Blogger raj said...
Sir,
Atheist can make fun of any religion/scripture as almost all religions are based on belief that GOD exists.There is no end of logic,as true devotee of GOD Ram can justify all his actions and people like you can do vice-versa. If you do not believe in God , you are not hindu by religion.So you have equal right to comment on other religions by which atleast it will be proved that you are not coward.
Your comment: If you do not believe in God , you are not hindu by religion.
My reply: Hinduism is not a religion started by one person, posing as the representative of God's son or some other prophet. It evolved over thousands of years with additions and deletions. Single person preached religions have rigid frameworks, entry gates, enrolments, and exit gates. They have stipulated names with specific meanings.
Hinduism, was and is not a religion in the restricted framework meaning. For this reason only you will not find the name 'Hindu' or 'Hinduism' in Indian books. It was and is the living style of the people living on the Indian Sub-Continent stretching from the river Indus to Iravathi River, Burma-Myanmar or even upto Cambodia and Vietnam. "Hindu" is a geographical entity, not a religious entity.
The word 'sanAtana dharma' used by some priests, monastery-dwellers also does not represent the living style of the residents of this great vast area of land. sanAtana dharma wants you to follow what the priests and swAmis dictate. You cannot accept the idea because the priests and swamis are not the elected representatives of Hindus, i.e. the residents of India. Besides, they have mutually-contradicting views fighting for cross purposes. For example, the vaishNava monk will ask you to have a vertical mark on your forehead whereas your Shankaracharya will ask you to wear a horizontal mark. Madhva follower will ask you to wear a black mark on a sandalwood background. They are individual sectorial, sub-sectorial views, not the tenets of Hinduism. I can give you one more example: In Tamil Nadu, there were two sub-segments of the VaishNava segment. A fierce battle for centuries in British courts took place about what mark is to be placed on the temple elephant's forehead. Tengadai mark is different from vadagalai mark.
The early inhabitants of our land were blanks. They were just-like newly purchased pen-drives or dvds or hard disks. They were just hunters, farmers, animal-breeders, rural artisans. I do not call them atheists, though they had some elements of atheists. There was no need of the words 'atheism' and 'atheist' because there was no theism at that time.
The Hindus (geographical sense) of those days had common sense. When they found a river in floods, they found that it was beyond their control and super-human. They directly prayed the river "O Ganga save us! Oh Narmada! save us.' Water would recede anyway some hours or days later. They thought that River heard their prayers and saved them.
When they found a strong furious cobra, at a time when there was no stick in the hand, they thought that the cobra would heed when prayed. Thus started 'Oh NAgA! Save me." The snake might have left on its own because it would have been afraid of its own life in danger in the hands of the human.
When they found an earth-quake, they might have prayed the earth itself, or hills nearby.
Suppose we pray the River Godavari in floods. It (she?) does not recede. As an alternative, we may get an idea that we pray the banian tree on the river banks. We may catch hold of its extended roots from the branches hanging into the river and save our lives.
Suppose we find a lion or tiger or leopard right at the entrance of our cottage. No sword or gun at hand. Nor do we have the skills to use them. This can happen even today in Lucknow or Guwahati or Kutch. What technique we adopt to save our lives depends on the situation.
Thus, basically, Hindus were not worshippers or any God or Goddess, except nature, that too only where was a crisis or a series of crises like droughts and epidemics.
Then, how is it that the blank pen-drives and DVDs have become htmls, phps, asps, pdfs, mp3s engraved on them and how is it that they started to refuse to work with other types of file formats? Here is your answer: Invasions and colonialisations. The invasions and colonialisations were not just Aryan, as some historians made out. Their number we cannot count or enumerate their names.
The Visn-Lakme worshippers were the Nords (Norway-Sweden-Denmark-Finland-Germany (Old Prussia)-Latvia-Lithuania-Sudovia etc).
Of course, the Nords lost their original geographical culture to the Roman Catholic Invaders. The Nords forgot their roots. Their histories do not bother about the pre-Christian evolutions, because that was called "PAGAN and DETESTABLE". Hence, their histories start with 1st Century A.D. If they have to go back, they will go back to the Old Testament and enter into Armanian History of West Asia. Then, Old Testament is not recognised by some traditions. Anyway, it is the problem of the Nords. We cannot prompt them or prod them.
The Siva and Fallus worshippers were from Crete (South Europe) and North Africa. The Indra-agni worshippers were from Iran (Ahur-Mazda). The Skanda worshippers had an agni (fire) branch. It was also apparently from Iran. The invaders were not just soldiers. They had come with their priests, astrologers, merchants, cowherds, animal-breeders and they started imposing their religions on the native inhabitants of India.
