First Indologists -2

Indologists

Bishop James M. Thoburn (1836-1922) wrote in his book, The Christian Conquest of India in 1906, about the Millions Waiting to be converted in the British Empire: 

“In her most palmy days Rome ruled over only one hundred and twenty million people, while in India today nearly three hundred million souls are subject, more or less directly, to the rule of the King-Emperor. China alone among the great kingdoms and empires of the world can compare with India in population at the beginning of this new century, and this splendid realm has opened all her gates and doors to the Christian missionary. Instead of the wretched little vessels in which Paul coasted around the Mediterranean ports, the Indian missionary has floating palaces to convey him at sea, while palatial cars await him when he wished to travel by land. God has opened his pathway to even the most remote tribes, while a sympathetic and enlightened government protects him from hostile persecution, or even the menace of danger. The original commission to evangelize the nations still stands, while God, who rules over all nations, sets an open door before his servants who are willing to enter and evangelize the waiting millions.” 

“The time is auspicious, and the missionaries of India should not lose a day or an hour in sounding the trumpet for a great forward movement. As Paul, the ideal missionary for all lands and all times, aimed first at Greece and next for Rome, so should the missionaries of our modern day aim for all the great centers of population, commerce, and political rule in the empire. This does not mean that outlying and distant places are to be negated, but only that the great centers of power and influence should be quickly seized and strongly held. A wide and firm grasp is needed. The word should be passed all along the line that India is to be won for Christ, and that the greatest movement ever attempted in the history of Christianity is now at hand. Nothing in all modern history, nothing since the day of Pentecost, has been equal to the present opportunity.  

The old may rejoice that they have lived to see this day, but the young may rejoice still more in the hope of seeing a day when a million souls will be found inquiring the way to Zion in North India, a  million in West India, a million more in Burma, and still a million more in South India. A million? Why not ten million? Why not the Christian Conquest of India? 

(source: The Christian Conquest of India - By Bishop James M. Thoburn Publisher: Jennings And Graham Date of Publication: 1906  p. 244-245). 

Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.  For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

“The Hindus were a foul race…and he wished Bert Harris (Air Marshall Bert "Bomber" Harris  could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.”  

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

                      - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965). His attitude to Indians was quite explicitly racist. 

As the British became more sure of their position in India and developed a sense of mission, there grew up a contempt for Indian culture. This was partly due to cultural arrogance on the part of the British, who dismissed Indian literature as pagan rubbish and Indian science as primitive nonsense. 

Macaulay disposed of ‘the whole native literature of India’ as ‘medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier – Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school – History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long – and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.’

(source: British India - By Michael Edwardes  p. 305-306).

Swami Vivekananda was to shatter Macaulay's dream and hope. The key point here is Macaulay's belief that 'that knowledge and reflection' on the part of the Hindus would cause them to turn to Christianity. His plan was to turn the strength of the educated Hindus against them, to use their commitment to scholarship to uproot their own tradition. To this end, he wanted someone willing and able to interpret Hindu Scriptures in such a way that the newly educated Hindu elite would see for itself the difference between their scriptures and the New Testament and choose the latter. It is a measure of Macaulay's seriousness that he persisted with his hare-brained scheme until he found just the man for it. The man was Friedrich Maximillian Mueller (1823-1900) who was to be touted as the foremost Indologist, Scholar Extraordinaire (by Nirad Chaudhury) and Vedemaharishi Mokshamula Bhatta (of  Oxford).
Swami Vivekananda pointed out more than a century ago: " The histories of our country written by English [and other Western] writers cannot but be weakening to our minds, for they talk only of our downfall. How can foreigners, who understand very little of our manners and customs, or religion and philosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories of India? Naturally, many false notions and wrong inferences have found their way into them. It is for Indians to write Indian history."
As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, the goal of the British was to weaken the Indian spirit, particularly the Hindu spirit, because the nationalist movement in India was mainly a Hindu movement. Most of the distortion in Indian history had already been done for them by the British, and then by their successors during the Congress rule. 
(Please refer to Eminent Historians - By Arun Shourie  Harper-Collins, New Delhi ISBN 8190019988).

Swami Vivekanada responded to a concerted attack on Hinduism:

"We who had come from the east have sat here day after day and have been told in a patronizing way that we ought to accept Christianity because Christian nations are the most prosperous. We look about us and we see England the most prosperous Christian nation in the world, with her foot upon the neck of 250,000,000 Asiatics. We look back into history and see that the prosperity of Christian Europe begin with Spain. Spain's prosperity began with the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins its prosperity by cutting the throats of its fellow men. At such a price the Hindoo will not have prosperity."

"When someone suggested to him that Christianity was a saving power, he opened his great dark eyes upon him and said:  

"If Christianity is a saving power in itself, why has it not saved the Ethiopians, the Abyssinians?" 

(source: Hinduism for Our Times - By Arvind Sharma Oxford Univ Pr June 1996 ISBN 0195637496  p. 72-73).

"On metaphysical lines, he wrote "no nation on earth can hold a candle to the Hindus' and curiously all the fellows that come over here from Christian lands have that one antiquated foolishness of an argument that because the Christians are powerful and rich and Hindus are not, so Christianity must be better than Hinduism. To which the Hindus very aptly retort that, that is the very reason why Hinduism is a religion and Christianity is not..."

(source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Calcutta, 1985 Volume VI. p. 390-391 and History of Hindu-Christian Encounters - By Sita Ram Goel South Asia Books July 1990 ISBN 9990049173 p. 90).

Refer to Be wary of English translations of Hindu scriptures - By Sheena Patel

No Hindu Culture
Dr. Dipak Basu of Nagasaki University in Japan has written:
"The British historians glorify the Muslim rule in India and dismiss the Hindu period as myths and fantasy. They dismiss the Marxian analysis of the British oppression of India . They emphasize the improvements in administration, construction of railroad, universities, abolition of ‘Sati’ and ‘Thugis’ from India and ultimate peaceful transfer of power to Gandhi-Nehru. In that history, there was no freedom movement in India , no man made famines, no transfer of huge resources from India to Britain , no destruction of Indian industries and agriculture by the British rule, but only a very benign and benevolent British rule in India .
History according to the JNU or AMU is not much different."

(source: CPI(M) and Karl Marx - By Dipak Basu - indiacause.com). Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com.

Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge and refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity.
So far as Europeans were concerned, it was fashionable for a time to deny the mere existence of such a thing as an Indian culture. Here are two representative quotations to illustrate this point:
Says Sir Henry Norman, in his book on the Far East: "Asia - always excepting Japan - has never been civilized and never will be unless a great change comes which this age is not likely to see otherwise than at the mouth of the cannon and the point of the bayonet." 

William Archer, who in his day was considered a dramatic critic of some standing, author of gave expression to the following judgment on India:
"Barbarian, barbarism, barbarious, I am sorry to harp on these words. But they express the essence of the situation...The plain truth concerning the mass of Indian population - and not the poor classes alone - is that they are not civilized people."
Naturally they could have no culture. Of minor poets like Robert Nicholls, or imperialist propagandists like Katherine Mayo, or the general run of Christian missionaries who could see nothing good in India. I need not say anything; for their views do not deserve consideration. 
(source: Essential Features of Indian Culture - By K. M. Panikkar Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Mumbai.1964 p. 23-24).
***
Bishop Caldwell on Dravidian Grammar:

"The idea of the Dravidian migrations from the north was first put forth by Bishop (who else ). Caldwell, insisted that the Dravidians had 'invaded' India long before the Aryans. As this theory had no basis in tradition, history or even archeology, it has tried to draw linguistic support from 'Dravidian-speaking Brahuis in Baluchistan and in Central and East India'."
"It is not only our duty," declared Lord Palmerston (1784 - 1865) the Prime Minister, "but in our own interest to promote the diffusion of Christianity as far as possible throughout the length and breadth of India"; " Every additional Christian," declared Lord Halifax (1800 - 1885) the Secretary of State," is an additional bond of union with this country and an additional source of strength to the Empire."
Rev William Ward, an English missionary who wrote a four-volume polemic which characterized Hindu faith as "a fabric of superstition" concocted by Brahmins, and as "the most complete system of absolute oppression that perhaps ever existed". (How would Christians feel if the compliment is returned by saying that nothing could excel superstition and oppression as the concepts of virgin birth, resurrection and slavery in the Bible, the pillars of faith that are central to Christianity?).
Barthelemy de Saint Hilare, the Education Minister of the French Government of 1883, declared that:
"the Hindu system of thought is hideous, without any intellectual rigor and coherence and cannot be compared with those of ancient Greece or modern Europe." 
(source: Arise O' India - By Francois Gautier Har Anand publisher  ISBN: 81-241-0518-9 p. 26).
John P. Jones in 1915 said:

"Schools for Non-Christians are especially established with a view to reaching and affecting the non-Christian community. They represent the leaven of Christianity in India. They are pre-eminently an evangelistic agency. ... I fearlessly maintain that more conversions take place, and more accessions are made, through these schools than through any other agency..." 
Moriz Winternitz
Unfortunately, not all scholars appreciated the timeless wisdom of the Vedas and Upanisads. Some scholars were so convinced of the superiority of Christianity and western philosophy that they had no qualms in shamelessly expressing their feelings publicly.
In 1925 The Professor of Indian Studies at the German University of Prague, Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937), denounced Schopenhauer for his admiration of the Upanisads with the following words -
'Yet I believe, it is a wild exaggeration when Schopenhauer says that the teaching of the Upanishads represents 'the fruit of the highest human knowledge and wisdom' and contains 'almost superhuman conceptions the originators of which can hardly be regarded as mere mortals...'
On the subject of the Vedas, Winternitz had this to say -'It is true, the authors of these hymns rise but extremely seldom to the exalted flights and deep fervor of, say, religious poetry of the Hebrews.' 
Weber, Boehtlingk, Kuhn and Goldstucker:
1. The famous German indologist Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) was a notorious racist whose German nationalistic tendencies were thinly veiled as works on Indian philosophy and culture.
When Humbolt lauded praise upon the Bhagavad-gita, Weber became disgusted. His immediate response was to speculate that the Mahabharata and Gita were influenced by Christian theology -
‘The peculiar colouring of the Krishna sect, which pervades the whole book, is noteworthy: Christian legendry matter and other Western influences are unmistakably present...’
Two Sanskrit scholars, Franz Lorinser and E. Washburn Hopkin, were quick to support Weber’s postulation. However, their theory lacked any hard evidence and was considered so ludicrous that most scholars in European universities rejected it, despite their Christian leanings. Nevertheless, the propagation of this eroneous hypothesis played its mischief and was mainly responsible for the hesitation of the Western scholars to assign to the Mahabharata a date, earlier than that of the Christian era.
In Chapter 4 of his book Krishnacharita, the famous Bengali writer, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, spoke about Weber as follows –
'The celebrated Weber was no doubt a scholar but I am inclined to think that it was an unfortunate moment for India when he began the study of Sanskrit. The descendants of the German savages of yesterday could not reconcile themselves to the ancient glory of India. It was therefore, their earnest effort to prove that the civilization of India was comparatively of recent origin. They could not persuade themselves to believe that the Mahabharata was composed centuries before Christ was born'.
2. Weber and his collegue Otto Boehtlingk prepared the famous Sanskrit dictionary called the 'Sanskrit Worterbuch'. Prof. Ernst Kuhn was also one of their assistants. Being mainly based on speculative and incorrect principles of philology, the work was unreliable and misleading. The dictionary was subject to severe criticism by Theodore Goldstucker (1821-1872), who was professor of Sanskrit at the University College in London. Weber was so disturbed by Goldstucker’s criticism that he resorted to abusing the Professor with the coarsest words possible. He added that the views of Goldstucker on his Worterbuch showed ‘a perfect derangement of his mental faculties’, since he was not willing to dismiss the authority of the Vedic scholars so easily. Replying to their undignified attacks, Goldstucker exposed the ‘scholarship’ of the likes of Roth, Boehtlingk, Weber and Kuhn and wrote:
'It will, of course, be my duty to show, at the earliest opportunity, that Dr. Boehtlingk is incapable of understanding even easy rules of Panini, much less those of Katyayana and still less is he capable of making use of them in the understanding of Classical texts. The errors in his department of the Dictionary are so numerous... that it will fill every serious Sanskritist with dismay, when he calculates the mischievous influence which they must exercise on the study of Sanskrit philology'.
He further remarked: '....that questions which ought to have been decided with the very utmost circumspection and which could not be decided without very laborious research have been trifled with in the Worterbuch in the most unwarranted manner…When I see that the most distinguished and most learned Hindu scholars and divines - the most valuable and sometimes the only source of all our knowledge of ancient India - are scorned in theory, mutilated in print, and, as a consequence, set aside in the interpretation of Vaidik texts; ...when a clique of Sanskritists of this description vapours about giving us the sense of the Veda as it existed at the commencement of Hindu antiquity; ...when I consider that those whose words apparently derive weight and influence from the professional position they hold...then I hold that it would be a want of courage and a dereliction of duty, if I did not make a stand against these Saturnalia of Sanskrit Philology.’
3. Referring to Prof. Kuhn, Goldstucker was positively venomous –‘(Professor Kuhn) was 'an individual whose sole connection with Sanskrit studies consisted in handing Sanskrit books to those who could read them, a literary naught, wholly unknown, but assuming the airs of a quantity, because it had figures before it that prompted it on, a personage who, according to his own friends, was perfectly ignorant of Sanskrit'.
However, we should not make the mistake that Herr Goldstucker was championing the cause of the Vedic literatures. Goldstucker’s skirmish with his fellow indologists was purely on an academic basis. Goldstucker was of the opinion that the people of India were burdened by Vedic religion which had simply brought them world-wide ‘contempt and ridicule’. He thus proposed to re-educate the Indians with Western values. He wrote:
‘The means for combating that enemy is as simple as it is irresitable: a proper instruction of the growing generation of its ancient literature.’ 
In his book, ‘Inspired Writings of Hinduism’ Goldstucker attacked the validity of the Vedas, stating that his aim was to inspire the new generation of Indians that their religious superstitions were backwards. This could only be achieved by scholastically destroying their sastras. The only recourse for the new generation would be to adopt European values in order to improve their character.
(source: Inspired Writings of Hinduism - By Theodore Goldstucker  p.115).
British historians - like Stirling, Hunter, Beams and Toynbee were in the British administrative services. They were eager to give the impression that foreign rule was a blessing for India. They present a dark picture of the Maratha administration. They depict the feudatory rajas as barbarians. There were many dark sides to British administration. There were corrupt and inefficient officers. There were judges who were deeply involved in unjust dealings. These facts have been kept hidden from the public eye.
Through the Imperial Glass
The remarkable Tenacity of Imperial perceptions- The Lindsay Commission

