QUOTES ON SCRIPTURES - V
QUOTES ON SCRIPTURES - V
Dr. Koenraad
Elst (1959 -) Though he was born in Leuven, Belgium in a Flemish Catholic family, he is a renowned Dutch historian. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies from the
Catholic University of Leuven. He is the author of several books
including ‘The Saffron Swastika, Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of
Hindu Revivalism’ and ‘Negationism
in India: Concealing the Record of Islam’.
During a stay at the 'Benares Hindu University', he discovered India’s communal problem and wrote his first book about the budding Ayodhya conflict.
A strong advocate for ‘Hindu
revivalism in the West’, he
wrote: "The struggle of Hindu
society is not primarily with the Muslim community. The most important
opponents of Hindu society today are not the Islamic communal leaders, but
the interiorized colonial rulers
of India, the alienated English-educated and mostly Left-leaning elite that
noisily advertises its 'secularism.' It is these people
who impose anti-Hindu policies on Hindu society, and who keep Hinduism down and prevent it from
proudly raising its head after a thousand years of oppression."
During a stay at the 'Benares Hindu University', he discovered India’s communal problem and wrote his first book about the budding Ayodhya conflict.
A strong advocate for ‘Hindu
revivalism in the West’, he
wrote: "The struggle of Hindu
society is not primarily with the Muslim community. The most important
opponents of Hindu society today are not the Islamic communal leaders, but
the interiorized colonial rulers
of India, the alienated English-educated and mostly Left-leaning elite that
noisily advertises its 'secularism.' It is these people
who impose anti-Hindu policies on Hindu society, and who keep Hinduism down and prevent it from
proudly raising its head after a thousand years of oppression."
"The
Hindu fight is not at all with Muslims; the fight is between Hindus anxious to
renew themselves in the spirit of their civilization, and the state, Indian in
name and not in spirit, and the political and intellectual class trapped in the
debris the British managed to bury us under before they left."
"The
worst torment for Hindu society today is this mental slavery, this sense of inferiority which Leftist intellectuals, through
their power positions in education and the media, and their direct influence on
the public and political arena, keep on inflicting on the Hindu mind."
"Pride in being Indian means, for 99%, pride in
Hinduism. So, this legitimate pride
has to be nourished with broad and in-depth knowledge of Hindu culture. The two
enemies of this effort are the pseudo-secularist morbidity that glorifies the
destroyers of Hindu culture, and discourages its study altogether...Most Western scholars positively dislike
Hinduism when it stands up to defend itself. They prefer museum Hinduism, or
innocent Gandhian kind of Hinduism, and they readily buy the secularist story
that an assertive Hinduism is not the 'real Hinduism'."
Elst notes that Eastern philosophy has appeal in the
West these days because "of rationality and the absence of a conflict between
science and religion as there is in Islam or Christianity."
"Hinduism
applauds diversity and consequently accepts that people of different
temperaments, circumstances and levels of understanding develop different
viewpoints and different forms to express even the same view point. In that
sense, it has always paid equal respect to shramanas and brahmanas, to jnana (ज्ञान-knowledge) and bhakti (भक्ति-devotion) etc. It showed samabhava (समभाव-equality) to all traditions which counted as dharma (धर्म -duty & religion).
This respect was never extended to adharma (अधर्म -non-religious/sinful) practices
and doctrines such as Christianity and Islam, the religions for whose benefit
the slogan is used mostly."
