Muller concluded : "But the ancient religion of India is doomed," "and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?"
(source: Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas - By Arun Shourie ASA Publications ASIN 8190019945 p. 139).
Exposing the roots of another culture so as to support everything that has flowed from it for 3,000 years, and this seen as God's work. Not quite the motive and belief we would associate with an objective scholar like Max Muller!
The credit of consolidating of the Aryan concept in the second half of the 19th century goes more to Max Mulller than to anybody else. It was he who sold the idea quite aggressively to the Western audience of his time. It was also something which was eagerly lapped up by his 'native' audience, although he himself was never ready for the rough and tumble of the Indian dust. In Max Muller's parlance " a native writer" exclaimed in Indian Mirror, Calcutta, of 20 September, 1874: "we were niggers at one time. We now become brethren."
(source: Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past - By Dilip K. Chakrabarti p. 92-94).
Theordore Goldstucker (1821-1872) born in Germany, professor of Sanskrit at London’s University College wrote the Dictionary of Indian Biography. He regarded the people of India as being burdened by Vedic religion, which had only brought them worldwide “contempt and ridicule.” Thus, he proposed to reeducated them with European values. In his book, Inspired Writings of Hinduism, Goldstucker assailed the validity of Vedic literature. His aim was to demonstrate to the new generation of Vedic followers that he had scholastically annihilated their scripture and that they should show their appreciation by adopting European values and improving their character.
"For what purpose then has this enormous territory been committed to England? Not to be the 'corpus vile' of political, social, or military experiments; not for benefit of our commerce, or the increase of our wealth - but that every man, woman and child, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya mountains, may be elevated, enlightened Christianized."
(source: Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas - By Arun Shourie ASA Publications ASIN 8190019945 p. 152)
In 1869 Dr. Franz Lorinser published a new translation and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Die Bhagavad-Gita: Uebersetzt und erlautert.
Lorinser believed that the Gita, which the world already regarded as 'one of the fairest flowers of heathen world', actually owed its ' purest and most greatly praised teachings' to the New Testament!
Historian Arthur D.Innes writes:
"The educators had hardly concealed their expectations that with Western knowledge the sacred fairy tales of the East would be dissolved and the basis of popularly cherished creeds would be swept away.
Richard Temple said:
“Hinduism is gradually breaking up, like the clouds before the rising sun…. it is being dissipated like the mist, before the science of the 19th century.”
W. J Wilkins in his Daily Life
and Work in India p. 252 was another Christian missionary who worked in
India to gather harvest of converts for Christ. He said: “If this faith in the
Divine origin of these books (the Vedas) could be destroyed, they could then
reasonably hope the people would listen with unprejudiced minds to their
statements respecting Christianity…”
Rev. J Fr. Stacker another Christian zealot in his book, Arsenal for the Christian Soldier in India p.
493 had this to say: “The Hindu religion resembles the Christian just as a
counterfeit coin resembles a true one.”
(source: The Hindu - By Krishna
Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti p. 98-99). Sir W. M. Williams, a Sanskritist with great missionary sympathies, prophesied, "When the walls of the mighty fortress of Brahminism are encircled, undermined and finally stormed by the soldiers of the Cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete."
Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807- 1886) was the brother-in-law of Thomas Macaulay and author of Christianity and Hinduism Contrasted. 1882. He addressed the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-Tyne. He states:
"...as the Christian religion is the only one capable of correcting the disorder caused by the passions of mankind, and of gradually leading on the world to a state of perfection, it must be of divine origin, and we are bound to promote its universal diffusion in obedience to its founder, Jesus Christ. It this is true as a general proposition, we are under a special obligation to our magnificent Indian Empire, and the facilities for the task are in proportion to the obligation;" their special loathing in this context for Hinduism; their premise, their hope, indeed their expectation that Christianity would soon prevail; their calculation that it was enough for Government to spread western lore and learning for Hinduism to be destroyed - The grammar and spelling books suffice to destroy the Hindu religion."
