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: Criticism of crude academic writing on Hinduism is coming from the community because it is not present in the academy.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- 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.
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
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.
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.
In this Imperial
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.
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.
For more refer to chapter on Aryan Invasion
Theory, European
Imperialism and Islamic Onslaught
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).
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).
Charles H. Townes (1915 - ) Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics, who invented the microwave-emitting - MASER says:
“Indian students should value their religious culture and of
course, the classical Indian culture bears importantly on the meaning of life
and values. I would not separate the two. To separate science and Indian
culture would be harmful. …I don't think it is practical to keep scientific and
spiritual culture separate.”
(source: In The Name Of Freethinking – By S Aravindan Neelakandan -
sulekha.com). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to chapter on Quotes and Advanced Concepts and European Imperialism and Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey - A preliminary reply by Dr. Koenraad Elst to Ms. Meera Nanda and A Rejoinder to Meera Nanda’s Article “Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and Vedic science” by Srikant - swaveda.com and Le Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud).
Also refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan. Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks - http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html. Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Refer to chapter on Conversion.
Biases in Hinduism Studies - By Abhijit Bagal
Jules Michelet (1798 -1874) French writer and the greatest historian of the Romantic school wrote about the Ramayana:
"Divine poem, ocean of milk!"
"Whoever has done or willed too much let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth........Everything is narrow in the West - Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look toward lofty Asia, and the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem, as vast as the Indian ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of love, of pity, of clemency."
Such was the first and enduring impression made on Michelet by the Ramayana. For more on Michelet refer to chapter on Quotes.
***
Rajiv Malhotra, founder of the Infinity
Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New
Jersey, engaged in making grants in the areas of compassion and wisdom, writes
in an article dated December 25, 2000:
“Our US
Congressman, who is a member of the India Caucus and will be part of the
Congressional delegation visiting India in early January, spent considerable
time with me today specifically on the Ramayana portrayal by Professor Susan
Wadley. The Congressman said that he was appalled at the inflammatory approach
in the Ramayana material, and was especially concerned that it was done under
Federal grant money as that could give it the aura of governmental stamp of
approval. While there is the First Amendment of the Constitution giving freedom
of speech, it is not the job of the Federal Government to spend the taxpayer's
money in support of what is essentially hate speech. He also felt that the
standard in case of school material should be at a higher level of sensitivity
towards minority communities in America, of which the Hindus are one. He
promised to write to Washington supporting our position, and will also explore
a way to get us in contact with the relevant authorities to participate in
future grants of this kind. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
The
above article by Rajiv Malhotra is with reference to Professor Susan Wadley's work emerging from two
National Endowment for the Humanities grants (1994 and 1997) received by her to
train high school teachers to teach the Indian epic Ramayana to American
students. In an internet article dated September 7, 2000, Susan Wadley
describes herself as the Director of South Asia Center and Ford Maxwell
Professor of South Asian Studies, Syracuse University, and her work that led to
the creation of the Ramayana course material and workbook as “A second WEB page
project emerges from the two National Endowment for the Humanities institutes
for high school teachers that I taught in 1994 and 1997. These four week
institutes focused on the Ramayana and its history, its relationships to
changing social and cultural norms, its presentation in art and drama. Teachers
at the institutes created lesson plans and instructional materials that have
been added to: these are found at http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/southasiacenter/ramayana/
.”
Many have complained that the workbook
developed by Susan Wadley depicts Lord Ram as an invading-outsider,
imperialist, oppressor, misogynist, and a racist and that the workbook sounds
more like the rant of an over zealous racist than that of an “objective” and
“neutral” scholar.
A letter
written by Dr. David Gray,
protesting the biased portrayal of Ramayana
by Susan Wadley, was
sent on December 1, 2000, to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
with a copy to Richard W Riley, who was the Secretary of Education, U. S.
Department of Education, at that time. Some excerpts from the Letter are
presented here:
“While the project generated useful course
material, it also included what are clearly partisan and political readings of
the epic, as well as outright inflammatory 'cheap shots' at a sacred text. This complaint is on behalf of United States citizens and
parents of school children. Hinduism
and Sikhism (which also worships Rama) are no longer merely about a far
away exotic land that Americans have little to do with. We have Hindus and
Sikhs right here in our classrooms today, amongst our office co-workers and as
our neighbors. It is irresponsible for any multicultural school to introduce a
protest song against Hindus and Sikhs that includes hate speech alleging that
"Muslims were targeted", or that certain people are "enslaved to
form a monkey army" with the purported intention to "attack
Muslims". What does this do to
foster mutual respect and understanding among different ethnic and religious
communities in America's sensitive tapestry, now represented in classrooms?
Should Government funds be used to
create such racially and religiously inflammatory teaching materials, denigrating
to one's classmates' sensitivities, ironically in the name of multiculturalism?
We understand that academic freedom, and the freedom of speech, allows us all
in this country to espouse ideas that may be unpalatable to some. These ideas
could be politically or culturally biased or even prejudiced. However, such
bias about others' religions and religious ideals, others' sacred texts and spirituality,
when it is presented to high school students by non-experts (high school
teachers), would lead to a warped understanding of others' history and
religions and to unintended consequences, including stereotyping and hatred of
minority groups. The particular version
of the Ramayana that Professor Wadley includes in the lesson plans, and that
she says is her favorite version of the many songs on the God-king Rama and the
Ramayana, was composed by an anti-Hindu activist. This particular
"song" is included in the essay titled, "The Ramayana and the
Study of South Asia" ("Education About Asia", volume 2, number
1, Spring 1997, page 36, by Susan S Wadley).”
Providing
an analogy with other religions, the letter goes on to say:
“This
same principle carries over to the study of other religions: for example,
Christianity or Islam. Some of the scholars who have studied the Bible have
read all or part of it as being patriarchal and oppressing women, Jews,
homosexuals and blacks. There are others who criticize its violence and the way
it is used to oppress the poor. Still others question the authenticity of the
Bible and the real-life events of Jesus. Of course, most Christians see the
Bible as containing God's words and would be horrified at the "deconstruction"
of their sacred text. Would we provide such portrayals of the Bible to our
secondary school students, especially dramatized in performances of hate songs
in the manner recommended by Professor Wadley? Christians would object
vociferously at what they would call an unfair portrayal of their faith.
Islamists and Muslims would similarly protest if one were to characterize
Prophet Mohammed as a jihadist and an oppressor of women, even if that were
supported by textual references. Scholars can debate controversial views on the
Ramayana and the Bible all they want. We just don't find it necessary to import
such debates into classrooms where children are beginning to understand the
basic contours of each religion. The
question that Professor Wadley should have addressed is this: if I were a
Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Moslem, how would I want my faith to be
understood by those outside it? We believe she has not adequately
understood this problem or has deliberately chosen to ignore it. Were this simply
a scholarly interpretation, this would be an unfortunate, but not a public,
issue.”
The
“song” that the letter refers to is in worksheet 2 of the course material and
instructs the students to “Read this song sung by an untouchable in north
India.” Some lines from the song have been reproduced below:
“Once the Aryans on
their horses invaded this land.