"The fundamental mistake of Indian secularism is
that Hinduism is put in the same category as Islam and Christianity. Islam and
Christianity's intrinsic irrationality and hostility to independent critical
thought warranted secularism as a kind of containment policy. By contrast, Hinduism recognizes freedom of
thought and does not need to be contained by secularism. Historically,
Hindus have quickly recognized Islam and missionary Christianity as maleccha (मलेच्छ),
barbaric predatory religions, not as instances of dharma to which any respect is due. Until Swami Dayananda Saraswati स्वामी दयानंद सरस्वती, they didn't
even consider these religions as worthy of a detailed critique. Christianity
and Islam are wrong in their central truth claims and can immediately be
discarded. Humanity has lived without these pretentious doctrines for long, and that it is a matter of
mathematical certainty that it will resume doing so. The question is only how
much damage they will be allowed to add to their record before expiring. A very optimistic objection could be that Hindu society need not bother
about Christianity and Islam, because the thrust of their historical aggression against Hinduism is
weakening and will weaken further in the future. It has happened before;
while Communists were plotting the
death of Hinduism and the dismemberment of India, the Hindutva (हिन्दुत्व-the Hindu way of life) movement did very little to counter Communism, yet Communism collapsed under
its own failure in its very stronghold."
"The
Hindu revivalist movement perceives itself as the cultural chapter of
India's decolonization.
This means that it tries to free the Indians from the colonial condition at the
mental and cultural level, to complete the process of political and economic
decolonization. The need for 'reviving' Hinduism springs from the
fact that the said hostile ideologies (mostly Islam) have managed to eliminate
Hinduism physically in certain geographic parts (like present day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh etc) and social segments of India,
and also (mostly Western ideology) to neutralize the Hindu spirit among
many nominal Hindus."
He
advocates the intellectual
mobilization of Hindu society. He stated: "Consider the
situation in Africa: in 1900, 50% of all Africans practiced Pagan religions;
today, Christian and Islamic missionaries have reduced this number to less than
10%. This is the kind of threat
Hinduism is up against. So far, the biggest success of these
aggressors is at the level of thought: many Hindus have interiorized the
depreciation of Hindu culture and society which their enemies have been feeding
them from the relative power positions...."
"Hindu tradition is based on the experience of
sages, sane men and women who observed the world and explored consciousness. Its
approach is scientific: the Vedic truths are verifiable, universal and
repeatable, not dependent on the views of privileged individuals (“prophets”)
but apaurusheya, “impersonal”.
***
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
British statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker. He played a
prominent part in all major political issues for about 30 years after 1765, and
remained an important figure in the history of political theory. In all his speeches in Parliament on India - those made in
connection with his Impeachment of Warren Hastings and others - Edmund Burke invariably
represented the civilization of India as high. In his speech on the East India Bill, he
said: "This multitude of men (the Indian nation) does not consist
of an abject and barbarous populace, much less of gangs of savages; but of a people for ages
civilized and cultivated; cultured by all the arts of polished life while we
(Englishmen) were yet dwelling in the woods. There have been in (India) princes of great
dignity, authority and opulence. There (in India) is to be found an ancient and
venerable priesthood, the depositary of laws, learning and history, the guides
of the people while living and their consolation in death. There is a nobility
of great antiquity and renown; a multitude of cities not exceeded in population
and trade by those of the first class in Europe; merchants and bankers who vie
in capital with the banks of England; millions of ingenious manufacturers and
mechanics; and millions of the most diligent tillers of the earth."
***
 |
| Radha-Krishna राधा-कृष्ण |
***
H. M. Hyndman (1842-1921): An eminent British
publicist.
He thus describes the important place of India in the world's history and civilization: "Many hundreds of years
before the coming of the English, the nations of India (भारत-वर्ष-The Indian sub-continent) had
been a collection of wealthy and highly civilized people, possessed of a great
language with an elaborate code of laws and social regulations, with exquisite
artistic taste in architecture and decoration, producing beautiful manufactures
of all kinds, and endowed with religious ideas and philosophic and scientific
conceptions which have greatly influenced the development of the most
progressive races of the West. One of the noblest individual moralists who ever
lived, Sankya Muni (मुनि-sage) was a Hindu; the Code of Manu (from the ManuSmriti-मनुस्मृति), dating from before the
Christian era, is still an essential a study for the jurist....and there are in
India, in this later age, worthy descendants of the great authors of the Vedas,
of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana."
