Vidyabhyaas or Vidhya abuse......

A news in last week samachaar.com was hinted to me by mama,Bharath, who so far seems to be sailing with me on the same thought boat. The news bore one of the most indiscrete budding of religious atrocities in the Bharatavarsha. " A third standard boy was sent home from his school (Chennai) because he sported mehndi in his hands". This, as the Principal of the institution cites from the school hand book is the law of the school. But it is ofcourse not the law of the land. The same news article also sights an instance where ten girls were suspended from a school near Pune until the mehndis vanish from the hands of the girls. This article appeared in only one of the news channels while the so called secular press and the secular government have no time to notice such "not important and not insults". I am just curious, has any hindu school ever compelled on any students on not to sport signs of any religion? Has any hindu school stopped any of its pupils from following their own religions? Has any hindu educational institution forced any conversion on any of its students any religion by threatening or offering monetary help or just moral counselling? I do not know any hindu schools doing such things.

The story has a deep rooted past that takes us back to 1835, once again to the colonial British rule and their evil strategies, hatched one after the other to defame our glory and the ultimate highlight is our goat like attitude.

If you had taken a look at my orkut album, amidst the three photos loaded there, the second picture speaks about a certain Lord Macaulay. I do not remember seeing his name anywhere in the high school history books or any commonly available books. That picture actually speaks a lot about this condition. Like mercenaries, who are hired in wars and in stealth operation to win over the enemy by indirect means, the English adopted several, cunning cheap ways to ensure the all round fall of the 10,000 years old civilization in just 300 years and to establish their own supremacy over the entire world, which was racist by their nature. Max Mueller was one of them. There were many such people funded for this purpose. Here it is Lord Macaulay himself speaking about revamping of the Indian educational system.

The simple strategy that was adopted was to choose a native who was Indian in color and blood but simply thought that the english education and the english way of life was the best. Now , such persons will be glorified as the best native and will be endowed with all special previlages. Eventually, the glorified persons looked upon the English as the extremely nobel people who have come to educate and liberate the native Indians from distress. And due to the economic and social disparity created, the English loving glorified people were regarded as high class and their way of education and living was to be emulated throughout the nation in the later years to come.

But what is wrong with the system now, even after the departure of the British? The economic and social disparity have altogether taken totally unrelated but a colossal form of disparity called the religious disparity. The schools run by different people following different religions, (ofcourse there is no shortage for religions in India) impart illogical hatred towards other religions rather than teaching about their religions. And why mix religion and education? Education is all encompassing. It is not just math and science. Knowledge is power. It is not wrong for the schools to educate their students about various religions, at the same time it is despicable on the part of the schools to force any religion on the students.

It is the duty of the government to see that the rules imposed by the school do not hurt anyone's sentiments. How come in a hindu majority nation that is pretty much tolerant to any other religion in the world, there is injustice and insult to Hinduism? This quesition is asinine. Beacause , it is we , the Hindus who have been stoic to all such irrational onslaughts in the name of SECULARISM. After all this happens , it is futile to take action against the offenders who by all means can get past the fragile gates of law without much effort. Should the concerned citizens think well before admitting their wards in such schools? In a nation, in which the ears of whatever government be in power have become permanently deaf to wails, shouts and the call outs of its majority, what is the solution for the victim and for not being victimised? Avoid or fight? No one has the answer.

http://india_resource.tripod.com/britishedu.htm

The above source provides a lot of info on this subject.