Then we who are the
natives became the displaced.
Oh Rama, Oh Rama, You
became the God and we the demons.
You portrayed our
Hanuman as a monkey,
Oh Rama, you
representative of the Aryans.
Muslims were targeted
and "taught a lesson".
To destroy Lanka, Oh
Rama, you
Formed us into a
monkey army.
And today you want us,
The working majority,
To form a new monkey
army
And attack Muslims.”
Lord Ram is thus depicted as an “Aryan
Invader” in school textbooks for American kids. The Aryan Invasion
Theory (AIT) itself is highly controversial with some scholars
suggesting that it is a colonial and racist construct of the 19th century. Some
scholars have suggested that there was no invasion but a gradual migration
leading to the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT). Some other scholars have suggested
that there was no invasion or migration, that the Aryans were indigenous to
India, and that the term Aryan does not refer to a caste or a race, rather it
refers to one with a noble behavior. There is a fourth group of scholars who
say that people from India migrated to other parts of the world such as Central
Asia and Europe and spread the Vedic (Based on the Vedas, books written
in Sanskrit, the largest and most ancient body of literature preserved by
mankind) civilization there, and, not the other way round – This is known as
the Out of India Theory (OIT). Unfortunately, many scholars such as Professor
Wadley often fall into the trap of labeling all of India's problems as 'Hindu',
whereas they would not label the very high incidence of child abuse, rape,
massive prison population, drug and other addictions, and high incidence of
clinical depression in the U. S. as 'Judeo-Christian' problems.
(source:
Biases in Hinduism
Studies - By Abhijit Bagal - indiacause.com). Also refer
to Biases in Hinduism
Studies Part I-IV - By Abhijit Bagal - indiacause.com and
chapter on Glimpses XI). Also
Refer to Visions of the End
of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian
Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll.
Refer to chapter on Conversion.
Also
refer to Bigotry and
Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By
Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic
discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com. Refer to Defaming of
Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of
Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com
he Self Loathing
Leftists and Liberals of India
Modern India’s modern
myths
The first of these myths is that India itself is a myth. The
Mahabharata and the Ramayana
are myths that were written by men who lived in a place without geography or
history. Sanskrit came from this same
nebulous arena as did the Vedas and the mathematicians who invented the zero.
The idea of India did not exist until the British created it is the contention of India’s self-loathing ‘liberals’. In the words of a historian of recent celebrity, India is an ‘unnatural nation as well as an unlikely democracy’. He does not bother to explain what he means by ‘unnatural nation’ since the nation state itself did not exist till not very long ago. Long, long before that there was a country called Bharat whose borders were clearly defined and whose certainty continues to be perfectly understood by ordinary Indians across India.
When a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka sets off to attend the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, he does not think that he is travelling to a foreign country. When a family from Bengal travels to Banaras or Mathura to drop off some inconvenient widow in one of the ashrams, there they do not think they are travelling abroad either. The only people who have a problem defining India are liberal, English-speaking ‘secular intellectuals’ who usually don’t speak even a single Indian language. They understand no more about the idea of India than those intellectual refugees from the West who make India their home and become ‘experts’ on all things Indian. They belong to the same club because they all make a living out of writing books, histories and articles about this India that is so unnatural a nation, so accidental a country.
The second myth perpetrated by the self-loathers is that there is no such thing as Hindu India.
The idea of India did not exist until the British created it is the contention of India’s self-loathing ‘liberals’. In the words of a historian of recent celebrity, India is an ‘unnatural nation as well as an unlikely democracy’. He does not bother to explain what he means by ‘unnatural nation’ since the nation state itself did not exist till not very long ago. Long, long before that there was a country called Bharat whose borders were clearly defined and whose certainty continues to be perfectly understood by ordinary Indians across India.
When a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka sets off to attend the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, he does not think that he is travelling to a foreign country. When a family from Bengal travels to Banaras or Mathura to drop off some inconvenient widow in one of the ashrams, there they do not think they are travelling abroad either. The only people who have a problem defining India are liberal, English-speaking ‘secular intellectuals’ who usually don’t speak even a single Indian language. They understand no more about the idea of India than those intellectual refugees from the West who make India their home and become ‘experts’ on all things Indian. They belong to the same club because they all make a living out of writing books, histories and articles about this India that is so unnatural a nation, so accidental a country.
The second myth perpetrated by the self-loathers is that there is no such thing as Hindu India.
There is a ‘composite’
culture that is Hindu and Muslim and that is that. Anyone who dares
suggest that for many centuries before Islam came to our shores India was a Hindu country is instantly reviled as a rank
‘communalist’ of the Hindutva kind. It is important to note here that
the self-loathing liberals have no problem describing a period of Indian
history as Mughul and another
period as British. The problem
is ‘Hindu’ India because the
premise that there was a country called Bharat that was entirely Hindu in
ancient times is somehow offensive.
Modern India has given birth to modern myths. The most popular myth among ‘secular liberals’ in these times of Islamist terrorism is that the Indian state is so evil that the jihad is a valid response. You would not think that there could be an alliance between religious fanatics and those who believe they are intellectuals of liberal, left persuasion but in India there is. This bizarre alliance is so strong that Indian leftists have become the most ardent spokesmen (and women) of the Islamists. They find themselves in this extraordinary role because nothing motivates them more than their passionate loathing of India. May I suggest a cure. It is time for them to spend an extended holiday in Pakistan or Bangladesh to discover what countries in which history is myth are really like.
Modern India has given birth to modern myths. The most popular myth among ‘secular liberals’ in these times of Islamist terrorism is that the Indian state is so evil that the jihad is a valid response. You would not think that there could be an alliance between religious fanatics and those who believe they are intellectuals of liberal, left persuasion but in India there is. This bizarre alliance is so strong that Indian leftists have become the most ardent spokesmen (and women) of the Islamists. They find themselves in this extraordinary role because nothing motivates them more than their passionate loathing of India. May I suggest a cure. It is time for them to spend an extended holiday in Pakistan or Bangladesh to discover what countries in which history is myth are really like.
(source: Modern India’s modern myths - By Tavleen Singh -
indianexpress.com).
Refer to India
After Gandhi: A History of the World's Largest Democracy - By Ramachandra Guha where
he claims that India is "an unlikely democracy" and "an
unnatural nation".
The Marxists
historians only continued the colonial-missionary project to deconstruct and
weaken India. Their conclusions could be likened to 'old wine in new bottles'.
If Indian academia was dominated by the left - i.e. the likes of Romila Thapar,
the Indian Express, the Times of India, CNN-IBN, Pankaj Mishra, Somini Sengupta
and Ramachandra Guha represent the 'liberal' response. The two are inter-related and are both offshoots of the
colonial-era world view. There is an element of deracination involved. Many are intellectual heirs to Thomas
Babington Macaulay.
