Dharampal (The Beautiful Tree) has effectively debunked the myth that Dalits had no place in the indigenous system of education. Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, ordered a mammoth survey in June 1822, whereby the district collectors furnished the caste-wise division of students in four categories, viz., Brahmins, Vysyas (Vaishyas), Shoodras (Shudras) and other castes (broadly the modern scheduled castes). While the percentages of the different castes varied in each district, the results were revealing to the extent that they showed an impressive presence of the so-called lower castes in the school system.
Thus, in Vizagapatam, Brahmins and Vaishyas together accounted for 47% of the students, Shudras comprised 21% and the other castes (scheduled) were 20%; the remaining 12% were Muslims. In Tinnevelly, Brahmins were 21.8% of the total number of students, Shudras were 31.2% and other castes 38.4% (by no means a low figure). In South Arcot, Shudras and other castes together comprised more than 84% of the students!
In the realm of higher education as well, there were regional variations. Brahmins appear to have dominated in the Andhra and Tamil Nadu regions, but in the Malabar area, theology and law were Brahmin preserves, but astronomy and medicine were dominated by Shudras and other castes. Thus, of a total of 808 students in astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins, while 195 were Shudras and 510 belonged to the other castes (scheduled). In medicine, out of a total of 194 students, only 31 were Brahmins, 59 were Shudras and 100 belonged to the other castes. Even subjects like metaphysics and ethics that we generally associate with Brahmin supremacy, were dominated by the other castes (62) as opposed to merely 56 Brahmin students. It bears mentioning that this higher education was in the form of private tuition (or education at home), and to that extent also reflects the near equal economic power of the concerned groups.
As a concerned reader informed me, the ‘Survey of Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay (1820-1830)’ showed that Brahmins were only 30% of the total students there. What is more, when William Adam surveyed Bengal and Bihar, he found that Brahmins and Kayasthas together comprised less than 40% of the total students, and that forty castes like Tanti, Teli, Napit, Sadgop, Tamli etc. were well represented in the student body. The Adam report mentions that in Burdwan district, while native schools had 674 students from the lowest thirty castes, the 13 missionary schools in the district together had only 86 students from those castes. Coming to teachers, Kayasthas triumphed with about 50% of the jobs and there were only six Chandal teachers; but Rajputs, Kshatriyas and Chattris (Khatris) together had only five teachers.
Even Dalit intellectuals have questioned what the British meant when they spoke of ‘education’ and ‘learning’. Dr. D.R. Nagaraj, a leading Dalit leader of Karnataka, wrote that it was the British, particularly Lord Wellesley, who declared the Vedantic Hinduism of the Brahmins of Benares and Navadweep as “the standard Hinduism,” because they realized that the vitality of the Hindu dharma of the lower castes was a threat to the empire. Fort William College, founded by Wellesley in 1800, played a major role in investing Vedantic learning with a prominence it probably hadn't had for centuries. In the process, the cultural heritage of the lower castes was successfully marginalized, and this remains an enduring legacy of colonialism. Examining Dharampal's “Indian science and technology in the eighteenth century,” Nagaraj observed that most of the native skills and technologies that perished as a result of British policies were those of the Dalit and artisan castes. This effectively debunks the fiction of Hindu-hating secularists that the so-called lower castes made no contribution to India's cultural heritage and needed deliverance from wily Brahmins.
Indeed, given the desperate manner in which the British vilified the Brahmin, it is worth examining what so annoyed them. As early as 1871-72, Sir John Campbell objected to Brahmins facilitating upward mobility: “…the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who will submit to them… The process of manufacturing Rajputs from ambitious aborigines (tribals) goes on before our eyes.”
Sir Alfred Lyall (1796 - 1865) was unhappy that:
“…more persons in India become every year Brahmanists than all the converts to all the other religions in India put together... these teachers address themselves to every one without distinction of caste or of creed; they preach to low-caste men and to the aboriginal tribes… in fact, they succeed largely in those ranks of the population which would lean towards Christianity and Mohammedanism if they were not drawn into Brahmanism…”
So much for the British public denunciation of the exclusion practiced by Brahmins!
(source: The Brahmin and the Hindu - By Sandhya Jain - dailypioneer.com - December 14 2004).
Thus, the British education system also was at the root of weakening the foundations of Hinduism or Indian nationalism. This was foreseen by some founders of British educational system.
***
3. Unity - Sense of belonging:
Mahatma Gandhi, (1869-1948) was among India's most fervent nationalists, fighting for Indian independence from British rule. He wrote in his book, Hindu Swaraj: "The English have taught us that we were not one nation before and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. This is without foundation. We were one nation before they came to India. One thought inspired us. Our mode of life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. Subsequently they divided us." What do you think could have been the intention of those farseeing ancestors of ours who established Setubandha (Rameshwar) in the South, Jaganath in the East and Hardwar in the North as places of pilgrimage? You will admit they were no fools. They knew that worship of God could have been performed just as well at home. They taught us that those whose hearts were aglow with righteousness had the Ganges in their own homes. But they saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature." They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. "
(source: Hindu Swaraj or Indian Home Rule - By M. K. Gandhi p. 46).
Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) freedom fighter and lawyer, wrote: "The European and the American come to India with a strong prepossession, and cannot discover any fundamental principle of unity at the back of the many bewildering diversities......Every Anglo-Indian publicist assiduously proclaims that India is not a country but a collection of countries, which have as little or as much in common with one another, either in race or history, as the German, the French, the Dutch, the Russian, the Italian, the English and the Spaniard in Europe have between them.....The orthodox official view is, in any case, there never was such an animal as Indian, until the British rulers of the country commenced so generously to manufacture him with the help of their schools and their colleges, their courts and their camps, their law and their administration."
"But while the stranger called her India, her own children, from of old, have known and loved her by another name. We never called her India. Long before the Greek invasion and even before the Babylonians and Assyrians came in any sort of contact with us, we had given this name of our country. That name is Bharatvarsha. Those who so persistently deny any fundamental historic unity or any real national individuality to our land and our people, either do not know, or they do not remember the fact that we never called our country by the alien name of India or even by that of Hindoostan. Our own name was, is still today, Bharatvarsha. But Bharatvarsha is not physical name, but a distinct and unmistakable historic name... Bharata was a king. He is a Vedic personage. The limit of Bharatvarsha extended in those days even much further than the present limits of India.
The unity of India was neither racial nor religious, nor political nor administrative. It was a peculiar type of unity, which may, perhaps, be best described as cultural."
(source: The Soul of India - By Bipin Chandra Pal Published by Choudhury & Choudhary Calcutta 1911. p. 84-98).
The British deliberately
tried to create a kind of pychosis among the Indians that India has
always been subject to foreign invasions and internal feuds, that there has
been no political unity in India at any time, that the cultural unity of India
was a fiction, and that whatever was good in India was due to European
influence. The British historian firmly believed that the British had a mission
to fulfill in India, and
that the British rule was a blessing for India.
(source: Recent
Historiography of Ancient India
- By Shankar Goyal p. 422).
Although the Raj
claimed the credit for India’s
political unification, the sub-continent had a geo-political unity that dated
back 2000 years before the British conquest to the Hindu-Buddhist Mauryan
empire. The Maurya emperors
had united most of the sub-continent under their rule between the fourth and
second centuries BC; and their imperial ideal was echoed from the fourth to
sixth centuries AD by a later Hindu dynasty the Guptas.
(source: Indian Tales of the Raj - By Zareer Masani p. 7).
Perhaps the most
mischievous statement we have of the claim that India has no unity, it is not a
nation, is made by Sir John Strachey on the opening page
of his well-known book, “India”. There he says:
“The first and most essential thing to be learned about
India, is that there is not and never was an India possessing according to
European ideas any sort of unity, physical, social, political, or religious: no
Indian nation, no people of India of which we hear so much.”
This alleged condition of things he claims to be a clear
justification of British rule. What answer is to be made? Sir Ramsey Macdonald, at one time
Premier declares that India is one in absolutely every sense in which Mr.
Strachey denies the unity. Here are his words:
“India from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from the Bay of
Bengal to Bombay, is naturally the area of a single government. One has only to
look at the map to see how geography has fore-ordained an Indian Empire. Its
vastness does not obscure its oneness; its variety does not hide from view its
unity. The Himalayas and their continuing barriers frame off the great
peninsula from the rest of Asia. Its long rivers, connecting its extremities
and its interior with the sea, knit it together for communication and transport
purposes; its varied productions, interchangeable with one another, make it a
convenient industrial unit, maintaining contact with the world through the
great ports to the east and west. Political
and religious traditions have also welded it into one Indian consciousness.
This spiritual unity dates from very early times in Indian culture. An
historical atlas of India shows how again and again the natural unity of India
has influenced conquest and showed itself, its empires. The realms of
Chandragupta and his grandson Asoka embraced practically the whole peninsula,
and ever after, amidst the swaying and falling of dynasties, this unity has
been the dream of every victor and has never lost its potency.”
