Perhaps Sindhu, the river nearby was mis pronounced as Indu?....and Greeks might have called it Indus...as we can see that many "Proper Noun" in Greek, ends with letter "s"....Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
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Perhaps Sindhu, the river nearby was mis pronounced as Indu?....and Greeks might have called it Indus...as we can see that many "Proper Noun" in Greek, ends with letter "s"....Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
:shock: :evil: :oops:......machi, not jus the departments, our society in general doesnt care enuff! :evil:Quote:
Originally Posted by Surya
I mean, how many over here r like us.....? :(
And who is AMR btw??
Akbar the Great!
Talking of Hindu Genocide and what is Akbar doing here?
Because I think he was the only Muslim ruler who didnt try to destroy Hindus. Ofcource he was an emperor and he has fought wars with Hindu rulers (as well as Muslim).
This year is his 400th death anniversary but the government rejected grants for organizing history and literary events in commemoration without giving reason. But its said the reason is Muslims dont like him (because he gave up islam and started his own religion) and Hindus dont care.
Akbar the Great = A.M.R?? :? :roll:Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandeep
U mean Akbar MahaRaj? I dont recall him being calld tat......jus Samrat Akbar....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambretta
????
Whats A.M.R :? :? :?
SUPPRESSING INDIAN HISTORY
The anniversary of Ayodhya has come and passed. Once more, many of India’s intelligentsia felt that the destruction of the mosque has signalled the end of a certain tolerant India, for which secularism was the unifying factor and has planted a dangerous seed of Hindu “nationalism” in India’s psyche. Yet, one should remember that the Hindu ‘fundamentalists’ did not kill a single soul in Ayodhya, whereas the bombs planted a while later in revenge by Indian Muslims with the help of Pakistan, killed more than 350 innocent human beings. In fact, during its long history, Hinduism has been one of the most peaceful creeds in the world, accepting the reality of different beliefs, never trying to convert -even in a non-violent manner, like the Buddhists did in Asia - and submitting itself rather meekly, except for a Shivaji, a Guru Gobind or a Rani of Jhansi, to numerous invasions. The same thing cannot be said about Islam, whatever N. Ram says in Frontline. Many historians, amongst them Will Durant, Louis Frederick, or Alain Danielou, have remarked that the Muslim invaders were so certain that they were doing their holy duty by razing temples and killing Hindus, that they had recorded down carefully and proudly their deeds in their own archives.
Mahmud of Ghazni, for instance, who patronised art and literature, would recite a verse of the Koran every night after having razed temples and killed his quota of unbelievers. Firuz Shah Tughlak, personally confirms that the destruction of Pagan temples was done out of piety and writes: "on the day of a Hindu festival, I went there myself, ordered the executions of all the leaders and practionners of his abomination; I destroyed their idols temples and built mosques in their places". Aurangzeb did not just build an isolated mosque on a razed temple, as Romila Thapar would like us to believe, he ordered all temples destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishvanath, one of the most sacred places of Hinduism and had mosques built on a number of cleared temples sites. All other Hindu sacred places within his reach equally suffered destruction, with mosques built on them. A few examples: Krishna's birth temple in Mathura, the rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujurat, the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb is counted in 4, if not 5 figures. This is a small excerpt of his own official court chronicles: "Aurangzeb ordered all provincial governors to destroy all schools and temples of the Pagans and to make a complete end to all pagan teachings and practices". Or:: "Hasan Ali Khan came and said that 172 temples in the area had been destroyed... His majesty went to Chittor and 63 temples were destroyed. Abu Tarab, appointed to destroy the idol-temples of Amber, reported that 66 temples had been razed to the ground".. Aurangzeb did not stop at destroying temples, their users were also wiped-out; even his own brother, Dara Shikoh, was executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion and the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because he objected to Aurangzeb's forced conversions. As we can see Romila Thapar and Percival Spear's statement of a benevolent Aurangzeb is a flagrant attempt at negationism (the negation of historical crimes). Even the respectable Encyclopedia Brittannica in its entry on India, does not mention in its chapter on the Sultanate period any persecutions of Hindus by Muslims, except "that Firuz Shah Tughlaq made largely unsuccessful attempts at converting his Hindu subjects and sometime persecuted them".
Indian school books seem to have taken their cue from the Encyclopedia Brittannica , as there is hardly any mention of this dark aspect of India’s past. But why does India negate its history? We know that Nehru and Gandhi wanted to keep Pakistan within India and wished to avoid the splintering away of Muslim groups. But was it a good enough reason to suppress information about Muslim atrocities during ten centuries of bloody invasions and the massive destruction of Hindu temples ? On the contrary this has only created more terrorism. Denying and suppressing the history cannot keep the harmony. In its place, truth and reconciliation are necessary. Hiding the truth denies sympathy to the victim, civilization and culture. A nation unless, it is ready to face its own history - the Good and the Bad, the Courageous and the Cowardly - can never bloom into its full plenitude. Hidden aspects of its own history sooner or later will surface and bring with them the guilt, anger, regret, which are the necessary ingredients to wipe-off that particular black karma. In Germany, for instance, Germans have been reminded again and again about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II, and that has brought a sense of guilt, which has acted as a deterrent to future atrocities
The Jews have constantly tried, since the Nazi genocide, to keep alive the remembrance of their six million martyrs. This has got nothing to do with vengeance. Do the Jews of today want to retaliate upon contemporary Germany? No. It is only a matter of making sure that history does not repeat its mistakes, as alas it is doing today in India : witness the persecution of Hindus in Kashmir, whose 250.000 Pandits have fled their 5000 year old homeland, or the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan. To remember, is to be able to look at today with the wisdom of yesterday. No collective memory should be erased for appeasing a particular community. Hiding the facts and justifying past Muslim crimes has led to terrorism in the Indian sub-continent. Muslims were never held accountable. One of the first steps to curb violence is to make one aware of past mistakes. Guilt in the culprit and forgiveness in the victim can put an end to self-righteousness and the kind of terrorism we see today in Kashmir, in spite of India’s peace overtures.
