Countering Christian Conversion

The fine art of subverting an individual's belief system to an extent that he starts hating his culture and tradition has been perfected by the Christian Church for over two millennia. This is a game they played and perfected against the unsuspecting Romans some 2000 years back. Early Christian were no theologians or intellectuals, they were mostly disgruntled slaves, criminals and other dregs of the society (Its interesting to note that Christianity, Islam and Communist thrive on unhappiness and unrest, manufactured or otherwise). These early Christians were no match for Roman, their arguments were childlike polemics against the might of Greco-Romans intellectual traditions. But within 300 years the Romans were defeated at their own game and Christianity held sway over the minds of the people.

Latin speaking Christians in the West did not acquire a philosophical mind of any considerable quality before the middle of the 4th century, with the conversion of the Roman Neoplatonist Marius Victorianus... (Heathen In His Blindness by SN.Balagangadhara)

Just like the early Christians, Hindus at the moment lack the intellectual depth and knowledge to challenge the Christian missionaries who have sharpened their theological skills by borrowing from various traditions and cultures they encountered around the world over the past 2000 years. The current re-conversion efforts by Hindu groups titled 'Ghar-Wapsi' (Home Return) is one such amateurish attempt to challenge Christian conversion missions. Much like the proverbial tiger skin analogy given by Kalyana to Alexander, where one side of the skin rises up when other side is pressed down, this will be an endless circular battle with no conclusive results,. The only unwanted by product of such actions would be giving a handle to sundry rights groups, media courts, pseudo intellectuals and Western countries to berate India's on religious freedom track record and give the BJP government an unwanted headache distracting it from its development agenda. Its another matter that such Ghar Wapsi has been happening since decades under Congress regimes but the media and the liberals find this an opportune moment to protest.

So how can this Christian conversion be tackled, is there a way to stop them from eating and digesting our civilisation and culture? In my humble opinion there are a few legislative and judicial routes open considering that Anti-Conversion laws exist in many states. They just need to be beefed up and enforced.

Stop Inculturation and Digestion of Hindu traditions: Christianity in its early days had difficulty in convincing the Romans that Christianity was a religion at all or had a history or traditions with any great antiquity, in fact Romans had not even heard of Jesus heralded by the Christians. For the Romans any practice that was rooted in antiquity handed down from generation to generation (much like Hinduism) was tradition or tradicio as they called it and thus formed a part of their belief system which is religion or religio for the Romans. For a young religion like Christianity, which was not the ancestral custom/ tradition of a people was hard pressed to provide evidence for its antiquity or traditions. Christians resorted to borrowing the Jewish traditions, Moses and other stories and thus put together a 'doctrine' which they showcased as the New Testament, a new improved version of the Jewish Old Testament. Must say the Christians used the gift of hindsight as a great weapon. The New Testament doctrine hardcoded many aspects of Christianity which got further reinforced through the Nicene creed and over time many new elements of the religion got incorporated which have now become integral part of Christianity. What we see today is finished product of Christianity with not much scope for path breaking evolution besides some concessions and amendments with the core remaining intact.

Keeping the above in mind, we can try to tackle the inculturation and attempted digestion of Hinduism by Christians through the law of antiquity, precedence, traditions and sanctioned practices of the Church. Just like the Romans, Hindus can take a more intellectual route to combat Christian conversion via inculturation by demanding from the Church evidence via law of precedence or evidence through religious scriptures or other aspect of the Christian doctrine where the use of Saffron robes, Rudrakshmala, Jesus Sahasranama, Jesus Namavali, Jesus Devasthanam and other aspects of inculturation that one may come across is practiced anywhere in the world and is a part of Christianity or sanctioned Christian practices. On the other hand Hindus should show how these elements have been part of Hinduism for thousands of years with scriptural evidence where applicable. Inculturation or borrowing Hindu traditions and customs thus can be outlawed by the court of law.

Proactive anti-conversion campaign: One very effective way to dent the Christian mission is a proactive anti-conversion campaign. Hindus can enlist the support of many intellectuals, activists, academics and even normal folks in the West who oppose Church's conversion activities. They can be invited to tour India to engage and speak with vulnerable sections of the society on the evils of conversions and probably even expose the lies of the Church. Lets face it, given India's colonial past, Indians face a inferiority complex while dealing with white people and the Church exploits this Indian vulnerability to the maximum. There is nothing more gratifying than a white man touching, moving about even eating at a Dalit house while his co-religionist shun him. This misplaced sense of acceptance by a white man is all that a Dalit needs to convert to an alien cult. Take this missionary edge away by firstly integrating the outer fringes of Hindu society and counter the white missionary with a white Christian myth busters. 

Stop new Church planting in non-Christian areas: Christianity believes in congregation, a collective place for mass worship and for this they have the Church. The Church is also a place where they can place their religious icon the cross for everyone to see so that it acts as a beacon for future converts. They tend to spread their religion by planting Churches in remote areas and servicing the region with a local or foreign priest. In most cases new Churches are planted in places where there are no Christians in the first place. Now why would Christian missions want to plant a new Church where there are no Christians at all but for the purpose of conversion. This is where Anti-Conversion law needs to be beefed up to enforce this rule. Here are some pointers.

a. No new Church can be planted where there are no native Christians living in the region for more than 25 years or so. Imported or supplanted Christians won't count.

b. For a new Church to be installed, the local Christian population should be a certain percentage of the overall population

c. No planting of Christian icons till above conditions met

d. In fact no Christian missionary activities can take place where there are no Christians already among the native populations. Christian mission can only service the existing Christians in a given region.

Thus for example JP Nagar, Jayanagar, Banashankari in South Bangalore where the Christian population is negligible, the Missions cannot either start a conversion campaign or plant a Church for that matter.

