Indologists

Charles H. Townes (1915 -  ) Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics, who invented the microwave-emitting - MASER says:

“Indian students should value their religious culture and of course, the classical Indian culture bears importantly on the meaning of life and values. I would not separate the two. To separate science and Indian culture would be harmful. …I don't think it is practical to keep scientific and spiritual culture separate.”

(source:  In The Name Of Freethinking – By S Aravindan Neelakandan - sulekha.com). 
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to chapter on Quotes  and Advanced Concepts and  European Imperialism and Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey - A preliminary reply by Dr. Koenraad Elst to Ms. Meera Nanda and A Rejoinder to Meera Nanda’s Article “Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and Vedic science” by Srikant - swaveda.com and Le Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud).
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 Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks - http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html. Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Refer to chapter on Conversion.

Biases in Hinduism Studies - By Abhijit Bagal
Jules Michelet (1798 -1874) French writer and the greatest historian of the Romantic school wrote about the Ramayana:
"Divine poem, ocean of milk!" 
"Whoever has done or willed too much let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth........Everything is narrow in the West - Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look toward lofty Asia, and the profound East for a little while. 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." 
Such was the first and enduring impression made on Michelet by the Ramayana. For more on Michelet refer to chapter on Quotes.
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Rajiv Malhotra, founder of the Infinity Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, engaged in making grants in the areas of compassion and wisdom, writes in an article dated December 25, 2000:

 

“Our US Congressman, who is a member of the India Caucus and will be part of the Congressional delegation visiting India in early January, spent considerable time with me today specifically on the Ramayana portrayal by Professor Susan Wadley. The Congressman said that he was appalled at the inflammatory approach in the Ramayana material, and was especially concerned that it was done under Federal grant money as that could give it the aura of governmental stamp of approval. While there is the First Amendment of the Constitution giving freedom of speech, it is not the job of the Federal Government to spend the taxpayer's money in support of what is essentially hate speech. He also felt that the standard in case of school material should be at a higher level of sensitivity towards minority communities in America, of which the Hindus are one. He promised to write to Washington supporting our position, and will also explore a way to get us in contact with the relevant authorities to participate in future grants of this kind. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

 

The above article by Rajiv Malhotra is with reference to Professor Susan Wadley's work emerging from two National Endowment for the Humanities grants (1994 and 1997) received by her to train high school teachers to teach the Indian epic Ramayana to American students. In an internet article dated September 7, 2000, Susan Wadley describes herself as the Director of South Asia Center and Ford Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, Syracuse University, and her work that led to the creation of the Ramayana course material and workbook as “A second WEB page project emerges from the two National Endowment for the Humanities institutes for high school teachers that I taught in 1994 and 1997. These four week institutes focused on the Ramayana and its history, its relationships to changing social and cultural norms, its presentation in art and drama. Teachers at the institutes created lesson plans and instructional materials that have been added to: these are found at http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/southasiacenter/ramayana/ .”

 

Many have complained that the workbook developed by Susan Wadley depicts Lord Ram as an invading-outsider, imperialist, oppressor, misogynist, and a racist and that the workbook sounds more like the rant of an over zealous racist than that of an “objective” and “neutral” scholar.

 

A letter written by Dr. David Gray, protesting the biased portrayal of Ramayana by Susan Wadley, was sent on December 1, 2000, to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with a copy to Richard W Riley, who was the Secretary of Education, U. S. Department of Education, at that time. Some excerpts from the Letter are presented here:

 

“While the project generated useful course material, it also included what are clearly partisan and political readings of the epic, as well as outright inflammatory 'cheap shots' at a sacred text. This complaint is on behalf of United States citizens and parents of school children. Hinduism and Sikhism (which also worships Rama) are no longer merely about a far away exotic land that Americans have little to do with. We have Hindus and Sikhs right here in our classrooms today, amongst our office co-workers and as our neighbors. It is irresponsible for any multicultural school to introduce a protest song against Hindus and Sikhs that includes hate speech alleging that "Muslims were targeted", or that certain people are "enslaved to form a monkey army" with the purported intention to "attack Muslims". What does this do to foster mutual respect and understanding among different ethnic and religious communities in America's sensitive tapestry, now represented in classrooms? Should Government funds be used to create such racially and religiously inflammatory teaching materials, denigrating to one's classmates' sensitivities, ironically in the name of multiculturalism? We understand that academic freedom, and the freedom of speech, allows us all in this country to espouse ideas that may be unpalatable to some. These ideas could be politically or culturally biased or even prejudiced. However, such bias about others' religions and religious ideals, others' sacred texts and spirituality, when it is presented to high school students by non-experts (high school teachers), would lead to a warped understanding of others' history and religions and to unintended consequences, including stereotyping and hatred of minority groups. The particular version of the Ramayana that Professor Wadley includes in the lesson plans, and that she says is her favorite version of the many songs on the God-king Rama and the Ramayana, was composed by an anti-Hindu activist. This particular "song" is included in the essay titled, "The Ramayana and the Study of South Asia" ("Education About Asia", volume 2, number 1, Spring 1997, page 36, by Susan S Wadley).”

 

Providing an analogy with other religions, the letter goes on to say:

 

“This same principle carries over to the study of other religions: for example, Christianity or Islam. Some of the scholars who have studied the Bible have read all or part of it as being patriarchal and oppressing women, Jews, homosexuals and blacks. There are others who criticize its violence and the way it is used to oppress the poor. Still others question the authenticity of the Bible and the real-life events of Jesus. Of course, most Christians see the Bible as containing God's words and would be horrified at the "deconstruction" of their sacred text. Would we provide such portrayals of the Bible to our secondary school students, especially dramatized in performances of hate songs in the manner recommended by Professor Wadley? Christians would object vociferously at what they would call an unfair portrayal of their faith. Islamists and Muslims would similarly protest if one were to characterize Prophet Mohammed as a jihadist and an oppressor of women, even if that were supported by textual references. Scholars can debate controversial views on the Ramayana and the Bible all they want. We just don't find it necessary to import such debates into classrooms where children are beginning to understand the basic contours of each religion. The question that Professor Wadley should have addressed is this: if I were a Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Moslem, how would I want my faith to be understood by those outside it? We believe she has not adequately understood this problem or has deliberately chosen to ignore it. Were this simply a scholarly interpretation, this would be an unfortunate, but not a public, issue.”

 

The “song” that the letter refers to is in worksheet 2 of the course material and instructs the students to “Read this song sung by an untouchable in north India.” Some lines from the song have been reproduced below:

 

“Once the Aryans on their horses invaded this land.

Then we who are the natives became the displaced.

Oh Rama, Oh Rama, You became the God and we the demons.

You portrayed our Hanuman as a monkey,

Oh Rama, you representative of the Aryans.

