Gita, Gandhi and Godse

Varghese K. George

Both Nathuram Godse and Mahatma Gandhi read the Bhagavad Gita but one became a martyr and the other a murderer
 

GRIM REMINDER: “January 30, the day Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi, is the starkest reminder in the history of humankind of how the same text can be read differently.” Picture shows Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral procession in in 1948.

January 30 reminds us of the fact that even the holiest of texts can have subjective and differential meanings.

The sacred Indian verses of Shrimad Bhagavad Gita has been in the news for various reasons in recent months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to United States President Barack Obama when he visited the White House last year and one to Emperor Akihito of Japan. He has declared that the Gita would be the gift that he would carry for all world leaders. More controversially, Union Minister Sushma Swaraj advocated that the Gita may be declared the national book of India. Most recently, the BJP government in Haryana declared its intention to teach the Gita as part of the school curriculum.

To say that religion and politics should not be mixed has not only become a cliché, but may be missing the point altogether. Many tall leaders found the reason for their political action in their religious faith. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr are examples. President Obama mentioned in his town hall speech in Delhi last week that his faith strengthened him in his life. It is also true that many kings and emperors of the past used religious faith to justify killings and destruction.

Martyr and murderer

Many individuals and organisations advocate and indulge in violence today, and justify it on the basis of religious texts. January 30, the day Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi, is the starkest reminder in the history of humankind of how the same text can be read differently. Both read the Bhagavad Gita. One became Gandhi. The other became Godse. One became a martyr. The other became a murderer. Jawaharlal Nehru, for whom the Gita was “a poem of crisis, of political and social crisis and, even more so, of crisis in the spirit of man,” wrote in the Discovery of India: “... the leaders of thought and action of the present day — Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Gandhi — have written on it, each giving his own interpretation. Gandhiji bases his firm belief in non-violence on it; others justify violence and warfare for a righteous cause ...”

What is curious is the fact that the two opposite interpretations of the Gita that Nehru refers to were responses to the same shared reality that their respective proponents encountered —  colonialism and Christianity. Two strikingly different responses emerge to the same situation. The divergence is evident from the debate between Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. In 1920, Tilak wrote to Gandhi: “Politics is the game of worldly people and not of Sadhus, and instead of the maxim, ‘overcome anger by loving kindness, evil by good,’ as preached by Buddha, I prefer to rely on the maxim of Shri Krishna, ‘In whatsoever way any come to me, in that same way I grant them favour.’ That explains the whole difference.” Gandhi replied: “For me there is no conflict between the two texts quoted by the Lokamanya. The Buddhist text lays down an eternal principle. The text from the Bhagavad Gita shows to me how the eternal principle of conquering hate by love, untruth by truth can and must be applied.”

For Tilak, the Gita was a call for action, political and religious. He declared that the Gita sanctioned violence for unselfish and benevolent reasons. While Tilak’s interpretation of the Gita that he wrote while in prison inspired a generation of warriors against British colonialism, it also informed Hindutva politics. Godse used similar arguments to justify the killing of the Mahatma, and quoted from the book during his trial. For Gandhi, the Gita and all religious texts were not excuses for exclusion and bigotry, but inspiration for compassion and confluence. In The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi — incidentally, the book that Mr. Modi gifted Mr. Obama — the Father of the Nation wrote: “But there is nothing exclusive about the Gita which should make it a gospel only for the Brahmana or the Hindu. Having all the light and colour of the Indian atmosphere, it naturally must have the greatest fascination for the Hindu, but the central teaching should not have any the less appeal for a non-Hindu as the central teaching of the Bible or the Koran should not have any less appeal for a non-Christian or a non-Muslim.”

Challenged by Christian missionaries, Gandhi learned more about his own religion, but more importantly, he imbibed Christian values rather than rejecting them. “Gandhi integrated several aspects of Christianity in this brand of increasingly redefined Hinduism, particularly the idea of suffering love as exemplified in the image of crucifixion. The image haunted him all his life and became the source of some of his deepest passions. He wept before it when he visited Vatican in Rome in 1931; the bare walls of his Sevagram ashram made an exception in favour of it; Isaac Watts’s ‘When I behold the wondrous Cross,’ which offers a moving portrayal of Christ’s sorrow and sacrifice and ends with ‘love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,’ was one of his favourite hymns...” Bhikhu Parekh writes. Gandhi was accused of being a ‘closet Christian’ and ridiculed as ‘Mohammad Gandhi’ by Hindu radicals.

Support for Godse’s reading

Godse’s reading of the Gita appears to gather more supporters in contemporary India. BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj knew what he was talking about when he praised Godse. Several individuals and organisations have become active in propagating the ideas of Godse. There is also a move to build a temple for him.

After gifting the Gita to the Japanese emperor, Mr. Modi wondered whether his act would irk secularists. The greatest of Indian secularists, Nehru, had this to say: “During the 2,500 years since it was written, Indian humanity has gone repeatedly through the processes of change and development and decay; but it has always found something living in the Gita...The message of the Gita is not sectarian or addressed to any particular school of thought. It is universal in its approach for everyone… ‘All paths lead to Me,’ it says.”

But then, it is all about reading it like Gandhi.

varghese.g@thehindu.co.in

Source: The Hindu   

Legal experts say debating Preamble pointless, needless

Written by Utkarsh Anand , Seema Chishti | New Delhi | Posted: January 30, 2015 1:22 am | Updated: January 30, 2015 2:27 am   

A day after Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there was “no harm” in debating whether the Preamble should have the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’, legal luminaries said that given the might of the Constitution and assertive judicial pronouncements, such a debate was “redundant” and “unnecessary”.

“What debate (is to be done)? Article 25 uses the word ‘secular’, and it was always there. The entire Constitution is premised on the idea of equality irrespective of religion, caste, creed or sex… That is secular, and the Constitution guarantees it,” former Chief Justice of India V N Khare told The Indian Express.

“Our Constitution itself is secular, with or without these words in its Preamble, and every Indian is fundamentally equal,” Justice Khare said.

Former Supreme Court Justice K T Thomas said the secular nature of the Constitution no longer required deliberation or debate.
“The secular nature of the Constitution has been well settled in many judgments of the Supreme Court, which has declared the Constitution itself as secular. It doesn’t make a difference whether the words (secular and socialist) were added during the Emergency or not.”

Justice Thomas, however, added that now that the words have been added, “they should remain there”.

Former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee said: “What is the point of arguing all this now? The Preamble only reflects what our Constitution says, and the Constitution lays down equality in every sense of the word for all Indians.”

The “Constitution itself is secular”, and a debate is “totally unnecessary”, Sorabjee said.

Retired Justice Rajindar Sachar, who headed the panel that studied the socio-economic and educational status of Indian Muslims, had stronger words.

“Any attempt to tinker with the Preamble is utterly illegal and grossly unconstitutional,” he said. “It warrants a more stern censure since the idea has come from those who have taken the oath of the same Constitution. It is in breach of that oath… The Prime Minister must issue a statement on behalf of his Cabinet that… the Preamble will not be touched.”

Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran said the two words added by the 42nd Amendment only made explicit what was already part of the original Preamble.

“The Constitution guarantees justice: social, economic and political; liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; equality of status and opportunity, and fraternity. These concepts are surely a part of the basic structure, which, under the law of the land, cannot be done away with. So the principles of secularism and socialism is intrinsic to Constitutional principles,” Ramachandran said.