Stop issuing Visas to foreign Church officials and known Missionaries: Missionaries enter India using a normal visitors Visa which does not allow them to engage in any conversion activities but they still continue to do so since enforcement is nonexistent and also its difficult to follow every missionary. Thus route to can be plugged at source by denying visa to foreign Church officials and missionaries. A little research by the Indian embassy or consulate in the foreign country can give them a lot of information on such organisations. Some of them are even school teachers who use their summer holidays to visit India on mission activities.

In my opinion laws of precedence and proactive anti-conversion campaigns are two untried methods to counter Christians especially the law of precedence if properly applied with the aid of an expert scholar can yield high dividends and will put an end to the inculturation activities.

Source: Heathen in his Blindness

Hindu Traditions, Religion and Scientific temper, countering Left Lib narrative!

The overall euphoria over the success of the Mangalyaan mission (Indian Mars Mission) and certain ignorant tweets and comments jolted me out of my inertia. The objective of this piece is not to criticize or educate Nikhil Wagle or others like him but to inform normal folks who may find the line of thinking expressed in his tweets as a valid point.

 India is a land of contrast and paradoxes and everyone who visits India from the West will tell you that. One thousand year old temples may be situated next to modern satellite communications complexes in Thumba, South India. A nuclear scientist may start the day by offering puja at a shrine and chant Vishnusahastranama (the thousand names of Vishnu) while driving to work. A brilliant software programmer at Google or Microsoft will code the most complex algorithms with an image of Ganesha adorning the soft board in the cubicle. Our engineers will not build a dam without ‘Bhumi Pujan’. Scientific research centers in India, engaged in the most advanced hi-tech research conduct puja and homa within their facilities. An engineering or medical science student will visit a temple for blessings and apply tilak before his exams. Now what makes some of these brilliant minds engaged in rationale, scientific work, perform these seemingly irrational, even superstitious acts. One word for this is ‘Tradition’ and not religion as some may have us believe.

                                   Religio is what traditio is all about     

                                                                  Heathen in his Blindness, Balgangadhara

To establish that the above statement i.e. its tradition and not religion that we Hindus follow in our daily lives, we have to first understand the origin and meaning of the word religion. The world religion comes from the Latin word religio used by the Romans to describe practices, rituals, festivals, sacrifices etc. that collectively became Roman customs and traditions over the centuries. When we look at religion as tradition, that is a set of practices transmitted over generations, then the term appears as a minor variant of our intuitive nation of culture: to have a religion is to have culture. Whenever there are people with a history, there tradition exists too. In other words they have religio too. This is how the pagans seem to have seen the issue.  “Thus religio is what traditio is all about, religion falls together with tradition and continuing a tradition does not require any reason other than itself” as Prof. Balagangadhara succinctly summarizes in his magnum opus ‘The heathen in his blindness’. 

The primary test of truth in religious matters was custom and tradition, the practices of the ancients…In philosophical matters one might turn to intellectuals and philosophers, but in religious questions one looked to the past, to the accepted practices handed down by tradition, and to the guarantors of this traditions, the priests (Wilken)

The republic was an age of rationalism; certainly as far as Roman nobility was concerned. But this tendency was never taken to its logical conclusion, rejection of tradition religious practices…Such respect for ancestral authority would assure the continuity of traditions rituals, just as the childhood associations, family traditions and the peculiar nature of pagan beliefs would be preserve traditional mental attitude. (Liebeschuetz)

It is wise and reasonable for us to preserve the institutions of our forefathers by retaining their rites and ceremonies. (Cicero)

                                                        Heathen in his Blindness, Balagangadhara

This non-exhaustive list reads like who’s who in western classical philosophy and science (both Greek and Roman) they not only performed religious rituals but also were priests of religious order. Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Plutarch, Athenogoras the Athenian, Celsus, Cornelius Tacitus, Prophyry, were highly regarded philosophers, thinkers, scientists, polymaths, yet openly participated and led religious ceremonies. Socrates the father of western philosophy defended himself against charges of Atheism and credited the Oracle at Delphi for his education. Socrates and his student Plato proposed that the soul is immortal and believed in reincarnation. Cicero’s was on the Roman council of Augury though he really did not lay much stress on conducting ones life based on soothsaying. Plutarch was a priest at the Oracle of Delphi yet he attacked some Roman traditio. Thus these individuals were brilliant rational thinkers, philosophers and atheist in some cases yet were also closely attached to their respective temples and practiced to their religious traditions.

Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (On the nature of Gods) is a great classical work on the origin of god that has not been bettered till date in western philosophy. The work is a speculative dialogue on the existence of god. Many 18^th century intellectuals such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, Edward Gibbon etc. used Cicero’s work, written some 2000 years earlier as the arsenal to attack religion and come up with the idea of Secularism. Why the arguments in Cicero’s work were decisive to the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman culture 2000 years later to make them turn away from god and turn atheist? The content of the Cicero’s work did not change but the cultural matrix in which it was understood had changed. What the European intellectuals thought of religion was very different from the idea of Roman religio. 18^th century Europe operated within a Christian cultural matrix and the intellectuals understood religion in the way Christian theology describes it (God, Son of God, Creed, Scriptures and other assorted dogmas). Thus the ancients could be perfectly rational, scientist, mathematicians, physicians, philosophers or atheist even and yet be closely attached to their gods and tradition without for a moment feeling any dissonance.

This Christian definition of religion has been passed on to our intellectuals through colonisation and through continuation of the colonial educational and cultural framework and thus they form misinformed or even ignorant idea of religion, which is far removed from the native thought. Religion holds a different meaning to the Hindus compared to the Christian definition of religion. The idea of religion to the Hindus is a collection of rituals and practices that have become a tradition over centuries just as religion was traditio for the Romans.

