy to the invading Aryans is immediate and striking, but doesn’t stop here.

The majority of Hutus are said to be Bantu, of original African race, which spilled out from the middle of the West African coast of Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cote d’Ivorie (Ivory Coast) and the inland countries of Burkina Faso and its neighbors.

In this scenario, which is contradicted by genetic analysis, the Tutsis (like the Aryans) are foreign invaders or migrants in the Rwanda-Burundi region. The Hutus, like the Indian Dravidians, are said to be much older people, but not the original inhabitants. The original inhabitants are said to be the Pygmies (or Twa), who constitute barely 1 percent of the people. The interesting part of the theory is the role assigned to the Tutsi minority. They are made into a superior race of invaders, just like the Aryans, and supposedly constitute the aristocratic elite and the oppressors of the Hutu majority.

According to this theory, the minority Tutsi have subjugated the indigenous, but not too indigenous (compared to the Pygmies) Hutus for centuries and forced them into the inferior position of agriculture. Now the key notion: Hutus and Tutsis are really two completely separate races, with the ‘black’ Hutus forming the oppressed majority, and their relatively fair invaders, the Tutsi, forming the oppressors.

This in essence is the Tutsi invasion theory, the African version of the Aryan invasion theory. The similarities are startling, even to the extent of the Dravidians in India being preceded by earlier inhabitants, the aborigines (the so-called adi-vasis), who have their African counterpart in the Pygmies. So we have the African Pygmy-Hutu-Tutsi sequence corresponding to the Indian aborigines-Dravidian-Aryan scheme.

It is a curious experience to look at the political evolution of this grotesque theory and its monstrous fallout. Until the coming of the Europeans, the Tutsis and the Hutus never saw themselves as different. Nor were they engaged in any racial wars. With the European scramble for Africa, Rwanda-Burundi became part of the short-lived German East Africa. After Germany’s defeat in the First World War, it became part of the Belgian colonies in Africa. This notion of the Tutsi-Hutu racial difference began to be drilled into the natives by colonial administrators, some academics (not unlike present day Indologists) and missionaries known as the Pere Blancs (White Fathers). (There are no Pere Noirs or Black Fathers.) They invented the Tutsi invasion theory and labeled the Hutus as the victims of Tutsi invasion and oppression.

It is worth noting that this period, between the two world wars, was the heyday of race theories in Europe. It seems the notion of superiority due to difference in skin color—imagined in this case—is indelibly ingrained in the European psyche. Its politics has collapsed, not due to any dawn of enlightenment on its proponents but the defeat of Nazi Germany. It has continued however in Western academia as Indo-European Studies and in other guises.

As with the Aryan theories and their various offshoots, this Tutsi-Hutu division has no factual basis. They speak the same language, have a long history of intermarriage and have many cultural characteristics in common. Differences are regional rather than racial, which they were not aware of until the Europeans made it part of their politics and propaganda.

The division if any was occupational. Agriculturists were called Hutu while the cattle owning elite were referred to as Tutsi. The Tutsi, like the Indian Aryans, were supposed to be tall, thin and fair, while the Hutu were described as short, black and squat— just as the Indian Dravidians are said to be. Since the Tutsi today don’t fit this description, scholars claimed that their invading ancestors did. They offered no proof but, being based on no evidence, their claim cannot be disproved either. In fact, it is impossible today to tell the two people apart. They are separate because government records carried over from colonial days say so.

This fictional racial divide was created and made official by colonial bureaucrats during Belgian rule. The Belgian Government forced everyone to carry an identity card showing tribal ethnicity as Hutu or Tutsi. This was used in administration, in providing lands, positions, and otherwise playing power politics based on race. This divisive politics combined with the racial hatred sowed by the Tutsi invasion theory turned Rwanda-Burundi into a powder keg ready to explode.

The explosion came following independence form colonial rule. Repeated violence after independence fueled this hatred driven by this supposed ethnic difference and the concocted history of the Tutsi invasion and oppression. Some 2.5 million people were massacred in this fratricidal horror of wars and genocides. Unscrupulous African leaders, like the self-styled Dravidian politicians of India, exploited this divisive colonial legacy to gain power at the cost of the people. Hutu leaders described the Tutsis as cockroaches, telecasting their tirades on the radio during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis. This led ordinary Hutus to massacre the Tutsis en masse in a bid to annihilate them completely.