Says British historian Vincent Smith, than whom there is no higher historical authority,
in his book Early History of India:
“India circled as she is by seas and mountains, is
indisputably a geographical unit, and as such rightly designated by one name.
Her type of civilization, too, has many features which differentiate it from
that of all other regions of the world; while they are common to the whole
country in a degree sufficient to justify its treatment as a unit in the
history of the social religious, and intellectual development of mankind.”
William Archer in his “India and the
Future” devotes a chapter to “The Unity
of India” in which he declares that Indian unity is “indisputable.”
There is no greater
uniting force known among people and nations in the world than religion. This
applies with pre-eminent emphasis to India.
(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland p.
238-289
Hinduism has imparted to the whole of India a
strong and stable cultural unity that has through the ages stood the shocks of
political revolutions.James Ramsey MacDonald (1866 -1937) first Labor Party prime minister of Great Britain could grasp this truth when he said:
"The Hindu from his traditions and religion regards India not only as a political unit naturally the subject of one sovereignty, but as the outward embodiment, as the temple - nay even as the Goddess Mother of his spiritual culture. "India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul."
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p.208).
Political Unity of India since Ancient Times
The name Bharatvarsha has a deep historical significance, symbolizing, a fundamental unity. The term was associated not only with the geographical boundaries but also with the idea of universal monarchy. The term was associated not only with the geographical boundaries but also with the idea of universal monarchy. This name together with the sense of unity imparted by it "was ever present before the mind of the theologians, political philosophers and poets who spoke of the thousand Yojanas (Leagues) of land that stretches from the Himalayas to the sea as the proper domain of a single universal emperor".
An early hymn in the Arthaveda, in a salutation to Mother Earth, expresses the same sentiment arising out of the enchantment of the land. Thus the very Indian land became an embodiment of the yearning for the Beyond. This deep-rooted sentiment is given expression to in the Vishnu-Purana. "Bharata is the best of the divisions of Jambudwipa (Asia) because it is the land of virtuous deeds. Other countries seek only enjoyment. Happy are those who, consigning all the rewards of their deeds to the Supreme Spirit, the Universal Self, pass their lives in this land of virtuous deeds, as the means of realization of Him. The gods exclaim, "Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of divinity, as men in Bharatvarsha, as that is the path of the joys of paradise and the greater blessings of final liberation." Another book, the Bhagvat Purana states, "Here God Himself in His grace is born as man to obtain the fervent devotion of sentient beings, so that they may wish final liberation. Even the gods prefer birth in this sacred land to enjoyment in heaven, won by so much sacrifice, penance and charity. This basic concept of India (Bharat) and spirituality (dharma) are identical and the faith that neither dharma nor its favored homeland can perish, in spite of the misfortunes of history, gave the people the confidence to survive the storms of political life or convulsions of nature through the millenniums.
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p.206-210).
This is what is stated in an inscription of King Yasodharman of Mandasor, Successors of the Guptas in the North:
"From the lands where the Brahmaputra flows,
from the flanks of the southern hills, thick with grove of palms,
from the snowy mountains whose peak the Ganga clasps,
and from the ocean of the West,
come vassals, bowing at his feet,
their pride brought low by his mighty arm,
and his palace court is a glitter,
with the bright jewels of their turban."
The rulers of medieval India also considered India as one geographical unit and sought to extend their sway over the whole of the land. The song Vandematram embodies that sense of unity.
There is also an under-current of religious unity among the various religious sects in the country. That is partly due to the overwhelming impact of Hinduism on the Indian mind which transcends any other single religion. This is mainly due to the comprehensive and all-embracing pervasiveness of Hinduism. Hinduism is not a mere form of religious approach or system. It is a "mosaic of almost all types and stages of religious aspiration and endeavor."
(source: Ancient India - By V. D. Mahajan p. 15).
The unifying effect of Hinduism and Sanskritic culture was great. Records dating from the early centuries indicate that shrines regarded sacred by all Hindus were located at widely separated points in all directions. Clearly, some concept of religious and cultural unity already existed. Long pilgrimages to such shrines created for many a connection with peoples in areas under different sovereignties. Then, too, the great body of Sanskritic literature provided a significant bond.
(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 32).
According to Jawaharlal Nehru: "Right from the beginning, culturally India has been one, because she had the same background, the same traditions, the same religions, the same heroes and heroines, the same old tales, the same learned language (Sanskrit), the village panchayats, the same ideology, and polity. To the average Indian the whole of India was a kind of punya-bhumi - a holy land - while the rest of the world was largely peopled by mlechchhas and barbarians. Sankaracharya chose the four corners of India for his maths, or the headquarters of his order of sanyasins, shows how he regarded India as a cultural unit. And the great success which met his campaign all over the country in a very short time also shows how intellectual and cultural currents traveled rapidly from one end of the country to another."
(source: Glimpses of World History - By Jawaharlal Nehru p. 129)
Dr. Radhakrishnan: "In spite of the divisions, there is an inner cohesion among the Hindu society from the Himalayas to the Cape Comorin."
(source: The Hindu View of Life - By Sir. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan p. 73-77).
Girilal Jain, late editor of Times of India: " It is about time we recognize that we are not a nation in the European sense of the term, that is, we are not a fragment of a civilization claiming to be a nation on the basis of accidents of history which is what every major European nation is. We are a people primarily by virtue of the continuity and coherence of our civilization which has survived all shocks. And though inevitably weakened as a result of foreign invasions, conquests and rule for almost a whole millennium, it is once again ready to resume its march."
(source: Hindu Phenomenon - By Girilal Jain p. 21).
Sri Aurobindo has said: "In India at a very early time: the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete and became the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas....Invasion and foreign rule, ....the enormous pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush the ancient soul out of the body her Vedic Rishis made for her."
(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo pg 158).
Guy Sorman visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France, says that the idea of a nation-state was an 18th century creation of the West. It is the cultural identity that has helped India stay together. The British did not do it for the love of India. It was here that the West started to colonize what was to become the Third World, a shameless process of systematic exploitation without any moral or religious justification.
(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman ('Le Genie de l'Inde') p. 197).
N. S. Rajaram: "It was claimed by the British, and faithfully repeated by the Leftist intellectuals, that the British unified India. This is completely false. The unity of India, rooted in her ancient culture, is of untold antiquity.
It may have been divided at various times into smaller kingdoms, but the goal was always to be united under a ‘Chakravartin’ or a ‘Samrat’. This unity was cultural though not always political. This cultural unity was seriously damaged during the Medieval period, when India was engaged in a struggle for survival — like what is happening in Kashmir today. Going back thousands of years, India had been united under a single ruler many times. The earliest recorded emperor of India was Bharata, the son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, but there were several others. I give below some examples from the Aitareya Brahmana. "With this great anointing of Indra, Dirghatamas Mamateya anointed Bharata Daushanti. Therefore, Bharata Daushanti went round the earth completely, conquering on every side and offered the horse in sacrifice. "With this great anointing of Indra, Tura Kavasheya anointed Janamejaya Parikshita. Therefore Janamejaya Parikshita went round the earth completely, conquering on every side and offered the horse in sacrifice."
There are similar statements about Sudasa Paijavana anointed by Vasistha, Anga anointed by Udamaya Atreya, Durmukha Pancala anointed by Brihadukta and Atyarati Janampati anointed by Vasistha Satyahavya. Atyarati, though not born a king, became an emperor and went on conquer even the Uttara Kuru or the modern Sinkiang and Turkestan that lie north of Kashmir. There are others also mentioned in the Shathapatha Brahmana and also the Mahabharata. This shows that the unity of India is ancient. Also, the British did not rule over a unified India. They had treaties with the rulers of hereditary kingdoms like Mysore, Kashmir, Hyderabad and others that were more or less independent. The person who united all these was Sardar Patel, not the British. But this unification was possible only because India is culturally one. Pakistan, with no such identity or cultural unity, is falling apart.
(source: Distortions in Indian History http://www.voi.org/books/dist/ch2.htm#3 ).
For more on the myths of British Raj, refer to The Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs - By Dr David Grey).
The British rule often claim to have given India - Democracy. If so, Why did it take 200 years to give India Democracy?
For more read: Democracy in Ancient India - By Steve Muhlberger
Sri Jayendra Saraswati - The Sankaracharya of Kanchi has said:
"The British never created anything in India - they merely destroyed. Instead of uniting, they divided; so the question is meaningless. For five thousand years Hindus have chanted in their morning prayers:
"Gange cha Yamunechaiva! Godavari! Sarasvati!
Narmade! Sindhu! Kaveri! Jale asmin sannidhim kuru!"
"Hail! O ye Ganges, Jamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada,
Sindhu and Kaveri, come and approach these waters."
There has been an explicit and clear geographical area that we have referred to as our land. Adi Sankara not only went to the four corners of this territory, he set up tens of shrines all over the Hindu land to be able to revive and revitalize Hinduism. It is absurd to think that India is a new idea."