Link to the incident

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20071122095214

Indian or Iranian?

image:http://historicalrama.org/varaha.jpg

It is not only in the conquests and war that we have forfeited our glory to some greedy powerful cunning passerby foreigner but we have been foolish and continue to be even now. How many of us even allot sometime to think about all these?
One of the greatest figures from the “Glorious past” of India is now claimed by yet another one of the contemporary civilizations. The great astrologer scientist, mathematician, poet from the veiled bright past of India - Varahamihira. How many of us know that the seat of the Indian politics, the Parliament houses a mural painting of Varahamihira by the side of that of Aryabhatta?
Varahamihira was one of the greats of the Indian past (505-587). He was born in Ujjain. He belonged to the family that worshipped Surya, the Sun god. The Vedic age scripts say that Sun god worship was also prevalent among the people. The priests who were in charge of the Sun god worship are called the Shakdwipi or Mag Brahmins. Even today we can see that Sun god worship is prevalent in many places in India. Varahamihira was a shakdwipi. He was one of the mainstays in the court of king Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. He wrote an astronomical treatise commenting on the Indian, Roman, Greek, and Egyptian called the Pancha Siddhantika. His contribution to astrology is considered to be the crux of Indian astronomy. His trigonometric contribution and his not so usual treatment of the problem of permutation are noteworthy.
I have listened to an interesting anecdote from the life of Varahamihira and it goes like this: Varahamihira was so great in astrology that he could tell the position of a person by latitude and longitude with just a glance at the person’s horoscope. Thus he was able to predict future events and so he became famous. His fame reached the heavens and when it knocked the door of Brihaspati, the guru of devas and the one of the principle planets of the Navagraha, Brihaspati was pretty much worried because Varahamihira was capable of changing the course of future events.
When this was going on, one day a person went to Varahamihira and gave him a horoscope and asked him to locate Brihaspathi. After the necessary calculations, the horoscope pointed to the location where the person was sitting. Varahamihira re did the calculations but every time it pointed to the same location. Convinced that his calculations were flawless, Varahamihira fell on all fours before the person asking him for his blessings. Now the person, who was Brihaspati in disguise revealed his original form and praised Varahamihira’s dedication and talent and asked him not to change the course of future. Upon such a divine request, Varahamihira put an end to his gimmicks. Such was his greatness.
Now that we know that Varahamihira is an Indian, here comes the glitch. There are some historians who still base their claim on the AIT, that he is Iranian. Iranians were Sun worshippers and so Varahamihira is also an Iranian and hence whatever astrology that is being followed is Iranic and not vedic. At this juncture I would like to stress that by Iran or Iranic or Iranians I point fingers at Iran that was, before the coming of Islam. Ujjain is in India and vikramaditya was one of the greatest rulers of the gupta age.
I had mentioned that the vedic people and the Iranians who formed a part of the group, all lived on the banks of Saraswati and due to unknown reasons, a group of people moved on to Iran. There is no concrete answer for why those people moved, war or natural calamity or was that just another human migration? We know that the Iranians were Sun god worshippers. Since the two groups of people, Iranians and the Indian Aryans co-existed in the same place; it is obvious that they share the same culture. It is not just Indra or Chandra who is being glorified in the Vedas; it is Surya also who is deified throughout. There was a divine lineage of the Sun family, the Ikshvaku clan in which we consider that God himself took birth as Sri Rama.

It is time, we, the citizens of Indian, sharpen our senses and light up the glory that is in dark before another passerby takes away whatever is left.

The Saraswati Saga

image:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqMiJ5a_BJQH49Ey9e0SvmAu49sgi7p_6pPSSku-U219bZeAz1IdO36PTXf4wmTQD-Io4ZpXaIAVH9iEjfjR8DjoA4pw5UtEBfqmO8_0s7OpS6M9Y3Sua3nyYi23yfZ_Gfvj2meAefXvg/s400/Saraswati.jpg

Now, for a moment, lets go back to the pre-christian era. The Romans have left the Britannia and returned to rome. The leaving of the Romans made the English speaking Celtic tribes unstable and this was in the best interest of the Irish king who always plotted to keep them divided, so he can conquer them easily.This was the earliest divided and rule policy of the Europeans. One more famous instance of the implementation of this cheap policy by the Europeans, is the French keeping the different German tribes divided until the rise of the German nationalism due to the aryan supremacy ending in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871.

The Europeans, all through the time during their rule over India, played the cheap policy of divide and rule over Indians alongside their other dirty tricks. They infested the Indian society with nepotism, bigotry, the religious divide. By no means, the Indian society was a perfect Utopian society before the coming of the british. There were shortcomings with Pre-British Indian society too. But that the blackspots in the pre-British India did not block the sun then but they do now.