So a peaceful, placid nation with a common populace, sharing a common language, culture and history was destroyed by colonialist, racist concoction called the Tutsi invasion theory. It was entirely the handiwork of colonial bureaucrats, missionaries and pseudo-scholars building careers on the discredited notion of race.

It is of course no coincidence that ideas that led to the Holocaust in Europe should have led to genocide in Africa. The disgrace is that they continue to exist in Western academia in various guises, ready to come out of the closet at an opportune moment. This is what was seen during the recent California school curriculum revision.

History lesson: transplanting the poison tree

Why should we learn all this? Because the Tutsi invasion theory has ominous parallels to the Aryan invasion theory and the Aryan myth, which scholars are trying desperately to save using linguistics or, Indo-European Studies or some similar fig-leaf. Sectarian tension and violence, thankfully not on the same horrific scale, was incited between North- and South Indians by self-styled Dravidian parties like the DMK, AIDMK and their many offshoots and incarnations. These are the poisonous legacy of the colonial-missionary racist offspring.

Why did India not go the way of Rwanda-Burundi? Not for lack of trying but because the cultural foundation of Hinduism proved too strong. It defeated the designs of politicians and propagandists masquerading as scholars. It is no coincidence that Rwanda and Burundi had been converted to Christianity, preparing the ground for sectarian conflict. Several church figures, including priests and nuns have been found guilty of complicity in the Tutsi massacres. As in India, Christianity was a colonial tool and missionaries little more than imperial agents.

Their failure in Hindu India is also what is behind the visceral anti-Hinduism of Witzel and his colleagues. It came to the fore during the recent California school controversy. This is enhanced by the fact that Hindu scholars have been at the forefront of exposing their designs and debunking their scholarly claims. An Internet group (IER or Indo-Eurasian Research) co-founded by Witzel has been doing little more than spewing venom at Hindus and their practices, in language and style that bear comparison with Nazi era publications like Julius Streicher’s Der Strummer.

They may have been defeated this time, but there is no room for complacency. The divisive politicians of India and their friends and colleagues in academia can come together to defend the Aryan-Dravidian divide. California last year was an example of such an unholy nexus. 7 Had Witzel and his colleagues succeeded in planting their poison tree in California schools, it would have become fertile ground for demagogues to turn the ethnically diverse California into a powder keg of animosities.

This brand of pseudo-scholarship cannot survive once their Aryan theories end up in the dustbin where they belong. Recognizing this, their advocates no longer engage in debate but resort to name calling. Any opposition to the Aryan theories is denounced as emotional, chauvinistic, and the handiwork of Hindu nationalists and fundamentalists. Like the artificial Aryan-Dravidian divide, the Tutsi-Hutu divide is also denied by respectable scholarship, including Western scholarship. Are we to denounce these—and a million Tutsi victims of the genocide—as the handiwork of these nationalistic chauvinistic Tutsis who deserved their fate?

The Aryan myth—and its advocates—have both been exposed, but it would be a serious error to assume that it has been put to rest. Bad ideas have a way of resurfacing especially when self interest is at stake. Writing about the persistence of superstitions like belief in witches and witchcraft in Europe, Charles Mackay, in his famous book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds observed (1841):

So deeply rooted are some errors that ages cannot remove them. The poisonous tree that once overshadowed the land might be cut down by the sturdy efforts of sages and philosophers; the sun may shine clearly upon spots where venomous things once nestled in security and shade; but still the entangled roots are stretched beneath the surface, and may be found by those who dig. Another King like James I [a self professed expert on demonology] might make them vegetate again; and more mischievous still, another Pope like Innocent VIII [who initiated the Inquisition against witches] might raise the decaying roots to strength and verdure.

One may add that scholars and academics are no more immune to the lure of obscurantism than medieval popes and kings, especially when their survival is at stake. With their base crumbling in Europe, these purveyors of hate are looking for fresh soil in places like California to plant their poison-bearing trees.

The Illegal Regime of Congress

 

EVM expose
Is electronic ‘rigging’ subverting electoral mandate?
By GVL Narasimha Rao

Shockingly, of the 13.78 lakh EVMs deployed in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, only 4.48 Lakh are either new or upgraded machines, while as many as 9.3 Lakh EVMs (or over 2/3rd of all EVMs) deployed are old machines. The Commission has furnished this information in reply to a RTI query dated July 21 to V. Venkateswara Rao, the main petitioner who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court on the issue.

