Hindus are under siege: Dr Subramanian Swamy
Sunday, 08.26.2007, 11:29pm (GMT-7)


India Post News Service

NEW JERSEY: Hindus in India should vote as a Hindu block to counter the Muslim and Christian vote banks which have been cultivated by political leaders in India, said former Indian Cabinet minister Dr. Subramanian Swamy. This was one of the many solutions Swamy offers to counter what he calls "the siege" that Hindus are under in India. Giving a talk on 'Hindus Under Siege' - a topic on which he has also written a book - at the Dwarakadhish Temple in Parlin, New Jersey, Swamy said, "Muslims and Christians vote as a block, so Hindus should also do the same.

To bring about political change, people's resolve is important because it is they who make the leaders." Swamy, who is currently fighting legal and political battles in India to save Hindu temples from government interference; the preservation of the Rama Setu (the bridge Lord Rama is known to have built between India and (Sri) Lanka); and restoration of the dignity of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, who was implicated in a murder and incarcerated by the previous Jayalalitha government in Tamil Nadu, has taken on a crusading role to reverse the severe anti-Hindu tendency of political leaders and mainstream media in India.

Having been in the US over the last two months as a visiting professor at Harvard University, he addressed the Indian American community in New Jersey and the Hindu Sangathan Diwas celebrations in Queens, New York over the weekend of Aug 18-19. According to Swamy, the biggest problem facing India today is religious conversions.

"It is always the Hindus that are converted to Christians or Muslims," Swamy pointed out. Why is it that one never hears of Muslims or Christians being converted to Hindus? That is because the government immediately intervenes to stop such conversions." Swamy said that all kinds of Western riff-raff are coming to India to undertake mass conversions of Hindus and the Indian government is doing nothing to stop it.

"These indiscriminate conversions of Hindus are a key dimension of the siege," he said. Another aspect of Hindu denigration, Swamy pointed out was the misrepresentation of Hindus and Hinduism in text books in countries like the US. The next is the rubbishing of Hindu religious icons, he said, citing the example of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi. Swamy pointed out that in India, only Hindu temples are subject to controls under the law - under the Hindu Temple and Charitable Trust Act -- while all other religious institutions are completely autonomous.

He said that only 6 percent of the temple income (Hundi collections and donations) is utilized for the upkeep of the temples, while the government takes away 94 percent of the money given to temples by Hindu devotees, for subsidizing Mosques and giving Muslims Hajj subsidies; and for Church renovations. The reason the governments get away with such injustice is because there is no united protest from Hindus, said Swamy. To show how a little protest and a united front can go a long way, Swamy cited the example of how the sacred Tirumala Hills were saved from government take over when Hindu religious leaders led a protest against the move.

"The government of Andhra Pradesh had made a move to take over four of the seven Tirumala hills in Tirupati, which house the sacred Balaji Temple. But they had to quickly withdraw their move when Swami Dayanand Saraswati rallied a huge protest. So, all we need is a little protest and they will fall in line," he said. On the Rama Setu issue, Swamy said he is fighting a legal suit to stop its destruction to make way for the Sethusamudram tunnel project as proposed by the government of India. Having received a stay from the Supreme Court, Swamy assured, "Nobody can touch the Rama Setu, and I can assure you that. It is sacred to Hindus and the Lord himself is there to protect it." In order to fight the anti-Hindu forces, it was not enough for Hindus to merely affirm their Hindu identity by visiting temples and celebrating Hindu festivals like Diwali, he said.

"That is no enough. All tormentors of Hindus in India are Hindus themselves. It is the politicians who do this for votes. If you want a genuinely secular government, Hindus must unite. They should follow a Hindu agenda." Elaborating on the Hindu agenda, Swamy said, "First and foremost we need to be clear about our identity. We are an ancient Hindu nation and all others living here have to acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus." Second, he said, Hindus have to develop a common language.

"Hindi as the national language is doing well. However, the base for most Indian languages is Sanskrit. Start learning Sanskrit and make it a vehicle to connect all Hindus," he exhorted. Swamy further said that NASA too had concluded in its journal that Sanskrit was the most perfect language to use as a medium for the preservation of its artificial intelligence.

Third on the agenda, Swamy said, was to learn the correct history of India. He said it was not true to say that India had been ruled and subjugated by foreign rulers over the centuries. "India is the only country where despite the Islamic and British rulers over more than a thousand years, has retained its Hindu identity. Hindus could never be subdued. We are the only ones who successfully fought outsiders." Lastly, he said, Hindus should adopt the concept of retaliation to deal with terrorism, especially in Kashmir.

"You cannot deal with terrorists with reason, the only way is to retaliate," he reiterated. Following the talk, a short film on the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, who have been languishing as refugees in their own country for more than a decade now, was shown to the gathering. The Q&A session that followed reflected the concern the audience felt over the potential threat to Hindus in India.

SRIREKHA N. CHAKRAVARTY

Thank God We have Dr. Subramanian Swamy to lead us!

Leaders alarmed by court remark

Swamy sees plot to sabotage Sethu

NT Bureau
Chennai, Aug 28:

Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy today alleged that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Tamilnadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and Union Ministers T R Baalu and Ambika Soni have planned to sabotage Ramar Sethu as they were against the court observation that the bridge should not be touched pending a hearing of a PIL.

Speaking to reporters here, Swamy said, 'I'll be approaching the Supreme Court on 31 August to seek a formal injunction against the execution of the project since the government was bent on committing this act.'

He claimed that alarmed by the Madras High Court's observation on the PIL filed against the Sethu Samudaram Canal that it should not be touched until the hearing ends on his PIL, the leaders were in a haste to destroy Ramar Sethu.

Stating that NASA had denied government's claim that it had sent an e-mail referring to Ramar Sethu as a natural formation, he said he had visited NASA in Houston, Texas, and the authorities had told him that they had never sent any such e-mail and that to infer any such fact about Sethu is a 'misrepresentation and mischievous'.

Swamy also demanded the Election Commission to set up an enquiry and investigative body to prepare an authoritative report on the hacking of Electronic Voting Machines.

On the nuclear deal, he said the agreement should be negotiated until US recognised India as a nuclear weapon State and that there was no need for signing the non-proliferation treaty which denies India access to nuclear technology.

THE CONCEPT OF SOUL – A LIVELY DISCUSSION AT THE ADVAITA LIST.

Mahesh Ursekar:

Pranams!

If we manage to create life from scratch, does that debunk the soul theory?

See below:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249628/

Your valuable views would be appreciated,

Thanks, Mahesh

Ramesh Krishnamurthy:

And what is the "soul theory"?

Mahesh Ursekar:

The theory that, after the death of a human being, there exists an entity called the soul that persists and continues to take a new birth. If we create life using chemicals in a laboratory, it appears that the human being is nothing but matter and after death the result is "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".

kuntimaddi sadananda:

PraNAms

What is normally called 'soul' in advaita is the presence of subtle body which is conducive for the
illumination or reflection of the all pervading consciousness. When the physical matter is conducive (with proper DNAs and RNA etc)and properly assembled for the subtle body to enter and manifest its karma, then we can say the consciousness get reflected through that subtle body to the physical body – which can now respond to the external stimulus. We now say that matter is living.

When the subtle body leaves that matter due to unfavorable circumstances (say heated up to high degree etc) then composite (assembled or otherwise) we say it is dead.

Consciousness is all pervading - it cannot be created or annihilated. But whether it can express as life or not depending on the upaadhis. What science can do is assemble the matter imitating the existing living structure and see if subtle body, which makes the gross matter to respond to stimulus, can enter in that assembled matter.

The law is wherever and whenever the upaadhis – both gross and subtle are capable of reflecting the consciousness, they will.

Scientists do not create life.

Hari Om!

Sadananda

Mahesh Ursekar:

Pranams!

