Tag: Hindu philosophy

We would like to expand the pantheon by borrowing a liberal lion from the West, such as John Stuart Mill or Thomas Paine. If there is a demand for a C20 inspirational figure then we propose Vaclav Havel…because of his life experiences under a non-liberal regime. Next, a humanist/atheist like Richard Dawkins (or Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens,…) because we would like India (and Indians) to move away from religion and towards humanism.  

Finally as one of the great Indians (re: Ramchandra Guha, see details below) and as a woman, we would recommend Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (or Sarojini Naidu), the freedom fighter and social reformer.
………………….
Earlier this year, Udipi Rajago­pa­la­charya Ananthamurthy
(URA), the Jnanpith award-winning Kannada novelist, educationist and
public intellectual, had declared that he would not live in an India run
by Narendra Modi. This had provoked lacerating responses from
right-wing Hindutva supporters. URA breathed his last on August 22,
2014, before the Modi government completed 100 days in office. ….
Chandan Gowda
of the Azim Premji University had interviewed the litterateur for an
eight-part Doordarshan series, telecast in June and July. It is possibly
URA’s last major interview. Excerpts:

….
What parts of the Gandhian legacy are important for you?

His suspicion of the modern world system is one. The modern world
system will destroy the earth, will destroy the sky, will destroy the
balance bet­ween nature and man because it is very greedy. Gandhi’s
rejection was sometimes extreme. But extremes can open the gate of
heaven, that’s what they have said. 
…
So Gandhi exaggerated at times, but
in the main you know that. He used trains all the time. But he said we
could live without trains. He rightly feared centralisation. Gandhi was
also friendly towards nature. There are many valuable Gandhian ideas.
The whole idea that small is beautiful comes from Gandhi. So he wanted
such ideas to govern the whole country. He didn’t like big buildings.

….
How do you view Nehru’s legacy?

I can still say primary education should  be nationalised and that
the healthcare system should also be nationalised. Where do I get these
ideas from? I get them from Nehru and, later, Indira Gandhi. We get
something very wholesome from the Nehruvian tradition.

….
What has Ambedkar meant for India’s politics in the 20th century?

I think nobody can help the Dalits reg­ain their self-respect as much
as Ambedkar can. Gandhi makes them regain their self-respect, but when
they regain it, you know, they will be softer than what they are. But
with Ambedkar, they can be themselves and still get self-respect. 
..
Ambedkar was a socialist and had a legal mind. His becoming a Buddhist
is very important for me. It’s not merely a political act. It’s a deep
act of self-purification. So Gandhi and Ambedkar began with two
different directions but they meet at one point, wanting spiritually
enhanced visions.

….
Lohia has meant a lot for you as a writer and thinker. How do you evaluate Lohia’s criticism of tradition?
I learnt a great deal from Lohia—to become what I have always called a
critical insider. Lohia was a very great critical insider. He absorbed a
lot from India’s spiritual traditions. He has written a great book, Interval During Politics, which has essays on Valmiki, on Vyasa, on Rama, Krishna, Shiva. They are great. 
…
Another great essay called Lessons in Yoga
shows he was deeply rooted in tradition. He knew his Shankaracharya
too. But he was very critical of the Brahminical element, which becomes
more and more important as Indian civilisation evolves. He was also
critical of the Shudras behaving in Brahmin ways. His opposition to
English as a language of knowledge was important to me.

….
Lohia was able to produce more pol­itical leaders than Nehru did.
Nehru inherited his friends from his party, but Lohia created a new
leadership. You find it in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Mulayam Singh Yadav
and Laloo Prasad Yadav, for example, are products of Lohia’s movement.
And Karnataka too has seen many fine socialist leaders. Unfortunately,
the socialist leadership became populist in some places. Lohia himself
was critical of these trends. He wanted some anarchy so that India kept
thinking of alternatives.

…..
How have you understood your relation with the Hindu dharma?