A learned commission under Professor A D Lindsay, master at Ballicol College , Oxford , reported on Christian Education in India in 1931:  

It maintained that although a ferment was in process within Hinduism, "Vedantic philosophy still retained its control and moulded consciously or unconsciously the fundamental attitudes of a vast majority of Hindus."

"The ascendancy of a superficial secularism, typified in the Nehru plan for an Indian constitution and in the personality of the Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Lindsay Commission declared, breathed new life into the spirit of easy accommodation of a pantheistic attitude blurring distinctions between truth and untruth and between right and wrong. With regard to the various efforts by eminent Indians to recondition Hinduism, two superficial motives were discerned. The first was the desire to give Hinduism a place in the modern world of activity and competition and the other was to render it respectable before a Western audience. Thus although the Gita with its call for action became a breviary of inspiration to Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Vivekananda and Dayanand Saraswati, the Lindsay Commission opined that the outcome was warped, desultory and perfunctory.  

The Lindsay Commission, however, unanimously concluded that Vedanta, in that awkward position, occupied ‘an uneasy seat’. The dominant figure in the Indian landscape’, the Commission pronounced, ‘is still the Hindu ascetic and sceptic sitting by the Jamuna’s bank watching the phantasmagoria of existence with indifference mingled with contempt’. “ India is too old to resent us’. There was a familiar ring in the exasperation. ‘Yet who can doubt that she will survive us? The secret of her permanence lies, I think, in her passivity and power to assimilate. The faith that will not fight cannot yield.”  

"The city of Benares was frequently upheld as representing the incongruity of this intriguing development. Eternal India persisted there with more ardour and enthusiasm than anywhere else despite the definite assault of Western science. The insolence and defiance of a superstitious Hinduism amazed the learned Commission. Hinduism at Benares , the Lindsay Commission reported, still continued to unfold itself, unheeding a Muslim emperor’s opposition, quite oblivious of the purifying and uplifting efforts of the Buddhist monastery of a neighboring Sarnath and in sheer indifference to the challenge of a Western and Christian civilization symbolized by the steel bridge.” Christianity, and along with it, Western civilization, the Lindsay Commission lamented, found Hinduism so firmly entrenched in the Indian ethos that they could only touch it marginally. The future seemed uncertain and this uncertainty released a feeling of melancholic frustration which, in turn, reinforced the claims of righteousness and dressed imperialism with a touch-me-not aloofness."  

The Lindsay Commission further stated on page 51 – 55:  

“Secularism is indeed the common enemy of all the religions since it demands in India, as it does elsewhere, in the name of religion and progress, that religion shall be rejected in a world where religion has no right…Hinduism is far too deeply entrusted in the soul of India to be reckoned as defeated as yet. As a matter of fact, the philosophy of Vedanta and the life of secularism are perfectly natural allies. Both alike reject many of the values that Christianity seeks to create and preserve, and with them, therefore, Christianity can make no terms.”  

The imperial mind in utter bewilderment, was overwhelmed by a creepy feeling which stood between it and Hinduism with its ‘ugly gods’, devastating ‘evil eyes’ and ‘sure charms’ all shrouded in mysterious forces that were beyond any rational explanation. It shivered at the infinite and immense secrets of India .  

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991    p. 69 - 239). Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

According to author Paul William Roberts 
"Conversion has largely failed in India because Christianity offers nothing that is not already available somewhere in the many forms of Hinduism. Hinduism never rejected the teachings of Jesus. Those who have converted either agreed with a gun pressed at their skulls as in Goa, or because it provided an escape from caste tyranny, as well as a guaranteed professional advancement. Through its Vedic legacy, Hinduism respects all faiths. It clearly states that God is one, but has many forms. The Christian message must sound preposterous: that God is indeed one, but has only one recognized form, his son. The "savages" of India were sophisticated - so sophisticated that the imperialist mixture of church and state in Europe could not grasp such sophistication."
"The sheer power of Hinduism terrified the Christian soldiers."