Ok. That is a viable theory. But consider its consequences -

If you believe in the evolutionary theory, then the first "living" organism was a prokaryote cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology) This includes organisms like bacteria & archaea. Scientists believe that it was most likely that a phagocyte engulfed a prokaryote cell, resulting in the creation of eukaryote cells. Our body parts are composed largely of eukaryote cells. (This para is to the best of my understanding)

Now my question to you is - both prokaryote and eukaryote cells are living entities. Our body contains millions of cells of both categories. Now according to your theory, the enlivining force of all living entities are subtle bodies. Does that mean that I, as a human being, am host to other
subtle bodies too? That doesn't sound right. Or do subtle bodies somehow differentiate between the two aforementioned "living" cells and hence we can say bacteria have subtle bodies but skin cells don't?

Thanks, Mahesh

Sundaresan, Vidyasankar:

"The theory that, after the death of a human being, there exists an entity called the soul that persists and continues to take a new birth. If we create life using chemicals in a laboratory, it appears that the human being is nothing but matter and after death the result is "ashes to ashes, dust to dust".

The "if" is a tall order, indeed. Creating life using chemicals in a laboratory means that a scientist will have to

A. synthesize every single DNA/RNA molecule, including every nucleotide that goes into DNA/RNA,a

B. synthesize every single enzyme needed for DNA/RNA function, including every amino acid that goes into each enzyme,

C. create every single molecule of the cell contents (sugars, fats, antibodies, chromatin, collagen etc.) chemically,

D. create the entire cell wall and membrane chemically,

E. put all these together and make a viable cell,

F. cause this entirely artifically synthesized cell to multiply,

G. cause the resultant mass of cells to properly differentiate,

H. develop these into an organism in vitro

All these major steps and all intermediate steps involved should be done in test tubes, not inside another living organism. For example, a denucleated cell from an organism cannot be used, nor can DNA extracted from an organism be used. And enzymes extracted directly from organisms or expressed in bacterial cultures cannot be used. Only if all these conditions are met and the resultant organism grows into a functioning adult can life be said to have been created using chemicals in a laboratory.

None of the current scientific techniques for cloning, parthenogenesis, in-vitro fertilization, etc. qualify for being seen as creating life in a laboratory using chemicals. They all rely on previously existing life. The theoretical possibility of creating life has always existed, no matter what the state of scientific knowledge has been. After all, there was a time when people thought insects spontaneously appeared from trash. It is well accepted now that nobody can succeed in creating new matter without recycling old matter and nobody can succeed in creating new energy without redistributing existing energy. However, when it comes to life, there is a suspicion that somehow, some day, someone will create new life from something that is not life. It is not borne out by the scientific evidence so far, leave alone philosophical considerations. Suffice it to say, we do not understand life and consciousness well at all.

Regards,

Vidyasankar

kuntimaddi sadananda:

Mahesh - PraNAms

I do not see any problem.

Your subtle body - pervades your whole body - that is why it subtle means- the sense of touch that your have in your remote skin is part manifestation of your pancha praaNaas. All cells are synchronized or organized as one organism to respond to that subtle body that pervades the whole body. When you die, you collect all your pancha praaNaas and sense faculties along with your anthaHkaraNa – and depart to experience next set of vaasanaas that cannot be experienced in this physical body. That is the death. The next body you take, if you have not realized in this life, depends on the nature of your vaasanas and it will find a suitable gross body that is conducive to express those vaasanaas. We have millions of bacteria that die and are looking for suitable bodies to express themselves. If a scientist can make one grass body, and if it is conducive they thank him and live happily there until that apartment is no more suitable. It is as simple as that.

If some cells in our body do not behave in accordance with the total organism, we call them as cancer cells - they are living cells but do not integrate with the rest of the body. Similarly the other bacteria and the virus - each have their own subtle bodies that differ from you hence they can consume you unless you can get rid of them.

Evolution is only at anatomical level - the evolution of jiiva is different from the evolution of the body structure. Each jiiva finds a suitable anatomical structure that is conducive to express its vaasanaas.

Advaita Vedanta has no problem with the evolution theory or any other theory - in fact more science progress more closure to advaitic doctrine.

In reality, you are, of course, consciousness that is all pervading. You are never born or die. The death of subtle body occurs only ones that is when you realize who you are.

The birth and death of gross bodies is nothing but integration of gross and subtle bodies which reflect the total consciousness depending the capabilities of the stubtle and gross equipments.

Hari Om!

Sadananda

Mahesh Ursekar:

Pranams Kuntimaddi!

Thanks for your explanation but I don't think you have addressed my concern adequately.

1. What happens when some cells are extraced from your body as a tissue culture or suitably preserved while outside you. The individual cells of this culture continue to exhibit the same behavior as when they were in your body. They are living without the enlivining principle of your subtle body. According to your explanation, how is that possible?

2. Why do you differentiate between bacteria (prokaryote) and other cells in your body (eurkaryote). They are both living. Why does one have its own subtle body while the other not?

Thanks, Mahesh

Mahesh Ursekar:

Pranams!

I reproduce from my link, the steps and challanges that scientists forsee in this quest which I think (at least partially) address your points:

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

a) A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

b) A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

c) A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system. His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

The difference, as I see, in the above technique (from previous methods like IVF, cloning, etc) is that they are building the cell ground up. All other techniques aimed to create life from (some form of) life while this method starts from matter alone. Another point I wish to make is that this claim is made by scientists from Harvard Medical (among others) and hence can be taken seriously.

Thanks, Mahesh

kuntimaddi sadananda:

Maheshji - PraNAms

Here is my understanding.

--- Mahesh Ursekar wrote:

"1. What happens when some cells are extraced from your body as a tissue culture or suitably preserved while outside you. The individual cells of this culture continue to exhibit the same behavior as when they were in your body. They are living without the enlivining principle of your subtle body. According to your explanation, how is that possible?"

First, when the cells are extracted, they are no more my cells - They were part of me as one organism when they are integrated as one - that is the reason I mentioned about the cancer cells. These cancer cells or the tissue cells that are extracted are taken over by another subtle bodies that is of unicelluar nature since they function and reproduce. Life is pulsating there in each of these cells as an entity. That life or life forms are differnt from mine. When you prick them, I do not feel the pain since their subtle bodies are differnt from mine. They grow and multiply accoding to their capabilities - but they are not me. In fact you may be able to use them to clone anther multi cell organism and that organism is differnt from me with their own vaasanas and subtle body to go through their life. Cloning process is exactly that. Why even when the conception occurs, two cells joinging as one and growing - it grows as separate individual. In the unicellular experiement you mentioned, the culture cells can also eat one another since each wants to survive at the expense of others if there is no other source of food. Each has mind of their own!Organism is one as long as they are integrated as oneand that integrated oneness is due to subtle body that is pervading as one. If there are many organisms in my body, each organism behaves differently competing with each other - since each is organized as separate entities and behave as separate entities. Therefore they have minds of their own that differ from mine. And they live at the expense of the host and can destroy the host for their survival. I have to leave that body and find another one that is more conducive or join the adviatin list to transcend my subtle body!

The point is the life pulsates or enlivens wherever and whenever the uppadhis or equipments are conducive to express that all pervading light of consciousness.

"2. Why do you differentiate between bacteria (prokaryote) and other cells in your body (eurkaryote). They are both living. Why does one have its own subtle body while the other not?"

No, I am not differentiating them - they have their own subtle bodies compare to mine. Like we have big apartment where I am living but some intruders also come and live - unless I get rid of them they may occupy the whole place and kick me out. The cells that are integrated as one organism are governed by one subtle body. Those cells that disintegrate and behave not as integral unit as one organism but behave like different organisms, since their organization differs from mine. The difference arrises since they show that they have mind of their own - and that mind iswhat we call their subtle bodies.

Anyway that is how I understand as life. It is the expression of consciousness in the subtle and gross bodies depending on their capabilities to reflect. Scientist as Vidya is pointing is only trying assemble (not create) from nature what he sees are physical requirements for consciousness to express. A scientist does not creat a life - life is the expression of all pervading consciousness in the matter that is suitable to express.

In the gross body - it expresses as just existence. In the more sophisticated cells, it can express as life, if the physiological functions can take place due to subtle body.