I am a Hindu, but that is an absurd thing to say. I mean, there is
nothing like a Hindu. I should say I am a Brahmin, to be very exact. But
that doesn’t describe me either, because I have given up the
ritualistic part of the Brahmin religion. 
…
I am a Hindu in a broad way,
in the sense that all of us believe that the Ganga is sacred, that the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, our two great epics, and the Upanishads
have deep spiritual insights. All this I believe. I believe what my
ancestors believed, that is, there is not one God but we can imagine
several gods and describe them in different ways…. Hinduism is also
difficult because it is based on hierarchies.

….
Has anything about Indian politics struck you as mysterious?

The fact that if you are an ascetic and if you have given up
everything, you can go beyond language, religion, caste, and appeal to
the whole country. You know when Gandhi emerged, it was a mysterious
thing, because he was neither a Bengali nor a Maharashtrian. All great
leaders until then had come from eit­her Bengal or Maharashtra.

….
How do you understand the need for swaraj in thought in India today?

I an not too passionately involved in what they call the desi,
because you will not find the pure desi when you search for it. It is
based on Sanskrit; it is mixed with Persian; it’s linked with different
rulers at different times.  There is nothing pure even in our folklore.
Therefore, I am more a follo­wer of Pampa (the 10th century Kan­­­nada
Jain poet), who wanted to combine the desi with the marga.
…
All my writing is a combination of the desi and the marga. I have
perhaps more marga in me than desi. But there is something like swaraj
in ideas. I have a feeling that we have become second-rate imitators of
the West. There was absolutely no original thought in India, except for
Gandhi, over the last two centuries. He was the only original thinker
and he had the courage to imag­ine a world without railways, without
technology, without whatever Britain brought to India. He could conceive
of a world without these and hence some kind of swadeshi chintana was
possible for him, that we can survive without the aid of the West. That
we can be intellectual without depending heavily on western thinkers.

….
What are the challenges facing someone who chooses to write about India in English?

Anyone who writes in English should be deeply knowledgeable about at
least one Indian language. I say this for all journalists too. You
cannot be an English journalist in Karnataka unless you know Kannada.
Similarly, for anthropological, sociological and other kinds of
writing.  I think it is very necessary to know how people think, how
people feel. You should be able to grasp that. And an ins­tinctive grasp
becomes possible if you know the language of the people.

….
Does it matter very much to you that people like you?

I enjoy being liked. Though I am ill, I forget I am ill because of
the affection and warmth I get from people who read me, who remember
what I write, who write me letters. I like it very much.

….
Could you tell us how you would like to be rem­embered?

As a Kannada writer. For having made a contribution to Kannada
through my works…that there are many younger writers who will get
something from me, because I have brought whatever I could from my own
past, from my Brahminical past, from the European world, from my various
experiences, and from my probing of my own self into the Kannada
language. It might be a threatened language in the modern world, but I
have worked against the threat and that is an achievement. I would like
to be remembered as a teacher, as a writer.
…………..

After coming out of jail,
Kamaladevi became active in trade union work, and travelled to the
United States, where she explained the relevance of civil disobedience
to black activists (her turn in the South is compellingly described in
Nico Slate’s recent book Colored Cosmopolitanism). 

After
Independence and Partition, Kamaladevi supervised the resettlement of
refugees; still later, she set up an all-India network of artisanal
cooperatives, and established a national crafts museum as well as a
national academy for music and dance. 

Tragically, because her work
cannot be seen through an exclusively political lens, and because her
versatility cannot be captured by a sect or special interest, Kamaladevi
is a forgotten figure today. Yet, from this historian’s point of view,
she has strong claims to being regarded as the greatest Indian woman of
modern times.
……

Link(1): http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?291808

Link (2): hindu.com/indians-great-greater-greatest

……

regards

Most Hindus would be hard-pressed to define Hinduism (we say this as a non-believer but with deepest sincerity). Having said that it is our observation that Hinduism is evolving fast and becoming a very different entity than what it was even a few decades ago. In our opinion (and in our little corner of the world) this is just as important as the transformation of Islam into a more austere, back to the roots version (which is also very different from what it was a few decades ago).

