This is a truncated version of the entire debate which ensued after the publication of Dr Frank Morales paper Does Hinduism Teach All Religions Are The Same on Sulekha.com (the entire conversation available at http://creative.sulekha.com/does-hinduism-teach-that-all-religions-are-the-same_102360_blog).
Since it is a long conversation and Naik appears late, this particular blog is a healthy debate between Naik and an Indian intellectual in the final parts of the conversation.
CHITTARANJAN NAIK
I’ve written a rebuttal of Dr.Morales’ article on Radical Universalism in which I’ve comprehensively examined all the arguments furnished by Dr.Morales in support of his thesis and found them to be fallacious.
The reply to Dr.Morales’ article is titled ‘The Sword of Kali’ and is available at:
http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/101.htm
and
http://swamij.com/sword-kali.htm
Regards,
Chittaranjan
________________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
My Comment refers to Reply by Chittaranjan Naik, the “sword of Kali” at
http://swamij.com/sword-kali.htm
Dr Morales placed “hinduism” in context, relative to other “religions”. This writer discusses only hinduism, leaving any details, problematic or otherwise, of other religions, severely alone. He is either unwilling to look critically at them, or thinks that the “hindu” ideal to follow is that of uncritical acceptance of something “just because they said so”. But he knows about other religions, as is shown by his willingness to defend them. Sure will make the clerics of those religions happy, not to be criticized at all, but to be defended gratuitously. Also there seems to be a emphasis on placing all the blame on the hindu people that goes well beyond honest self criticism. In other words, “hinduism” especially of the “universalist” kind of the author is great, only the “hindus” stuck in “that other” hinduism, and no one else, are to blame.
For most of us practitioners, at the level of social ground reality, this is an Our theory vs Their Theory debate. If they subscribed to our theory “ekam sad vipra bahuda vadanti” then the debate may not even arise. But the fact being that their theory treats us & our theories as Unbelievers/heathens, means there are conflicting & opposed views.
It does not make sense at all to treat them (Abrahamic religions) as subscribing to our theory, & then defend them using the same theory. That would be a surefire way to get annihilated in any argument! I’m sure our ancestors were much better than that , to have kept our sanskriti alive through all the invasions, both physical & mental, of our culture.
Author seems to be conflating Shruti & Smriti to extract “sameness of religions”.
He does this by ignoring fact that Abrahamic exclusivist religions were unknown when most of the smritis he quotes from were written. “religion” as of today is an Abrahamic definition, & it is wrong to force fit Indic thought into Abrahamic, or vice versa for argument sake. Hence the idea conflict starts right at the level of what framework one uses for discussion. Abrahamic definitions of “religion” are not the same as “Indic/asian” ones.
He starts from the basic premise of “clayness of all pots” i.e. “religiousness of all religions”
No wonder he successfully comes back to “religions same but not exactly” Seems like circular logic?
What “we radical universalists” insist on calling a pot, actually thinks & behaves like a hammer. So what is the point of the sameness of the hammer & pot though they be made of the same material?
In his explanations, he uses Unity/Oneness when convenient (of religions) and duality when convenient (God Vs Nature, Chaitanya vs Jada etc..)
He insists on giving a “free pass” to the other religions, turning the onus onto “hinduism” to practice the tolerance & sameness all others explicitly disavow. Uses the “Svetaketu” episode in the Chandoyya Upanishad (Sama Veda) to give this free pass.
He expounds beautifully on the “greatness of hinduism” in “the spiritual .. of Hinduism”. It is indeed wonderful to hear him preach on the beauty & transcendence of the Vedanta, & Upanishadic concepts. But he forgets that all that grandeur may end up either obliterated or as a “footnote” in the Book(s) of the “people of the book”, when there aren’t left any people to practice it, let alone defend it. He seems to forget the very idea of Kshatriya Dharma, a core component in the varnashram concept.
Implied is the idea that Abrahamic Prophets & Deities can fit in the “hindu” worldview as Avataras. Doesn’t say it explicitly, as he knows what reaction these “words out of a “kafir/unbeliever”’s mouth would have.
He makes quite a convincing case for “hindu universalism” but is sadly wrong in presuming anyone other than hindus (& maybe uncommitted or former Abrahamists) would subscribe to this notion.
His audience doesn’t seem to be that of practicing hindus as Dr Morales audience is, but of “intellectuals”. Seems to know a great deal about nyaya, vedanta etc, and is not afraid to show it off. Amazing how so much of his erudition can cause so much confusion in a common man trying to understand him. He uses Vedantic “discursive knowledge” to serve a “higher master” which seems to be his personal / group ideals. How much more radical universalist can one get?
He doesn’t pass up the chance to bring up presumed prior “judeo-christian” orientation to criticize the slight, as perceived by him, of the author to the “72 houris of Islam”. Dr Morales didn’t seem to be offering any value judgements on this, as presumed by this author.