Source: The Indian Express

Ghar wapsi: Why the Hindus will never be a minority in India

Only the lower caste have reasons to convert in this country.

POLITICS   |   4-minute read |   19-01-2015

Sohail Hashmi @Dilliwal

There has been a lot of noise on the issue of conversion, the pitch is constantly rising and the gullible are increasingly being told that there is an international conspiracy to reduce the Hindus to a minority in the land of their birth. The ratcheting up of the rhetoric has assumed shriller tones since Nepal, the one country that used to describe itself as a Hindu state decided to drop the sobriquet and chose to declare itself a "secular state". The only people in Nepal who want to go back to being described as a Hindu state are the monarchists and that says something about the relevance of the idea of a denominational state in the 21st century.

All kinds of "histories", in fact more hysterical fulminations than the result of any serious enquiry, are put forward and claims made that Hindus have been enslaved and converted forcefully for a thousand years.

The entire thesis of slavery of the Hindus at the hands of Muslims is a fallacy, primarily because those propounding this thesis have not the foggiest idea of what precisely slavery is and when they club this so-called slavery in the "Muslim period" with the "enslavement of the Hindu nation" by the British, they place under public scrutiny their utter and absolute ignorance of what imperialism is and how it operates.

Aside from their complete unfamiliarity with historical processes and with the various stages in the evolution of societies, these worthies, who also claim to have taught the decimal system to the world, expose themselves further to ridicule by not addressing a question of elementary arithmetic, they have never tried to explain why after 1,000 years of forcible conversion, Hindus continue to be 85 per cent of the country's population. Either those engaged in forcible conversion were extremely inefficient that they managed to convert only about 15 per cent of the population in a project lasting ten centuries, or the entire thesis is based primarily on make believe assumptions.

This constant noise about conversion and the creation of this frenzy of insecurity and of a psychosis of fear, of being reduced to a minority is, in fact, a clever attempt to prevent people from asking the one basic question that the noise makers have no answer for and the question is "But why do only Hindus convert".

The entire discourse on forcible conversion has been developed in order to prevent people from asking this one question. An honest answer to this question will shake the vey edifice upon which rests the Chaturvarnashram or the caste system.

Almost 2,500 years ago, two Kshatriya princes began needling the Brahmanic order, asking questions that triggered the first exodus from the order. This mass departure was the first organised rejection of the idea of intellect being the preserve of some, power the handmaiden of some others, trade and commerce of another lot and existence in servitude, the fate of the overwhelming majority. The questions that the Kshatriya princes asked have yet to be comprehensively answered.

As long as those who control the reins of faith continue to insist that Chaturvarnashram is in fact the divinely ordained division of labour, we cannot escape the situation where large parts of the population are compelled to exist in conditions of absolute servitude, exclusion and marginalisation. The Chaturvarnashram is the Indian version of racial discrimination. Forever perpetuating the dominance of the "dwij jaatis".

As long as this discriminatory construct continues, Dalits and tribals will continue to convert as they have from the time of the Buddha, it is another matter that conversion does not help them escape the brand of being a low born and so carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, butchers, cobblers, tailors, potters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, performers, and others who had to work for a living have always been treated as life of a "lower intellect" because if they had any intellect they would be Brahmins or Kshatriyas - people who made others do their dirty work.

And it is because of this that entire communities converted to Islam and Sikhism when the opportunity presented itself and it is because of this that the finest craftspeople are to be found among these communities.

Some "upper-castes" also converted in the hope that if they converted to the religion of the king, it will help them rise in life. Whenever the "upper-caste" converted they carried their caste names into the new religion and examples of this can be found in Kashmir, in Rajasthan, in Haryana and in Punjab, but when the "low caste" converted they gave up their caste names because they were not converting for political reasons, they were opting out of a system that treated them with bias and prejudice.

Source: dailyo

Where Upanishads and Hadith are taught together

News » National                                                MANDSAUR, January 10, 2015

Mahim Pratap Singh

Images of goddess Saraswati and Ajmer Shariff share the wall at a classroom 
in Madarasa Firdose centre at Mandasaur in Madhya Pradesh. 
Photo: Prashant Nakwe    The Hindu

As the sun slowly warms the small classrooms of Madrasa Gyan Sagar, students return from the extended winter break to welcome New Year’s Day at school.

There is a picture of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, displayed prominently on the wall in the Principal’s office. Outside is a blackboard on which is inscribed a quote from the Brihadarnyaka Upanishad (Asato Maa Sadgamaya) and one from the Hadith (Knowledge is the greatest wealth.)

In a classroom, three girls, Ambreen, Simran and Farida, begin reciting Saraswati Vandana. They study in a madrasa, probably unlike any other in the country.

Gyan Sagar is one of the 128 madrasas run by a group of women in and around Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, which is otherwise famous for its poppy farms and high-grade opium. In 78 of these madarsas, Hindu students outnumber their Muslim friends (over 55 per cent of the students are Hindu), while 630 of the 865 teachers employed by the group are Hindu.

The Hindu religion is taught as a compulsory subject for students from Hindu households, with textbooks comprising detailed explanations of religious rituals and their scientific basis. “Most of the families in this village [Songari] are Muslim. Yet, the madrasa offers both religions as subjects. Students learn about their respective religions and share the teachings with their classmates from the other religion in their free time. The entire experience is very enriching,” says Gagan Bhatnagar, Principal of Madrasa Gyan Sagar.

Five Muslim and two Hindu women form the Nida Mahila Mandal (NMM), which operates these schools, headquartered at Madrasa Firdaus, the main branch just outside the gates of old Mandsaur city. The madrasas — with names such as Madrasa Gurukul Vidyapeeth and Madrasa Jain Vardhaman — have a strength of 5,500 students from across the district.

Set up in 1992 by Shahzad Qureshi, Madrasa Firdaus initially used to impart religious education and offered free tuition to poor students from other schools. In 1998, when the Madhya Pradesh government set up the Madrasa Board, the Nida Mahila Mandal, a registered society, got itself accredited as a study centre to offer higher secondary education.

“We were educating children from poor families. A lot of poor Hindu families wanted to enrol their children in our schools, but were concerned about religious education,” says NMM chairperson Talat Qureshi.

“That is when we thought of reviving India’s older system of madrasas that offered subsidised education, and where such legends as Munshi Premchand, Raja Rammohun Roy, Bharatendu Harishchandra and Pandit Ramchandra Shukla had their education,” says Dr. Qureshi, a dentist by profession.

Modern education is the primary focus of the Madrasa Firdaus group. However, since it is affiliated to the Madrasa Board, it must offer religious education. To get around that condition, the NMM sought help from Hindu friends and prepared a Hindu religious education module and integrated it into the curriculum. As a result, Hindu religion is a compulsory subject for Hindu students studying in these study centres, while Muslim students have to study and pass Deeniyat.

“The Hindu Dharma textbook contains the Gayatri Mantra, Solah Sanskaar and Pranayaam, among other topics, and explains their scientific basis,” says Nemichand Rathore, a freelance journalist who drafted the textbooks.

While English is the preferred medium of instruction, Hindi is a compulsory language, and students can choose either Urdu or Sanskrit.