Take the example of caste. We are admittedly a bit too fond of the – ”Syrian Christians are Brahmins” – gag (thus, Arundhati Roy is a Brahmin from her mother’s side).  Even though people have called us haters for saying this but still…we have met a fair, few SyCh-s and they have (even in short conversations) always managed to bring up this “fact.” In a country where lot of people (majority) equate folk-lore with history, such a deeply held belief probably should be accepted as fact.

In our (non-scholarly) opinion, caste is but a tribe, we have a million castes and a zillion tribes in modern India. We would even go so far as to argue that the Kayasthas of Uttar Pradesh (Saxena, Srivastava, Mathur, Bhatnagar, Gaur, Asthana, Nigam, Kulshrestha,…) are a different tribe than the Kayasthas from Bengal (Ghosh, Basu, Mitra, Dutta,…), even though folk-lore states that Kayasthas (and other super-castes) were “imported” from UP to Bengal any centuries ago.
……
What is the relationship between Hinduism and caste? Without delving too deep into the question (we do not have the knowledge base to do so) we ask another related question. Which came first: association as Hindus or dissociation as castes? If caste=tribe assumption is correct, then it may well be that society was divided into castes before developing a common set of rituals that we now recognize to be as part of Hinduism. The philosophical foundations of caste were possibly added post-hoc by Hindu scholars.

What is the significance of Gotra? It is possible of people from different castes to have the same gotra (and vice versa). To us, this seems like a contradiction in terms, unless it is also recognized that caste is not defined (and was not originally) defined rigidly.

The march towards a common Canon-feasible? The left-liberals assure us that such a thing is inconceivable. However (again as an outsider) it seems that this is exactly what the Hindutva project is all about. To the extent this process is influenced by the Arya Samaj, Hinduism should be ready to abolish idolatry, caste and ancestral worship (starting with cremation rituals). The Hindu religion (official version) will look a bit like Islam!!! But unofficially, we doubt that Hindus will ever be able to get rid of idolatry- it is actually the one big differentiator.

Is it possible to abolish caste? We are seeing this in both ways. The opinion makers- the middle class (derived from all castes and from other religions) – have become more protective about caste identity. At the same time urban lifestyle (and western values that are creeping upon us all the time) is anti-caste. Remove the iron rod of religion and no guardian can stop a Hindu boy falling in love with a Muslim girl (to take the most extreme case of societal bridge building).

Eventually we are hopeful that caste will become ceremonial in nature: yes, we like to know where you came from. But that is not your only identity or even the primary identity. You are a human being, first and foremost. Make this society (and country and world) a better place to live (preferably through non-violent means), or step out of the way. This will only happen when the Dalits get their fair share (starting with a Dalit Prime Minister).

The USA has managed to elect a black man (twice) as top dog (if one chooses to be picky about ancestry, having a Kenyan papa is not the same as having a black-american dad). In India, a Maha-Dalit (the lowest in the caste ladder) became the Chief Minister of Bihar (after Nitish Kumar was crushed by the Tsunamo and stepped aside).

The USA is also getting prepared to elect a Madame President in 2016. If Mayawati manages to secure the top spot she would do so as the first unmarried, Dalit woman, who was also mentored by a Dalit (Kanshi Ram, no relation). That would be a truly defining moment for modern India.  

Religion will probably stay with us (unfortunately). It helps define the “other” as much as it defines ourselves. Canon or no canon, Hinduism will be defined as the un-Islam, Sikhism as un-Islam and un-Hindu, and so on….
……………….