“There is nothing strange if even a Hindu yogi should here find himself greeted by 72 exquisitely beautiful apsaras!” By saying this, he wrongly states that the “Soul” that reaches “heaven” is exclusively male! Or at least has a sex based attribute. And one thought that the “soul” was beyond “male” or “female”.
His “hindu universalism” is a great ideal, but ungrounded in the realities of the life of regular folks (Indics, abrahamists, & others). He completely ignores the predatory nature of Abrahamism, & brings in Christ, Mohammed etc into the discussion only to defend them using Indic ideas. He should know well that the majority of the powerful Islamic & Christian clergy have never bothered to defend any of the core Hindu ideals.
His Statement:
“God manifested not only as Rama and Krishna and Jesus, but also as matsya (fish) and kurma (tortoise) and narasimha (man-lion). “
Seems like a typical elitist “defense” of others at the expense of basic hindus & their practices. The Hindu idea of Jesus, however respectful, is never enough for Christians who consider him the Only Son of God, Saviour etc.
He is ignoring Power differentials between hindu & abrahamic culture. How can a relationship between two (obvious?) brothers work if I think he is my brother, & he thinks I’m an idiot, & in order to be considered his brother, I should agree to all he says? One could say I’m the intellectually superior Vedantin & will convince him eventually. But Here & now, he is about to take out a sword & threaten me as he has done so often in the past. If I’m dead or converted, what good is all that Vedantic intellect to me or the world ?
He keeps insisting that other’s “mountains” are same as ours, without justification. They don’t think so, & he doesn’t even try to prove so. Only says “Hindu Universalism says so”. How can one characterize something as same without discussing attributes, similar & different?
He does a creditable defence of the “mysticism” of Ramakrishna, since no one can really define a “mystic”. Except this mystic seems a confusing hybrid of Hindu Christian & Islamic thought, & difficult to accept as an “authentic voice” of hindus, though admirable for his saintly qualities, & for his apparently reverting back to Brahman after each encounter with abrahamic thought. It is the greatness of overall Indic / Hindu thought that we encourage saints, without overtly labeling them as “heretics” & persecuting them for dabbling in other often predatory “religions”. This by no means justifies the content & attitudes of these predatory religions. Hindus will respect Ramakrishna without having to compulsorily agree with his ideeas.
By saying for Ram Mohun that “He rejected both the Advaita of Shankara (the God of the Brahmos was a Formless God that created the world ex-nihilo) as well as the idolatry of Hindu polytheism.” He is using the same painful words that christian/muslim missionaries & allied people use, to attack our worship through murtis. Does this mean those are his words too? I don’t think so, but it is not clear. He clears this up somewhat later, but still, this makes one wonder, if “one of us” thinks we are “idolaters”, where do we go from here?
Keshub’s self image as Judas takes the cake. What a windfall for the missionaries! Substitute “hindu” for “Keshub” & Wow! Does the author fail to see the sociopolitical significance of this kinds of “hindu collossus” striding about the stage in Colonized India, relentlessly trying to fulfil Macaulay’s vision of a Christianized Anglicized Indian leader class?
Anyone hearing “It was a vision of the Vedic God, but Keshab covered It with the name of Christ. Perhaps the New Dispensation was his atonement for his terrible betrayal of the Son of God. ” cannot but think of these words as the words of a christianized hindu, if not an outright christian. “The Vedic God” & “Son of God” in the same sentence is confusing & misleading to say the least!
By saying “Clearly, the vision was Hindu, but in Keshab’s eyes it bore the name of Christ.” he demonstrates everything that defines the neo-hindu, & all the new age & abrahamic/western appropriations from hinduism which are then clothed into Christianity, or something similar.
These appropriations are ably helped by Ramakrishna’s statement when he tells Brahmos “he told them to take as much as they could and reject the rest.” What defence of Dharma is this ? He may be a saint, & my respects to him, but this didn’t sound like even an attempt to defend dharma. Oh well, we ordinary mortals do not understand mystics.
In accusing Dr Morales of “Not being content with his apostasy against Sri Ramakrishna,” where is your hindu tolerance dude, & did you not know that “apostasy” is strictly an Abrahamic thing, like “heathen/kaffir” etc…? Outrage does things to one, doesn’t it?
“Before one sits in judgment over Hindu saints, it is better to be immersed oneself in the living waters of Hinduism. Theories and papers are dry academics. ” Same goes for you dude, if you question somebody’s commitment or understanding to hinduism, there are plenty who will be doing the same to you.