Phrases such as unnatural nation and unlikely democracy are easy to bandy about. I would like such terms to be operationalized. How would he in fact describe a 'natural nation'? And a 'likely democracy'? I presume Guha had the Anglo Saxon world in mind! But let us not forget the history of slavery, segregation and genocide linked to Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
At one point, Guha alleges that Hindu civilization (the latter word is not his) can not explain India's resilience as it "excluded the Dalits and women". I would like to know how Hinduism excluded women any more than any other religion did? Can he justify such sweeping statements? In certain respects, he is a pop historian for an Indian media that fails to think through. He is somewhat hyped - as is a lot in India. The problem in India is that the Indian left has monopolized the study of Indian history and leaves no room for different interpretations. The left has dominated the history departments in all centers of higher education in India. JNU stands out in this regard.
Phrases such as unnatural nation and unlikely democracy are easy to bandy about. I would like such terms to be operationalized. How would he in fact describe a 'natural nation'? And a 'likely democracy'? I presume Guha had the Anglo Saxon world in mind! But let us not forget the history of slavery, segregation and genocide linked to Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
At one point, Guha alleges that Hindu civilization (the latter word is not his) can not explain India's resilience as it "excluded the Dalits and women". I would like to know how Hinduism excluded women any more than any other religion did? Can he justify such sweeping statements? In certain respects, he is a pop historian for an Indian media that fails to think through. He is somewhat hyped - as is a lot in India. The problem in India is that the Indian left has monopolized the study of Indian history and leaves no room for different interpretations. The left has dominated the history departments in all centers of higher education in India. JNU stands out in this regard.
(source: desicritics.org).
Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large
scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view
of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma.
The Marxists’ contempt
for India – particularly the India of religion, culture, and philosophy – is
deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the
most die-hard imperialists. Some of the British had an orientalists’
fascination for the East, but Indian Marxists suffer from no such sentimentality.
The very “Asiatic mode of production” was primitive and any “superstructure” of
ideas and culture built on that foundation must be barbaric too and it has
better go.
Karl Marx ruled out self-rule for India altogether and in this
matter gives her no choice. He says the question is “not whether the English
had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by
the Turks, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Brition.”
His own choice is clear.
Indian Marxists fully accept his thesis, except they are
also near-equal admirers of the “Turkish” conquest of India.
Indian Marxists get
quite lyrical about this conquest and find quite a fulfillment in it. Let us
illustrate the point with example of M N Roy. His had admiration for Muslim Imperialism.
He admires the “historical role of Islam” in a book of the same name and
praises the “Arab empire” as a “magnificent monument to the memory of Mohammed.”
He hails Muslim invasion of India and tells us how “It was welcomed as a
message of hope and freedom by the multitudinous victims of Brahmanical
reaction.”
Marxists writers and
historians (M N Roy, Romila Thapar, Ifran Habib, K N Panikkar, D D Kosambi, D N
Jha, Satish Chandra and others…) are all over the place and they are well
entrenched in the academic and media sectors. They
have a great say in University appointments and promotions, in the awarding of
research grants, in drawing up syllabi, and in the choosing and prescribing of
text-books. No true history of India is possible without countering their
philosophy, ideas and influence.
(source: Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Volume I - By Sita Ram
Goel - Voice of India p. 285-286). Refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught
and European
Imperialism. Watch video - Brahmins in India
have become a minority. Please
refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By
Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End
of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian
Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll.
Refer to chapter on Conversion.
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the
film The God Awful Truth.Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks
http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html
Secular Politics Communal Agenda
Writing Politically correct Histories?
The Indian history writing has never been an easy task because the beginning itself was motivated by the political considerations and religious constraints, rather than driven by the principles of historiography. This necessarily encouraged historians to distort the history of India so as to fit in certain ideological and religious framework. Entire history written by colonial, ideologically and politically motivated historians is witness to it and victim of it. Since the independence of India a new approach has become fashionable i.e. writing of 'politically correct history'. The entire history wiring has now been reduced to 'secular' history and 'communal' history. In the process, the sacredness of primary evidence and importance of original sources have become a major casualty. To push their agenda and to write 'politically correct history', historians have resorted to hiding away the facts, ignoring the facts. Their sole agenda is to prove their viewpoint wedded to their political ideology and its usefulness in the immediate battle in politics. This approach is as visible as daylight in the writings dealing with almost all periods of history, including the freedom struggle and the partition of the country. The last sixty years history of independent India has been dealt with even more callously.
(source: Secular Politics Communal Agenda: A History of Politics in India from 1860 to 1953 - By Prof Makkhan Lal).
Secular means
anti-Indian
The Washoe County
Commission in the US observed Sanskrit Day on January 12
and organised a two-day seminar to mark the occasion. What could be more
ironical than knowing that a Sanskrit seminar was held on American soil while
the mother of most Indian languages, the dev bhasha (language of gods), is
ignored in its own country.
Sanskrit, German
scholar Max Müller had observed, was the greatest language of the world.
Mahatma Gandhi had said that without the knowledge of Sanskrit, nobody could
become a truly learned man. Only in India could such a language take shape and
flourish. Unfortunately, Government does not realise what a national treasure
this language is; this reminds one of the Sanskrit saying which means "a
monkey cannot value the gift of a necklace of pearls".
This cannot be a result of ignorance. It must be a part of
the larger conspiracy to eliminate Indian languages. Our present-day rulers are
doing with impunity what Lord Macaulay could only partly achieve through his
policies in the 19th century. His system of education has now got a new name --
'secular education'. It seems it is now a sin to teach students the glory of
ancient India .
Everything non-Indian, even anti-Indian, is being taught
in classroom in order to give the curriculum a 'secular' look. If our textbooks
praise the Vedic period, the
descendants of Lord Macaulay raise a hue and cry. The authors of the
textbooks would rather heap praise on the Mughal period in order to add a
'secular' colour to the books.
If the 'secularists' find some tatsam (undistorted) words
in Hindi textbooks, they accuse it is 'saffronisation' of Hindi. In order to
make the Hindi books 'secular', the language has to be replete with words of
Arabic and Persian origin.
The mere mention of the word Ganesh, the lord of wisdom,
in a textbook of a south Indian State , was so unbearable for the self-styled
champions of secularism in the country that the chapter had to be replaced by
one on an animal. But an entire opening chapter, "Jisu mahan" (Jesus,
the great), of a Government textbook in a North-Eastern State invites no
resentment from any quarter.
(source: Secular
means anti-Indian - By Indulata Das Edit page dailypioneer Jan 22,
2008).
Mahabharata
in Chinese sold out, goes into second editionThere is a growing desire in China to learn about India's culture and traditions. "For a long time, Chinese scholars paid too much attention to the West. Now, there is a growing desire to know Indian civilisation and imbibe its wisdom," Huang Baosheng, who headed the five-member team of translators at Beijing University.
"The 5,000 sets released in the first edition were bought not just by libraries as happens m the case of most such works - but also by ordinary readers," Huang, who is a teacher at the university's Sanskrit department, said. The sets are moderately priced at 680 yuan (Rs 3,862) each.
Huang and his team worked for over 10 years translating the epic from the Sanskrit edition brought out by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. The institute's version, Huang said, is the best of the epic in Sanskrit.