Ayushi Varshi, 16, has opted for Urdu and flawlessly recites Kalmas and Ghazals. “My parents encourage me to learn Urdu. They say it offers a lot of career opportunities,” she says.

Her siblings Mehek, 12, and Abhi, 9, enrolled in Insha Public School, another branch of Madrasa Firdaus, are also learning the language.

Then, there is Shabnam, a Class VIII student of Madrasa Firdaus, who is fascinated with the Gayatri Mantra. Bolne mei bahut accha lagta hai [I love the sound of it], she says, after reciting it.

The group of madrasas is affiliated to the State education board till Class VIII, while the secondary and higher secondary levels are affiliated to the National Institute of Open Schooling.

Source: The Hindu

Nation celebrating wrong heroes: Arundhati Roy

Special Correspondent

Writer Arundhati Roy at an Ayyankali memorial lecture in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday. 
Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar    The Hindu

 The real struggles and battles of actual heroes such as Ayyankali in Kerala or Jyotiba Phule in Maharashtra, who successfully led mass movements against upper class brutalities, will continue to be kept away from popular imagination as long as the nation keeps celebrating the wrong heroes, writer and political thinker Arundhati Roy said here on Thursday.

She was delivering the Mahatma Ayyankali address at an international seminar on “Re-imagining struggles at the margins: A history of the unconquered and the oppressed” organised by the Mahatma Ayyankali Chair, Department of History, University of Kerala.

It is part of a political conspiracy to perpetuate the caste system that such heroes are never celebrated. All the while, the nation has been fed on centuries of lies about “mahatmas,” who never openly renounced the caste system but instead, advocated that the hereditary occupation of people who belonged to a particular caste ought to be the maintained social order, she said.

“The story of Gandhi that we have been told, is a lie. It is time to unveil a few truths, about a person whose doctrine of nonviolence was based on the acceptance of a most brutal social hierarchy ever known, the caste system. Gandhi believed that a scavenger should always remain a scavenger. Do we really need to name our universities after him?” Ms. Roy said, quoting from several writings by Gandhi.

Caste system

“India can never hope to be a U.S. or China as long as the caste system, this deep disease in our souls, is not annihilated. It is time that as a nation, people started asking themselves if they wanted to institutionalise injustice, if they were so sick as to believe that some people deserved to be more privileged than the others,” she added.

Kancha Ilaiah, Dalit activist, writer and former Professor of Political Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad, delivered the keynote address. The seminar was inaugurated by P.K. Radhakrishnan, Vice Chancellor, University of Kerala.

Source: The Hindu

శ్రీ కౌముది జనవరి 2015

శ్రీ కౌముది   జనవరి 2015

The Spice that Could Help Boost Memory in Just One Hour

Michelle Schoffro Cook                                                               January 2, 2015

Now there’s one more reason to enjoy your favorite curry dish. Turmeric, a spice commonly found in many Indian curry dishes, has been found to improve memory and cognition in as little as one hour.

While conducting the research for my upcoming book 60 Seconds to Boost Your Brain Power (Rodale, 2015), I came across an exciting study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The double-blind, placebo-controlled study explored the effects of one of turmeric’s active ingredients known as curcumin on sixty healthy adults aged sixty to eighty-five to determine whether the spice has any short- or long-term memory or cognitive effects.

Conducted at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, researches assessed the mental effects of curcumin supplementation after one hour, three hours, and four weeks. They conducted multiple tests to determine whether the participants had any mood, cognitive, or blood marker effects that might indicate curcumin’s immediate or long-term effects. In just one hour after taking the supplement the participants showed significant performance improvement on memory and attention tasks compared to the placebo group.

The participants had many impressive results after four weeks of treatment with curcumin as well. The scientists indicated that working memory, energy levels, calmness and contentedness (as measures of mood), and even fatigue induced by psychological stress were significantly improved following the long-term treatment with the supplement. Participants also had lower cholesterol levels after taking the curcumin supplement.

Even Alzheimer’s patients with severe symptoms, including dementia, irritability, agitation, anxiety, and apathy, showed excellent therapeutic results when taking curcumin in a study published in the Japanese medical journal Ayu. When participants took 764 mg of turmeric with a standardized amount of 100 mg/day of curcumin for twelve weeks, they “started recovering from these symptoms without any adverse reaction in the clinical symptom and laboratory data.” After three months of treatment the patients’ symptoms and their reliance on caregivers significantly decreased. After one year of treatment two of the patients recognized their family members when they were unable to do so at the outset of the study. In one of the cases the person had a 17 percent improvement on their Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score.

The study results were achieved using a brand of curcumin called Longvida; however there are many other excellent brands. Ideally choose a standardized extract of curcumin. Follow package directions. Consult your physician prior to taking curcumin. In my upcoming book 60 Seconds to Boost Your Brain Power (Rodale, 2015), I recommend 400 mg of curcumin three times daily for people suffering from brain disorders, working with a physician.

Source: care2

Excavation at Harappan site reveals house plan

News » National                                                                                CHENNAI, January 3, 2015

Updated: January 3, 2015 01:49 IST

 T. S. Subramanian

A part of the 21 pots found at the burial pit in the late Harappan site of Chandayan, Baghpat district, Uttar Pradesh.

Remains of skeleton, animal bones indicate funeral ceremony at late-Harappan site

Excavation conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at the late-Harappan site of Chandayan in Uttar Pradesh has, for the first time, revealed the plan of a house on the Ganga-Yamuna doab, with its mud walls, four successive floor levels and post-holes.

While these were found in the habitation area, trenches laid in the burial area brought to light 21 Harappan pots, the remains of a skeleton, a broken copper crown placed on the skull, animal bones and remains of a feast, indicating a funeral ceremony.

“It was a salvage excavation meant to know the site’s cultural sequence,” said A.K. Pandey, Superintending Archaeologist, Excavation Branch-II, ASI, who led the excavation at Chandayan in Baraut tehsil of Baghpat district. He decided to conduct the excavation after labourers digging farmland to collect clay found the crown placed on the skull, a red-ware bowl and a miniature pot last August. The ASI excavated five trenches in December, each of 10x10 metres, with two trenches in the habitation locality and three in the burial area. Mr. Pandey estimated that the late-Harappan site could have existed before 4,000 years.

The excavation in the residential area revealed a mud wall and post-holes in one trench and four closely laid and successive floors of a house in another trench and pots. They were found at a depth of 130 cm and upwards from the surface level. The posts positioned in the holes would have supported the roof of the house. “The habitation area is significant for the floor levels, and mud walls were occurring in the Ganga-Yamuna doab for the first time,” Mr. Pandey said.

In the burial site, 150 metres from the residential area, excavations brought to light 21 pots, including deep bowls, dishes, flasks and lids with knobs and cylindrical agate beads. Nearby were the skeleton’s femur and pelvis. These, along with a broken copper crown, were found by labourers digging for clay. The copper crown was embedded with carnelian and faience beads. The orientation of the burial site was from northwest to southeast. The 21 pots might have contained cereals, milk, butter and honey used in the funeral ceremony, Mr. Pandey said.

Twenty metres from the skeleton, remains of animal sacrifice, other refuse and pots similar to those found in the habitation area were found, suggesting some religious ceremony during the funeral, Mr. Pandey said.