Political parties now suspect that something has wrong but appear woefully short in understanding the rigging possibilities of electronic voting machines. Most of them have nagging doubts about the tampering of the EVMs, but have not raised these concerns in an open manner for fear of retribution and ridicule. The Supreme Court in its order in disposing the writ petition on EVMs had stated last month that the issue raised are of vital concern and the political parties may approach the Commission to clarify their doubts about the EVMs.

The debate over the unreliability of the EVM that raged over the last two months is reaching a crescendo as many new facts come to light, even as Election Commission officials continue to carp ad nauseam that the EVMs used by the Election Commission are infallible, without any substantive proof, whatsoever.

On the other hand, there is now enough verifiable and circumstantial evidence to show that there is something amiss about the EVMs. The true story of the EVMs is beginning to unfold and it would be a tragedy if the political parties do not get to the bottom of the truth about these allegations and apprehensions. The poll panel is betraying signs of nervousness as it has no convincing explanations to a number of emerging concerns and the political parties owe it to the millions of the voting public to investigate and arrive at proper conclusions to show that their votes have not been robbed by unscrupulous individuals and to restore the public faith in our voting system.

Shocking verdicts
As someone who has analysed and predicted many parliamentary and assembly elections in the past, let me add a new perspective to the raging EVM debate. The only two parliamentary elections where the pollsters in general have gone horribly wrong in India’s parliamentary history are the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and 2004. Consider this fact these are the only two national elections that were totally electronic.

In stark contrast, the Lok Sabha election results of 1991, 1996 and 1999 which were manual could be accurately predicted by most pollsters. For instance, my own Lok Sabha predictions for the Times of India and Doordarshan for all these elections were bang on target. (See box for these predictions and actual results).

That brings up the relevant question: Has the voter mood in the Lok Sabha elections that we were able to gauge very accurately until 1999 become so complex after the Election Commission made them totally electronic employing the EVMs?

Poll predictions vs. Actual results

* Polls by G.V.L. Narasimha Rao for Times of India/Doordarshan

Interestingly, we could accurately predict various assembly elections (held using EVMs) held between 2004 and 2009 general elections including the elections of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. How is it that the same electronic voting machines turned in voting results that we could capture accurately in assembly polls, but not in national elections?

Is it the case that these voting machines per se are reliable when they are properly handled (which explains why there were no problems in assembly elections), but have been tampered with in the Lok Sabha polls producing startling results both in 2004 and 2009?

Lest the cynics argue that my theory of “electronic rigging” in national elections based on this circumstantial evidence is a figment of my imagination and rubbish it on the promise that the BJP would not have performed creditably well in states like Bihar and Chhattisgarh in 2009 general elections if that were the case, let me substantiate my claims with some pertinent information and questions.

EC owes explanation
The Election Commission is less than truthful in claiming that the EVMs deployed in general elections are tamperproof, when its own technical committee led by Prof. P.V. Indiresan held otherwise. The Expert Committee in its September, 2006 report (points 3.6 and 3.7) recommended that the old EVMs should be upgraded with suggested modifications, testing and operating precautions to make them tamper proof.

Shockingly, of the 13.78 lakh EVMs deployed in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, only 4.48 Lakh are either new or upgraded machines, while as many as 9.3 Lakh EVMs (or over 2/3rd of all EVMs) deployed are old machines. The Commission has furnished this information in reply to a RTI query dated July 21 to V Venkateswara Rao, the main petitioner who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court on the issue. (Copy of the ECI reply enclosed)

New, improved EVMs were deployed in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and some UT’s and all north eastern states except Assam. In all others states, old EVMs, which do not meet the technical specifications, were used.

Why is it that these new, improved machines were not deployed in any of the key Congress-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruled states? Who were the persons responsible in making these decisions and what was the rationale in making the choice of states with the new, improved EVMs?

Curiously, while many states seem to have been selected following some alphabetical sequence, the UPA ruled states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Maharastra and Tamil Nadu (which fall in the same sequence) have been left out systematically.

Naturally, the following questions arise and the EC is duty bound to answer them satisfactorily. What considerations guided the deployment of the old EVMs, more susceptible to tampering in all the states ruled by the ruling combine at the Centre? Why all the EVMs were not upgraded or replaced as recommended by the Expert Committee? Isn’t the Commissions guilty of misleading the political parties and the public opinion that it’s EVMs are tamper proof when it is fully aware of their limitations and shortcomings? All these serious questions warrant convincing answers from the Commission.