He thus describes the important place of India in the world's history and civilization: "Many hundreds of years
"...and
yet, nine-tenths of what has been written by the British about India is so
expressed that we are made to believe the shameful falsehood that stability and
civilized government in Hindustan (हिंदुस्तान India was called thus, meaning land of the Hindus) began only with the rule of the
British."
***
Professor Kakuzo Okakura (1862
-1913) a Japanese philosopher, art expert, curator and author of 'The Book of Tea and The Ideals of the East', with Special Reference to the Art of Japan says:
Okakura adds that in this scientific age: India had faith. "Such a faith in its early energy and enthusiasm was the natural incentive to that great scientific age which was to produce astronomers like Aryabhatta, discovering the revolution of the earth on its own axis, and his not less illustrious successor Varamihira; who brought Hindu medicine to its height, perhaps under Susruta; and which finally gave to Arabia the knowledge with which she was later to fructify Europe. The religion and culture of China are undoubtedly of Hindu origin. At one time in the single province of loyang there were more than three thousand Indian monks and ten thousand Indian families to impress their national religion and art on Chinese soil."
"Asia is one,” says Okakura “The Himalayas divide only to unite."
***
Sir
Michael Sadler (1861-1943): a British historian, educationalist and university administrator. He worked
at the universities of Manchester and Leeds. He was a champion of the public school system.
He wrote: "One cannot walk through the streets of any center of population in India without meeting face after face which is eloquent of thought, of fine feeling, and of insight into the profound things of life. In a very true sense the people of India are nearer to the spiritual hearts of things than we in England are. As for brain power, there is that in India which is comparable with the best in our country."
He wrote: "One cannot walk through the streets of any center of population in India without meeting face after face which is eloquent of thought, of fine feeling, and of insight into the profound things of life. In a very true sense the people of India are nearer to the spiritual hearts of things than we in England are. As for brain power, there is that in India which is comparable with the best in our country."
***
Dr. Arthur Versluis (1959
- ) Associate Professor of American Thought and Language at Michigan State
University, a scholar and researcher of several currents of the hermetic,
gnostic, theosophic and mystic traditions and author of 'The Egyptian Mystery',
He says: "It is necessary that we turn to the Vedanta....because the Upanishads provide the purest metaphysics available to us from the primordial past."
He says: "It is necessary that we turn to the Vedanta....because the Upanishads provide the purest metaphysics available to us from the primordial past."
***
Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) Belgian poet and essayist. Nobel laureate for literature in 1911. In
his book Mountain Paths, in the doctrine of Karma, he finds "the only satisfactory solution of
life's injustices."
"He falls back upon the earliest and greatest of Revelations, those of the Sacred Books of India with a Cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed."
Maeterlinck
writes in his book 'The Great Secret': "We cannot tell
how the religion of the Hindus came into being. When we become aware of it, we
find it already complete in its broad outlines, its main principles. Not only is
it complete, but the farther back
we go, the more perfect it is, the more unadulterated, the more closely related
to the loftiest speculations of our modern agnosticism." He continues, "When
the world had emerged from the darkness," says the Bhagvat Puranam, भग्वत पुराण "the subtle
elementary principle produced the vegetable seed which first of all gave life
to the plants. From the plants, life passed into the fantastic creatures which
were born of the slime in the waters; then, through a series of different shapes
and animals, it came to Man." "They passed in succession by way of the plants, the worms, the insects, the serpents, the tortoises, cattle, and the wild animals - such is the lower stage," says Manu again, who adds, "Creatures acquired the qualities of those that preceded them, so that the farther down its position in the series, the greater its qualities. Have we not here the whole of Darwinian evolution confirmed by geology and foreseen at least 6,000 years ago? On the other hand, is this not the theory of Akasa (आकाश) which we more clumsily call the ether, the sole source of all substances, to which our science is returning? Is it true that the recent theories of Einstein deny ether, supposing that radiant energy - visible light, for example - is propagated independently through a space that is an absolute void. But the scientific ether is not precisely the Hindu Akasa which is much more subtle and immaterial being a sort of spiritual element or divine energy, space uncreated, imperishable, and infinite."