"The Chinese version has more than 30 illustrations taken from the original. The work has been appreciated by scholars around the world, including those from Harvard, who recently visited us in Beijing." The Mahabharata's version comes several years after the Ramayana was translated into Chinese. Ji Xianlin, a Sanskrit scholar, secretly translated the epic in 1976. Huang and most Sanskrit scholars in China are students of the 95-year-old Ji, who is now in hospital near the university. The other scholars involved in the Mahabharata project are Huang's wife Guo Liang Yun, and Ge Weijun, Li Nan and Duan Qin.
(source: Mahabharata in Chinese sold out, goes into second edition - By Saibal Dasgupta - timesofindia.com November 22, 2006). Refer to chapter on Hindu Scriptures and India and China.
Indian Marxism is only a passing phase in a much larger trend known as Macaulayism, named after the British administrator designed to create a class of people in Indian in skin color but British in every other respect. "Macaulayites" are those Indians who have interiorized the colonial ideology of the "White Man's Burden" (as Rudyard Kipling called it in a famous poem): the Europeans had to come and liberate the natives, "half devil and half child", from their native culture, which consisted only of ignorance, superstition and the concomitant social evils; and after this liberation from themselves, these Indians became a kind of honorary Whites.
Macaulay's policy was implemented and became a resounding success. The pre-Macaulayan vernacular system of education was destroyed, even though British surveys had found it more effective and more democratic than the then-existing education system in Britain. The rivalling educationist party, the so-called Orientalists, had proposed a Sanskrit-based system of education, in which Indian graduates would not have been estranged from their mother civilization as they became through an English education....."
This is the continuance of, in a series the culmination of the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it. Hence the doggedness with which they set about to undermine the faith and regard of the people for five entities:
·
the gods and goddesses
the Hindus revered;
·
the temples and idols
in which they were enshrined;
·
the texts they held
sacred;
·
the language in which
those texts and everything sacred in that tradition was enshrined and which was
even in mid-19th century the lingua franca - that is, Sanskrit;
·
and the group way of
life - the Brahmins. The other component of the same exercise was to prop up
the parts - the non-Hindus, the regional languages, the castes and groups which
they calculated would be the most accessible to Missionaries and the Empire.
Persons no less than Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekanada, Rabindranath Tagore etc have called for a change in the teaching of history.
Mahatma Gandhi said “I find daily proof of the increasing and continuing wrong being done to the millions by our false deindianising of education. These graduates who are my valued associates flounder when they have to give expression to their innermost thoughts. They are strangers in their own homes. What is worse, even the swaraj for which we are struggling may become foreign in character when we finally get it.” His words were indeed prophetic
In spite of Islamic Onslaught and British Imperialism, our children should read what the West Bengal's Leftist government is teaching kids. Refer to an extract from the, textbook for Class V.
“Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honor and equality..." (Refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism.
Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com.
Today the Marxists are in the same business of conversion. For their outlandish dreams to be realized it was just as essential that the people lose faith in, and regard for, that they cut themselves off from their roots. While our eminent historians try to belittle the achievements of Indian art and architecture in the ancient period - by insinuating that it was derived from other countries, by seeing in it only reflection of the life of the privileged classes - Soviet historians talk of the high standards the Indians attained in these spheres. They talk of high originality..."
(please refer to Hindu Culture for more on Soviet historians).
(source: Eminent Historians - By Arun Shourie Harper-Collins, New Delhi ISBN 8190019988 p. 193 -243 and Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst Publisher: Rupa ISBN: 81-7167-519-0 p. 25-26). Refer to chapter on European Imperialism and refer to Why are India's Achievements so little Known?).
Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll. Refer to chapter on Conversion. Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks - http://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Conclusion
The Perennial Hindu Mind
The Perennial Hindu Mind
He remarked in 1911: "A time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its scriptures."
***
The Hindu mind
represents humanity’s oldest and most continuous stream of conscious
intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have
maintained an unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine
since the dawn of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of
civilization in previous humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited
culture.
The Hindu mind
sustains a vision of eternity and infinity.
The Hindu mind, under siege during the Islamic invasions,
lost its eminence in the world forum during the colonial era. In the 18th
and 19th century great Western thinkers like Voltaire and Goethe
praised the Hindu tradition and the Brahmin class that sustained it. However,
those seeking to convert or conquer India tried to turn the Hindu mind and
lofty spirituality and philosophy into mere idolatry, eroticism, and
superstition.
The Hindu mind started and shaped the Indian independence
movement. The prime figures of this movement in the early 20th
century were, at least in their private lives, staunch Hindus, and
practitioners of Yoga. The Hindu worldview of Vivekananda, Aurobindo or Gandhi
was replaced by a Leftist-Marxist worldview, guided by Nehru, who was a Fabian
socialist with little regard for anything Hindu. To shore up their position,
the Leftists in India created an alliance of anti-Hindu forces, including even
missionaries, which they did not do in any other country.
The textbooks and media of India, guided by their Marxist elite, banished Hindu concerns
and made them the main target of their abuse and ridicule. ‘Hindu’ became a dirty word for them and the
idea that there was any Hindu civilization was scorned, just as it was by the
previous colonial masters. The result was that independent India was
still ruled by a foreign and hostile mindset.
Nevertheless, the Hindu mind, being the native intelligence
of the country, could not be suppressed. Today they are reexamining history
from a Hindu perspective and exposing the colonial distortion of the Vedic
heritage that fails to recognize the spiritual roots of Indic civilization.
Yet more commonly, Leftists
in India have made the allegation of extremism against Hindu forces that is at
best an exaggeration and at worst a complete invention. This anti-Hindu
propaganda has been a ploy to discredit the Hindu cause and protect their
citadels of power that a Hindu revival would take away from them. The Leftists
have thrown their typical denigrating slurs against Hinduism as fascist, Nazi
or fundamentalist, perhaps hoping that these distortions will arouse negative
reactions and keep people from really looking at the Hindu cause.
(source: Hinduism and the
clash of Civilizations - By David Frawley p. 12 –19). Refer
to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful
Truth.
Criticizing Hinduism
with impunity in academia and the media?
Hindus and Scholars - By Arvind Sharma - Excerpts
Hindus and Scholars - By Arvind Sharma - Excerpts
Even today, with Indian scholars also involved in the
academic study of Hinduism, Western scholarship exercises a sway on the Indian
mind out of all proportion to its size and in a way not comparable to its role
in other religions. Indeed, in India Hinduism is still widely understood in
Western terms—terms that include a highly
negative perspective on its role in Indian public life and public education.
During the first 50
years of Indian independence, this perspective was embraced by an Indian
government that was guided by principles of socialism and secularism. Socialist
thought treated all religion as a non-scientific relic of the past. Indian
intellectuals specifically blamed Hinduism (along with imperialism) for India’s
appalling poverty, and denounced any Hindu political expression as a threat to
the state even as they were sparing in their critique of the minority religions
of Islam and Christianity.