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Link: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/what-would-krishna-do-or-shiva-or-vishnu

….

regards

This was astonishing as well:

Parsis in China:

The problem with left-liberal academicians (DN Jha, Sumit Sarkar and others) is that the secular fan-base in India is microscopic and there is not much love from minority communities (who are to be sure appreciative of the majority bashing).

Conservative Muslims are least interested in the “secular” record of Akbar, they hate him for his out-reach (and the plan to kick-off a new religion). 

Conservative Sikhs are repulsed by praise for “marxist-atheist” Bhagat Singh, they believe that Sardar Singh was a faithful follower of the Panth. 

The Dalits dislike the liberals intensely since the ideologues are primarily drawn from the super-caste community- red/pink Bengal has remarkably seen only Brahmin Chief Ministers for the past two decades. Even Navayana – the pro-Dalit megaphone – is led by the non-Dalit firebrand S Anand.

There are now dark clouds on the horizon, the new govt will be sympathetic towards Hindutva scholarship and will be headed by people like Rao who are convinced that “folklore is history.” Going forward, any book considered anti-saffron will not be publishable in India. That leaves only the West and the public forums afforded by the New York Times and the Guardian (and others). That will be one crowded space already occupied by super-stars.
……………………………………………………..
The media describes him as an RSS man and the author of the
Mahabharata Project, but very little is known about the mild-mannered
historian from Telangana in academic circles.  Yellapragada Sudershan Rao,
the new chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR),
describes himself as a colonial historian and argues that faith and
reason can go hand in hand in the writing of history.


………
You have lashed out against Marxist historians and their
interpretation of history. Why is the writing of history a Right vs Left
debate?

I think it is time to think about India’s history from an Indian
perspective. 

For the last 60 years, our writing and understanding of
history has been influenced by the West. Indian research has been far
too dependent on the West to write its own history. We are dependent on
their translations and interpretation. And, these are my personal views,
history writing in India is Euro-centric and imperialistic. The ICHR, I
understand, is in the process of acquiring digital records from centres
of history in the US and Europe. This will not only give us access to
our own records but will also aid us in writing history from our
perspective.


…
You have been appointed by the BJP government. Don’t you think institutions such as the ICHR should be free of politics? 
The MoU (memorandum of understanding) prepared by the founding fathers
of ICHR gave the powers to the government to appoint heads of social and
historical institutes. I have no qualms in admitting that these
appointments are political. 

Have previous heads of social institutes
been questioned about their appointments? Why are these questions asked
only about me? The government has been formed by a democratic process.
It has been elected by the people. To question that is to question
democracy itself. Unlike other social institutes, the ICHR attracts a
lot of attention because history is an important subject. But history
belongs to the people. We have not shown or written a comprehensive
history of India to the people of India. History is by the people, for
the people and of the people.


….
You are the author of the Mahabharata project? What is the project about?

There is a certain view that the Mahabharata or the Ramayana are
myths. I don’t see them as myths because they were written at a certain
point of time in history. They are important sources of information in
the way we write history. What we write today may become an important
source of information for the fut­ure in the future. 

When analysed, of
course, they could be declared to be true or false. History is not
static. It belongs to the people, it’s made by the people. Similarly,
the Ram­ayana is true for people…it’s in the collective memory of
generations of Indians. We can’t say the Ramayana or the Mahabharata are
myths. Myths are from a western perspective.


…
What does that mean?

For us, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are true accounts of the periods in which they were written.


….
But shouldn’t the writing of history be rooted in historical evidence and research?

Western schools of thought look at material evidence of history. We
can’t produce material evidence for everything. India is a continuing
civilisation. To look for evidence would mean digging right though the
hearts of villages and displacing people. We only have to look at the
people to figure out the similarities in their lives and the depiction
in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. 

For instance, the Ramayana mentions
that Rama had traveled to Bhad­ra­chalam (in Andhra Pradesh). A look
at the people and the fact that his having lived there for a while is in
the collective memory of the people cannot be discounted in the search
for material evidence. In continuing civilisations such as ours, the
writing of history cannot depend only on archaeological evidence. We
have to depend on folklore too.