Muslims were targeted and "taught a lesson".

To destroy Lanka, Oh Rama, you

Formed us into a monkey army.

And today you want us,

The working majority,

To form a new monkey army

And attack Muslims.”

 

Lord Ram is thus depicted as an “Aryan Invader” in school textbooks for American kids. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) itself is highly controversial with some scholars suggesting that it is a colonial and racist construct of the 19th century. Some scholars have suggested that there was no invasion but a gradual migration leading to the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT). Some other scholars have suggested that there was no invasion or migration, that the Aryans were indigenous to India, and that the term Aryan does not refer to a caste or a race, rather it refers to one with a noble behavior. There is a fourth group of scholars who say that people from India migrated to other parts of the world such as Central Asia and Europe and spread the Vedic (Based on the Vedas, books written in Sanskrit, the largest and most ancient body of literature preserved by mankind) civilization there, and, not the other way round – This is known as the Out of India Theory (OIT). Unfortunately, many scholars such as Professor Wadley often fall into the trap of labeling all of India's problems as 'Hindu', whereas they would not label the very high incidence of child abuse, rape, massive prison population, drug and other addictions, and high incidence of clinical depression in the U. S. as 'Judeo-Christian' problems.

(source: Biases in Hinduism Studies - By Abhijit Bagal - indiacause.com). Also refer to Biases in Hinduism Studies Part I-IV - By Abhijit Bagal - indiacause.com and chapter on Glimpses XI). Also Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll. Refer to chapter on 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. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com. Refer to Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com

The  Self Loathing Leftists and Liberals of India

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Modern India’s modern myths

The first of these myths is that India itself is a myth. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are myths that were written by men who lived in a place without geography or history. Sanskrit came from this same nebulous arena as did the Vedas and the mathematicians who invented the zero.

The idea of India did not exist until the British created it is the contention of India’s self-loathing ‘liberals’. In the words of a historian of recent celebrity, India is an ‘unnatural nation as well as an unlikely democracy’. He does not bother to explain what he means by ‘unnatural nation’ since the nation state itself did not exist till not very long ago. Long, long before that there was a country called Bharat whose borders were clearly defined and whose certainty continues to be perfectly understood by ordinary Indians across India.

When a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka sets off to attend the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, he does not think that he is travelling to a foreign country. When a family from Bengal travels to Banaras or Mathura to drop off some inconvenient widow in one of the ashrams, there they do not think they are travelling abroad either. The only people who have a problem defining India are liberal, English-speaking ‘secular intellectuals’ who usually don’t speak even a single Indian language. They understand no more about the idea of India than those intellectual refugees from the West who make India their home and become ‘experts’ on all things Indian. They belong to the same club because they all make a living out of writing books, histories and articles about this India that is so unnatural a nation, so accidental a country.

The second myth perpetrated by the self-loathers is that there is no such thing as Hindu India.

There is a ‘composite’ culture that is Hindu and Muslim and that is that. Anyone who dares suggest that for many centuries before Islam came to our shores India was a Hindu country is instantly reviled as a rank ‘communalist’ of the Hindutva kind. It is important to note here that the self-loathing liberals have no problem describing a period of Indian history as Mughul and another period as British. The problem is ‘Hindu’ India because the premise that there was a country called Bharat that was entirely Hindu in ancient times is somehow offensive.

Modern India has given birth to modern myths. The most popular myth among ‘secular liberals’ in these times of Islamist terrorism is that the Indian state is so evil that the jihad is a valid response. You would not think that there could be an alliance between religious fanatics and those who believe they are intellectuals of liberal, left persuasion but in India there is. This bizarre alliance is so strong that Indian leftists have become the most ardent spokesmen (and women) of the Islamists. They find themselves in this extraordinary role because nothing motivates them more than their passionate loathing of India. May I suggest a cure. It is time for them to spend an extended holiday in Pakistan or Bangladesh to discover what countries in which history is myth are really like.

(source: Modern India’s modern myths - By Tavleen Singh - indianexpress.com). 

Refer to India After Gandhi: A History of the World's Largest Democracy - By Ramachandra Guha where he claims that India is "an unlikely democracy" and "an unnatural nation". 

The Marxists historians only continued the colonial-missionary project to deconstruct and weaken India. Their conclusions could be likened to 'old wine in new bottles'. If Indian academia was dominated by the left - i.e. the likes of Romila Thapar, the Indian Express, the Times of India, CNN-IBN, Pankaj Mishra, Somini Sengupta and Ramachandra Guha represent the 'liberal' response. The two are inter-related and are both offshoots of the colonial-era world view. There is an element of deracination involved. Many are intellectual heirs to Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Phrases such as unnatural nation and unlikely democracy are easy to bandy about. I would like such terms to be operationalized. How would he in fact describe a 'natural nation'? And a 'likely democracy'? I presume Guha had the Anglo Saxon world in mind! But let us not forget the history of slavery, segregation and genocide linked to Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

At one point, Guha alleges that Hindu civilization (the latter word is not his) can not explain India's resilience as it "excluded the Dalits and women". I would like to know how Hinduism excluded women any more than any other religion did? Can he justify such sweeping statements? In certain respects, he is a pop historian for an Indian media that fails to think through. He is somewhat hyped - as is a lot in India. The problem in India is that the Indian left has monopolized the study of Indian history and leaves no room for different interpretations. The left has dominated the history departments in all centers of higher education in India. JNU stands out in this regard.

(source: desicritics.org).

***

Marxists Distorians

Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma.  

The Marxists’ contempt for India – particularly the India of religion, culture, and philosophy – is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists. Some of the British had an orientalists’ fascination for the East, but Indian Marxists suffer from no such sentimentality. The very “Asiatic mode of production” was primitive and any “superstructure” of ideas and culture built on that foundation must be barbaric too and it has better go.

Karl Marx ruled out self-rule for India altogether and in this matter gives her no choice. He says the question is “not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turks, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Brition.” His own choice is clear. 

Indian Marxists fully accept his thesis, except they are also near-equal admirers of the “Turkish” conquest of India. 

Indian Marxists get quite lyrical about this conquest and find quite a fulfillment in it. Let us illustrate the point with example of M N Roy. His had admiration for Muslim Imperialism. He admires the “historical role of Islam” in a book of the same name and praises the “Arab empire” as a “magnificent monument to the memory of Mohammed.” He hails Muslim invasion of India and tells us how “It was welcomed as a message of hope and freedom by the multitudinous victims of Brahmanical reaction.” 