An article by Francois Gautier.
ISLAM AND INDIA
Muslim invasions are still today a very controversial subject, since Indian history books have chosen to keep quiet about this huge chunk of Indian history - nearly 10 centuries of horrors. At Independence, Nehru too, put it aside, perhaps because he thought that this was a topic which could divide India, as there was a strong Muslim minority which chose to stay and not emigrate to Pakistan. Yet, nothing has marked India’s psyche - or the Hindu silent majority, if you wish - as much as the Muslim invasions. And whatever happens in contemporary India, is a consequence of these invasions, whether it is the creation of Pakistan, whether it is Kashmir, whether it is Ayodhya, or Kargil. There is no point in passing a moral judgment on these invasions, as they are a thing of the past. Islam is one of the world’s youngest religions, whose dynamism is not in question; unfortunately it is a militant religion, as it believes that there is only one God and all the other Gods are false. And so as long as this concept is ingrained in the minds of Muslims, there will be a problem of tolerance, of tolerating other creeds. And this is what happened in India from the 7th century onwards : invaders, who believed in one God, came upon this country which had a million gods… And for them it was the symbol of all what they thought was wrong. So the genocide - and the word genocide has to be used - which was perpetrated was tremendous, because of the staunch resistance of the 4000 year old Hindu faith. Indeed, the Muslim policy vis à vis India seems to have been a conscious and systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined. Entire cities were burnt down and their populations massacred. Each successive campaign brought hundreds of thousands of victims and similar numbers were deported as slaves. Every new invader often made literally his hill of Hindu skulls. Thus the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000, was followed by the annihilation of the entire Hindu population there; indeed, the region is still called Hindu Kush, 'Hindu slaughter'. The Bahmani sultans in central India, made it a rule to kill 100.000 Hindus a year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100.000 Hindus in a single day, and many more on other occasions. Historian Konraad Elst, in his book "Negationism in India", quotes Professor K.S. Lal, who calculated that the Hindu population decreased by eighty million between the year 1000 and 1525, indeed, probably the biggest holocaust in the world’s history, far greater than the genocide of the Incas in South America by the Spanish and the Portuguese.
Regrettably, there was a conspiracy by the British, and later by India’s Marxist intelligentsia to negate this holocaust. Thus, Indian students since the early twenties, were taught that that there never was a Muslim genocide on the person of Hindus, but rather that the Moghols brought great refinement to Indian culture. In "Communalism and the writing of Indian history", for instance, Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra, professors at the JNU in New Delhi, the Mecca of secularism and negationism in India, denied the Muslim genocide by replacing it instead with a conflict of classes :
”Muslims brought the notion of egalitarianism in India”, they argue. The redoubtable Romila Thapar in her "Penguin History of India", co-authored with Percival Spear, writes again : "Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance, is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares".
What are the facts, according to Muslim records ? Aurangzeb (1658-1707) did not just build an isolated mosque on a destroyed temple, he ordered all temples destroyed and mosques to be built on their site. Among them the Kashi Vishvanath, one of the most sacred places Hindu worship, Krishna's birth temple in Mathura, the rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujurat, the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb is counted in 5, if not 6 figures, according to his own official court chronicles: "Aurangzeb ordered all provincial governors to destroy all schools and temples of the Pagans and to make a complete end to all pagan teachings and practices"... "Hasan Ali Khan came and said that 172 temples in the area had been destroyed”... “His majesty went to Chittor and 63 temples were destroyed”… “Abu Tarab, appointed to destroy the idol-temples of Amber, reported that 66 temples had been razed to the ground". Aurangzeb did not stop at destroying temples, their users were also wiped-out; even his own brother, Dara Shikoh, was executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion and the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because he objected to Aurangzeb's forced conversions.
This genocide is still a reality which should not be wished away. Because what the Muslims invasions have done to India is to instil terror in the Hindu collective psyche, which still lingers many centuries later and triggers unconscious reactions. The paranoia displayed today by Indians, their indiscipline, their lack of charity for their own brethrens, the abject disregard of their environment, are a direct consequence of these invasions. What India has to do today, is to look squarely at the facts pertaining to these invasions and come to term with them, without any spirit of vengeance, so as to regain a little bit of self-pride. It would also help the Muslim community of India to acknowledge these horrors, which paradoxically, were committed against them, as they are the Hindus who were then converted by force, their women raped, their children taken into slavery – even though today they have made theirs the religion which their ancestors once hated.