Drawing from the above its easy to see how in ancient India, brilliant scientist like Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, Aryabhata, Varahamira, Susruta, Nagarjuna, Charaka to name a few were not only rational and scientifically ‘tempered’ but also closely attached to their gods and traditions which does not mean that their work was less reliable or less worthy. Going back to the tweet by Nikhil Wagle, a prominent Marathi journalist, does the achievement of the Indian space scientist is less worthy just because they prayed to Shri Venkateshwara Balaji? What is scientific temper, is it a badge or a certificate? If Indian space scientist can send a spacecraft to Mars, is it not scientific temper enough that they have to further embellish it with rejection of their ancient traditions.

                                                    The Telegraph India

Via Keerthik Sasidharan and Anjali George on twitter

Ganesh puja before all rituals, Sandyavandane, Yajnopaveetham, Tulsi Puja, Dipawali, Holi, Dashera, Krishna Janmashtami, Ram Navmi, Surya Puja, Karva Chauth, Raksha Bandhan, Ritual bath before entering temple, applying Haldi on wedding day (Turmeric) and all other such rituals, practices have to be retained and practiced as they have been transmitted over generations and they need no further legitimization. It’s been the way of our ancestors and so it shall be ours. If we lose these traditions then we lose our identity, we will lose our soul.

The Octavius, Caecilius the Pagan

Its better as high priest of truth, to receive the teaching of your ancestors, to cultivate the religion handed down to you, to adore the gods whom you were first trained by your parents to fear… not to assert an opinion concerning the deities, but to believe your forefather, who while the age was untrained in the birth-times of the world itself, deserved to have gods either propitious to them, or as their kings.

          Heathen in his Blindness, Balgangadhara

I dedicate this article to S. Nambi Narayanan ISRO scientist and all the brilliant scientist at ISRO who have made the Indian Mars mission, Mangalyaan a great success. Working against great odds they have made all us Indians a very proud people.

Sources: Heathen in his Blindness and How to speak for Indian traditions by Prof. Balagangadhara of Ugent.

First published in Swarjaya Mag  

Hindu contribution to world science, 'Adhyatma-Vidya' the science of man

Adhyatma-Vidya, has pre-eminence in the Indian tradition. Our country has, contributed immensely in this field of the science of man.

Our writers in ancient India gave the highest place of honour to this science of man in depth. Physics, chemistry, botany, zoology and astronomy -- all these vidyas/ shastras or sciences were highly respected and cultivated in ancient India; but pre-eminent position among all sciences was given to this science of man, in depth.

In the Bhagavad Gita enumerating his glories in the manifested universe as the one in-dwelling and outspreading Divine Reality, Sri Krsna, the Divine Incarnation, affirms this pre-eminent position when he says: 'adhyatma vidya vidyanam' -- among the vidyas or sciences, I am adhyatma-vidya.

A must read article in this context http://newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/article1508533.ece

Its no wonder that physicist, astronomers and other scientist fall back on Hindu philosophy to seek deeper meaning in their field of research. Instead of peering into space with a telescope, sitting down and reflecting inwards gives much deeper meaning of the world and the universe at large. It is without a doubt that our ancient sages were scientist, who in absence of modern laboratory theorised answers to most questions which confounds modern science even today.

Adhyatmic Vidya is also the single biggest differentiator between Hindu religious philosophy and Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the later religions, Adhyatmic Vidya is frowned upon. An individual's attempt to connect with his inner being (Soul) is not sanctioned by these religions and this is why you will see many disillusioned westerners travelling to India trying to "find themselves". Adhyatmic Vidya is also the biggest reason Yoga finds resistance among these faiths.

So will it be safe to call Hinduism also, the science of humankind?!

Digestion of Indian civilisation into rival civilisations: Being Different discussion board

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/how-india-became-america-185045

Building on the above article on how blind copying western civilisation is hollowing India and making Indians rootless, Rajiv Malhotra eminent thinker and writer positions the following scenarios of possible digestion of Indian civilisation into rival civilisations. It is imperative that Indians take cognisance of the rival civilisational dynamics which impact us. We cannot live in blissful isolation or blindly adopt western civilisational practices as being 'cool'. We need to be discerning and be very careful on what we adopt. I really like Narendra Modi' mantra 'we can be modern without becoming western'. 

Rajiv Malhotra

Watch Videos
Rival Civilisations Impacting India, speech by Rajiv Malhotra
India in the Eagles eye, speech by Rajiv Malhotra

The Pretence of Pluralism!!

Being Different, book
by Rajiv Malhotra

Rajiv Malhotra's bestseller Being Different has helped me to take the discussion on secularism in India forward from the historical perspective I gave in my previous article. Secularism and respect for other religions is enshrined in the very ethos of Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism as its known today. Accepting another way of worship or respect for an alternate idea of the 'Absolute reality' and in fact exploring this alternate idea to enrich the over all spiritual experience was and is an accepted practice. We Hindus all along have held the belief that this is the case with other faiths such as Christianity and Islam, that they reciprocate our respect for their faith but it seems this is not the case, its a one way street and we are stuck on the 'no entry' end.

In this book the author raises a pertinent point at the very outset about the pretense of pluralism in western civilisation and society, which has also infected us in India with the disease of 'secularism'. Rajiv's sharp mind has pierced through the fog and illuminated upon on how Hinduism and its Dharma based philosophy is 'Tolerated' mind you and not respected, till such time that it can be digested or destroyed by the Judeo-Christian centric western civilisation. 

