TRUE SECULARISM EXISTS WHERE DEVAS, DEVIS, & DEVATAS EXIST IN INDIA, SEE FOR YOURSELF SAYS VANAMALI THOTAPALLI, REST OF THE COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD CALLING THEMSELVES "SECULAR" ARE GIVEN TO ONE-GODISM OF ONE SORT OR THE OTHER

BE PROUD OF INDIA: LETTER IN INDIA ABROAD OF NEW YORK

INDIA ABROAD (PRINT EDITION), PAGE A3, JUNE 22, 2012

(Courtesy: India Abroad)

A lot of us have conflicting opinions about South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Is she a victim of the circumstances of this country or is she simply exploiting our naivete? Is she being forced to say that she is Christian to gain much-needed votes or has she genuinely abandoned the Sikh religion? When the President of the country is forced to shout that he is Christian, we can understand the terrible pressure that Haley is under.

But my letter is not about her choices but her need to make such a choice. So often we read letters bashing India, and very few praising the good things that we have done. Well, here is a good thing. Neither Nicky Haley nor Barrack Obama would have to declare their religious affiliation if they were running for office in India. Unfortunately, we come from a poor country . We are darker skinned, we have come to expect only the worst from ourselves. This kind of attitude is damaging our kids, who are growing up to be second-class citizens of this world -- dumping their heritage and religion at the first opportunity.

Haley says she was harassed and mocked as child for not being Christian. And so, as an adult she joins the harassers , the mockers?  What is the message that she is sending to young Sikh girls of today? Give in to bigotry and hatred?

I don't recall Sonia Gandhi ever having to answer for her religious views. To Indians, it did not matter. Or shall I say, to Hindus it does not matter? If the Buddha had the misfortune of being born in Europe or Middle East, he would have been branded a heretic and tortured to death, his writings burned, his followers killed. There would not be such a thing as Buddhism today. No Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Bohra Islam or Tibetan Buddhism either.

But the multiplicity of religions means that there is room for conflict, room for mischief-makers to paint every conflict a religious one. In contrast, in countries where Christianity and Islam dominate there is less conflict -- because most of the minority have been killed or driven out. Lucky for the Zoroastrians that a country like India existed; otherwise there would be no Parsis in the world today.

So, then, did India do the right thing?

Can any one name off the top of their heads, one, just one non-Christian leader from the west? One, just one non-Muslim leader from the Middle East? No wonder Obama is forced to kowtow to religious fundamentalists. No wonder the likes of Haley and Jindal had to distance themselves from their heritage.

But not if they were in India. What a great country it is. Be proud that the country of our roots rests on a bedrock of such values and principles.

Vanamali Thotapalli

by email.    

CHRISTIST AND WESTERN WORLD DOMINATION BY ANY HOOK OR CROOK BY STEALTH UNDER THE RADAR IN INDIA WHERE THE WORD "SECULAR" IS BASTARDIZED TO PERMIT DEMOGRAPHIC ATTACK ON LOCAL POPULATIONS TO DIVERT THEIR LOYALTIES TO CHRISTISTS AND WESTERN POWERS. A POST-COLONIAL DISEASE!!!

Christian Imperialism in India

by

Dr. Gautam Sen

Indian independence was not the watershed naively assumed to be. It was a significant political retreat for the British colonial power, but did not constitute total rout. The colonial authority left behind a venal, anti-national communist front it had comprehensively suborned through the agency of its wartime anti-Nazi alliance with the USSR. Its sole raison d’etre turns out to have been to harass and weaken the Indian State at the instigation of Anglo-American agencies. Indian communism eventually transmuted into grand larceny and criminal extortion, as it committed widespread real estate fraud and robbed public assets, akin to plunder by the Communist Party of China today. The communist leadership at the time of independence was also dominated by Calcutta Brahmos, many of whom harboured a deep-seated scepticism towards Hinduism, having imbibed both Islamic and Unitarian monotheism and abhorrence of idolatry. This subconscious hostility is evident in the tenacious defence of the Islamic conquest and plunder of India and the enslavement of its Hindus by its Brahmo Nobel laureate.

The British facilitated the creation of Pakistan though that was easy enough since the landed Muslim elite of India was not about to live in a country run by Hindus. And they were certainly not going to live as their co-equals because of some anti-Islamic, Western claptrap about democracy. Pakistan quickly became the Anglo-American instrument for tormenting India, astutely described as NATO’s second Cold War by Iqbal Singh, a former editor of London’s India Weekly. Pakistan’s military dictatorships were pampered as prized assets beyond reproach and the thorough going Islamisation of the country in the 1980s welcomed as yet another fortuitous opportunity for mischief. Of course, it has all gone horribly wrong, with the likelihood of infinitely worse to come since truculent Pakistani Islamists are both quite mad and foolhardy, cheerfully contemplating the erasure of their own civilisation provided they can take the Anglo-Americans with them. And the Sino-American nuclear arsenal gifted to Pakistan for terrorising India and its abominable pagans may have now found unintended targets. Evidently there is an Almighty and justice eventually prevails!

After Indian independence, major elite schools and colleges in India remained under the tutelage of the Christian clergy and their insidious Indian Christian surrogates. They socialized generations of India’s elite to disdain their Hindu identity and embrace the interests of the very former Christian rulers who had tyrannised them. The strategic goal of taking over the Indian Anglo press to nourish the same pathetic Anglo elites with drivel to ensure they remained indoctrinated was achieved covertly. Virtually all English language newspapers and television channels now have links with the church and their co-conspirators in Western diplomatic missions in India. They are also largely staffed by products of Indian Christian schools and colleges and Anglo-American universities, who entertain ambiguous political loyalties. Indeed many journalists employed in them are a thoroughly compromised comprador presence in the Indian body politic, not infrequently on the payroll of Western intelligence agencies. This manifest clandestine Christian presence within India has turned out to be devastating for Hindus since its modus operandi of advancing by stealth has proved highly effective. 

The church has vast historical experience facilitating imperial expansion on behalf of Western states, to the accompaniment of genocide and slavery, since the time of the Emperor Constantine, but the two institutions are not synonymous. Indeed there are areas of tension between them on social issues that impinge on religious doctrine and the perceived interests of the church. But Christianity and the Western imperial system have unwaveringly shared the common goal of world domination for millennia, dutifully giving mutual sustenance to each other when it really matters. One decisive reason for the success of Christian imperialism is the ability to sponsor committed evangelists, which entails using the deep-seated religious yearnings of individuals for their own dastardly imperial purposes. Many of these evangelists adhere to high standards of personal moral conduct and also genuinely believe they are doing the work of the Saviour by purportedly uplifting the weak and poor by providing medical aid, education and employment opportunities, etc. 