By Francois Gautier from his public book 'Rewriting Indian history'
Perhaps we'll leave it to Surya to answer! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Sandeep
If people are willing to convert to Hinduism which caste will they be part of ? :D The religion itself restricts any conversion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
A master stroke to nullify all sensible voices.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
The Jews history is completely different from our histroy. Remembrance of past history leads to insecurity and thats the reason why they feel compelled to invade Palestine when there was no need to, which in turn increases anti semtism - this in turn increases the insecurity. Its a cycle. Inspite of being intelligent and talented, they are not able to lead a peacful life because of this insecurity. Do we want the same thing to happen to us. More over Israel is a country only for Jews, and they can write what they want in their History books about any other community. But the question is do we want to mention the past in our history books and make one community nervous and expect them to be filled with remorse for what we assume happened some 800yrs back.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
I persume if many Britons have decided to settle down in India and form a sizeable part of the Indian community then our Independence movement's history would also have been scaled down.
Its not hiding the fact, its showing compassion and understanding to the other community, shows the Indian greatness.
dsath,
A genocide remain a genocide !Quote:
The Jews history is completely different from our histroy.
The response to it can vary with time and how we perceive it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
Eelavar wrote: since Indian history books have chosen to keep quiet about this huge chunk of Indian history - nearly 10 centuries of horrors.
Agreed there was a genocide of Indians by the invading muslims, there is a conspicuous attempt to hide this fact for the same reason that hides the lower caste subjugation in the so called glorious vedic era as clearly elucidated by the vedas and manu sastra. The lack of unity in hinduism is mostly because of the casteism, and the definition of hinduism as propogated by certain section of the people. When the subjects are told that your sacred scriptures are vedas but you cannot read them, what sort of unity/sense of belonging can one expect ?
Is hinduism as practiced across the country has anything to do with vedas ?
Do we have a lot of temples across the country for the vedic gods ?
why the common practices of hindus across the regional affiliations appear similar and non vedic ?
untill the hijack of hinduism by the vedics is prevented, and the real essence of hinduism projected, there will be o unity among hindus, the attack stared with the vedics, continued with the muslims, gods knows who it could be in the future economic wars.
AMR mean, A. M. Rajagopalan, who is the chief edtor of Kumudam Jyothidam. He is a great astrologer (really great) and he is person who writes often about these things in the same magazine..Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambretta
www.kumudam.com
Not only Islam has this view, even Chritianity has the same view....I think only Sanaathana Dharma has a different view in this....Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
"Yepyanya Devatha Bhaktha Yajanthe Shraddhayaan Vitaha: |
Tepi Maameva Kountheya Yajanthey Vidhi Poorvakam||
this is a sloka from 9th chapter of Bhagavath Geetha, which says, whoever follows his way of life and prays to his own God( means Praying God in the way he wants) with sincerity in heart and do his Karma, will attain me (the Suprreme Almighty) by law...
So madam, do you mean to say, Genocide can become a service to the society when viewed from a different platform? I wish to see an example of such a situation, explained by you....Quote:
Originally Posted by dsath
Exactly! :oops: I've spoken to people about this, and there are people who argue that doing this would create a feeling of communalism amoung Indians...WTF?!?!?! :banghead: Sure, this creates a feeling of Communalism, but Politicians quoting "Hindu Enraal Thirudan" which was completly out of context is perfectly alright?! :roll: WHAT A SHAME! :|Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambretta
[tscii]:clap: :clap: :clap:Quote:
Originally Posted by Elavar
Wonderful Post Elavar! :clap: Thanks for posting that article. :)
Lamby and Sandeep,
Yeah it's already been explained by Srivatsan. :)
I think that AMR is more of a Social and Cultural Advisor rather than just a Astrologist. :)
Vedics? That's a term that is used over and over in this section of the hub, who are u reffering to when you say that? The hijack? What Hijack? Back in the day, when lower caste people were forbbiden to read the Vedas? If so, that so-called "Hijack" doesn't exist anymore. No one is ristricted from reading the Vedas anymore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mahadevan
If telling the truth is going to create a communal tension, then it is better be faced and be controlled with Iron fist....Truth is truth...If a sect of people, doesnt want to accept this, then they better accept. :twisted:Quote:
Originally Posted by Surya
dear Surya,
Thank you very much. :wink:
To all
AIT, Vedas and Caste system are the three most misunderstood subjects in India !
I will post articles which resume my opinion.
Please note that all those quotations are writted by an European who reconize, and who have admiration for the Indian civilisation, anciant as modern.
Francois Gautier is a french born journalist who live for more than 30 years in India, and know it well.
He wrote many books relating to the Indian society, he is really well informed.
dsath and mahadevan,
The caste system and the vedas are not what you think.
THE THREE GREAT DISINFORMATIONS ON INDIA
A civilisation is like the human soul: it has a childhood, where it struggles to learn; an adolescence where it discovers - sometimes painfully - the hard facts of life; an adulthood, where it enjoys the fruits of maturity; and an old age, which slowly leads to death and oblivion.
In this manner, since the dawn of human history, civilisations have risen, reached the top where they gravitate for some time, achieving their enduring excellence -and then slowly begin their descent towards extinction. Usually, old age for these civilisations meant that they fell prey to barbarians, because they had lost the vitality and the inner obedience to their particular genius, which they had possessed at the time of their peak and which had protected them. This has been a natural process and barbarians have played an important role in the evolution of humanity, for they made sure, in the most ruthless manner, that civilisations did not stagnate; because like a human being, a civilisation must die many times before it realises the fullness of its soul and attains divine perfection.
There have been many such great civilisations which rose and fell throughout the ages: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Africa, China, Greece, or Rome. Human nature being what it is, most of these civilisations established their might by military conquest and thus imposed their order and their views upon others, a process which some have called civilisation, others colonisation.