Marxists writers and historians (M N Roy, Romila Thapar, Ifran Habib, K N Panikkar, D D Kosambi, D N Jha, Satish Chandra and others…) are all over the place and they are well entrenched in the academic and media sectors. They have a great say in University appointments and promotions, in the awarding of research grants, in drawing up syllabi, and in the choosing and prescribing of text-books. No true history of India is possible without countering their philosophy, ideas and influence. 

(source: Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Volume I - By Sita Ram Goel  - Voice of India p. 285-286). Refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism. Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority. Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll. Refer to chapter on Conversion.

Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks
http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html

Secular Politics Communal Agenda
Writing Politically correct Histories?

The Indian history writing has never been an easy task because the beginning itself was motivated by the political considerations and religious constraints, rather than driven by the principles of historiography.  This necessarily encouraged historians to distort the history of India so as to fit in certain ideological and religious framework.  Entire history written by colonial, ideologically and politically motivated historians is witness to it and victim of it.  Since the independence of India a new approach has become fashionable i.e. writing of 'politically correct history'.  The entire history wiring has now been reduced to 'secular' history and 'communal' history.  In the process, the sacredness of primary evidence and importance of original sources have become a major casualty.  To push their agenda and to write 'politically correct history', historians have resorted to hiding away the facts, ignoring the facts.  Their sole agenda is to prove their viewpoint wedded to their political ideology and its usefulness in the immediate battle in politics.  This approach is as visible as daylight in the writings dealing with almost all periods of history, including the freedom struggle and the partition of the country.  The last sixty years history of independent India has been dealt with even more callously. 
(source: Secular Politics Communal Agenda: A History of Politics in India from 1860 to 1953 - By Prof Makkhan Lal).
***

Secular means anti-Indian

The Washoe County Commission in the US observed Sanskrit Day on January 12 and organised a two-day seminar to mark the occasion. What could be more ironical than knowing that a Sanskrit seminar was held on American soil while the mother of most Indian languages, the dev bhasha (language of gods), is ignored in its own country.

Sanskrit, German scholar Max Müller had observed, was the greatest language of the world. Mahatma Gandhi had said that without the knowledge of Sanskrit, nobody could become a truly learned man. Only in India could such a language take shape and flourish. Unfortunately, Government does not realise what a national treasure this language is; this reminds one of the Sanskrit saying which means "a monkey cannot value the gift of a necklace of pearls".  

This cannot be a result of ignorance. It must be a part of the larger conspiracy to eliminate Indian languages. Our present-day rulers are doing with impunity what Lord Macaulay could only partly achieve through his policies in the 19th century. His system of education has now got a new name -- 'secular education'. It seems it is now a sin to teach students the glory of ancient India .

Everything non-Indian, even anti-Indian, is being taught in classroom in order to give the curriculum a 'secular' look. If our textbooks praise the Vedic period, the descendants of Lord Macaulay raise a hue and cry. The authors of the textbooks would rather heap praise on the Mughal period in order to add a 'secular' colour to the books. 

If the 'secularists' find some tatsam (undistorted) words in Hindi textbooks, they accuse it is 'saffronisation' of Hindi. In order to make the Hindi books 'secular', the language has to be replete with words of Arabic and Persian origin. 

The mere mention of the word Ganesh, the lord of wisdom, in a textbook of a south Indian State , was so unbearable for the self-styled champions of secularism in the country that the chapter had to be replaced by one on an animal. But an entire opening chapter, "Jisu mahan" (Jesus, the great), of a Government textbook in a North-Eastern State invites no resentment from any quarter. 

(source: Secular means anti-Indian - By Indulata Das  Edit page dailypioneer Jan 22, 2008).

***
Mahabharata in Chinese sold out, goes into second edition

There is a growing desire in China to learn about India's culture and tradi­tions. "For a long time, Chinese schol­ars paid too much attention to the West. Now, there is a growing desire to know Indian civilisation and imbibe its wisdom," Huang Baosheng, who headed the five-member team of translators at Bei­jing University.

"The 5,000 sets released in the first edi­tion were bought not just by libraries ­as happens m the case of most such works - but also by ordinary readers," Huang, who is a teacher at the university's Sanskrit department, said. The sets are mod­erately priced at 680 yuan (Rs 3,862) each.

Huang and his team worked for over 10 years translating the epic from the Sanskrit edition brought out by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. The institute's version, Huang said, is the best of the epic in Sanskrit.

"The Chinese version has more than 30 illustrations taken from the original. The work has been appreciated by scholars around the world, including those from Harvard, who recently visited us in Beijing." The Mahabharata's version comes several years after the Ramayana was translated into Chinese. Ji Xianlin, a Sanskrit scholar, secretly transla­ted the epic in 1976. Huang and most Sanskrit scholars in China are students of the 95-year-old Ji, who is now in hospital near the university. The other scholars involved in the Mahabharata project are Huang's wife Guo Liang Yun, and Ge Weijun, Li Nan and Duan Qin.

(source: Mahabharata in Chinese sold out, goes into second edition - By Saibal Dasgupta - timesofindia.com November 22, 2006). Refer to chapter on Hindu Scriptures and India and China.

Macaulayism
Indian Marxism is only a passing phase in a much larger trend known as Macaulayism, named after the British administrator designed to create a class of people in Indian in skin color but British in every other respect. "Macaulayites" are those Indians who have interiorized the colonial ideology of the "White Man's Burden" (as Rudyard Kipling called it in a famous poem): the Europeans had to come and liberate the natives, "half devil and half child", from their native culture, which consisted only of ignorance, superstition and the concomitant social evils; and after this liberation from themselves, these Indians became a kind of honorary Whites.
Macaulay's policy was implemented and became a resounding success. The pre-Macaulayan vernacular system of education was destroyed, even though British surveys had found it more effective and more democratic than the then-existing education system in Britain. The rivalling educationist party, the so-called Orientalists, had proposed a Sanskrit-based system of education, in which Indian graduates would not have been estranged from their mother civilization as they became through an English education....."
This is the continuance of, in a series the culmination of the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities:

·         the gods and goddesses the Hindus revered; 

·         the temples and idols in which they were enshrined;

·         the texts they held sacred;

·         the language in which those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was even in mid-19th century the lingua franca - that is, Sanskrit; 

·         and the group way of life - the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up the parts - the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which they calculated would be the most accessible to Missionaries and the Empire.

As Ashish Nandy, a Christian critic of old and new forms of colonialism, has observed: "Schooling is the chosen instrument of alienation. The brightest children are snatched away from familiar surroundings to be introduced in schools based on Western model. When they leave, they speak the language of the colonizer and can no longer communicate with their own people."
Persons no less than Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekanada, Rabindranath Tagore etc have called for a change in the teaching of history.