Source: The Hindu 

Mythology of conversion

Why Hindus never converted but now want to reconvert

POLITICS  |   Long-form |   29-12-2014

Devdutt Pattanaik @devduttmyth

Observe how you react when you read the word "mythology". You are conditioned to believe it means "falsehood". Where did this conditioning, and meaning, come from? It comes from Christianity and secularism and science, the Western kind. And this has been accepted as "the" truth by many educated Indians – from the cult leaders of the liberal Left, to the gurus of the conservative right, even scriptwriters of Bollywood. Reveals how much of education has become indoctrination.

The word "mythos" means stories in Greek. Stories construct a worldview that is transmitted from generation to generation, shaping cultures. It is this story that binds people, turns them into a community. Every community in the world, from the Kalahari bushmen of Africa to the investment bankers of Wall Street, from aborigines of Australia to the brahmins of Varanasi, from the bishops in the Vatican to the Arabs of Mecca, has a worldview, a myth, about the nature of the world. Everyone in the community views their story as the truth. They have to. It is the glue that keeps their people together. The outsider finds these stories strange – weird, fantastic, absurd, stupid. Hence the twin meaning of myth – truth and falsehood. It is the assumption of the insider, and the judgment of the outsider. In other words, subjective truth.

For the Christian, Jesus is the saviour. For the Muslim, Muhammad is the last prophet. For the Buddhist, life is suffering. For the older Thervada Buddhist school, there was only one Buddha. In the latter Mahayana Buddhist school, there were many Buddhas. For the Hindu, there is rebirth. For the Shaivite, Shiva can break the cycle of rebirth. For the Vaishnavite, Vishnu is the cycle breaker. For the Jain, the world has no beginning or ending. For the secularist, religion is bad. For the capitalist, money is good. For the communist, the haves oppress the have-nots. For patriarchy, heterosexual men are superior. For the atheist, god is fiction. For the scientist, that which is measurable is real.

Notice how "myth" stretches from religious world to the non-religious world. For everyone tells stories, incredible stories, that some want to believe and some don’t. Storytelling is human. Story believing is human. Myth making is the indicator of humanity.

This poses a problem: how to distinguish the truth from falsehood? Reportage from propaganda. Ideology from reality. Ontology (knowledge independent of the mind) from epitemiology (knowledge created by the mind).

To understand this, we have to study the mythology of Abrahamic religions.

Why Abrahamic religions? Two reasons. First, Abrahamic religions have a profound political power, shaping Western/modern/global discourse, in more ways than we can imagine. Second, from Abrahamic religion we have our conventional understanding of "there can be only one truth!"

Abrahamic religions speak of "false gods" and "one true God". This idea is rather unique to Abrahamic mythology. There is the jealous god who does not like false gods, the god who refuses to be contained within a form and is formless, though is represented in language and art using the masculine form. Those who aligned to this mythology rejected all other gods. To prove their faith, they actively toppled other gods. Thus, when Christianity spread to Northeast India in the 20th century, the older tribal religions were wiped out. Memories were erased. Rituals forgotten. Exactly what happened in Arabia and Persia after the rise of Islam in the eighth century.

The Greeks did not have the concept of the "false" god. They had many gods. New gods kept coming in and old gods kept losing ground. The strong Olympians overpowered the earlier Titans. Eventually, the all-powerful god of the Christians kicked every god out when the Roman empire turned Christian. This was important to control the empire. The cacophony of many was replaced by the directives of the One. Notice this trend in recent times in India – where many clamour for dictatorship, and reject the vast diversity of languages in favour of a single language.

But then Greek mythology resurrected itself - not the gods, but their story. The dominant theme of Greek thought is about oppression and rebellion. To stay oppressed is to be in hell. The point of life is to fight back such authoritarian oppression, take a stand and be heroic. Greeks loved individualistic heroes and the polis (the city center) where rule was by consensus of individuals. With Greek thought came the European Renaissance of the 15th century, which challenged the church, and the idea of god, the idea of King, and gave rise to the Protestant movement (where the church is rejected but not god) as well as the relatively recent atheistic movement (where both church and god are rejected).

In its purest form, science does not judge. Science says: I know what I measure; the rest I don’t know. But science emerged in Christian Europe and so like the Abrahamic God, science became a judge. Science started to say: What I measure is true; the rest is falsehood. Thus the division of true and falsehood, spread into philosophy and science. Earlier, the Greek differentiated between two kinds of truth: that which is created by stories (mythos) and that which is created by reason (logos). Under Christian influence, mythos became falsehood and logos became truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth. Thus the Abrahamic God, overthrown by the Renaissance, fought back and made its way right into the speeches of the most radical militant atheists. This Christianised Science, where truth and falsehood were repeatedly demarcated, made its way to every corner of the world through missionary schools and the modern education system that adopted the missionary method.

Hinduism is not based on the notion of "false" gods and "true" gods. Hinduism has no concept of "judges". Truth is seen very differently. There is limited truth or mithya and limitless truth that is satya. The finite human mind can never appreciate the infinity of the world. But the mind can be expanded – by practices of propagated by hermits such as yoga and tapasya and tantra. Only the sage can see all. He is therefore Buddha, he whose intelligence (buddhi) is fully formed. He is therefore bhagavan, he who sees all parts (bhaga). In Jainism and Buddhism, the sage is a great teacher. In Hinduism, the sage is god, who defies the mortal body. God of Hinduism is limitless (ananta). This limitless god can "contract" himself and "bring himself down to the level of mortals". From here comes the concept of "avatar" (he who descends). From his mountaintop, Shiva sees all. But he is isolated up there. So the goddess brings him down to the plains, to Kashi, where the gaze is restricted by the horizon.

God who is "limitless" is very different from god who rejects the "false". The one is accommodating of human limitations. The other cannot tolerate human weakness. The one has no sense of urgency for it sees fear of death as delusion. The other wants to save the world before falsehood claims the world. The one is at peace. The other is always at war. Guess which god dominates the modern world.

Ironically, Hindu Right wing have started adopting the Abrahamic version of God. And the Left wing seems to agree with this definition of god. It has become the only definition of god, endorsed even by atheists and Bollywood.

The limitless god is too passive – it does not indulge cult leaders. Cult leaders want to be admired as heroes, and so they need villains. So they construct "false gods" – missionaries and secularists. They reject post-modern definitions of mythology. For them myth is "falsehood" not "subjective truth". The latter definition does not serve their ambitions. There is an epidemic of cult leaders in the Right wing, desperate seeking power, each one a jealous god. They don’t care for any truth but their own. So they tell stories, of how Hinduism is under threat and how everyone needs to be alert and fight back. But there is one key clause in a cult leaders story that often goes unnoticed: to win the battle against Christian missionaries, you have to recognise only their version of Hinduism with them as its true articulator. This they make themselves the chosen one! Other than cult followers, everyone can see the irony.

We often forget that one of the earliest form of "conversion" can be traced to Buddhism. It did this without force, without violence– through one leader (Buddha), one clear doctrine and set of rules (Dhamma), and through institutions (the Sangha). Buddhist monks did not speak of any "true" or "false" god, but he did offer the "cure for worldly suffering" revealed by his leader. For the common folk, this made Buddha, the source of the solution, a larger than life being, greater than man – a god! So eventually, ignoring earlier practices, gigantic images of Buddha started appearing, and being worshipped, in Central Asia, China and South East Asia. He who did not care for the gods, became a god. And when he became god, the many Gods of the Puranas, from Shiva to Kali to Krishna, ended up overshadowing him.