The advent of Jesus Christ heralded the rise of the European-Western civilisation, whose forerunners were the Greek and Roman cultures. For long, Europe was only a disunited lot of barbarian tribes fighting each other. The Crusades signalled the earliest attempt at unity, although the French and the British, for instance, kept warring each other long after them. Some of these nations were great seafarers. Thus Spain and Portugal for instance, reached out to the far world and colonised huge chunks of territories in the Americas from the 14th century onwards. But it can be safely said that with the industrial revolution, European civilisation started reaching its maturity at the beginning of the 19th century and that a great civilisation, whose genius was consciousness in the material, developed henceforth. Simultaneously, of course, as all other civilisations had done before, Europe started expanding outwards and imposed its own civilisation on other cultures, which had lost their vitality and were open to conquest. England, particularly, because it mastered the seas, went farther, faster and acquired more territories than other European nations, such as France, who often had to settle for the crumbs. And certainly, Great Britain’s prize possession, the jewel in its colonies, must have been India, whose mighty borders extended then from Afghanistan to Cape Comorin.
Western civilisation must be intimately associated with Christianity, even though Christianity took different forms over the ages : Protestantism, Lutheranism, Russian Orthodoxy... According to the Hindus, Jesus Christ was an "avatar", a direct emanation from God. Christ was surely a great avatar of love.And Christianity certainly had a softening influence on the Western world, where, let's face it, barbarism was the order of the day for many centuries. In the Middle Ages for instance, Christianity was the only island of sanity in a world of rape, black plague, murders and chaos; and as the Brahmins did in India, it was the Christians who preserved the oral and written word for posterity. There have been many great saints in Christianity, men of wisdom, who strove for divine vision in austerity. Such were Saint François of Assisi’s, who reached high spiritual experience. Saint Vincent de Paul, who practised true Christian charity. Or Saint Gregory, who attained authentic knowledge. Unfortunately, Christianity, got somehow politicised and fossilised under the influence of corrupt popes and has often become a magma of dogmas, rites, do’s and don’t.
Generally, because all Christians believed - like the Muslims - that only their God was the true one, The Christian colons sought to impose upon the people they conquered their own brand of religion - and they used the military authority of their armies to do so. It is true that this was done in good faith, that the « soldiers of Christ » thought that the civilisations they stumbled upon were barbarous, pagan and incomprehensible. True also that they sincerely believed that they brought upon these « savages » the virtues of western civilisation: medicine, education and spiritual salvation. But the harm done by Christian missionaries all over the earth will never be properly assessed. In South America, the Spanish soldiers and priests annihilated, in the name of Jesus, an entire civilisation, one of the brightest ever, that of the Incas and the Aztecs. Everywhere the Christians went, they stamped mercilessly on cultures, eradicated centuries old ways of life, to replace them with totally inadequate systems, crude, Victorian, moralistic, which slowly killed the spontaneity of life of the people they conquered. They were thus able to radically alter civilisations, change their patterns of thinking. And three generations later the children of those who had been conquered, had forgotten their roots, adapted Christianity and often looked upon their conquerors as their benefactors.
Yet a few years ago, the West was able to celebrate the anniversary of Columbus, discoverer of the "New World" with fanfare and pomp. But the New World was already quite old when it was discovered by the young Barbarians, much older in fact than the fledgling Western civilisation. And Columbus, however courageous and adventurous, was a ruthless man, whose discovery of the New World triggered an unparalleled rape in human history.
Yet, not only the West still deifies Columbus, but no one in the Third World has been capable to challenge coherently that undeserved status.
The truth is that today, not only in the Western world, but also in the entire so-called developing world, we are constantly looking at things and events through a prism that has been fashioned by centuries of western thinking. and as long as we do not get rid of that tainted glass we will not understand rightly the world in general and India in particular.
For the stamp of Western civilisation will still take some time to be eradicated. By military conquest or moral assertiveness, the West imposed upon the world its ways of thinking; and it created enduring patterns, subtle disinformations and immutable grooves, which play like a record that goes on turning, long after its owner has attainded the age of decline. The barbarians who thought they had become « civilized », are being devoured by other barbarians. But today, the economic might has replaced the military killing machine.
By F.Gautier
THE FIST DISINFORMATION ON INDIA: THE ARYAN INVASIONS
The theory of the Aryan invasion is still taken as the foundation stone of the History of India. According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and archaeologists, the first inhabitants of India were good-natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds, called the Dravidians, who had founded what is called the Harappan - or Valley of the Indus civilisation. They were supposedly remarkable builders, witness the city of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistani Sind, but had no culture to speak-off, no litterature, no proper script even. Then, around 1500 B.C., India is said to have been invaded by tribes called the Aryans : white-skinned, nomadic people, who originated somewhere in Western Russia and imposed upon the Dravidians the hateful caste system. To the Aryans, are attributed Sanskrit, the Vedic - or Hindu religion, India’s greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as well as a host of subsequent writings, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, the Ramanaya, etc…
This was indeed a masterly stroke on the part of the British : thanks to the Aryan theory, they showed on the one hand that Indian civilisation was not that ancient and that it was posterior to the cultures which influenced the western world - Mesopotamia, Sumeria, or Babylon - and that whatever good things India had developed - Sanskrit, literature, or even its architecture, had been influenced by the West. Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being the mother of all Indo-European languages, became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the religion of Zarathustra is said to have influenced Hinduism, and not vice versa. And on the other hand, it divided India and pitted against each other the low caste dark-skinned Dravidians and the high caste light-skinned Aryans, a rift which is till enduring.