 |
| The Ganga Aarti on the ghats of Ganges in Benaras (Varanasi/Kashi) |
Commenting on the Vedic hymns Maeterlinck says: "Is it possible to find, in our human annals, words more majestic, more full of solemn anguish, more august in tone, more devout, more terrible? Where, from the depths of an agnosticism, which thousands of years have augmented, can we point to a wider horizon? At the very outset, it surpasses all that has been said, and goes farther than we shall even dare to go. No spectacle could be more absorbing than this struggle of our forefathers of five to ten thousand years ago with the Unknowable, the unknowable nature of the causeless Cause of all Causes. But of this cause, or this God, we should never have known anything, had He remained self-absorbed, had He never manifested Himself." Thus it is, say the Laws of Manu, (मनु-स्मृति- Manu Smriti) "that, by an alternation of awakening and repose, the immutable Being causes all this assemblage of creatures, mobile and immobile, eternally to return to life and to die." He exhales Himself, or expels His breath, throughout the Universe, innumerable worlds are born, multiply and evolve. He Himself inhales, drawing His breath, and Matter enters into Spirit, which is but an invisible form of Matter: and the worlds disappear, without perishing, to reintegrate the Eternal cause, and emerge once more upon the awakening of Brahma ब्रह्मा - that is, thousands of millions of years later; to enter into Him so it has been and ever shall be, through all eternity, without beginning, without cessation, without end."
Maeterlinck in his book The Great Secret, calls The Bhagavad Gita (श्रीमद भागवतम/गीता-The Gita) or 'Song of the Blessed', "a magnificent flower of Hindu mysticism."
***
John Adam Cramb (1862-1913) : Lecturer in Modern History at Queen Margaret College, Glasgow. In London he gave private courses on history, literature and philosophy.
He is the author of 'The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain'. In his book he writes: "India is not only the Italy of Asia, it is not only the land of romance of art and beauty, it is in religion, earth's central shrine. India is religion."
***
James Bissett Pratt (1875-1944) American author of 'Why Religions
Die' and 'India and its Faiths', makes these observations about
Hinduism, which according to him, is the only religion which tends to survive
the present crisis in the life of all religions. Hinduism, he calls the 'Vedic Way' is a 'self perpetuating' religion. The Vedic way...the way of
constant spiritual re-interpretation.. leads to life - life which is self
perpetuating, self-renewing and which for the individual and for the
world may be eternal.
"Unlike other religions 'not death, but development' has been the fate of Hinduism ... that which in it was vital and true cast off the old shell and clothed itself in more suitable expression, with no break in the continuity of life and no loss in the sanctity and weight of its authority."
Generalizing on the secret of longevity of the Vedic religion, Professor Pratt says: "If a religion is to live it must adapt itself to new and changing conditions; if it is to feed the spiritual life of its children, it must have the sensitivity and inventiveness that shall enable it to modify their as their needs demand."
"Unlike other religions 'not death, but development' has been the fate of Hinduism ... that which in it was vital and true cast off the old shell and clothed itself in more suitable expression, with no break in the continuity of life and no loss in the sanctity and weight of its authority."
Generalizing on the secret of longevity of the Vedic religion, Professor Pratt says: "If a religion is to live it must adapt itself to new and changing conditions; if it is to feed the spiritual life of its children, it must have the sensitivity and inventiveness that shall enable it to modify their as their needs demand."
Another
secret of the vitality of Hindu
religion, is its catholicity. He says: "Mutually contradictory
creeds can and do keep house together without quarrel within the wide and
hospitable Hindu family."
"Hindu thought....because of its ingrained conclusiveness, its tolerance, and its indifference to doctrinal divergences, stressed the essential unity of all Indian Dharmas, whether Hindu or Buddhist, and minimized differences."