The British plans to proselytize India were being chalked up now, so the genesis of all sorts of nonsenses. We can already see them succeeding in most parts of India to this day.
The first one was revamping of the educational system. The British, especially Macaullay was very much intent on removing the then prevalent age old educational system and replacing that with the more materialistic english education. The result is evident today. The next one was dividing the demographics. Here religion served its purpose, Hindus and Muslims. It is might be wrong for me to say Hinduism and Islam served the English at this time but Hindus and Muslims changed the words of their religion more appropriately to serve their purpose. The 85/15 split was obvious then and it was done. Now the game plan boiled down to divide the 80. The opportunities were plenty. There were as many castes,sub castes, creed as there were stars on the sky for the British. But they could do that and still fail. Because the 80 %, though split they are still Hindus. They still share the same scriptures, culture etc. Ramayan, Mahabharat, The Gita, The Vedas and above all Sanskrit will hold them together. The Think-tanks probably spent more than a few some sleepless nights. At that time, came to light one of the most talked about, so called western Sanskrit scholar, Freidrich Max Mueller. Though a German by birth , he had settled in England after his education in oxford. Many sources say that he was struck with poverty before he actually climbed to fame by bombing the entire world with the "Aryan Supremacy theory". The writings by Max Mueller saw the rise of German nationalism and the effect was unification of Germany leading unto the World War II.

Now, who would not like to be in the limelight? and that too to climb out of poverty, that is a double whammy. He was missionary funded by the british, like the lawrence of arabia but to study into the scriptures in Sanskrit and propogate them in a demeaning way so that the Indians who revere those scriptures as holy books should lose faith in the Sanskrit and the oldest, Rig veda. More about this can be found in the links given at the end of my own thoughts.

Who were aryans? All through the Vedas, there is not a mention of aryans as racially superior tribe who conquered India and drove the inhabitants down south. The simple use of the color of the people, light and brown, aryans and dravidians to divide the people was handled by the british. The impact of climate, lattitude, diet were left out of the equation to give way to an imaginary theory. Caucasians, Mangolians, Negroid and Australians were forgotten. Nevertheless,  both the divisions, aryans and dravidians belong to the Caucasian race. It was in the vedic age and in the indus valley that Indians and the Iranians lived a vedic life before a possible fight between the groups made one of groups move to what is now called Iran.

The Old theory says that the aryans came from central Asia as nomadic tribes and destroyed a highly advanced Indus valley civilization and dark skinned dravidians. There is no scientific truth that such a war or genocide took place at the timeline mentioned. There is no solid proof that the aryans came from the central asia. They were also the people who occupied the banks of Sarasvati. How could a tribe, barbaric in nature, coming from elsewhere, compose verses and poems about nature, God, affection ,society and endow us with the ways of living for different causes? If aryans are from a different part of earth, why is it that there is not a single mention of any place outside India and there are innumerable mention of places and rivers all through India? Why is it that they chose India as their motherland and all their holy places are scattered all over India? No proponents of AIT have answered these queitions convincingly.

It is human nature to associate oneself to the greatness in the past. And all that history tells us is that people of Indus valley lived a great life and people of vedic age were far ahead of the times. To show their racial superiority, one possible option left was to say that all the aryans were central Asians or rather Europeans and since ages Europeans have been dominating the rest of the world and particularly India. By default, the credit for all the achievements of aryans in science, society, warfare, spirituality would go to the Europeans. A cheap tactic? Why steal greatness?

There is no such distinct clan or race called Aryans. Aryan in sanskrit and in the vedas means good natured or gentleman and it is used in vedas as a means of addressing someone in a noble way. So the aryans did not come from elsewhere but are also a part of the greatness of this nation which most of us have forgotten or deny to accept.

How is Sanskrit, the language of aryans and dravidians?

