Highest Sageness -39

Indological MaCarthyism

"You cannot be proud of a heritage you know nothing about, and in the name of secularism, we have spent 50 years in total denial of the Hindu roots of this civilisation. We have done nothing to change a colonial system of mass education founded on the principle that Indian civilisation had nothing to offer." 
"As for me I would like to state clearly that I believe that the Indic religions have made much less trouble for the world than the Semitic ones and that Hindu civilisation is something I am very proud of."
                                      - writes Indian columnist Tavleen Singh - The Indian Express June 13, 2004. Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser.
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There is a great tendency in the Western academia to stereotype any reconsideration of ancient Indian history as nationalist or communal. It is erroneous to lump it into a simplistic, hastily identified and easily demonized Hindutva category.  

Anybody who challenges the long held assumptions pertaining to the Indo-Aryans is instantly dubbed as a fundamentalist or nationalist or accused of contributing to Nazi agendas.  

Blanket stereotypification of the Aryan debate with Hindu nationalism is great annoyance with most Hindu scholars. Any one attempting to question this established paradigm is in danger of being dubbed a Nazi.

Dilip Chakrabarti, author of Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Pasthas nothing but scorn for the Indian intellectual elite who “fail to see the need of going beyond the dimensions of colonial Indology, because these dimensions suit them fine and keep them in power. In his view, “as the Indian historians became increasingly concerned with the large number of grants, scholarships, fellowships and even occasional jobs to be won in Western universities, there was a scramble for new respectability to be gained by toeing the Western line of thinking about India and Indian history.” The result is that “institutions on the national level have to be ‘captured’ and filled up with stooges of various kinds,” and making the right kind of political noises is important for historians.” 

Chakrabati has also said: 

“We have no hesitation in asserting that the “Nigger Question” is in various forms still very much a part of the Indological scene. Right from the patronizing comments on “Babu English” to wry remarks on Indian nationalism for refusing to accept the idea of Greek and other extraneous origins of some of the crucial traits of Indian culture, the Western Indological literature has been consistent in viewing the general Indian scholarship in the manner as an inferior product…Some Indians’ refusal to acknowledge the veracity of Aryan invasion of India is interpreted by Western Indologists as misdirected symptoms of “north Indian nationalism.” (114).

He further comments:

“Rumblings against some of the premises of Western Indology have been heard from time time, but such rumblings generally emerged in uninfluential quarters, and in the context of Indian historical studies this would mean people without control of the major national historical organizations, i.e. people who can easily be fobbed off as “fundamentalists” of some kind, mere dhotiwalas of no intellectual consequence. “ (3)

Arun Shourie (1941- ) is a Rajya Sabha member and among India's best known commentators on current and political affairs. His writings are backed by rigorous analysis and meticulous research. He  has remarked about the Marxist influence as well as the corruption of the “leftist” school of historians in India: 

“They have made India out to have been an empty-land filled with successive invaders. They have made present-day India and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo-an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as “India,” just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by the Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communals to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see, strained to whitewash the Islamic period…

"These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion; the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism – they have made out to be the epitome of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy and secularism." 

They have been able to work all this mischief “because of the control they have come to acquire over institutions. Shourie lists, to the rupee, the considerable resources that have been pocketed by the “leftist” historians during their tenure in the ICHR, ostensibly for contributions toward such enterprises as the multivolume Towards Freedom Project, almost none of which has seen the light of day despite the lapse of years.  

(source: The Quest for the Origin of Vedic Culture - By Edwin F Bryant  p.   267 - 286). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com. Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser. Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Race, Religion and Philology in the 19^th Century  

Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914 -  )  Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Religions at the Collège de France in Paris, has observed: 

“As scholars established the disciplines of Semitic and Indo-European studies, they also invented the mythical figures of the Hebrew and the Aryan, a providential pair which, by revealing to the people of the Christianized West the secret of their identity, also bestowed upon them the patent of nobility that justified their spiritual, religious, and political domination of the world.  

"Behind these projections, we cannot today fail to see looming in the background the dark silhouette of the death camps and the rising smoke of the ovens.” 

***

The Indo-European languages clearly had a separate line of descent from the biblical tongues, the practitioners of the new science of philology (many of whom had received their linguistic training from the Church) turned their scholarship to the task of justifying the ascendance of European Christianity to the principal role in Providential history. 

To accomplish this they invented a pair of concepts – Aryan and Semitic – that by the end of the century had embarked on ideological and political careers far outside philology. Supposed characteristics of the respective languages were assigned to the peoples who spoke them: thus the Semitic peoples (primarily the Jews) were, like their language, passive, static and immobile, while the Aryans (principally Western Europeans) became the active, dynamic Chosen People of the future. 

Philology the comparative study of language – left an indelible mark on Western visions of history and contributed directly to some to the most horrifying ideologies of the 20^th century.    

The discovery of Indo-European caused a furor that extended well beyond the discipline of comparative philology. All the human sciences, from history to mythology, and soon to include “racial science”, were affected by the discovery of a tongue that was known not only as Indo-European but also as Aryan. One of the leading promoters of the Aryan theories, Friedrich Max Muller (11823 – 1000) described the inception of his discipline as the starting point for a new science of human origins. 

Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas fired the imagination of scholars driven by romantic curiosity about prehistoric times. Other scholars hoped to infuse new Aryan life into Christianity that had suffered much at the hands of the Enlightenment and Revolution. 