In the 1990s, two developments began to disturb the ease
with which Hinduism could be criticized
with impunity in academia and the media. The first was the rise to
political power of the BJP party as the major partner in a new governing
coalition. This meant that it was no
longer possible to dismiss Hinduism out of hand as a species of social
pathology.
Concurrently, and
impinging more directly on the Western scholars of Hinduism, was globalization
and the consequent growth of a well-educated, professional, and computer-savvy
Hindu community in North America. Previously, North American academics could
write without having to take into account the reaction of the Hindu faith
community, which lay halfway around the world. But immigration was now bringing
Hindus to the door of the American ivory tower.
Of course, the
academics continued to insist that their work was open to critique by other
academics only, and not by the faith community. But educated Hindus were
increasingly critical of the new vogue of using psychoanalytic methods to
interpret Hinduism. This approach was,
they claimed, far more subjective than traditional historical and philological
methods. And with the emergence of the Internet they began to go over the heads
of the academics and express their dissatisfaction with psychoanalytic
presentations of Hinduism directly to the Hindu faith community itself.
The turning point came with the publication of Kali’s Child by
Jeffrey Kripal in 1995. This
book made the sensational claim that Ramakrishna (1836-1886), one of the most
revered swamis, or holy men, of modern India, who was known for being a
life-long celibate, was actually a latent homosexual.
Written under Wendy
Doniger, a pre-eminent Indologist at the University of Chicago, and
published by the Chicago University Press, Kali’s Child won
a book award from the American Academy
of Religion (AAR), the largest professional organization of religion
scholars in the world. The author spent a year teaching at Harvard.
Here, it seemed, another brilliant career was being made by applying psychoanalysis to the study of
Hinduism—or, depending on one’s point of view, by making Hindu saints appear,
as it were, biodegradable.
But the book generated profound uneasiness in the
Ramakrishna Mission and then in the Hindu community at large. It was said that
the author had obtained access to the mission under false pretenses, and
further, that the Bengali language expert at the University of Chicago was
absent on the day of Kripal’s dissertation examination. But these were just
allegations.
Then, in November 2000, Swami Tyagananda,
a member of the Ramakrisha Order
and the Hindu “chaplain” at Harvard University, produced a tract entitled “Kali’s Child
Revisited or Didn’t Anyone Check the Documentation,” which
questioned the author’s linguistic competence in Bengali on which the whole
thesis hinged. Bound copies of the tract were distributed at the annual meeting
of the AAR and it was posted on the Internet as well (http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITkalichildframeset.htm).
Kripal did not respond to Tyagananda’s
critique in any detail, and to date still has not. Such perceived indifference
to an obviously credible critic was noticed by the Hindu community, and
independent scholars within the community took it upon themselves to explore
the matter further.
For their
part, Western academics should understand that depicting Hinduism in a manner
perceived as provocatively demeaning by the Hindus themselves does nobody any
good. Nor is the cause of civilized intellectual discourse advanced if they
decline to respond to informed critiques simply because the critics do not
happen to be academics. It tempts the critics to conclude that the emperors
have no clothes.(source: Hindus and Scholars - By Arvind Sharma). Refer to Taking Back Hindu Studies - By Srinivas Tilak - sulekha.com. Also refer to Call For An Intellectual Kshatriya - by Rajesh Tembarai Krishnamachari and Washington Post and Hinduphobia - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com and Alerting Naked Emperors in an Age of Academic Arrogance - By Narayanan Komerath - Swaveda.com and Protestant Pedagogues Peeved at Protest Against Porn-Peddling - By Narayanan Komerath - indiacause.com and The Post and Manufacturing Consent - By Sankrant Sanu - sulekha.com).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Saying anything good
about Hinduism and you are automatically labeled as belonging to the Sangh
Parivar by insecure Western Academia and their brown Indian counterparts?
Refer to Prof.
James G. Lochtefeld - http://www2.carthage.edu/~lochtefe/hsource.html. and
chapter on Glimpses IX. Please refer to Impressing the whites: The new international slavery – By
Richard Crasta. Also Refer to Visions of the End
of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and Onward Christian
Soldiers: The Holy War on Science - By Robert Todd Carroll.
Refer to chapter on Conversion.
Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School
Textbookshttp://www.petitiononline.com/history1/petition.html. Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com.
Negative Pressures in the American Educational System on Hindu Identity Formation
"The war against Hindus is a media war, beginning in textbooks, but global in its scale." - says George Thundiparambil
Stereotypes about India and Hinduism when taught as fact in American classrooms may negatively impact students of South Asian origin who are struggling to work out their identity in a multicultural, predominately Anglo-Christian environment.
In American textbooks, Hinduism is referred to as one of the world's "five great religions" and yet paradoxically, Hindu beliefs and traditions are often represented as a superstitious localized collection of archaic cults. Hinduism is too complex, too dense, too unbelievable, on the level of Greek mythology but with too many gods who are even more bizarre than Zeus and the pantheon of Mount Olympus, who were at least the precursors of "Western traditions." During the impressionable teenage years, these negative portrayals can cause shame and embarrassment among Indian-American students regarding their ancestry and can engender a dislike for India. Students may also respond to these negative stereotypes by adopting a defensive posture vis-à-vis the teacher's presentation, as they feel compelled to correct misperceptions.
This essentialist presentation of Indic Civilization can be summarized as the standard pedagogic approach which runs quickly from the "Cradle of Civilization"—contrasting the Indus Valley with Egypt and Mesopotamia—on past the Aryans, who were somehow our linguistic (and/or racial) ancestors—to the poverty stricken, superstitious, polytheistic, "caste ridden" Hindu "way of life". . . and then somehow magically culminates with a eulogy of Mahatma Gandhi.
The majority of the informants' comments agreed with this list of essentialisms. Though most stated that "Hinduism, the caste system, poverty, third world country inferiority" were the aspects of India that were stressed, one student did state that her teacher "dealt only with the independence movement." One articulate informant complained that, in her classes, India was not depicted accurately and "only negativities were enforced, [India was not presented through] a wide picture." She continued by summarizing the gist of the treatment of India: "We all starve. We eat monkey brains. We worship rats. We worship cows." Ultimately she observed that "Only Gandhi and ancient India were covered with any respect." Another informant reinforced this assessment with his list of topics, which can be said to form the structure of most high school classroom presentations. He cited, "Indus Valley, British occupation, Gandhi," and then added, "That's it!"
One informant complained that "Hinduism" was described as "some sort of bizarre mystic religion in which people do dances and worship strange things. India is full of poor uneducated starving people, a country on the verge of collapse." Critical of the stereotype-as-fact orientation, another young man stated "The poverty of India was blown out of proportion and no Asian countries were credited with the artistic and literary contributions they made to the world. Islamic nations were presented as fanatical, China was the 'communist enemy', Japan was an economic and educational threat and India was overpopulated." The majority of the informants agreed that when India was studied, "Religion and the caste system were emphasized." Several noted that when studying Gandhi, in the context of Partition, "animosity between Hindus and Muslims" was discussed.