But today, this theory is being challenged by two new discoveries, one archaeological and the other linguistic. Firstly, in the Rig Veda, the Ganges, India’s sacred river, is only mentioned once, but the mythic Saraswati is praised FIFTY times. For a long time, the Saraswati river was indeed considered a myth, until the American satellite Landstat was able to photograph and map the bed of this magnificent river, which was nearly fourteen kilometres wide and took its source in the Himalayas. Archaeologist Paul-Henri Francfort, who studied the Saraswati region at the beginning of the nineties, found out that the Saraswati had "disappeared", because around 2200 B.C., an immense drought reduced the whole region to aridity and famine. "Thus, he writes, most inhabitants moved away from the Saraswati to settle on the banks of the Indus and Sutlej rivers". According to official history, the Vedas were composed around 1500 BC, some even say 1200 BC. Yet, the Rig Veda, describes India as it was BEFORE the great drought which dried-up the Saraswati, which means in effect that the so-called Indus, or Harappan civilisation was a CONTINUATION of the Vedic epoch, which ended approximately when the Saraswati dried-up.
Recently, the famous Indus seals, discovered on the site of Mohenja Daro and Harappa, have been reportedly deciphered by Dr N. Rajaram, a mathematician who worked at one time for the NASA and Dr Jha, a distinguished linguist. In the biased light of the Aryan invasion theory, these seals were presumed to be written in a crude Harappan (read Dravidian) script, although they had never been convincingly deciphered. But according to Rajaram and Jha “the Harappan Civilization, of which the seals are a product, belonged to the latter part of the Vedic Age. It had close connections with Vedantic works like the Sutras and the Upanishads. The style of writing reflects the short aphorisms found in Sutra works. The imagery and symbolism are strongly Vedic. The vocabulary depends heavily on the Vedic glossary Nighantu and its commentary by Yaska known as the Nirukta. The name of Yaska is found on at least two seals ‹ possibly three. There are references to Vedic kings and sages as well place names. Of particular interest are references to Plakshagra ‹ the birthplace of the Sarasvati River, and Sapta Apah or the Land of the Seven Rivers.
This means that the Rigveda must already have been quite ancient by the time of the Harappan Civilization. Since the Harappan Civilization was known to be flourishing in the 3100 * 1900 BC period, the Rigveda must have been in existence by 4000 BC. This now receives archaeological support following R.S. Bisht¹s investigation of the great Harappan city of Dholavira. Bisht (and other archaeologists) have concluded that the Vedic Aryans of the Sarasvati heartland were the people who created the Harappan cities and the civilization associated with it”.
Sri Aurobindo, too, India's greatest yogi, poet, philosopher- and surely its most ardent revolutionary- spoke against the Aryan theory: "We shall question many established philological myths,-the legend for instance of an Aryan invasion from the North, the artificial and inimical distinction of the Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race... Like the majority of educated Indians, I had passively accepted without examination, the conclusion of European scholarship"(India's Rebirth, page 103)... He also shatters the myth of the difference of language to support the theory of meeting of races: «But here also my preconceived ideas were disturbed and confounded. For on examining the vocabulary of the Tamil language, in appearance so foreign to the Sanskrit form and character, I yet found myself continuously guided by words, or families of words supposed to be pure Tamil, in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable not only suggested the connection but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through this Dravidian language that I came first to perceive what seems to me now the true law, origins and, as it were, the embryology of the Aryan tongues...The possibility suggests itself that they may even have been two diversions, or families derived from one lost primitive tongue».(India's 104)
Hence, it is becoming more and more clear that there probably never was an Aryan Invasion in India, a theory which was imposed upon the subcontinent by its colonisers and is today kept alive by Nehruvian historians, Christian missionaries (it is thus easy to convert the downtrodden tribals and Dravidians, by telling them that Hinduism was a religion thrust upon them by the hated "Brahmin" invaders) and the communists (who hate anything Hindu. History should be rewritten so that Indian children learn to be proud of their ancient and INDIGENOUS civilisation - and the consequences of this new theory applied not only to Asia, but also to the entire history of the whole world.
By Francois Gautier quotation from his public book 'Arise O India'
THE SECOND DISINFORMATION: THE CASTE SYSTEM
Even more than the Aryans-Dravidians divide and the Vedas, the caste system has been the most misunderstood, the most vilified subject of Hindu society at the hands of Western scholars and even today by "secular" Indians. But ultimately if one wants to understand the truth, the original purpose behind the caste system, one must go back to the Vedas. "Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the principle on which this distribution was based was peculiar to India. A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which alone would qualify him for the task. The Kshatryia was Kshatryia not merely because he was the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high courage and manhood of action, and he had to cultivate the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties. So it was for the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth for the race and the Shudra who discharged the humbler duties of service without which the other castes could not perform their share of labour for the common, good". (Sri Aurobindo, in India's Rebirth, p 26).
Many Indian sages have even gone even further than Sri Aurobindo, arguing that in the occult relation India had with the Universal Force, each one was born in the caste CORRESPONDING to his or her spiritual evolution. There are accidents, misfits, errors, they say, but the system seems to have worked pretty well untill modern times when it got perverted by the vagaries of materialism and western influence. Can one accept such a theory? Sri Aurobindo, while praising the original caste system, does not spare it in its later stages: "it is the nature of human institutions to degenerate; there is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth... By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. the spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present condition...(India's Rebirth, p 27). And the Barbarians came !