In the works of Ernest Renan, Adolphe Pictet (1799 - 1875) Friedrich Max Muller, and Rudolph Friedrich Grau, Christ remained a central figure in the conceptualization of Indo-European civilization. The new religious sciences attempted to treat all religions in the same way and yet to impose a Christian providential meaning on the new comparative order. The cataloging of peoples and faith reflected the belief that history was moving in a Christian direction.  An old Hebrew text provided one of Western Christendom's founding myths. God, his face shrouded in eternity, created the world in six days simply by breathing the syllables of certain words in a language that dispelled chaos. In the Garden of Eden man in turn used language to name every one of Gods' creatures (Genesis 2:19 - 20). The story of Genesis is thus the story of language in action - first the language of God, then the language in action - first the language of God, then the language of man.

This rediscovered Aryan territory became the primitive homeland of Western man in search of legitimation.

Ernest Renan (1823 - 1892) was a French philosopher and writer. In his own lifetime, Renan was best known as the author of the hugely popular Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus).

He was convinced that we are “haunted by our origins” and that the Christian who seek to understand his origins must come to terms with Hebrew. 

"The Jews may have introduced humanity to “a religion substantially superior to that of the Aryans, but the Vedas remain “the key to our origins, the primitive revelation of our ancestors, to which our conversion to Jewish ideas should not make us indifferent.”

Thus “the Bible thus bore fruits that were not its own. Judaism was the stock on which the Aryan race produced its flower.” “Christianity is, as a matter of fact, the religion of the civilized peoples. Every nation admits this in one way or another, depending on its level of intellectual culture.”

(source: The Language of Paradise: Race, Religion and Philology in the 19^th Century  – By Maurice Olender  p. x - 140).
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Human Zoos - Racists Theme parks to Europe's Colonists?
Whither Liberty, Equality and Fraternity? Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 1789?
Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II (1818 - 1868) said shortly before he was defeated by a British invasion and committed suicide:

"I know their game, First traders and missionaries, then ambassadors, then the cannon. It's better to get straight to the cannon."

The belief of European Christians that other races were inferior, led to colonisation and large scale abuse. The extirpation of native peoples in the Americas , in Australasia , and elsewhere around the world was of little consequence since these peoples were only pagans and might not even possess souls. They were slaves by nature. God had made them like that. Christian scholars and pseudo-scientists concurred. Sample non-Christians were kept in western Human zoos - Racist theme parks for Europe ’s colonists in the nineteenth century. There was an Australian aborigine in London Zoo. 

A Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga (1881- 1916) shared a cage with an orang-utan in the Bronx Zoo as late as 1906 .

Colonisation by European powers was seen as a God given opportunity for spreading the gospel to the heathen. It was a Christian duty, even when it led to the deaths of millions. God encouraged colonisation. He showed the way. He spoke to churchmen. He cleared the path for colonialists. His Churches were keen to convert or replace native heathen populations. Both Catholic and Protestant Churches encouraged colonialism. Typically, in Africa , missionaries would advance into new territories. Sooner or later they would sow discord, encouraging rebellion against unsympathetic local rulers. When bloodshed followed the Churches would appeal to European governments to intervene, and another territory would be annexed. This process seems to have accounted for more than half of the European colonies in Africa . Churches were often guilty of complicity in massacres and atrocities resulting from colonial policy. For example King Leopold was granted control of the Congo in 1885 explicitly to bring Christianity to the benighted heathen. The atrocities perpetrated by his government in the Belgian Congo - the extensive use of slave labour and assorted murderous practices - were first concealed, then minimised by the Roman Church.  Colonization was regarded by almost all Christians as wholly good, divinely sanctioned and necessary, well into the twentieth century.

African intellectuals who criticized the European clichés in the twenties and thirties made several arguments. (1) European conquest itself was barbaric . There was wide agreement about the barbarism of the “civilizing hordes”, from the West African essayist Tovalou Houénou to Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore ….

 

On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism

 

For more than half a century - from the beginning of the 1870s to the end of the 1930s - the exposition of so-called exotic peoples in zoological gardens and international expositions attracted a huge public eager to be fascinated by the unfamiliar and the unknown. Throughout Western Europe travelling exhibits of non-European natives were recurring features of zoological gardens where they eclipsed the drawing power of the more usual animal exhibits. Both exhibits were isolated by fences that variously protected sometimes the animals and more often the public; but in the cases of the human exhibits the main purpose of the fences seems to have been to stress the distinction between them and us. All explanations had one common goal: to provide conclusive evidence for the inherent superiority of the victors. The "human zoos" became one piece of evidence in the search for that goal. In addition they were seen as providing evidence for the then familiar family tree that illustrated man's origins from monkeys and apes, through various stages of development, to the Europeans at the top of the tree. Clearly, the exhibition of Africans in European zoos helped to convince the spectators that they were members of a superior race with a superior culture.

(source: Christianity, Apartheid and Racialism - heretication.info and The parade of the vanquished and On A Neglected Aspect Of Western Racism – By  Kurt Jonassohn

Colonial Indology - Acceptance of A Racist Theory

"The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice"  

- Mark Twain author of Following the Equator.  

It is gratifying to note that people like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh, Dadabhai Naoroji and Dr. B R Ambedkar did not have appetite for racial theories, because, as Naoroji put it, they were unrealistic and often used to prove the inferiority of Asians. 

One does not grudge the British rulers of India their policy, but one may justifiably ask why such racist theory was accepted, some oppositions notwithstanding, by all and sundry not merely among the Indian masses but also among most of the professional historians and archaeologists till today. The roots of Hindu bigotry do not lie in the glorification of ancient India but in the historical acceptance of a demeaning racist theory which equated the history of ancient India to that of Aryan colonization. 