(source: Interview with Sri Jayendra Saraswati - by Rajeev Srinivasan - India Abroad March 8'2002).
***
The Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs
While few educated South Asians would deny that British Colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of the common people of the sub-continent - several harbor an illusion that the British weren't all bad. Didn't they, perhaps, educate us - build us modern cities, build us irrigation canals - protect our ancient monuments - etc. etc.
Literacy and Education
The literacy in British India in 1911 was only 6%, in 1931 it was 8%, and by 1947 it had crawled to 11%!
Urban Development
It is undoubtedly true
that the British built modern cities with modern conveniences for their
administrative officers. But it should be noted that these were exclusive zones
not intended for the "natives" to enjoy. Consider that in 1911, 69
per cent of Bombay 's population lived in one-room tenements (as against 6 per
cent in London in the same year). After the Second World War, 13 per cent of
Bombay 's population slept on the streets. As for sanitation, 10-15 tenements
typically shared one water tap!
Yet, in 1757 (the year of the Plassey defeat),
Robert Clive of the East India Company had
observed of Murshidabad in Bengal: "This city is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London ..." (so quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report of 1916-18). Dacca was even more famous as a manufacturing town, it's muslin a source of many legends and it's weavers had an international reputation that was unmatched in the medieval world.
But in 1840 it was reported by Sir Charles Trevelyan (1807 - 1886) to a parliamentary enquiry that Dacca 's population had fallen from 150,000 to 20,000. Montgomery Martin - an early historian of the British Empire observed that Surat and Murshidabad had suffered a similiar fate. (This phenomenon was to be replicated all over India - particularly in Awadh (modern U.P) and other areas that had offered the most heroic resistance to the British during the revolt of 1857.)
In 1854, Sir Arthur Cotton (1803 - 1899) writing in "Public Works in India " noted:
"Public works have been almost entirely neglected throughout India ... The motto hitherto has been: 'Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything....."
Adding that the Company was unconcerned if people died of famine, or if they lacked roads and water. Nothing can be more revealing than the remark by John Bright in the House of Commons on June 24, 1858,
"The single city of Manchester, in the supply of its inhabitants with the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in the fourteen years from 1834 to 1848 in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its vast dominions."
Irrigation and
Agricultural Development
There is another
popular belief about British rule: 'The British modernized Indian agriculture
by building canals'. But the actual record reveals a somewhat different story.
" The roads and
tanks and canals," noted an observer in 1838 (G. Thompson,
"India and the Colonies," 1838), ''which Hindu or Mussulman Governments constructed for the service of the
nations and the good of the country have been suffered to fall into
dilapidation; and now the want of the means of irrigation causes
famines."
Robert Montgomery Martin,
in his standard work "The Indian
Empire", in 1858, noted that the old East India Company
"omitted not only
to initiate improvements, but even to keep in repair the old works upon which
the revenue depended."
Sir
William Willcock (1852 - 1932) a distinguished hydraulic engineer,
whose name was associated with irrigation enterprises in Egypt and Mesopotamia
had made an investigation of conditions in Bengal. He wrote: "Not only was nothing done to utilize and improve the original canal system, but railway embankments were subsequently thrown up, entirely destroying it. Some areas, cut off from the supply of loam-bearing Ganges water, have gradually become sterile and unproductive, others improperly drained, show an advanced degree of water-logging, with the inevitable accompaniment of malaria. Nor has any attempt been made to construct proper embankments for the Gauges in its low course, to prevent the enormous erosion by which villages and groves and cultivated fields are swallowed up each year."
Modern Medicine and
Life Expectancy
Even some serious critics of colonial rule grudgingly
grant that the British brought modern medicine to India . Yet - all the
statistical indicators show that access to modern medicine was severely
restricted. A 1938 report by the ILO (International Labor Office) on
"Industrial Labor in India " revealed that life expectancy in India
was barely 25 years in 1921 (compared to 55 for England) and had actually
fallen to 23 in 1931! In his recently published "Late Victorian Holocausts" Mike Davis reports that life
expectancy fell by 20% between 1872 and 1921.
In 1934, there was one hospital bed for 3800 people in
British India and this figure included hospital beds reserved for the British
rulers. (In that same year, in the Soviet Union , there were ten times as
many.) Infant mortality in Bombay was 255 per thousand in 1928. (In the same
year, it was less than half that in Moscow .)
William
Digby (1849 - 1904) noted in "Prosperous British India" in 1901
that "stated roughly, famines and
scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of
the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as
widespread." In Late
Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis
points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of
British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.
Land that once produced grain for local consumption was
now taken over by by former slave-owners from N. America who were permitted to
set up plantations for the cultivation of lucrative cash crops exclusively for
export. Particularly galling is how the British colonial rulers continued to
export foodgrains from India to Britain even during famine years.
Annual British Government reports repeatedly published
data that showed 70-80% of Indians were living on the margin of subsistence.
That two-thirds were undernourished, and in Bengal , nearly four-fifths were
undernourished.
Contrast this data with the following accounts of Indian
life prior to colonization:-
" ....even in the
smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk, beans and other vegetables, sugar
and sweetmeats can be procured in abundance .... Tavernier writing in the 17th century in his "Travels in India".
Niccolo Manucci (1639 - 1714) the Venetian who became chief physician to
Aurangzeb (also in the 17th century) wrote:
"Bengal is of all
the kingdoms of the Moghul, best known in France ..... We may venture to say it
is not inferior in anything to Egypt - and that it even exceeds that kingdom in
its products of silks, cottons, sugar, and indigo. All things are in great
plenty here, fruits, pulse, grain, muslins, cloths of gold and silk..."
The French traveller, Francois Bernier (1625 - 1688) also described 17th century Bengal
in a similiar vein:
"The knowledge I
have acquired of Bengal in two visits inclines me to believe that it is richer
than Egypt . It exports in abundance cottons and silks, rice, sugar and butter.
It produces amply for it's own consumption of wheat, vegetables, grains, fowls,
ducks and geese. It has immense herds of pigs and flocks of sheep and goats.
Fish of every kind it has in profusion. From Rajmahal to the sea is an endless
number of canals, cut in bygone ages from the Ganges by immense labour for
navigation and irrigation."
The poverty of British India stood in stark contrast to
these eye witness reports and has to be ascribed to the pitiful wages that
working people in India received in that period. A 1927-28 report noted
that
"all but the most
highly skilled workmen in India receive wages which are barely sufficient to
feed and clothe them. Everywhere will be seen overcrowding, dirt and squalid
misery..."
Ancient Monuments
Perhaps the least
known aspect of the colonial legacy is the early British attitude towards
India's historic monuments and the extend of vandalism that took place.
Instead, there is this pervasive myth of the Britisher as an unbiased
"protector of the nation's historic legacy".
Plans to dismantle the Taj Mahal were in place, and
wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition
work was to begin, news from London indicated that the first auction had not
been a success, and that all further sales were cancelled -- it would not be
worth the money to tear down the Taj Mahal. Thus the Taj Mahal was spared, and
so too, was the reputation of the British as "Protectors of India's Historic Legacy" ! That
innumerable other monuments were destroyed, or left to rack and ruin is a story
that has yet to get beyond the specialists in the field.
India and the
Industrial Revolution
Perhaps the most important
aspect of colonial rule was the transfer of wealth from India to Britain . In his pioneering book, India Today, Rajni Palme
Dutt conclusively demonstrates how vital this was to the Industrial
Revolution in Britain. Several patents that had remained unfunded suddenly
found industrial sponsors once the taxes from India started rolling in. Without capital from India , British banks
would have found it impossible to fund the modernization of Britain that took
place in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In addition, the
scientific basis of the industrial revolution was not a uniquely European
contribution. Several civilizations had been adding to the world's
scientific database - especially the civilizations of Asia, (including those of
the Indian sub-continent). Without that
aggregate of scientific knowledge the scientists of Britain and Europe would
have found it impossible to make the rapid strides they made during the period
of the Industrial revolution. Moreover, several of these patents,
particularly those concerned with the textile industry relied on pre-industrial
techniques perfected in the sub-continent. (In fact, many of the earliest textile machines in Britain were unable to
match the complexity and finesse of the spinning and weaving machines of Dacca
.).
Some euro-centric authors have attempted to deny any such
linkage. They have tried to assert that not only was the Industrial Revolution
a uniquely British/European event - that colonization and the the phenomenal
transfer of wealth that took place was merely incidental to it's fruition. But
the words of Lord Curzon still
ring loud and clear. The Viceroy of British India in 1894 was quite
unequivocal, " India is the pivot
of our Empire .... If the Empire loses any other part of its Dominion we can survive,
but if we lose India the sun of our Empire will have set."
Lord Curzon knew fully well, the value and importance of
the Indian colony. It was the transfer of wealth through unprecedented levels
of taxation on Indians of virtually all classes that funded the great
"Industrial Revolution" and laid the ground for
"modernization" in Britain . As early as 1812, an East India Company
Report had stated "The importance
of that immense empire to this country is rather to be estimated by the great
annual addition it makes to the wealth and capital of the
Kingdom....."