But finally, have the people who dismiss caste as an Aryan imposition on the Dravidians, or as an inhuman and nazi system, ever attempted to understand its original purpose and genius? Is it really worse than the huge class differences you can see nowadays in Europe ? And can you really exclude it today off-hand, when it still survives so much in the villages - and even in more educated circles, where one still marries in matching castes, with the help of an astrologer? Does the caste system need to be transformed, to recapture its old meaning and once more incarnate a spiritual hierarchy of beings? Or has it to be recast in a different mould, taking into account the parameters of modern Indian society? Or else, will it finally disappear altogether from India, because it has become totally irrelevant today ?
At any rate, Hindus should not allow it to be exploited shamelessly against them, as it has been in the last two centuries, by missionnaries, "secular" historians, Muslims, and by pre and post-independance Indian politicians -each for their own purpose.
THE THIRD DISINFORMATION: THE VEDAS
The third piece of disinformation concerns the Vedic religion. Ah, the Vedas! So much misconception, so many prejudices, so much distortion have been spewed about this monument of a book, this unparalleled epic. French historian Danielou, for instance, maintains that the original Vedas « were an oral Dravidian tradition, which was reshaped by the Aryans and later put down in Sanskrit ». According to Danielou, the Mahabarata is the story of how the low caste Dravidians = the Pandavas, revolted against the high caste Aryans =the Kauravas, who had enslaved them during their conquest - and won, helped by the dark-skinned Krishna, a Dravidian of course. Danielou finds lineage between the Vedic religion and the Persian religion (Zarathustra), as well as the Greek Gods; the problem is that he seems to imply that the Vedic religion may have sprung from the Zoroastrian creed! He also puts down all Vedic symbols as purely physical signs: for instance Agni is the fire that should always burn in the house's altar. Finally, he sees in the Rig-Veda "only a remarkable document on the mode of life, society and history of the Aryans".(Histoire de l'Inde, page 62)
But Danielou must be the mildests of all critics. The real disinformation started again with the missionnaries, who saw in the Vedas "the root of the evil", the source of paganism and went systematically about belittling it. The Jesuits, in their dialectical cleverness, brought it down to a set of pagan offerings without great importance. Henceforth, this theory was perpetuated by most Western historians, who not only stripped the Vedas of any spiritual value, but actually post-dated them to approximately 1500 to 1000 years B.C. It is very unfortunate that these theories have been taken-up blindly and without trying to ascertain their truth, by many Indian historians and sociologists such as Romila Tharpar.
And even when more enlightened foreigners like Max Mueller, whose Sanskrit scholarship cannot be denied, took up the Vedas, they only saw "that it is full of childish, silly, even monstrous conceptions, that it is tedious, low, commonplace, that it represents human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness and that only here and there are a few rare sentiments that come from the depths of the soul'
If there ever was one who disagreed with the Western view, be it of Danielou, or Max Mueller on the Vedas, it was Sri Aurobindo : "I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy, but Veda -the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, but also about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world, the truth which is beyond opinion, the knowledge which all thought strives after -'yasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam' (which being known, all is known). I believe that Veda be the foundation of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism, -but a veil has to be drawn aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I belive it to be knowable and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the world depends on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life in the world and among men". (India's Rebirth, page 90)
Sri Aurobindo contended that Europeans have seen in the Vedas "only the rude chants of an antique and pastoral race sung in honor of the forces of nature and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intellect". But he insisted that a time must come "when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in perfect freedom into the meaning of its own scriptures". He argued that the Veda remains the foundation of Indian culture: "the Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge, the Veda will remain its end. The recovery of the perfect truth of the Veda is therefore not merely a desideratum for our modern intellectual curiosity, but a practical necessity for the future of the human race. For I firmly believe that the secret concealed in the Veda, when entirely discovered, will be found to formulate perfectly that knowledge and practice of divine life to which the march of humanity, after long wanderings in the satisfaction of the intellect and senses, must inevitably return." (India's rebirth, 94)
What is the Secret of the Vedas? First we have to discard the ridiculously early dates given by historians and bring it back to at least 4000 BC. Why did historians show such an eagerness in post-dating the Vedas and making of them just a mumble-jumble of pagan superstition? Because it would have destroyed the West's idea of its own supremacy: primitive barbarism could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions so early, particularly when the Westerners have started our era after the birth of Christ and decreed that the world began on 23rd October 4004 B.C...!