Only one among our great political leaders saw through the hollowness of the Aryan theory. In his book, Who were the Shudras? In 1946 B R Ambedkar devoted a complete chapter – Shudras versus Aryans – to examine the issue. Citing extensively the Vedic sources which suggest that the distinction between an Arya and Dasa/Dasyu was not racial distinction of color and physiognomy and thus the origin of Sudra could not have anything to do with race, Ambedkar stated the following: 

“That the theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers fails to the ground at every point goes without saying….Anyone who comes to scrutinize the theory will find that it suffers from a ‘double infection.’ In the first place, the theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions and the inferences based on such assumptions. In the second place, the theory is a perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it. (Ambedkar 1970 73 – 73). 

Dr. Ambedkar was aware of the hold of this theory over the masses and scholars alike. He offered a succinct explanation. 

“The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. But far from being dead, the theory has a considerable hold upon the people. There are two explanations which account for this phenomenon. The first explanation is to be found in the support which the theory receives from the Brahmin scholars. This is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus, they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its express avowal of the superiority of the European races over the Asiatic races. But the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion but he most willingly hails. The reason are obvious. The Brahmin believes in the two-nation theory. He claims to be the representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and superiority. He like particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan invader and conqueror of the non-Aryan native races. For it helps him to maintain and justify his overlordship over the non-Brahmins."

"The second explanation why the Aryan race theory is not dead because of the general insistence by the European scholars that the word varna means color and the acceptance of that view by a majority of the Brahmin scholars. Indeed, this is the mainstay of the Aryan theory. "

Dr. Amdedkar could clearly see the implications of such ill-founded hypotheses which colonial Indology imposed on India and which Indian scholars went on repeating ad nauseam.  

(source: Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past - By Dilip K. Chakrabarti  p. 226 - 228). For more on Western Biased Scholarship, refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism. Refer to The Dangers of Aryan Invasion Theory - BBC.  Refer to The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas in Europe - By Leon Poliakov and The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India - By M L Goel

A. K. (Anthony Kennedy) Warder is a scholar of Indology, mostly in Buddhist studies and related fields, such as the Pāli and Sanskrit languages. He has written 15 books and numerous articles. He currently holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit in the School of East Asian Studies in the University of Toronto. Writing years after Independence, he notes: 

“The standard imperialist version of Indian history, worked out during the colonial period, is now, most remarkably, taken for granted among modern Indian historians of almost all persuasions, not least among them the ‘Marxists’ (who in this respect remain Hegelians; S. A. Dange is an honourable exception), as well as among academic historians in all other countries, again regardless of political persuasions.”

(source: Contending paradigms of Indian history: Did India lack historical agency? - By Shivaji Singh).  Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser.

The Imperialist History of India
A Mythical India?

What is the gist of this British imperialist-tailored Indian history? 

In this history, India is portrayed as the land “conquered” first by the ‘Dravidians’, then by the ‘Aryans’, later by Muslims, and finally by the British. Otherwise, everything else is mythical. Our history books today exhibit this obsession with foreign rule. 

For example, even though the Mughal rule from Akbar to Aurangzeb is about 150 years, which is much shorter than the 350 year rule of the Vijayanagaram empire, the history books of today hardly take notice of the latter. In fact the territory under Krishna Devaraya’s rule was much larger than Akbar’s, and yet it is the latter who is called “the Great”. Such a version suited the British rules who had sought to create a legitimacy for their presence in India.  

Furthermore, we were also made to see advantages accruing from British rule, the primary one being that India was united by this colonialism, and that but for the British, India would never have been one country.  Thus, the concept of India itself is owed to the plunder of colonialists. On the contrary, there was always as India which from north to south, thought of fundamentally as one country.  Just as Hinduism exists from ancient days despite a lack of a Church, Book, or Pope, Hindustan too existed from time immemorial but without the parameters of a modern state. The invading Muslims and the British on the contrary tried to disrupt that unity by destroying the traditional communication channels and educational structures.

It is this foreign version that makes us out to be foreigners in our own land. The Aryan-Dravidian divide in the history taught in schools and universities is purely a conception of foreign historians like Max Mueller and has no basis in Indian historical records. This fraudulent history had been lapped up by north Indians, and by south Indian Brahmins, as their racial passport to Europe. Such was the demoralization of the Hindu mind, which we have to shake off through a new factual account of our past.

The accepted history of no country can however be structured on foreign accounts of it. But Nehru and his Leftist cronies did just that, and thus generations of Indians have been brainwashed by this falsified history of India.  The time has come for us to take seriously our Puranic sources and to re-construct a realistic well-founded history of ancient India, a history written by Indians about Indians. Such a history should bring out the amazing continuity of a Hindu nation which asserts its identity again and again. It should focus on the fact that at the centre of our political thought is the concept of the Chakravartin ideal – to defend  the nation from external aggression while giving maximum internal autonomy to the janapadas.  A correct, defalsified history would record that Hindustan was one nation in the art of governance, in the style of royal courts, in the methods of warfare, in the maintenance of its agrarian base, and in the dissemination of information. Sanskrit was the language of national communication and discourse. In particular, it was not Hindu submission as alleged by JNU historians that was responsible for our subjugation but lack of unity and effective military strategy.

(source: Fraudulent history of India - By Dr. Subramanian Swamy - indianrealist.com and Falsification of Chronology in India’s History - By Dr. Subramaniam Swamy - indiarealist.com).  Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser

Eurocentrism and History of India
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) first prime minister of free India, was more than a deeply moral human being. He yearned for spiritual light. He was particularly drawn to Swami Vivekananda and the Sri Ramakrishna Ashram. The Upanishads fascinated him.
Regarding Euro centrism, he wrote in his book The Discovery of India:  
"Till recently many European thinkers imagined that everything that was worthwhile had its origins in Greece or Rome."
Nehru has lamented: 
"How few of us know of these great achievements of our past, how few realize that if India was great in thought and philosophy, she was equally great in action. Most westerners still imagine ancient history is largely concerned with the Mediterranean countries, and medieval and modern history is dominated by the quarrelsome little continent of Europe."