Mahatma Gandhi said “I find daily proof of the increasing and continuing wrong being done to the millions by our false deindianising of education. These graduates who are my valued associates flounder when they have to give expression to their innermost thoughts. They are strangers in their own homes. What is worse, even the swaraj for which we are struggling may become foreign in character when we finally get it.” His words were indeed prophetic
In spite of Islamic Onslaught and British Imperialism, our children should read what the West Bengal's Leftist government is teaching kids. Refer to an extract from the, textbook for Class V. 
“Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honor and equality..." (Refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism.
Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com.

Today the Marxists are in the same business of conversion. For their outlandish dreams to be realized it was just as essential that the people lose faith in, and regard for, that they cut themselves off from their roots. While our eminent historians try to belittle the achievements of Indian art and architecture in the ancient period - by insinuating that it was derived from other countries, by seeing in it only reflection of the life of the privileged classes - Soviet historians talk of the high standards the Indians attained in these spheres. They talk of high originality..."

(please refer to Hindu Culture for more on Soviet historians).
(source: Eminent Historians - By Arun Shourie  Harper-Collins, New Delhi ISBN 8190019988 p. 193 -243 and Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst  Publisher: Rupa ISBN: 81-7167-519-0 p. 25-26). Refer to chapter on European Imperialism and refer to Why are India's Achievements so little Known?).
Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll. Refer to chapter on Conversion. Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks - http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Conclusion

The Perennial Hindu Mind

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India. Education in England gave him a wide introduction to the culture of ancient, or mediaeval and of modern Europe. He was described by Romain Rolland as ' the completest synthesis of the East and the West.
He remarked in 1911: "A time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its scriptures."
***

The Hindu mind represents humanity’s oldest and most continuous stream of conscious intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture.

The Hindu mind sustains a vision of eternity and infinity.  

The Hindu mind, under siege during the Islamic invasions, lost its eminence in the world forum during the colonial era. In the 18^th and 19^th century great Western thinkers like Voltaire and Goethe praised the Hindu tradition and the Brahmin class that sustained it. However, those seeking to convert or conquer India tried to turn the Hindu mind and lofty spirituality and philosophy into mere idolatry, eroticism, and superstition. 

The Hindu mind started and shaped the Indian independence movement. The prime figures of this movement in the early 20^th century were, at least in their private lives, staunch Hindus, and practitioners of Yoga. The Hindu worldview of Vivekananda, Aurobindo or Gandhi was replaced by a Leftist-Marxist worldview, guided by Nehru, who was a Fabian socialist with little regard for anything Hindu. To shore up their position, the Leftists in India created an alliance of anti-Hindu forces, including even missionaries, which they did not do in any other country.

The textbooks and media of India, guided by their Marxist elite, banished Hindu concerns and made them the main target of their abuse and ridicule. ‘Hindu’ became a dirty word for them and the idea that there was any Hindu civilization was scorned, just as it was by the previous colonial masters. The result was that independent India was still ruled by a foreign and hostile mindset. 

Nevertheless, the Hindu mind, being the native intelligence of the country, could not be suppressed. Today they are reexamining history from a Hindu perspective and exposing the colonial distortion of the Vedic heritage that fails to recognize the spiritual roots of Indic civilization.  

Yet more commonly, Leftists in India have made the allegation of extremism against Hindu forces that is at best an exaggeration and at worst a complete invention. This anti-Hindu propaganda has been a ploy to discredit the Hindu cause and protect their citadels of power that a Hindu revival would take away from them. The Leftists have thrown their typical denigrating slurs against Hinduism as fascist, Nazi or fundamentalist, perhaps hoping that these distortions will arouse negative reactions and keep people from really looking at the Hindu cause. 

(source: Hinduism and the clash of Civilizations - By David Frawley  p. 12 –19). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Criticizing Hinduism with impunity in academia and the media?
Hindus and Scholars - By Arvind Sharma - Excerpts

Even today, with Indian scholars also involved in the academic study of Hinduism, Western scholarship exercises a sway on the Indian mind out of all proportion to its size and in a way not comparable to its role in other religions. Indeed, in India Hinduism is still widely understood in Western terms—terms that include a highly negative perspective on its role in Indian public life and public education.

During the first 50 years of Indian independence, this perspective was embraced by an Indian government that was guided by principles of socialism and secularism. Socialist thought treated all religion as a non-scientific relic of the past. Indian intellectuals specifically blamed Hinduism (along with imperialism) for India’s appalling poverty, and denounced any Hindu political expression as a threat to the state even as they were sparing in their critique of the minority religions of Islam and Christianity.

In the 1990s, two developments began to disturb the ease with which Hinduism could be criticized with impunity in academia and the media. The first was the rise to political power of the BJP party as the major partner in a new governing coalition. This meant that it was no longer possible to dismiss Hinduism out of hand as a species of social pathology.

Concurrently, and impinging more directly on the Western scholars of Hinduism, was globalization and the consequent growth of a well-educated, professional, and computer-savvy Hindu community in North America. Previously, North American academics could write without having to take into account the reaction of the Hindu faith community, which lay halfway around the world. But immigration was now bringing Hindus to the door of the American ivory tower.

Of course, the academics continued to insist that their work was open to critique by other academics only, and not by the faith community. But educated Hindus were increasingly critical of the new vogue of using psychoanalytic methods to interpret Hinduism. This approach was, they claimed, far more subjective than traditional historical and philological methods. And with the emergence of the Internet they began to go over the heads of the academics and express their dissatisfaction with psychoanalytic presentations of Hinduism directly to the Hindu faith community itself.

The turning point came with the publication of Kali’s Child by Jeffrey Kripal in 1995. This book made the sensational claim that Ramakrishna (1836-1886), one of the most revered swamis, or holy men, of modern India, who was known for being a life-long celibate, was actually a latent homosexual.

Written under Wendy Doniger, a pre-eminent Indologist at the University of Chicago, and published by the Chicago University Press, Kali’s Child won a book award from the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the largest professional organization of religion scholars in the world. The author spent a year teaching at Harvard. Here, it seemed, another brilliant career was being made by applying psychoanalysis to the study of Hinduism—or, depending on one’s point of view, by making Hindu saints appear, as it were, biodegradable. 

But the book generated profound uneasiness in the Ramakrishna Mission and then in the Hindu community at large. It was said that the author had obtained access to the mission under false pretenses, and further, that the Bengali language expert at the University of Chicago was absent on the day of Kripal’s dissertation examination. But these were just allegations.

Then, in November 2000, Swami Tyagananda, a member of the Ramakrisha Order and the Hindu “chaplain” at Harvard University, produced a tract entitled “Kali’s Child Revisited or Didn’t Anyone Check the Documentation,” which questioned the author’s linguistic competence in Bengali on which the whole thesis hinged. Bound copies of the tract were distributed at the annual meeting of the AAR and it was posted on the Internet as well (http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITkalichildframeset.htm). Kripal did not respond to Tyagananda’s critique in any detail, and to date still has not. Such perceived indifference to an obviously credible critic was noticed by the Hindu community, and independent scholars within the community took it upon themselves to explore the matter further.