"The British were more cunning at the game than the Portuguese, careful to show respect for Indian religions. Yet they sneered at the pagans behind their back, educated the Indian elite in British-run schools, or at Eton and Cambridge - which, if it did not guarantee conversion to Christianity, resulted in lapsed Hinduism, agnosticism, or an intellectual humanism.

In India, Anglo indoctrination produced a generation of "brown sahibs" who looked down on the religion of the masses, the opium of the people. Such is the power of colonization that a whole generation must pass before the paralyzing spell wears off."

(source: Empire of the Soul: Some journeys in India - By Paul William Roberts p. 323-325). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
Many Christian researchers have documented the cause of the antipathy of the missionaries towards the Brahmins. Elizabeth Susan Alexander wrote,
“For the missionaries Brahmans (sic) had been in the forefront of the staunch Hindu opposition to missionary endeavours in Madras Presidency. They had also been the vanguard of the Indian nationalist movement that had taken alarmingly extremist turns.”

(source: The Attitudes of British Protestant Missionaries Towards Nationalism in India, Konark Publishers, Delhi, 1994, p 67.)
As the great Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, late curator at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a distinguished student of Indian history and culture, and author of several books, and unmatched in his understanding of Indian culture, language, religion and philosophy. Ananda Coomaraswamy, had this to say regarding the Macaulayite higher education:  
"A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots — an intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, to the past or the future. Of all Indian problems the educational is the most difficult and the most tragic."
(source: The Dance of Shiva - By Dr. Ananda K Coomaraswamy p. 127).
(Note: The tragic consequences was that the convert now found himself cut off from his ancient roots, attached to a foreign godhead and a foreign culture, and taught to despise and revile everything that for millennia had been an object of worship for his ancestors - including his own country.  This proves how the so called "just and merciful rule" of the British was indeed barbaric tyranny. The burning of ancient books on Ayurveda in Kerala, so as to impose the European system of medicine on the natives, the cutting of weavers' thumbs in Bengal with a view of crippling the production of superior Indian cloth and ensuring the sale of British products, the ruthless, often bloody, extortion of revenue from the peasants for decades on end, even in the midst of the worst famines, the whipping, hangings and tortures that awaited those who opposed the Empire - these are only a few among the unending examples of the "providential character" of the British rule. But they took place too far from the "civilized" world to attract any notice. The Britons like the relief of high-sounding speeches in London's salons, adorned with a few pagan objects d'art purloined from India.

(Source: Readings in Vedic Literature: The Tradition Speaks for Itself - By Satsvarupa dasa Goswami p. 173-181).
Since Independence, there has been a growing conviction that education should teach Indian values. One of India' leading experts on education, Dr. Humayun Kabir, former Minister of Science and Cultural Relations of the centrall government, had warned:
" The divorce of modern education from the Indian context is still a fact which threatens danger to the country's life....danger in ....the weaning away of the literate classes from the culture of the country....The new literates no longer derive their strength from the age-long traditions of the land. Their outlook is Western or more frequently pseudo-Western. Cut off from their moorings, they are unstable, loud and factional."
(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 191-192).
Prof. Perceival Spear of Cambridge University has said: “It was possible for a man to admire the West and to revere the East and to have European authority for both opinions.” What arrogance! The “unique” has to be replaced by “Universals” in the plural. We have to be the children of the horizons, or as the Atharvaveda (16.3.6) says, Samudro Asmi Vidharmana, “the Unbounded Ocean am I.”
(source: Theo-Diversity and Humane Values - By Prof. Lokesh Chandra).
The Indological scholars of the present day have inherited the pioneer's bias and thought; today's bias is not "evangelist" but "empiricist," it slants just the same. 

Dilip K. Chakrabarti in his book, Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past - By Dilip K. Chakrabarty thus summarized the situation: 

"The model of the Indian past...was foisted on Indians by the hegemonic books written by Western Indologists concerned with language, literature and philosophy who were and perhaps have always been paternalistic at their best and racists at their worst.." 
( source: http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/britishedu.htm).

Thoughts of Modern Indian Scholars

The wise may arraign or applaud
Wealth may flow in or vanish
as it will,
Death may occur today
or when the epoch ends
The steadfast never stray
from the path of righeousness

                             - written in Sanskrit by Bhartrihari in Nitishatak

Thoughts of Modern Indian Scholars

The wise may arraign or applaud
Wealth may flow in or vanish
as it will,
Death may occur today
or when the epoch ends
The steadfast never stray
from the path of righeousness

                             - written in Sanskrit by Bhartrihari in Nitishatak

***
But truth can never remain hidden for long. Now some modern Indian scholars of  have also begun to see to some extent, though not thoroughly, through the thin veneer of European scholarship.
Prof. Rangacharya writes:

"Incalculable mischief has been done by almost all the English and American scholars in assuming arbitrarily the earliest dates for Egypt or Mesopotamia - dates going back to B.C. 5000 at least - and the latest possible dates for Ancient India on the ground that India borrowed from them."
(source: History of Pre-Musulman India, Vol. II, Vedic India, Part I. 1937 A.D., p. 145).
Nilakantha Shastri, the Head of History Department of Madras University, although a supporter of many untenable Western theories, had to write:

What is this but a critique of Indian society and Indian history in the light of the nineteenth century prepossessions of Europe? This criticism was started by the English administration and European missionaries and has been nearly focused by the vast erudition of Lassen; the unfulfilled aspirations of Germany in the early nineteenth century, doubtless had their share in shaping the line of Lassen's thought."
(source: All India Oriental Conference, December 1941, Part II., p. 64, printed in 1946.)
C. R. Krishnamacharlu, Ex-Epigraphist to the Government of India, having realised the ulterior motives of European writers, has expressed his views more strongly. He writes: '
"These authors, coming as they do from nations of recent growth, and writing this history with motives other than cultural, which in some cases are apparently racial and prejudicial to the correct elucidation of the past history of India, cannot acquire testimony for historic veracity of cultural sympathy."
(source: 'The Cradle of Indian History', p. 3, Adyar Library, Madras, 19).
Prof. R. Subba Rao, M.A., L. T., in his Presidential Address, (Sectional), Sixteenth Session of Indian History Congress, Waltair, (29th December, 1953.) writes: 
"Unfortunately, the historicity of Puranas and their testimony has been perverted by certain Western scholars who stated rather dogmatically that the historical age cannot go back beyond 2000 B.C., and that there is no need for fixing the Mahabharata war earlier than 1400 B.C. They accused the Brahmins of having raised their antiquity and questioned the authenticity of the Hindu astronomical works." 
(source: J.A.H.R.S., Vol. XX, p. 187). (source: Vedic Knowledge Online). 
For those who came from the West to convert India into Christianity or to rule over India, the British in particular, saw India with a different eye. They saw nothing good in this country. Why? Because they wanted to justify conversions or British rule over India. Thus, they did the greatest damage to the image of this country.
A word on missionaries: they claim they brought “light” to this country. Rabindranath Tagore says: they started fires.