Rajiv Malhotra shows us that by clever semantics the Judeo-Christian system obfuscates facts and is loath to the idea of accepting Hinduism as its equal. In many of the inter faith dialogues he participated in, he finds the Christian religious leadership very defensive or out rightly dismissive of accepting the phrase 'mutual respect' instead of 'tolerance' in the discussions or the resolutions that are passed at the end of such dialogues and discussions. Why do simple words such as these make any difference one may ask, it does. In Latin meaning of 'tolerance' refers to 'enduring' or 'grudgingly bear' which is not same as mutual affirmation or respect. The definition of 'mutual respect' in Latin is to hold someone in high esteem and the term presupposes we are equally worthy of honour. Thus Judeo-Christian religion does not accord Hinduism the later status.

In a UN sponsored Millennium Religion Summit in 2000 in New York, the Vatican delegation led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict brought the entire proceedings to a halt by objecting to the Hindu delegation position led by Swamy Dayananda Saraswati of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha who insisted that the word 'tolerance' be replaced with 'mutual respect' in the official resolution. Pope Benedict put his foot down, after all how can heathens be accorded equal status and respect, which would undermine the Christian justification of evangelizing and converting them. The high profile event was on the verge of collapse with no official resolution but Swamy Dayananda Saraswati held firm even though a great deal of pressure was put on the delegation to relent. He was emphatic that the time has come for the non-Judeo-Christian religions to be respected as equals and not just tolerated by the three 'religions of the book' and dogma. At the last minute the Vatican blinked and conceded, the resolution declared that all religions would agree to respect one another. This was big news and was broadcast widely among the non-Abrahamic religions.

Its another matter that a few weeks later the dept of Inquisition at the Vatican responsible for formulating Church policies (and a small matter of massacring millions who did not go with the Church) retracted from the joint UN resolution by declaring that all religions are not equal and while one may experience divine grace in another religion but its still deficient as compared to a salvation which only the Church can provide.

In the light of the above observation, one must stop and think how hollow is secularism that we follow in India and the glib talk of the intellectual opinion makers. How misled is a Hindu into believing that all religions are the same and should be respected when the dogma of the Abrahamic faiths flies in the face of secularism and the values we hold so dear to our hearts. Its important that a Hindu better understands Hinduism its core philosophies and how different they are from the others. Somewhere in the years in between we have forgotten what our elders used to tell us, 'we are different from them'. It's important to understand that its OK to be different and yet be treated with respect and be held in high esteem.

First published in Center Right India 

Inventing the Dravidian Race Part - 3, Appropriation of Shiva, excerpts from the book 'Breaking India'

Protestant missionaries in the beginning attacked Saiva Siddhanta vehemently, the American Missionary Seminary in Sri Lanka used a Tamil English journal called the Morning Star (1841) to launch an attack on Saivites, calling Tamils barbarians living in darkness.  This attack proved counterproductive, caused much angst among the people for the Christian disrespect towards a cherished tradition. The attack was also effectively countered by a Sri Lankan Saivite Arumuga Navalar. Therefore the strategy changed from denigration to appropriation. 

G.U. Pope used this strategy very often, whenever he found something suitable and in line with his Christian belief he attributed it to Christian influence on Tamils and whenever he found something not fitting into his Christian belief and dogma, he blamed it on Hinduism. He states:

It will be seen how very near in some not unimportant respects the Saiva system approximates to Christianity; and yet some of the corruption to which it has been led by what almost seems a necessity are months the most deplorable superstitions anywhere to be found.

Later Christian missionaries started using this strategy to start portraying Saiva Siddhantha closer to Christianity. This missionary success in selectively appropriating and spreading confusion has permeated academic Tamil studies ever since.

Source:

Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Arvindan Neelakandan

Inventing the Dravidian Race Part - 2, De-Hinduising Tamil Traditions excerpts from the book 'Breaking India'

Since colonial times to this day there has been attempts to construct an ethnic-religious identity separate from the rest of India, and to find christian roots for this so-called 'Tamil religion'. This entailed manipulating  the interpretations of the literary core of Tamil tradition, which consists of three main elements: 

i) Thirukural, a classical Tamil text containing ethical literature that is very much a part of the Indian Smriti tradition; 

ii) Saiva Siddhantha, a Vedanta branch of Saiva philosophy; and

iii) A huge body of classical Tamil devotional literature.

 


Thirukural

As per recorded statements of Robert Caldwell, the so called saviour of the Tamil people noted on number of occasions that nothing ethical or civilised could come out of the Dravidian mind, either by itself or under the influence of the Vedic religion. But at the same time he did not want to credit Vedic tradition, so he chose another source. He attributed Thirukural to Jainism. Even if for a moment this is believed to be true, Caldwell in his attempt to create fake origins and sources forgot that Jainism is also part of the Vedic religious system which in effect puts the Thirukural within the Hindu tradition. At any rate Caldwell's claims have been demolished. G.U Pope another missionary maintained that Thiruvalluvar was under Christian influence (St. Thomas) that produced this literary work. This claim for decades has been rejected even from within the christian missionary community. However, it is being revived today by evangelical movements in Tamil Nadu.

Saiva Siddhantha

Dravidian scholars labour to position Saiva Siddhantha as something unique to Tamil spirituality and not linked to Hinduism although the traditional works of Saiva Siddhantha refers to Vedas as their authority. G.U Pope and other missionaries positioned it as a monotheistic approximation of Christianity but not exactly pure Christianity. They then attempted to hoodwink people into believing that they were following a polluted form of Christianity and they could help people in upgrading to pure Christianity via conversion.

Tamil Devotional Literature

All hymns written in Tamil speak of Siva as living in the Himalayas and even address him as 'Arya'. Evangelist and pro Dravidian scholars fabricated the origins and distorted the interpretations of their contents to suite their agendas.