Latest statements from Commission officials reveal that they themselves seem to entertain doubts about the functioning of the old EVMs deployed in Lok Sabha elections. The Commission officials now say that only new, improved and ‘certified’ EVMs will be deployed for by-polls due shortly in Tamil Nadu where the opposition parties led by the AIADMK have decided to boycott by-elections. Does it not amount to admission of guilt that the old EVMs used in the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu were not reliable and prone to tampering?

‘Stand alone’ EVMs
Election Commisison officials have time and again argued that the EVMs cannot be tampered as they are stand alone machines without being part of any network and are not based on operating systems as the EVMs used elsewhere in the world.

That is an erroneous argument. The stand alone EVMs can be hacked on a selective basis; in any state, constituency or polling station of one’s choosing. Granted, this cannot happen without tampering with the individual EVMs deployed for election duty at some stage of their handling in the manufacture or election operations. That brings up the relevant question as to who can actually be involved in tampering.

It may be difficult or even impossible to influence lakhs of government functionaries deployed for election duty to tamper all the EVMs. But, it appears that there are a number of private players involved in gaining access to the EVMs at various stages, starting from their manufacture to their operations and maintenance at various stages of elections. Evidently, they are a huge potential security hazard.

Role of private players
Election Commission officials now claim that the EVMs are tamper proof and this confidence stems merely from the certificates of authenticity given by their manufacturers namely the ECIL and BEL, both in the public sector. Is that a valid ground for unbridled optimism about their tamper proof reliability? Is there any way that the officers on election duty or political party representatives to verify that these EVMs are indeed not tampered with? The answer is a no.

In addition to the manufacturers, there are a number of private players and individuals who are engaged in handling these machines at several crucial stages. There is not much information available on who these people are, who hires them, what duties they perform, what process is adopted to hire them and what are the terms of their engagement?

Preliminary enquiries show that they include chip manufacturers, service maintenance staff, manpower suppliers, outsourcing agencies, transporters of EVMs etc., who have unlimited access to the EVMs. What prevents them from tampering with the EVMs at some stage of election operations? In some states, we found reports suggesting that the maintenance and EVM handling work has been done by people belonging to the ruling parties. Does that not give ample scope to these parties to manipulate these machines?

A few authorised, unscrupulous elements gaining access to the machines can play havoc with them. No one would even get a hint of such manipulation as most officials are completely ignorant of the technology manipulation possibilities. Experts allege that these manipulations are so simple and devious that these could be done even without any knowledge on the part of the operational staff engaged in such manipulations who will mistake these activities to be part of the operational procedures.

EC operations in mystery
The biggest problem is that all the operations of the Election Commission of India are shrouded in mystery and there is a veil of secrecy that surrounds them, while as a public institution; it is expected to function in a transparent manner. India’s democracy cannot be held hostage to the whims and fancies of a few high ranking and well meaning officials of the Election Commission who would like us to simply believe that under their watchful supervision, nothing can go wrong.

Most senior officials of the Election Commission and those engaged in the polling process at various levels seem blissfully unaware of the manipulation possibilities of the EVMs. Worse, ECI officials see any doubts raised against EVMs as attacks on their personal integrity.

But, in a country where the election commissioners are appointed owing to their known political affiliations and former election commissioners are rewarded with positions and ministerial berths for ‘services’ rendered, doubts are bound to be raised about their impartiality. It is the duty of the Commission to reveal all facts to show that it has little to hide.

The Election Commission has the responsibility to initiate a national debate to discuss all issues threadbare. In stead of addressing valid concerns, it has been asking everyone to prove that their EVMs are tamper prone. Granted, no tampering can be done without physically manipulating it. Experts are challenging that the EVMs used in the elections can be tampered if one has physical access to them and the commission is not willing to take the challenge. The Commission perhaps wants the petitioners to perform some magic skills in manipulating their machines without gaining any physical access.

In the wake of serious concerns and the emerging potential possibilities for manipulation at various stages, it is the onerous duty of the poll panel to demonstrate basis for their oft repeated claims that their EVMs cannot be tampered with and not anyone else. The Commission should take voluntary steps in promoting a healthy debate and remove all hurdles to restore public faith in a system that has been junked by most western democracies rather than attempt to muzzle all opposition by making unsustainable claims.