Euro centrism attributes historical superiority or priority to Europeans over all others. The fundamental assumption that progress is somehow permanent and natural in the European part of the world but not elsewhere, and progress elsewhere is mainly the result of the diffusion of innovative ideas and products from Europe and Europeans. 

For more on Eurocentrism refer to chapter on Glimpses XIV.  Refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism and Suvarnabhumi. Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser.

Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth and Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com. Refer to A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom - By Andrew Dickinson White - umich.edu. Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.

Common genetic traits - Aryan theory demolished
Time to give this theory a decent burial now in our school history books?

An international team of genetic scientists has ruled out the theory of Aryan invasion of the Indian sub-continent.

“The age old argument that there was an Aryan invasion of the sub-continent is simply bunkum.
Scientific studies prove that there is no such thing as Aryan Indian or Dravidian Indian. Genetic high resolution studies carried out by us prove that all Indians are derived from same grandgrand parents who arrived here 60,000-70,000 years ago from Africa ,” Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a scientist of the team, told Deccan Chronicle.
Dr Chaubey, a member of the scientific community at the Instituteof Molecular an d Cell Biology, University of Tartu , Estonia , said the research also proved that all Indians had common genetic traits irrespective of the regions to which they belonged.
“It took us four years to complete the study and we analysed 12,200 samples to reach this conclusion,” said Dr Chaubey.
“Genetic studies help us to establish relations between populations. We focussed on the paternal (Y chromosomes) and maternal DNA genealogies. The data which we generated does not support any major influx to the subcontinent other than the earlier arrival of migrants from Africa ,” he said.
“The present day caste/creed/religion is of indigenous origin,” said Dr Chaubey.
(source: Common genetic traits - Aryan theory demolished and Aryan theory demolished).
Agenda driven theory

Michael Wood (1948 - ) British broadcaster and historian, has done some great documentaries in the past - India: Empire of the Spirit and Barbarian West. However in his new PBS series – Story of India he reiterates the myth of Aryan Invasion and Dravidians as the original settlers of India in spite of the mounting evidence against it. 

A US-based Hindu advocacy group has taken strong objection to historian Michael Wood's documentary ‘The Story of India,’ being telecast on public television, describing its presentation of the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) as ‘agenda driven.’ Rejecting the theory, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said India has always been the cradle of Hindu civilization and there is no debate about it.

"This theory, that is not supported by archaeological evidence, was first posited by European Indologists and British colonialists, eventually finding support from a section of India's politically motivated linguists and historians such as Romila Thapar, and famously, controversial Harvard linguist, Michael Witzel," she said.
This theory, the HAF believes, is ‘agenda-driven’. In his documentary, HAF says, Wood holds that the early Hindu practice of worshipping devas, or demigods representing elements, ‘somehow implies that these practices were imported from Central Asia.’ "There is no debate that India was always the cradle of Hindu civilisation, and the Vedas, the Hindu's holiest scriptures, are the recorded history of our ancestors," said Suhag Shukla, HAF's Managing Director.  The AMT is reviled by many Hindus, he said, due to its implicit proposition that a tribe of ‘Aryans’ migrated into the Indian subcontinent, subjugated an indigenous people dispersing them to South India and established a caste system where the highest castes are comprised of ‘Aryans’ in an ethno-religious apartheid system. This ‘explosive theory’ that narrates that Aryans were only the first colonizers -- followed by Greeks, Mongols, Turks, Persians -- was used by European historians to justify the last foreign claim on India, the British Raj, he added. However, he asserted, it is the latest genetic evidence, based on chromosomal and DNA analysis, that scientists believe definitively discredits the AMT.
(source: Hindu group in America objects to ‘The Story of India’ - expressindia.com). Refer to Communist Historians: The Enemy Within – By Yvette Rosser. For more refer to chapter on Glimpses XXII
Controversies and Omissions in the PBS Documentary  

Based on the findings of the archeological excavations, it is crystal clear that the theory of Aryan Invasion is nothing more than a myth and all humans except Africans, have ancestors in the Indian peninsula. They can trace their ancestry that appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago in Northern part of India or more precisely from South Asia .

The evolution of the Sanskrit language can be traced to 3100 BC in the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas originated in India . There is no reason for us to doubt that the similarity that we see between Sanskrit and other European languages is due to the migration of the population that started 50000 years back from Indian peninsula and has continued since then. These facts were easily available to anyone, especially to Michael Wood, who was involved in creating epic of such phenomenal nature. One would expect that the show of such magnitude will identify controversies and present both sides of the stories. There was no reason for a historian like Michael Wood to ignore the existence of the Maratha Empire, since it is more recent history and all the documented evidence is readily available. It is very sad that the historian of such calibre failed to catch this controversy and omitted 200 years of recent history that changed the fate of India . In doing that he has done disservice to Indian people especially to Hindus. His views are more Euro-centric.

(source: Controversies and Omissions in the PBS Documentary - By Vijay Shertukde). Refer to Bradshaw Foundation.

Frits Staal’s Bird Watching 
Ganesha Phallus type of Research?