The textbook gives both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana paragraph-length descriptions which, considering space limitations, is at least adequate. The book explains that in the Bhagavad-Gita "doing one's moral duty according to one's responsibilities marks the highest fulfillment in life." It mentions Rama and Sita who "symbolize the ideals of Indian manhood and womanhood." The next statement is strange. It claims that from these epics and the
” Upanishads and the Vedas themselves, scholars have pieced together the origins of the two most important influences in Indian history—the caste system and Hinduism.”
This textbook, published in 1990, can not be expected to be free of Euro-centric jargon, but it should not perpetuate the patronizing perspective that scholars have "pieced together" the essence of India and through their reconstructions have discovered the origins of Hinduism, based primarily on the caste system. Though this may be a subtle complaint, it represents the overall tone found in this type of presentation of Indian civilization—the burden of preservation by occidental scholars. Though this makes reference to the work of scholars, this phrasing in no way offers insight into the processes of historiography.
Once again, in concluding, the authors state that: “the caste system and Hinduism ranked as the most important developments of Indian history. These two ideas become interwoven in the fabric of Indian society.”
The caste system has received far more space than anything else about ancient India. A total of nine paragraphs have been devoted to the topic of caste, to the exclusion of any mention of the famous poet Kalidasa, or ragas and rasas—systems of aesthetics, or statecraft. This book implies that nothing in India is more important than the caste system. The next heading, "Buddhism," begins after the four pages devoted to Hinduism stating that "Buddha did not accept the Hindu gods," and "Although he did not attack the Hindu caste system openly, he did not accept it."
On page 213 the authors state that "Mathematicians of India developed the system of Arabic numerals, but the Arabs transmitted the system to the West. The Arabs also contributed the concept of zero to mathematics." This implies that zero was an Arab concept, though the authors previously mentioned that the Arabs had transmitted zero from India. Which is it? The text does say that Arab views of a spherical earth with hemispheres is attributed to a Hindu idea.
(source: Stereotypes in Schooling: Hinduism - By Yvette C. Rosser
- has an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Texas at Austin,
and is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in Curriculum and Instruction
at that university).
Also refer to Bigotry and
Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By
Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com and Endemic
discrimination against Hindus - By Rajeev Srinivasan
source: http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/nmj_articles/east_west/east_west_5.html
The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842 though the study of Sanskrit itself, did not start in American universities until some years later. The first American Sanskrit scholar of any repute was Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901) who taught at Yale (Elihu Yale was himself ultimately connected with India and had profound respect for Vedic philosophy). Another early Sanskritist, Fitzedward Hall (1825-1901) was in the Harvard class of 1846 but left college to search for a runaway brother in-of all places-India, where he continued his studies of Indian languages and even became tutor and professor of Sanskrit at Banaras. He was the first American scholar to edit a Sanskrit text-the Vishnu Purana.
One of Salisbury's students at Yale, William Dwight Whitney (1827-1901) went on to become a distinguished Sanskritist in his own right having studied in Berlin under such distinguished German scholars as Bopp and Weber. Whitney became a full professor of Sanskrit language and literature at Yale in 1854, wrote his classic Sanskrit Grammar
(1879) and was the doyen of Indologists of
his period. Whitney was succeeded in the Chair of Sanskrit Studies of Yale by
Edward Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932). Hopkins was an excellent scholar but made
his name principally as an exponent of India's religions. His book The
Religions of India (1895) was for many years one of the
principal works on the subject available in America and his Origins and
Evolution of Religion published in 1923, sold well.With Yale leading the way, Harvard caught up and beginning with James Bradstreet Greenough (1833-1900), had a succession of great Sanskrit teachers, the most distinguished among them was Charles Rockwell Lanman who taught for over forty years, publishing such works as Sanskrit Reader
and Beginnings of Hindu Pantheism. But his greatest contribution was planning
and editing of the Harvard Oriental Series. In his time he was responsible for
influencing such students of his who were later to achieve literary renown as
T. S. Eliot, Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt. The tradition of American
Indologists has been nobly kept up by those who followed: to mention only a few
names, A. V. William Jackson, Franklin Edgerton, W. Norman Brown, and Joseph
Campbell.
Articles
Excerpts from India and World Civilization- By D. P. Singhal pp- 268.
The growing influence of Indian thought in recent years has indeed frightened some Western religious writers, such as Hendrick Kraemmer (World Cultures and World Religions), who have designated it as the "Eastern invasion of the West". Perhaps excessive anxiety to defend the Western Christian traditions may have led Kraemer to over-rate Indian influence. But there are many European scholars who have denounced Indian thought in unmistakable terms. Whether response or resistance, admiration or denunciation, all are equally indicative of impact and stimulus.
In a limited way the migration of Indian labor to other countries provided yet another link between India and the outside world. Indian settlers began to move to other countries in 1830, mainly to work on British plantations. This made abolition of slavery commercially possible a few years later, when the notorious indenture system was introduced in the British Empire. According to estimate, twenty-eight million Indians migrated to various countries between 1834 and 1932.
An important social survey, carried out in Britain about some years ago, produced some surprising results. A quarter of all those who professed belief in an after-life- an eighth of the population-did not believe that this after-life would be eternal; eleven percent of the believers actually declared their faith in transmigration. This was "perhaps the most surprising single piece of information to be derived from this research". Belief in transmigration is a typically Indian doctrine and is contrary to the creeds of Europe and Western Asia.
Politically and intellectually it was inevitable that there should have been some reaction in Europe against an invasion of Indian learning. Reaction against alien ideas appears to be a common human irrationality. Certainly, the nature of political relationships and nationalistic pride understandably played a significant role. European nations generally were more receptive to Indian ideas during the early period of their relationship which was based on relative equality. But as European political, technological and economic supremacy over Asia came to be recognized, an attitude of superiority crept into the European – and particularly the British- outlook. The influence of political relationships on cultural intercourse is further illustrated by the fact that, once the British became overlords of India, Indian learning drew more sympathetic and imaginative understanding form other European countries than it did from the British.
The discovery of Indian thought by European scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to an outburst of admiration and enthusiasm, mainly because they felt that Indian thought filled a need in their European culture. Neither Christianity nor the classical cultures of Greece and Rome were considered satisfactory any more and the European intelligentsia sought to apply the new knowledge, brought in increasingly by Indologists, to their own spiritual preoccupations.
It is significant that, with notable exceptions, India appears to have been most attractive to those Europeans who did not visit the country personally. In other words, Indian thought made a better impact on the European mind than did contemporary Indians.
Of all the European nations, Germany’s response to India was most enthusiastic and open
hearted. Perhaps the similarity between the German and the Indian mind, in the
sense that both are given to contemplation, abstract speculation, and
pantheism, and both have a tendency towards formlessness, inwardness, and
transcendentalism, contributed toward German understanding of Indian
literature. Leopold von Schroeder says:
"The Indians are the nation of romanticists of antiquity." The
Germans are the romanticists of modern times". Sentimentality and feeling
for nature are common to both German and Indian poetry, whereas they are
foreign, for instance to Hebrew or Greek poetry. Another similarity is
illustrated , by the Indian tendency to work scientific systems, India was the
nation of scholars of antiquity, in the same way as the Germans are the nation
of scholars of the modern times.
