Author: Bharata Bharatavanshi

Two Articles On Tribalism

We can divide the different belief structures by three traits, openness to exploration of ideas, attitudes to internal differences, attitude towards external entities . And  we can trace the evolution of different belief structures and how they influenced the world and have been influenced by the world.

Islam comes into it just as british are brought into it to explain harmful effects of colonialism to understand the relative under development. Europe succeeded because of 3 things, science, printing and freedom to criticize, India was the pre eminent place for new math and astronomy, it allowed freedom to criticize, atheists existed in India till the coming of Islam. Ramanuja , was the second greatest theologian in last 1500 yrs possibly and he stood against caste discrimination and so did many others in past 1000 years. Without Islam to worry about, people would have possibly be worried about these issues instead. Atheists existed in India for longer period than entire history of christianity thus far or the entire peak period of greeko roman civilization. To understand the influence of Islam, one only needs to wonder, what would have happened to western civilization had it been occupied, its universities destroyed, oxford and Cambridge being replaced with taj mahal and qutb minar. It was knowledge that changed the west and it would have been knowledge that would have changed India too, and knowledge production under Islam in India was bad.

Ambedkar himself admired ramanuja , advaita . He said in his annhilation of caste ” no foreign ideology is necessary…” . So, no, he didnt see Hinduism as without hope. As for moral development in India is concerned, Coming of Islam was a big factor in all round under development altogether. There are many more people in Hinduism who stood up on issues of caste and they were allowed to criticise religion in its entirety. Ambedkar was made chairman of constitution by Gandhi and congress whom he criticised a lot. He visited and praised rss in its service as well. One cant say that of Islam. Islam kills its critics. so, no, I dont hold the same degree of hope for thee. As for borg, that is more apt for christianity and islam. It is not Hinduism that seeks converts.

when your cousin and head of NDTV which has a very left position and is married to sister of brinda karat, top left leader and chooses to not give you space, that is revealing as to how far gone they themselves think of her. Excursion trips to maoist camps who were declared by congress lead upa 1 govt( which was allied to the biggest block of left who engage with democracy in parliament) prime minister manmohan singh as “single biggest internal threat”, and whose stated position is to overthrow democracy and you are sympathetic to them, that tells everything. And yes, occasionally people do celebrate killings of Indian soldiers by maoists.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/dantewada-aftershocks-at-jnu-415103

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pitched-battle-over-peoples-war-at-JNU/articleshow/5783093.cms

It might be ok for people to ally but it is foolish to not recognize the true nature of ally. My point regarding kashmir was that violence there had to do with guns that did come from across border and not killing of political activists of rival political parties purely for sake of power as it was in west bengal or in kerala. Kashmir isnt about political violence, west bengal is. There is no army posted there. The fact that the biggest internal security threat are maoists and the worst political violence was in west bengal controlled by left reveals to its nature. There should be endless volumes of literature on their violence, but if the academies themselves are covered by left ideologues as JNU among others are, who will call it out?.

HH is better than roy. There is no comparison on this. He isnt supporting or sympathizing a murderous gang of people whose stated objective is to overthrow of pakistan govt itself and throw out democracy.He didnt go to their camps and write propaganda piece in support of them. Condone their violent murders by their kangaroo system of justice where victims have no say. This is the more sinister element of left, they use democracy itself against it. Your understanding of “left” is very poor if you dont know of the nature of left in India and their history of violence and thereby your assessment of roy stands invalid.

Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam” Edited by Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar

atire and bursting the bubble of religion should be an option, else it all becomes tribal. everyone will start counting the increasing numbers and demographic change all the time. everyone will start picking sides all the time.tribalism will increasingly become dominant as though there were no option .

we should consider the harm we are avoiding, the good that can be done. a fundamentalist group might very well complain against others including fellow religious people. what might be ok for liberal believers might very well be bad for fundamentalist believers.And in multi religious society, there is much competition on all fronts including competition by competing fundamentalist groups. For example blasphemy laws came into India first due to article 295 A, introduced by british in aftermath of ilm ud din assassinating the publisher of ranglia rasool which was done in retaliation for muslims calling Hindu goddess sita as prostitute. The result was that the publisher was assassinated, the murderer ilm ud din was given death sentence, he was defended in court by Jinnah, the founder of pakistan. His funeral attracted over 10,000 muslims and supposedly his funeral prayer was lead by Iqbal, the ideological founder of pakistan, soon, blasphemy law was introduced. Later after Independence. Nehru introduced the first amendment in article 19 (2) regarding freespeech. These two laws among others have been used to silence opponents. Consequence has been that Hindus too have begun to use these laws to try to silence. Its a show of power, a way to put people in their place.