Chrisitian historian Stephen Neill rejects Pope and Caldwell's fraudulent claim with a tone of empathy: 'Their brilliant imagination has produced a beautiful romance. The sober verdict of historical judgment must be that any Christian influence on Tamil literature is unlikely...what we see is devout minds working on similar problems and arriving independently at comparable results'.

Source:

Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan  

Inventing the Dravidian Race Part - 1, Breaking India

Colonial administrators and evangelists were able to divide and rule the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, based on imaginary histories and racial myths - to the extent of inventing an entire race called 'Dravidians'. Evangelical and colonial interest worked in tandem with ethno-linguistic scholars to fabricate the Dravidian identity. British administrator Brian Hodgson* invented the term 'Tamulian' to refer to what he considered to be non-Aryan indigenous population of India.

The catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian race' was a British missionary named Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814-91) from the Anglican church. He used linguistic theories to create a racial theory. In his papers and books presented to his peers he proposed that Dravidians were in India before the arrival of the Aryans, were cheated and kept in shackles by the Brahmin's through exploitation of religion. He demanded a complete removal of Sanskrit from Tamil, and once the Dravidian mind was free of the Brahmin Aryan influence, Christian evangelisation would reap the souls of the Dravidians.

Contrary to claims by other missionary scholars like William Carey, who supported the thesis that all Indian languages are derived from Sanskrit, a critical role was played by Alexander Campbell and Francis Ellis, collectors of Madras who broke rank and claimed that south Indian languages were not derived from Sanskrit which laid the foundation for later intervention. No Indian scholar or Pandit has made such a claim before.

A lie took to the absurd when Ellis claimed that Tamil and Dravidians are connected to Hebrew and also with Arabic. Their logic was based on some convoluted biblical theory of skin colour, all dark skinned people were children of Ham - the cursed one.

Caldwell transformed Linguistics into Ethnology which had far reaching consequences. He established the theological foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism backed by the church. What this means simply is separating south India from north India by raising false boogies of Aryanism and Brahmanism supported by 'Atrocity Literature'**, disassociating Tamil from Hindu spirituality and giving it a independent origin which instills temporary pride before church usurps the classical art-forms of South India***. For all the degradation and insults heaped on Tamil culture and Hinduism a statue of Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope another missionary has been erected on Marina beach in Chennai by the local state government. It is a major landmark in that city today.

Missionary strategy was two pronged. First, intensely study the devotional and spiritual literature and praise it in glowing terms to Tamil scholars. Second, they projected Tamil culture as being very different and totally independent from the rest of India. To support their argument they would provide spurious works created by the church to support this view. This body of work then went on to provide ideological underpinnings of later racist politics. Chandra Mallampalli, a christian scholar, explains:

South Indian political culture of non-Brahmanism drew its inspiration from the Dravidian ideology: this ideology posited a distinct linguistic and racial identity for south Indians. Non Brahmin agitators pitted Dravidian culture, which most often championed the Tamil language, against Hindu, Aryan or Sanskritic cultures from the North. Champions of Dravidianism and non-Brahmanism drew upon the cultural and linguistic resources provided by missionaries such as Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope.

Missionary scholarship created a false local ethnic identity and Tamils were instructed to reject its Hindu nature. It became strategic to show that Tamil religion had strong ethical underpinnings on par with civilised world and this meant monotheistic Christianity. What these theorist failed to say and the people who fell for the Dravidian race theory and religion failed to ask was what is Tamil religion they talk of? But what was provided were quasi Christian traits retrofitted into Tamil devotional works to prove its similarity with Christianity. In fact the propaganda went to the extent of claiming that the Thirukural was influenced by St. Thomas and Thiruvalluvar the great Tamil Hindu saint was his disciple.

The second part of the strategy kicked in now. To show the proximity of Christianity with the spuriously created Tamil race-religion identity the missionaries chose the Kural - a non sectarian humanistic body of work and Saiva Siddhanta - corpus of scriptures seen as representing a native monotheistic counterpart to Christianity. Brook and Schmid identify two steps in the way these Tamil clsssics were used: first, separating Brahmins and non-Brahmins using the Kural; and second, linking Dravidian ideology with Saiva Siddhanta as an interim step towards further linking it with Christianity.

Robert Caldwell characterised the Brahmins as the racial others of the Dravidians, the Aryan colonisers^ who speak and read Sanskrit. Through this manipulation the Brahmins were made out to be colonisers and the actual colonisers the British and their Christian mission were projected as saviors of the Tamils.

Blogger Notes:

* Civil administrators and arm chair historians created race theories and similar such farcical concepts with absolutely no scientific rigour.

** Atrocity literature is a technical term referring to literature generated by a Western interest, with the explicit goal to show that the target non-Western culture is committing atrocities in its own people and hence need of Western intervention.

*** Recently attempts are being made to absorb Bharatnatyam, lamp lighting and many other Hindu art-form and traditions into Christianity. 

^ Missionaries dub Sanskrit speaking Aryan Brahmins as colonisers and oppressors of the Dravidians in the south but elsewhere in the north missionaries claim common ancestry with Aryans and attempt to usurping of Sanskrit and the Vedas.

Source:

Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Arvindan Neelakandan

Inventing the Aryan Race. Excerpts from the book 'Breaking India'

Raymond Schwab in his seminal book The Oriental Renaissance published in 1984 explains that in the late 1700 the widespread arrival of the translation of the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus provided the west with the first idea of the advanced level of eastern philosophy and spiritual message independent of the Bible and other classical traditions like the Greeks and the Romans. Hinduism became a source of many theological debates and arguments. The publication of Kalidasa' Shankutala  proved the proverbial last straw. The Europeans had to appropriate a superior civilisation to keep their superior religion and race status intact and thus started the greatest re-writing and retrofitting of culture, religion, language and history of the world.