(source: The Colonial
Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs - indiaresource.com). It is painfully evident that the West has approached Asia "armed with gun-and-gospel truth," systematically imposing its religions, its values, and its legal and political systems on Eastern nations, careless of local sensitivities and indifferent to indigenous traditions."
(source: Oriental Enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought - By J. J. Clarke p.6-8).
The timeline of contact of both Islam and the British with the Indian subcontinent is a chronicle of butchery, plundering of wealth and resources, destruction of Hindu/Buddhist temples and property, slavery and rounding up of women for harems, forced religious conversions and taxation, and degradation of local customs and traditions that led to cultural, religious, economic, political and social upheaval of unprecedented proportions that modern India is only now coming to grips with. While the Islamic bunch had the barbaric and destructive characteristic as their hallmark, the British were a little more refined, emphasizing on economic exploitation, but no less generous or kind towards their subjects.
(source: Resurrecting India's True History - By Hari Chandra -sulekha.com).
***
Smelling British Sahibs learnt to bathe in India - Civilizing the British?
The first Englishmen who came to India as servants of the
East India Company were bewildered by many of our customs. Many of them
commented on, in their letters home, the habit, among certain classes of the
Hindus, of taking a daily bath
The early factory-hands of John Company in India may have
been somewhat scandalized by the fact
that Hindu men and women of good families should not mind taking their baths
in full view of others, what they found even more strange was that they should
be washing their bodies at all.
For the British, the process of washing the body entailed
lying prone in a tub half full of hot water. And how many houses in
pre-Industrial England could have had metal containers large enough to
accommodate grown men and women, and, even more, the facilities to heat up
enough water? The conclusion was inescapable. For most Englishmen of the 17th
and 18th centuries, a bath must have been a rare experience indeed, affordable
to the very rich, who perhaps took baths when they felt particularly obnoxious,
what with their zest for vigorous exercise, such as workouts in the boxing ring
or rowing or riding at the gallop over the countryside. What a sensual pleasure
it must have been to lie soaking in a tub full of scalding hot water? But such
indulgences were possible only during the few weeks of what the English call
their summer. For the rest of the year, the water in the tub could not have
remained hot for more than a couple of minutes, and from November through
February must have gone icy cold as soon as it was poured in. Brrrrr!
Then again, even those who thus bathed their bodies a few
times every summer seem to have been careful to, as it were, keep their heads
above water. In other words, a bath did not also involve a hair-wash. Otherwise
there doesn’t seem to be any reason why they should have found it necessary to
coin—or adopt—a special word to describe the process of bathing hair: shampoo,
which, ‘Hobson Jobson’ tells us is derived from the Hindi word, champi,
for ‘massage’. Why a word which normally described the process of
muscle-kneading should have been picked on to explain a head-wash, is not at all
convincing. It seems that the Company’s servants used to send for their barbers
every now and then to massage their heads with oil and then rinse off the hair
with soap and water. So the
head-champi, became ‘shampoo’.
Which may explain why G M Trevelyans’s English Social History does not so much as mention the
word ‘bath’. In the pre-industrial age it was, at best, an eccentricity
indulged in by exercise-freaks in the summer months, and a head-bath was even
rarer. English royal
court felt compelled to post in 1589: "Let no one, whoever he may be,
before, at or after meals, early or late, foul the staircase, corridors, or
closets with urine or other filth."
But, out in the tropics they must have gone about smelling
quite a bit. In fact, the Chinese, when
they first encountered the White man described him as "the smelly
one".
According to William
Dalrymple, in his book White Mughals: Love
and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
"Indian women, for example, introduced British men in the delights of regular bathing." And again:
"Those
who had returned home and continued to bathe and shampoo themselves on a
regular basis found themselves scoffed at as ‘effeminate’." "Indian women, for example, introduced British men in the delights of regular bathing." And again:
(source: Smelling sahibs learnt to bathe in India - by Manohar
Malgonkar - tribuneindia.com).
Religion of Love?
The Meek are send to torture chambers?
Atrocities committed by the Christian Missionaries in Goa - (Gomantak)
Paul Williams Robert says in his book Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India. Some Journeys in India. pg 82-83:
"In the wake of the warriors came the priests. First, the Franciscans, then the Jesuits, then the Dominicans, and lastly the Augustinians. It must have made their holy blood boil to find their old foes, the Muslims and Jews openly and brazenly practicing their religions. The men of God set about clearing what the Dominican termed this "jungle of unbelief" with the ardor of Amazon lumber barons. Just like the mullahs who had marched into Goa two hundred years before with the Bahamani sultans, these Catholic clergy were prepared to go to any lengths to spread their faiths. Initially they pestered the Portuguese king for special powers, then they pestered the Pope to pester the king on their behalf.
The first of these special powers arrived in 1540 when the viceroy received authority to "destroy all Hindu temples, not leaving a single one in any islands, and to confiscate the estates of these temples for the maintenance of the churches which are to be erected in their places. Five years later, the Italian cleric Father Nicolau Lancilotto reported that "not a single temple to be seen on the island."
The island in question was Teeswadi, the main field of operations for the two priestly orders then on the scene. A glance at the absurd profusion of churches standing cheek by jowl in Old Goa still conveys some idea of the spiritual excesses indulged in by these competing orders of the day.
This Olympiad of Christianization scared the hell out of the locals, and thousands of family fled across the river. To them, the harshness of the Moghuls still governing the adjacent territories must have been preferable to the rabid monomania of papist clerics. A saying still exist in Konkani, the language of Goa:
"Hanv polthandi vaitam" ( I'm leaving for the other bank ), one half of its double meaning implying to this day that a person is rejecting Christianity.
Although their temples had been razed. The Hindus who remained continued to practice their religion in secret. More extreme methods were therefore instituted to bring the heathen into the
church's loving embrace. Hindu festivities were forbidden; Hindu priests were forbidden from entering Goa; makers of idols were severely punished; public jobs were given only to Christians.
Soon it was announced that anyone practicing in private was declared a crime. The penalty was confiscation of property. Also Hindus, dying without a male heir could pass their estates only to relative who had embraced Christianity.
Death was no easier than life for Hindus in mid-sixteenth-century Goa. To them, the cruelest piece of legislation passed by the Portuguese prohibited cremation of the dead - an inviolably sacred part of Hindu faith. As a result, death had to be kept a secret; the wailing grief of the women had to be smothered; family members had to go about their business as if nothing had happened; children were sent out to play, washing was done, work was performed - all as usual. In the dead of the night, a boat would be loaded with firewood down on the riverbank, then the dead body would be placed on it, covered by more wood. The pyre would be set alight and the boat pushed out to drift on the river's currents as the funeral party ran back into the safety of shadows. The missionaries simply could not grasp that another people's faith could be as dearly cherished as deeply embedded as their own. The missionaries obviously had no idea how resilient Hinduism could be, and indeed is. It had survived Islam's scimitar, and it would survive the sword that so much resembled the cross in whose service it was now employed. Total of 200 temples had been demolished.
Says Andre Corsalli to Giuliano de Medici Jan 6, 1516:
" In a small island near this, called Divari, the Portuguese , in order to build the city, have destroyed an ancient temple ... which was built with marvelous art and with ancient figures wrought to the greatest perfection, in a certain black stone, some of which remain standing, ruined and shattered , because these Portuguese care nothing about them. If I can come by one of these shattered images, I will send it to your Lordship, that you may perceive how much in old times sculpture was esteemed in every part of the world."
To the non-Christians, there are many aspects of Christianity that are perplexing and, in some instances, downright bizarre. The Church decided the best way of resolving these problems would be to start a reign of terror to frighten the savages into submission. It set up a kind of tribunal. The palace in which these holy terrorists ensconced themselves was locally known as the Vodlem gor - The Big House. It became the symbol of fear. Ceremonies were conducted behind closed doors. People in the street often heard screams of agony piercing the night.
Here are some gruesome details:
"Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents, whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities were amputated carefully, so that a person could remain conscious even when all that remained was torso and head. Male genitals were removed and burned in front of wives, breasts hacked off and vaginas penetrated by swords while husbands were forced to watch."
According to Sardar K. M. Panikkar: " The The Papacy took in hand the organization of the Holy Office to control missionary activities 123 years after Vasco da Gama's arrival in India. In 1534, Goa was made a bishopric with authority extending over the entire Far East. Special instructions were issued to the Portuguese to root out the infidels. Hindu temples in Goa were destroyed and their property distributed to religious orders (like the Franciscans) in 1540. The Inquisition was established in 1560.
Intolerance of things Indian became henceforth the characteristic feature of missionary zeal in India.
Any compromise with Hindu life or religion was avoided, e.g. the eating of beef was held to be necessary as it would put the convert altogether out of the pale of Hinduism."
(source: Asia and Western Dominance - By K. M. Panikkar p. 281-282). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple. Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel. Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn .
Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI
So notorious was the Inquisition in Portuguese India that word of its horrors even reached home. Such then is the history of Christian persecution in Goa. And yet the cruelest of these proselytizers from the past are supposed to be treated as 'Saints" by the very nation that was victimized by them! Stating the facts about the past tyranny of the Church in India, quickly becomes an "earth shattering" conspiracy by the "fascist" Hindu extremists. The signs of India's humiliation and oppression at the hands of her Christian aggressors is present everywhere in the nomenclature of innumerable roads, buildings and educational institutions named after the very criminals who sought to annihilate all traces of India's vast and ancient repertoire of advanced knowledge.
"The missionary brought with him an attitude of moral superiority and a belief in his own exclusive righteousness. The doctrine of the monopoly of truth and revelation, was alien to the Hindu and Buddhist mind. To them the claim of any sect that it alone possesses the truth and others shall be 'condemned' has always seemed unreasonable. In addition, the association of Christian missionary work with aggressive imperialism introduced political complications. Even in the days of unchallenged European political superiority no Asian people accepted the cultural superiority of the West."
(source: Asia and Western Dominance - By K. M. Panikkar p. 296). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
To conclude, While the non-Europeans, in holy frenzy, slaughtered millions of Hindus and proselytized a large number in the then India from Baluchistan to Bengal and carried their accumulated treasures of centuries and the women population for sale, the European with their subtle and crafty ways just conquered the whole of India by sucking out more wealth than all their predecessors had done together by brute force.
Lamenting this bloodiest story in history, Will Durant in his book Our Oriental Heritage (pg 463) advises peace living people never to trust the barbarians again and be always prepared to pay the price of civilization.
"The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry."
(For more information on Goa Inquisition please visit Hindu Holocaust). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth
Perhaps the most barbaric and most horrendous Human rights
violations ever committed in history.
The Followers of the
Prince of Peace and Love, as they called Jesus
Christ, got busy with conversion of the Hindus, because they had been commanded
by Jesus: Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Mt.xxvii:19).
Therefore, they set up in Goa (A.D. 1560) the Inquisition to teach the Hindus
the tenets of their religion which, they claimed, like the Muslims, was the
only true religion in the world!. They called it the Holy Office; the Hindus
who suffered at its hands called it the Bloody Inquisition. The followers of
Jesus Christ made free and forcible use of the faggot, the thumbscrew, the
whip, the stake and the scaffold to teach the Hindus what the true religion.
(source: The Hindu - By Krishna Vallabh Paliwal and Brahm Datt Bharti
p.10).
For Cruelty inflicted
by Christianity - Watch Constantine's
Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby. Refer to
Documentaries - The Holy Inquisition – History Channel and Secret Files of the Inquisition –
PBS. Watch video
- Church's
Inquisition -Torturing Those Who Disagreed (1 of 6). Refer to Index of Forbidden Books and Mexican Inquisition
Here are some observations of Babasaheb Ambedkar on the ruthless exploits of the Portuguese
missionaries in Goa in the 16th century:
“The entry of the Catholic Church in the field of spread
of Christianity in India began in the year 1541 with the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first
missionary of the new society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the
Pope. The Syrian Christians shrank with dismay from the defiling touch of
the Roman Catholics of Portugal and proclaimed themselves Christians and not
idolaters. The other is that the Malabar Christians had never been subject to
Roman supremacy and never subscribed to the Roman doctrine."
“The inquisitors of
Goa discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came
the delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. Don Alexis de Menzes was appointed Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts
than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into (the) work of
persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared
him to Rome. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force,
he summoned the Syrian Churches to submit themselves to his authority.
“Fraud took the place of violence; money took place of
arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and appealed to the imaginations
of men when he could not work upon their fears.
The persecutions of Menzes were very grievous for he separated priests
from their wives; excommunicated on trifling grounds, members of the Churches;
and destroyed old Syriac records which contained proofs of the early purity of
faith.”
(source: Dr
Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, Volume 5, pg 435-37). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful
Truth.
Refer to World
Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI
***
The Inquisition made its way to India under the Portuguese
Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier in 1545. The
first demand for the establishment of the Inquisition in Goa was made by St.
Francis Xavier. In a letter addressed from Amboina (Moluccas) to D. Joao
III, King of Portugal, on May 16, 1545, he wrote:
“The second necessity for the Christians is that your
majesty establish the Holy Inquisition, because there are many who live
according to the Jewish law, and according to the Mohammedan sect, without fear
of God or shame of the world. And since there are many who are spread all over
the fortresses, there is the need of the Holy Inquisition, and of many
preachers. Your majesty should provide such necessary things for your loyal and
faithful subjects in India.”
The eminent Jesuit historian, Fr. Francisco de Souza, describes in the following passage an
incident which served as the immediate cause for the introduction of the
Inquisition in Goa:
“Whilst in the island of Goa, heated efforts were made to
destroy Hinduism, father Provincial Gonslavo da Silveira and bishop Belchior
Carneiro were moving about in Cochin persecuting the insidious Judaism. These
priests came to know how in that city were living some descendants of the
Israelite people, rich and possessing much, but infected with Judaism…”
Francois Pyrad, a French traveler, was in Goa during the period of July 1608 to January 1610. In his account of his travels he gives the following information of the Inquisition in Goa:
Francois Pyrad, a French traveler, was in Goa during the period of July 1608 to January 1610. In his account of his travels he gives the following information of the Inquisition in Goa:
“The Inquisition consists of two fathers, who are held in
great dignity and respect; but the one is much greater man than the other and
is called Inquisitor Major. Their procedure is much more severe than in
Portugal; they often burn Jews,
whom the Portuguese call Christianos noeuous, that is to say, ‘New
Christians.’
It came into existence in 1560. The Jesuit historian
Father Francisco de Souza tells us that the goal of the Inquisition in India
was to destroy Hinduism and also persecute Indian Jews who had lived peacefully
with the Hindus for centuries. Francois Pyrad, a Frenchman who lived in Goa
from 1608-1610, tells us that the number of victims persecuted was very large.
We have eyewitness accounts telling us that it was far worse than in Europe. J C Barreto Miranda, a Goanese historian,
in his book Quadros Historicas de Goa p.145,
wrote of the Inquisitors sent by the Pope:
“The cruelties which in the name of the religion of peace
and love this tribunal practiced in Europe, were carried to even greater
excesses in India, where the Inquisitors, surrounded by luxuries which could
stand comparison with the regal magnificence of the great potentates of Asia,
saw with pride the Archbishop as well as the viceroy submitted to their
power. Every word of theirs was a sentence of death and at their
slightest nod were removed to terror the vast populations spread over the
Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands, and who, on the most
frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in the deepest dungeon or
strangled or offered as food for the flames of the pyre.”
A vivid idea of the feelings of deep-rooted terror with
which the Holy Office in Goa was viewed by the common people is provided by the
following story recounted by F Nery
Xavier in Instruccas do Marquez
du Alorna as seu successor p. 38:
“The terrible acts of the Inquisition during the early
period of its existence had caused terror to be so deeply rooted in the
memories of the people that none dared to name the place where it was housed as
the house of the Inquisition, but gave it the mysterious appellation “Orlem gor” (The Big House).”
Fr. James Brodrick, well known biographer of St. Xavier and himself a Jesuit
wrote in his book, Saint Francis Xavier p. 201 footnote, about the limitations
of the understanding and outlook of St. Xavier:
“St. Francis Xavier’s knowledge of Hinduism, was, if
possible, even less adequate than his few notions of Mohammedanism. Though the
Portuguese had been in India for over forty years, none of them appears to have
made the slightest attempt to understand the venerable civilization, so much
more ancient than their own, on which they had violently intruded.”
Francis Xavier hostility towards the heathen (Brahmin) priesthood:
“These are the most perverse people in the world….they
never tell the truth, but think of nothing but how to tell subtle lies and to
deceive the simple and ignorant people, telling them that the idols demand
certain offerings, and these are simply the things that the Brahmans themselves
invent, and of which they stand in need in order to maintain their wives and
children and houses…They threaten the people that, if they do not bring the
offerings, the gods will kill them, or cause them to fall sick, or send demons
to their houses, and through the fear that the idols will do them harm, the
poor simple people do exactly as the Brahmans tell them…If there were no
Brahmans in the area, all the Hindus would accept conversion to our
faith."
(source: The Heathen in His Blindness - by S. N. Balagangadhara
Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 9004099433 p.120-121).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI
Alan Machado-Prabhu records how the Portuguese conquered Goa and ruled by terror:
In its two and a half
centuries of existence at Goa, the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and
64 in effigy. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046. The
people who were converted but still continued secretly to perform Hindu rituals
were treated even more harshly… The manner in which the Church enriched itself
was just scandalous. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols
went to the Church…The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an
impressive scale. The open performances of Hindu ceremonies were replaced by
great public processions on Christian feast days. One of the worst criminals
was Francis Xavier, later to be made into a saint.”