The provision of medical help is one of the most crucial factors in facilitating religious conversion since it constitutes a form of ‘giving of life’ and creates an irresistible motive to adopt the faith of those offering such succour. It becomes the unfailing prelude to eventual religious conversion that also ends in a call to arms, as with Baptist Nagaland and Mizoram in India. The Naga and Mizo Baptist church website proudly proclaims its mission as one to defend the faith, amounting to exactly such a call to arms, as well as evangelize beyond their own regional borders. The Baptists managed to estrange both communities totally from their traditional, Hindu animist moorings and implant profound unease with all things connected to it among the Nagas and Mizos.

The tried and tested techniques adopted by Christian institutions and their imperialist collaborators, Western States, with convergent goals, are manifold. The first has always been to exploit local fault lines and divisions and accentuate them at every juncture in order to devise entry points and identify traitors who will facilitate deeper assault. Exploiting local divisions among the people they encountered in Asia, the Americas and Africa were the basis for the initial 16^th century European conquests since their relative military strength was never overwhelming. The weakening of the dominant indigenous authority in place and rendering it dysfunctional, with the assistance of local surrogates, is the unfailing paramount preliminary goal of foreign intervention. 

In the contemporary period, the excuses for intervention that precipitates political chaos can range from travails of alleged class struggles, using native Leftists in countries like India as dupes or collaborators, and the incidence of ethnic and religious strife. In recent decades, audacious direct military assault has been justified by resort to the supposed necessity of humanitarian intervention and complete falsehoods about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. It has resulted in extraordinarily destructive, blood-soaked interventions within tribal and schismatic Sunni and Shia communities of Middle Eastern Islam. In addition, cynical targeted killings by Western intelligence agencies have precipitated veritable civil wars across the entire region. But in India Islam has always been an ally of Christian imperialism because, jointly, they can keep Hindu India off balance while their nefarious campaigns unfold.

In the particular case of India itself, the whole issue of caste, though a pre-existing phenomenon and an internal frailty vulnerable to manipulation, was recast by the British colonial power to divide its people. The historic fluidity of caste relations was gradually replaced by harder, more self-conscious boundaries in the late 19th century that would come to haunt Hindu civilisation. And the idea of an upper caste monster and seeds of virulent racial hatreds were implanted by the highly creative use of Censuses. And, in subsequent decades the colonial power pounced to take advantage, arguing the Indian disadvantaged, whom they themselves had exploited ruthlessly earlier, needed their protection, as the Indian independence movement gathered momentum. The church sponsored the south Indian obsession with the spurious theory of an Aryan conquest of their region and all the evidence to refute this fabrication cannot apparently dislodge the conviction. It has also acquired potent electoral utility, altering the course history of Indian political and social life permanently.

The laughable antics of Indian communism about class oppression, allegedly refracted through caste, were always a mere appendage to this larger imperialist conspiracy with which they had become treasonously complicit. The depth of the sheer venality and corruption of the Indian Left stands thoroughly exposed as they flock to Western faculties in New York, Chicago, Cambridge, London and Oxbridge and engage in shameless spectacles on behalf of church and Western empire with obscene hand-wringing about India’s minorities and their human rights. The size of their salaries and the square footage of their salubrious homes abroad expose the truth about their sordid motives in auctioning their proverbial grand mother to the highest bidder.

In addition, the church engages in outright bribery of politicians, government officials and journalists and blackmail. Bribery is targeted towards useful individuals and this includes outwardly innocuous tactics like arranging scholarships for their children to study abroad and the possibility of a Green Card for permanent residence in the case of the US.  In India, a high proportion of politicians and bureaucrats are also vulnerable to blackmail and pressure because they have engaged in sexually compromising behaviour and other criminal acts. Foreign intelligence agencies and the church share such information to elicit their compliance and support for legislative acts. This is the likely reason for the rather puzzling reversal of restrictions on religious conversion in Tamil Nadu and the unusual attentiveness of the politician who did so to concerns of the church ever since. And politicians whose political careers the church sponsors and also, as a corollary, helped achieve vast wealth through theft then allows bribery to be financed locally, as in the case of Andhra Pradesh. The church gains access to the stolen resources and uses them to facilitate religious conversion, i.e. the victims of church subversion end up paying for it as well.

The Catholic Church has always promoted religious conversion through a phenomenon now described as inculturation, although it is as old as the church of Peter itself. Providing relief to the poor has been a source of huge political strength for the Christianity since its very inception, as even the last pagan Roman emperor Julian recognised, and the basis for its claim to conscience. Along with it, the church established a tradition of insinuating itself with pre-existing local pagan practice and custom, which has proved extraordinarily adept in deceiving and alluring potential converts to their faith. These are methods that other Christian denominations have also adopted, but the Vatican raised it to an art form of immense efficacy. This is how it managed to turn Korea into a largely Christian country and similar duplicity has been practised across Asia and Africa.  In the latter, the number of Christians rose from 90 million at the beginning of the 20^th century to over 350 million today. Walking around Bhayander, in the outskirts of Mumbai recently, I came across what appeared to be idols of Radha and Krishna along the roadside, only to discover, on closer examination, that they were, in fact, Jesus and Mary masquerading as traditional Hindu idols.

Nowadays, Christian clergy across India can be seen in the traditional ochre robes of Hindu holy men as well as sporting religious marks on their foreheads and church entrances adorn the sacred Hindu symbol Om. Statues of Jesus and Mary are often placed circumspectly alongside Hindu idols in some Hindu temples in acts of outrageous duplicity. Befuddled Hindus acquiesce because they revere the holy in all its incarnations, even if they prefer their own particular path of worship. But such acts of deception are a prelude to their total extirpation by Christian aggressors and merit violent resistance. Having effectively extinguished European Jewry the church seeks to destroy remnants of the Hindu intelligentsia, which it regards as an obstinate intellectual and spiritual dissenter against its world historical struggle for domination. 

In addition, some Christian converts to Hinduism are in fact infiltrators, sowing confusion by duplicitously re-interpreting Hindu scriptures and feigning empathy. And, revealingly, some are advocates of interfaith dialogue, a purely diversionary subterfuge to confound Hindus. More alarmingly, one infamous American supposed to convert to Hinduism advocates formal Hindu concordats with the church to legitimise religious conversion, which would profoundly compromise their ability resist its diabolical machinations within India.