….
Are you for correcting the writing of history?

I won’t put it that way. But real history has to come through. I am a
follower of truth. The ICHR should encourage research about India and
Greater India—from Southeast Asia all the way to Afghanistan, Iraq and
Iran. There is enough archaeological evidence to show the connect of our
civilisation there.


….
What is your view on Ayodhya?

Is it not a fact that mosques as structures came to be in India in
1000 AD? Is it not a fact that the mosque was built by a lieutenant of
Babur? A historian can only enlighten people on the facts of history.
Historians can at best say evidence of earlier remains of a Hindu
structure are there. Conflicting views are created by political leaders. 

If Ayodhya is not the place of Ram, where did he live? Looking at the
present structures in Ayodhya, we can see people still living the way
that finds a mention in the Ramayana. Historians can only give their
opinion to enlighten people.


…..
Doesn’t correcting history pose a problem? Why only cast it
in the context of two communities? How about Dalits and untouchability?

The question of untouchability is relatively recent, as recent as
3,000 years. And it has its basis in the economy. It was not based on
social status. Did we hear of untouchability before this period of 3,000
years? Let me give you an example. Sage Vishwamitra went to a Dalit hut
and asked for dog’s meat as he was hungry. The Ramayana and Mahabharata
are replete with instances of different castes, did we find a mention
of untouchability there?


…..
As a historian, are you trying to give a religious interpretation to history? 
I am a Hindu and a Brahmin. To be a Hindu isn’t a religion. In my
personal practices, I can adopt religious practices of the community to
which I belong—as a Shaivite or a Vaishnavite. But that is not what
being a Hindu is about. 

Reli­gi­ons are recent manifestations. I feel
the­re’s only Sanatana Dharma. There was no conflict between communities
or on religious lines as there was only one sanatana dharma. Now there
are several reasons for conflict to take place. 

Besides, Muslims are the
only ones who have retained their distinct culture. Can Christians or
Muslims say all religions are one? A Hindu can say that. There was no
conflict when there was sanatana dharma, Conflict or contests came about
when temples were destroyed and mosques built on the sites in medieval
times.


….
Didn’t Hindus destroy Buddhist monuments?

I agree. But Buddhism was on the wane then, in decline. But were
thousands of people killed as they were in the raids to the Somnath
temple? I won’t use the word corrections here. But the real history has
to come up.

…..

Link: http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?291363

……

regards

If this core truly pervades popular belief today then it cannot be
easily explained as a late nineteenth and twentieth century product of
colonialism as many on the left try to do. This is not to deny the
presence of other orthodox and heterodox traditions in this core, only
to say that such a monism’s mass appeal must surely have preceded
colonial times. Doniger and her supporters never acknowledge this wider
humanity in their arguments and so end up attacking a straw man. 

For instance, Vamsee Juluri’s essay
articulates an attitude that may be widely shared by modern practicing
Hindus. He clearly differentiates it from militant Hindutva by making
plain the diverse and plural heritage of Hindu thought. But he
simultaneously argues against Doniger by saying her interpretations
flagrantly contradict the lived experience of devout Hindus. This
dialectical argument raises many difficulties for both sides, and sets
up a tension between Hinduism seen as an intellectual object and as a
sacred practice. 

Second, however, it may be asked, shouldn’t the lived experience of
religious symbols and myths be part of what is explained by inquiry?
That is, shouldn’t the external, intellectual stance account for the
internal, experiential facts? For example, if one holds that the Shiva
lingam represents Shiva’s erect penis, how does this square with the
interpretive community’s view (e.g. possibly something abstract like
Shiva’s sexual and creative power or just Shiva himself)? In a parallel
situation, is it right to describe the Holy Communion in Christianity as
a cannibalistic rite? Certainly there is a connection between a penis
and a Shiva lingam as there is between the body and blood of Christ and
the ritual bread and wine, but do these connections involve the literal connotations of “penis” and “cannibalism”? 