Political parties must demand accountability
Most political parties now suspect that something has wrong but appear woefully short in understanding the rigging possibilities of electronic voting machines. Most of them have nagging doubts about the tampering of the EVMs, but have not raised these concerns in an open manner for fear of retribution and ridicule. The Supreme Court in its order in disposing the writ petition on EVMs had stated last month that the issue raised are of vital concern and the political parties may approach the Commission to clarify their doubts about the EVMs.

At stake is not just the fate of the political parties but the sanctity of our electoral process and the essence of our democracy. Parties must vociferously raise their concerns in public domain and in Parliament and ensure that the poll panel is held accountable to the millions of its electorate and conduct future elections in a manner that enhances the confidence of the electorate and that of the political parties in their outcomes.

(The author is a leading political analyst and a member of the BJP. Views expressed here are his own.)

- – Forecast Actual
1996 BJP+ 188 189
- Congress+ 142 132
- Others 212 215
1998 BJP+ 252 252
- Congress+ 140 147
- Others 145 138
1999 BJP+ 287 298
- Congress+ 174 135
- Others 77 105

I have now come to the conclusion that the “shock defeat” of NDA in 2004 and the “shock victory” of UPA in 2009, both are result of EVM fixing. These “election shocks” where pollsters go horribly wrong with predictions are nothing but results of shocks administered by EVMs and Chawla-type bueracrats.

It is strange to see again and again election results that are so against the national mood and predictions of pollsters. For example, in Uttarkhand, Congress “swept” all five lok sabha seats, but in state bypolls held a mere 15 days later in the same area, the Congress candidate came third!!

Congress has cheated Indians in 2004 and 2009 and is an illegal usurper of political power. its regime is illegal. If EVM tampering is proved by a committe that has representation of all political parties, Chawla belongs in jail for committing treason. It should also be investigated why congress was determined to plant Chawla in EC against stiff opposition if he could provide the party with no benefit at all.

I also have a feeling that the Congress courtiers are allying with a Western intelligence agency (anglo saxons) to keep Hindu nationalists out of power. Keeping the BJP out of power suits the objectives of both perfectly. it is the Mir Jafar and Jai Chand story all over again.

Western Academia: an arm of the church?

Academe as Battleground – Part 3       
We are all immigrants from somewhere

By Radha Rajan

Harvard, the Alma Pater of both Witzel and Clooney, is a good example of western academe being a creature of the White Church. Glimpses of Christian History narrates the birth of Harvard University, crediting medieval Christendom for the birth of the concept of universities; the narrative, at the very end implies piously that Harvard was pre-ordained by God. Corollary? The Christian God works through history and establishing universities is a part of the bigger plan.

“Universities sprang up in Medieval Christendom. Nothing like them had been seen in history, for not only did they concentrate teachers, they embraced the idea of set coursework whose requirements must be fulfilled before a specific degree was awarded. Students were periodically tested before being certified in their chosen subjects. Universities were modeled on guilds which trained and rated apprentices and journeymen and gathered members for mutual protection. The Christian ideal often tends to clump people together for mutual support in a body.

John Harvard was a wealthy member of the English middle class. The death of most of his family from plague had left him holding the entire Harvard estate. John came to the New World in 1637, apparently to practice his faith in a simpler and more pure style than he felt he could enjoy in the established Church of England. The following year he died of a protracted disease. He willed half his estate and his entire library for the establishment of a college. The prospective school may have received £850, a very large sum by New England standards. God concentrates wealth for a purpose.” Amen.

“Nothing like that had been seen in history” is typical of the scholarship and reportage about Christendom and by extension, about Hindu India’s history that Harvard supports and propagates; and “John came to the New World in 1637″ is polite for the wave after wave of marauding genocidal European Christians invading North America. A quick look at the list of publications from Harvard University Press informs us in a trice of Harvard’s White Christian geo-political predilections.

This is how HUP describes Martha Nussbaum’s book on Hindu nationalism -

“While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Nussbaum’s long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history”.

This is routine western academic front-end refuse about Hindu nationalism and therefore doesn’t merit further commentary except to take note of the mirthful Martha’s “professional relationship with India” which is pregnant with several unflattering explanations but HUP’s description of a book of German translation of the Rg. Veda is suggestive of western academe fulfilling their God’s will when He created Harvard.