Many believe that Jesus was greatly influenced by Buddhism in his "lost years" and was inspired to create the "church", an idea that was alien to the earlier Jewish faith. When the church became powerful, the Roman empire adopted it. Instead of conquering tax-paying land for Rome, they new generals began conquering souls for the one true god. Later, with the rise of Science, god became secular "money" and the age of enlightenment became the age of colonisation. Secular thought propagated itself on the principles of the church – lessons of conversion informed many a marketing department. Brands became the new gods. Rockstars became the new gods.

We forget that stories influence stories. Just as Buddhism can influence Christianity, and Christianity can influence Capitalism and Communism, and the story of the "one true God" can influence truth-seeking scientists. Likewise, the story of the "limitless god" of Hinduism can also influence the limited truths of terrorists and activists.

Conversion believes that only one story will prevail at the end. Re-conversion believes that some stories are under threat. The tangible form of stories – customs, rituals, symbols – may die. The language (vac, in Vedas) may die but not the thought (manas, in Vedas). The intangible form of each and every story is eternal (sanatan, in the Vedas) and ever-changing (a-nitya, in the Vedas). Thus is how Vedic ideas survived despite the rise of Buddhism - reframing ideas locked in esoteric rituals into entertaining epics. This is why the Hindu concept of "history" is "a-historical". The limits of time are broken. The story, or rather idea of the story, belongs not just to the past but also to the present and the future. It recurs always. Conversion and re-conversion, conquest and liberation, follow each other like the recurring battle of the devas and the asuras. So it was, so it is and so it will be. Iti-hasa, even if the Hindu Right wing does not want to believe it.

Source: dailyo  

Fifty shades of saffron

Opinion » Comment                    December 27, 2014
Updated: December 27, 2014 01:50 IST

Satyabrata Pal

"Narendra Modi can pay tribute to Sardar Patel by making India 
proud rather than building his statue." Picture shows him with BJP 
leader L.K Advani in Kevadia village, Gujarat.    PTI

The danger now is that under an overtly Hindu government, discriminatory practices against the most vulnerable people will flourish even more

On December 11, 2014, when the U.N. General Assembly adopted June 21 as the International Day of Yoga, as recommended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India rejoiced. Never mind that the day before was the first Human Rights Day under his watch; this crept by unnoticed.

At the SAARC Summit, Mr. Modi declaimed, “As we seek to build bridges to prosperity, we must not lose sight of our responsibility to the millions living without hope.” He was, as always, matchless as a kathakar, an artiste whose fabulous retelling of fables reinforces them in the minds of the faithful as fact. But while his performances have zero defects, on the lives of the multitudes hanging on to his words, believing in them and daring to hope, they have had zero effect so far, because the responsibility of which the Prime Minister spoke is usually ignored.

In 1990, the U.N. launched the Human Development Report based on the challenging predicate that “people are the real wealth of a nation.” How wealthy are we really? After two decades of rapid GDP growth, we bestride SAARC like a colossus doing the splits, one foot splayed eastward to keep China out, the other westward to keep Pakistan down. We loom like a giant among midgets, but on every parameter that measures equity in development, there is little to choose between us and our neighbours.

The Human Development Index (HDI) for 2014 ranks us at 135 among 187 countries; Sri Lanka at 73 did way better than us, and we were shadowed by Bhutan at 136, Bangladesh at 142, Nepal at 145 and Pakistan at 146. The fact that India was a stable democracy, as the others were not, that our economy had galloped along, as theirs had not, had made very little difference to the lives of our citizens.

Within the HDI, the Gender Inequality Index which measures three critical parameters — reproductive health, women’s empowerment and their participation in the labour market — is particularly important because it shows how a society treats its more vulnerable half. Sri Lanka at 75 is well ahead of us, but so is Nepal at 98, Bhutan at 102 and Bangladesh at 115. India is in lock-step with Pakistan, both ranked at 127. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, which brought in far-reaching measures to protect women, is now almost two years old; sadly, it has made little difference.

Depth of deprivation

My five years on the National Human Rights Commission were a humbling experience. In 2009, we had 82,000 complaints, in 2013, a lakh. A five-member Commission could not possibly do justice to more than a fraction of these. We dismissed 60 per cent of complaints in limine, or at the outset, 11 per cent with directions to officials to act (but never had the time to check if they did) and transferred 6 per cent to the State Human Rights Commissions, which were mostly ramshackle.

Read: Universal rights and universal violations

Our investigative visits to rural India were dives into the darkness that contained the mass of the iceberg of which the complaints coming to us were only the tip. In a country still largely illiterate, a terrible violation of human rights in itself, very few knew the NHRC existed. Those who did wondered if it would be able to help; many thought it would not. For every complaint that came to us, a hundred did not, but since so many were on systemic problems affecting entire communities, they brought home to us the range, depth and persistence of discrimination and deprivation in India. The two are often linked, and that is the real cause of worry with our new dispensation. The poorest and the most vulnerable — women, Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Muslims — suffer because the social bias against them is rooted in Hindu belief and practice, and still so strong that the laws meant to protect them are impotent. Even under a secular government, public servants would plead with the NHRC that there would be law and order problems if they tried to implement these. The danger now is that under a government so overtly Hindu, these practices will flourish even more. The hate speeches of Cabinet members signal where this could lead us.

“Discrimination and deprivation are often linked to one another, and that is the real cause of worry with our new dispensation”

Mr. Modi wants his party to be careful with their words, but there are fifty shades of saffron around, most of it strident. He wants civil servants to be sensitive, but they always are, to the wishes of the powers that be. He wants the police to be SMART, but they already are, reporting to the National Crime Records Bureau that in 2013 there were only two incidents of human rights violations by their personnel. The same year, 33,753 complaints to the NHRC, a third of the total received, were against the police, detailing how they preyed on those they should protect.

In Mr. Modi’s defence, these are national problems he has inherited, not created, but Gujarat is the template he holds up to the rest of India, and there are a range of impartial reports that show how cavalier it has been about the lives of the State’s people. A 2013 Lancet study found that among the 11 rich States, Gujarat had done the worst in bringing down the mortality rate of children under five, one of the Millennium Development Goals. The Census established that the sex ratio in Gujarat has declined from 934 in 1991 to 920 in 2001 to 918 in 2011. Not surprisingly, the NCRB data shows a high incidence of crimes against women. So too, the data shows, are crimes against Scheduled Castes, at levels higher than in the other developed States: Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The ASER/Pratham Reports on Education show low percentages of students in Standard V who could read a Standard II text, and could do divisions. That is not a model to copy.

Dreadful cost

Despite what he said in Kathmandu, Mr. Modi’s record as Gujarat Chief Minister shows that his sights are set on prosperity, not on “the millions living without hope.” ‘Make in India’ is his priority, and there the signs are ominous. A few weeks back, ASSOCHAM issued an advertisement which announced, “Repeal of archaic laws is the need of modern times…ASSOCHAM has identified 105 laws for review, which can promote a better regulatory framework for successfully actualising Mr. Modi’s vision of ‘Make in India’.” These include 43 laws that protect human rights and safeguard labour welfare, including the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, Protection of Forest Rights Act, Inter-State Migrant Workers Act, Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, and the Minimum Wages Act. If these are the voices he listens to, development will come at a dreadful cost.