This seemed a bit out of the parameters of the debate. Sort of “I’m a better hindu since I was born one, & have imbibed more just by living in India, and your understanding & empathy for hinduism is no match for me. Cuz I get to define what hinduism is. And of course I’d like to give the “same” empathy to other religions every time I even feel a stirring of empathy for my own”
The beautiful & deep exposition on “Eternal Dharma” seems again to fall back to defining other people’s religions as their “swa dharma” revealed to them by “God”. So far so good. The leap of thought taken in equating (presumably) their tendencies to kill/convert kaffirs/heathens to their “swadharma” seems a bit difficult to digest. How come the “free pass”? How is this tendency not judged as adharma. Hindus never have a problem with others carrying on with their “svadharma”, it is the “adharma” of abrahamics & others due to the “avidya” of confusing “sharing vidya” with forcible (mental & physical) conversion that is the problem. Who lives with the consequences?
Glaringly absent in the author’s analysis is any discussion of “kshatriya dharma” in this context. Would he rather that Arjuna take Duryodhana to be doing his “sva dharma” in doing all he did? Why did Krishna in the Gita urge Arjuna to fight? Granted this is a difficult thing to judge when someone, like duryodhana, becomes evil enough that he needs to be fought, but one cannot deny his, or his adharma’s existence. The idea that nobody’s notion of svadharma could ever possibly tinged by “avidya” & hence “adharma” is difficult to swallow.
Author’s fear of “abrahamization” of neo-hindus is well founded. However, no one, least of all Dr Morales seems to be advocating abandonment of the “svadharma” concept.
Is it so unreasonable & “unhindu” to discuss the idea that others’ notions of “svadharma” especially when they are no longer benign but threatening, could contain some “a-dharmic” components? And can we not expect to keep our “swabhimaan” when we have a dialogue with them about this, & ask that they cease & desist ? Or shall we be patiently waiting for them to come & “fix” us & our societies to be like them. Is that the dharmic way, then, according to the author?
And to the final punch lines:
“The answer to all these questions is rooted in one simple fact – the fact that we Hindus have forsaken our dharma. We are caught today in the gale of a storm and it tosses us about in all directions. The whirl of the storm is not outside us; it is within us, created by the vacuum that we have ourselves allowed to birth within our souls.
The malady that plagues Hinduism today is not due to the conquering Moghuls that came down from the North-West, nor is it due to the colonial British that came sailing across the seas, nor is it due to the glitter and kaleidoscope of the modern West; it is due to our own debilitating weakness and inadequacy.”
This above doesn’t quite say anything concrete, grandiloquent though it sounds. If he would like to keep Radical Universalism alive, how does he expect followers of his line of thinking not to lured by the numerous sophisticated & competitive “same” “svadharmas” of the others who do not subscribe to the very concept of svadharma ? At least, this defence of Radical Universalism is not going to help them uphold their dharma. As far as Abrahamic thought goes, our “Dharma(s)” are invalid, to be eliminated.
Also he has fallen neatly into the Indologists trap of treating “our own debilitating weakness and inadequacy” as an essential “hindu condition”. Yes, we have to take some blame surely. But one could very well make the case that our problem is mostly one of “avidya” of the outside world & it’s sense of it’s “dharma”. This is what Dr Morales seems to be addressing, by passing on a little “vidya” regarding the relationship of the predatory cultures of the world to us “hindus”. His awareness of the Judeo Christian, Greco Semitic culture probably gives him more insight into this issue. There has to be a sense of balance while apportioning blame, it is not Totally “ours” or Totally “theirs”.
Reading this author, however, I have this to conclude. No amount of words & concepts is going to help someone who firmly believes in his own essential weakness & then tries to get strong. How “vedantic” is that anyway?
________________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
Dear Sri Karigar,
I welcome your comments on my article ‘The Sword of Kali’. You express your feelings quite well. But I feel it would have been more appropriate if you had attempted to bring some philosophy into your comments. After all, Dr.Morales’ article was titled ‘A Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism’.
You say:
“For most of us practitioners, at the level of social ground reality, this is an Our theory vs Their Theory debate.”
So be it. But please remember that there are also Hindus who want to go deeper into the subterranean waters of Reality from where the fountains burst forth into the ‘social ground realities’ of this world.
Regards,
Chittaranjan
_______________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
Dear Shri Naik.
Thanks for the compliments on my expressing my feelings. One point, though. While my comments may not “qualify” as eligible for the label “philosophy”, they are a valid intellectual response in support of Dr Frank’s original article. Expressing ourselves in English as we are, and implicitly using western frameworks of thought, I very well know the inherent power a “philosopher” or “academic authority” has in being able to reduce my kind of response to “mere feelings”, the implication being that somehow “feelings” are not “philosophical” enough. Since in the Indic world view “pure reason” or “logic” ungoverned by intuition & “feelings” is an incomplete & potentially “adharmic”, I see no reason for Indic thinkers to aspire for western “philosophic” labels.
As I have expressed in my comments on your article, I have great admiration for the beautiful way in which you have explained the nuances & details of Indic philosophy, be it Mimamsa, Vedanta, Samkhya, etc. I am in the process of reading some more of your articles too. On a personal level, I have a lot to learn before I even get the depth of knowledge in the finer points like yourself, or many of the swamijis whose talks I have attended.