For their part, Western academics should understand that depicting Hinduism in a manner perceived as provocatively demeaning by the Hindus themselves does nobody any good. Nor is the cause of civilized intellectual discourse advanced if they decline to respond to informed critiques simply because the critics do not happen to be academics. It tempts the critics to conclude that the emperors have no clothes.
(source: Hindus and Scholars - By Arvind Sharma). Refer to Taking Back Hindu Studies - By Srinivas Tilak - sulekha.com. Also refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari and Washington Post and Hinduphobia - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com and Alerting Naked Emperors in an Age of Academic Arrogance - By Narayanan Komerath - Swaveda.com and Protestant Pedagogues Peeved at Protest Against Porn-Peddling - By Narayanan Komerath - indiacause.com and The Post and Manufacturing Consent - By Sankrant Sanu - sulekha.com).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Saying anything good about Hinduism and you are automatically labeled as belonging to the Sangh Parivar by insecure Western Academia and their brown Indian counterparts?

Refer to Prof. James G. Lochtefeld -  http://www2.carthage.edu/~lochtefe/hsource.html. and chapter on Glimpses IX. Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll. Refer to chapter on Conversion.

Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks
http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html. Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com.

Stereotypes in Schooling: Hinduism -  By Yvette C. Rosser (some excerpts)
Negative Pressures in the American Educational System on Hindu Identity Formation  
"The war against Hindus is a media war, beginning in textbooks, but global in its scale." - says George Thundiparambil  
***  
Stereotypes about India and Hinduism when taught as fact in American classrooms may negatively impact students of South Asian origin who are struggling to work out their identity in a multicultural, predominately Anglo-Christian environment.
In American textbooks, Hinduism is referred to as one of the world's "five great religions" and yet paradoxically, Hindu beliefs and traditions are often represented as a superstitious localized collection of archaic cults. Hinduism is too complex, too dense, too unbelievable, on the level of Greek mythology but with too many gods who are even more bizarre than Zeus and the pantheon of Mount Olympus, who were at least the precursors of "Western traditions." During the impressionable teenage years, these negative portrayals can cause shame and embarrassment among Indian-American students regarding their ancestry and can engender a dislike for India. Students may also respond to these negative stereotypes by adopting a defensive posture vis-à-vis the teacher's presentation, as they feel compelled to correct misperceptions.
This essentialist presentation of Indic Civilization can be summarized as the standard pedagogic approach which runs quickly from the "Cradle of Civilization"—contrasting the Indus Valley with Egypt and Mesopotamia—on past the Aryans, who were somehow our linguistic (and/or racial) ancestors—to the poverty stricken, superstitious, polytheistic, "caste ridden" Hindu "way of life". . . and then somehow magically culminates with a eulogy of Mahatma Gandhi.

Negativities may persist in classes at the University level, in which Hinduism is represented as myth, rather than a living tradition embodying universal truths—as Hindus would naturally perceive it. Wars, disease, population, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, female infanticide, flooding, and starvation." "India," stated another student was "only thought of as a third world country—considered inferior and totally ignorant of world events."
The majority of the informants' comments agreed with this list of essentialisms. Though most stated that "Hinduism, the caste system, poverty, third world country inferiority" were the aspects of India that were stressed, one student did state that her teacher "dealt only with the independence movement." One articulate informant complained that, in her classes, India was not depicted accurately and "only negativities were enforced, [India was not presented through] a wide picture." She continued by summarizing the gist of the treatment of India: "We all starve. We eat monkey brains. We worship rats. We worship cows." Ultimately she observed that "Only Gandhi and ancient India were covered with any respect." Another informant reinforced this assessment with his list of topics, which can be said to form the structure of most high school classroom presentations. He cited, "Indus Valley, British occupation, Gandhi," and then added, "That's it!"
One informant complained that "Hinduism" was described as "some sort of bizarre mystic religion in which people do dances and worship strange things. India is full of poor uneducated starving people, a country on the verge of collapse." Critical of the stereotype-as-fact orientation, another young man stated "The poverty of India was blown out of proportion and no Asian countries were credited with the artistic and literary contributions they made to the world. Islamic nations were presented as fanatical, China was the 'communist enemy', Japan was an economic and educational threat and India was overpopulated." The majority of the informants agreed that when India was studied, "Religion and the caste system were emphasized." Several noted that when studying Gandhi, in the context of Partition, "animosity between Hindus and Muslims" was discussed.
The textbook gives both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana paragraph-length descriptions which, considering space limitations, is at least adequate. The book explains that in the Bhagavad-Gita "doing one's moral duty according to one's responsibilities marks the highest fulfillment in life." It mentions Rama and Sita who "symbolize the ideals of Indian manhood and womanhood." The next statement is strange. It claims that from these epics and the

” Upanishads and the Vedas themselves, scholars have pieced together the origins of the two most important influences in Indian history—the caste system and Hinduism.”
This textbook, published in 1990, can not be expected to be free of Euro-centric jargon, but it should not perpetuate the patronizing perspective that scholars have "pieced together" the essence of India and through their reconstructions have discovered the origins of Hinduism, based primarily on the caste system. Though this may be a subtle complaint, it represents the overall tone found in this type of presentation of Indian civilization—the burden of preservation by occidental scholars. Though this makes reference to the work of scholars, this phrasing in no way offers insight into the processes of historiography.
Once again, in concluding, the authors state that: “the caste system and Hinduism ranked as the most important developments of Indian history. These two ideas become interwoven in the fabric of Indian society.”
The caste system has received far more space than anything else about ancient India. A total of nine paragraphs have been devoted to the topic of caste, to the exclusion of any mention of the famous poet Kalidasa, or ragas and rasas—systems of aesthetics, or statecraft. This book implies that nothing in India is more important than the caste system. The next heading, "Buddhism," begins after the four pages devoted to Hinduism stating that "Buddha did not accept the Hindu gods," and "Although he did not attack the Hindu caste system openly, he did not accept it."
Indians should "hire a high-powered lawyer and sue textbook publishers for character assassination. How else could you get their attention so they would reconsider their treatment of South Asia except through a method that they all understand. Sue them for libel!" 
On page 213 the authors state that "Mathematicians of India developed the system of Arabic numerals, but the Arabs transmitted the system to the West. The Arabs also contributed the concept of zero to mathematics." This implies that zero was an Arab concept, though the authors previously mentioned that the Arabs had transmitted zero from India. Which is it? The text does say that Arab views of a spherical earth with hemispheres is attributed to a Hindu idea.