"Hindu thought....because of its ingrained conclusiveness, its tolerance, and its indifference to doctrinal divergences, stressed the essential unity of all Indian Dharmas, whether Hindu or Buddhist, and minimized differences."
"For most Westerners “histories of philosophy”
begin with the Greeks and end with the Americans,
and convey not the least
suggestion that anyone outside of the West ever had a philosophical idea. A
glance at the curricula of most our colleges and universities would seem to
indicate that the one principle on which they are planned might be phrased:
nothing east of Suez ! To
one who has had a taste of the riches which Indian thought and Indian
literature can contribute to our intellectual life and our spiritual
experience, this deprivation which we Westerners inflict upon ourselves and
upon our young people seems pitiful in the extreme. Indian philosophical literature, taking its
rise several centuries before the time of Thales, has swept down through the
ages, retaining always a characteristic point of view of its own, but
developing in a great variety of fresh forms. Indian thought constitutes today
the one type of living philosophy independent of our Western tradition.
Neither China nor Japan possesses a living philosophical
movement of its own. The tendency of nearly all the schools of
Western philosophy is more and more steadily setting in the direction of
naturalism, and often of a rather crude naturalism. The victories of natural
science have hypnotized most of our philosophers. From such a world as Western naturalism usually offers, the thoughtful
mind which craves something more than a scientific pattern of space-time evens
may be glad to take refuge in the eternal insights into a spiritual realm,
spread out before us in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Vedantic
philosophy."
 |
| Every life form on this planet, is considered divine, without any exception. That is the basic philosophy of Sanatana Dharma |
***
William Harten Gilbert (1904 - ) author of Peoples of India has said: "In the history of human culture the contribution of the Indian peoples in all fields has been of the greatest importance. From India we are said to have derived domestic poultry, shellac, lemons, cotton, jute, rice, sugar, indigo, the buffalo, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, sugar-cane, the games of chess, Pachisi, Polo, the Zero concept, the decimal system, the basis of certain philological concepts, a wealth of fables with moral import, an astonishing variety of artistic products, and innumerable ideas in philosophy and religion such as asceticism and monasticism."
***
Arun Shourie (1941- ) is a Rajya Sabha member and among India's best known commentators on current and political affairs. His writings are backed by rigorous analysis and meticulous research. Shourie has been an economist with the World Bank, a consultant in the planning commission and the editor of Indian Express. Among the many honors and awards, he has received the Magsaysay Award, the International Editor of the Year, the Dadabhai Naoroji and the Astor Award. Author of several books, including Secular Agenda, Eminent Historians, Harvesting Our Souls, Religions in Politics. Shourie writes:
"The traditions of India were rich as can be.
They had attained insights of the first water...And they were inclusive. A person devoted to a tree was not traduced as an
'animist', a person devoted to a bull or an elephant, or a lion or a snake or
even the lowly mouse was not laughed away. The objects of his devotion were
received with reverence - they became part of a pantheon.. Nor was this
artifice. The inclusiveness flowed from deep conviction, from what had been
experienced at the deepest.. But no one could impede reform by an appeal to
'fundamentals', for these fundamentals made the individual's own experience the
ultimate referrent. That everything should reform and transform, the tradition
regarded as natural. Differences were harmonized through discourse..."
***
Prof. Brian David Josephson (1940 - ) Welsh physicist, the youngest Nobel
Laureate. He states: "The Vedanta
and the Sankhya hold the key to the laws of mind and thought process which are
co-related to the Quantum Field, i.e. the operation and distribution of
particles at atomic and molecular levels."
"He
has turned to meditation and Indian Philosophy especially the Vedanta and
Smakhya philosophy to find" scientific explanations" for the laws of
mind and thought processes and their correlation to the quantum field in
physics, which deals with creation and destruction of particles at atomic and molecular
levels. 'Indian philosophy shows the relationship between mind and matter. Mind
as seen in Indian philosophy enables one to describe subjective reality or the
process of decision making as a wave function in terms of quantum
physics".