(source: Image & image-makers of MEA - M. S. N. Menon - TribuneIndia 12/22/2001). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

Women in the Age of Imperialism  

“Until the females are raised by education as to hold their proper rank in society and until their hearts are brought under the influence of Christianity, there is little hope that the people of India will rise from idolatry and sin to the dignity and happiness of a Christian people.” 

– American Mission Report, Jaffna (1839-9-10). 

Women believed, according to Hunter, that “Christianity was responsible for the elevated status of Western women” and that “in preaching the gospel they were only sharing what they had received in such bounty.” This means that American women missionaries were moved to action by both “the heinousness of heathen womanhood and gratitude for their own Christian womanhood.” Many had noted that such attitude were a kind of “Imperial feminism”  

In both America and Britain, there, was a whole cult of missionary work, highlighting the “romance of missions.” Women who were “doers” could fight oppressive conditions at home and boldly venture abroad to expose the “wrongs of women.” Magazines, popular novels and poetry on women’s work among “heathen” women abounded; there were journals like “The Heathen Women’s Friend,” “Helping Hand” and books such as Life and Light for Heathen Women were published by the Women’s Board of Missions. Popular novelists also latched on to the theme of missionary adventure, introducing a new genre of daring missionary heroines in exotic settings fraught with dangers of various kinds. Emma Southworth (in Fair Play, 1868) created a character, Britomarte Conyers, whose main desire is to leave America and save other women. “Oh my sisters! My sisters!” she exclaims, “as Christ died to save the whole human race, so I would die for you.”

In Britain, Priscilla Chapman wrote a book, Hindoo Female Education (1839), alerting her readers to “the poor idolatrous females in bondage” and wrote of “the necessity of an avowed Christian direction to the efforts which may affect the elevation of the Hindoo females from their present degradation to the proper level.” And in 1878, Isabel Hart (of the Baltimore Women’s Foreign Missionary Society) described heathen women as “degraded, secluded and helpless” and reminded American women of their “responsibility and duty” to support missionary work.  

Helen Montgomery writing of Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910) said: “Christianity was the most tremendous engine of democracy ever forged” and was “destined to break in pieces all castes, privileges, and oppression.” 

But missionaries had to also face the realities of rising nationalism in India and Sri Lanka. But the tradition of the white man’s and white woman’s Christian burden continued the belief, among many, that “premature independence for India would be….an abdication of the ordained exercise of Christian rule.” A conservative member of parliament who opposed political reforms for India, which were being discussed in the early 1930s, wrote: 

“…the whole ideal of British laws, justice, and administration….exactly interpret the Ten Commandements…our idea of government is the nearest approach to Christianity, and to exchange it for government which may lean towards…the worship of Shiva or Kali is…a “spiritual abdication.” 

“The holy church – now alas steering its malignant way through the Indian Ocean.”  - W. B. Yeats (around 1905), letter to Florence Farr.

(source: The White Women's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule - By Kumari Jayawardena p. 24-32). 

Technology and Culture in India

The reversal of the European image of Asia seems to have occurred, however, in a gradual period between 1780 and 1830, by which time the foundations of the industrial revolution in England had already been laid. Voltaire noticed a bit of it. Having once considered India as “famous for its laws and sciences”, he felt it necessary to denounce the increasing preoccupations of Europeans in India with the amassing of “immense fortunes”, and this led him to remark that “if the Indians had remained unknown to the Tartars and to us, they would have been the happiest people in the world.” 

By 1830, the British had acquired, in what was to become a completely European century, a flattering notion of the nature of their own civilization, and a thoroughgoing contempt for every other.  

In India, itself, this new attitude found expression in the famous Minute of Lord Macaulay (1800-59) on the 2^nd of February, 1835: 

"I have never found one amongst them (the Orientalists) who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia….It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same. "

The next influential person on our list, Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), had his own theories about the role of the British industrial civilization in India. “England” he wrote, “has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. He went on to emphasize how the British were breaking up the village community, uprooting handicraft industry, and establishing private property in land, which he termed “the great desideratum of Indian society”. Industrial life would wreck the caste system: “Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labor, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive, impediments to Indian progress and Indian power.”

Here again, the remarkable fact is that a hundred years later, Peter F Drucker (1909 - ) (the godfather of the global corporation) would still be theorizing along similar lines. In one of his not so well known books, The Landmarks of Tomorrow, he urged his readers to face “the new reality of the collapse of the East, that is, of non-Western culture and civilization, to the point where no viable society anywhere can be built except on Western foundations”. He based his pontification on the perception that: Every single one of the new countries in the world today – including those that have not yet shaken off colonial status – sees its goal in its transformation into a Western state, economy and society, and sees the means to achieve this goal in the theories, institutions, sciences, technologies and tools the West has developed. 

And certainly no accurate description of non-Western human experience could ever have been possible with minds convinced, for example, that Western philosophy was the nearest approach to metaphysical truth ever attained by mankind, that the Christian religion contained truth incumbent upon all men everywhere to believe. 

As Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995) put it, even European painting and sculpture had become “absolute” painting and sculpture, that “which artists of all cultures must have been trying unsuccessfully to attain”. European music was music, all other music, anthropology. 

The study of white men, even, was a separate science called sociology: anthropology was for the rest.  

If Macaulay was one of the first to set out to prescribe how best, in his case Indians, might save their withered souls, he was also the virtual founder of a movement that would carry on his tradition to the present day.   