Though the aryan invasion theory has been refuted as a false theory now all over the world, it is in India the maximum impact is still prevalent. The AIT was politicised by the British and the Germans then and also by present day politicians for cheap gains. If aryans speak Sanskrit and dravidians have their own languages, why is it that the philosopher saints like Shankara ,Madhvacharya and Ramanuja, and many more from south revered so much in the north as well? Why is it that their teachings are in Sanskrit as well? Aren't the politicians we find in India today very good at playing cheap politics to survive the AIT even when its proponents go back on their word saying that the aryans were the natives of India?

Max Mueller, in his book " India,what it can teach us?" says that many European and Asian languages in their unadultered form, which is pretty much away from the present day form have a lot in common with Sanskrit. So, is it right to say that sanskrit originated in Europe? Hahaha.....it sounds foolish. People of Britain speak English. There was a lot of migration to the Americas. So the people of Americas speak english. But English has not died at its very birth place, has it? Sanskrit in its purest form is found in India and it is from India, people have migrated outside and spread their language and raised city states and nations.

Sanskrit was the language of the indigenous India that was coexisting with other languages. It was the major language spoken by most of the people in aryavrata.

What really happened to the Vedic Civilization and the Indus Valley Civilization?

Max Mueller and the AIT proponents say that the civilization is just collapsed around 2000 BC and Ramayana and Mahabharata are merely fictional stories and if at all considered real, they are just the skirmishes between petty cheiftains that took place around 1000-1200 BC. But the reality is hidden and unkown.

Saraswati is a holy river that has been revered in the Vedas. Along the banks of this great river flourished the vedic civilization. Accounts say that the river was 7 kilometers in width and was flowing from the Himalayas through Rajasthan in to the sea. There are about 60 citations about this river in the vedas compared to one about the Ganges. Recently many settlements have been found around and along the banks of the now dried river Saraswati. Modern historians have found the course of the river which is same as the vedic location. The river changed its course a lot of times. And probably it is the flooding in the great river Saraswati that caused the end of the glorious civilization. Probably it is this flood that caused the great migration, the migration of the Indus valley people in to Iran, central Asia and as far as Europe where there were city states and nations which rose thereafter and from the other bank into South India. Modern excavations show that the vedic settlements were spread from across Iran to Ganges and beyond and beyond Tapti.

Dinesh Agrawal states that the prehistoric chronology of India is,

• Vedic Age - 7000-4000 BC
• End of Rig Vedic Age - 3750 BC
• End of Ramayana - Mahabharat Period - 3000 BC
• Development of Saraswati-Indus Civilization - 3000-2000 BC
• Decline of Indus and Saraswati Civilization - 2200-1900 BC
• Period of Complete chaos and migration - 2000-1500 BC
• Period of evolution of syncretic Hindu culture - 1400 - 250 BC

My personal take, vedic age is beyond 7000 and might go even beyond 15000 BC or so. I agree with the events right from the decline of the Indus and Saraswati civilizations but before that it is still more of BC yet to be revealed.

Swami Vivekananda on Aryan Invasion Theory
"Our archaeologists' dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryans came from - the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet; others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red haired. Others, according to their idea, think that they were all black-haired. If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on Swiss lake. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for as the truth of these theories, there is notone word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends..."
"And the theory that the Shudra caste were all non-Aryans and they were a multitude, is equally illogical and irrational. It could not have been possible in those days that a few Aryans settled and lived there with a hundred thousand slaves at their command. The slaves would have eaten them up, made chutney of them in five minutes. The only explanation is to be found in the Mahabharat, which says that in the beginning of the Satya Yoga there was only one caste, the Brahmins, and then by differences of occupations they went on dividing themselves into different castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming Satya Yuga all other castes will have to go back to the same condition." (The Complete Work of Swami Vivekananda, Vol.III Page 293.)

One interesting thing to be noted is that the Sarawati saga is still continuing.........

Some references thay you might like if you wish to follow through this topic.