My issue is in line with Dr Morales & Rajiv Malhotra (Ref his Myth of Hindu Sameness on Sulekha). I find it difficult when “hindu Universalism” is used to uncritically give a free pass to what appear as “adharmic” tendencies in other “religions”. Why this shyness to criticize? And why consistent inclusion of alien & incompatible Abrahamic thought forcibly into the very core concepts of Indic thought (i.e. sameness of Allah & bhagwan, Bible & Gita, etc)? Especially when the reciprocation is absent, and our actions are viewed as capitulation at best, or blasphemy at worst. We can still continue respecting the individuals who practice these traditions. Why the visceral need, it seems, to down play their adharmic tendencies to avoid “hurting” them. We are right in criticizing our own social practices, etc, but why is hindu criticism ONLY self directed?
If concepts like Yoga & Advaita etc can take such dizzyingly ecstatic “anandmayi” flights of thought & experience, it is because the “common illiterate” and obviously “non-philosophic” (as per current academic criteria) un anglicized un islamized hindus clung to & preserved the underlying traditions in the face of concentrated & vicious attacks from other systems that sought to supplant them (even if well intentioned, i.e. to “save heathen souls” or “bring kaffirs equality & justice” ). Our embattled ancestors even found it within them to be “large hearted” to not paint these religions as “evil” or some such category.
For there lies the annamaya kosa (physical body) and Pranamaya kosa (prana, life force) that sustains the chitta, buddhi, & atma of Indic thought like Yoga & Vedanta. The simple temple goer, while (s)he or I may not totally understand all the sanskrit mantras, does know what it all stands for, for the most part. It is hurtful & painful to see “gurus” & “leaders” invalidate our daily lives from their lofty ivory tower perches. And I guess the only way to express hurt at one of our own is through “feelings”. We “commoners” expect some protection from our leaders & gurus in the face of times of “dharm sankat”. Is that wrong?
Lastly, I await your comments on “kshatriya dharma” in this context.
Again, not all of the above criticism is directed at your writings, and I thank you for having taken the trouble to read my response.
_______________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
Dear Shri Karigar,
It was not my intention to belittle the place that feelings have in our lives. And I am not entirely unsympathetic with your views. I do recognize that feelings, such as those you express, have their genesis in the injustice that we, as a nation, have suffered time and again through our history. But still, I believe there is a need for us to go more deeply into our own roots before we frame our responses to the situation that is presenting itself to us today. If only the educated Indians of the last two centuries had been more deeply rooted to their own philosophies and culture, it would hardly have been possible for the Indologists to foist upon us such inane theories as the AIT, or to employ half-baked linguistic theories to ‘dethrone’ Sanskrit from its position as the mother of all languages. The Astadhyayi of Panini and the Mahabhashya of Patanjali have their ground in language-philosophy and I do not believe that the modern academics working on linguistic research have an adequate idea of what this philosophy is.
When I had said (in my article, The Sword of Kali) that there is an essential sameness in all religions, I was certainly not referring to the institutionalised forms of Abrahamic religions. The reason is simple – they are hardly religions. The word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin ‘religaire’ which means ‘to re-connect’. Religion is essentially a re-connection to the ground of our being. But what goes in the name of religion in the institutions erected by the Church is more truly a thirst for power rather than a thirst to re-connect to the ground. True religion, be it Hinduism or Abrahamic religion, comes from the same perennial source that infuses and enlivens this universe, but the institutions built in the names of religions today have become more like war-machines built for assuaging the thirst for empire-building.
I believe that your opposition to the views I’ve presented in the article is based on your perception that Hindu Universalism is an open invitation to the (irreligious) missionary elements in other religions to come and ravish our dharma and culture. But this is not true. Universalism does not mean passive inaction in the face of adharma. It is certainly not a free pass for every conqueror to loot our country and ravish our history. The Universal Vision of Hinduism sees dharma as the meaning conferred on the world by the intrinsic meanings (yathartha) in Reality. To act in accordance with dharma, even if such an act were to be to fight a war, is in perfect consonance with Hindu Universalism. Rather than try to explain it all, I will reproduce here below three messages that I had recently posted in another discussion forum to present what I think Universalism means in the context of the attacks that have been (and are being) perpetrated on our ancient religion and culture. Forgive me if this message is turning out to be a bit long and winding, but it does culminate in the reply to the question you had asked about kshatriya dharma.
POST 1
Namaste to all Advaitins,
The true Advaita sadhaka is a sanyasi. But what is meant by sanyasa?
Sanyasa is not the giving up of the world. It is the giving up of everything that is centred on the ego. It is the giving up of the family because the whole world is family. It is the giving up of home because the entire universe is home. It is the giving up of the roof over the head because the open sky is the roof. It is the giving up of the bed one sleeps on because the bosom of the earth is the bed.