Analyzing the sounds Frits Staal came to the conclusion that mantras could belong to a pre-language era since:

• Mantras are language independent: Anything in language can be translated whereas mantras remain the same in all languages.
• Mantras, even though they seem to be in a language like Sanskrit, are not used for their meaning.
• Mantras follow patterns, like refrain, which is not seen in language

This school of scholarship looks in the most unlikeliest places to find something that doesn’t exist there and then concludes: see, I told you, it isn’t there! In a paper devoted to studying Mantras, why is Staal bothered about whether they existed in the pre-language era? 
But as we see, this serves a point: to prove that Mantras are basically a string of sounds mindlessly repeated just for the kicks and therefore meaningless. It becomes very easy to reach this conclusion if you “prove” that Mantras belonged to the pre-language age: when bark-covered humans roamed around the earth emitting meaningless sounds called Mantras. Staal’s boundless genius shows the way.
It isn’t worth commenting except that Michael Wood is a layman version of Staal. Wood is just another Westerner thoroughly enchanted with the “exotic” India but can never understand it. If Staal–for all Indology scholarship–is compelled to display his ignorance about something as simple as Mantras, which Indians understand intuitively.
Conclusion
Staal’s paper again reaffirms my conclusive faith in the utter uselessness of Western Indological scholarship. His bird-sound-comparison is fundamentally flawed because he bases his thesis on disciplines unrelated to Indology like ornithology. Unlike Semitic faiths, genuine Indological scholarship is only possible if you live Hinduism. Textual reading will get you professorships, not insights. Worse, as in Staal’s case, they lead to ill-understood speculations and even worse, perversions like Wendy’s Children have unleashed on the world. People who are not from the system better not attempt to interpret the hymns. (Refer to Invading the Sacred).

This is a caution not a prohibition because Hinduism is an experiential religion. Unless you are rooted in its experience and tradition, you’re bound to produce the meandering mass of misunderstanding that is Staal’s paper. Only a handful of scholars like David Frawley and Koenraad Elst have taken the pain to get to the roots of understanding Sanatana Dharma. Note the difference in clarity between these scholars and Staal. The reason why Staal and his ilk fail so miserably is their approach to studying Hinduism. It is a mercenary approach, which hardly works. The spirit of Sanatana Dharma is one of opening up: opening up our entire being to understand it.

(source: Frits Staal’s Bird Watching - sandeepweb.com). Refer to How Old our Mantras? - varnam.org.

CAPEEM Fights Discrimination Against Hindu Children with a Lawsuit
California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM) has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of California against the California State Board of Education and the California Department of Education. The complaint is about Hindus and children's civil rights, derogatory portrayal of Hinduism & Ancient Indian Civilization and violation of Federal and State laws and statutes, as well as the California Department of Education (CDE)  and State Board of Education (SBE) guidelines. The complaint was filed with the Federal Court on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006.

The civil rights of Hindu schoolchildren are violated by advancing an inaccurate and derogatory picture of Hinduism in sixth grade school textbooks. California Department of Education and State Board of Education meetings on the matter failed to address Hindu concerns. Hindus are being discriminated.

Various Hindu groups and parents participated in this process since the Sixth grade History-Social Sciences textbooks came up for adoption last year. After being let down by the CDE and SBE, the parents decided to move the court and restore civil rights and forbid discriminatory practice against Hindus. Most importantly, the school children are the ones who will be suffering damage due to derogatory presentation in the textbook. Many students, from past and present, have spoken to CDE and SBE about their experience in the classroom and that what is taught in the school has nothing to do with what they know and practice at home.

Venkat Balasubramani filed the complaint on CAPEEM’s behalf. Balasubramani is an attorney who has worked in the past with public interest groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights matters.
(source: Federal Lawsuit Claims California Textbooks Violate Hindu Civil Rights - hinduismtoday.com).
Please make a Donation -  Hindu American Foundation Launches Defense and Education fund Drive

A Textbook Debate Over Hinduism

When Abhijit Kurup began learning about Hinduism at his Claremont middle school, he could barely recognize his own religion.

Textbooks portrayed the 6,000-year-old tradition as a religion of monkey and elephant gods, rigid caste discrimination and oppression of women, he said. 

"It degraded my religion," said Kurup, now a UC Riverside freshman. "I felt a mixture of anger, embarrassment and humiliation."

(source: A Textbook Debate Over Hinduism - By Teresa Watanabe,  LA Times Staff Writer February 27 2006).

Fraudulent Distorians?

Refer to Creationism By Any Other Name… - By Romilla Thapar and Michael Witzel - outlookindia.com

Hindutva groups would like Hinduism - one of the world’s oldest major religions, with approximately 800 million adherents worldwide, to be treated with the same consideration and respect as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.

(Note: Anything wrong with that? Ms. Thapar? California’s official educational standards contain specific policies on this, which assert, CA State Law [Education Code 60044(a) and Subsection (b)], and the Standards for Evaluating Instructional Materials for Social Content (2000 Edition) clearly state the following guidelines for textbooks:

'1. Adverse Reflection. No religious belief or practice may be held up to ridicule and no religious group may be portrayed as inferior.'
'2. Indoctrination. Any explanation or description of a religious belief or practice should be present in a manner that does not encourage or discourage belief or indoctrinate the student in any particular religious belief.').

Refer to Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud is a book by Arun Shourie. - The book explains how a group of academic historians, of Marxist persuasion, has been tweaking Indian history and also lining its own pockets in the process.  Note: Last December, a Kansas University Professor of Religious Studies, Paul Mirecki, who enraged Christian bigots by lampooning the Biblical version of Creation, was beaten up; he told police that the men who beat him made references to his controversial statements in this regard.

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Hindu-baiters
"Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires" ?

Sandhya Jain author of Adi Deo Arya Devata. A Panoramic View of Tribal-Hindu Cultural Interface and eminent columnist in the mainstream English Media of India, she has written eloquently about Hinduism and has remarked on this issue:

"Old Hindu-baiters from both countries (USA and India) gang up to abort a necessary correction of school textbooks in California.