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

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

The Early American Indologists
source: http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/nmj_articles/east_west/east_west_5.html
The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842 though the study of Sanskrit itself, did not start in American universities until some years later. The first American Sanskrit scholar of any repute was Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901) who taught at Yale (Elihu Yale was himself ultimately connected with India and had profound respect for Vedic philosophy). Another early Sanskritist, Fitzedward Hall (1825-1901) was in the Harvard class of 1846 but left college to search for a runaway brother in-of all places-India, where he continued his studies of Indian languages and even became tutor and professor of Sanskrit at Banaras. He was the first American scholar to edit a Sanskrit text-the Vishnu Purana.
One of Salisbury's students at Yale, William Dwight Whitney (1827-1901) went on to become a distinguished Sanskritist in his own right having studied in Berlin under such distinguished German scholars as Bopp and Weber. Whitney became a full professor of Sanskrit language and literature at Yale in 1854, wrote his classic Sanskrit Grammar (1879) and was the doyen of Indologists of his period. Whitney was succeeded in the Chair of Sanskrit Studies of Yale by Edward Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932). Hopkins was an excellent scholar but made his name principally as an exponent of India's religions. His book The Religions of India (1895) was for many years one of the principal works on the subject available in America and his Origins and Evolution of Religion published in 1923, sold well.
With Yale leading the way, Harvard caught up and beginning with James Bradstreet Greenough (1833-1900), had a succession of great Sanskrit teachers, the most distinguished among them was Charles Rockwell Lanman who taught for over forty years, publishing such works as Sanskrit Reader and Beginnings of Hindu Pantheism. But his greatest contribution was planning and editing of the Harvard Oriental Series. In his time he was responsible for influencing such students of his who were later to achieve literary renown as T. S. Eliot, Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt. The tradition of American Indologists has been nobly kept up by those who followed: to mention only a few names, A. V. William Jackson, Franklin Edgerton, W. Norman Brown, and Joseph Campbell

Article

 1.Western Response to Modern India
Excerpts from India and World Civilization- By D. P. Singhal pp- 268.  
The growing influence of Indian thought in recent years has indeed frightened some Western religious writers, such as Hendrick Kraemmer (World Cultures and World Religions), who have designated it as the "Eastern invasion of the West". Perhaps excessive anxiety to defend the Western Christian traditions may have led Kraemer to over-rate Indian influence. But there are many European scholars who have denounced Indian thought in unmistakable terms. Whether response or resistance, admiration or denunciation, all are equally indicative of impact and stimulus.
In a limited way the migration of Indian labor to other countries provided yet another link between India and the outside world. Indian settlers began to move to other countries in 1830, mainly to work on British plantations. This made abolition of slavery commercially possible a few years later, when the notorious indenture system was introduced in the British Empire. According to estimate, twenty-eight million Indians migrated to various countries between 1834 and 1932.
An important social survey, carried out in Britain about some years ago, produced some surprising results. A quarter of all those who professed belief in an after-life- an eighth of the population-did not believe that this after-life would be eternal; eleven percent of the believers actually declared their faith in transmigration. This was "perhaps the most surprising single piece of information to be derived from this research". Belief in transmigration is a typically Indian doctrine and is contrary to the creeds of Europe and Western Asia.
Politically and intellectually it was inevitable that there should have been some reaction in Europe against an invasion of Indian learning. Reaction against alien ideas appears to be a common human irrationality. Certainly, the nature of political relationships and nationalistic pride understandably played a significant role. European nations generally were more receptive to Indian ideas during the early period of their relationship which was based on relative equality. But as European political, technological and economic supremacy over Asia came to be recognized, an attitude of superiority crept into the European – and particularly the British- outlook. The influence of political relationships on cultural intercourse is further illustrated by the fact that, once the British became overlords of India, Indian learning drew more sympathetic and imaginative understanding form other European countries than it did from the British.
The discovery of Indian thought by European scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to an outburst of admiration and enthusiasm, mainly because they felt that Indian thought filled a need in their European culture. Neither Christianity nor the classical cultures of Greece and Rome were considered satisfactory any more and the European intelligentsia sought to apply the new knowledge, brought in increasingly by Indologists, to their own spiritual preoccupations.
It is significant that, with notable exceptions, India appears to have been most attractive to those Europeans who did not visit the country personally. In other words, Indian thought made a better impact on the European mind than did contemporary Indians

Of all the European nations, Germany’s response to India was most enthusiastic and open hearted. Perhaps the similarity between the German and the Indian mind, in the sense that both are given to contemplation, abstract speculation, and pantheism, and both have a tendency towards formlessness, inwardness, and transcendentalism, contributed toward German understanding of Indian literature. Leopold von Schroeder says: "The Indians are the nation of romanticists of antiquity." The Germans are the romanticists of modern times". Sentimentality and feeling for nature are common to both German and Indian poetry, whereas they are foreign, for instance to Hebrew or Greek poetry. Another similarity is illustrated , by the Indian tendency to work scientific systems, India was the nation of scholars of antiquity, in the same way as the Germans are the nation of scholars of the modern times.

The French were not amongst the first Europeans to come into contact with India. But as soon, as French travelers, who are known for their literary taste, visited India and reported on their travels, French literary circles responded enthusiastically.

The British response to Indian learning was most mixed. Whilst India remained a trying political problem, she was a symbol of British power and achievement, as well as a major source of her economic wealth. Individual thinkers studied India closely and whilst some were fascinated, others were repelled. Often the political expedience-for instance the need to justify domination of India to the British public-British administrators were compelled to interpret Indian culture as degenerate and decadent.
Another barrier between Indian and British cultural co-operation was the Englishmen working in India. The early administrators were indifferent to anything except trade and profits; the later ones, after 1830, suffered from a sense of cultural inferiority, which compounded with political superiority, manifested itself in self-righteousness, prejudices, and arrogance. They often came to India for only a few years, invariably lived an exclusive life, and returned home to condemn Indian culture and traditions with gusto.
Their callous indifference to Indian art is well reflected by the fact that the liberal William Bentinck, who initiated social reforms in India, seriously considered the possibility of dismantling the Taj Mahal and selling the marble to meet the shortage of money in the Company’s treasury. He was prevented because "the test auction of materials from the Agra palace proved unsatisfactory."

Fed on Macaulay, Mutiny, and Kipling, the English, no wonder, did not appreciate India.

2. Indian Response to Modern Europe
Excerpts from "India and World Civilization" - By D. P.Singhal  - Chapter VII pp- 273.