Interfaith dialogue was sponsored early in the 20^th century as a vehicle for disarming and neutralising other religious dispensations, especially, pagans, whom Christians intended to convert. They have never recognised the validity of Hinduism and cognate faiths like Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. And Christians have steadfastly refused to cease evangelical activity within these communities, or even discuss the issue at their own official interfaith conclaves. Yet, they persist in engaging in cynical dialogue with these faiths, sipping tea together and dwelling on the divine, while preparing to destroy them altogether. Indeed, once they have acquired numerical preponderance they have resorted to legislation, by the state authority, to curb the faith of the remaining non Christian communities, which had been turned into a minority in their own country because of Christian evangelism. This is happening to Buddhists in Korea and indeed secular ideas like evolution are being removed from Korean school textbooks at the behest of the church. 

Both Christian and Muslim majority provinces of India only permit Hindu worship at their discretion.

The spread of the tentacles of the church in Nepal in the past two decades was helped by an archaic and corrupt monarchy and astonishingly semi-literate political leadership. It seems highly likely that Maoism in Nepal became a vehicle to destabilise the country, allowing Christian evangelists to take advantage of genuine local grievances that derived from the total failure of governance and resulting poverty, accentuated by a population explosion. They became the patrons of Maoism, a phenomenon also evident from their human rights propaganda on behalf of Naxalites in India. For Christian missionaries, Nepal and its uneducated and poor, were easy targets for conversion, en masse, like the Nagas and Mizos of India. And the US itself is seeking a foothold in the region as well, adjacent to the Chinese border.

Now foreign NGOs and Christian evangelists have successfully implanted the notion of political rights for ethnic and caste groups across the whole of Nepal and made a national consensus impossible and rendered it virtually ungovernable. Simultaneously, conversions to Christianity are proceeding apace, often through Korean missionaries who can blend easily with the local population owing to their physical appearance. Shockingly, payments were accepted by leading Nepali politicians from the US Kathmandu embassy, clearly on behalf of Christian evangelists, to remove the word Hindu from the Nepali Constitution and declare the country secular. Indian government policy in Nepal also facilitated outcomes sought by the church and the US through either complete ineptitude or deliberate complicity to end Nepal’s Hindu identity. Of course the adoption of policies sought by the church could have been enforced by routing them through India’s quasi Catholic Congress party leadership.

Dr. Gautam Sen

22^nd June 2012.

(President, World Association of Hindu Academicians)

SELF-DEFEATING MENTALITY OF HINDUS - VINAASHKAALE VIPAREETA BUDDHI ?

Have Hindus already been defeated?

by

Dr. Gautam Sen

A number of pathetic truisms have effectively paralysed Hindus psychologically and politically. The first is the mindlessly repeated cliché that they comprise 80% percent of India’s population, which means precisely nothing because Hindus have never managed to act collectively as a political community. 

On the contrary, more than a good half of India’s nominal Hindu population, the OBCs and so-called Dalits of its Hindi heartland, has been absorbed into political Islam. Indeed they compete with shocking alacrity to do the bidding of grotesque Wahhabi clerics and do not hesitate to unleash state violence against Hindus when instructed to do so. 

The supposed atheists of India, from West Bengal and Kerala to Tamil Nadu and India’s evangelical heartland that is Andhra Pradesh, also collaborate enthusiastically with Christist, white imperialists in addition to political Islam.

The second truism, of recent provenance, suggests that projected Indian economic growth and successes in producing defence equipment, from missiles to nuclear warheads, mean that Indians are somehow on the threshold of greatness. All of this is laughable and unfolding recent events highlight how fragile is the boast of economic triumph, so easily derailed the moment massive plunder and waste exceed revenues governments can extract from hapless Hindu taxpayers. 

On the issue of defence preparedness, the only sphere in which India is a genuine world leader is the scale of its imports of military hardware that it cannot produce itself. Growing Imports after six odd decades of endeavour to indigenise merely underline failure to achieve stated goals. And the serviceability of imported defence hardware for required purposes is increasingly doubtful since bribery apparently plays a major role in determining what is purchased. In addition, the ability of India to fight a prolonged war, without foreign assistance, is uncertain, as the brief Kargil encounter exposed. 

The third supposed truism, which fills the average, uncomprehending Hindu with a warm glow of mindless self-satisfaction, is the ascription of an inherently tolerant character to their faith. It is merely an excuse for cowardice and failure to resist wrong doing and of the most egregious kind, which is violence against their own womenfolk. There is no justification in Hindu scriptures for tolerating the intolerable. On the contrary, they enjoin violent resistance, even if it means the loss of close relatives and revered teachers. The Pandavas fought a bitter war of annihilation to uphold righteousness and the divine revealed himself to affirm their Dharmic duty to do so. 

The ruling ideology of modern Hinduism is the brilliant subterfuge implanted by British colonial rulers through their chosen medium, the so-called Mahatma. He was thought eminently suitable for ending the increasingly violent resistance to British rule in the early twentieth century Bengal because of his self-regarding antics in South Africa, in support of British interests. And not only did the British colonial authority manage to discreetly promote the Mahatma to the pinnacle of the nationalist movement, they also reinforced the pervasive Hindu penchant for cowardly indifference and retreat in the face of superior physical force.

A reigning Indian propensity, a counterpoint to Hindu cowardice, is wilful blindness to the darkness enveloping their country and overtaking their faith. There is an unspoken seeming conviction that the danger to them and India will only arise in the shape, if it ever does, of a full scale frontal military assault by its enemies. That seems highly unlikely because India’s adversaries have found an infinitely less troublesome way of seizing India and finishing off Hindus and Hinduism once-and-for-all. 

The advance by stealth, subverting India by manipulating its electoral politics is now well advanced and accelerating because success in seizing its executive governance has proved extraordinarily easy. And it has prompted greater determination to consolidate the on-going usurpation of the Indian State apparatus and advance even more rapidly. 

India is being lost bit by bit, with Hindus being expelled from border regions and whole areas of cities beyond official administrative access, even for undertaking a proper census. An entire swatch of States, across the Indian heartland as well as its border regions, has succumbed to political Islam and Christian imperial stratagems. These areas are now governed by a political class that is only nominally Hindu and daily engaged in acts of sedition. Instead of honour and fidelity to the faith of their tormented ancestors, they are surrendering their country in exchange for transient political power and material wealth.