Hari Om!

Sadananda

Shyam:

Pranams Mahesh-ji

Sadananda-ji has already provided some very insightful and meaningful thoughts in answering this.

I would like to add a few thoughts.

First of all, as anyone who has had to talk to reporters about his or her research findings will tell you, the reporter is interested not in your research but in "sensationalizing" that research to draw eyeballs - hence ridiculous headlines such as this one.

Now, if any scientist were to actually claim "I can create life within 10 years" our very simple question to them would be "Respected Sir, It is wonderful that you have such fervored optimism, now, pray, please tell me what IS life?"

The plain honest answer which any scientist will give you is "I do not know".

If Science does not even know "what" life is, is it not perhaps a little premature to claim to actually "create" life?

From a scientic perspective, we somewhat know what is sentiency, we have some idea of what is conscious and what is consciousness, - but what exactly is life>is there a thing we point to and say "this particular thing here is what is life" - absolutely not.

We know life when we see it. We know a person is alive or dead (well, most of the time) We know a cell is alive or dead.

But what is life? We only know life it by its absence, when we fail to detect its presence, but we have no idea what it actually is to begin with. It seems "self"-evident, but hard to define.

Take a live person. He is a conglomeration of trillions and trillions of cells - all of which "die" and "get replaced". Let us say i coated all his cells with a colour blue. Some period of time later in this live person, i may not find a single blue cell as they have all been replaced. So the person was more than the sum total of all his cells put together. Then who was the "person". Who do you say is "alive" - and - how do you say he is "alive" - is he alive because his heart is beating - well i can always pace his heart - his brain - science can invent a brain pacemaker in another 100 years - maybe less - but does any of that answer the question who is this he who is alive?

Now take one cell of this person.

Give it some food in a petridish and you can say it is "alive" - why - its metabolism continues.

But "what" is it that is alive? The protoplasm, the nucleus, the Golgi bodies??

Let us say we take the nucleus and culture that and say the nucleus is still alive.

Well "what" in the nucleus is alive? the strands of dna?? take them apart? nucleotides, and so on....

Take the case of a prion - it is a strand of protein that not only is "alive" - but can cause a debilitating incurable disease such as Creutzfield Jacob. So it is alive, but has no cell wall, no protoplasm, no nothing - just one strand of protein!

This way if we go on analyzing subcomponents of what appears to be a "whole" live entity such as cell, we finally reach a stage where we are dealing with nano-particles and chemical bonds, and so on in infinite regress.

We basically arrive at that frontier of science which by default cannot be broken - the barrier of infinity.

And it is precisely at this barrier that Vedanta starts and ends.

Vedanta is not opposed to science - but is not related to science. The two work in different non-overlapping domains - the secular and the spiritual. Yet, you will find a disproportionate number of vedantic students are "men of science" - so-called intellectuals, physicists, mathematicians, logicians, physicians, astronomers, microbiologists, engineers, etc. Why? Because Vedanta is extremely scientific in its approach. As one progresses in any scientific discipline one feels drawn to the factual underlying unity that Vedanta asserts.

And that brings me to the main point. Vedanta deals with a fact, not a theory. It is a fact about one's own self-identity. It cannot be proven by any scientific enquiry. It cannot be disproven by any scientific enquiry.

A study of vedanta is not menat for armchair leisure reading - it is a serious pursuit meant to understand my self. What is an essential and indispensible requirement is shraddha in the Shruti - so when the Shruti talks about samsara, rebirth, punya-papa, - we accept it as a fact, not as a theory. If it is a mere theory, then yes, every other headline in the Daily Mirror talking about life being created or a magic potion for immortaility etc etc will seemingly have us vaccilating in our own convictions - "if Bhagwan Krishna is wrong about vaasamsi jeernani yatha vihaya, then why should i believe anything he says about kshetra-kshejna?"

Which again brings us back to the whole issue of blind faith and shraddha and the subtle but crucial difference between the two - which is a whole topic by itself.

If man and science get to the point where they align matter to enable it to be an appropriate upadhi to manifest consiousness, which is all-pervasive, they would have precisely succeeded in doing what a mother hen already does, which is create a mass of protein called an egg, incubate it, and wait for life to get "created" - only thing is you wont be hearing the hen crowing about its wondrous accomplishment of "creating life."

My humble pranams,

Hari OM

Shri Gurubhyoh namah,

Shyam

Ravisankar Mayavaram:

I think it is the other way around. A jivA can identify itself withany material body, even if that does not show any sign of "life" suchas growth, activity, decay, etc. And then suffer the consequences of such an identification.

Think of this, ahalya was cursed to become stone and remain as suchtill Sri rAma liberated her. Would you say that stone had life? Thendoes all stones have life? But the jIva called ahalya suffered thatstate of grossness of stone and she was bound to it. So are otherinstances, where other beings were bound trees etc.

When a man and woman mate to produce a baby, are they producing a jIva? No at the point of conception, a jIva based on its karma and the will of God identifies itself with that embryo, suffers the consequences thereafter.

I may be totally wrong, but I believe that a soul/jiva can be made to identify itself with any material body and suffer based on its karma.

So if God ordains that jIvA has to cling on whatever these scientists create and suffer, then it will have a soul - otherwise it will not.

Sri rAma did walk a lot on stones, there was but one ahalya.

SrImAtre namaH

Ravi

Hindu Society under Seige by Sita Ram Goel is published in the website http://voiceofdharma.org/ from where this has been copied for the benefit of fellow Hindus. Kanchi Kamakoti Seva Kendra gratefully acknowleges' Voice of Dharma' website's contribution to the survival and emancipation of Hindus.

Hindu Society Under Siege

(by Sita Ram Goel)

4. The Residue of Macaulayism

Now for the second residue of British rule, Macaulayism. The term derives from Thomas Babington Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council in the 1830s. Earlier, the British Government of India had completed a survey of the indigenous system of education in the Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras. A debate was going on whether the indigenous system should be retained or a new system introduced. Macaulay was the chief advocate of a new system. This, he, expected, will produce a class of Indians brown of skin but English in taste and temperament. The expectation has been more than fulfilled.

There is a widerspread impression among ‘educated’ classes in India that this country had no worthwhile system of education before the advent of the British. The great universities like those at Takshashilã, Nãlandã, Vikramashîla and Udantapurî had disappeared during Muslim invasions and rule. What remained, we are told, were some pãthashãlãs in which a rudimentary instruction in arithmetic, and reading and writing was imparted by semi-educated teachers, mostly to the children of the upper castes, particularly the Brahmins. But the impression is not supported by known and verifiable facts.

Speaking before a select audience at Chatham House, London, on October 20, 1931, Mahatma Gandhi had said: ‘I say without fear of my figures being successfully challenged that India today is more illiterate than it was before a fifty or hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root and left the root like that and the beautiful tree perished.’

What the Mahatma had stated negatively, that is, in terms of illiteracy was documented positively, that is, in terms of literacy by a number of Indian scholars, notably Sri Daulat Ram, in the debate which followed the Mahatma’s statement, with Sir Philip Hartog, an eminent British educationist, on the other side. Now Shri Dharampal who compiled Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts in 1971 has completed a book on the state of indigenous education in India on the eve of the British conquest.¹

Shri Dharampal has documented from old British archives, particularly those in Madras, that the indigenous system of education compared more than favourably with the system obtaining in England at about the same time. The Indian system was admittedly in a state of decay when it was surveyed by the British Collectors in Bengal, Bombay and Madras. Yet, as the data brought up by them proved conclusively, the Indian system was better than the English in terms of (1) the number of schools and colleges proportionately to the population, (2) the number of students attending these institutions, (3) the duration of time spent in school by the students, (4) the quality of teachers, (5) the diligence as well as intelligence of the students, (6) the financial support needed to see the students through school and college, (7) the high percentage of lower class (Sudra and other castes) students attending these schools as compared to the upper class (Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaisya) students, and (8) in terms of subjects taught.