Swastik and Sanskrit provide the links between the Nords and the Indians. My Indian readers can search for the grammar and vocabulary of the Old Prussian on the internet and see for themselves how close the Sanskrit language and the Visn-Lakme were close to the Nords.
People cannot keep their dvds, hard disks and pen-drives blank or inadequately written, all the time. The invaders wanted to write on our mental hard-disks. We allowed. Depending on the area which was under the new colonial rule, different Gods entered into the particular Regions. This is in addition to the crises Gods (flooded rivers, hills, trees, animals, disease Goddesses) people already used.
There are two key threads behind all these conversions, amalgamations, absorptions, reconstructions and metamorphoses. The first thread is "hope". If God(dess) X does not work, God Y will work. If Ayyappa does not work Shirdi Sai Baba will work. If Shirdi Baba does not work, Jesus will work and if he does not work Alla or KalEsha Mastan or Chisti or Chaddar will work. The second thread is "fear". That God may be angry. The followers of that God may be angry.
The VISN_Lakme worshippers had the four caste system. All the three scriptures (Ramayana, Mahabharata (includes Gita), and Mahabhagavata) were from the Visn-Lakme worshippers. Hence, all the three books laid great emphasis on enforcing the four caste system, placing the battle-losing races and tribes in the Sudra and fifth castes.
The Shiva-fallus worshippers did not have to worry about castes. For this reason only Ramayana and MahaBharata didn't mention about castes in the demons-daityas-dAnavas-asuras (all same). Some demons performed sacrifices (yagnas), but they might not have been the same as the visn-lakme yagnas or indra-agni yagnas. They were all co-colonisers trying to occupying as much space as possible in Indian Sub-continent. The battles of Ramayana and Mahabharata show the colonials battles of both the types - intra colonial battles i.e. battles between one colonial group and another colonial group or original colonial battles (battles between the colonisers and the natives).
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN COLONISATION OF INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES
Here, the history of United States is worth referring. The British, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italians, Germans (and others) colonised United States and Canada. The colonisers had their religious distinctions-- the Catholics from Austria, France, Spain and Italy. the Lutherns and Protestants from Germany. The Anglicans from England. Some Puritans. Some Quakers. Something else, something else. They were praying and fighting among themselves. At the same time they were subjugating the native American Indians calling them barbaric and unciviised, branding them superstitious. Different counties and States in US and the Canada may, therefore, have different religious denominations and dominations, though superficially all may claim that in God they trust. But swearing is different from practising.
Back to Gods in Hinduism.
The later Sankaracharya monastic Heads claimed that Adi Shankaracharya tried to united all the six sects -- visn, saiv, skAndh, gaNEsh, sUrya (Sun), and dEvi (Mother Goddess or Shakti). The Advaita philosophy of Adi Shankara had nothing to do with these six sects called 'shaN-matas'. There was apparently a Buddhist onslought.
Adi Shankara was said to have overcome the onslought by combining these six Hindu segments. I personally feel that a true preacher of Advaita would not have dropped down to hymn-writing which involves flattering and curry-favoring the Gods and Goddesses. If there were no takers for the Advaita philosophical concepts, he would have probably kept a low profile and taken up some other work. The wings of philosophic contemplation, arguing and explorative mental expedition which Advaita philosophy envisaged and X - the flattering-curry-favoring-surrendering- hymn-singing-surrendering culture cannot co-exist in the same monastic traditions. Philosophic contemplation and explorations were and are difficult jobs. Wearing red-black-orange clothes, forehead marks, chanting and singing are easier jobs. Pretensions are possible in both. This happens in every religion. Revered Pope wears some bizarre colorful dresses, some crowns and headgears and wields his stick and ask audience surrender to God and his representative. Does that mean search was already completed and God was brought on to the pulpit of preaching?
True philosophical contemplations and investigations, if undertaken today in a scientific manner, will initially involve some oscillations between 'theism and atheism' and finally have to end up with atheism, if history of evolution of religion in India is taken into cognisance. As you have pointed out , logic will not be of any use, because everybody can twist logic.
Today's Hindus (geographical meaning of the residents of the Indian Sub-Continent) have to go back to their ancestral thought levels of pre-invasion centuries. In other words, they have to convert their minds into clean re-writable hard disks. The re-writing of the hard-disks, they have to do for themselves. The operating systems have to remain functional and secure, while the appendages in the folders and directories undergo formatting or drive clean-up.
The geographical Hindus have to guard their mental vacuums alertly. Otherwise alien computer viruses -- the Christian and Islamic will enter. If alien viruses enter, our MENTAL computers will not reboot.
GIST
My dear Mr. Raj: Let us become geographical Hindus and not fanatic Hindus.
Your comment on proving that I am not a "coward". It is not in my agenda that I shall have to prove that I am not a coward. But, I shall write a very clear NOT-ESCAPIST reply for you, in my next blog post.
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