The sanyasi doesn’t have any work to do because all work is being done by God. The sanyasi’s action is attuned to the Will of God; his own will has disappeared in its attunement to the ineluctable Will of God. But everyone can’t be a sanyasi. One has first to be attuned.
One may not be a sannyasi, but one can begin here the process of attunement. One can gradually remove oneself from one’s own self-centredness and begin to center oneself in the larger space of the world. It is the way of our dharma, and the dictate of dharma has already been given to us: when the village is threatened one shall sacrifice the family for the village, when the country is threatened one shall sacrifice the village for the country, and when the God within one’s Self is threatened the country shall be sacrificed for God. That is the way to sanyasa. And that is why Swami Vivekananda said to his countrymen:
“If you seek your own salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of others that you must seek… and even if you have to go to hell in working for others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation… Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I will also sacrifice my life; you also, every one of you, should do the same. All these works and so forth are only a beginning. Believe me, from the shedding of our blood will arise gigantic, heroic workers and warriors of God who will revolutionise the whole world.”
Today Dr.Y… wrote to me and said that his blood boils when he sees what has happened to our country. I resonate strongly with him. He said that the Moghuls raped our women, and the British raped our country. I had said yesterday that the British had raped the history of our country. But do we know that the history of the British people itself has been raped? It was raped by the Church. If one reads ‘The Mists of Avalon’ one will see what I mean.
The religion of the British Isles was once rooted in the Great Spirit that imbues all of Nature. The people of the British Isles worshipped the Great Mother Goddess before the missionaries of the Church came to their land and ravished their native religion. A few days ago, I spoke of the religion of Christ and the religion of the Church. They are two different things. But still, we should not decry everything in the Church. It has within it the sacred teachings of Christ, and it has within it the spirit of the Church fathers, the blood of a thousand martyrs that sacrificed their lives for Christ; there is no doubt about it. But it has also within it the anti-Christ: the thirst for power. The thirst for power that erected the ‘second epiphany’ concocted by an Ecumenical Council that sat together to decide what the religion of the wanderer of Galilee should be. The nazar (vision) of the Nazarene was masked by the thirst for power that dwelt in the hearts of those that had appropriated to themselves the Kingdom.
When an adulteress was being stoned, Christ said, ‘let he that has not sinned cast the first stone’, and the people were silent. But through the ‘second epiphany’, the Church gave to itself the right to go out and cast stones on all the peoples of the earth for their sins – and to bring them back to the ‘true religion’: the religion not of Christ, but of the Church.
When one goes deeper into the backgrounds of William Jones and Max Mueller, one finds that there were strange dissonances in their hearts. One the one hand they were truly impressed with the Indian scriptures, and on the other hand, the religion of the Church was gnawing at their minds. Today we have the letters that these ‘great’ men of Europe wrote, and it is easy to see that both William Jones and Max Mueller were motivated by the ‘spirit of the Church’ to bring Christianity (read ‘religion of the Church’) to this ‘heathen’ land. Had it not been for Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda, the seeds planted by these Indologists would perhaps have succeeded in making this country into a Christian land. But there were more things working below the surface of this world than meets the mortal eye.
Advaita does not say that this world is an illusion. This world is not an illusion when Maya is showing it to be real. It is an illusion when Maya is showing it to be an illusion. The world is self-referencing to Maya – that is the nature of Maya. Brahman gives to us both these visions. When this world is not an illusion, it is a delusion to sit in non-action and say that it is all an illusion. Let the sanyasi say that; he has a right to say it. But those that live in the world must act, must shed tears, must shed their blood if need be, must cry in joy, and must suffer in their resistance to adharma. There is no alternative to it.
There is an old English song which goes something like this:
Hierusalem, my happy home,
When shall I come to thee,
When shall my sorrows have an end,
Thy joys when shall I see?
And we, the sons and daughters of Bharata, what about our happy home? When shall our sorrows come to an end? We were far away, too preoccupied with our self-centredness, when our country was burning. And our history was stolen from us; our holy land was ransacked; and even our minds were stolen from us by streams of many alien thought. We are hardly we any more.
Before we shall have our joys, we must learn to cry for this country. We must learn to allow our blood to boil for it. We must become ourselves. It is better to commit sati than to lie down passively and be raped.
With blood, sweat and tears
Chittaranjan
POST 2
Namaste Sri M…,
M’s comment: “Having the uninvidious job of being your fact checker I am glad that you are low on specifics in this post, however, addressing its generalities I think it is merely an accident of history as to who is the imperial bully boy because everyone thinks that their system is best, even the gentle Hindu.”