Read: Making human rights a reality

India’s governments have so far pursued development with a human face. Vast social welfare programmes protect those whom the market forces savage, but these are riddled with huge problems. For instance, hardly any materials go into the rural employment guarantee projects, but each year material costs claimed are well over 20 per cent of its budget. A survey done for the NHRC showed that 60 per cent of the allocation for the Integrated Child Development Services was being stolen. The list goes on. The answer does not lie in jettisoning these programmes, but in making them work better. Without them, rural India will empty out.

Our Prime Minister’s many admirers believe that Sardar Patel’s mantle has descended on him. Vallabhbhai Patel made India, Narendra Modi can unmake it. But with his extraordinary talents, integrity and ability, our Prime Minister can also be the making of India, and make India, all of India, proud. That should be his tribute to his idol, not the monstrous statue of the Sardar now rising in Gujarat like a prelapsarian Ozymandias.

(Satyabrata Pal is a former Member of the National Human Rights Commission.)

Source: The Hindu   

A time of Christmas without Christians

Opinion » Comment                                                               December 27, 2014
Updated: December 27, 2014 01:26 IST

Sanjay Srivastava

"The manner in which Christmas has come to belong to all of us is not without 
consequences for a multi-religious society." Picture shows students dressed as 
Santa Claus ahead of Christmas day celebrations in Gurgaon.

A religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society

In New Gurgaon, where I live, Christmas is a very significant affair. This Christmas too, you might have been forgiven for thinking that significant sections of an electorate that voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party suddenly converted to Christianity. All over Gurgaon, Resident’s Welfare Associations organised Christmas fairs where children sang carols, santas gave away gifts, and people of all ages, dressed in red caps, exchanged Christmas greetings. Gurgaon’s Christmas is, of course, now a national event and my description could be applied to December 25 goings-on in a number of cities across India. However, when I rang a friend in Kerala to wish him “Merry Christmas,” he responded that someone else had rung him earlier in the morning, saying he was calling to greet him on what might be the last Christmas in India. Though said in jest (and in reference to recent anti-Christian violence), this comment sits oddly with what appears to be uninhibited and large-scale participation of non-Christian populations in Christmas celebrations. Or, does it? Is it possible that we might have, in fact, come to prefer Christmas without Christians? The manner in which Christmas has come to belong to all of us is not without consequences for a multi-religious society.

When I was small, Christmas was a day that belonged to a specific community. It was, in many cities of North India, referred to as bada din ( big day). “Bada Din Mubarak!” was the term I was taught to use as a greeting, if i came across any Christian on December 25. I don’t think I came across many and hence the greeting remained a pedagogic contrivance rather than customary practice. But what it did teach me, not in a self-conscious ‘secular’ manner but as part of casual, everyday life, was that a specific religious day and a specific religious community were intertwined and legitimate aspects of Indian life. As a child, because Christmas was not my festival, I and several others around me recognised it as a festival that belonged to another community, that was as real and legitimate as mine. In my imagination, Christmas was celebrated by real flesh and blood people who constituted actual communities. Their bada din signified something as valuable as the festivals that I took part in. Hindus and Christians existed as well-defined communities, but not hostile ones. That community was real to me precisely because Christmas and Christianity mapped on to each other.

In recent times, when Hindus have started to celebrate Christmas as their own, we have moved into an era where a festival of legitimate difference has transformed into one of a ritual of leisure and lifestyle. It becomes contiguous with taking a foreign holiday or buying a fridge. It need not remind us any longer of the legitimacy of the community for whom Christmas is something more than a ‘shopping mall festival’ but a fundamental way of defining community life. Celebrating the customs and rituals of another community is not itself a bad thing. However, in this case it appears that when Christmas becomes “our” festival, it ironically weakens the ability to recognise, respect and champion difference. The “mainstreaming” of Christmas sits alongside a growing indifference towards Christians: it is almost as if we can do it as well as them and don’t really need them. It, peculiarly enough, signifies a time of Christmas without Christians.

A shopping festival

The invention of Christmas as a shopping festival has a long history in the West, particularly in the context of late 19th century Britain. The more recent replication of this process in India is intimately tied to shifts in political and consumer cultures. It does, however, have a parallel in the 20th century’s manufacture of yoga as a lifestyle activity in the West, largely shorn of its philosophical bearings. The spread of yoga in the West did not lead to greater tolerance of Indians and the popularity of Christmas in India has little to do with an acceptance of religious differences. Indeed, it is the context of something quite the opposite: the symbolic production and consumption of different ways of being through consumerism that exists side-by-side with the actual suppression of difference. So, while we consume Christmas cake, we don’t seem very bothered by arson in churches. We have begun to prefer pre-packaged difference.

“Celebrating the rituals of another community is not a bad thing, but when Christmas becomes 'our' festival, it weakens the ability to recognise, and respect difference”

It is an odd situation, then, and quite different from when I was a child. Earlier, Christmas was not a festival of the Hindus but Christians were not identified as an enemy community. It was not a utopia of communal harmony but certainly different. Now, however, Christmas finds vigorous acceptance among the majority community — words can hardly convey the earnestness with which the children of my locality sing “Silent Night” — but there are hardly any mainstream murmurs (let alone roars) of protest against anti-Christian sentiments and practices. I don’t ever remember singing “Silent Night” and may have waited in vain to ambush a passing Christian (or anyone else) with a bada din greeting, but I also do not recall church burning and ‘ghar vapsi’ as normalised activities.

What is at stake is something much more fundamental than the tiring invocation of ‘secularism’ versus ‘fundamentalism.’ These categories may not be adequate to understand a present where some sections of the majority community adopt minority rituals but rejects minorities. When we become ‘shopping mall Christians’ — the Christmas celebration in my locality ended with an RWA-sponsored tambola — we forget that a religious festival signifies something more than the consumption of different commodities; it is meant to remind us of the different kinds of people in society. The current upsurge in Christmas celebrations appears, dangerously, to encourage the sense that it is our right to celebrate Christianity’s key event on one day of the year, without taking any responsibility for what happens to its adherents on the other days when we move on to some other form of consumption.

(Sanjay Srivastava is professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

Source: The Hindu

Four reasons why Vajpayee doesn't deserve Bharat Ratna

The award is given in recognition of exceptional service rendered without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex. Our former prime minister doesn't fulfil this criteria.

POLITICS  |   2-minute read |   24-12-2014

Md Hussain Rahmani @rahmaninama

President Pranab Mukherjee has announced India's highest civilian awards for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and freedom fighter and scholar Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (posthumously). In the latter case, the present regime is extending its drive to appropriate historical icons.

As always, the first reactions came on Twitter. Noted historian Ramchandra Guha tweeted, "Giving Vajpayee a Bharat Ratna is fine, but one should not award it to people dead or long dead. Awarding Malaviya is a mistake. If Malaviya, why not give Tagore, Phule, Tilak, Gokhale, Vivekananda, Akbar, Shivaji, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Ashoka, Bharat Ratnas too?"