The sacred Constitutional compact that Indians had reached between themselves in 1949 has now been broken completely, its gradual erosion followed by near-total abandonment. Supreme political authority in India has been transferred to a foreign national with extra-territorial loyalties, and to advisers who are routinely conspiring with the Pakistani ISI and Vatican criminal operatives.  The anointed, quasi monarchical successor to supreme executive authority in India has declared privately that his most urgent task will be to combat alleged Hindu terror. He proposes, in effect, to wage war against India’s Hindus by fabricating canards, already a phenomenon in recent years.

Furthermore, collusion of Indian officialdom with foreign infiltrators, allowing them to settle in India, granting them citizenship rights in the form of identity papers, ration cards and the right to vote has utterly destroyed the Indian Constitution. The Hindus of India have no obligation to defer to its operational principles when they interact with State authorities. Their right to govern is now made possible by disregarding India’s very Constitution, since they are voted into power by foreigners in many areas of the country. Elsewhere in the world, restoration of the sanctity of a Constitution is accomplished by insurrection and forceful erasure of its violators.

Hindus accepted political partition as a brutal, unavoidable reality, but India’s new rulers allowed its consequences to spell disaster for India. Instead of enabling a significant number of Muslims to leave for the homeland of Pakistan they had voted to create, especially from UP, they moved heaven and earth to prevent their migration. This extraordinary self-indulgence was intended to advertise their liberal credentials and assuage their own arrogant self-regard at the expense of Hindus. Its neo-Muslim first prime minister, with absurd pretensions to an Anglo persona as well, decided that the best course of action would be to reassure Muslims by allowing them to consolidate politically and curb all Hindu aspirations. All his successors have followed suit, whatever their proclaimed outward political affiliations. Keeping Muslims in good humour has been the earnest desire of all Indian governments since independence. Hindu voters acquiesced because no alternatives were available and all Hindu organisations have been complicit in this incomprehensible political project that would inevitably lead to the effective extinction of Hinduism and India. 

In the dismal Indian political scenario, Kashmir was ethnically cleansed of Hindus and instead of unleashing the full might of the Indian State to combat it Indian politicians engaged in every form of chicanery to legitimise the outcome. State governments of West Bengal, motivated by crass Bengali parochialism and pique, masquerading as a Leftist urge for uplifting poor Muslim agriculturalists, sought to turn West Bengal into an Islamic enclave and succeeded. The fate of UP, under the outright criminal dispensations of its most prominent political parties, is no better, with shamelessly greedy and semi-literate, nominally Hindu politicians, unabashedly complicit in Jihadi terror. Leaders of one political party even ensured safe passage for terrorist bombers, en route to Delhi through UP to plant bombs that eventually killed Hindus in 2005. 

In the decades after independence, Nagaland and Mizoram were sacrificed by Jawaharlal Nehru to white Christian imperialists. Subsequently, the entire south of India has become Christianised and/or Islamised in all but name. The atheism espoused by its execrable politicians is a mere church-inspired ploy to keep Hindus at bay until an appropriate moment arrives to reveal their militant Christian loyalties.  The examples of the armed uprising of Nagaland and Mizoram will then be repeated, with demands for autonomy and the cessation of "Brahminnical" oppression. 

Politically disempowered Hindus have become preoccupied with empty ritual because their faith does not enjoy the protection of the State power that alone would guarantee its security and integrity. Without the proverbial oversight of the Right arm of State political power and military capability, the Hindu faithful have descended into the absurd, serially appeasing Islamic truculence for inconsequential gains and interfaith dialogue with mendacious Christian assassins, ruthlessly uprooting Hinduism in its own homeland. 

Hindu scriptures have been largely turned on their head by a new type of businessman guru, with no awareness that political security and personal wellbeing are a prerequisite for spiritual upliftment, as Swami Vivekananda had acerbically observed. These Hindu gurus, some from the most sacred maths of Indic history, have evidently swallowed Mahatma’s half-wit injunction to meekly accept all crimes against Hindus and their society. His notorious advice to Noakhali’s rape victims in 1946 was to commit suicide rather than resist. 

The new frequent flyer Hindu guru has also developed a taste for being serenaded by wealthy foreign clients and demonstrates a less than godly sense of entitlement through first class air travel to keep them company abroad. And of course they have been overawed by a sprinkling of white adherents, apparently bemused by patter on renunciation and the divine!

In the meantime, the Hindu faithful have been abandoned to their unenviable fate, wallowing in IPL and Bollywood while their country is seized with alarming rapidity. They do not know that the lascivious dance routines epitomizing Bollywood films, they find so alluring, originated in the nightly humiliation of captured Hindu princesses compelled to gyrate publicly before sequential rape by their captors. This is the destination to which Hindus are headed and recent acts of Muslim criminality in West Bengal, in the heart of their capital city, are a cautionary tale. 

A Hindu woman was raped by Muslim thugs in the middle of Kolkata’s premier entertainment district, only to be denounced as a slanderous liar by the Chief Minister of Bengal, ever the defender of Muslim criminality, when she complained to the police. The senior woman police officer who subsequently confirmed that the young woman had indeed been raped was unceremoniously removed from her post. Virtually on cue, a Muslim mob sexually assaulted a young woman, virtually in the same location a few weeks later, because she had witnessed the crime and was prepared to give evidence.  This woman Chief Minister happens to be Hindu and a Brahmin.

Dr. Gautam Sen

(President, World Association of Hindu Academicians)

June 17^th 2012.

ANTI HINDUTVA, ANTI HINDUNESS, IS INSTINCTIVELY TRULY ANTI HINDU

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/06/anti-hindutva-euphemism-for-anti-hindu.html

16.6.12

Anti Hindutva, a euphemism for anti Hindu - Dr. Vijaya Rajiva

June 17, 2012

The ancient dream of the West has always been to overcome and defeat Hinduism. This was not merely owing to the compulsions of colonial expansion and exploitation, but the result of the evangelising proselytising nature of Christianity. Together, this was a formidable combination : the Bible and the gun. Since the early destruction of Hindu temples by the Nestorian Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries, through the Goa Inquisition of the 16th century and the subsequent activities of the missionaries of the Raj era and in independent India, both through direct conversion and Inculturation , the agenda has always been the same. That agenda is the destruction of the Vedic Agamic Hinduism which has continued down the millenia and bids fair to continue for several more millenia. For further details on the Christian destruction of Hindu temples, the work of Sita Ram Goyal and Swami Devananda Sarasvati are good sources.