The Anglican historian Dr. Fryer wrote:
“In the principal market
was raised an engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a pulley
…which unhinges a man's joints, a cruel torture.”
(source: The Ethics of Proselytizing - By Rajiv Malhotra). Refer
to Jesus Christ:
Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
Goa gained a reputation as an important distribution
point for Arab horses. Fine Arab steeds were very much in demand in India, and
the Portuguese importers found this trade very lucrative. But another
profitable trade had developed in another form of livestock - human beings!
S.C. Pothan tells us that: "The Portuguese also inaugurated slave trade by seizing able-bodied men and women in the neighbouring Indian territory and selling them. They opened a slave market in Goa." ("The Syrian Christians of Kerala", 1963, p.31).
Apparently this market not only served the export trade but was in much demand by the local Portuguese whose lifestyle was extravagant and profligate. But we are also told that there was a lively trade in Kaffirs, a derogatory term for the natives of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. The girls who, we are told, were very much in demand, were paraded for sale in the nude. (B. Penrose - "Goa, Queen of the East" p.67).
In 1592 the viceroy of Goa "proclaimed that slaves of
infidels who converted themselves to Christianity would be freed." (Cunha
Rivara - cited by Priolkar, "The Goa Inquisition" p.141).
"Those who have escaped death by their extorted
confessions, are strictly enjoined, when they leave the prisons of the Holy
Office, to declare that they have been treated with great tenderness and
clemency, in as much as their lives, which they justly merited to lose, should
be spared. Should anyone, who has acknowledged that he is guilty, attempt to
vindicate himself on his release, he would be immediately denounced and
arrested, and burnt at the next Act of Faith, without hope of pardon."
(Dellon, quoted by Priolkar "The Goa Inquisition", Sec.2, p.34).
Dr Dellon described the Archbishop's prison
as: "The most filthy, dismal, and hideous of all I ever witnessed, and I doubt if there can be any other in the world more repulsive."
Another particularly odious Edict of Faith was the obligation of Goa's citizens to spy on behalf of the Inquisition.
[Its] "infamy never reached greater depths, nor was more vile, more black, and more completely determined by mundane interests than at the Tribunal of Goa, by irony called the Holy Office. Here the Inquisitors went to the length of imprisoning in its jails women who resisted their advances, and after having satisfied their bestial instincts there, ordering that they be burnt as heretics." ("A India Portuguesa, Vol.11, Nova Goa", 1923, p.263 - cited in "The Goa Inquisition" p.175).
(source: The Inquisitive Christians - By H. H. Meyers). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
Anti-Hindu Laws in Goa
In his book Goa
Indica: A Critical Portrait of Post Colonial Era:
"The impact of Christianity is there for all to see.
"For almost four hundred years since he conquered Goa the Portuguese king
acted like half-emperor, half-Pope. Not just the privilege of clerical
appointments, the king even appropriated to himself the right to examine all the
Papal Bulls, allowing their enforcement in his conquered lands only if he found
nothing detrimental to Portugual’s interest in them," says Arun Sinha quite forcefully.
(source: TribuneIndia.com).
The Hindus living within the Portuguese dominion, were
forbidden to observe their ancestral rites and customs, even behind closed
doors, and subjected to many other discriminatory laws. The Inquisition took a
prominent part in enforcing these measures and the resulting harassment was so
great that many of the Hindus also emigrated to neighboring territories.
Various measures were taken by the Portuguese rulers in
Goa with the object of converting the natives to Christianity. Firstly, there
were those measures to make it difficult for the natives to continue to retain
their old religion. The temples and shrines of the Hindus were destroyed and
they were forbidden to erect or maintain new ones even outside the Portuguese
territories; practice of Hindu rites and ceremonies such as the marriage
ceremony, the ceremony of wearing the sacred thread, ceremony performed at the
birth of a child, was banned; priests and teachers of Hindus were banished;
those who remained were deprived of their means of subsistence and ancestral
rights in village communities; they were also subjected to various humiliation,
indignities and disabilities; orphan children of the Hindus were snatched away
from the families for being baptized; and men and women were compelled to
listen to the preaching of Christian doctrine. In 1560, the Viceroy D. Constantino de Braganza,
ordered a large number of Brahmins of the island of Goa. The result of such
orders was that the Hindus migrated to the neighboring lands en masse. The
Hindus of Salsette approached the Viceroy and clamored against this order but
their appeals fell on deaf ears. They thereupon returned home “and placing in
carriages the idols, whose temples were threatened with ruin, they moved to the
other side where there were no Portuguese to persecute them.” The image of Shri Mangesh was probably moved from Cortalim (earlier
known as Kushasthali) at this
time in 1566. (The temple was dedicated to Lord Shiva). The Jesuit historian Francisco de Souza writes that:
“The Church of Cortalim is erected in the same site, where formerly the idol of
Mangesh was worshipped.”
Other measures were incentives for convesion to
Christianity, such as jobs, altering the laws of inheritance in favor of those
who changed their religion.
Use of Torture by Inquisition
Torture was used freely and with all severity by the
Inquisition in Goa may be inferred from the following passage in Dr. C Dellon’s in the book, Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa:
“During the month of November and December, I every
morning heard the cries of those whom the torture was administered, and which
was inflicted so severely, that I have seen many persons of both sexes who have
been crippled by it, and amongst others, the first companion allotted to me in
my prison.”
Torture was used by the Inquisition as an expedient to
obtain a confession where the evidence against the accused was incomplete,
defective or conflicting.
During the torture the only words to be addressed to the
accused were “Tell the truth.” The notary faithfully recorded all that passed,
even to the shrieks of the victim, his despairing ejaculations and his piteous
appeals for mercy or to be put to death, nor would it be easy to conceive
anything more fitted to excite the deepest compassion than these cold-blooded
matter of fact reports.
The Manual of Regulations provided that ordinarily the
‘torture of pole’ (pulleys) should be administered but where the physician or
surgeon feels that on account of weakness or indisposition the accused could
not stand it, ‘the torture of potro; may be given.
The Inquisition at different times and places made use of
a variety of other forms of torture also. Referring to the forms of torture
used by the Inquisition, E T
Whittington, writes as follows:
“As to the torture itself, it combined all that the
ferocity of savages and the ingenuity of civilized man had till then invented.
Besides the ordinary rack, thumb-screws, and leg crushers or Spanish boots,
there were spiked wheels over which the victims were drawn with weights on
their feet; boiling oil was poured over their legs, burning sulphur dropped on
their bodies, and lighted candles held beneath their armpits.”
Alexandre Herculano, a famous writer of the 19th century, mentioned in his
“Fragment about the Inquisition”: “...The terrors inflicted on
pregnant women made them abort....Neither the beauty or decorousness of the
flower of youth, nor the old age, so worthy of compassion in a woman, exempted
the weaker sex from the brutal ferocity of the supposed defenders of the
religion....”
“...There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the volluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists !!”
“...There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the volluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists !!”
(source: History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in in Portugal
1926 - By Alexandre Herculano).
Scholars are generally
agreed that the Inquisition of Goa had earned “a sinister renown as the most
pitiless in Christendom.”
The story of the Inquisition in Goa is a dismal record of
callousness and cruelty, tyranny and injustice, espionage and blackmail,
avarice and corruption, repression of thought and culture and promotion of
obscurantism.
(source: The Goa Inquisition - By Anant Kakba Priolkar p. ix -
57). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the
Mylapore Shiva Temple.Refer to Jesus Christ:
Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel.
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI
Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn
Arthur
Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German
philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th
century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of
philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was
profoundly affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes a large part of his
psychological theory from the writings of Schopenhauer.He comments on the atrocities inflicted on the Hindus:
"...on the fanaticism and endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancient had no conception! Think of the crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry 'It is lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war cry 'It is the will of God,' Think of the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody and terrible conquests...in three continents, or....in America, whose inhabitants were for the most part, not looked upon as human! And above all, don't lets forget India, the cradle of the human race, or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where first.. were most cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original faith of mankind. The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bear witness to the monotheistic fury...carried on from Mahmud, the Gahaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurengzeb, the fratricide, whom the Portuguese...have zealously imitated by destruction of temples and the auto defe of the Inquisition of Goa..."For the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities perpertrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds...We hear nothing of the kind in the case of the Hindoos and Buddhists."
(source: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - By T. Bailey Saunders p. 1 - 42). Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI
Missionary Oath:
Missionaries had to take an oath which enjoined them, “to be loyal to Portugal in all the countries discovered or to be discovered, conquered or to be conquered, by Portugal. And to warn Portugal of any activity which may be contemplated against her”.
The British prescribed a similar oath: “I include in this promise exact obedience to any rules laid down by His Majesty’s representatives, and also an undertaking to refrain from doing, saying or writing anything either publicly or privately, to the prejudice of the British Government in India.”