The French were
not amongst the first Europeans to come into contact with India. But as soon,
as French travelers, who are known for their literary taste, visited India and
reported on their travels, French literary circles responded enthusiastically
The British response to Indian learning was
most mixed. Whilst India remained a trying political problem, she was a symbol
of British power and achievement, as well as a major source of her economic
wealth. Individual thinkers studied India closely and whilst some were
fascinated, others were repelled. Often the political expedience-for instance
the need to justify domination of India to the British public-British
administrators were compelled to interpret Indian culture as degenerate and
decadent.Another barrier between Indian and British cultural co-operation was the Englishmen working in India. The early administrators were indifferent to anything except trade and profits; the later ones, after 1830, suffered from a sense of cultural inferiority, which compounded with political superiority, manifested itself in self-righteousness, prejudices, and arrogance. They often came to India for only a few years, invariably lived an exclusive life, and returned home to condemn Indian culture and traditions with gusto.
Their callous indifference to Indian art is well reflected by the fact that the liberal William Bentinck, who initiated social reforms in India, seriously considered the possibility of dismantling the Taj Mahal and selling the marble to meet the shortage of money in the Company’s treasury. He was prevented because "the test auction of materials from the Agra palace proved unsatisfactory."
Fed on Macaulay, Mutiny, and Kipling, the English, no wonder, did not appreciate India.
2. Indian Response to Modern Europe
Excerpts from "India and World Civilization" - By D. P.Singhal - Chapter VII pp- 273.
Excerpts from "India and World Civilization" - By D. P.Singhal - Chapter VII pp- 273.
Western tradition is a highly generalized, extremely vague, and ill-defined concept that is often stretched to include or exclude anything at will to suit the purpose in hand. It is not a unitary system of thought, nor has it an unbroken historical continuity. There are deep controversies as to its exact nature and value, and it is a complex of diverse, even contradictory, ideologies and traditions. For instance, it is equally proud of the imprints of early Greek and Christian traditions which were relentlessly opposed to each other.
Even a casual investigation reveals the inherent contradictions of Western traditions. Western tradition is often characterized as one of material progress and scientific advancement, yet Christian mystical thought is superbly well developed, and until recently science was positively denounced in the Christian West. In most respects scientific inquiry was much more highly developed in the Hellenistic period than it was in mediaeval Europe. In fact, exactly why Hellenistic science declined needs an explanation. Again, it is repeatedly pointed out that Western tradition stems from the enlargement of individual liberties, and that individual liberty is the essence of Western civilization. Some Western scholars go even much farther and assert that the West has regarded " a denial of freedom as a denial of the value of the individual and therefore as a sin against the soul of man."
Yet it is not possible to completely ignore the Western institutions of slavery, feudalism, colonialism, and imperialism and racism. Western liberalism, of which the West can be justly proud , was born in the seventeenth century as a reaction against the violence and hatred that had prevailed during the almost unbelievably atrocious religious wars. But even since then, liberalism has not remained unchallenged in the West. Indeed, totalitarianism and suppression of freedom of thought and person appear to be the unbroken trend of a Western tradition that can claim most of the famous despots of world history, including Alexander, Julius Ceasar, Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, and Mussolini. This fact is even more startling when these dictators and conquerors are contrasted with the prophets of non-violence and peace, such as Gautama Buddha, Asoka, and Mahatma Gandhi, who were all born in Asia. Even the divine rights of kings, found far more serious advocates amongst Western monarchs- the Greek Alexander, the Roman Ceasars, Russians Czars, French Bourbons, and British Stuarts. It is true that the Western world has continuously fought for liberty, but this only serves to illustrate the existence of anti-freedom forces and a totalitarian current in Western tradition.
Again, it cannot be claimed, as it is often done, that the rise of Christianity did much to improve the position of the individual, for religious persecution has been a common feature of Western Christianity. The once persecuted Christians, having gained power, themselves became persecutors. The terrible struggles between Church and State were not fought for individual, or even religious freedom; the Church sought to compel the secular powers to serve its own purposes. Any individual who did not subscribe to the Church’s belief was at once denounced as a heretic. Crusades and religious wars of extermination were often as bloody as Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews and Gypsies.
The Church even persecuted the mediaeval minstrels and Gypsies because they loved freedom.
Christianity, which is in practice a unique combination of beliefs and clergy, whilst owing its religion to Jesus and his early Asian disciples, is, in strict ecclesiastical hierarchy, an essential Western movement. Whatever may have been the value of the Church in religious practice, it has inhibited freedom of thought and individual liberty by relentlessly enforcing its presuppositions as eternal truths. It is the Church which sets moral standards for the individual and prescribes his belief. The organization of the Church is unparalleled in history. No federation of states has been as comprehensive and universal in taking hold of the minds of people, and no monarch or dictator has been given the complete and willing obedience of such a wide and vast body of peoples, as has the Church.
The Islamic Caliphate and the Buddhist monasticism were, in this respect, no way comparable to the Christian Church.
Communism, with all its scientific reason, humanism, and economic equality, is essentially a totalitarian doctrine, negating individual liberty, and is a typical, almost, exclusive Western concept. Communism stresses the primary of reason, but like a missionary religion, it has a sense of its own infallibility and an obligation to world-wide expansion. Its greatest exponents have mainly been Western or Western-trained.
Even the British thought, which was more directly and closely linked with India than that of other European countries, had its own inner conflicts and contradictions in respect to India, ranging from Edmund Burke’s liberalism and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism to John Bright’s radicalism.
Burke desired India to stay Indian; in fact, he was rather anxious to reform the disreputable English trustees in India. He strongly condemned the facile and much used aspersion of "Oriental Despotism" and warned his countrymen against passing judgment upon a people, for ages civilized and cultivated, who formed their own laws and institutions prior to "our insect origins of yesterday." The Utilitarians and Evangelicals, on the contrary, saw little good in Indian society and desired to Westernize it completely by denying individual liberty to the Indian. The Utilitarians, whilst not denying the abstract right to liberty, could see no alternative to a benevolent British despotism in India, conducted from London. India exposed Utilitarianism’s paradox between its principle of liberty and that of authority. The Evangelicals’ viewpoint was religious; they believed that only through Christianity could temporal welfare and spiritual salvation be achieved. Hence, they looked upon the British conquest of India as a divine act to redeem themselves from their depraved system of superstition. Thus they sought the rapid conversion of the peoples of India to Christian ways, as interpreted by Western clergy. If Utilitarianism provided a justification and a practical basis for British imperial rule in India, Evangelicalism gave it a sense of urgency and intense zeal.
Whilst the 17th century marked the zenith of India’s mediaeval glory, the 18th century was a spectacle of corruption, misery, and chaos. The glory of the Mughals had vanished, life had become insecure, the nobility was deceitful and oppressive, and intellectual curiosity had given way to superstitious beliefs. The country was in a state of military and political helplessness. In this atmosphere, literature, art and culture could barely survive. The malaise of India was aggravated in full measure by the East India Company with its indiscriminate exploitation, corruption and bribery.