However, in my view, conferring the Bharat Ratna to Vajpayee raises more important questions. Here are four strong reasons of mine that weaken Vajpayee's case for the prestigious award:

1. Bharat Ratna only for being a prime minister: While Bharat Ratna is an award for life-time service, it is only Vajpayee's prime ministerial tenure that is being considered as exceptional and unblemished. Even as PM, some of his decisions were highly controversial. One was the famous surrender to the IC-814 hijackers and releasing dreaded terrorist Masood Azhar in return for the safety of the hostages. After the release, Azhar's outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed, carried out several attacks on our country, including the attack on Parliament in 2001.

2. Architect of Babri Masjid demolition: Listen to his speech that he delivered on December 5, 1992 in Ayodhya. He is openly calling for the demolition of the disputed structure. Was it without distinction of race or religion? What happened after the demolition will always haunt us as it severely dented India's pluralist nature and ethos.

3. Even his role during India's freedom struggle has always been in question: His controversial confessional statement before a magistrate during the Quit India Movement in 1942 indicted two freedom fighters. This aspect of his life was even raised by some of his detractors in Parliament after he became PM in 1998.

4. Vajpayee's communal rant: Contrary to his image as a moderate statesman, he spewed venom against the Muslim community during his speech at the BJP conclave in Goa, barely a few months after the 2002 Gujarat riots. This is what he said: “Wherever Muslims live, they don’t like to live in co-existence with others; they don’t like to mingle with others; and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats.”

Do these comments reflect someone who deserves a Bharat Ratna?

Source: dailyo

Focus on policies, not events

Opinion » Editorial                December 25, 2014

In its first seven months, the Narendra Modi government seems to have appropriated as its own several of the red letter days in the calendar. Just as Teachers’ Day on September 5 became Guru Utsav, Gandhi Jayanthi on October 2 was used to showcase Mr. Modi’s Clean India campaign. Indira Gandhi’s death anniversary on October 31 was observed as National Unity Day in commemoration of the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, one of Mr. Modi’s heroes. Even the birthdays of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi on November 14 and November 19 were sought to be turned into markers of his Clean India drive. Now, Christmas will be Good Governance Day, to mark the birthday of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Modi takes centre stage no matter whose birth or death anniversary it is. Whether India needs to observe any one day as Good Governance Day is debatable, and whether it ought to be the birthday of Mr. Vajpayee even more so. The irony of marking a public holiday as Good Governance Day seems to have been lost on Mr. Modi and his Cabinet colleagues. Several Ministries have asked officers to attend programmes on December 25 as part of Good Governance Day. Schools have been asked to encourage participation in an essay competition to mark the day. Although participation is voluntary, entries for the online competition would be accepted only on December 25.

The infusion of new meaning into traditional public events and holidays seems to be a deeply political act, particularly in its show of insensitivity to the sentiments of minorities. If the Congress suspected an attempt to appropriate, or worse, undermine, its icons through government-sponsored activities, school authorities, especially managements of Christian minority institutions, are worried about having to help, even if only tangentially, with events on Christmas day. Given the ideological orientation of the BJP government, what could have passed off as innocuous events to ritually mark anniversaries have become politically contentious. Although participation in the essay competition is voluntary, and it is to be held online, the very fact that the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti not only asked officials to ensure that activities relating to Good Governance Day be held in all schools in their respective regions, but also demanded a consolidated report to be sent to the Samiti indicates the pressure on officials to ensure compliance. Holidays are declared for a purpose, but it is not the kind of political purpose the government seems to have in mind. Instead of stirring controversies, it is time the Modi government, especially the Ministry of Human Resource Development, thought more in terms of policies and programmes than in terms of anniversaries and competitions.

Source: The Hindu   

PK hits Hinduism more than Islam: But when religion itself is a lul thing, does it matter?

Conversion row: Right to religion is a basic right. Right to propagate is offensive and should be removed. Nobody should be allowed to propagate faith.

POLITICS  |  BREAKING NEWS INTO PIECES  |   6-minute read |   22-12-2014

Kamlesh Singh      @kamleshksingh

Everybody is talking religion. Everybody has one and nobody needs to be a pundit to talk religion. You don't need logic, reason or any basis to have your say because these things, to begin with, are alien to religion. The war zone starts right at our western border and goes on till Greece. The land of continuous conflict. At home, the reconversion drive in our midst that has pushed us into the middle of another religion-centric discourse. And as if that wasn't enough, Aamir Khan's PK is threatening would have made Rs 100 crores by the time you finish reading this. This sweet film has led to calls for boycott from the ones known as "Internet Hindus". They think it is an attack on their faith. It is time to clear the fog and throw some harsh light on hard facts.

PK as a film is overtly anti-religion, not just Hinduism. It attacks Hinduism more directly than other religions because the story is based in India, 80 per cent of which is Hindu. The story is about an alien trying to get help from God. Hindu hardliners' main peeve is that the film handles Islam with kid gloves. I would call that a smart move by Rajkumar Hirani. Hindus are not at the same level on offence meter as Muslims are. The siege syndrome has just infected Hindus. Among Muslims, it is at a critical level.

The boycott call is behind the support call both on box office cash register and on Twitter trends. Because on a meter of taking offence and ignoring to taking offence and killing people, Hindus are at Level Two. That's Boycott level. To demand a ban is Level Three. To enforce shutdowns is Level Four and going totally mental is Level Five. You can show a scared Shiva character running helter-skelter and get away with it. Showing the Prophet is a sure-shot suicidal move only the Scandinavian have attempted till now.

So, full marks to Rajkumar Hirani for keeping it sane. Hirani thought Hindus could take a joke or two. He has been quite there if not spot on. He hasn't been knifed yet. Lunatics, from all religions, have no sense of humour. But there is a greater chance of getting killed in ridiculing Islam than ridiculing Hindus or Christians. Hindus have too many Gods and godmen for everyone to get offended by one film. Hindus are also really old and settled being Hindus. Christianity, over 2,000 years old, is more settled than Islam, which is in its darkest period right now and is perceived to be at war, within and without. The golden rule of rubbing salt is you don't rub it on a fresh wound.

The film comes at a time when there is a fierce debate going on about conversion. As the Hindu Right wants converts to revert to Hinduism. Christians and Muslims believe conversion is a fundamental human right and a one-way street. The government wants the pitch to rise to a point where it can thrust a ban on conversion down everyone's throat.

The Constitution allows the right to follow one's faith and propagate it. Christians and Muslims want it to stay that way. Their claim is conversion, unless by force, fear or allurement, must be allowed. This is where the problem lies. There is nothing called conversion out of conscience. Luring someone in the name of heaven, or by instilling fear of hell, falls in the grey area between forceful and voluntary conversion. These grey areas will always lead to controversies. Missionaries are called missionaries because they have a mission. We all know what that is. It's called saving the soul. From the wrath of God?

The Hindu hardline calls it ghar wapsi, which itself is a can of worms. How long back do you want to go in history? Hindus were peaceful pagans before organised religion came into this land. They worshipped anything from sexual organs to trees to stones and so on. They had too many books and too many gods to be organised under one umbrella. The king was the avatar of Vishnu, revered and worshipped. The land provided plentiful to people who were busy living than looking for meaning of life. Talking to God was not the in-thing here like it was in the dreary deserts of Palestine where life was tough, the sun was harsh and people wondered about the meaning of life. They had a series of prophets until Muhammad put a full stop to it.