Secondly, the Vedic seers, who had attained the ultimate truth, had clothed their oral findings in symbols and images, so that only the initiated would understand the true meaning of their aphorisms. For the more ordinary souls, "those who were not yet twice born", it meant only an outer worship which was fit for their level of spiritual evolution. The Vedic rituals, has lost its profound meaning to us. Therefore, as Sri Aurobindo elucidates, when we read: "Sarama by the path of the Truth discovers the herds", the mind is stopped and baffled by an unfamiliar language. It has to be translated to us.. into a plainer and less figured thought: "Intuitions by the way of Truth arrive at the hidden illuminations". (India's rebirth, 109) Lacking the clues, we only see in the Vedas a series of meaningless mouthings about the herds or the Sun. Sri Aurobindo remarks that the Vedic rishis "may not have yoked the lighting to their chariots, nor weighed sun and star, nor materialized all the destructive forces of Nature to aid them in massacre and domination, but they had measured and fathomed all the heavens and earth within us, they had cast their plummet into the inconscient and the subconscient and the supraconscient; they had read the riddle of death and found the secret of immortality; they had sought for and discovered the One and known and worshipped Him in the glories of His light and purity and wisdom and power". (India's rebirth, 116)
Ah, these are the two secrets of the Vedas, then, the reason why they have remained so obscure and lost their original meaning. Firstly, the Vedic rishis had realized that God is One, but He takes many faces in His manifestation; this is the very foundation of Hinduism. And Secondly, the Vedic rishis had gone down in their minds and their bodies all the way to the roots of Death, to that eternal question which haunts humanity since the beginning of times: why death? What is the purpose of living if one has alaways to die? Why the inevitable decay and oblivion? And there, in their own bodies, at the bottom rock of the Inconscient, they had discovered the secret of immortality, which Sri Aurobindo called later the Supramental and which he said was the next step in humanity's evolution... "Not some mysterious elixir of youth, but the point, the spring where All is One and death disappears in the face of the Supreme Knowledge and Ananda." (India's rebirth, 95)
Is this then the work of a few uncivilized sheperds, who had colonized the poor Dravidians? No wonder the West cannot recognize the Vedas for what they are, the whole foundation of their moral domination would then collapse.
All the subsequent scriptures of Hinduism derive from the Vedas, even though some of them lost sight of the original Vedic sense. The Vedas are the foundations of Indian culture; the greatest power of the Vedic teaching, that which made it the source of all later Indian philosophies, religions, systems of yoga, lay in its application to the inner life of man. Man lives in the physical cosmos, subject to death and the falsehood of mortal existence. To rise beyond death, to become one of the immortals, he has to turn from the falsehood to the Truth; he has to turn onto the Light, to battle with and conquer the powers of Darkness. This he does by communion with the Divine Powers and their aid; the way to call down these aids was the secret of the vedic mystics. "The symbols of the outer sacrifice are given for this purpose in the manner of the Mysteries all over the world an inner meaning; they represent a calling of the Gods into the human being, a connecting sacrifice, an intimate interchange, a mutual aid, a communion".(Foundations of Indian Culture. p 145). Sri Aurobindo also emphasizes that the work that was done in this period became the firm bedrock of India's spirituality in later ages and from it "gush still the life-giving waters of perennial never failing inspiration".
dsath,
The caste system during the succesive invasions was perverted !
At the beginning the caste system was not as the actual duty manipulated and corrupted system.
At the beginning it a was wonderful social-economic system which permit to one who work to live a decent life as an another citizen ! It was better than capitalism and communism togheter !
Another important fact, the old caste system was not hereditary as now !
Your caste was CHOICED in function of your own capacities !
Persons of the same family could be of different castes !
Friends,
Read those quotations fully, it's very interesting from the beginning to the end !
My views following these lines...Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
sanskrit and tamil were different dialects of the same language, that, at some point of time, became totally incomprehensible to both sides.
The initial people were farmers. To protect their crops from animals, they started appointing strong people as kathiriyars, these people probably being the strongest of them. Their primary responsibility is to guard. As they started piling the produce, they started trading with other people. Since everyone cannot go to other places to trade, again, specific people were there to do that. Later these people also went overseas. ( note: its said that the first major export from india to europe was pepper. ta: vasikam - pepper. vasikar - vanikar - pepper people. thirayar - sea people). Finally comes the natural disasters - flood, storms and famine. Someone had to study nature, come up with explanation why these happen and solution to prevent / evade these. These were the brahmins.
Since these people had the duty to protect the crops, trade and to predict nature (which till today is a challenge), they couldnt do any other tasks. In reply, the farmers will share food with them. Later there could have been subdivision of these castes based on specific duties - velan, pallan, rayan etc. These people were called suthirars ( technicians)
A person is born a brahmin/ kathiriyan/ vasikar / suthirar : This is the most commonly misinterpreted statement. Even today, we agree that some people are born intelligent, born brave, born businessman etc. My understanding is this statement says "When a person is born, he/she has some skill associated with him and he becomes that". There is no statement which says that a person has to take up the work / caste his family is into. In short, for instance, a person who is "born a brahmin", not necessarily belongs to a "brahmin family". The person's father could be a "suthirar" and mother could be a "vasikar". unfortunately most of the old texts have been misinterpreted and are being followed in the wrong sense.
The statement "if a brahmin makes a mistake, he shall be forgiven" implies that since the duties of a brahmin(not a person born by a brahmin) are related to nature, which can never be expected to yield proper results, his mistakes shall be forgiven.
In tamil, "aiyam" = "odu". A brahmin is not supposed to have anything to his own. He had to beg or "look at others" even for food. That's why they are called "(ethir)parpar". That is the primary reason, brahmins were treated as next to god. Since they dedicated their life for the well being of others. Again, nowhere does it say that a brahmin is a person born in a brahmin family.
The tamil word "kalai" refers to dialect. Brahmins are broadly classified as "vadakalai" and "thenkalai" - northern and southern dialects. To my understanding, almost all of the "vadakalai" brahmins prefer sanskrit. The "thenkalai" brahmins prefer tamil. But in general, the "thenkalai" brahmins do not have great madams like the "vadakalai" brahmins and hence, we think that all brahmins prefer sanskrit.
Even untouchability seems to be a misinterpretation to me. If I say "no one touches my friend while I am here", it doesnt literally mean "to touch". Similarly, the original text could have meant something like that. Also, since these people were mostly doing a lot of brain work, they were physically weak. (Even today it is true. Look at the people in IT. They are much weaker than the factory workers. A small contamination and they fell ill.) So people had to be clean before feeding the brahmins. Also, the brahmins themselves had to be clean.