Samkhya
and Vedanta propound the evolution of universe in it inanimate and animate
aspects, more comprehensively than modern science does. Vedananta derives it
from primal Divine Energy or Sakti and Samkhya from proto-Nature or Prakriti.
***
Michael Wood (1948
- ) British historian/host/writer of 'The Barbarian West', a TV documentary. At
the heart of the Western Civilization, says Wood, lies a deep streak of
violence which drives them to exploit nature and mankind.
Taking the Eastern perspective of life, Wood leads us through Western history from its Greco/Roman beginnings to Sir Francis Bacon's and momentous treatise declaring science's supremacy over God. Wood says this is where the West really got off-track, into matter, away from spirit. Final frames of this uncomplimentary portrait of Western societies-and their claims of superiority over Eastern cultures-are cuts from NASA spaceships to a worship scene in Meenaskhi temple, South India, where Wood suggests real civilization has been flourishing for millennia.
"India was one of the earliest of the great civilizations and it defined
the goals of civilized life very differently from the West. The West raised
individualism, materialism, rationality, [and] masculinity as it ideals.
India's great tradition insisted on non violence, renunciation, the inner life,
[and] the female as pillars of civilization. And through all the triumphs and
disasters of her history she hung on to that ideal, an eternal quest to
identify humanity with the whole of creation, a unity in diversity ... History
is full of empires of the sword but India alone created an empire of the
spirit."
"Ancient India is with us today in the living tradition of the Hindu religion, the basis of Indian culture. The traditions that are honored by millions of Hindus in the present were born in the Indus Valley 5,000 years ago."
***
***
"This
multitude of men (the Indian nation) does not consist of an abject and
barbarous populace, much less of gangs of savages; but of a people for ages civilized and cultivated; cultured by all the
arts of polished life while we (Englishmen) were yet dwelling in the woods. There have been in (India) princes of
great dignity, authority and opulence. There (in India) is to be found an
ancient and venerable priesthood, the depository of laws, learning and history,
the guides of the people while living and their consolation in death. There is
a nobility of great antiquity and renown; a multitude of cities not exceeded in
population and trade by those of the first class in Europe; merchants and
bankers who vie in capital with the banks of England; millions of ingenious
manufacturers and mechanics; and millions of the most diligent tillers of the
earth."
***
Fredrick von Schiller (1759-1805) was Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe's friend, who otherwise took little interest in Indian literature,
was also moved to enthusiastic praise of Shakuntala, which he found in some
respects un paralled in the classical literature of Greece and Rome.He published part of the Shakuntala in Thalia, and in a letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt he wrote that: "in the whole of Greek antiquity there is no poetical representation of beautiful love which approaches Sakuntala even afar."
***
H. M. Hyndman (1842-1921) the eminent British publicist thus describes, the important place of India in the world's history and civilization:
"Many
hundreds of years before the coming of the English, the nations of India had been
a collection of
wealthy and highly civilized people, possessed of a great
language with an elaborate code of laws and social regulations, with exquisite
artistic taste in architecture and decoration, producing beautiful manufactures
of all kinds, and endowed with religious ideas and philosophic and scientific
conceptions which have greatly influenced the development of the most
progressive races of the West. One of the noblest individual moralists who ever
lived, Sankya Muni was a Hindu; the Code of Manu, dating from before the
Christian era, is still an essential a study for the jurist....and there are in
India, in this later age, worthy descendants of the great authors of the Vedas,
of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana."
"...and
yet, nine-tenths of what has been written by the British about India is so
expressed that we are made to believe the shameful falsehood that stability and
civilized government in Hindustan began only with the rule of the
British."
***
"On
the other hand there seems to be an increasing number of persons who have been
led by natural and acquired sympathy to adopt in some form one of the Eastern
religions." The new German faith is said to have for its main source of
interpretation Eckhart and the Bhagavad-Gita.