K. M. Pannikar author of Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953. Panikkar’s study was primarily aimed at providing a survey of Western imperialism in Asia from CE 1498 to 1945. Christian missions came into the picture simply because he found them arrayed always and everywhere alongside Western gunboats, diplomatic pressures, extraterritorial rights and plain gangsterism. Contemporary records consulted by him could not but cut to size the inflated images of Christian heroes such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. They were found to be not much more than minions employed by European kings and princes scheming to carve out empires in the East. Their methods of trying to convert kings and commoners in Asia, said Panikkar, were force or fraud or conspiracy and morally questionable in every instance. Finding that “missionary activities… which became so prominent a feature of European relations with Asia were connected with Western political supremacy in Asia and synchronised with it” He concluded: “It may indeed be said that the most serious, persistent and planned effort of European nations in the nineteenth century was their missionary activities in India and China, where a large-scale attempt was made to effect a mental and spiritual conquest at supplementing the political authority already enjoyed by Europe. Though the results were disappointing in the extreme from the missionary point of new, this assault on the spiritual foundations of Asian countries has had far-reaching consequences in the religious and social reorganization of the people…”
(source: Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities - By Sita Ram Goel). Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
The British rule often claim to have given India - Democracy. If so, Why did it take 200 years to give India Democracy?
For more read: Democracy in Ancient India - By Steve Muhlberger
St. Francis Xavier wrote from Cochin on 20 Jan. 1548 to King John III of Portugal, " You must declare as plainly as possible ......that the only way of escaping your wrath and obtaining your favor is to make as many Christians as possible in the countries over which they rule.' (source" Macnicol, The Living Religions of India 1934 p. 268. ) Vasco da Gama told the first Indians he met on the Malabar coast that he came to seek "Christians and spices."
***
Eminent Indian Historians? (excerpts)
http://www.indiastar.com/wallia19.html
Included as principals in this group of Marxist historians are Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, K.M. Shrimali, K. M. Pannikar, R. S. Sharma, D. N. Jha, Gyanendra Pandey, and Irfan Habib. This group has, Shourie charges, "worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion [Hinduism], the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies -- Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism-- they have made out to be the epitome of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!" By promoting each other's publications and puffing up their reputations, this group has long been "determining what is politically correct." (note: Romila Thapar is totally ignorant of Sanskrit, though it has not stopped her from posing as an authority on Vedic India! In fact, a recent newspaper column by a retired bureaucrat — which reads like a paid advertisement — goes on to call her ‘India’s most eminent historian’!)
For several decades, these "eminent historians" have striven hard to continually denigrate Hindu cultural history, the oldest surviving civilization in the world, by "blackening the Hindu period and whitewashing the Islamic period." Indeed, Arun Shourie should have challenged them to refute American historian Will Durant's assertion in his The Story of Civilization: "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Or that of French historian Alain Danielou's statement, in his Histoire de l' Inde : "From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races."
The largely Marxist membership of the Indian Council of Historical Research appointed by the socialistic Congress party, which was in power for nearly all of the fifty years since independence, was reconstituted in July 1998 by the Bharatiya Janata Party, currently ruling at the center. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for undoing the harm done by the Marxist historians to the Indian psyche: "they have used these institutions to sow in the minds of our people [the Hindus] the seeds of self-hatred."
***
According to columnist, Meenakshi Jain: "Leftist historians in India have deliberately omitted in the entire discussion on the Delhi Sultanate, the words dhimmi and (hated) jaziya tax are deliberately omitted, though they are crucial to understanding the dynamics of that epoch. Overlooking all forms of Hindu persecution, the book states that Brahmins and ulema were equally permitted to propagate their respective faiths. References to the infamous 'pilgrimage tax' are conveniently dropped. The Mughal period, too, is selectively purged of its unpleasant facets. Akbar's early measures like the re-naming of Hindu holy cities, the imposition of the jaziya and forced conversions are ignored, as also the fact that as much as seventy percent of his nobility consisted of foreign Muslims. The limited Hindu participation in the upper echelons of the nobility (besides the Rajputs, just four other Hindus) is not alluded to."
(source: Selective Memory - By Meenakshi Jain - Hindustan Times, May 8, 2001).
Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
(referemces from the Books Used)
1. Asia and Western Dominance - By K. M. Panikkar
2. The Case for India - By Will Durant
3. India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - Jabez T. Sunderland
4. The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty
5. The Goa Inquisition - By Anant Kakba Priolkar
Education in India under the East India Company - By Major B. D. Basu (excerpts)
The history of education in India under the British rule has
yet to be properly written. It should
be remembered that in the pre-British period, India was not an illiterate
country. This land was far more advanced in education than many a Christian
country of the West. Almost every village had its school for the
diffusion of not only 3 but 4 R’s – the last R being religion or the Ramayana.
That work has contributed not a little to the preservation of Hindu
culture.
Stress has not been laid on another fact, which is, that
educational institutions were not established in this country as soon as the
East India Company obtained political supremacy here. It took the Christian
merchant “adventurers” just a century to come to the decision that it was for
their benefit to impart education to the swarthy “heathens” of India. The
battle of Plassey was fought in 1757; and the Wood’s Despatch, commonly called
the Educational Charter of India,
is dated 1854. This should show that the system of education was not introduced
in hot haste but after the mature deliberation of nearly a century.
It should also not be lost sight that the Indians
themselves were the pioneers of introducing Western education in this country.
The Hindu College
of Calcutta was established long before Macaulay
penned his celebrated minute or wood sent out his Educational Despatch to India.
When the East India Company attained political supremacy
in India,
they did not bestow any thought on the education of the inhabitants of their
dominions. Gold was their watchword. Everyone of their servants who came out to
India
tried to enrich himself as quickly as possible at the expense of the children
of the soil. It was on this account that Edmund Burke described them as “birds
of prey and passage” in India.
According to Herbert
Spencer, “The Anglo-Indians of the last century – “birds of prey and
passage, “ as they were styled by Burke – showed themselves only a shade less
cruel than their prototype of Peru and Mexico.”
These residents of Britain after making their fortunes
retired in England, where they were known as “Indian Nabobs.”
The Christian
“Indian Nabobs” looked on the heathens of India in the same light as their
co-religionists of America did on their Negro slaves. Writes a
historian: “On the contrary, the education of Negroes was expressly forbidden.
Here, for instance, are some passages from the Code of Virginia in 1849; “Every
assemblage of Negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing
shall be an unlawful assembly.
(Harmsworth: History of the World vol. IV p. 2814).
But as years rolled on, it became patent to some
thoughtful Anglo-Indians, that their dominion in India could not last long
unless education – especially Western – was diffused among the inhabitants of
that land. But this proposition struck terror and dismay into the hearts of the
generality of the people of England.
It should be
remembered that India was NOT a country inhabited by savages and barbarians. In
the pre-British period, India possessed educational institutions of a nature
which did not exist in the countries of the West. That even in the beginning of the Nineteenth century,
India, in the matter of education, was in advance of the European countries is
proved by the fact of her teaching those countries a new system of tuition, to
which attention was drawn by the Court of Directors in their letter to the
Governor-General-in-Council in Bengal, dated 3rd June, 1814,
extracts from which have been already given above. Very few in India know that
the system of “mutual tuition” –
which has been practiced by Indian school-masters since time immemorial – has
been borrowed by the Christian countries of the West from India. The man who
first introduced it into Great Britain was a native of Scotland by the name of Dr. Andrew Bell (1753-1832).
The village communities of India had not then been
destroyed, and it being the duty of every village communities to foster
education, a school formed a prominent institution in every village of any
note. Thus one Mr. A. D. Campbell,
Collector of Bellary, wrote in his Report dated 1823, as follows:
“The economy with which children are taught to write in
the native schools and the system by which the more advanced scholars are
caused to teach the less advanced, and at the same time to confirm their own
knowledge, is certainly admirable, and well
deserved the imitation it has received in England.”
He then goes on to remark, "of nearly a million souls
not 7000 are now at school." The decimation of the Indian education system
thus created a vacuum that then had to be filled. Into that vacuum, eager and
waiting, went the missionaries, who swiftly set up their own church-sponsored
schools and taught Indian children their own literature and history according
to the gospel of Max Muller. It is by now a well-established fact that
education was a means to Christianize and "domesticate" the native
population and render it loyal to the British empire.
(Extracts from the report
of A.D. Campbell, Esq., the Collector of Bellary, dated Bellary, August
17, 1823, upon the Education of the Natives: p. 503-504 of Report from Select
Committee on the affairs of the East India Company, vol. 1. published 1832)
The late Mr. Keir
Hardie (1856-1915) Britain's first Labor MP, in his work on India, (p.
5), wrote:
“Max Muller, on the strength of official documents and a
missionary report concerning education in Bengal prior to the British
occupation, asserts that there were 80,000
native schools in Bengal, or one for every 4000 of the population. Ludlow, in his History of British India, says that “in every Hindoo village which has retained its old form I am assured
that the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher, but where we
have swept away the village system, as in Bengal, there the village school has
also disappeared.”