You would be doing a better service to truth if you were to ask the historians to give us the specifics regarding the construction of Indian history. In particular, I would like to know the specifics regarding the evidences used by them to derive the date of Chandragupta Maurya starting from the following four names mentioned in the ‘Indica’ of Megasthenes: Erranaboas, Palibothra, Ganges and Sandracottus. I believe I have sufficient reason to be indignant at the lack of evidence for the historical construct they came up with, and which they have the audacity to call ‘history’. I may be only a ‘native’ according to Sir William Jones, but I am not an idiot.
But you ask me for the specifics regarding what I said in my previous post – about the ‘spirit of the Church’ that gnawed at the minds of William Jones and Max Mueller. Here below are the specifics:
THE SPECIFICS THAT YOU ASKED FOR
A. WILLIAM JONES
From the Asiatic Researches Vol 1, Published 1979
First extract:
“As to the general extension of our pure faith in Hindustan there are at present many sad obstacles to it…. We may assure ourselves, that… Hindus will never be converted by any mission from the church of Rome, or from any other church; and the only human mode, perhaps, of causing so great a revolution, will be translate into Sanscrit…. Such chapters of the Prophets, particularly of Isiah, as are indisputably evangelical, together with one of the gospels, and a plain prefatory discourse, containing full evidence of the very distant ages, in which the predictions themselves, and the history of the Divine Person (Jesus) predicted, were severally made public; and then quietly to disperse the work among the well-educated natives.”
Question: Why does the historian want to disperse the chapters of the Bible among the well-educated natives – and quietly at that?
Second extract:
“It is my design, in this Essay, to point out such a resemblance between the popular worship of the old Greeks and Italians, and that of the Hindus.”
Question: Why does the historian have prior designs other than getting to the truth of the matter?
Third extract:
“Rama and Crishna, must now be introduced, and their several attributes distinctly explained. The first of them, I believe, was the Dionysus of the Greeks.”
Question: Why does the historian want to introduce Rama and Krishna in accordance with a prior design?
Fourth extract:
“The first poet of the Hindus was the great Valmic, and his Ramayan is an Epick Poem…. Comparison of the two poems (the Dionysus and the Ramayan) would prove Dionysus and Rama to have been the same person; and I incline to think, that he was Rama, the son of Cush, who might have established the first regular government in this part of Asia.”
Question 1: Had William Jones even bothered to read the Ramayana? Rama was the father of Kusha, not his son.
Question 2: And what kind of historical method is this that is produced by Jones to ‘prove’ that Rama and Dionysus were the same?
Fifth extract:
“This epitome of the first Indian History…. Though whimsically dressed up in the form of allegory, seem to prove a primeval tradition of this country of the universal deluge described by Moses, and fixes consequently the time when the genuine Hindu Chronology actually begins.”
Question: Why use the Bible to fix the Chronology of the Hindus? Why not use the chronology of the Hindu Scriptures to fix the chronology of the Bible? The Hindu scriptures have dates; the Bible does not. Does it have something to do with the Hindus being natives? Or does it have something to do with prior design?
B. MAX MUELLER
Let us now move over to Max Mueller. I don’t even have to ask questions here; Max Mueller’s words speak loud by themselves.
(All letters published in 1976 in USA)
First letter: Written to Chevalier Bunsen, Oxford, 1856
“India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece were at the time of St.Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports… For the good of this struggle I should like to lay down my life, or at least to lend my hand to bring about this struggle. Dhulip Singh is much at Court, and is evidently destined to play a political part in India.”
“I should like to live for ten years quite quietly and learn the language, try to make friends, and then see whether I was fit to take part in a work, by means of which the old mischief of Indian priestcraft could be overthrown and the way opened for the entrance of simple Christian teaching…. Whatever finds root in India soon overshadows the whole of Asia.”
Second Letter: Written to Dr.Milman, the Dean of St.Paul’s,
Bournemouth, 1867
“I have myself the strongest belief in the growth of Christianity in India. There is no country so ripe for Christianity as India, and yet the difficulties seem enormous.”
Third Letter: Written to his wife, Oxford, 1867
“..I feel convinced, though I shall not live to see it, that this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India, and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what their root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.”
Letter written to the Duke of Argyll, Oxford, 1868
“India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough…. A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character….. A new national literature will bring with it a new national life, and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of.”
“The ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”
ON INDIAN HISTORY
There has been an impression created by the Western Academy that Indians had no sense of history. This is not true. Indians have always had a way of recording history. It is the arrogance of the Indologists that they have not recognised it or willfully ignored it. But the European historians nevertheless used the history written by the Indians for their own purposes. Let me tell you a story. I was once trying to obtain the historical details of a place called Alibag, a small town in Western India, when I came across a Gazette on Colaba District (the district in which Alibag is located) published by the British Government when it was governing India. Do you know what I found in it? There is a small coastal village adjoining Alibag called ‘Chaul’. I had often passed through this village and had hardly given it a second glance. It is an inconspicuous place with a few temples and some mud houses and a population of perhaps not more than a thousand. Much to my surprise, the Gazette informed me that great naval battles had once been fought here between the French and the Portugese. This was quite a revelation, but what came next was even more so. Chaul was once a centre for trade, it said, and for more than a thousand years before the British came to India, it was a place where the Chinese traders used to come with silk and other goods, and then these goods were dispersed to various parts of India and the world. And next came an astonishing fact. The Gazette said that Chaul was once host to a great convention, and among the invitees to the convention was none other than Ptolemy.