1. http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_agrawal.html
2. http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html
3. http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
4. http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/462.html

The Equestrian Tale

                   image: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rbo/lowres/rbon179l.jpg

We will kick off with one of the most famous horses and a famous equestrian. One of the greats of the pre-christian era that history reckons. Alexander, the great, from Macedonia was unarguably one of the most famous conquerors of the ancient world. He was ambitious. He had the gift of being under the tutelage of Aristotle, the famous student of Plato. It was Aristotle who inspired Alexander of the world conquest.

Plutarch (46 AD -120 AD), a Greek historian, describes the way in which Alexander, although young took possession of Bucephalus, despite the fact that the soldiers in Philips’s army were not able to control the horse. Right from his childhood he had rivaled the fame and the valor of Achilles, another Greek myth hero.

It is really breathtaking when we read that Alexander’s small but trained army defeated a much larger Persian army and drove Darius out of Persian. The battle with Darius III, the Persian emperor was a victorious one that brought Babylon and all its riches to Alexander and increased his thirst for more conquests. He set his eyes on the land beyond the Hindkush mountains. He quelled a number of tribes on his way to India.

By then winning had become the habit of Alexander, his generals and the Greek army. But the Greek army, after years of travel away from home had reduced considerably in size, because of wars, diseases and also responsibility. At every sensitive region along his line of conquest, Alexander allowed some of his generals for peaceful administration and ruling.

Also the remaining soldiers had grown weary of the continuous wars; fatigue had set in among them. Many of the remaining soldiers did not wish to fight at all. Till this point in history, all the historians speak the truth and history has a lot of versions beyond the Hindkush.

Not many of us read or know about the change in behavior and attitude of Alexander during his conquests. Not all of us know the truth about the change in the war strategies he adopted and least of all his sexual orientation. What we are taught or we read are mostly about the exploits and conquests of Alexander. We will be able to justify the goodness of such descriptions if such things are present in a third grade book for character development! But the blatant truth is not present even in the annals of history.

Moving on with Alexander, we have a lot of reluctant to fight, tired, sick, war sick, home sick soldiers with a few war hungry ones.

It was Jhelum now. The river was ready to be invaded. Alexander, being a great general himself was now in a fix. He knew that the war was going to be devastative for Greeks if he was going to take on Purushottama, (Porus) in day light with his fatigued soldiers. The strategy was one of a nocturnal surprise. The soldiers of Porus, as Alexander expected, would be sleeping and would be taken in by surprise if attacked at night.

All set. Jhelum was crossed. It was not Porus who was surprised but it was the equestrian from Macedonia who met with the surprise. An army of elephants was waiting for the ambush. The battle was gory: The elephant archers breaking the defense of the Greek phalanx, the elephants hurling the Greeks in air and the Indian archers beheaded and elephants fatally wounded.

The Greeks had never fought in such conditions and against such an army. Now the Greeks are not conquering but just defending the counter offense. Soon it was the turn of Alexander to motivate the Greeks. Alexander himself charged in at one of the elephants.

Awake. All the historical accounts speak the same even till here. What happens after this?

The brave Alexander, on his bucephalus was charging onto the tusker. The elephant was creating a mound of grave of the Greek phalanx. And here in this encounter the horse is pierced and is dead very shortly and Alexander was fatally wounded. As always, when the king is wounded, the kinsmen guard him back to his castle away from the enemies. This is what happened in the case of Alexander, the great also. Porus was not pursuing Alexander and his men. Porus was not seeking victory. It is not the Indian philosophy. It is not what we are taught. It is not the Indian way of life. We are always self-contended. It is entreating to say that India, having fostered so many big empires and emperors, never strayed beyond the Hindkush. Isn’t this amazing?

India has not invaded any nation. It was India which was invaded all throughout the history and adopted any stranger and customs as its own. One cannot sight many wars and battles in India which were ambition driven or greed driven. It has always been a mechanism of self defense rather than an offensive attack.

This incident is what the Greeks found difficult to digest and changed the course of the history.

It is this part of the movie Alexander by Oliver Stone , the battle of Hydaspes, that speaks the truth which for centuries has been waiting to burst out.