Doniger’s book is not about revelatory insights into the Hindus but
generally about completely worldly things like sex, death, and material
pursuits. While Eros and Thanatos are undoubtedly powerful forces in
human lives and while material pursuits are indispensable to survival,
Doniger succeeds only in clarifying that the Hindus, like other humans,
were and are part of the animal kingdom.  

Much of what she says is
probably true—the Brahmins did eat beef early on, for example—and the
Hindus who have been offended by such facts ought to recognize that
religious values are not eternal but emerge through history. But, for
her part, Doniger fails to make sufficiently salient how unique and
humane the impulse of vegetarianism was as a response to the barbaric
conditions of material life in all early human civilizations. She passes
up such opportunities over and over again.

For the aims she chose, her cultural history needed to
have been more of an intellectual history. She never explores what the thinkers
of Indian civilization did—whether Brahmins or non-Brahmins, men or
women—when they confronted conceptual problems like the origins of the
world and how we might come to know it. No logic of inquiry or
argument is described as it would have to be if one wanted to “show the
presence of brilliant and creative thinkers entirely off the track.” 

Indeed, there is hardly any speculation about the metaphysical instincts
of the Hindus at all. Her materialism, while right in spirit, is
summoned too soon and all one gets is the subterfuges and stratagems of
the ancients. No doubt these existed as they are an inevitable part of
human nature and no doubt they played some role in the worldviews of the
Hindus, but do they constitute what is special and unique about Indian
civilization, or any civilization for that matter?

regards

Killing
is not right. Killing animals to eat them is not a civilised thing to
do, but carnivores exist in nature and in many places, humans have to
subsist on non-vegetarian food for reasons beyond their control. But
wherever possible, vegetarianism must be practised. Hurting people
physically or mentally, whether by word or action is wrong. Ahimsa is
more important than prayer. Ahimsa should be the central principle of
your faith, but you have to raise your voice against injustice. Then, if
you hurt someone who has hurt other people, it is justified. But the
death penalty is barbaric — it is murder by the state.

So, life should be lived with
compassion and non-violence. I think a lot about life and the way we
live it; I also think about death and how we deal with it. The basic
point is, we don’t know where we come from; we also don’t know where we
go after death. In between, we might know a little about life. 

People
talk a lot about body and soul — I’ve never seen a soul, nor do I know
anyone who has seen one. So for me, death is a full stop. I don’t
subscribe to the theory of rebirth endorsed by Hinduism and Buddhism nor
do I believe in the Judeo-Christian belief in a heaven and hell. Ghalib
said: “We know the truth about paradise but to beguile your mind is not
a bad idea.”
 
When I met The Dalai Lama, I told him I didn’t
believe in God. He threw his head back and laughed, saying, nor do
Buddhists. I often wonder, how only Hindu and Buddhist children relate
incidents from previous births while Muslim and Christian children
don’t. There is nothing unique about death. 
Death comes to all who are
born. So we don’t need to pull a long face when death comes. Of course,
it is human nature to grieve for someone you’ve lost. But that’s no
reason to create a big fuss, wailing and screaming. Nor is there any
need to have elaborate rituals.
 
Death is in the order of
nature — when your time comes, die with dignity. I’m a member of the
‘Die with Dignity’ society formed by Minoo Masani 20 years ago. I can’t
say I don’t fear death — but I’m more concerned about whether it is
going to be a long drawn out painful process.
 
Iqbal wrote: “If
you ask me about the sign of faith/when death comes to him/he should
have a smile on his face.” I’m all for the ancient tradition of
celebrating death. When people over 70 years die, their death should be
marked with celebrations including music, dancing and feasting. It is a
sign of maturity and acceptance of the inevitable. 

regards