“Edited and translated by Karl Friedrich Geldner

The Rigveda is the oldest Indian and one of the oldest Indo-European texts. It is a collection of 1,028 hymns addressed to the gods, (note the small ‘g’ in gods) composed in highly poetic and notoriously difficult Archaic Sanskrit. Medieval Indian commentaries and especially the modern Western scholarship of the past 150 years have increasingly shed more light on its poetry, religion, and ritual as well as on its contemporary meaning. The Rigveda has been translated in scholarly fashion only once during the twentieth century, and that was into German in 1951 by K. F. Geldner. Geldner’s volumes have long been out of print; they are reprinted here in one useful reference volume”.

Harvard has gone to great and painstaking lengths not to mention the word ‘Hindu’ even once in this descriptive paragraph. It is doubtful if a similar description of the Torah, the Bible or the Koran, by a non-believer without once mentioning the name of the people for whom these scriptures are sacred, could have been possible. Every word in the description above signals intent.

The Rg. Veda is an Indo-European ‘text’

Western scholars of the Rg. Veda are modern while Indian commentaries (not Bhashyakaras, not even commentators, definitely not scholars) are medieval. Medieval comes with a Christian academic baggage because Hindu scholars do not speak of our tradition and heritage in terms of ancient past, medieval times and modern

Harvard is not saying the Rg. Veda has several layers of meaning; Harvard is saying it has an ancient meaning, a medieval meaning and contemporary meaning; the meaning of the Rg. Veda for horse-riding Central Asian invaders/composers (because Rg. Veda is religious ritual in poetry format) is different from the meaning that our Bhashyakaras put on it and the meaning that modern western scholars like Max Mueller, Geldner and Witzel put on it.

Only one worthwhile, scholarly translation of the Rg. Veda has been undertaken in the 20th century and that is by a German. Harvard publishes the translation again and passes the baton of western scholarship of the Rg. Veda to another German, Michael Witzel

Needless to say, Geldner was the son of a Protestant clergyman

All western academic activity is arranged around the fact that White Christians are a nation-less people. The White Christians of America and the European Christians cannot live down the brutal history of the White Church. Staring them in the face is the genocide of Native Americans and the contrast presented by the Hindus of India who have lived contentedly in their janmabhumi. While Parts 1 and 2 of this article detailed the comical research of western academe and its Indian minions on all issues Hindu, we shall proceed to see the diabolic intentions of western academe in the US on all issues concerning Native Americans. Readers will see the pattern of motivated scholarship that emerges; scholarship intended to propagate the White Christian worldview and world order.

Nation-less White Christians, in this case the Puritans, had to peddle Euro-American nation building as a noble enterprise, sweeping the invasion and occupation of another nation and the genocide of Native Americans away from sight. This they did by two elaborate charades – scholarly fairy-tale accounts of the numbers of Native Americans in North America, prior to Puritan invasion and the more familiar to Hindus scholarship – you Native Americans are not of this soil; you too are from elsewhere.

The most heartening thing in all this is that western academe’s intent to de-nationalise the Hindus and Native Americans is being challenged more and more by native scholars – Ward Curchill and Vine Deloria Jr., Shrikant Talagheri and S Kalyanaraman among many others.

“The choice ultimately is ours. If we elect, sheep-like, to accept the definitions of entities like Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, and Newsweek as to what comprises “proper” or “appropriate” recountings os historical fact and meaning, we will merely have consigned ourselves to more of what has already transpired. If, on the other hand, we move to embrace, absorb and extend the kind of work pioneered by Deloria, Grinde, Williams Stannard and Sale, we equip ourselves to change it in a profoundly positive fashion”. (Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, p 121)

The “federally-established and maintained” Smithsonian and other ‘entities” as Churchill puts it so heartwarmingly disparagingly placed the numbers of Native American peoples in 1492 when Christopher Columbus entered the continent, at a comical one million. Later, admitting to a “little” error and underestimation by a factor of 100, the Smithsonian upped the number to 2 millions. This gross diminishing of the numbers was necessary to transform the horror and absolute immorality of the total and complete annihilation of the Native Americans by White Christians into a matter of a “little” genocide; sad, yes, unfortunate, also yes but it was only a “little” genocide, nothing more. The bulk died of disease which the White Christians beginning with Christopher Columbus, “inadvertently” passed on to Native Americans who had no immunity from European pathogens. Cotton Mather, the illustrious son of Increase Mather, a Puritan priest and theologian and President Harvard College, gloated, piously of course, over the death by disease of the Native Americans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

“In describing the consequences of indigenous peoples’ “quarrelsome” attitude about being pushed out of their territory around the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631, Puritan leader Cotton Mather rejoiced that “God ended the controversy by sending the smallpox among the Indians…who were before that time exceedingly numerous”. (Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, p 139) Cotton Mather was the son of Boston’s First Family and a leading intellectual, theologian and academician of the times.