These have been twisted in some later point of time and have been totally mistaken. With the arrival of christian missionaries, who can never understand either the indian languages or culture or hinduism, everything has been diverted and we started believing what they wanted us to believe.
manyvan2000 wrote
Totally agree. But we must not forgot that Christians were not the first invaders !Quote:
These have been twisted in some later point of time and have been totally mistaken. With the arrival of christian missionaries, who can never understand either the indian languages or culture or hinduism, everything has been diverted and we started believing what they wanted us to believe.
This corrupted system is so not only due to christians missionaries.
In fact, the old system was attacked by every invaders.
Of course. I did not deny that. In fact, the system was misunderstood even before the invaders. The effects of our mistake became worse with invaders and the worst with the advent of the missionaries.Quote:
Totally agree. But we must not forgot that Christians were not the first invaders !
This corrupted system is so not only due to christians missionaries.
In fact, the old system was attacked by every invaders.
So much for tolerance in an Islamic country
Hindu temple demolished in Malaysia
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Kuala Lumpur, April 21: Malaysian authorities have bulldozed a century-old Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur, as devotees cried and begged them to stop, Hindu groups said today.
The Malaimel Sri Selva Kaliamman Temple was reduced to rubble after Kuala Lumpur's city hall sent in bulldozers, they said.
In a complaint to police, the temple's vice-president, Subramaniam Ragappan, said about 300 devotees were praying Tuesday when the bulldozers arrived, accompanied by police and city hall officials.
"We were forced to stop our prayers and (rituals) halfway as they proceeded to tear down the temple," he said in a copy of the complaint obtained by a news agency.
A copy of a letter from city hall to a local lawmaker, who had asked for the temple to be left intact, said the demolition was going ahead to make way for a building project.
City hall officials were not immediately available for comment.
Subramaniam said city hall tried in 2001 and again in 2004 to tear down the building, which was on government land, but had been dissuaded by politicians.
"Everybody was crying and saying how could the government do this, but they still broke the temple," he told the news agency. (Agencies)
mahadevan, i find it's a very ugly act !
If in modern time it sill happen, just imagine how many of those temples were destroyed and remplaced by Islamists in the past.
Unbelievably shocking!! :shock: :oops: :( :evil:Quote:
Originally Posted by Eelavar
This is not a shock for me....this is quite usual...my surprize is, how this temple was left unrazed so far... :shock:Quote:
Originally Posted by mahadevan
Dear Hubbers,
Although I do agree with ur comments 100%, I do think that we should be a little more discreet or polished about our views on current events if we want this thread to stand, because the Mods will lock it. Being too open about our Socio Political ideas will have dire concequences @ the hub since it's a mixture of different minds. Trust me, I would know. :oops: I've been on the verge of getting banned numerous times because of it. :)
Oops! Ur rite, Suri machi! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Surya
We shudnt go overboard w/ our ocmments....! Tks for highlighting us on this! :D
i think the worsest genocide we r going through is hindus converting into other religions!
especially in foreign countries, those christian sects gives money for converting from hinduism to christianity!
i dont get the point why hindus converts at all! doesn't ur God said that he is everywhere and he is everyone, then why convert? if u feel some religions r better than hinduism then practise it, ur religion or god didnt say that u should only worship him, to the contrary of other religions!?
Lamby Machi, :thumbsup: :D :D
Crazy,
Xtian Conversion in India has nothing to do with Faith. Hmm..Conversion is sort of a "Hot Button" issue @ the hub....let me be as polished as possible. :)
No Offence or anything to Any Xtian Friends @ the hub....I'm just saying this in regards to the Foreign Missionaries....
Why Hindus Convert? What Tactics do these Missionaries use to convert Hindus....
*Caste System. Offered Escape From It if Converted to Xtianity. (Not True. The Converted People still call themselves "Brahmin Converted" or "Thevar Converted" etc etc. :)
*Money. Offered Money when in a tight situation. For Ex. A personal situaton. A few years ago, my cousin fell fatally ill. She was admitted in a Hosp in Chennai, the bills kept piling up, and after a couple years, my Uncle no longer had the financial Capability to pay the bills. He was approached by an Xtian Mission. They Claimed that they would Pay My Uncle everything he has spent so far, and also pay the forthcoming bills. But the catch was, he had to change his faith. My Family is a very strong Hindu Family, and when he heard this, he said that there was no way of that happening. Later on he got financial help for the expences from Us, and other Family Members. My cousin now works in New York, she is completly recovered, she's still a strong hindu, and she's doing great. But the point is that, usually people do convert when in that situation. These Missions which are funded from Foreign Countries take advantage of the financial situation of Hindus.
Nothing wrong in Preaching One's Religion, as long as it is the Religion's Philosophy and Ideas which are being preached.
I'm going to stop here, because it's getting way off of the topic. But if you fele like you must know more, then go This Link to learn about it. :) We could create another thread, but that wouldn't stand. :)
iam not talking about whats happening in india. iam talking about how ppl convert from hinduism to other religion in foreign countries!Quote:
Originally Posted by Surya
and they do convert not b'coz of caste system or money! most of those ppl have enough money, they convert b'coz of ................god know why!
thank u surya for ur links!
that was intresting! i just read about portuguese ruined jaffna!