One of the latest attempts by the anti Hindu crowd is the "anti Hindutva" campaign which questions the legitimacy of Hinduness and the incontrovertible fact that culturally and civilisationally India is a Hindu country. They deliberately and wilfully pretend that Hindutva is un Hindu, and set up a straw man of "Hindutva" which they then attack under the pretext that it is not Hinduism but Hindutva that they are attacking. The conversions (forced or otherwise) of Hindus
are the imposition of alien faiths onto the Hindu population. That these faiths have been internalised by segments of the population is also incontrovertible. Many Indian Muslims and Indian Christians, while practising their faith privately, have remained loyal to the country of their ancient lineage. But equally many more have succumbed to a chauvinism which questions such practices as the lighting of lamps at public functions as a 'Hindu' practice. There are also those who secretly aid the Church's agenda under the rubric of various causes, such as interfaith dialogue, a bogus venture for the Hindus, but a good cover for hostile elements to engage in Inculturation.

Then, there are those who ally with jihadi terrorism. And then there are those who while nominally being Hindu are sufficiently brainwashed by the British colonial educational system to be unable to distinguish between what secularism means in India and their valuable inalienable Hindu heritage. A carefully calibrated change is required in the educational system to incorporate a study of Indian history and the Hindu heritage so that young Indians do not fall prey to the niceties of Western scholarship which by and large use Western paradigms and also unquestioningly accept the colonial versions (still persisting) of Indian history, politics and civilisation. This is especially applicable to the work of the historians of the post independence Nehruvian era, often referred to as the 'eminent historians.' The damage they have done to the narrative of Indian history is incalculable and the many acolytes they have spawned need to be rejected.

The last few years have seen the proliferation of so called experts and scholars in Indian politics, who have a superficial understanding of the subcontinent, and who are also actively opposed to the Hindu ethos. This is disguised as anti Hindutvaism, because a straw man has been set up behind which Hinduism per se can be attacked, the latest being the bizarre attempts at tracking the Sangh Parivar on the internet, disguised as sociological analysis (see the latest effort by Ingrid Therwath's Cyber-Hindutva : Hindu Nationalism, the diaspora and the web' June 2012). It should be pointed out that she is a pupil of Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot, whose works are yet to be assessed. This is very similar to the 'fortress of Brahmanism' thesis put forward by racists such as Monier Williams, or the ubiquitious writer Arundhati Roy who spoke about the Brahmanic Hindu state and claimed that she was attacking this state, not India per se ! The present writer has written about both these hoaxes in previous articles (See The Mighty Fortress of Brahmanism in Haindava Keralam and in http ://www.kalyan97.blogspot.in) and pointed out that both have misrepresented the complex evolution of Vedic Agamic Hinduism, which is the practice of the aam admi Hindu and millions of Hindus both in the homeland and in the diaspora.

The Supreme Court in its 1995 judgment had defined Hindutva as Hinduness, as a way of life or a state of mind.

This is, in the opinion of this writer, a weak formulation. It gives rise to all kinds of ambiguities behind which anti Hindu elements can shoot at their target. It is best to return and reemphasise Savarkar's definition of Hindutva. It is the common belief of all those who think of Bharat as Mathrubhumi (Motherland), Pitr Bhumi (Fatherland) and Punya Bhumi (Sacred Land). This last is particularly important since the Vedic seers saw in their vision the world of Devas and Devatas as celestials inhabiting the land. Hence, the proliferation of temples in the Indian landscape and the consecrated muftis (the Devas and Devatas) that reside in these temples, and are worshipped by Hindus. Hence too the importance of the Vedic rituals that accompany Hindu worship.

This central definition of Hinduness is essential if Hindus are to defend their culture and civilisation vigorously and unhesitatingly against the onslaught of the asuric forces, coming from abroad and as well as inside India.

Inside India we have a host of such writers such Prabhat Patnaik who throw around words like 'fascism' of which they have little or no understanding. Fascism is a European/Western phenomenon where the combination of corporate power and state power in order to further both the Bible and the gun (the Christian project) is quite unlike the Hindu ethos, whether at the individual level or at the state level or that of the Sangh Parivar organisations . These organisations are specially singled out as a localised target by the anti Hindu elements (See his 1993 article ' The Fascism of our Times'). Patnaik is a sociologist, but many other academics have carelessly or with deep malice, thrown this word around to describe any and every Hindu who is attached to the Punya Bhumi.

This practice is also accompanied by a subterfuge. Hindutva is then compared to their imaginary framing of Hinduism. Their 'imaginary community' (concept borrowed from Benedict Anderson) is precisely that, a concoction they have put together that ignores the ongoing practice of Vedic Agamic Hinduism, which is based on the vision of the Vedic seers. Rashtram (the limited translation is 'nation' ) was also first mentioned in the Rig Veda, where the Goddess Sarasvati pronounces on the reality of the Punya Bhumi:

"I am the rashtra moving people together for abhyudayam", (Rig Veda 10.125). Abhyudayam means welfare.

Many of the critics of Hindutva are simply ill informed, or have a half baked knowledge both of the Hindu ethos and the development of the nation state in Europe, whose two trajectories (both at the historical and the theoretical level) are different. Many, of course, are speaking with malice aforethought.

Neverthless, it is up to the Hindus to reject both groups immediately and firmly.

(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university)

CHANGE INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE MODEL TO INTER-KNOWLEDGE GATHERINGS -DAVID FRAWLEY

http://bharatabharati.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/dialogue-interfaith-or-interknowledge-david-frawley/

Dialogue: Interfaith or Interknowledge? – David Frawley

Posted on June 16, 2012 by IS

“There is a fundamental flaw in the very concept of ‘inter-faith’. The problem lies in the world ‘faith’ for defining religious and spiritual traditions. Western monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, are certainly faith-based and one can rightly call them different faiths, that being what they call themselves and how they define themselves. Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, however, are knowledge-based and do not call themselves ‘faiths’ but dharmas.” – Dr. David Frawley

Is the inter-faith model valid?

Much is being made of ‘inter-faith conferences’ in which representatives of different religious traditions, particularly major religious leaders, like heads of states, are brought together on a common platform.

It is important that people come together and dialogue relative to religion, spirituality and the main issues of life, regardless of their backgrounds or traditions. This is essential for any truth, peace or understanding to arise in the world. But one wonders whether the interfaith model is really able to do this.

What is faith and does it define religion or spirituality?

The main issue is that there is a fundamental flaw in the very concept of ‘interfaith’. The problem lies in the world ‘faith’ for defining religious and spiritual traditions. Western monotheistic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, are certainly faith-based and one can rightly call them different faiths, that being what they call themselves and how they define themselves.

Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, however, are knowledge-based and do not call themselves ‘faiths’ but dharmas. For them faith (shraddha in Sanskrit) has a place but is subordinate to a higher knowledge. Just as a scientist would not attend an interfaith conference representing science as another faith, so too, the followers of knowledge based traditions are not comfortable with their traditions being turned into faiths or made on par with faith-based beliefs and dogmas.

While Biblical traditions generally define the goal of human life as salvation through faith, in the dharmic traditions the goal is liberation through knowledge, which implies questioning, perhaps even rejecting much of what the Biblical traditions call faith. Faiths are human based, historical and transient, while dharma is eternal and universal. The law of gravity is not a matter of faith, nor is the law of karma, unlike the virgin birth or other such faith-based doctrines and miracles.

In dharmic traditions everything must be questioned, including the nature of faith, the mind, the ego, the soul and God. Dharmic traditions also discriminate some faiths as false or illusory and cannot embrace anything that is called a faith as being true or real. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of faith as being tamasic, rajasic or sattvic and only the later bringing true knowledge. The Gita (XVII.27-19) says that sattvic faith is done without the seeking of any fruit or reward. Rajasic faith is done with the aim of gaining honor for oneself and done with ostentation. Tamasic faith is done out of ignorance, to cause pain to oneself or to others. The question is whether faiths that seek conversion, conquest of the world, and employ aggression and violence – or which are in any way exclusive claiming to be the only true religion – can be called sattvic. If we promote rajasic and tamasic faiths, then we will also promote rajasic and tamasic values, which lead to inevitable violence and destruction. Even in common language, blind faith is known to be quite negative in its consequences. Without a critical examination of what faith is merely to promote faith may not really help creating peace in the world.

India based or Bharatiya traditions do not sacrifice knowledge at the altar of faith. They are not based upon irrational faiths like a final prophet, an only son of God and his miracles, a final book or revelation or what you will. They do not promote faith in a person, a book, or an institution as the ultimate. They emphasise our own direct individual experience of truth through Yoga and meditation. In the dharmic traditions faith also can and must be questioned. To not question something because it is a matter of faith is a dangerous tendency that leads to illusion.

Faith based religion as promoting Western monotheism

The first problem with the idea of interfaith and faith-based traditions is that faith as such is assumed to be valid to define the real nature of religion. Each faith is presumed to have its own validity as a faith. Religion is defined as faith, which diminishes the relevance and importance of knowledge-based traditions. And each faith is not to be questioned because it is a matter of faith. To question someone’s faith is regarded as inappropriate, insensitive and out-of-place. Faith is made into something sacred, without first purifying the faith in the fire of knowledge.

In interfaith movements there is a general agreement that ‘I won’t question your faith and you won’t question mine’. We will agree to respect our mutual faiths, without questioning them, even if my faith requires converting your children. This means there is no questioning of dogma, theology or metaphysics in interfaith gatherings. There is no philosophical or psychological analysis of states of consciousness in religion. There is no search for a greater or universal truth that might take us beyond the limitations of different faiths, which largely reflect emotional assertions not a higher perception.

In interfaith gatherings, religions as they are seen to be cloaked in a mantle of unquestioning acceptance. While the followers of one belief-oriented religion may accept one irrational faith, interfaith followers pride themselves in accepting any number of irrational faiths, even if they are mutually contradictory. Differences in theology or practice are blurred over. One embraces faith as the ultimate truth of religion, when faith is at best a door way.

The whole idea of ‘faith based traditions’, moreover, is largely a Biblical model and promotes monotheistic traditions. It can easily be subverted into a conversion based agenda and is resistant to question the politics of conversion. Faith usually implies faith in the One God, his book and his representatives. This One God of the faith is not a common truth of all humanity, but the religion of one community that casts out the non-believers as unholy. In spreading the notion of faith, it is these faith-based approaches that are emphasised and their definition of religion that is accepted.

The message of interfaith gatherings – in which Biblical traditions are usually the majority – is that ‘we will tolerate you if you become like us’. This is half way to conversion and still reflects the conversion based mentality. It is an attempt to impose faith-based monotheism as the basis of inter-religious communication and harmony. This is to accede to the authority of faith-based monotheism on the level of ideas. This means that interfaith gatherings can also be regarded as warm ups for conversion rallies!

Inter-knowledge, not inter-faith

What we need is not interfaith gatherings in which all religious faiths are allowed to go unquestioned but ‘inter-knowledge traditions’ in which there is an effort to arrive at a universal truth in religion and spirituality, just as in science, which requires that everything must be questioned.

Certainly people of various religious backgrounds should come together to discuss the truth of our existence, including religious leaders. But let them come together as human beings first of all, not as representatives of vested interests in religion protected by the aura of faith. Of course the proponents of the faith are unlikely to come to inter-knowledge gatherings. If they do, their purpose will be to protect their faith, not to find truth because in faith-based traditions truth is a matter of faith, of suppressing the questioning mind, not of examining the fundamental questions of life and finding an answer in our own deeper awareness.

Inter-religious gatherings have their place in the global society, just as meetings between scientists, artists, politicians or business leaders. But these gatherings must first of all accept a ‘pluralistic conception of religion’, which includes knowledge based as well as faith-based traditions and which does not bow to western faith-based monotheism as the prototype of religion.

This does not mean that we should make a show of questioning, much less mocking the faith of others. Let each person believe what he or she wants. That should not be our business. Yet when a particular faith becomes socially aggressive and seeks to convert the world, it can and must be questioned. We need not elevate faith into dogma that no one can question, whether it is one faith or many.

Freedom and pluralism should be there in religion as in our secular lives, but one need not accept all religions as true in order to do this. This making of all religions true through faith is in fact expanding the medieval notion of the supremacy of faith that led to inquisitions, holy wars and massive genocide, not to mention the suppression of knowledge in the Dark Ages. It shuts down any critical scrutiny of religious organisations, particularly those engaged in conversion. After all they are just honouring their faith. Today we see a new suppression of the questioning of religion in the name of protecting certain aggressive faiths that are rooted in the Middle Ages. If this is allowed to go one, the entire world will be taken back to the Middle Ages.

Hinduism and its Vedantic philosophy welcome dialogue in religion. This is only possible when pluralism and diversity in religion is honoured and when religion moves from faith to knowledge, from seeking to convert others to seeking understand the nature of the mind and the consciousness that transcends it.