The pagans of this land had no problem in accepting Christianity because adding another man to worship in your pantheon full of gods isn't big deal. Hindus would have got Muhammad too into their fold. Depiction of Muhammad wasn't a big deal either. Persians and Indians drew the Prophet with all due respect when it did not invite instant death. But that was then. Islam spread like an all-engulfing ideology and it ruled lands so far and wide that its decree mattered.

Hindus, unless strictly prohibited, fund nothing wrong in pluralism when it came to worshipping all gods and avatars. Mahavir and Buddha were widely accepted as avatars. Guru Nanak founded a unique amalgamation of faiths and Hindus and Sikhs were visiting each other's places of worship. They continue doing so. Since it was allowed, Hindus worshipped Muslim saints as their own and continue doing so. There was no one Hinduism until Hindus were identified as Hindus, by the others. You know where the word Hindu came from and all that jazz. Besides they were no longer rulers of the land and the newly-arrived religious people were, they didn't want to be left out. They brought out their books. They brought out their philosophies and looked for syncretism within. They accepted the moniker Hindu and began identifying with it. What the people of the book called pagans progressed into a religion, sort of. No longer a way of life. They didn't have a word for religion because dharma means principles, not a sect or faith.

Religion, as it happens, tends to consolidate and all it needs is enough centrifugal force. The centuries when Islam and Christianity spread did not belong to Hindu rulers, per se. The siege mentality wasn't as pervasive so they were fighting among sects, caste or language. Like Islam had/has different versions and a central version, Hinduism began acquiring strengths/weaknesses of Islam. If there could ever be Wahhabism outside Muslims, we see that in action today. There is a great deal of pressure to bring homogeneity. A tradition as diverse as Hinduism is being homogenised in a slow, painful process. The all-new assertive Hindutva has replaced the good old inclusive Hinduism. There is no central authority yet but there is a sustained effort to create one. A centre around which everything moves. The BJP's historic victory is generating the centrifugal force to make the Sangh Parivar the centre of political Hinduism. Political Islam has wreaked havoc in places it held sway. Political Hinduism will be equally destructive, if not worse.

The conversion debate will not end until conversions continue. There is need to snip the right to religion and restrict it to that. Propagating one's religion cannot be a fundamental right. Isn't developing a scientific temperament among our fundamental duties? A nation that insists on rights and ignores its duties is a nation headed for a mess. Every citizen should have the absolute right to follow his/her religion as belief must remain a basic right in any democracy. Propagating your belief, which is ridiculously unscientific and fantastically stupid, is a dangerous luxury if we need to move towards being a rational society.

Source: dailyo 

An unconstitutional proposal

Written by Sanjay Nirupam 2 | New Delhi | Posted: December 20, 2014 12:21 am

 Communalism is the core ideology of the BJP and religious polarisation its main political programme, it seems. To run this programme and prop up its ideology, it has again raked up the issue of religious conversions. This issue, which resurfaced due to the recent Agra conversions orchestrated by persons linked to the BJP through the Dharm Jagran Samiti, has rocked both Houses of Parliament. What happened in Agra was unconstitutional, unethical, immoral and illegal, where Muslims were lured to convert with the offer of BPL ration cards. When the opposition raised this issue in Lok Sabha, the ruling BJP was defenceless. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu jumped into the debate, saying that since childhood, he had dreamt of a ban on all sorts of religious conversions and that the government is ready to enact an anti-conversion law. This was a frivolous argument, a face-saver. But the BJP has succeeded in dragging the opposition into the debate.

The Constitution does not provide for an anti-conversion law. It gives freedom of religion to all its citizens. Article 25(1) states: “Subject to public order, morality and health and to other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and right to profess, practise and propagate religion.” No immoral act is allowed in the propagation of religion and social health has to be maintained. India has been a pluralistic religious society for centuries. Our forefathers, while writing the Constitution, had adopted a structure based on the values of liberal, democratic and secular thought. The aspect of freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution has been debated in the past. From the lower courts to the Supreme Court, the issue of religious conversions has been dealt with in depth. The SC has upheld the constitutional provisions in the past. In its 235th report, the Law Commission of India dealt with the issue while prescribing the mode of proof for conversions and reconversions to another religion, suggesting a law on conversions rather than an anti-conversion law. It says: “It is well settled that freedom of conscience and the right to profess a religion implies freedom to change religion as well. It is pertinent to mention that Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifically lays down that the freedom of conscience and religion includes freedom to change religion or belief.” It has further quoted the judgment of Justice R. Basant in a marriage dispute case: “Religious conversions may appear to many in the Indian mindset to be unnecessary, puerile and a negation of the very concept of respect of both the religions and the followers of such religion. But, certainly, the freedom of faith guaranteed by the Constitution may not justify the negation of the right to pursue the chosen faith by conversion where necessary”. It appears that Naidu has conveniently chosen to ignore this report.

The issue of religious conversion and the right to propagate religion was debated even before Parliament came into existence. On December 6, 1948, in a Constituent Assembly debate, Loknath Mishra expressed apprehensions about the liberal approach. He said, “Indeed, in no constitution of the world [is the] right to propagate religion a fundamental right and justifiable.” He was countered by other members and finally his objection was set aside. Laxmikant Maitra countered him: “Propagation does not necessarily mean seeking converts by force of arms, by the sword or by coercion. But, why should an obstacle stand in the way if by exposition, illustration or persuasion you could convey your own religious faith to others?” Echoing the same view, K.M. Munshi said: “… under [the] freedom of speech which the Constitution guarantees, it will be open to any religious community to persuade other people to join their faith. So long as religion is religion, conversion by free exercise of conscience has to be recognised.”

Our Constitution is clear about the concept of the propagation of religion and conversions. They are two sides of the same coin, and guaranteed as a fundamental right. But, to my mind, if any conversion is affected by coercion, inducement or allurement, it is unconstitutional. Taking this aspect into account, many state governments have enacted laws to check forceful conversions, like Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, etc. However, interestingly, the names of these acts do not convey the essence of conversion. For example, the MP act is known as the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam, 1968 and the Odisha act is the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967. Even the name of the laws enacted to check conversion by state governments refrain from using the word “conversion” because it is against the spirit of the Constitution.

On January 17, 1977, the SC delivered a judgment in Rev. Stanislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh, where it explained the constitutionality of these state acts and denounced forceful conversions. The SC quoted the observation of the high court of Madhya Pradesh: “What is penalised is conversion by force, fraud or by allurement. The other element is that every person has a right to profess his own religion and to act according to it. Any interference with that right of the other person by resorting to conversion by force or allurement cannot, in our opinion, be said to contravene Article 25(1) of the Constitution of India, as the article guarantees religious freedom subject to public health.”

In the final analysis, the BJP must understand and accept the difference between conversions and forceful conversions. The BJP lost its pitch in UP when it raked up the issue of “love jihad” before the by-elections. The Agra conversions are a ploy to polarise the state’s voters, keeping the UP elections in mind. The BJP should focus on the development agenda and refrain from divisive politics on the basis of religion. The sinister design, especially by the BJP fringe, to polarise voters will not yield political dividends but instead ensure the party’s early exit from power. The electorate, particularly young voters, voted for socio-economic development and will not tolerate any deviation from this agenda.

The writer, a former MP, is a senior Congress leader

Source: indianexpress