In contrast, Europe was robust and vigorous. This was the Age of Enlightenment, and Europeans were going through a process of rebirth during which religion was detached from state, alchemy from science, theology from philosophy, and divinity from art. The impact of Western culture on India was that of a dynamic society on a static one. It is a cruel irony of history, that whilst two major revolutions – the French and the American-upholding the human rights to liberty and equality were taking place in the West, India was in the throes of losing her own freedom to Western mercantile imperialism.
" The British domination of India has been described as a "political and economic misfortune."
In 1937, a distinguished British civil servant, G. T. Garratt, declared that the period of Indo-British civilization of the 150 years had been most disappointing, and "in some ways the most sterile in Indian history."
Haunted by Macaulay’s ghost
By Francois Gautier -Publication: Organiser
Date: November 29, 1998
http://www.hvk.org/hvk/articles/articles/1298/0023.html
With 800 million souls, Hindus constitute the majority of this country. Why should Hindus then be ashamed of a "Hindu education"? Traditionally and historically, Hinduism has always been the most tolerant of all religions, allowing persecuted minorities from all over the world, whether the Jerusalem Jews, the Parsis from Persia, Christians from Syria, or even Arab merchants, to settle in India over the centuries and practice their religion in peace. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of India's invader, be they Muslims, who ruthlessly tried for 10 centuries to stamp out this most peaceful of all religions; or the Christians missionaries, who used every means at their disposal to convert Hindus to the “true” religion (and are still trying today).
But Hinduism, never tried to convert anybody, never sent its armies or missionaries to neighbouring countries, to impose its religion and ways of life-not even by non-violence means, as the Buddhists did all over Asia. It should also be said that Hinduism is much more than a religion, it's a way of life, a universal spiritual outlook, which has allowed numerous sects, branches, philosophies, to develop within its fold, as long as they were faithful to the central truth of Hinduism: Dharma. It even recognises the truth and validity of other creeds-and it's perfectly normal for a Hindu to have pictures of Guru Govind, Christ, Buddha and Krishna in their homes. For are they not avatars? And is that not true secularism (and not the .opportunistic secularism of India’s politicians, which has divided India along caste and religious lines)?
Then why should Hindus not be proud of Hinduism? It has not only shaped the psyches of Hindus, but also of Indian Christians, Jains, Parsis, even Muslims, who are like no other Muslims in the world. And why should Indians be ashamed of their own civilisation whose greatness was foremost Hindu? Why should they refuse to have their children read the Vedas, which constitute one of the great Mountains of spiritual wisdom, or the Bhagavad Gita, which contains all the secrets of eternal life? Or the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which teach the great values of human nature: courage, selflessness, spiritual endeavour, love of one’s wife and neighbours. ...
Are the French ashamed of their Greeco-Roman inheritance? Not at all! On the contrary they even think that civilization started with the Greeks. Would you call the Germans or the Italians “nationalists" because they have Christian Democrats Parties? Christianity is the founding stone of Western civilisation and nobody dares deny it. Clinton goes to the mass and swears on the Bible and none finds anything to say. We French are brought-up
listening to the values of Homer's Iliad, or Corneille's Le Cid. It is true that in France there has been a separation of the State and the Church; but that is because at one time the Church misused its enormous political power and grabbed enormous amounts of lands and gold. But no such thing ever happened in India. The Brahmins never interfered in politics and today they are often a neglected lot.
When they took over India, the British set about establishing an intermediary race of Indians, whom they could entrust with their work at the middle level echelons and who could one day be convenient instruments to rule by proxy or semi-proxy. The tool to shape these "British clones" was Education. In the words of Macaulay, the 'Pope' of British schooling in India: "We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and in intellects". Macaulay had very little regard for Hindu culture and education: "All the historical information which can be collected from all the books which have been written in the Sanskrit language, is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England".
It seems today that India's Marxist and Muslim intelligentsia could not agree more with Macaulay or with Charles Grant. For the dream of Macaulay has come true: Nowadays, the greatest adversaries of the "Indianised and spiritualised education" of Joshi, are the descendants of these "Brown Sahibs' the "secular" politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole Westernised cream of India. And what is even more paradoxical, is that most of them are Hindus. It is they who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to accept "an Indianisation, nationalisation and spiritualisation" of India's education system, which is totally western-oriented. And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West.
But then, what does makes Indian unique? Take the proposal of Joshi to make Sanskrit compulsory in school. Great idea! Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, and it could become the unifying language of India, apart from. English, which is spoken only, by a tiny minority. "Sanskrit. ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken", admonished 50 years ago Sri Aurobindo, India's great Sage and Seer.
A dead language, you say! Impossible to revive? But that's what they argued about Hebrew. And did not the Jewish people, when they got back their land in 1948, revive their "dead" language, so that it is spoken today by all Jewish people and has become alive again? The same thing ought to be done with Sanskrit. Let the scholars begin now to revive and modernize the Sanskrit language, it would be a sure sign of the dawning of the Renaissance of India. In a few years it should be taught as the second language in schools throughout the country, with the regional language as the first and English as the third. Then will India again have its own unifying language.
Aurobindo had replied; "in that case Hindus should give up their culture". But the disciple had continued: "the argument is that the song speaks of Hindu- gods, like Durga and that it is offensive to Muslims". Said Sri Aurobindo: "but it is not a religious song, it is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view should be naturally there. If it cannot find a place, the Hindus may as well be asked to give-up their culture. The Hindus don't object to "Allah-Ho-Akbar".
It is then obvious that Education in India has to be. totally revamped. The kind of Westernised education which is standard in India, does have its place, because India wants to be on par with the rest of the world, and Indian youth should be able to deal confidently with the West: do business, talk, and relate to a universal world culture. But nevertheless, the first thing that Indian children should be taught is the greatness of their own culture. They should learn to revere the Vedas, they should be taught the genius of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, they should be told that in this country everything has been done, that it was an unsurpassed civilisation, when the West was still mumbling its first words, that Indian civilisation reached heights, which have been since unsurpassed. But they should be taught early that India's greatness is her spirituality her world-wide wisdom. India’s new education has to be spiritualised, it has to be an inner education, which teaches to look at things from the inner prism, not through the western artificial looking glass.
India's Dharma, her eternal quest for truth, should be drilled in the child from an early age. And from this firm base, everything then can be taught - from the most modem forms of mathematics, to the latest scientific technologies.
(The author is correspondent in South Asia of Le Figaro, France's largest circulated newspaper)
(The Hindustan Times, 8-11-1998)
Did You Know?
Much of Modern Medicine can be traced to the Hindu surgeon, Sushruta, circa 600 BCE.
Much of Modern Medicine can be traced to the Hindu surgeon, Sushruta, circa 600 BCE.
For more on medicine, please refer to chapter on Hindu Culture).
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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and also gratefulness to
Ms. Sushma Londhe ji for her noble, magnanimous and eminent
works on the peerless Wisdom of our Sacred Scriptures)
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humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal
Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the
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