We are thus faced with the old colonial reconstruction of Indian history, which diminishes the fabulous achievements of Hindu civilisation and the unity of its social constituents, and deconstructs it into a disparate mosaic whose different components do not amount to a cultural coherence. 

America's Hindu community has long borne the burden of a humiliating and incorrect depiction of Hindu religion and culture; parents have faced young children saying they are ashamed to be Hindus.

Why, for instance, should devout Hindus accept that their children be taught that "Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires". Why should the primordial stories in Hindu scriptures be branded as 'myths' when the scriptures of monotheistic traditions are said to come from Only One (mutually exclusive) God(s)?

Unfortunately, unlike Islam and Judaism, America's Hindus lack political clout. Hence they were hopelessly out-manoeuvred by professional Hindu-haters led by Prof Michael Witzel of the Harvard Sanskrit Department. As Harvard University ignored protests that Herr Witzel was misusing the varsity letterhead to pursue a political agenda, Hindus should settle scores by forcing closure of the Sanskrit Department by ensuring that the professor gets no students for two successive terms.

Sadly, the California school board allowed this process to be hijacked by Herr Witzel, who claimed to be a religious scholar, though he is a non-Hindu, a known Hindu-baiter, and proponent of the discredited Aryan Invasion Theory. Yet Witzel and Thapar erode their already dubious academic credibility by claiming that NASA and ISRO satellite imagery of ancient riverbeds along the famed route of the Saraswati do not prove the existence of the river in Vedic times. "

(source: Sunset in Sacramento - By Sandhya Jain March 7 2006 Edit Page dailypioneer.com). Please refer to chapters on Hindu Culture, Quotes, Sanskrit, Yoga and Hindu Philosophy. Refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com.

Selectively harp on Hinduism
How are other faiths represented in American textbooks?

Why don't our (Indian) pseudo secular journalists and scholars (eg. Now, Multicultural Hindutva - By Raja Rajagopal and 'Palpable Falsehoods' - By Vinay Lal) give no consideration to how other faiths are represented in these textbooks. 

They just selectively harp on Hinduism and seek to scrutinize this faith in a manner that no other religion, least of all Christianity, is subjected. What does the Bible say about Slavery and Women?  For more on Prof. Vinay Lal refer to http://www.uclaprofs.com/profs/lal.html 

Refer to California School Text Issues: Students Debate With Prof. Michael Witzel At Harvard University - Lokvani.com.   Refer to South Asian Bleeding Hearts Association.  

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI

Refer to Swamy's wake-up call to Hindus - newstodaynet.com.

Political incorrectness?
Disparaging/Sarcastic text of Ramayana in American Textbooks?
So look around—see any monkeys?”

Current California textbooks on Hinduism (Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Textbook) on p. 87:

“The monkey king Hanuman loved Rama so much that it is said that he is present every time the Ramayana is told. So look around—see any monkeys?”

Jules Michelet (1789-1874) French writer, one of the greatest historian said about the Ramayana:
"There lies my great poem, as vast as the Indian ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of love, of pity, of clemency." 

(source: Philosophy of Hinduism - An Introduction  - By T. C. Galav  ISBN: 0964237709 Universal Science-Religion. Pg 149 and Making History Poverty?. For more refer to chapter on Hindu Scriputres.

(Note: Navya Shastra also requests that the school board recognize the positive contribution of Dalits to Hinduism, and strongly suggests replacing the photo of the Dalit performing a menial task* with one that illustrates a Dalit immersed in a faith practice. For while the caste system has treated many Hindus very unfairly, the liberating resources of the tradition that affirm the equal worth and dignity of all beings should also be presented).

***

Textbooks about Hinduism: Why accuracy matters?

What the Hindus and Jews were demanding had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design. They were asking that the books accurately and fairly portray their religions and histories. But the request to make the changes was met with antagonism by a group of prominent religious scholars. The group, led by Harvard Sanskrit scholar Michael Witzel, filed a petition against the changes, claiming they had more to do with religious fanaticism on the part of the groups than with accuracy.

Many Hindu groups and parents in California were understandably upset -- Witzel unfairly branded them as extremists. But he doesn't have to worry about his child coming home from school and declaring that he no longer wants to be a Hindu because his classmates ridiculed him about something taught in class that day. That recently happened to one Milpitas, Calif., parent of an 11-year-old.

(source: Textbooks about Hinduism: Why accuracy matters? - By Viji Sundaram New America Media, Jan 10, 2006). Refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan

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

***

Negative portrayal of Hinduism in American schools ?

"the state of Hinduism as has been portrayed in public school textbooks is outdated and derogatory and misleading. There is no expanding on the philosophy of the Hindus, their positive attributes. The textbooks bring topics that are not brought in when it comes to other religions. When they talk about Jesus or give instances from the Bible, they put on them on paper as historical fact, but when it comes to stories of Rama or Krishna, it is always a myth. if you look at Christianity or Judaism or Islam, nowhere in the textbooks is there any discussion on women's rights. Then, to pull it in for Hinduism is a different treatment of Hinduism. If you look at Christianity or Judaism or Islam, nowhere in the textbooks is there any discussion on women's rights. Then, to pull it in for Hinduism is a different treatment of Hinduism. (Refer to Treatment of Women in the Bible and chapter on Women in Hinduism and Hindus fight discrimination in California textbooks – 1 – By Kalavi Venkat).