(source: Homo Faber: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West - By Claude Alphonso Alvares p. 4 –6). For more on culture, refer to chapter on Hindu Culture)

Current Indologists - Evangelical Mindset?
Slandering Hinduism: A Classic illustration of what happens when somebody is confronted with a superior culture.

"With all their orientation towards “culture” the Western Indologists positively dislike Hinduism when it stands up to defend itself. They prefer museum Hinduism, or an innocent Gandhian kind of Hinduism, and they readily buy the secularist story that an assertive Hinduism is not the “real Hinduism”.

(source: Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society - By Koenraad Elst  p 83).

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com. Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge. Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority.

Refer to Be wary of English translations of Hindu scriptures - By Sheena Patel

"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 Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com
For more on Christian Intolerance refer to chapters on The Goa Inquisition, European Imperialism and Conversion,

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1981 -   ) Russian author and historian, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. In his work Solzhenitsyn continued the realistic tradition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and complemented it later with his views of the flaws of both East and West.

He once put it,

"The mistake of the West is that it measures other civilizations by the degree to which they approximate to Western civilization. If they do not approximate it, they are hopeless, dumb, reactionary."

(source: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, interviewed in Time of 24 July 1989).

Edward Said (1935 - 2003)  author of Orientalism, has noted that the 
"US academy had taken over the Orientalist mantle from the Europeans after World War II and the "area specialist," he noted, "lays claims to regional expertise, which is put at the service of government or business or both."
For too long, many have donned the cloak of “academic freedom” as a tool to deconstruct and debase Hindu perceptions of God and Truth, the scriptural bases of their interpretations and the heroes Hindus worship.
(source: Hindu American foundation). Refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

Edward Said: that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact and that Orientalism as academic discipline is a “kind of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient. Orientalism overrode the Orient. ..Can any other than a political master-slave relation produce the Orientalized Orient? The positivism of Western research appears itself as an ideology of domination; philology is a symptom of the Western sill to power. There is an unmistakable aura of power about the philologist.” 

Europeans have not tried to understand the Orientals; they have tried to articulate or prescribe a self-understanding for them: “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.” 

Ronald Inden has criticized “Orientalist constructions of India” and ways in which “Indological discourse” has denied to Indians” the power to represent themselves” and thus reinforced processes of alienation and subjugation. Indology, too, has projected its objects into a sphere of “otherness,” “has appropriated the power to represent the Oriental, to translate and explain his thoughts and acts not only to Europeans and Americans but also to the Orientals themselves.” In particular, it has construed the caste system as the “essence of Indian civilization.“ 

The West has imposed its methods of research, its values and modes of orientation, its categories of understanding, its “epistemic absolutism” upon the Indian tradition and alienated the Indians from what they really were and are.

(source: Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought - By Wilhelm Halbfass  p. 1 - 12). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Hinduism Misinterpreted in Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia Britannica (2009 Student and Home Edition) not depict Hinduism in a positive manner, in general. It looks more of a critique of Hinduism, where several concepts—fairly clear to an average Hindu—have been predicted as tensions and confusions. Britannica has misrepresented the concept and message of Hinduism, and Hindu values have been disparaged. The articles on Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have been written in a very good sense, and the evils of these religions have been subjugated by the way of presentation of those themes. In almost every section of, unnecessary contradictions and tensions have been mentioned with exaggeration. Why? It seems that the ambition of Encyclopædia Britannica is to show Hinduism inferior to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but even then the question is: Why?

Authorities of Encyclopædia Britannica had forgotten this fact when they had to publish about Hinduism, but they had well-remembered it when they had to publish material on Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. On the one hand they have chosen people like Rev. Henry Chadwick to write on Christianity, Fazlur Rahman, an alim, to write on Islam, and Rabbi Lou Hackett Silberman to write on Judaism, and on the other hand they have chosen Wendy Doniger, who is criticised for her negative portrayals of Hinduism as a writer and editor of Hinduism.

Britannica disrespects more than 800 million Hindus by publishing mendacious statements about their religion. Some of these statements are extremely false, concocted, and rude. How painful they are to a Hindu heart, there is no account of that. About Lord Krishna, who is respected and revered by all Hindus, the article says:

Krishna was worshipped with his adulterous consort, Radha.

The story of Rama, like that of Krishna , also has a shadowy side.

and

The benevolence and beneficial activity of these figures (Rama, Krishna , et al.) is, however, occasionally in doubt. Vishnu often acts deceitfully, selfishly, or helplessly.  

And then starts the critical examination of virtues of Lord Ram, Lord Krishna, and Lord Vishnu. Is criticism the job of an encyclopedia? The sole task of the writers of was to tarnish the image of Hinduism, its principles, its beliefs, its revered. Has Britannica examined the shadowy sides of Jesus, Mohammad, or Abraham? 

(source: Encyclopedia Britannica insults Hinduism – Amit Raj Dhawan ). Refer to Wendy's Child Syndrome - By Rajiv Malhotra).

Sanskrit: Shelving a Heritage
From Macaulay to MTV

Marxism infested secularity of the Indian State has imposed the principle of separation of State from the Church in the European and Soviet manner. Indian Secularism has taken the form of turning away from one’s own heritage and disregarding the spiritual and ethical commitments that ancient and medieval vehicles of all religions and cultures symbolize. As a result, Sanskrit is the biggest casualty under secularist milieu. Practically speaking, secularism now means wallowing in easy consumerism of the day and neglecting religious and cultural issues. Hence the disruptive and not additive protests by secularists.  

Guilt for the ‘Classical’ Heritage  

India alone excels in belittling its classical heritage as it has unfortunately codified it as its ‘Hindu past.’

This classification began in the colonial period when non-European cultures were primarily seen in terms of religious denominations of the non-Christian colored races. They were further divided into two broad categories, primitive (African, Australian and American aborginies) and static (Asia and China ).  

The problem of giving Sanskrit its due place in Indian education is therefore, not just a matter of giving concession to a particular language. It is the task of using five thousand years of all the textual wealth produced in this subcontinent. And all who believe that these texts, the bulk being in Sanskrit, are not required for maintenance of cultural identity have little knowledge of civilizational rise and decline in history.  

History as a Political Tool

***

Arrogance of the Indian Anglophile  

“For Western historians anything that is pre-Christian has to have been heathen, barbaric, godless or pagan, and traced back to Greek or Rome. Thus, their religious loyalties stunt their intellectual horizons." 