This indigenous system was discarded and left to die out by the British not because its educational capacity was inferior but because it was not thought fit for serving the purpose they had in mind. The purpose was, first, to introduce the same system of administration in India as was obtaining in England at that time. The English system was highly centralised, geared towards maximisation of state revenues, manned by ‘gentlemen’ who despised the ‘lower classes’ and were, therefore, ruthless in suppression of any mass discontent. Secondly, the new system of education aimed at promoting and patronising a new Indian upper class who, in turn, would hail the blessings of British Raj and cooperate in securing its stability in India. The indigenous system of education was capable neither of training such administrators nor of raising such a social elite, not at home anywhere.

The system of education introduced by the British performed more or less as Macaulay had anticipated. Hindus like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahamanã Malaviya, Veer Savarkar, Sri M.S. Golwalker, to name only the most notable amongst those who escaped its magic spell and rediscovered their roots, were great souls, strong enough to survive the heavy dose of a deliberate denationalisation. For the rest, it has eminently succeeded in sweeping an ancient and highly cultured people off its feet. Macaulay does deserve the honour of a whole ‘ism’ of which we have not seen the last yet.

It is not easy to define the doctrine of Macaulayism in as authentic terms as we could do in the case of Islamism and Christianism. Doctrinally, Macaulayism is quite diffused. It does not swear by a historical prophet whom it proclaims as the latest as well as the last and the best. It does not bestow a monopoly of truth and wisdom on a single book. It does not lay down a single code of conduct distilled from the doings of a prophet or the sacerdotal tradition of a church.

Nor is Macaulayism malevolent like Islamism or mischievous like Christianism. It is rather mild and well-meaning, more like an imperceptible breeze which blows in silently, fins up the psychological atmosphere, creates a mental mood, inspires an intellectual attitude, and finally settles down as a cultural climate-pervasive, protean and ubiquitous.

Unlike Islamism and Christianism, Macaulayism does not employ any meticulously matured methods to propagate or proliferate itself. It is not out to use a specified section of Indian society as a vehicle of its virulence. It is not a potent potion like Islamism which destroys the body of a culture in one fell sweep. It is not subtle like Christianism which subverts a society surreptitiously. But at the same time, it is a creeping toxaemia which corrodes the soul of a culture and corrupts a social system in slow stages. And its target is every section of Indian society.

Yet, as we survey the spread of its spell over Hindu society, particularly Hindu intelligentsia, we can spot some of its paralysing processes. The most prominent are the following five:

1. A sceptical, if not negative, attitude towards Hindu spirituality, cultural creations and social institutions with solemn airs of scholarship and superior knowledge. Nothing in Hindu India, past or present, is to be approved unless recognised and recommended by an appropriate authority in the West;

2. A positive, if not worshipful, attitude towards everything in Western society and culture, past as well present, in the name of progress, reason and science. Nothing from the West is to be rejected unless it has first been weighed and found wanting by a Western evaluation;

3. An intellectual inclination to compare Hindu ideals and institutions from the past not with their contemporaneous ideals and institutions in the West but with what the West has achieved in its recent history-the 19th and the 20th Centuries;

4. A mental mood to judge the West in terms of the ideals and utopias it proclaims from time to time, while judging the Hindus with an all too supercilious reference to what prevails in Hindu society and culture at the present time when the Hindus have hardly emerged from a long period of struggle against foreign invasions;

5. A psychological propensity to scrutinise, interpret and evaluate Hindu culture, history, society and spirituality with the help of concepts and tools of analysis evolved by Western scholarship. It is never granted that the Hindus too have well-developed concepts and tools of analysis, derived from their own philosophical foundations, that it would be more profitable to use these concepts and tools of analysis for a proper understanding of the Hindu heritage, and that it is less than fair to employ alien and incompatible methods of evaluation while judging this heritage. If the Hindus use their own concepts and tools of analysis to process and weigh the Western heritage, our Macaulayists always throw up their hands and denounce the exercise as unscientific and irrelevant to the universe of discourse.

The intellectual and cultural fashions and fads of our Macaulayists change as freely and frequently as the intellectual and cultural climate in the West. Now it is English Utilitarianism, now German Idealism, now Russian Nihilism, now French Positivism or Existentialism, now American Consumerism-whatever be the dominant trend in the West, it immediately finds its flock among the educated Hindus. But one thing remains constant. The platform must first be prepared in the West before it could or should find an audience in India.

And this process of approving, rejecting, judging and justifying which Macaulayism promotes among its Hindu protagonists does not remain a mere mental mood or an intellectual inclination or a psychological propensity, that is to say, a subjective stance on men and matters. It inevitably and very soon expresses itself in a whole life-style which goes on rejecting and replacing Hindu mores and manners indiscriminately in favour of those which the West recommends as the latest and the best. The land from which the new styles of life are imported may be England as upto the end of the Second World War or the United States of America as ever since. But it must always be ensured that the land is located somewhere in the Western hemisphere. ‘Phoren’ is always fine.

The models which are thus imported from the West in ever increasing numbers need not have any relevance to the concrete conditions obtaining in India such as her geography, climate, economic resources, technological talent, administrative ability, etc. If the imported model fails to flourish on the Indian soil and in India’s socio-economico-cultural conditions, these must be beaten and forced into as much of a receptive shape as possible, if need be by a ruthless use of state power. But if the receptacle remains imperfect even after all these efforts, let the finished product reflect that imperfection. A model imported from the West and implanted on Indian soil even in half or a quarter is always preferable to any indigenous design evolved in keeping with native needs and adapted to local conditions.

Starting from the secular and socialist state and planned economy, travelling through a casteless society and scientific culture, and arriving at day-to-day consumption in Hindu homes, we witness the same servile scenario unfolding itself in an endless endeavour. Our parliamentary institutions, our public and private enterprises, our infrastructure of power and transport, our medicine, public health and housing, our education and entertainment, our dress, food, furniture, crockery, table manners, even the way we gesticulate, grin and smile have to be carbon copies of what they are currently doing in the West.

Drain-pipes, bell-bottoms, long hair, drooping moustaches; girls dressed up in jeans; parents being addressed as mom and pa and mummy and daddy; demand for convent schooling in matrimonial ads: and natives speaking their mother tongues in affected accents after the English civilian who was helpless to do otherwise-these are perhaps small and insignificant details which would not have mattered if the Hindus had retained pride in the more substantial segments of their cultural heritage. But in the current context of kowtowing before the West, they are painful portents of a whole culture being forced to feel inferior and go down the drain.

The Hindu may sometimes need to feel some pride in his ancestral heritage, particularly when he wants to overcome his sense of inferiority in the presence of visitors from the West. Macaulayism will gladly permit him that privilege, provided Kãlidãsa is admired as the Shakespeare of India and Samudragupta certified as India’s Napoleon. The Hindu is permitted to take pride in that piece of native literature which some Western critic has lauded. Of course, the Hindu should read it in its English translation. He is also permitted to praise those specimens of Hindu architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance and drama which some connoisseurs from the West have patronised, preferable in an exhibition or performance before a Western audience. But he is not permitted to do this praising and pride-taking in a native language nor in an English which does not have the accepted accent.

The Hindu who is thus addicted to Macaulayism lives in a world of his own which has hardly any contact with the traditional Hindu society. He looks forward to the day when India will become a society like societies in the West where the rate of growth, the gross national product and the standard of living are the only criteria of progress. He is tolerant towards religion to the extent that it remains a matter of private indulgence and does not interfere with the smooth unfoldment of the socio-political scene. Personally for him, religion is irrelevant, though some of its rituals and festivities can occasionally add some colour to life. For the rest, religion is so much obscurantism, primitive superstition and, in the Indian context at present, a creator of communal riots.