Hindus are just beginning to join the civic process in the US. I think schools are well aware that you cannot have people in ivory towers writing textbooks without having some inputs from the community which is being written about. It is easy to fling mud to deflect attention from what is really being put into the book. There are so many political Hindu-phobic forces. If you look at high academia and look at the way Hinduism has been portrayed by many, they had a free rein for so many years. They were able to define Hinduism for Hindus. I think they have apprehensions now to allow Hindus to define Hinduism. "

(source: 'I am not for rewriting Hinduism' - interview with Suhag A Shukla - rediff.com).  Refer to Indian Identity in American Schools - By C Alex Alexander - sulkeha.com. Also refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan.  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.

Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI

(Note: Double Standards? American journalists believe that it is the right of Christians, Muslims or Jews to be politically active, but brand Hindus fighting for their political rights as "Hindu fundamentalists").

Your child is a ‘broken person!’

Mahatma Gandhi  " I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living."

He used to refer to them as children of Hari - Harijans. He told the  Christian missionaries that he resented their attempts to convert the Harijans. 

"I resent the overtures made to Harijans."

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com and  Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

***

If you are a Harijan Hindu, and if your child goes to a California school, she would be told that she is a broken person – that is, if Michael Witzel et al have their say.

Everyone would agree that positive reinforcement is the best way to nurture a child. But, Witzel et al, in their capacity as reviewers, have insisted that California textbooks should call Harijan Hindus ‘Dalits’ [Ref.: State of California, Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission’s Memorandum, dated November 22, 2005, edit 86]. This word literally means ‘a broken person.’ It was coined in 1972 by a militant group called Dalit Panthers Party [Joshi, B.: Untouchables! Voices of the Dalit Liberation Movement, pp. 141-147]. The party was ephemeral but some politicians, who act as the fifth column of Christian missionary fronts, insist on using this word to denote the Harijans.

In the effect it has on the child, this obnoxious word is not different from ‘nigger,’ a word used by racists to call Black Americans. Such words inculcate anger, a feeling of victimization and destroy the child. 

Will textbooks ever describe Native Americans as ‘nits’ and ‘wolves,’ the words racists used for them?

Michael Witzel et al did not stop at that. They also wanted an illustration of a night-soil remover to depict a Harijan in a textbook on ancient India for grade six [Ref.: State of California, Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission’s Memorandum, dated November 22, 2005, edit 7]. Can Witzel cite evidence that this obnoxious profession even existed in those times? Why does he insist on falsely stereotyping the Harijans, who have a heritage they can be proud of? Will he demand that textbooks have the powerful depiction of victims of Inquisition or jihad to illustrate Christianity and Islam respectively?

(source: Hindus fight discrimination in California textbooks - 3 - By Kalavi Venkat india-forum.org). For more refer to chapter on Caste System and Conversion. Also refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan and Insults to the Mahatma, ignored by India - rediff.com.

Yes, ‘secular’ US seems kinder to Hindus than ‘secular’ India 

The headlines of this short story, factually told, run like this. ‘Hindus worship ‘statues’, not ‘deities’.’ ‘Hindu God cannot have capital ‘G’ and have to be content with the ordinary letter ‘g’ as, unlike the Gods in Abrahamic faiths, there is no one God for Hindus’. ‘Who in sixth standard cares whether Ramayana was written before or after the Mahabharata’.

This scandalous depiction of Hindus, their faith and history is not the tirade of evangelicals luring Hindus to their faith. But, this is how some US scholars who supported the demeaning descriptions of Hindus and India in textbooks proposed by the California Department of Education (CDE) defended their contents when Hindus protested and sought corrections. Since the US scholars were not Hindus, their defence of the books lacked credibility. To fill the credibility gap, Indian seculars stepped in, led by Romila Thapar; they jointly petitioned the CDE that the Hindu protest against the textbooks was actually the protest of the ‘Hindutva forces’. Hence, the corrections suggested by them should be disregarded.

The issue is whether what Hindus say is true or not. Does the truth lose its value because Hindus bring it out? 

Dr Michael Witzel, a Harvard University professor who is undeniably anti-Hindu and thus an icon of Indian seculars, charged that the Hindu community’s corrections were motivated by ‘Hindutva forces’. He warned the CDE that it ‘would lead without fail to an international educational scandal’ if accepted. Romila Thapars of secular India joined as co-petitioners of Witzel, making it a kind of ‘confession’ on behalf of Hindus.

(source: Yes, ‘secular’ US seems kinder to Hindus than ‘secular’ India - By S Gurumurthy - newindpress.com). Thus Spake Professor Michael Witzel - A Harvard University Case Study in Prejudice?

Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Are Hindus children of a lesser 'god'?
Who are opposing the Hindu initiative to end discrimination in California textbooks?

Many Hindu American parents have been dismayed by the negative and caricaturist description of our heritage that our school children in the United States are subjected to.

Other ancient traditions such as Jainism are also ignored in textbooks. HEF has received letters of support from Jain groups, as well as Hindu American organizations representing immigrants from Nepal and the Carribbean. More than 100 world-class scholars of archaeology, history and academic study of religion have written to CDE in support of HEF/VF efforts.

Who are they, and why did they oppose the changes? Steve Farmer, a non specialist who does not understand a single Indic language or genre of texts, initiated Witzel's petition, on which many Marxist ideologues signed. It seems that Michael Witzel, who sent the petition on behalf its signatories, has called Hindus immigrant to the USA, "lost or abandoned people." Reports also indicate that he has made fun of the most sacred Hindu chants such as "Om." Witzel indulged in clandestine activism, and urged his cosignatories to mobilize opposition to the Hindu initiative through fringe ultra-left Indian or South Asian groups in the United States.