Closely related to this “little” genocide and God-ordained death-by-disease are the attendant academic falsehoods -

Much of the continent was uninhabited and terra nullius or vacant land which the White Christians occupied, obedient to the will of God, tamed and put to productive use

Because it was uninhabited and the land was vacant anyway, there is no wrong attached to occupying and settling it

The Native Americans were a barbaric lot given to cannibalism and human sacrifice

White Christians after diminishing them to convenient and manageable numbers converted the remaining to Christianity to civilize them and teach them to do an honest day’s work

Until the civilizing influence of White Christianity, Native Americans lived by hunting, “jump-killing” the mastodons and mammoths

So if we are responsible for genocide, well native Americans are responsible for rendering extinct the precious fauna of North America

Lest the readers think serious academia is incapable of such mirthful research, they must only bring to mind the kind of scholarly research that has gone into the Aryan Invasion Theory, the language of the Rg. Veda (Witzel’s favorite hobby horse) and the language of the Indus-Saraswati seals. In what the writer saw as a startling repetition of the Aryan Invasion Theory by which White Christians placed the Brahmins, the Rg. Veda and Sanskrit outside national borders, the Smithsonian and other Churchillian entities invented the Bering Strait Theory which put the Native American people outside their national borders to make the point, if we are outsiders then you are outsiders too.

“Thus people accepting the idea that outmoded explanations of human evolution have been modified substantially will continue to hold with the Bering Strait Theory even though to do so is a great inconsistency. But another point must be made which requires a chapter of discussion – and that is whether or not the Bering Strait is simply shorthand scientific language for ‘I don’t know, but it sounds good and no one will check’.

Coupled with this belief is the idea that American Indians (‘Native Americans’ because today the name ‘American Indians’ means Americans of Indian origin or PIOs) were not original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere but latecomers who had barely unpacked before Columbus came knocking on the door. If Indians had arrived only a few centuries earlier, they had no real claim to land that could not be swept away by European discovery. Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian devoted his life to discrediting of any early occupancy of North America and a whole generation of scholars, fearfully following the Master, rejected the claims of their peers rather than offend this powerful scholar”. (Vine Deloria Jr. Red Earth White Lies, Chapter 4, Low Bridge – Everybody Cross, p 68, Fulcrum Publishing Golden, Colorado, 1997)

The Bering Strait is an inter-continental bridge connecting Asia to America. As Deloria puts it scathingly, Native Americans, according to this school of scholarship, waited for low tide and then hopped to America from Asia via this bridge. Now this “bridge” is a land mass the size of a sub-continent which has since the days of the crossing-over, conveniently disappeared under the sea. Deja Vu. Readers must recollect the lost continent of Lemuria which too is an intercontinental landmass which if it had existed would have proved yet another of western academe’s de-nationalsing-the-Hindus scholarly research. The Christian God, it would seem must attend speedily to this bit of neglected history. He has to bring Lemuria and Berengia to the surface again to validate Harvard and the Smithsonian.

The sense of rootedness to the soil is a primordial urge and once the White Church expanded the White God’s domain through genocide, slavery and colonialism, the Church’s flock became a nation-less people. On every territory they now find themselves, they are only genocidal invaders, interlopers and settlers. The driving objective of western academe is “What is not for me will also not be for you”. Today, the Hindus of India and the non-Christian and non-Muslim peoples of Asia alone continue to live on their nation. Citizenship of a non-national country is not the same as nationhood. It is at best living in a rented house or living in a house that has been seized after killing the owner. Western academe has two objectives – to justify the predatory expansion of the White Church and to de-legitimize the claim of the indigenous peoples to their national territory and sense of nationhood.