Now the question that naturally comes to mind is: Where did the British Government get this information from if the ‘natives’ had no sense of history and had not kept any historical record? No, M…, the natives did have a history, and the history of a place was recorded fairly faithfully and it was called the ‘sthala purana’. The British Government collected these manuscripts, which were mostly written on leaves (bhoj patra), and they were stored in the East India Company and Asiatic Society Libraries. We do not know where the originals are today. Still, one occasionally comes across native sthala puranas even today when one visits distant places in our country. The stahala puranas usually begin with the divinities that are supposed to have visited the place, but they also contain accounts of dynasties, of the kings that built the towns or reconstructed the place and the major events that had happened there.
If you had been born in India as a Hindu, M…, you would perhaps know what I mean when I say that Indian history speaks everywhere that you go in this country. Indians had an historical sense. India has always had a historical record. It had maintained chronological dates, and some of it exists even today. The picture painted by Hegel and the Indologists that Indians never had a sense of history is not true. These are not simply my words; they are based on facts. Please read the following extract taken from the book “Hiouen-Thsang in India” by Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire and translated by Laura Ensor:
“And judging from the frequent quotations that Hiouen-Thsang makes from the Sanskrit Memoirs he made use of and under his eyes – for he often translates them word for word – it seems certain that these Memoirs bore little resemblance to the Mahavansa written in Pali, which Turnour has given us, nor the Rajataranjini, which we owe to Troyer. We must therefore conclude, that in the seventh century after Christ, at the time when the Chinese pilgrim travelled all over India, there were to be found in Sanskrit literature works which described more or less faithfully the history, statistics, and geography of the country; more of which have come down to us. This is doubtless a very unexpected and curious discovery, but it is no less a fact. As Hiouen-Thsang found writings of this kind all over India from the northern kingdom of Kutch down to Magadha, where he remained many years, in order thoroughly to study them, it is evident that these works were very numerous and well-known. The names Hiouen-Thsang gives them are various; sometimes he calls them Ancient Descriptions, sometimes Historical Memoirs, sometimes Collection of Annals and Royal Edicts; at other times Secular Histories, or simply Indian Books on such or such a country or Memoirs of India, etc. Hoiuen-Thsang did not confine himself to these indications, already very exact; he does not even confine himself to the quotations he gives from the Sanskrit books; he also tells us the source of these valuable books and their official origin. In a general description of India, which fills the best of the second book of the Si-yu-ki, and which may be considered an excellent introduction to all that follows, Hiouen-Thsang is careful to tell us, in a chapter devoted to literature, that `special functionaries were generally appointed in India to take down in writing any remarkable speech; and that others had the mission of writing down an account of any events that took place.’ Then he adds” The collection of annals and royal edicts is called Nilaflta. Good and evil are both recorded, as well as calamities or happy omens.’”
“It is therefore, certain that India possessed in the days of hiouen-Thsang, and even long before his time, a long number of historical works, full of details, analogous in a certain measure to those which, since the famous days of Greece, have continued to be drawn up by all the nations of civilised Europe. It must be admitted, while recognising the value of these annals, that judging even from Hiouen-Thsang’s quotations, the natives of India had a peculiar method of understanding and writing history. India has never had a Herodotus, a Thucydides, a Polybius, a Titus-Livy, a Tacitus, or a Machiavelli It had, however, its original historians, whoever they may have been; and this fact can no longer be denied. It would, therefore, seem that it is a hasty assertion to say that Indian genius had no knowledge of history; and that in its constant preoccupation about the absolute and infinite, it had never thought of noting the lapse of time, nor of recording in any lasting manner the events that were taking place. India felt the need like the rest of humanity, and tried to satisfy it in the best way it could; and Hiouen-Thsang’s testimony, although it stands almost alone, is perfectly undeniable on this subject. His proofs are too constantly repeated, and he relies on too many different authorities, for his credibility to be doubted for an instant.”
Barthelomy says that Hiouen-Thsang’s testimony stands almost alone today. Yes, they are alone today because most of the manuscripts were collected by the British to be stored in the Libraries. Do they still exist today? I don’t know. But one thing you may do is ask any Hindu in this group, and they will tell you that in India almost every family used to preserve its history. These histories may have been written on bhoj-patras or on copper plates, but they were there and they were preserved for centuries. Indians had a sense of history. The Indologists had a sense of arrogance.