Lars Martin Fosse, a cosignatory on Witzel's petition and writing on behalf of Witzel's petitioners, appealed to fundamentalist Christian missionaries and alleged Khalistanis to mobilize volunteers to oppose the Hindu initiative. Sikhs, who are a peace-loving, hard-working and enterprising community, have been rightly upset that textbooks that deal with medieval history ignore Sikhism.

Predictably, the Witzel group has received strong support from Indian communists who have always borne an animus for Hindus. The very first articles by Nalini Taneja favoring his stance came out in the online newspaper of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Further articles by Anjana Chatterjee, an Indian leftist in United States, appeared in some Leftist online magazines, as did articles by Comrade Vijay Prasad, founder of the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL). All kinds of abuses in their standard lexicon ('fascists', casteists, Hindu nationalists, Nazis etc.) were hurled without any attempt to understand the issues academically. Another conspiracy theory stated by Leftists was that HEF/VF wanted to exclude the Aryan Invasion.

Moreover, ancient Buddhist texts also seemed to include similar treatment of Chandalas in ancient India, and true egalitarianism was absent in other religions as well. Therefore it was unfair to single out Hinduism. However, Witzel group and the Indian American Leftists played the 'Dalit' card, further muddying the situation to no one's benefit. Some reports indicate that many of the participants who showed up at the Board meeting might not be Hindu Dalits.

Lastly, some members of the Indian Muslim community (such as Khalid Azam of the Indian Muslim Council) have stepped in the fray although Islam was not present in ancient India. In contrast to Hindu changes, the 500 changes of the Jewish community and a hundred changes proposed by the Muslims were accepted in toto by everyone without a single protest. But as many as 58 of the modest 95 odd Hindu group proposed edits were opposed by the same people. Why? Are Hindus children of a lesser 'god'? Why is that that 'scholars' who have never acted constructively in improving the coverage of India and Hinduism in textbooks are now trying to 'foil' constructive maiden attempts by HEF/VF? How come anti-Hinduism is common in all these groups?

(source: Who are opposing the Hindu initiative to end discrimination in California textbooks? - By Vishal Agarwal - indiapost.com. Refer to Insults to the Mahatma, ignored by India - rediff.com. Also refer to Hate group numbers top 800 in USA - Southern Poverty Law Center. Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com. 

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

American conspiracy against Hinduism!

As an unknown heathen with my racial and cultural memories going back to the dawn of history, I am rather amused by the manner in which the California Education Department has recently permitted some known anti-Hindu baiters like Michael Witzel, professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University, and some of his chosen suspects to intrude into (if not lurking house trespass!) the textbook selection, evaluation and reform process, in gross violation of established norms of decorum and decency. 

Professor Witzel of Harvard University is a great champion of the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. He succeeded in persuading the authorities to incorporate this as an inviolable fact in the textbooks. It should not be forgotten that the Aryan Invasion Theory of India was manufactured, marketed and sold as a common colonial product during the days of British Raj and which was later lapped up by all the European historians, the highly Anglicised Indian historians and the so-called 'secular' historians belonging to the moribund leftist groups in India. The Hindu Education Foundation requested the Californian Authorities to take note of the overwhelming evidence available today against the Aryan Invasion Theory so as to make the presentation in the textbooks more reasonable, balanced and in accord with different shades of expert academic opinion. 

(source: American conspiracy against Hinduism!  - By V Sundaram - newstodaynet.com). Also refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan. For some humor refer to Indology Researchers' Fan Club. For more on Western Biased Scholarship, refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism.  

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Whose religion is it anyway?
California schoolbooks are up for grabs by Hindu-baiters

The letter disparaged the Hindu parents and activists as the American handmaidens of Hindu nationalist groups in India. The Hindu nationalists, the petition charged, had sought to "rewrite" history and that the heinous project was derailed by the expert and active intervention of secular, academic, and objective "South Asia" scholars.

Known for his abrasive and sarcastic put-downs on various India-centred discussion lists, Professor Witzel had inserted himself into a variety of debates on these matters in the past. His muscle as an Ivy League professor was sought to be leveraged by the US-based RSS/ BJP baiters who wrote him asking for his quick intervention in California's school textbooks vetting process. The Hindu groups' request for review of the textbooks was no different from the request by Jewish Americans.

The politics is going to be vicious because the chief petitioner has previously expressed bias against Indian immigrants to the US and stereotyped them as "lost" and "abandoned" people. His hostile and scurrilous imprint is all over the Internet, and yet those who have co-signed his petition have done so without an inkling about the nature of the changes proposed and the changes accepted after review. Professor Michael Witzel has defined NRIs as "Non Returning Indians", Hindus in North America as "HiNA" - punning on the Sanskrit hina (meaning low born, lowly) - and caricatured Hindu parents in the US training their sons and daughters in Indian classical music and dance as being unaware of the status of dance and music in India in feudal times.

The "experts'" petition refers to the bloody riots in Gujarat in 2002, and cleverly and diabolically seeks to insinuate that the Hindu parents and activists of California who have sought changes in the school textbook are ideologically in bed with the murderers and rapists in Gujarat. This is the kind of political skullduggery that we may expect in Washington DC or in New Delhi, but should we countenance such vile and vulgar practices by academics?

(source: Whose religion is it anyway? - By Ramesh Rao - indiareacts.com). Refer to Romila Thapar’s Kluge Prize – By Dr. Gautam Sen - vigilonline.com

Om Tat Sat

                                                        

(Continued...) 

( My humble Pranam, Honour  and also gratefulness  to   Ms. Sushma Londhe ji for her  noble, magnanimous and eminent works on the   peerless  Wisdom of our Sacred Scriptures)

  

_{(My humble salutations to   , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees   for the discovering  collection)}

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