- Stephen Knapp, author of Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence p. 272.

Indifference to Sanskrit and other classical languages is nurtured in no small measure by Indian Anglophils who live under the illusion that availability of ancient texts in English translations is sufficient for understanding the ancient ways of thought and feeling. For them there is no greater waste of time than learning ancient languages. Polyglossists are no longer admired in Indian academia. Indian universities do not demand a first hand knowledge of Sanskrit or prakrits from their doctoral researchers in history or philosophy. 

It is symptomatic of the times that a leading university like the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) did not have a Sanskrit department till 2002 although it boasted having eminent historians on its faculty. 

The Indian Anglophones admire Orientalists but forget that the Orientalist enterprise was not to inform the Indian readers but to interpret a colonized culture for proswlytization and governance. They also forget that no culture can do things for another culture; one has to seek meaning in one’s own past by one’s own effort. For those Anglophils that may doubt this even after Edward Said’s work, one may remind them of T S Eliot’s dictum that ancient texts have to be studied and translated not only by each culture but also by each generation of culture. So what great-grandfather Max Muller did for Europeans needs to be done by Indians for themselves today.

(source: India: A Cultural Decline or Revival? - By Bharat Gupta  p 25 - 30). Refer to chapters on Sanskrit, Glimpses XXII and Glimpses XXI and European Imperialism.

Academic researchers versus Hindu civilization - By Gautam Sen

Tavleen Singh columnist with Indian Express has recently commented in her article A Dark and Distorted Hinduism:

"..American professors who have written scholarly tomes on Hinduism make Hinduism sound like a mix of voodoo and pornography. Hindu gods and religious symbols have been put through Freudian analysis to establish such bizarre conclusions as Ganesha’s trunk representing a “flaccid phallus” and his love of sweets as a desire for oral sex. He also has Oedipal problems! This Freudian analysis goes beyond the gods to actual Hindu religious practices, and it is then that these scholars show not just their abysmal ignorance but their deliberate distortion of reality. They teach students in American universities that Brahmins drink menstrual blood and other human fluids and that this is Tantra. They teach that Shiva temples are dens of vice where priests routinely murder and rape unsuspecting pilgrims."

Refer to A Dark and Distorted Hinduism and Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. 
Refer to Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com  

“The Bhagavad Gîtâ is not as nice a book as some Americans think. Throughout the Mahâbhârata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviours such as war.... The Gîtâ is a dishonest book; it justifies war. ..I'm a pacifist. I don’t believe in ‘good’ wars.”

-  Wendy Doniger, Indologist and Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago: Philadelphia Inquirer of 19 November 2000. Refer to to Wendy's Child Syndrome - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com.

For information on the Bhagavad Gita refer to chapter on Hindu Scriptures and Quotes and Glimpses X).

India as an object of entrepreneurial enquiry 

This discussion seeks to understand why Indian studies in the West (especially the US and the UK) are overwhelmingly hostile to their object of study. In the first place, ethnocentric and parochial perceptions will usually dominate when one culture critically evaluates another.

It may be innocently imagined that an intellectual entrepreneur engaged in sustained study of a particular society or country must have empathy for it. On the contrary, such enquiry can take the shape of reconnoitring an enemy and indeed compound the distaste for the culture in question, which I imagine is the case with a majority of Western scholars of India. Critiques of the foundational ideas of a society and culture indicate, ipso facto, distaste for it. A society will always be vulnerable to the scurrilous deconstruction of its primordial beliefs because they are historical in character. Arbitrary first principles, usually mythical, are the basis for all human existence. Thus, pitiless scrutiny, without respect or empathy, towards the deeply held sacred beliefs of others, which defines their very humanity, is a sure sign of utter disregard.

British colonial roots of Cold War hostility towards India 

The long-standing Anglo-Saxon critique of Hindu society and independent India has roots in the visceral British hatred of the educated Hindu elites of late nineteenth century Bengal, whom they themselves had originally sponsored. The resulting confluence of British imperial interests and subsequent Muslim politics in India is too well known to require detailed recounting. The British inaugurated twentieth century sectarian Islamic politics in India as a counterweight to the pan-Indian and secular Congress, which was seeking basic political rights for all Indians. They also partitioned Bengal in 1905 to vent their anger against ‘native’ protest at their oppressive and racist rule over all religious communities (cf. The Imbert Bill). An unbroken straight line can be drawn from this burgeoning British hostility towards Hindus over a hundred years ago to the constant fabrications of British journalists and editors in the print media and television about India today. These contemporary lies will one day transmute into ‘unassailable’ archival material, cited in journals by academics to assert the superiority of their research methodology and dismiss the amateur investigator.

(source: Academic researchers versus Hindu civilization - By Gautam Sen - London School of Economics & Political Science). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com
Wilful misrepresentation of India’s culture and heritage?
Paul Courtright book titled: Ganesa - Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings has plenty of insidious passages in his book aimed at tarnishing not only the image of Ganesha,
Swapan Dasgupta noted Indian journalist has observed: 
"Beginning sometime last year, American Hindus have mounted a spirited attack on the bastions of Indology in the North American universities. The movement was triggered by the reprint of Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings by Paul Courtright of Emory University in Georgia. It was claimed by American Hindus, quite rightly too, that the projection of the Hindu god as a personification of incestuous licentiousness was deeply offensive."
What is significant is that, for the first time, there is an organized Hindu protest against wilful misrepresentation of India’s culture and heritage. At a time when the United States of America perceives India as a strategic partner, both economically and politically, does it behove the American academic establishment to patronize those who perceive Hindu to be a four-letter word?
(source: Reclaiming the Hindu Gods - By Swapan Dasgupta - telegraphindia.com January 30' 2004). Refer to Limp Scholarship and Demonology - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com and Taking Back Hindu Studies - By Dr. Srinivas Tilak - sulekha.com). Also refer to chapter on Glimpses IX and Glimpses X) and European Imperialism.
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
***

Shoddy Scholarship?
Criticism of crude academic writing on Hinduism is coming from the community because it is not present in the academy.