It should not, therefore, be surprising if this self-forgetful, self-alienated Hindu who often suffers from an incurable anti-Hindu animus a la Nirad Chaudhry, turns his back upon Hindu society and culture and becomes indifferent to their fate. He cannot help having not much patience with the traditional Hindu who is still attached to his spiritual tradition, who flocks to hallowed places of pilgrimage, who celebrates his festivals with solemnity, who regulates his daily life with rituals and sacraments, and who honours his forefathers, particularly the old saints, sages and heroes. He also cannot help being indulgent towards those who are hostile to the traditional Hindu and who heap contempt and ridicule on him, no matter to what community or faith they belong, though he may not share their own variety of religious or ideological fanaticism.

The traditional Hindu, on the other hand, wants to live in peace and amity with all his compatriots. He is normally very tolerant towards his Muslim and Christian countrymen, and gladly grants them the right to their own way of worship. He goes further and quite often upholds Muslim and Christian religions as good as his own. He shows all due respect to Muslim and Christian prophets, scriptures and saints. He does not try to prevent anyone from freely discussing, dissecting, even ridiculing his religion and culture. He never mobilises murderous mobs against those Hindus who do not share his convictions about his ancestral heritage. He turns a blind eye to his Gods and Goddesses being turned into cheap models in calendars and commercial advertisements. Nor does he go out converting people of other faiths to his own.

The traditional Hindu, however, does get stirred when the Muslims and Christians cross the limits and threaten the unity and integrity of his country. He does want to retain his majority in his only homeland against Muslim and Christian attempts to reduce him to a minority by fraudulent mass conversions. He does believe that Hindu society and culture have a right to survive and put up some defence in exercise of that right. But the Hindu addict of Macaulayism stubbornly refuses to concede that right to Hindu society and culture. He cannot see the need for defence because he cannot see the danger. And he has many strings to his bow to run down the Hindu who dares defy his diktat. His attitude can by summarised as follows:

1. To start with, he refuses to recognise any danger to Hindu society and culture even when irrefutable facts are placed under his nose. He accuses and denounces as alarmists, communalists, chauvinists and fascists all those who give a call for self-defence to the Hindus. Better, he explains away the aggression from other faiths in terms of the aggression which ‘Hindu communalism’ has committed in the first instance;

2. Next, he paints a pitiful picture of the aggressor as a poor, deprived and down-trodden minority whom the Hindus refuse to recognise as equal citizens, constitutionally entitled to a just share in the national cake;

3. At a later stage, he assumes sanctimonious airs and assigns to the Hindus an inescapable moral responsibility to rescue their less privileged brethren from the plight into which the Hindus have pressed them. In any case, the Hindus stand to lose nothing substantial if they make some generous gestures to their younger brethren even if the latter are slightly in the wrong;

4. In the next round, he harangues the Hindus that any danger to them, if really real and worth worrying about, arises not from an external aggression against them but from the injustice and oppression in their own social system which drives away its less privileged sections towards other social systems based on better premises and promises. Does not Islam promise an equality of social status because of its great ideal of the brotherhood of men? Does not Christianity present an example of dedicated social service a la Mother Teresa?

5. If the Hindus are not convinced by all these arguments and become bent upon organising some sort of a self-defence, he comes out with a fool-proof formula for that eventuality as well. The Hindus are advised to put their own house in order which, in his opinion, is the best defence they can put up. They should immediately abolish the caste system, start inter-dining and inter-marrying between the upper and lower castes, particularly the Harijans, and so on and so forth. It never occurs to him that social reform is a slow process which takes time to mature and that in the meanwhile a society is entitled to self-defence in the interests of its sheer survival;

6. If the Hindus still remain adamant, he tries his last and best ballistics upon them. He suddenly puts on a spiritual mask and lovingly appeals to the Hindus in the name of their long tradition of religious tolerance. How can the followers of Gautama and Gandhi descend to the same level as Islam and Christianity which have never known religious tolerance? The Hindus would cease to be Hindus if they also start behaving like followers of the Semitic faiths which have been conditioned differently due to historical circumstances of their birth. But he never dares put in one single word of advice to the followers of Islamism and Christianism to desist from always having it their own way. He knows it in his bones that such an advice will immediately bring upon his head the same abusive accusations which Islamism and Christianism hurl at the Hindus. This is the outcome which he dreads worse than death. He cannot risk his reputation of being secular and progressive which Islamism and Christianism confer upon him only so long as he defends their tirades against the Hindus.

But the stance which suits Macaulayism best is to sit on the fences and call a plague on both houses. The search for fairness and justice is somehow always too strenuous for a follower of Macaulayism. The one thing he loathes from the bottom of his heart is taking sides in a dispute, even if he is privately convinced as to who is the aggressor and who the victim of aggression. He views the battle as a disinterested outsider and finds it somewhat entertaining. The reports and reviews which some of our eminent journalists have filed in the daily and the periodical press about happenings in Meenakshipuram and other places where Islamism is again on the prowl, leaves an unmistakable impression that these gentlemen are not members of Hindu society but visitors from some outer space on a temporary sojourn to witness a breed of lesser beings fighting about Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

An adherent of Macaulayism can well afford to take this neutral, even hostile stance, away from and above Hindu society, its problems and its struggles, because, in the last analysis, he no more regards Hindu society as his own or as his indispensable benefactor. He has already managed to monopolise most of the political and administrative power in this country and the best jobs in business and the professions. He has secured a stranglehold on the most prestigious publicity media. The political upstarts and the neo-rich look up to him as their paragon and try to mould their sons and daughters in his image.

But what is uppermost in his mind, if not his conscious calculation, is the plenty of patrons, protectors and pay-masters he has in the West, particularly the United States of America. The scholars and social scientists over there in the progressive West approve and applaud whenever he pontificates about India’s socio-economico-cultural malaise and prescribes the proper occidental cures. They invite him to international seminars and on well-paid lecture tours to enlighten Western audiences about the true state of things in this ‘unfortunate’ country and the rest of the ‘under-developed’ world. He can travel extensively in the West with all expenses paid on a lavish scale. Even in this country he alone is entitled to move and establish the right contacts in social circles frequented by the powerful and the prestigious from the West.

And, God forbid, if the worst comes to the worst and the ‘fanatics like the RSS fascists’ or the Muslim fundamentalists or the Communist totalitarians take over this country, he can always find a safe refuge in one Western country or the other. There are plenty of places which can use his talents to mutual profit. The salaries they pay and the expense accounts they allow are quite attractive. The level of living with all those latest gadgets is simply lovable. In any case, he has all those sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, cousins and close relatives ensconsed in all those cushy jobs over there-the UN agencies, the fabulous foundations, the business corporations, the universities and research institutions.

So, Hindu society with all its hullabaloo of religion and culture be damned. This society, and not he, stands to lose if he is not permitted to work out his plans for progress in peace. In any case, this society cannot pay even for his shoes getting polished properly.

Footnotes:

¹ Since published as The Beautiful Tree, New Delhi, 1983.

United we stand, divided we fall!

Unity is the 'animal instinct' in all of us. Let us not lose it. See the video clip for proof!

http://www.freevlog.hu/video/6038.html

3. The Residue of Christianism

(from 'Hindu Society Under Siege')

The British rule in India crystallised two residues-Christianism and Macaulayism.

Certain strains of Macaulayism developed what is euphemistically described as a ‘revolutionary temper’ in the later stages of the British rule and joined hands with Communism after the Bolshevik victory in Russia. The whole of Communism, which is also hostile to Hindu society and culture, is not Macaulayism. Yet, if Macaulayism had not prepared the ideological ground, Communism could not have made the strides it did in this country.

We shall analyse Christianism first. It was the first to make itself felt forcefully at the onset of the British rule in India,

We, however, wish to make it clear at the very outset that Christianism in India does not refer to the Christians in this country. They are our own people who at a certain stage of our history went over to a foreign faith in an atmosphere created and exploited by Christianism. But although they have renounced their ancestral faith, they have, by and large, not shown any marked hostility towards Hindu society and culture. Nor have they so far served as vehicles of Christianism except in certain areas of the Northeast, notably Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. Christianism in India is centered in the numerous Christian missions operating all over the country, particularly in the so-called tribal belts.