***
Sister Nivedita - Margaret Noble (1867-1911). Her first literary
achievement was Kali the Mother, in which she expounds the conception
of Kali. There are many 'educated Indians - of Christian missionaries we need
not speak - who think that Kali is some blood-thirsty deity worshipped by
barbarous people. to such
people this book ought to be a revelation. The Web of Indian Life, may be at once said that it is the
greatest in the English language upon India. It is not a travel book, but a
revelation of the soul of a people.
Sister
Nivedita probed into the heart of Indian womanhood and reflected in her
rhythmic and eloquent prose the natural simplicity and spiritual fervor of the
women of India. Women, she contended, are the embodiment and repository of the
ancient wisdom of the East. They are the inheritors of a radiant orthodoxy,
unspoilt by age and undimmed by the passing fashions of the day to which men so
easily succumb.
"Hinduism would not be eternal were it not
constantly growing and spreading, and taking in new areas of experience.
Precisely because it has this power of self addition and re-adaptation, in
greater degree than any other religion that the world has even seen, we believe
it to be the one immortal faith."
In
the chapter on the Bhagavad Gita, she writes: "The
book is nowhere a call to leave the world, but everywhere an interpretation of
common life as the path to that which lies beyond. "Better for a man is
his own duty, however, badly done than the duty of another, though that be
easy. "Holding gain and loss as one, prepare
for battle." That the man who throws away his weapons, and permits
himself to be slain, unresisting in the battle, is not the hero of religion,
but a sluggard and a coward; that the true seer is he who carries his vision
into action, regardless of the consequences to himself; this is the doctrine of
the "Gita" repeated again and again....Not the withdrawn, but the
transfigured life, radiant, with power and energy, triumphant in its
selflessness, is religion. "Arise!" thunders the voice of Sri
Krishna, "and be thou an apparent cause!"
Sister
Nivedita talked about the task before India. "We must create a history of
India in living terms. Up to the present that history, as written
by the English, practically begins with Warren Hastings, and crams in certain
unavoidable preliminaries, which cover a few thousands of years...The history
of India has yet to be written for the first time. It has to be humanized,
emotionalized, made the trumpet-voice and evangel of the race that inhabit
India."
Sister
Nivedita realised that India's unrivalled, integrating culture that had spread
from the Himalayas in the North to Kanyakumari in the South was due to this closeness with the ancient epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, a closeness that had been
attacked and almost severed by Colonial style of education: "These two
great works form together the outstanding educational agencies of Indian life. All over the country, in every
province, especially during the winter session, audiences of Hindus and
Mohammedans gather round the Brahmin storyteller at nightfall, and listen to
his rendering of the ancient tales. The Mohammedans of Bengal have their own
version of the Mahabharata."
This
is why she would never call Indian women as ever having been illiterate. They
had imbibed the best in the Indian tradition and strove to bring up their
children as a Rama or Krishna, Arjuna or Karna, Sita or Savitri.
***
Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)
poet and scholar. Author of The Song Celestial, which is a translation of the Bhagavad Gita. It has great elevation of tone and majesty and
dignity of style. There are many translations of the Gita but Arnold's
translation has a place apart among them by its accuracy and the grave harmony
of the verse. The translation is dedicated by the poet to India.
He
wrote in his preface: "This famous and marvelous Sanskrit poem occurs as
an episode of the Mahabharata, in the sixth - or "Bhishma" - Parva of
the great Hindu epic. It enjoys immense popularity and authority in India,
where it is reckoned as one of the "Five Jewels" - pancharatnani - of
Devanagari literature. In plain but noble language it unfolds a
philosophical system which remains to this day the prevailing Brahmanic belief
blending as it does the doctrine of Kapila, Patanjali, and the Vedas."