Native American scholars are not only turning the ignoble and blatantly manufactured theses emanating from these portals but are also exposing the politics behind this kind of scholarship. Scholars like Kalyanaraman and Talagheri are undertaking corrective scholarly studies but have not ventured to expose the politics of western academe and their Indian stooges. It may be left to others to strip western academe of its veneer of exalted academic standards to reveal the naked Christian agenda of its research and researchers. The bulk of academic studies tampering with the sense of Hindu nationhood must be evicted from our own academe lock, stock and barrel. Nation and nationalism, rootedness to the soil and its religion, society and polity deriving from the culture which in turn derives from the religion rooted to the soil are emerging as central concerns in countries threatened by the brazen intrusion of the White Church into their nations and the serious threat posed to Hindus by jihadi Islam.

“At this juncture, the whole planet is locked, figuratively, in a room with the socio-cultural (I would add western academic) equivalent of Hannibal Lecter. An individual of consummate taste and refinement, imbued with indelible grace and charm, he distracts his victims with the brilliance of his intellect, even while honing his blade. He is thus able to dine alone upon their livers, his feast invariably candlelit, accompanied by lofty music and a fine wine. Over and over the ritual is repeated, always hidden, always denied in order that it may be continued. So perfect is Lecter’s pathology that, from the depths of his scorn for the inferiors upon whom he feeds, he advances himself as their sage and therapist, he who is incomparably endowed with the ability to explain their innermost meanings, he professes to be their savior. His success depends upon being embraced and exalted by those upon whom he preys. Ultimately, so long as Lecter is able to retain his mask of omnipotent gentility, he can never be stopped. The spirit of Hannibal Lecter is thus at the core of an expansionist European “civilization” which has reached out to engulf the planet. (Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, p 93)

The only way to halt the march of European Civilization is for the natives of every nation to start the process of re-claiming their nations from the Abrahamic religions. In India, Hindus must begin to not only question motivated west-driven scholarship but also expose the geo-politics behind such scholarship. Iravatham Mahadevan, Pollachi Mahalingam, the University of Madras Departments of Sanskrit and Vaishnavism, Sri Vaishnava scholars, our epigraphists, historians and linguists and the small idiots who think the likes of Witzel and Clooney, Doniger and Nussbaum must be defeated in polite academic exchange, must see themselves described by Ward Churchill. Churchill calls these willing and unwitting allies and useful idiots, the “sympathetic biographer” who attempts to explain Lecter in academic and sublime literary terms. “The biographer thus reveals not only a willing complicity in the subject’s crimes, but a virulent pathology of his or her own. Such is and has always been the relationship of “responsible scholarship” to expansionist Europe and its derivative societies”. (Ward Churchill)

Hindu nationalists and Hindu scholars can learn a thing or two from Ward Churchill, Vine Deloria Jr. and David Stannard about how to conduct ourselves on the White Christian formulated academic battleground.

(Concluded)
Radha Rajan, 11th August, 2009.
 

Westerners and the LTTE

KP sings about DPL, VIP links

Despite him being an internationally wanted fugitive, LTTE’s self-proclaimed leader since the killing of Velupillai Prabhakaran, Selvarasa Pathmanathan has revealed shocking details about his continuing links with top officials of international organisations and ambassadors of leading Western nations serving in Colombo.

Since he was whisked to Colombo from Malaysia via Bangkok on Thursday night after a daring seize at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday afternoon, Selvarasa a.k.a. Kumaran Pathmanathan has been under interrogation at an undisclosed location in Colombo.

According to sources, he has also revealed details of Tiger leaders still hiding among civilians in IDP camps and about leaders who had managed to escape from those camps to India and Western countries.

As to details about the massive war chest of the organisation, placed by experts at billions of dollars, KP had claimed that he was not aware of those details as Prabhakaran had entrusted those functions to other people. But he has divulged information about his LTTE links in Western countries.

However, he has confessed that the bulk of the LTTE finances had come from Switzerland, followed by UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

Probe every insurgeny and terrorist movement anywhere in the world–from Taliban to LTTE to Nepal Maoists–you find that it has been funded/directed by White Christians. These people are the real terrorist supporters of the world lighting up fires in pagan lands on behalf of their church.

Sri Lanka should use the testimony of Pathmanathan and move a motion in UN to get these Western countries declared as official supporters of terrorism. Alternatively, the time is ripe to start some insurgencies in Western countries to return the favour. There are many faultlines in Western societies that can be exploited. These people will not desist from supporting terrorist movements till their own houses are set on fire.

Western countries are the biggest arms dealers and terrorist supporters in the world.