» The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

DEVAS, DEVIS & DEVATAS: PROTECTORS OF SECULARISM IN INDIA

Why defend Devas and Devatas?

by

Achintyachintaka

One billion Hindus worship multitude of Devas, Devis, and Devatas in their temples and in the worship rooms or corners in their homes. Some who do not openly do so have no disrespect for those
who do. This is because of the very tolerant nature of Hinduness. Growing up in such tolerant
society makes a Hindu child intuitively understand that Hindus are worshipping the internal
representation when they close their eyes, it is the conscious perception of Devas, Devis, and Devatas
and not the stones, whether artistically sculpted or not that they face, or the various artistic depictions
of the images of Devas and Devatas they seem to worship. For the monotheistic idiots and other non
comprehending onlookers with their concrete thinking and brainwashing by their own "faiths" against
"idol" worship, such worship of Devas and Devatas by Hindus is difficult to understand and arouses
both conscious and unconscious hostility. The reason is that their God is "jealous" they are indoctrinated to believe, and they cannot tolerate anyone that worships any other God but "HIM". In contrast, a Hindu child can intuitively understand a Christian worshiping his God or a Muslim worshipping his Allah because they too are indeed worshipping whatever their representations of these divinities they have internalized during their upbringing in their respective religious cultures.

When 80+% population of India is made up of such intuitively tolerant Hindus who have this generous
tolerance and understanding of worshipping different "Gods and Goddesses," and have a conviction that such paths all lead to the same "God" or "Brahman," the Vedic cultural memories the Hindus carry in their Unconscious lead to instant empathy for the existential state of mind in the other human being that is engaged in the process of worship. This is summarized by Bhagvad Gita and later by Swami Vivekananda in his short speech delivered at the Congress of World Religions in Chicago in 1893. The difference is that This One final "place" where all worshipping minds flow to concentrate as per Hindu Vedic ethos is not acceptable to the Abrahamic religions.

The word "idiot" is used deliberately to emphasize not the lack of mental ability and is not meant to describe a Monotheist as an imbecile but to point out that the intolerant excessive attachment to an "idea" and unshakeable adherence to a culturally ingrained "idea" is what makes him/her an "idiot" in the sense of the very true meaning of the word "idiot."

It is this idiocy that leads to the fanaticism of the Abrahamic faiths and their historical aggressivity and drive to proselytize the world populations. Conversion on larger and larger scale globally by what started of as small cults in the Middle East have today led to two major "religions" of the world that are dominating the globe both demographically and politically. "One Godism" has been a political tool to dominate "non-believers," enslave them, exploit them and use world resources for dominant groups belonging to these faiths. Colonization may have come to an end but neo-colonization continues.

Conversion by sword, or at gun point with threats of, or actual, torture, as well as all forms of coercion was the order of the day in the past and continues to be the modus operandi of these two dominating religions historically and even now in some regions of the world. Astronomical amounts of wealth is expended by both of these dominant "religions" for converting world populations to their faith and to invest in "inculturation."  The sad fact is the conflict between the Cross and the Crescent was overt at one time and now it is covert yet active in many areas of the world. Such conflict is bereft with violence.

The 80+% Hindus of India, the worshippers of Devas and Devatas, are the true secularists of India and are the glue that holds the secular population of India and will be the real buffer to reduce the overt conflicts. Reduce this population of Hindus to less than 50% and one will inevitably see increasing rift among the One Goddists for political dominion, and annihilation of Hindus from their own land will follow. That will be the end of "Secular" India.

Every Hindu then has a duty to defend all devas and devatas worshipped by all Hindus and stop the onslaught on their society by the "One Goddists". The very survival of India as a secular nation depends on the freedom to worship Devas and Devatas. The freedom to worship and freedom to think are the very essence of Hinduness. There is no room for freedom to convert and propagate one's Monotheistic religion in Bharat as a constitutional guaranty, although some misinterpret constitution of India and "Secularism" therein as a license for demographic attack on Hindus.

The devas and devatas are all over Bharat. Bha stands for brilliance and rata stands for engrossment. Devas are the brilliant ones literally when the mind is illuminated, and hence the Devas are intimately related to Bharat. Bharat is the punya bhumi meaning the "sacred land" because of the presence of sacred Devas and Devatas all over the land of Bharat. That is what makes it sacred and it is, therefore, the punyabhumi where Hindus are indigenous.

If India is to see its progress (abhyudaya) as a secular nation, the land of Devas and Devatas needs to be protected from not being grabbed by the Monotheistic "idiots." Demographic attack by converting local population of India to monotheistic faiths by opposing "polytheistic" or "pantheistic" worship must be faced bravely and stopped immediately with strategies to prevent their further growth and land grabbing. Such process is metastasizing at exponential rates in many parts of India, Kerala, Andhra, Assam, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland not to mention Kashmir.

Whoever is committed to "Secularism" will be remiss if not simultaneously defending Devas and Devatas.

DEFEND VEDIC DEVAS & DEVATAS, THEIR AGAMIC TRADITIONS WHO REPRESENT AAM AADMI

 'The Center for the Study of Dharma and Civilisation'

by

Dr. Vijaya Rajiva

The founder of this Center is Dr. Frank Morales (aka Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya) a  young American former university student who turned to Hinduism at an early age and is said to have taken initiation from a Hindu guru and with his early advocacy of what he called radical universalism (to describe Hinduism) he came to be accepted in Hindu circles. However, in 2008 he produced a 2 part video series called Jesus the Dharma Master. This appeared to be something of a u turn and it caused some consternation in the Hindu Samaj. In 2009 he started the International Sanatana Dharma Society and established its Ashram at Omaha, Nebraska. It sounded eerily like the wanderings of Yogananda Paramahamsa into Christianity (Autobiography of a Yogi) which ended  with the establishment of the Self Realisation Society in California, with its  temple prominently displaying a cross at the front. If reports are to be believed, the Society now has even replaced Yogananda's  picture with that of Jesus. This appears to be the inevitable culmination of the process known as Inculturation whereby a native culture is surreptitiously invaded and eventually overcome. Could this happen to Frank Morales and his projects ? The signals are not encouraging.

The present writer has written about Frank Morales in a series of three articles, the last of which summarises the issues that the Hindu Samaj should confront in assessing both Frank Morales and his present brainchild the Center (See 'Frank Morales and the Jesus Video ' at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/frank-moraless-jesus-video-dr-vijaya.html). These issues are clearly presented and the reader is requested to view them in the article. 