The evolution of Aryan race theory and racism in general evolved out of two factors. One was, Germans seeking national identity separate from the classical traditions (Greece and Rome) as they were already appropriated by the French with whom the German had running feud. The second was imperialistic ambitions and colonial goals of the Britain and other European countries with an overlay of missionary sponsorship.

It was with the discovery of Sanskrit that Philology, i.e. study of languages was born. We can safely say that Europeans obsession with the use of Sanskrit in the construction of a linguistic origin for the European people and their culture gave birth to Philology. To understand why Europeans fell over each other to appropriate Sanskrit stems from the work done by William Jones a judge in the Calcutta court of the East India Company. He says...

The Sanskrit language ... is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greeks, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity... than could possibly have been produced by accident

A century later Max Muller one of the most influential figure wrote:

Thanks to the discovery of Sanskrit ancient language of India and thanks to the discovery of the close kinship between this language an the idioms of the principal races of Europe...a complete revolution has taken place in the method of studying the worlds primitive history

What he actually meant was, with the chance discovery of Sanskrit with its similar sounding words we can now re-write our history and the world history as we choose. Once the Indian texts had been mined for their treasures had been processed through mistranslations, plagiarism, rejection and extrapolations and the Indian knowledge securely retrofitted into the Bible and European history, the Indian source lost its earlier glamour and was discarded.

German scholars like Johann Gottfried Herder, Hegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel were working on creating a separate identity for the German people away from their bitter enemies the French and in fact wanted to elevate it beyond the French. They romanticised India to the level that Schlegel built India as the historical motherland of the German people and claimed that the ancestors of the German people were Indians who migrated to Germany. He describes India as a land of 'happiness and fertility'. He states that the first wave arrived into north Europe from India and another wave much later went to Egypt, Greece and Rome.

While the Germans adopted the Sanskrit and Aryan identity as their national essence, the British had a different relationship with it, in light of the fact that they ruled over the Indians they used it to legitimise their rule as a reunion of a long lost brothers, helping out his downtrodden brethren.

Some of the scholars who lent a helping hand in this fraud were Ernest Renan who created the Aryan Christ, Friedrich Max Muller, Adolphe Pictet, Rudolph Friedrich Grau, Joseph Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and few others.

The Aryan Christ

As Christians in Europe struggled to break free from Judaism, Sanskrit & Aryan race theory provided them the escape vehicle. Renan in his inaugural speech in College de France said 'The victory of Christianity was not secure until it completely broke out of it Jewish shell and again became what it had been in the exalted consciousness of its founder, a creation free from narrow minded bonds of the Semetic spirit.' He further wrote 'Originally Jewish to the core Christianity over time rid itself of nearly everything it took from the race, so that those who consider Christianity to be the Aryan religion par excellence are in many respects correct'.

After reading this and many such attempts to divorce Christianity from Judaism I am more and more convinced that the Jews never persecuted and crucified Christ. It was the Romans who did it. Its obvious Christ may have been preaching against the Roman gods, extolling his people to rise and over throw the occupiers, becoming a pain in the back side for the administrators. Once they themselves converted  to Christianity a few years later it may have become uncomfortable for the new converts to be seen as the murderer of the founder of their new found religion. The case of murder was then made out against the Jews and how they connived and schemed to have the renegade killed. Since the Bible came much after it was easy to spread this spurious tale of Jews crucifying Christ. By the way notice that Christ in no way looks least bit Jewish but every bit a European.

People like Pictet and Grau justified colonisation of India as the only way to bring long lost Aryan brothers together. Both viewed the world composed of two races, the Aryans and the Semitic. While the Europeans were Aryans the Jews were Semitic. Indians were considered polluted Aryans who had to be converted to the true faith of Christianity. Gobnieau promoted the Aryan invasion theory and caste theory basing his work on Karl Marx's assumption that India had no history other than a series of foreign invasions. One wonders if Karl Marx was really as clued in and profound as he is made out to be?

Wilhelm Halbfass explains how the Aryan construct shifted over time:

During Gobnieau's lifetime, the old theory of the Asian origin of the European languages and traditions and of cultural movements from the East to the West, increasingly gave way to speculations on primeval movement from West to the East and on Aryan migrations from Europe, specially Northern Europe or even the North pole to India. According to these speculations, the Europeans gave their superior culture to the Indians and then lost their superiority through the mixing with the local inhabitants and perished in a climate for which they were not suited. In 1903 E. de Michelis summarised this by stating that Asia and India in particular was not the cradle of civilisation but the grave of the Aryans.

Chamberlain: Aryan-Christian Racism

Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) was a British author who wrote the book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in 1899. Though English he wrote it in German to emphasise his Aryan-Teutonic heritage. The book was a Europe wide best seller. This book linked Indian caste with race and projected Aryan heritage as the most evolved. He wrote in his book:

...wherever the Aryans went they became masters. The Greeks, the Latin, the Kelts, the Teutons, the Slavs - all were Aryans: of the aborigines of the countries which the overran scarcely a trace remains. So too in India, it was 'varna' colour which distinguished the white conquering Arya from the defeated black man, the Dasyu, and so laid the foundation of the caste. It is to the Teutons branch of the Aryan family that the first place in the world belongs, and the story of the 19th century is the story of the Teutons triumph.

But in time Chamberlain became aware of the limitations of the Biblical basis of the Aryan myth, and even had a premonition that one day the notion of a historical Aryan race might be fully disproved. Yet he felt that the notion was important for Europe. He wrote:

Though it were proved that there never was an Aryan race in the past, yet we desire that in the future that there may be one. That is the decisive standpoint for men of action.