Some accounts also say that Porus used just one twelfth of his elephant power for the battle on the banks of river Jhelum with Alexander. The kingdom of Porus was a small kingdom on the banks of Jhelum. On the other side of the kingdom of Porus lay the vast Gupta empire which in taking the shape of the powerful Mauryan Empire in the spirits of two of the earliest statesmen India had produced, Chandragupta and Chanakya.

When the small kingdom could make the Greeks retreat, any takes on the Guptas or the Mauryas?

Soon after the battle at Jhelum,(Hydaspes is how the Greeks call Jhelum), the fatally wounded and the dead horse Bucephalus was buried at a place on the banks of the river which Alexander named as Bucephala just like the city of Alexandria.

The rest of the history is again undisputed till the death of Alexander.

Every nation boasts the greatness of its past, even though it does not have any. Why is it in India, even if the past is a glorifying one, why is it that we hesitate to accept that? Why is it that we try to be submissive? We need not invade any nation but why cannot we even praise someone who defended the nation, instead glorify a foreigner who came in to invade us?

I am sure, this is the version of the incident which most of us would have studied in our history books:

Porus fought bravely. But he was defeated, chained and brought in front of Alexander. Porus held his head high despite his defeat and demanded a king’s respect from a king. This unstinting nature of Porus pleased Alexander and made him give the kingdom back to Porus, stop fighting and go back to Babylon.

There is no doubt that Alexander is one of the greatest generals of the ancient world, probably of all time. Why should truth be faked to glorify another? Why should the true be belittled for the deification of another?

Isn’t Alexander a great general despite his retreat at Jhelum?

History is often written by the winners???

A long wait and .......here we go........

Hi everyone, the idea of compiling a blog has been more provoking than just penning down my thoughts. I have always wondered at my friends who had ventured into this sort of blogging long back and by virtue of duty and dedication they still have their good work going. I hope to emulate their good work.

One more bullet to be stressed "HE is blogging not because he is bored or for whatever crappy reasons which few other blog for, but to be frank, he is doing it coz' he has strong views on certain issues that have remained as Dark Horses from times immemorial and continue to be so and he just wants the other people to opine his conclusions and confessions: Melody or Malady."

A race horse about which very little is known-----There have been several race horses all through the rich heritage of India alone,let us blank out the rest of the world for a while. The travesty is that these horses are no longer allowed to race, while unworthy, unhealthy horses gallop faster with the robotic wheels of cheap politics oiled with greases of vote banks, batteries of corruption, screws and nuts of nepotism and bigotry. This is ubiquitous in all the race courses in the great nation of Bharatvarsha. And no where, are these old dark horses allowed to race. Leave alone racing, they are disappearing even from the minds of a true Indian because he no longer reads about them in schools or all the records of their existence are being destroyed or if the records exist, it is just that we find the words " racing horses " MISPRINTED as " burdened sick mules". All the actual horses became dark horses beacuse western historians called so and the others(WE) just shut their mouth and shook their head to whatever the west was hinting to.

And all these dark horses are evanescing even today because.................

Why would anyone afterall do this to his own horses?

Has three hudred years of slavery and subservient nature made us look upon ,as trivial, our majestic and glorious past which even the most shrewd,pragmatic and brilliant present day citizens of Albion, Americas and the entire world just admire without having even an inkling of what those are ?

Or is it that we have become dumb enough to accept whatever the western historians label us as?

Or is it that the present constitution is pretty much rigid that it is pretty much difficult even to accept truth if an unintentional truth was inscribed not on the pages next to the Preamble but only in the high school text books?

Or is it that we give a damn about past and work to settle down as individuals who teach their children showing "living examples" of how to lead a life ?

Or is it the "Bullshit..........I will settle in US of A" attitude that cares least for its mother nation?

Or is it that our past is stinking and we really dont want to get reminded of all that?

Ofcourse I am sure it is not the last one. All of us know that our past has been a glorious one.

Probably there are other reasons that others could think of, but whatever it is ....

are these the ways which we must follow to repay and honor our nation, its heroes..?