Whilst Europe sought ancient Indian learning, India focused her attention on modern European knowledge. In this cultural encounter, initiative remained for the most part with Europe, for she was a young developing society with an inquisitive mind and the material resources to obtain easy access to what she fancied. In contrast, Indians even if they knew what they needed, could not get at it at will.
Western tradition is a highly generalized, extremely vague, and ill-defined concept that is often stretched to include or exclude anything at will to suit the purpose in hand. It is not a unitary system of thought, nor has it an unbroken historical continuity. There are deep controversies as to its exact nature and value, and it is a complex of diverse, even contradictory, ideologies and traditions. For instance, it is equally proud of the imprints of early Greek and Christian traditions which were relentlessly opposed to each other.
Even a casual investigation reveals the inherent contradictions of Western traditions. Western tradition is often characterized as one of material progress and scientific advancement, yet Christian mystical thought is superbly well developed, and until recently science was positively denounced in the Christian West. In most respects scientific inquiry was much more highly developed in the Hellenistic period than it was in mediaeval Europe. In fact, exactly why Hellenistic science declined needs an explanation. Again, it is repeatedly pointed out that Western tradition stems from the enlargement of individual liberties, and that individual liberty is the essence of Western civilization. Some Western scholars go even much farther and assert that the West has regarded " a denial of freedom as a denial of the value of the individual and therefore as a sin against the soul of man."
Yet it is not possible to completely ignore the Western institutions of slavery, feudalism, colonialism, and imperialism and racism. Western liberalism, of which the West can be justly proud , was born in the seventeenth century as a reaction against the violence and hatred that had prevailed during the almost unbelievably atrocious religious wars. But even since then, liberalism has not remained unchallenged in the West. Indeed, totalitarianism and suppression of freedom of thought and person appear to be the unbroken trend of a Western tradition that can claim most of the famous despots of world history, including Alexander, Julius Ceasar, Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, and Mussolini. This fact is even more startling when these dictators and conquerors are contrasted with the prophets of non-violence and peace, such as Gautama Buddha, Asoka, and Mahatma Gandhi, who were all born in Asia. Even the divine rights of kings, found far more serious advocates amongst Western monarchs- the Greek Alexander, the Roman Ceasars, Russians Czars, French Bourbons, and British Stuarts. It is true that the Western world has continuously fought for liberty, but this only serves to illustrate the existence of anti-freedom forces and a totalitarian current in Western tradition.
Again, it cannot be claimed, as it is often done, that the rise of Christianity did much to improve the position of the individual, for religious persecution has been a common feature of Western Christianity. The once persecuted Christians, having gained power, themselves became persecutors. The terrible struggles between Church and State were not fought for individual, or even religious freedom; the Church sought to compel the secular powers to serve its own purposes. Any individual who did not subscribe to the Church’s belief was at once denounced as a heretic. Crusades and religious wars of extermination were often as bloody as Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews and Gypsies.
The Church even persecuted the mediaeval minstrels and Gypsies because they loved freedom.
Christianity, which is in practice a unique combination of beliefs and clergy, whilst owing its religion to Jesus and his early Asian disciples, is, in strict ecclesiastical hierarchy, an essential Western movement. Whatever may have been the value of the Church in religious practice, it has inhibited freedom of thought and individual liberty by relentlessly enforcing its presuppositions as eternal truths. It is the Church which sets moral standards for the individual and prescribes his belief. The organization of the Church is unparalleled in history. No federation of states has been as comprehensive and universal in taking hold of the minds of people, and no monarch or dictator has been given the complete and willing obedience of such a wide and vast body of peoples, as has the Church.
The Islamic Caliphate and the Buddhist monasticism were, in this respect, no way comparable to the Christian Church.
Communism, with all its scientific reason, humanism, and economic equality, is essentially a totalitarian doctrine, negating individual liberty, and is a typical, almost, exclusive Western concept. Communism stresses the primary of reason, but like a missionary religion, it has a sense of its own infallibility and an obligation to world-wide expansion. Its greatest exponents have mainly been Western or Western-trained.
Even the British thought, which was more directly and closely linked with India than that of other European countries, had its own inner conflicts and contradictions in respect to India, ranging from Edmund Burke’s liberalism and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism to John Bright’s radicalism.

Burke desired India to stay Indian; in fact, he was rather anxious to reform the disreputable English trustees in India. He strongly condemned the facile and much used aspersion of "Oriental Despotism" and warned his countrymen against passing judgment upon a people, for ages civilized and cultivated, who formed their own laws and institutions prior to "our insect origins of yesterday." The Utilitarians and Evangelicals, on the contrary, saw little good in Indian society and desired to Westernize it completely by denying individual liberty to the Indian. The Utilitarians, whilst not denying the abstract right to liberty, could see no alternative to a benevolent British despotism in India, conducted from London. India exposed Utilitarianism’s paradox between its principle of liberty and that of authority. The Evangelicals’ viewpoint was religious; they believed that only through Christianity could temporal welfare and spiritual salvation be achieved. Hence, they looked upon the British conquest of India as a divine act to redeem themselves from their depraved system of superstition. Thus they sought the rapid conversion of the peoples of India to Christian ways, as interpreted by Western clergy. If Utilitarianism provided a justification and a practical basis for British imperial rule in India, Evangelicalism gave it a sense of urgency and intense zeal.
Whilst the 17^th century marked the zenith of India’s mediaeval glory, the 18^th century was a spectacle of corruption, misery, and chaos. The glory of the Mughals had vanished, life had become insecure, the nobility was deceitful and oppressive, and intellectual curiosity had given way to superstitious beliefs. The country was in a state of military and political helplessness. In this atmosphere, literature, art and culture could barely survive. The malaise of India was aggravated in full measure by the East India Company with its indiscriminate exploitation, corruption and bribery.
In contrast, Europe was robust and vigorous. This was the Age of Enlightenment, and Europeans were going through a process of rebirth during which religion was detached from state, alchemy from science, theology from philosophy, and divinity from art. The impact of Western culture on India was that of a dynamic society on a static one. It is a cruel irony of history, that whilst two major revolutions – the French and the American-upholding the human rights to liberty and equality were taking place in the West, India was in the throes of losing her own freedom to Western mercantile imperialism.
" The British domination of India has been described as a "political and economic misfortune."
In 1937, a distinguished British civil servant, G. T. Garratt, declared that the period of Indo-British civilization of the 150 years had been most disappointing, and "in some ways the most sterile in Indian history."