Chamberlains work went on to become an authoritative influence on the Nazi leadership which had devastating consequences for Europe as real authentic history tells us.

Note: All scholars mentioned in this article have never seen or met an Indian let alone been to India. All their papers and books was based on second hand information, hearsay, translations, mistranslations. At best their books and theories can be called 'conjecture' with no scientific foundation.

Source:
Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Arvindan Neelakandan

'Atrocity Literature' British colonial policies, excerpts from the book Breaking India

If the nation state were severely undermined in its external capacity to deal with other forces, the result could invite invasions, re-colonisation, cultural and psychological imperialism, and other unwanted intervention. This has happened numerous times in India's history; for instance, when the British used human-rights cases as pretexts to act against many Indian rulers.

Ironically, the British themselves committed many horrible acts while justifying them by compiling what is known as Atrocity Literature* to depict the savagery of Indians. They claimed that for their own acts were designed to help bring about civilisation for Indians. Here are some examples:

• The Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871 and made it lawful to perform genocide against a list of Indian tribes deemed to be criminals, including every member of this tribes right from birth. Many tribes were condemned not because they were criminals but because they were fighting against the British destruction of their jungles and other habitats. The Thugs were one such group that got so badly maligned via atrocity literature that their name has entered English language as being synonymous with criminals.
• Atrocity literature played its part in downgrading women's rights too. Veena Oldenburg's seminal book, Dowry Murder, gives details of how the British encouraged Indians to list out cases of atrocities that could be blamed on native culture. They systematically compiled these anecdotes, mostly unsubstantiated and often exaggerated and one-sided. This became a justification to enact laws that downgraded the rights of the common citizens. The book shows how the dowry extortion that have become so common in middle-class India today, were actually started when women's traditional property rights were taken away by British through convoluted logic. 
• Girl child infanticide [from a earlier post of mine]
• Nicolas Dirks is one of the many scholars to have shown how the British used atrocity litrature in order to exacerbate conflicts between 'jatis' in order to 'solve' their problems by intervening. This helped the British to gain further power and extort Indian wealth.
• Claims of atrocities against workers were used to outlaw various Indian industries, including textiles and steel making, in which India had a lead over Britain. Meanwhile, the British started own Industrial Revolution to supply these goods to India as a captive market, turning Indians from world-class producers and exporters into importers and paupers. According to British authros WilliamDigby, between 1757 and 1812, the inflow of profits from India into Britain was estimated at between £ 500 million and £ 1 billion. The value of this sum in todays purchasing power would be over a trillion dollars. British were very diligent in documenting alleged cases of atrocities against workers, by the Indian manufacturers who were their competitors, and then outlawed many Indian industries on the charges of violating workers rights. The massive poverty and unemployment that resulted, only made the workers plight worse.

In a land mark monograph written a century ago by Mahatma Gandhi discusses how Indians working for the British were unwittingly helping to sustain the empire.

If one pays attention some of these policies are being carried forward by our present government run by the Congress party and infested with the Left liberals intelligentsia.

*Atrocity literature is a technical term referring to literature generated by a Western interest, with the explicit goal to show that the target non-Western culture is committing atrocities in its won people and hence need of Western intervention

Source:
Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra

Ignorance of the Hindus and the lies they are fed!

This post is inspired by my discussions on Hinduism with the so called 'liberals' the self proclaimed secularist who are actually pseudos or plainly ignorant. I challenge them by asking them what do they know about Hinduism, or define please Hinduism for me and the oft repeated line is Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life, Hinduism and its philosophies can be interpreted as one wishes and that there is no one interpretation, Hinduism cannot be defined etc!! My next question is who said these things or how or where did they hear these things i.e. and the response is vague and you start realising that the person is out of depth and has no understanding, in defense he even retaliates by calling me a Hindutva fascist.

To cut to the chase, such false notions of Hinduism is spread by non other other than Christian missionaries, Muslims, left leaning scholars, western academicians who have half baked knowledge or hidden agendas pandering to one or the other political or religious groups who funds their work.

The objective of spreading such false notions of Hinduism not being a religion is to then raise the question to a potential convert about his religion and to state to him that he has none because Hinduism is not a religion and the Hindus say it themselves. Thus he should embrace the true faith i.e. Christianity or Islam depending on which religion the deceiver belong to.*

The second false notion about flexible and varied interpretations of Hindu scriptures is spread so that missionaries, mullahs (for eg. Zakir Naik) and marxist (the 3M's) alike have a field day interpreting and reinterpreting Hindu scriptures and put Hindus on the defensive, challenge Hindu philosophies and make them sound redundant, false or just shame Hindus with the objective of gaining converts. *

For the record Hinduism is a religion with a set of codes and religious obligations and it demands its adherents to perform them, its different matter that most of us don't. Hinduism has had various saints and sages who have contributed their wisdom and philosophies to the religion down the ages (7000 to 8000 yrs) which has come down to us in the form of The Vedas (Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva) Upanishads, Puranas, The Bhagwat Geeta and many other such works of wisdom and philosophies. Thus unlike the Abrahamic relgions Hinduism is not a hostage to a prophet or a victim of dogma's.

Secondly Hinduism has many books of wisdom and philosophies even more saints and sages but Hinduism has one central belief system and none of these are open to flexible and varied interpretations and have very precise and exact meaning. The Vedas, The Bhagwat Geeta, The Upanishads are all very clear in their meaning and message.

So please dispel this vague notion of Hinduism and go rediscover it. Learn from a guru the real meaning of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma the real name Hinduism.