Many Hindus have expressed concern about the quality and nature of Hinduism scholarship emanating from the U.S. academy. What kind of work has drawn criticism from the Hindu community? Here are just a few examples:

1. In his book on Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed deity of Hindus, Emory University professor Paul Courtright made claims that Ganesha’s trunk represents a limp phallus and the fondness for sweets of this child deity carries “overtones” of a desire for oral sex.
2. University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger has been quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, “a dishonest book” that "justifies war."
3. In her article on Hinduism in Encarta, which serves as a mainstream introduction for general audiences, Doniger highlights what she calls “contradictions” in the Hindu tradition--often using deprecating parenthetical asides, unusual for such an encyclopedia entry.
4. In Kali's Child  Rice University professor Jeffrey Kripal portrays Sri Ramakrishna, a much-revered Hindu spiritual leader, as a sexually abused homosexual child-molester.

"Kali's Child" has become a standard reference on Ramakrishna in the U.S. academia; the works of Courtright, Kripal and Doniger are similarly served up as mainstream interpretations of the Hindu tradition, finding their way into museum exhibits and primary references for encyclopedias.  
Refer to Swami Tyagananda has done a detailed review of Kali's Child including some of its many translation errors:
Kali's Child Revisited or Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation? - By Swami Tyagananda. (source: U.S. Hinduism Studies: A Question of Shoddy Scholarship - By Sankrant Sanu - beliefnet.com). Refer to Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com

Persistent Mental Colonization of the Indian mind
The chief event that caught the imagination of the Hindus, all and sundry, was exposure of Paul Courtright’s attempt to pass cheap “smut” as scholarship. I liken this to the spark triggered by fat-smeared cartridges in 1857—the first war for the liberation of the colonized Indian mind has begun. However, the failure of 1857 is something we must learn from, and try to avoid in this venture. Firstly, we must realize that sepoys would be deployed by the Western academics against their compatriots and we must not be taken in by these sepoys.
Western academics and their Indian Sepoys have feeling the heat of the Indian rebellion started a tirade against any Indians daring to oppose their dogmas on their elitist list RISA (Religion in South Asia) and its look-alikes.
(source: RISA shenanigans and the "Sepoy Mutiny" - By Rajita Rajvasishth - swaveda.com). Refer to chapter on Conversion.
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. For more on Christian Fundamentalism Agenda in USA, 
Refer to: A conflict between Science and God - By Martin Kettle - Guardian and Quotes from The American Taliban and Christian Fundamentalists to Push Bible as Classroom "Knowledge" and Bush, the Neocons and Evangelical Christian Fiction: America "Left Behind" - By Hugh Urban and The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy - publiceye.org. and Dinosaurs, evangelicals and the state - By Justin Webb - BBC. and Cornell President Says "Intelligent Design" Religion, Not Science and American Fundamentalists. Religion in America’s Public Square: Are We Crossing the Line? - By Abraham H. Foxman  ADL National Commission Meeting and Intelligent designers are out to Christianize America.  Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Also refer to Battlefield Earth - By Bill Moyers and The Godly Must Be Crazy - By Glen Scherer and Rapture or Rupture? - By Bryan Zepp Jamieson. Refer to The Republican War on Science - By Chris Mooney and Resurgence Of Religious Right Among Top Concerns - totallyjewish.com.  More evangelicals turning up in elite circles, schools - By Laurie Goodstein and David D. Kirkpatrick and David D. Kirkpatrick and David D. Kirkpatrick and David D. Kirkpatrick - The New York Times/May 22, 2005. The Crusaders: Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image - By Bob Moser - rollingstone.com and Dominionist. Refer to As America declines, the Bible thumpers take hold - By Ramesh Rao - indiareacts.com and How the Dominionists Are Succeeding in Their Quest for National Control and World Power - yuricareport.com.  America is a religion - By George Monbiot - guardian.co.uk

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).

Indian Academic Sepoys or Uncle Tom?
Hindu Bashing - In The Name Of Freethinking – By S Aravindan Neelakandan

There is now a new kid in the secularist bloc crusading against Hindutva -- Ms. Meera Nanda, (author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India and Intellectual Treason - By Meera Nanda - a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies at Columbia University. Saddled well in the column spaces of pro-Chinese newspapers and magazines like The Hindu and Frontline, she charges against the ecologically sound windmills of Hindutva. In her mind however the windmills morph neatly into Nazi dragons and the delusory contagion of the mind spreads to the brains of other pseudo-secularist intellectuals.

Essentially what Ms. Nanda peddles are Marxism and a critique of Hinduism -- a critique that belongs to such a bygone era of Colonialism, that even a third-rate evangelist would think twice before mouthing it. But Ms. Nanda tries to sell these outdated potions under the attractive label of 'freethinking'.

Ms. Nanda's pseudo-freethinker position, denouncing Swami Vivekananda in the pretense of advancing scientific temper, gets a jolt from one of the greatest scientists of modern India. Satyendranath Bose (1894-1974) in whose name go a family of sub-atomic particles – Bosons -- has this to say about the relevance of Swami Vivekananda: 

“In Vivekananda we find an unprecedented synthesis of the scientific temper and spirituality. India needed this sort of education in his times. The need persists even today. …In our present period of crisis all the more specially we recall Swami Vivekananda. Today if we fail to regenerate his ideals then it is pointless for us to feel proud of his heritage."  
Indian culture has elements conducive for the spread of scientific temper among the masses of India, more than perhaps any other surviving traditional culture. Indian culture allows pluralism.. Indian culture assures freedom. Another great achievement of the Hindu civilization that ensured that religion and science did not clash.. 
Thus, we find Bhaskara II (12th century CE) asserting that: “It is necessary to speak out the truth accurately before those who have implicit faith in tradition. It will be impossible to believe in whatever is said earlier unless every erroneous statement is criticized and condemned.”
Not only was Bhaskara not burnt at the stake but was venerated as an Acharya. Walking the path of one's inner search, not based on authority or blind faith but based on intelligence is one of the basic aspects of Indian culture.
(Note: In 1992 the Church did a mea culpa and declared that it was wrong when it persecuted Galileo, ex cathedra or not).
(Note: Uncle Tom - By Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) - eventually came to mean an African American who sells out his people's interests and still does today. A black man who will do anything to stay in good standing with "the white man" including betray his own people. A byword for lackey and sell-out - black freedom struggles by ingratiating himself with his white overseers - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Uncle+Tom. Miss Nanda has been invited to talk at the Le Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud).

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)