There were no blasphemy laws in Indian history before, Therefore there are many stories that speak of ill of certain actions of the gods. Rival believers of different gods make up stories of ill action of other gods and as a result people abandon the belief in those gods to other gods or become buddhists or jains or atheists etc.

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/jinnahs-only-lost-case-defending-the-killer-of-a-blasphemer-ghazi-ilm-deen-r-h.87158

Apparently it was the only case Jinnah lost. And he fought the case under request of Iqbal.

What I will agree though is on blasphemy for the sake of it or to intentionally keep taunting people. It is plain rude and a disgusting behavior. being sensitive to others is fine.

I think I would perhaps be correct in claiming India has the largest body of oral knowledge created, preserved and transmitted than any thing else in the world. Jainism, buddhism,atheism owe their origins to vedic speculations being preserved and their debating /speculating culture. Philosophical speculation is just not possible without memory being preserved in some way, it just wasnt true for anyone else except for vedic people. So, i disagree on this issue. As for Indus valley, there seem to be aspects of goddess worship of some kind and associated human sacrifice. Many cults of human sacrifice continued with Goddess worship, kali for example.

Brihadaranyaka upanishad, for example is quoted by both carvakas and Buddha himself. It is probably the most ancient upanishad, it asks the interesting question as to what survives after death, speculation is from, atman, to karma, idea of all things going back to their source, earth element to earth, water element to water, it compares the answer to what survives after a plant is uprooted, so if one qualifies question with God, what survives after death then one ends up with most of the spectrum of beliefs that come from India.

atheism- no God,no cosmic karma,no atman
ajivika- No God, no karmic force, no atman, naturalistic force, fate
sankhya- (ancient sankhya is unknown now, latest sankhya has similar model to david chalmers(they really deserve credit, this theory has been brought back independently by david chalmers), ofcourse there are differences, but one can bracket sankhya with david chalmers somewhat. consciouesness, matter being origin for everything else including intelligence.
buddhism- no God, karma cosmic force, no atman
jainism- no God, karma cosmic force, atman yes
advaita- No God, karma cosmic force,atman yes
other hindu schools have God, karma,atman etc combination of things.

There are other reasons to believe this, upanishads record sense objects, sense organs and knowing through them, this is reflective of later buddhism, One of Buddha teachers was a person who taught him an ancient form of sankhya. Buddha himself is to have spoken of different groups of vedic teachers to be authentic than others. In absense of memory preserving culture I do not know how can any of these ideas could have been speculated , recorded and preserved for generations growing into a community. This isnt possible, it might be a case that the people were from non vedic social back grounds were taking parts of vedic,Upanishads principles bit by bit as they saw fit and then have own schools but the ideas do seem to come only from vedic system of knowledge. Again, in order to have any worthwhile philosophical speculation of any kind one must first possess an ability to remember and pass it along for generations. This ability was possessed by vedic system

Not exactly, partly true, later shunga dynasty supported buddhism as well. One has to look at the same sources that , the first state sanctioned genocide on basis of religion infact happened under Ashoka . so it was ashoka who used violence, then new empire that displaced them also used violence and since buddhist sangha was associated with mauryan empire a lot, they too suffered probably, but then again, the next generation also supported buddhism. Later period of attack by mihirakula was defeated by other hindu kings who were praised by buddhists in their writings. Infact, ambedkar writes buddhism disappeared because of coming of Islam.

“There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the ‘But’. The word ‘But’ as everybody knows, is the Arabic word and means an idol. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar, and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia.”

decline of buddhism