* These are the just the few possible ways the missionary, mullah, marxist combine spread lies and then use them against ignorant Hindus. 

Christian missionaries in scholarly clothing: Excerpts from the book Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram Part 13

There was more than scholarship involved in creating the Aryan invasion theory. Max Muller was as much colonial-missionary political agents as he was a scholar, for which he was richly rewarded. As he proudly declared in his Autobiography: “Lord Derby, then secretary of State for India, declared that the scholars who had discovered and proved the close relationship between Sanskrit and English, had rendered more valuable services to the British Government of India than many a regiment”. The most eloquent statement relating this ‘history’ to the Brtish rule came from Stanley Baldwin then Prime Minister, in a speech he made in the House of Commons in 1929:

Ages and ages ago, there sat side by side, the ancestors of the English, Rajputs and Brahmins. Now after ages…the two branches of the great Aryan ancestry have again been brought together by Providence… By establishing British rule in India, God said to the British. “I have brought you and the Indians together after a long separation, not in the order that you should lord over them, or that you should exploit them, but in order that you should recognize your kinship with them… It is your duty to raise them to your own level as quickly as possible and work together, brothers as you are, for the evolution of humanity…

Ref: Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

Friedrich Max Muller Confessions. Excerpts from the book Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram Part 12

Devout Christians were at the forefront of the resistance to Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection. Surprisingly parts of America and Europe still resist his theory. In fact as late as 1890 most schools in the west taught the Biblical account of creation, which means that most students who passed out from these institutions were indoctrinated by this Christian dogma. The fact that the first English schools in India were run by Christian missionaries was also responsible for the Biblical theory, and it’s the Aryan invasion theory. Indian history was retrofitted into Biblical timelines.

Towards the end of his career Max Muller did try to dilute his earlier position by stating, “Whether the Vedic hymns were written 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth can ever determine”.

Ref: Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

The Rise of the Aryan Invasion Theory. Excerpts from the book Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram Part 11

In the sixteenth century European travelers to India were struck by the remarkable affinties between Sanskrit and European languages. Fillippo Sasseti a Florentine merchant living in Goa between 1583-88 CE, observed that there was definite connection between Sanskrit and European languages.  But it was Sir William Jones a Calcutta judge with the British East India Co. the founder of the Asiatic Society who launched a comparative linguistics study. He observed…

The Sanskrit language whatever be its antiquity is of wonderful structure; more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and the forks of the grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from the some common source.

Many historians regard this observation by William Jones as the basis for ancient Indian history. Please note that the whole approach to ancient Indian history came into existence flowing from the study of Sanskrit and other European languages.

Its not surprising that linguist such as Friedrich Max Muller and Albrecht Weber should have formulated a model of ancient Indian history based on their theories of comparative linguistics.

According to the AIT a people called Aryans, a branch of the Indo-Europeans living originally in Central Asia or Europe invaded India overcame the natives, who according to this theory were ‘a rabble of aboriginal savages’ to become the lord and masters of India. This is the famous Aryan invasion theory being treated as historical facts by Indian and western historians. According to this theory the invaders brought the Vedas and Sanskrit language with them.

To arrive at this theory and date of 1500 BC Max Muller relied on the only model available for ancient history available in Europe then - The Biblical account of Creation.

Ref: Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

Points to note:

1)  For a moment lets take the AIT at face value. The AIT was created in the mid 1800 and the Harappan ruins were found in the 1920’s then how is it that the linguists have concluded on ‘invasion’.

2)  Later historians have very smartly retrofitted all new findings, artifacts and evidence into the AIT model without looking at alternate theories. 

Comment: JNU Marxist historians like Romila Thapar who recently retracted the Aryan race and invasion theory and other western scholars like Michael Witzel, Akso Parpola etc are ready to base their studies and reputation on the unscientific conjecture of British bureaucrats and civil servants but don’t give alternate models due respect. The funny part is that in the last 150 odd years the scholars supporting the AIT have only done just that ‘supported’ this flawed theory and have not come out with any new break through. Witzel and her minions have spent their entire lifetime in propping up this false theory.

Ancient Indian history retrofitted into Christian Biblical dogma. Excerpts from the book Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram Part 10

It’s important to note that the Aryan invasion theory is entirely a nineteenth century European creation. It finds no support in ancient Indian records, which recognizes no homeland other than India. Also, the theory was formulated when there was no archaeology or scientific methods to assist nineteenth century European scholars who also for the most part lacked scientific education. Most of them believed in the Biblical theory of creation according to which the world and all the living things were created at 9:00 am on October 23^rd 4004 BC. For several centuries it was a serious offence to question this Christian dogma. Firm belief in this dogma led early Indologist to manipulate Indian history and chronology to fit everything within the framework of this Biblical superstition.

History books do not mention this Biblical background – most authors probably are even unaware of it – but unwittingly they still carry the legacy of this Christian Fundamentalist doctrine. It was later presented in the linguistic terms, and the chronology of ancient India and the date of the Rigveda found in history books were made to rest on these Biblical beliefs: Creation in 4004 BC and the Biblical floods in 2448 BC. Nor is this the only contributor to the Aryan invasion theory, European and British colonial interest too played their role.

Ref: Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

Please read more from the same series

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/synopses-from-book-sarasvati-and-vedic.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/synopses-from-book-sarasvati-and-vedic_02.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/excerpts-from-book-sarasvati-river-and.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/excerpts-from-book-sarasvati-river-and_03.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-horse-at-harappa-sarasvati-river-and.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/global-drought-ended-harappa-not-any.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/reference-to-sarasvati-in-rigveda.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/sarasvati-great-mother-of-us-all.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-chronology-harappa-sutra.html
http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/10/4-recommended-books-for-all-ancient.html