Monday, October 24, 2011

A fake historian can damage a nation for generations

Tarnish every person, Institution, Period, Confidence...
Ascribe tolerance, magnanimity to the intolerant... 
Portray the inclusive, Open tradition as the one out to swallow others, and the exclusivist, totalitarian ideology as the ideology of broad-mindedness, of peace, tolerance...
Denounce as 'communal' anyone who demands proof... 
Blame victims for the consequence of the ideology of the oppressors...
Suppress the role of comrades in aiding imperial rulers...
Tarnish leaders, reformers who led the nationalist movement...
All the while control institutions, hog patronage, exercise power, and have a good time...wrote Arun Shourie in the introduction to his book Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. Well, he was absolutely right in his observation about the history writers in India.

History writing in India is very difficult unlike history writing in say Europe. Writing of Indian history in a large scale happened at the time of the British. The Indian history writing is in near absolute control of the writers with Marxist ideology. The underlying tone of Marxist approach towards history can be summed as: ancient societies are primitive, all kinds of social evolutions are class struggle, and India absorbed great things from invaders rather than producing great things on its own. In Marxist version of history, Hindu society is always portrayed as regressive, many Islamic rulers (who were actually religious fanatics) are portrayed as tolerant, a great lie of Aryan-Dravidian division theory is invented to create divide amongst Indians, a great warrior-saint like Guru Tegh Bahadur is called a bandit, freedom fighters are called as terrorists (I clearly remember studying this), great patriots like Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Vivekananda are touted communal.

Marxists never had scantest respect for the spiritual heritage of India which is actually its core strength. If it did not process that strength, it could never have attracted the greatest minds like Albert Einstein or Mark Twain. Students never study India’s contribution to the world in art, science, metallurgy or various other technologies. Students who receive this kind of education can never know the great heritage of India and they will grow devoid of pride in their country and some of them have contempt for it as well. All the ‘great’ historians that can be listed from the present day India like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, R.S.Sharma, Bipin Chandra are heavily inclined towards leftist ideologies. Anyone who tries to correct some gross errors is termed ‘communal’. The Marxist historians are doing such a great harm to the country that it can put Macaulay’s dream to shame!

When someone tries to mend these mistakes (as it happened when Murali Manohar Joshi was HRD minister and the attempt was a failure), and present history as it is, then there will be a big hue and cry of ‘saffronization’. When did saffron enter the scene! The lobby of Marxists is very strong that they will make such attempts to fail. They enjoy a strong patronage from the government and support from media as well. This is a hard nexus which may take many decades to break. It may be true that the history writing should not have hold of any ideologies but if an ideology is inevitable, let it be a nationalistic one rather than the putrid communist one.

You may build a magnanimous building. But if it is built on quick sand, the glory is transient. Sooner or later, the building has to fall & will fall. As the old saying goes: truth ultimately triumphs.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

If Buddha was born in Saudi Arabia!

Just imagine! A rebel like Buddha having born in Saudi Arabia post 622 A.D! Being a rebel doesn’t mean that one has to go against the establishment through an armed rebellion or though violence. One can go bereft of them as well. Buddha proved to the world it can be done.


At the time when Buddha got enlightened (he never claimed that he was the chosen one as some later sectarian prophets did), the great spiritual truths were not accessible to common public. It was in the besieged castle of the priestly class. The first thing Buddha did was that he made them available for the public. Sanskrit was a priestly language even then. Prakrit was the common language of the people. So, he preached to the people in Prakrit. Buddha never had any intention of starting a religion but later it was nevertheless started in his name. As they say if Christ and Buddha come back now and see what’s being done in their name they will be crying seeing the ignorance of people. 

Buddha was against established believes, dogmas, doctrines of his day. He declared there was no god. That was a big blow for the established religion of the time. He said ‘Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’ They said everything was ‘atman’ (the soul). Buddha declared all are ‘anatman’ (no-soul). There was no god, no soul. That was a death blow for the religion of his time because most of the doctrines were banked on these two concepts. Still, people did not kill him. They invited him for debates and knowledge was expounded. They worshiped him as god incarnate though he mocked at their customs and belief systems. 


If Buddha was born in some Arab nation and if he was vociferous enough to declare there was no god and if he had mocked at their belief in prophet-hood, we would never have known who the Buddha was because he would have been killed. It requires a great maturity to listen to the critics and counter-argument to the established belief system. Indians always had that maturity. Take Jesus Christ for example. He did not tell any revolutionary truths in the beginning at all. He said some simple truths for common people. But people saw him as a threat to their established religion and they exterminated him. If Jesus had been born in India he would have been worshipped as the god incarnate.

India’s religion was never organized. It had many systems and sub-systems. So, it gave a great freedom like no-where else. One could believe in god, one could believe in no-god, one could believe in nothing and still be a Hindu (though the word ‘Hindu’ was coined much later than the time of Buddha). There were idol worshippers, there were advaitins (who believed in the self and god are the same), there were charvakas (downright materialists who believed in nothing they could not see and for whom sensual enjoyment was everything).There was no action which was considered sacrilegious. In fact, in most of the Indian languages there is no exact word which matches with the meaning of the word sacrilege or blasphemy because the freedom given was such that there was no act which was blasphemous in this nation.

The Indian culture had an incredible assimilation power which was unprecedented. If anyone looks at the ethnicity of Indian population, there is all possible kind of races, religions in this country and all are assimilated so well. Swami Vivekananda while delivering the speech in the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago said “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.” That’s the uniqueness and strength of this culture. The very factor that this culture is living despite of various severe assaults from different people starting from Alexander to the Muslim invaders to the British is a testimony to the fact.

There have been many great civilizations but the Indian civilization is the only civilization which has not withered away with time. There should be something immense in this civilization which has made it to stand the test of time. Tolerance to other people and assimilation power are natural traits of Indian culture. So, if anyone comes to me and say Hindus have to learn tolerance, I just throw him a smile and with all contempt possible I’ll say ‘buddy! You don’t know what you are talking about’!!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

My Books Review: September '11


     1) Saints and mystics: This book is a brief biography of a few saints and mystics of the world & is published by Ramakrishna Mutt. The saints and mystics that are covered are: Pavhari Baba, Baal Shem Tov, Swami Brahmananda, St. Vincent de Paul, Sri Narayana Guru, St. Teresa of Avila, Kabirdas, Swami Virajananda, Goda Devi, Sri Aurobindo, Gopaler Ma, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Gobind Singh, Akka Mahadevi.
     Though I knew about a few saints in the book, I did not know in detail about the lives like those of Pavhari Baba, St. Teresa or Guru Gobind Singh. It was a good read. 

     2) Many lives, many masters: This book is written by a prominent psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss. It starts with a patient with several psychological disorders coming to Dr. Brian for help. In order to cure the patient, the doctor goes for the hypnosis, regression therapy. But after a few sessions, to his amazement the patient in a session instead of going to the early childhood or infancy slips to a past life. The doctor could not believe it because science has not acknowledged the existence of past lives though in some religions the belief exists. But he could not dismiss it as some non-sense because the descriptions given by the patient is so very vivid and accurate and besides the patient had a strict catholic upbringing which doesn’t believe in past life. It was neither hallucination nor delusion because as a trained psychiatrist, he knew the symptoms of those. 


The doctor continues the past life regression therapy and many previous lives of the patient get unfolded. To his surprise, the problems that the patient had began to heal at a very rapid pace than it would in normal type of therapies. This convinced the doctor about the existence of past as well as the future lives. At the end of multiple sessions of therapy, the patient became more than normal, radiating vibrancy. This is a good book in the fields of Para-psychology or ESP.