The eight fundamentals of Christianism in India may be summarised as follows:

1. That the Hindus have never had a Saviour whose historicity can be ascertained, with the possible exception of the Buddha;

2. That Jesus Christ whose historicity cannot be questioned has superseded all earlier Saviours of Hinduism (if they were Saviours at all and not disciples of Lucifer) and rendered superfluous all subsequent Hindu saints and sages;

3. That St. Thomas, an apostle of Jesus himself, was specially chosen by the Church to win India for his Master’s message:

4. That St. Thomas could not complete his mission in India because he met an untimely martyrdom at the hands of some Hindu, most probably Brahmin, heathens;¹

5. That the converts made by SL Thomas, the first century Christians of the South, establish beyond doubt that Christianity is an ancient Indian religion and not a Western import as alleged by the Hindus;

6. That it is the sacred task of the Christian Church to complete the mission of St. Thomas and see to it that India becomes a Christian country, once and for all;

7. That if there is any thing good and wholesome in Hindu religion, it is not because Hindu saints and sages ever made any direct or conscious contact with Truth but because they merely stumbled upon some of it in the workings of Universal Nature which was preparing itself over a long time for the advent of Jesus Christ;

8. That no Hindu, even if he follows the Ten Commandments in letter and spirit and lives by the Sermon on the Mount, can ever hope to escape eternal hell-fire unless he has been baptised in a Christian church and administered the Christian sacraments.

These tenets have their source in the Christian religion which also, like Islam, is an extremely exclusive religion.² Christianity too claims for itself a monopoly of truth and virtue, swears by the only true God, the only true Saviour or the only Son of the only true God, the only true Revelation, the only true way of worship, and so on. It too has to its discredit a long and unrelieved record of wanton destruction of ancient religions and cultures and a large-scale killing of heathens. The annals of Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and America, particularly Central and South America, provide harrowing details of this destruction and bloodshed.

We in this country do not associate Christianity with misdeeds similar to those of Islam because the British invaders who finally succeeded in capturing power in India did not allow the Christian crusaders to use state power, directly and in an uninhibited manner. They had perhaps become wiser by a reading of Muslim history in India and did not allow their religion to interfere with the business of building a stable empire. A more tenable explanation of this British refusal to patronise Christianity beyond the point of no return is the Renaissance in Europe which had considerably discredited this creed in its own homeland by the time British arms were triumphant in India.

But we did have a taste of the intrinsic spirit of Christian aggression in our first encounter with the missionaries who swarmed towards our shores in the wake of Western victories from the 16th Century onwards. When the Portuguese seized Goa and adjoining territories the Catholic Church lost no time in setting up an Inquisition for the benefit of native converts who were likely to recant or relax in their faith. Francis Xavier, whom the Catholic Church hails as the Patron Saint of the East, expressed a deep satisfaction at the sight of six thousand dead Muslims whom the Portuguese had slaughtered. He also made forcible conversions, demolished Hindu temples, smashed Hindu idols, and inaugurated that anti-Brahmanism which has by now become the sine qua non of all progressive thought and politics in India.

The triumphal march of British arms in India in the second half of the 18th Century convinced the Christian missionaries that British victories were due not to a superiority in the art of warfare but to the superiority of the Christian creed by which the British generals and soldiers swore. They immediately started pouring venom on Hindu religion, culture and society. No lie was vile enough in the service of Christian ‘truth’. No fraud was foul enough in the service of Christian ‘virtue’.

An example will serve to illustrate the spiteful spirit of the Christian missionaries at that time. They spread a canard in India and abroad that many Hindus voluntarily rushed under the wheels of the great chariot during the annual rathayãtrã at Puri, and got themselves crushed to death in order to attain salvation. The great chariot, according to them, was always accompanied by droves of dancing girls who sang lascivious songs and made obscene gestures towards crowds on both sides of the broad street. The ‘great’ William Wilberforce, who ruled the circle of Christian crusaders in Britain and who adamantly advocated the Christianization of India by an unstinted use of state power, demanded immediately that the temple of Jagannath be demolished to stop this ‘devil-dance’ for good. The British Commissioner of Puri at that time saved the situation by writing a long letter to a liberal British M.P. in which he stated that he along with many other British civilians in the district had been a regular witness of the rathayãtrã for twenty years but had never witnessed a single victim under the wheels nor found anything immodest in the songs and symbolic gestures of the dancing girls. The English word ‘Juggernaut’, which according to the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary means ‘any relentless destroying force’, is a living witness to the inventive imagination of the early Christian missionaries.

This campaign of calumny against everything Hindu continued till late in the 19th Century. Swami Vivekanada was referring to this crude campaign when he cried with anguish in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago that ‘if we Hindus dig out all the dirt from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and throw it in your faces, it will be but a speck compared to what your missionaries have done to our religion and culture’.

Had not the Hindus come out in defence of their religion and culture, this missionary mischief would have multiplied by leaps and bounds. The Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj were the earliest expressions of this Hindu spirit of resistance. A notable contribution was made by the Theosophical Society whose founder, Madame Blavatsky, exposed the spiritual and moral claims of Christianity and whose chief apostle in India, Mrs. Annie Besant, inspired no small pride in the Hindu heritage. The Ramakrishna Mission also came to the rescue at a later stage. Mahatma Gandhi gave no quarters to Christian theology or to Jesus Christ as the only Son of God and Saviour of mankind. He had his own charming method of recommending Sermon on the Mount while showing compassion for the victims of the missionaries whom he described as ‘rice Christians’Perhaps the main reason for the weakening of this malicious and mendacious campaign was the collapse of Christianity in its own homeland, the Western countries. The West had taken a decisive turn towards the scientific spirit. Meanwhile, the message of Hindu spirituality had also spread to the centres of learning in the West. The exponents of Hindu religion and culture like Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Raman Maharshi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswami and Mahatma Gandhi were demonstrating by their words and deeds the profound promise which Hindu Dharma held for mankind. The missionaries had to change their methods.

The core of Christianism in India, however, remains intact. They now know that the fortress of Hindu society cannot be seized by a frontal assault. They are, therefore, busy in the backyards and have hidden themselves behind the smoke-screens of several theologies. Some of these covert methods can be listed as follows:

1. Training of more and more native missionaries in their far-flung, well-equipped and fabulously financed seminaries so that missionary work looks no more like an undertaking manned mostly by foreigners;

2. Hinduising the outer accoutrements of Christian priests, liturgy and sacraments in order to convince the Hindus that Christianity is not an imported creed, and that Christianism is not out to corrode Hindu culture;

3. Directing their powerful press and publishing houses not to attack Hindu religion and culture openly but to develop a scholarly and comparative critique of Hindu religion, culture and society, always to the ultimate disadvantage of the latter;

4. To establish and extend educational institutions which at least immunise the upper class Hindu children and youth against whatever Hindu ways still survive in their homes, wherever they do not succeed in attracting them towards Christianity;

5. To build and expand hospitals and undertake other social work in order to attract an all-round respect for the Christian spirit of social service, and neutralise as narrow bigotry any questioning of their missionary motives;

6. To open orphanages and homes for the handicapped where proselytization can proceed safely and unnoticed;

7. To concentrate on Hindu ‘tribals’ who are removed from the main centres of Hindu population, so that there is no untoward publicity;

8. To take out promising candidates for conversion on prolonged tours of Western countries in order to impress upon them the wonders worked by Christian culture and civilization;

9. To encourage well-to-do and willing Christians in the West to adopt boys and girls from poor Indian families, send them to missionary schools and colleges, and provide them with monetary assistance till they are converted;

10. To finance and promote political campaigns for separate states, inside or outside the Union of India, in those areas where the Christian population has attained majority or dominance.

There are plenty of methods which the missionaries employ to harangue and/or hoodwink the unsuspecting Hindus. Some of these methods are pretty crude, especially those employed by the American missionaries who aim a loud and simplistic promise, ‘you also can be saved’ or a sweet scolding, ‘don’t you want to save yourself?’ through big advertisements in daily newspapers, regular radio broadcasts and door to door pedlars of salvation. The other methods are sophisticated and disguised as ‘Indian theology.’