For the time being one can look at the prospectus of the International Sanatana Dharma Society(founded by Morales) which seems to have spawned the Center (and readers are urged to go to that website) and take stock of its philosophy and program. On the Home Page of Dharma Central (the organisation also founded by Frank Morales) one reads the following:

"The teachings and practices of the ISDS are based directly upon the Vedic scriptures. Our scriptures consist of the entire shruti and smriti cannons of the Vedic literature, but with special emphasis on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, Brahma Sutras, Yoga Sutras and Narada Bhakti Sutras" ( the typo should be corrected; it is canons not cannons !).

What is curious about this list of sacred scriptures is the omission of the 4 Vedas, the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Vedas. There is a brief reference to a line from the Rig Veda which extols Vishnu. This omission is significant in that the 4 Vedas worship 33 devas and devatas. The Vedas are the fountainhead of Hinduism. While the monotheistic faiths are able to cherry pick suitable lines from the Upanishads, they are unable to do so from the 4 Vedas, the Brahmanas (prose commentaries) and the Aranyakas. This neglect of the 4 Vedas is in line with the Frank Morales version of Hinduism, which endorses either the rarefied versions of Vedanta or the theism of Vaishnava tradition, both of which lend themselves to Inculturation. Whereas the polytheism of the Vedas and the worship of murthis cannot be so distorted for the purposes of monotheism.

On this same Home Page one gets to a short video of Frank Morales as Shri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya inagurating what seems to be the Ashram of the ISDS. He is at pains to tell the audience that at this Ashram there will be no pujas or cultural events. The Ashram will be devoted to the spiritual quest. For models of spiritual behaviour he tells his audience they can look at Sri Rama or the lives of sadhus. So far so good. Wisely, no mention of Jesus, at least in this video !

In general the short video shows a relatively young person seemingly in earnest about his spiritual quest. All the same the fact that he calls himself an Acharya (presumably ordained by a Hindu Acharya in India of the Vaishnava persuasion) is not a guarantee that he is a spiritually evolved person. The present writer recalls that in his reply to one of the first two critical  articles about him, Frank Morales reported a conversation with a Hindu friend on the phone. Imagine, he said, calling Sankara a Baptist !  Notice that already he is indirectly referring to himself as Adi Sankara ! This itself is a testimony to his immaturity/vanity.

He is very definitely a 'bright' person . Such people can easily simulate spirituality. And he certainly talks about it ! But does this alone call for an endorsement by the Hindu Samaj ? Someone is doing something, said one sympathetic observer about the Center. But is not the identity of this 'someone' important ? Is he authentic ? Is he capable of doing a Bede Griffith (readers are requested to read the third article in the series ' Frank Morales's Jesus Video ' listed above, to understand the reference to Bede Griffiths). Briefly, he was a British monk settled in India who spent many years as a Vedantin ( and fooled many Hindus !)and then ended up doing a u turn and returning to his native faith, Christianity. In that third  article there are accounts also of similar u turns by other foreign Christian converts (so to speak) to Hinduism, who did a u turn. Bede Griffths ended by saying that Vedantic mysticism is inferior to the Christian Trinity. He also spoke about the next one thousand years in which Christianity should overcome Hinduism in the same way that it overcame Greek philosophy etc. So did the Pope on his visit to India ! The agenda is always the same.

Dr. David Frawley (aka Vamadeva Shastri) well known to Hindus, has high praise for Frank Morales and is on the Board of Advisors of the Center. Dr. Frawley is now also active in the project of Interfaith Dialogue. This project is, in the opinion of the present writer, an initiative that does not bode well for the Hindu Samaj, which is being asked to do mea culpas for what ? The problem is with the other parties. And each such dialogue has ended with the benightened Hindus either scratching their heads or surrendering abjectly to the opposition on various issues.

Why drag Hindus through this ? Recently, Dr. Frawley made a good speech at the Bangalore  Institute for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) which it must be noted is a Christian initiative.
His personal committments to the Vedic heritage cannot be questioned but the political impact of his moves on Hindu India must be taken into consideration. And inter alia can his political judgment be trusted ? Merely his high praise of Morales as the answer to every Hindu's prayer, can it be taken at face value ?

The survival of Hinduism in Bharat is the key. In this, no doubt the NRIs and interested foreigners and as well dedicated converts to Hinduism can play a constructive and helpful role. But their influence should not be allowed to overshadow the work already being done inside India. Nor should it become a distraction from that serious task. If the Center provides a meeting ground for Hindus in the diaspora then it serves a useful purpose, but it should not become a distraction from the work being done in India. Its importance as the first ever such American project ( or so it is claimed) should not be overestimated. It could even be argued that the Center might turn out to be not only a distraction, but a ploy, a front (to use that phrase current in common parlance). This possibility cannot be dismissed out of hand. The defence of the Vedic Agamic tradition is too important to be so treated, especially by those who claim to defend Hindu interests. We simply cannot afford to be nonchalant and look the other way.

And a closer look at the main mover and shaker in the project is called for. Here some of the issues raised in the article 'Frank Morales's Jesus Video' by the present writer are relevant. The reader is requested to go through that article(hyperlinked above).

The second undertaking the Hindu Samaj should undertake  is an assessment of the stated purpose of the Center itself. The blurb tells us the following :

" The Centre for the Study of Dharma and Civilisation (CSDC) is the very first academic think tank of the Sanatana Dharma tradition ever created in American history. Established by Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya in May of 2012, the  CSDC brings together several of the most prominent Hindu scholars in America with the singular purpose of academically affirming the presence of the philosophy, practice and culture of Sanatana Dharma in the intellectual realm."

While at first glance this appears to be a laudable aim, the restricted nature of the enterprise, its intellectual restriction to a certain aspect of Hinduism and its neglect of the grounded reality of Hindu practice in the homeland of Hinduism, gives one pause. Is this another Yoganand misadventure, or a purely rarefied enterprise which may even distract from the work to be done inside Bharat, by its superimposition of a galaxy of names some of whom may be genuine, but others who may be working at cross purposes with the stated aims of the Center ? Or is it simply a front ?

Time will tell. Certainly the Hindu Samaj will be watching. The Hindu Samaj's first duty is to safeguard the Vedic Agamic tradition within Bharat, with the Hindus (and allies) of the diaspora playing an adjunct role. The globalisation of Hinduism has brought some advantages, but the dangers are also there. One sees this readily in the economic front, where the swadeshi approach has been railroaded to serve the interests of the multinationals. A similar process is likely to occur in projects such as the Center, which ostensibly seeks to promote Hinduism but may well be hi jacked by hostile elements.

(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university)