Arnold
already well known for the Light of Asia, wrote in India Revisited of
the rite of bathing in the Ganga, and he described with emotion the people he
observed at their prayers: "Some are old and feeble, weary with long
journeys of life, emaciated by maladies, saddened from loses and troubles; and
the morning air blows sharp, the river wave runs chilly. Yet there they stand,
breast-deep in the cold river, with dripping cotton garments clinging to their
thin or aged limbs, visibly shuddering under the shock of the water, and their
lips blue and quivering, while they eagerly mutter their invocations. None of
them hesitates; into the Gunga they plunge on arrival, ill or well, robust or
sickly; and ladle the holy liquid up with small, dark, trembling hands,
repeating the sacred names, and softly mentioning the sins they would expiate
and the beloved souls they would plead for."
***
Acharya Jiwatram Bhagwandas Kriplani: आचार्य कृपलानी (1888-1982): Noted Gandhian, and
Eminent National Leader. During the transfer of power in 1947, from the British to India, Acharya Kriplani, as he is popularly known, was the President of the Indian National Congress.When speaking as the President of the Congress in India, he said: "I am a Hindu and am proud of the fact. But this is because Hinduism for me has stood for tolerance, for truth and for non-violence...."
***
He
has commented on the wise division of life in India: "Here is a philosophy far removed
from the grotesque refusal to grow old in the West, where wisdom has been
replaced by cosmetic surgery and psychiatric help."
"The Indian tradition, on the other hand, is that men submit to nature and form part of it, there nature preserves its sacredness, lost in the West since the Industrial Revolution." He further states that the idea of feminism and ecology came from the 1968 movement, from the meeting between India and the West. He says: "There is hardly anything in European thought to predispose the West to reject virility, the respect for authority, the mastery over nature. India too has a warrior (khastriya) tradition of virility as exemplified in the Mahabharata, only it is secondary. First, comes the veneration of thousands of goddesses - for the Indians, India is above all Mother India. India's femininity and sexual ambiguity, is the very antithesis of Western virility. For example, when the British scaled earth's highest peak, the exploit was widely hailed as the "conquest of the Everest." It was not realized and is often not realized still, that the word "conquest" was totally out of place in the context of the peak which is considered an object of reverence by many.
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| Aum ॐ symbol of piety, Satya सत्य (truth) and Dharma (duty) are the three basics of Sanatana Dharma |
"The
more decentralized, diversified and ritualized a religion is the better it can
withstand the onslaught of rationalist thought. Hinduism, derives its strength
from the fact that it is not a single unified religion but the sum total of
thousands of local faiths. Every village has its own cult, rooted in the local
culture without any universalist pretensions."
"India
is a marvelous example of the art of living together at a time when Westerners
are apprehensive about the future of their society."
"You cannot be a Hindu fundamentalist. It does
not mean anything...The concept of fundamentalism does not exist in Hinduism." No
one man embodies the spirit of universalism, it runs through the whole of India
and there is a place for all religious groups and communities. The spiritual
message of India is her capacity to let so many divergent practices coexist.
The Enlightenment philosophers seemed to have grasped this profound
originality...This the real message of India."
He
says, "India has a strong cultural image in the west; unfortunately, it is
not being commercially exploited." This should sink into the heads of
those of us who are happy to be third-rate imitators of the US.
Sorman
asserts that India is not a rogue state when he talks of the nuclear option.
But there seem to be some Indians who are not so sure of their own country. He
points out that "Nobody knows what is right. Each civilization...has its
sense of the right. No one can impose his perception of right over
others."
"Each
Indian looks for God in his own way and worships one or several of the millions
of deities who are the supposed reincarnation or expression of God, a Spirit or
a Force. This has never led to a religious war. There have been communal
clashes, but India has never had to face religious wars or
crusades save those that were thrust on it from outside. The multiple
revelation of the East has proved to be in many ways more advantageous than the
single revelation of the West."
***
Siddharth S. Sinha,
सिद्धार्थ स. सिन्हा
ssselan@yahoo.in
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