Haunted by Macaulay’s ghost
By Francois Gautier -Publication: Organiser
Date: November 29, 1998
http://www.hvk.org/hvk/articles/articles/1298/0023.html

As a foreign journalist, one cannot understand all the excessive noise made about the Education Agenda of Murli Manohar Joshi: What is wrong in trying to "Indianise, nationalise and spiritualise" education in India? Joshi's critics-and there have been many-have called it "a hidden Hindu agenda". So what?
With 800 million souls, Hindus constitute the majority of this country. Why should Hindus then be ashamed of a "Hindu education"? Traditionally and historically, Hinduism has always been the most tolerant of all religions, allowing persecuted minorities from all over the world, whether the Jerusalem Jews, the Parsis from Persia, Christians from Syria, or even Arab merchants, to settle in India over the centuries and practice their religion in peace. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of India's invader, be they Muslims, who ruthlessly tried for 10 centuries to stamp out this most peaceful of all religions; or the Christians missionaries, who used every means at their disposal to convert Hindus to the “true” religion (and are still trying today).
But Hinduism, never tried to convert anybody, never sent its armies or missionaries to neighbouring countries, to impose its religion and ways of life-not even by non-violence means, as the Buddhists did all over Asia. It should also be said that Hinduism is much more than a religion, it's a way of life, a universal spiritual outlook, which has allowed numerous sects, branches, philosophies, to develop within its fold, as long as they were faithful to the central truth of Hinduism: Dharma. It even recognises the truth and validity of other creeds-and it's perfectly normal for a Hindu to have pictures of Guru Govind, Christ, Buddha and Krishna in their homes. For are they not avatars? And is that not true secularism (and not the .opportunistic secularism of India’s politicians, which has divided India along caste and religious lines)?
Then why should Hindus not be proud of Hinduism? It has not only shaped the psyches of Hindus, but also of Indian Christians, Jains, Parsis, even Muslims, who are like no other Muslims in the world. And why should Indians be ashamed of their own civilisation whose greatness was foremost Hindu? Why should they refuse to have their children read the Vedas, which constitute one of the great Mountains of spiritual wisdom, or the Bhagavad Gita, which contains all the secrets of eternal life? Or the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which teach the great values of human nature: courage, selflessness, spiritual endeavour, love of one’s wife and neighbours. ... 
Are the French ashamed of their Greeco-Roman inheritance? Not at all! On the contrary they even think that civilization started with the Greeks. Would you call the Germans or the Italians “nationalists" because they have Christian Democrats Parties? Christianity is the founding stone of Western civilisation and nobody dares deny it. Clinton goes to the mass and swears on the Bible and none finds anything to say. We French are brought-up
listening to the values of Homer's Iliad, or Corneille's Le Cid. It is true that in France there has been a separation of the State and the Church; but that is because at one time the Church misused its enormous political power and grabbed enormous amounts of lands and gold. But no such thing ever happened in India. The Brahmins never interfered in politics and today they are often a neglected lot.

When they took over India, the British set about establishing an intermediary race of Indians, whom they could entrust with their work at the middle level echelons and who could one day be convenient instruments to rule by proxy or semi-proxy. The tool to shape these "British clones" was Education. In the words of Macaulay, the 'Pope' of British schooling in India: "We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and in intellects". Macaulay had very little regard for Hindu culture and education: "All the historical information which can be collected from all the books which have been written in the Sanskrit language, is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England".
It seems today that India's Marxist and Muslim intelligentsia could not agree more with Macaulay or with Charles Grant. For the dream of Macaulay has come true: Nowadays, the greatest adversaries of the "Indianised and spiritualised education" of Joshi, are the descendants of these "Brown Sahibs' the "secular" politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole Westernised cream of India. And what is even more paradoxical, is that most of them are Hindus. It is they who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to accept "an Indianisation, nationalisation and spiritualisation" of India's education system, which is totally western-oriented. And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West.
But then, what does makes Indian unique? Take the proposal of Joshi to make Sanskrit compulsory in school. Great idea! Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, and it could become the unifying language of India, apart from. English, which is spoken only, by a tiny minority. "Sanskrit. ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken", admonished 50 years ago Sri Aurobindo, India's great Sage and Seer.
A dead language, you say! Impossible to revive? But that's what they argued about Hebrew. And did not the Jewish people, when they got back their land in 1948, revive their "dead" language, so that it is spoken today by all Jewish people and has become alive again? The same thing ought to be done with Sanskrit. Let the scholars begin now to revive and modernize the Sanskrit language, it would be a sure sign of the dawning of the Renaissance of India. In a few years it should be taught as the second language in schools throughout the country, with the regional language as the first and English as the third. Then will India again have its own unifying language.
The Ministers walked out when the Saraswati Vandanam was played. But why should anyone object to Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning who bestowed so much grace on India. In 1939, a disciple told Sri Aurobindo that: "there are some people who object to singing of Vande Mataram as a national song; Sri
Aurobindo had replied; "in that case Hindus should give up their culture". But the disciple had continued: "the argument is that the song speaks of Hindu- gods, like Durga and that it is offensive to Muslims". Said Sri Aurobindo: "but it is not a religious song, it is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view should be naturally there. If it cannot find a place, the Hindus may as well be asked to give-up their culture. The Hindus don't object to "Allah-Ho-Akbar".
It is then obvious that Education in India has to be. totally revamped. The kind of Westernised education which is standard in India, does have its place, because India wants to be on par with the rest of the world, and Indian youth should be able to deal confidently with the West: do business, talk, and relate to a universal world culture. But nevertheless, the first thing that Indian children should be taught is the greatness of their own culture. They should learn to revere the Vedas, they should be taught the genius of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, they should be told that in this country everything has been done, that it was an unsurpassed civilisation, when the West was still mumbling its first words, that Indian civilisation reached heights, which have been since unsurpassed. But they should be taught early that India's greatness is her spirituality her world-wide wisdom. India’s new education has to be spiritualised, it has to be an inner education, which teaches to look at things from the inner prism, not through the western artificial looking glass. 
India's Dharma, her eternal quest for truth, should be drilled in the child from an early age. And from this firm base, everything then can be taught - from the most modem forms of mathematics, to the latest scientific technologies. 
(The author is correspondent in South Asia of Le Figaro, France's largest circulated newspaper)
(The Hindustan Times, 8-11-1998)

Did You Know?

Much of Modern Medicine can be traced to the Hindu surgeon, Sushruta, circa 600 BCE.

Best known for plastic surgery, his other notable achievements include cosmetic surgery, treatises on medical ethics, definitions, for 121 surgical implements, control of infection through antiseptics, use of drugs, to control bleeding, toxicology, psychiatry, midwifery, cataract operations and classifications of burns. And if all this weren't enough, Sushruta was among the first to prescribe surgical anesthesia - which in his day was a healthy dose of  strong wine!

For more on medicine, please refer to chapter on Hindu Culture).

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)}

( The Blog  is reverently for all the seekers of truth and lovers of wisdom and also purely  a non-commercial)