With the destruction of the village communities and the
impoverishment of the people which are inseparably connected with the British
mode of administration of India, educational institutions which used to
flourish in every village of note became things of the past.
Walter Hamilton, writing in 1828 from official records
said: “It has long been remarked that science and literature are in a
progressive state of decay among the natives of India, the number of learned
men being not only diminished, but the circle of learning,….the principal cause
of this retrograde condition of literature may be traced to the want of that
encouragement which was formerly afforded to it by princes, chieftains and
opulent individuals, under the native governments, now past and gone. (vol. 1.
p. 203).
The British
administrators of India of those days were actuated by political motives in
keeping Indians ignorant. Thus one gallant
Major General Sir Lionel Smith, K.C.B., at the enquiry of 1831, said:
“The effect of education will be to do away with all the
prejudices of sects and religions by which we have hitherto kept the country –
the Mussalmans against Hindus, and so on; the effect of education will be to
expand their minds, and show them their vast power.”
Conversion and
Education of Hindus: The Situation in 1813
In the Charter Act
of 1813, to promote the happiness of the heathens of India, it was
proposed that:
“such measures ought to be adopted as may tend to the
introduction among them of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral
improvement; and in furtherance of the above objects, sufficient facilities
ought to be afforded by law to persons desirous of going to and remaining in
India, for the purpose of accomplishing those benevolent designs.”
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to point out
the diplomatic language of the above clause of the Charter Act. It is language
befitting a Machiavelli or a Talleyrand – which does not so much express as
conceal the thought and objects which the framers of the Act had in view. Who
are the persons referred to as “desirous of going to and remaining in India,
for the purpose of accomplishing those benevolent designs?” They were Christian missionaries.
At the time of the East India Company charter of 1813,
education in England was still under the control of the Church. Hence, the
framers of the charter could not think of imparting education to Indians
without ecclesiastical agency. This explains the diplomatic language of the
Charter.
It would have been outraging the feelings of Indians to
have informed them of the ecclesiastical Department that they were going to be saddled
with, for the benefit of the Christian natives of England. Hence the diplomatic
language of the Charter Act.
Warren Hastings was asked by the Lords’ Committee:
“would the introduction of a Church establishment into the
British territories in the East Indies, probably be attended with any
consequences which would be injurious to the stability of the Government of
India?”
Sir Malcolm told the Lords Committee:
”With the most perfect conviction upon my mind, that, speaking humanly, the Christian religion has been the greatest blessing that could be bestowed on mankind….In the present extended state of our Empire, our security for preserving a power of so extraordinary a nature as that we have established, rests upon the general division of the great communities under the Government, and their subdivision into various castes and tribes; while they continue divided in this manner, no insurrection is likely to shake the stability of our power. “
”With the most perfect conviction upon my mind, that, speaking humanly, the Christian religion has been the greatest blessing that could be bestowed on mankind….In the present extended state of our Empire, our security for preserving a power of so extraordinary a nature as that we have established, rests upon the general division of the great communities under the Government, and their subdivision into various castes and tribes; while they continue divided in this manner, no insurrection is likely to shake the stability of our power. “
Hastings and Malcolm
and others, opposed the introduction of Christian missionaries in India and
imparting of knowledge to its inhabitants from considerations of political
expediency. But it was on grounds of political expediency, too, that these two
measures were advocated.
It was Charles
Grant, described as the Christian Director of the East India Company,
who was the first to press upon the British public the expediency of sending
Christian missionaries to India for the conversion of its heathen inhabitants,
and the imparting them education. We
read in his biography that Grant always kept his eye fixed on the chief object
of his heart – the evangelization of India. In order to succeed in his
endeavor, he did what the Christian missionaries are in the habit of doing to
this day, that is, vilifying, and painting the natives of India in the blackest
color possible.
Again he wrote: “By planting our language, our knowledge,
our opinions, and our religion, in our Asiatic territories, we shall put a
great work beyond the reach of contingencies; we shall probably have wedded the
inhabitants of those territories to this country.”
That is quite true. The Christian nations and countries of
the West sent missionaries of their faith to non-Christian nations, not so much
for the spiritual welfare of the latter, as for the worldly good which these
missionaries bring to the Christian nations.
That Indian patriot, Lala Lajpat Rai, who was deported out of India without any trial
and without knowing the nature of the charges against him, wrote in a letter
from America, which he visited in 1905:
“ The other day there was held a conference of
missionaries in which President Copen
is said to have advocated the extension of the mission work for the benefit of
the American trade. He said, in part, we need to develop foreign missions to
save our nation commercially….It is only as we develop missions that we shall
have a market in the Orient which will demand our manufactured articles in
sufficient quantities to match our increased facilities. The Christian man is our customer. The
heathen, has, as a rule, few wants. It is only when man is changed that
there comes this desire for the manifold articles that belonged to the
Christian man and the Christian home. The missionary is everywhere and always
the pioneer of trade..”
Commenting on the above extract, Lala Lajpat Rai very
rightly observed:
“The Indian admirers and friends of Christian missions ought to note this commercial ideal of the
American missionary. The missionary is not ‘the pioneer of trade’ only
but also the pioneer of the political supremacy of the Boston people of the
East. I think the frank statement of leading Christians ought to open the eyes
of all who see no danger in the work of the Christian Missions in the
East.”
If truth be told, it
must be admitted that Christian nations are not anxious to save the souls of
the heathens but wish to enrich themselves, and, therefore, send missionaries
to non-Christian lands. Charles Grant wanted
to keep the natives of India perpetually under the leading strings of his own
countrymen. He wrote that,
“We can foresee no period in which we may not govern our
Asiatic subjects, more happily for them than they can be governed by themselves
or any other power; and doing this we should not expose them to needless danger
from without and from within, by giving the
military power into their hands.”
According to him, neither conversion to
Christianity nor imparting of instruction to the natives was calculated to
inspire them with any desire for liberty. Neither Charles Grant nor the natives
of England were prompted by any motive of philanthropy or altruism to grant
these measures to India. It was sordid considerations of worldly gain which led
the people of England to adopt the above measures under the cloak of
philanthropy.
(source: Education
in India Under The Rule of the East India Company - By Major B. D. Basu
1934 2nd edition. Calcutta).
***
As the British came to India on a civilizing mission (Nandy, 1983), with the ideology of a tough, courageous, openly aggressive, and hypermasculine rulers (Nandy, 1987), India's traditional ways were discredited, disregarded, short-circuited and even ridiculed (Srinivas, 1999). The impact of colonialism was deep, causing depreciation and trivilization of ancient Indian knowledge and qualities, and all excellence "was abolished as effectively as by decree" (Anand, 1961, p.69), resulting in the denigration of native excellence. To the colonizers, the intellectual potential of the Indians was a fixed limited quantity, and not a variable. However, narrow scholasticism and a very limited view of Indian abilities received sanction in colonial India and thus excellence suffered from a particular stereotype (Gore, 1985).
As the British came to India on a civilizing mission (Nandy, 1983), with the ideology of a tough, courageous, openly aggressive, and hypermasculine rulers (Nandy, 1987), India's traditional ways were discredited, disregarded, short-circuited and even ridiculed (Srinivas, 1999). The impact of colonialism was deep, causing depreciation and trivilization of ancient Indian knowledge and qualities, and all excellence "was abolished as effectively as by decree" (Anand, 1961, p.69), resulting in the denigration of native excellence. To the colonizers, the intellectual potential of the Indians was a fixed limited quantity, and not a variable. However, narrow scholasticism and a very limited view of Indian abilities received sanction in colonial India and thus excellence suffered from a particular stereotype (Gore, 1985).
The education tradition of the colonial powers still
permeates practices in the post-colonial India and, indeed, the Westernization
of the educational system has been far greater since independence than under
British rule. This has produced a new
class that is ever looking towards Europe and America. Even after 50
years of independence in India, we have neither been able nor seem to be taking
effective steps towards liberating ourselves from the colonial domination.
Though similar concerns have been raised by scholars in various fields
including art and culture, the programs for identification and urturance of
excellence in India are heavily loaded with the classical Western thinking and
conceptualization, discrediting the indigenous notion of excellence.
(source: India's
search for excellence - By Raina, M.K, Srivastava, Ashok K -
Jan 2000, Vol. 22 Issue 2, p 102, 7p http://www.roeperreview.org/
).
Is the March over?
By Mario Cabral E Sa, Goa
Hindustan Today October, 1997
"When all are baptized, I order all temples of their
false gods destroyed and idols broken into pieces. I can
give you no idea of the joy I feel seeing this done."
By Mario Cabral E Sa, Goa
Hindustan Today October, 1997
"When all are baptized, I order all temples of their
false gods destroyed and idols broken into pieces. I can
give you no idea of the joy I feel seeing this done."
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
( My humble Pranam, Honour
and also gratefulness to
Ms. Sushma Londhe ji for her noble, magnanimous and eminent
works on the peerless Wisdom of our Sacred Scriptures)
(My
humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal
Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the
discovering collection)
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