But what looms large at the back of all these methods is the mammoth finance which flows in freely from the coffers of the Christian churches and communities in Europe and America. An idea of the magnitude of this finance can be got from a recent incident which was widely reported in the daily press. An imaginative and enterprising but poor South Indian palmed off on a Christian missionary a lot of faked literary and archaeological evidence about the adventures of St. Thomas in South India against a cash payment of fifteen lakh rupees-a paltry sum in the total budget of the mission concerned. And there are hundreds of such missions in India.

The Statesman dated 17 August 1981 has published an interesting news item from Aachen in West Germany: ‘The Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Mother Teresa, has asked her supporters to suspend charity donations, reports UNI-DPA. The German Section of the International Association of Friends of Mother Teresa which donated six million marks in 1980 is to be disbanded at the end of this year in response to the plea. Mother Teresa who won the prize in 1979 after years of work aiding the poorest of the poor called for a temporary halt to contributions ‘until we have used up what we have’. ‘I will then ask you again’, the founder of the Missionaries of Charity said in a circular. Excessive support of a single charity leading to the needs of thousands of others being forgotten was probably behind the request.’ (emphases added).

Six million West German marks amount to approximately two and a half crores of rupees. The amounts contributed by other sections of the International Association of Friends of Mothers Teresa are most likely to total up to many times this sum. Mother Teresa is not in a position to use all the money that has already been given to her. So the torrent has been halted temporarily. It will start pouring again as soon as she gives the signal. And hers is only one of the ‘thousands of other charities’. One can well imagine the staggering finance at the disposal of Christianism in India.

The free flow of this Western wealth enables the missionaries to live in and have at their disposal palatial mansions in which their missions and seminaries are housed. Their vow of poverty never comes in the way of their having modern sanitation facilities, kitchens, communications and transport. They can travel not only over the length and breadth of this country but to the ends of the earth to attend conferences, congregations, seminars and symposia. Everywhere they go they can stay in similar sumptuous style. It is but human if the superiority of their style of living gets confused with the superiority of the Christian creed.

Recently some missionaries, particularly in the Catholic missions, have started talking a new language-the language of radicalism and revolution. It is not unoften that this language comes most easily to those who do not have to share the woes and wants of people with whom they commiserate. They make the best of both the worlds. Our Communist leaders are an excellent example of such synthetic radicalism.

The West has lost its fascination for the faith. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find men and women in the West who would take the holy orders and become wedded to vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. But the West does not mind parting with plenty of cash which its prosperity can spare with ease. Christianity is, therefore, making a bold bid to establish a safer haven in the East while the going is good.

India provides a particularly soft target. The Christian missions are welcome to open their purse strings in the Islamic and Communist countries of Asia. But the missions there are barred from winning new converts. Hindu India, drowned in poverty and suffering from cultural self-forgetfulness, is the only country in Asia which provides the quid pro quo.

Press Release

Kanchi Kamakoti Seva Kendra is happy to announce the successful conclusion of Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s Greater Toronto Area lecture series during the three day from 10^th August 2007 to 12^th August 2007.

In his electrifying speech at the Wilfrid Laurier University’s Business School Dr. Subramanian Swamy compared the achievements of China and India and with fact and figures shown to all that the real and lasting economic achievements lie with India and not China. He also brought out the inescapable truth that India which was the Industrial Workshop of the world before the Britishers occupied it, is only reasserting its prideful place as the leading economic giant. The loss of our pre-eminence is due to colonial exploitation and with the end of colonialism the surge to success is inescapable even though the Nehruvian socialists had stalled its stride by their bankrupt policies of curtailing private enterprise.

In his many speeches at Hindu Samaj, Hamilton, Ram Mandir, Mississauga, Sanathan Mandir at Markham and Vaishno Devi Mandir at Oakville Dr.Subramanian Swamy explained that at this present historical juncture the Hindus are under siege. In his hard hitting speeches he listed the many secularist sieges that cripple the Hindus and called for Hindu Renaissance. Swami Vivekananda said: "Arise, Awake and Go Forth as Proud Hindus". This message forms the basis of Dr Swami's definition of the following five maxims which should constitute the fundamentals of Hindu Unity:

Firstly, a Hindu, and those others who are proud of their Hindu past and origins, must know the correct history of India. They must learn the concept of India as Hindustan (not Soniastan or Secularistan!)

Secondly, according to Hindu belief, all religions equally lead to God, and not that all religions are equal in the richness of their theological content. Respecting all religions, Hindus must forcefully demand from others that such respect is a two-way obligation. Muslims and Christians shall be part of the Hindustani parivar or family only if they accept this truth and revere it.

Thirdy, Hindus must prefer to lose everything they possess rather than submit to tyranny or terrorism.

Fourthly, the Hindu must have a mindset to retaliate when attacked. The retaliation must be massive enough to deter future attacks. Fifthly all Hindus to qualify as true Hindus must make an earnest effort to learn Sanskrit and the Devanagiri script in addition to their own mother tongue and must pledge that one day in the future, Sanskrit will be India's link language since all the main Indian languages have large percentages of their vocabulary in common with Sanskrit.

He concluded that all Hindus world over must preserve, persevere and be proactive to the above fundamentals for the benefit of mankind and pass them on to their posterity.

Jai Hind!

HINDU SOCIETY UNDER SEIGE

(BY Sita Ram Goel)