He wrote in 1838: "Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost ceases to regard us as foreigners. They speak of our great men as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the same objects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they become more English than Hindus..."
He delivered this to the Baptist Missionary Society in London in April 1888:
"..That every British is spreading the truth of Christianity that Providence has placed the Empire at the disposal of Britain; that Buddhism and Hinduism are dying and dead; that the tribals ought to be made the special focus of the exertions of the missionaries."
(source: Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas - By Arun Shourie ASA Publications ASIN 8190019945 p 80-92).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-59) is best known for introducing English education in India. Macaulay was the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Legislature.
He wrote in his notorious 1835 Minute that Hinduism was based on " a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value ...(one) that inculcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects ... hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality...fruitful of monstrous superstitions. " Hindus had therefore been fed for millennia with a "false history, false astronomy, false medicine ...in company of a false religion."
"A war of Bengalees against English men was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons."
(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 194)).
Macaulay advised in 1835 the creation of an Indian elite through Western style education, making them
"Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, in intellect.'
The policy was frankly one of Westernizing India.
Though not a missionary himself, he sincerely believed that Christianity held the key to the problems of administering India. In a letter to his father in 1836, Macaulay exulted,
"...It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project."
" I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education." The superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable." The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronize sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance, at the public expense, 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." " I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books, I would abolish the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahmanical learning."
(source: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~raley/research/english/macaulay.html )
Please read the following article: Haunted by Macaulay’s ghost - By Francois Gautier )
"To the literature of Britain . . . which has exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce and mightier than that of our arms . . .before the light of which impious and cruel superstitions are fast taking flight on the Banks of the Ganges!"
(source: http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/britishedu.htm).
He remarked that Indians were: "lesser breeds without the law" and summed up the opinion of many. In 1885 he wrote of the "monstrous superstitions" of India and summarily condemned ancient Sanskrit texts as "less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England."
(source: Oriental Enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought - By J. J. Clarke p.73)
He wrote to his father in 1836:
"It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal, thirty years hence."
Macaulay's object was to undermine the social and religious institutions of India. The Indian Daily News, for instance, wrote in its leader on March 29, 1909: "Lord Macaulay's triumph over the Oriental School, headed by Dr. Wilson, was really the triumph of a deliberate intention to undermine the religious and social life of India."
Macaulay looked upon India much in the same way as a landlord looks upon his serfs. He wrote: "We know that India cannot have a free government. But she may have the next best thing - a firm and impartial despotism."
He had no heart, no sympathy for the longings and ambitions of educated India, nor had he ever tried to understand them. His idea was to bind India with the fetters of legislation, albeit the chain might be gilded. In his famous speech of the 10th July, 1838, Macaulay said: "I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws as India; and I believe also there never was a country in which the want might so easily be supplied...It is a work which especially belongs to a Government like that of India, to an enlightened and paternal despotism."
(source: Rise Of The Christian Power In India - By Major Baman Das Basu (1867-1930) Calcutta R. Chatterjee 1931 p. 802-807).
The question in Macaulay's mind was not just of perpetuating British imperial control over India: his aim was to rescue Indians from Hinduism, he was certain about the superiority of Christianity and about the boons that would follow as it spread in India. For he declared four years later in his essay, "Gladstone on Church and State," the heathenism of India is "more cruel, more licentious, more fruitful of absurd right, and pernicious laws" than that of any other part of the world. The people of India, he declared in "The Gates of Somnath", are idolators, blindly attached to doctrines and rites which, considered meekly with reference to the temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious."...Hence to condone Brahminical idolatry and to discountenance Christianity is to "commit high treason against humanity and civilization."
(source: Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas - By Arun Shourie ASA Publications
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).
(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
"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."
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."
"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."
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:
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
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).
(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).
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
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 Neetishatakm
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).
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.
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).
(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 2nd 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
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
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