2. The Residue of Islamism The most malevolent of these residues is Islamism, the residue of the Muslim invasion of India spread over several centuries. Its basic tenets are ultimately derived from the teachings of Islam which has so far succeeded in sealing itself off from every shade of empiricism, rationalism, universalism, humanism and liberalism, the hallmarks of Hindu as well as modern Western culture. But in the context of India where Islam failed in its mission of lasting conquest and total conversion, these tenets have acquired a singularly sinister and subversive character. Let it be clear that the reference here is not at all to our Muslim brethren who are our own flesh and blood, except for that microscopic minority which takes pride in the purity of its Arab, Persian or Turkish descent.1 Instead of being the proponents of Islamism, the Muslims of India are its victims whom it is trying to use as vehicles of its poisonous virulence. The vast majority of Indian Muslims were converted to Islam by force or allurements. But the conversion did not help them socially or culturally as their status today in India’s Muslim society should amply prove. The Muslims of India, therefore, have to be freed from rather than accused of Islamism. What we mean by Islamism is a self-righteous psychology and a closed cultural attitude which make it impossible for its converts to coexist peacefully and with dignity with other people. There are many Hindus who share several tenets of Islamism. On the other hand, there are many Muslims who are frightened by Islamism and who would gladly join the mainstream of Indian nationalism if they are freed from the whiphand which a minority of theologians, politicians and hooligans has come to wield in their community. Those who want to know Islamism first-hand and in full measure are referred to Shaikh Sir Mohammed Iqbal’s two long poems which he wrote quite early in his career, and which earned for him the title of Allama among the adherents of this cult. These are the Shikwã and the Jawãb-i-Shikwah which Mr. Khushwant Singh has recently published in an English translation. The Shikwã ends by summing up that ‘naghmã hindî hai tau kyä, lai tau hijazi hai mirî’, that is, ‘no matter if my idiom is Indian, my spirit is that of Hijaz’. Hijaz is that part of Arabia in which Mecca and Medina are situated. The Jawãb-i-Shikwah ends on a still more strident note. Allah announces to the Allãmã His supreme message for mankind in the following words: ‘kî wafã tûne muhammad se tau ham tere hain’, that is, ‘if you are faithful to Muhammad, I shall be faithful to you.’ Now, there are many Muslims in India who have never heard the name of Iqbal or listened to his muse. And there are many Hindus whose admiration for Iqbal is immeasurable. No, Islamism does not refer to any particular section of Indian society. It refers to that intellectual-or unintellectual-attitude which awards the monopoly of truth and virtue to a particular prophet, and consigns all knowledge to the pages of a particular book. Taking our cue from Allãmã Iqbal and his lesser cohorts like Altãf Hussain Hãlî, we can safely summarise the credo of Islamism in the following five fundamentals: 1. That Indian society before the advent of Islam was living in utter spiritual, moral and cultural darkness (jãhilîya) like pre-Islamic Arabia; 2. That Islam brought to India the only true religion, the only authentic moral values, the only humane culture, and the only progressive social order; 3. That this civilizing mission of Islam in India could not be completed, as in many other lands of Asia and Africa, due to the intervention of the wily British who cheated Islam of its empire in India, mostly by means of fraud; 4. That while the creation of Pakistan has been a triumph and consolidation of the power of Islam, west of the Ravi and east of the Hooghly, the conquest of India by Islam remains an unfinished task; 5. That Islam has a right to use all means, including force, to convert this Dãrul-harb of an India into a Dãrul-Islam, so that a Hakûmat-i-Ilãhiyah could liquidate all traces of jãhilîya and impose the law and culture of Islam. There are many Hindus like the late Pandit Sunderlal who fully accept the first two fundamentals of Islamism. It is a different matter that their logic fails them at this stage and they do not proceed to the next three fundamentals which follow irrevocably. And there have been many Muslims like the late Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Justice M.C. Chagla who rejects these fundamentals as repugnant. Having thus outlined its version of past Indian history, and the apocalypse towards which future Indian history should be forced to travel, Islamism has evolved a strategy in which the Muslims of India are envisaged as a base and an arsenal. Some salient features of this strategy can be outlined as follows: 1. The Muslims of India, particularly the Muslim intelligentsia, should be sealed off from every shade of rationalism, universalism, humanism and liberalism, and an army of mullahs and maulvis trained in the tenets of Islam should be let loose to brainwash and keep them along the right track; 2. Every Muslim who does not accept Islamism or dares criticize it or stands for the mainstream of Indian nationalism, away from and above religious differences, should be denounced as a renegade and a legitimate victim for murderous Muslim mobs; 3. The Muslims should be encouraged to air as many grievances as can be invented, and try to pass off as a down-trodden minority, oppressed, exploited and treated as second class citizens by the ‘brute’ Hindu majority; 4. These contrived grievances of the Muslims should be used to convert the Muslim community into a compact vote-bank which can function as a balancing factor in as many electoral constituencies as possible, and which can blackmail all non-Islamist political parties to accommodate Muslim candidates or include the maximum measure of concessions to the Muslim community in their election manifestos; 5. The Muslims should be made to agitate for India’s support to all international Islamic causes, right or wrong, legitimate or illegitimate, so that their attention is kept constantly diverted from demands of their own economic, social and cultural condition; 6. The Muslims should be progressively persuaded and prepared to stage street riots on the slightest pretext, be it a stray pig, or music before a mosque, or Urdu, or the minority character of the Aligarh Muslim University, or a purely personal fracas between toughs belonging to two communities, or the bombing of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by an Austrian adventurer, or the hanging of Z.A. Bhutto by President Zia of Pakistan, or the capture of the Ka’ba by some disgruntled faction in Saudi Arabian politics, or some other similar event in the Islamic world at large; 7. The frequent riots should be used to frighten the Muslims who should then be coaxed to create, consolidate and extend exclusive Muslim enclaves which can be stocked with arms and ammunition, imported or otherwise. The seven-fold strategy is aimed at the Muslims in India who are to be brainwashed, blackmailed, frightened and forced into the fold of Islamism. Another side of the same strategy has been worked out to neutralise, paralyse and blacken or pamper different sections of Hindu society so that the road is cleared for the forward march of Islamism. Some salient features of this secondary strategy can be outlined as follows: 1. The concept of Secularism which is enshrined in the Constitution of India and which has become the most sacred slogan for all our political parties should be distorted, misinterpreted and misused to the maximum to block out the least little expression of Hindu culture in the state apparatus and public life of India; 2. The terms ‘communal’ and ‘communalism’ which have become terms of abuse in India’s political parlance, should be carefully cultivated and more and more mystified to malign all those organisations, institutions and parties which do not serve Islamism, directly and/or indirectly; 3. The accusation of being fascists and anti-secularists should be hurled at all those individuals and organisations who question the exclusive claims of Islam and its culture, who know and tell the truth about Islamic scripture and history, and who see through the Muslim game of grievances; 4. All praise and support should be extended to those Hindus who go out of their way to champion Islamic causes, national and international, and who see in Islam and its culture those higher values which Islamism claims for them; 5. All available platforms should be used to defeat and frustrate the emergence of a genuine and positive Indian nationalism by always harping on India’s multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-language, multi-national, and multi-cultural character. Islamism did make some headway among the Muslims in Independent India mostly because the dominant section of Hindu intelligentsia partronised it for various reasons. The Congress politicians patronised it because they found out very soon that they were in a minority among the Hindus, and that they could survive in power only by combining a solid Muslim vote with whatever Hindu vote they could get. The Socialists went out of their way to patronise it partly because they harbour an anti-Hindu animus and partly in the hope of securing Muslim vote-a hope which has not as yet come anywhere near fulfilment. The Gandhians partronised it because they no more remembered that their great Master, Mahatma Gandhi, was a Hindu with a profound faith in Sanãtana Dharma, and because they misunderstood his doctrine of non-violence towards all people, including the Muslims of India, as an endorsement of Islam. The Communists patronised it because they saw in it a powerful ally in their campaign against Hindu society which they viewed as their main enemy. The self-alienated Hindu intellectuals patronised it out of sheer animus towards Hindu society and culture which they were out to damn on any pretext. Extending patronage to Islamism thus became a pastime for all those who wanted to pass off as large-hearted liberals, progressives and secularists. But in the absence of local resources and international patronage, the progress of Islamism in India was rather slow. Pakistan, which was its only patron abroad, could not provide much help beyond some hysteria in its mass media and propaganda in international political forums. The several wars which India was forced to fight with Pakistan to the disadvantage of the latter, also inhibited Islamism in India from acquiring the requisite degree of self-confidence. The use of oil as a political weapon by Islamic countries and the influx of petro-dollars in plenty from several Arab countries, particularly Libya and Saudi Arabia, since the early ‘seventies, has given to Islamism in India a new glow of self-confidence in one sudden sweep. This influx of Arab money is a natural and inevitable phenomenon because, in the last analysis, Islamism is only another name for Arab imperialism which had, at one stage of its history, pillaged and populated with its own progeny many foreign lands and which even today keeps many non-Arab nations spiritually enslaved. Islamism in India is now busy employing to the maximum advantage the Arab money which is pouring in through many channels and in increasing quantities. Some of these uses are very obvious to the eye. A few salient features of the new scenario can be listed as follows: 1. The rapid rise of a powerful press, mostly in Indian languages, and many publishing houses to propagate Islamism; 2. The generous funding of old and the founding of many new maktabs, madrasas and institutes for teaching Islam and training missionaries who are then employed at high salaries for purifying the faith of die Muslim flock and seeking new pastures for converts to Islam; 3. Buying of land and real estate all around in urban and rural areas by individual Muslims and Islamic institutions and organisations at whatever prices available; 4. Manufacturing and storing of arms in mosques, Muslim homes and localities and training of Muslim toughs; 5. Holding of frequent conferences, national and international, and taking out demonstrations in support of every Islamic cause; 6. Financing Muslim politics and inducing Muslim politicians to infiltrate and ingratiate themselves in every political party, and function from every public platform; 7. Bribing secularist Hindu intellectuals, scribes public workers and politicians, and buying them up for supporting Islamism, denigrating Hindu culture, and character-assassinating those who oppose Islamism; 8. Using the lure of money for winning converts to Islam from the weaker sections of Hindu society, particularly the Harijans. The strategy is nothing new. The self-same strategy had been used by the Muslim League for the carving out of Pakistan. Only the aid and abetment which the British provided at one time have been replaced by the aid and abetment from Arab countries. And in the matter of a mere decade, Islamism in India has assumed the same menacing proportions as it had on the eve of Partition. The parallel should make us pause. (Contd.)