M’s comment: “As a native of a post-imperial country (Ireland) I can say that it is absolutely pointless to dwell on the past, it draws energy away from the present moment where our present problems beset us.”
The academy is now cooking for the future based on the distorted history that it had cooked in the past. Shall we be mute spectators to it all?
M’s comment: “Such ranting has been the strategy of right wing fascist groups who rave about unfinished historical business and use the uncertainty and insecurity of modern times to further their own agenda. As the Americans say: Get over it!
It suits the Americans to say it. It does not suit the Indian to say it. Labeling an effort to find the truth as ‘right wing fascist agenda’ does not help to establish what the truth is. But the seeker of truth must be prepared to carry the burden of being labeled. Labeling is infact the favourite weapon that the American Academy uses against those who question its authority. 🙂
Warm regards,
Chittaranjan
POST 3
Namaste R…, K.., R.., M..,
The discussion on this topic has been very interesting. R…. has succinctly pointed out the injustice that is happening even today in our country. And M…. has pointed out how the wounds caused by history, and especially our perceptions of these wounds, can easily lead to things like fascist agendas. There is truth in it, for Hitler is its proof. I would say that when past wounds are opened up they have the potential to cause serious derailments in the human psyche – we have merely to look at the incidents of terrorism that are taking place in the name of religion to see the havoc it is causing. So, what is the way out?
I believe the way out is given by dharma. A wound is not healed by hate. Hate is itself a wound. To act according to dharma is not to act with hate, but to act rightly. It is to love the Moghuls and the British and the members of the Church even as we refuse to bow down to anything that goes against our dharma. Dharma is rightful action alone, disassociated from all emotions, and it has no conflict with the love that one bears towards all people. Harishchandra loved his wife and yet he beheaded her for the sake of rightful action. Dharma forbids us to rob our neighbours. It also forbids us to be passive when the neighbour comes to sack our house and wife and children.
Whether the injustices of the past are corrected or not is not left to us, but to act according to dharma is certainly in our hands. If we do not act according to dharma, it is not merely to the detriment of our selves, but also to the detriment of our country. Our country will be taken care of once we allow ourselves to be governed by the Way of Dharma.
Warm regards,
Chittaranjan
_______________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
I read you response with interest, and was suitably impressed by your rejoinders to “M”. Hats off (or “pagdi/topi off..) for the Indian history lesson to “M” (007’s boss..? ) The idea of Sthala Purana is so in keeping with Indic traditions, I’d love to get more information & reference regds the same. I’m sure other Sulekha readers would too. Thanks for the additional “vidya”.
Your statement “When I had said (in my article, The Sword of Kali) that there is an essential sameness in all religions, I was certainly not referring to the institutionalised forms of Abrahamic religions. The reason is simple – they are hardly religions.” brings into focus the real underlying issue, which is the definition of the word “religion”.
Until the definition acquires attributes capable of encompassing Sanatana Dharma, we have to be content with the default description, & the onus is on us to explain our distinctiveness vis a vis the other “religions”.
Being stuck with the term “religion”, the least we can do is to explain that ours is a completely different “religion”, sharing precious little in structure, or orientation, or worldview, with the others apart from the generic “search for happiness” & “search for how to be Good & do Good”, “living a good life” and other desirable characteristics that all humans profess to look for.
Saying “we are same as you” in one fell swoop prompts the question “then why not be us ?” (“We” being the non prosyletizing “religions” & “them” being people & organizations/ideologies that are aggressively courting members, religious, or those peddling “westernized” or “modernized” or “secularized” labels.)
From the point of view of Indic thought, the prevailing understanding of the world is overwhelmingly based with reference to Christianity. While Judaism (the mother form ?? or the revision 1 to Christianity’s revision 2 ??) and Islam (the brother claimant to the “true throne” form ?? or the revision 3 form) at least share common Abrahamic origins, Sanatana Dharma, along with other “pagan” systems cannot and should not be defined this way.
So is it not incumbent upon us, both as practitioners, and especially as leaders/representatives to clearly spell out this fact in every important discourse? So while I applaud your above statement, I find this clarity missing in your “Sword..” article. And that article will probably carry a lot more influence than your posts here will ever do.
We are trying to “go more deeply into our own roots” as you would approve of, but have no support from the “pillars of society” i.e. the school system (US, Indian, or elsewhere. Note the “textbook X-washing” controversies in both places when Indians try to get fair treatment equivalent to other “religions”), the prevailing social discourse, (again, both in English & English educated privileged Indians like us), and the “secular public space” (dominated by western constructs of humanity, where our assertions of our uniquely different & relevant views are dismissively labeled “hindutva” “weird” or worse.)
Unfortunately, when we look at out “insider gurus” for knowledge, aside from the very few articulate organizations like Chinmaya Mission & Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, most are awash with the “sameness preaching”. So , as Dr Morales said, “What’s a boy to do?” Few of us “boys” have the luxury, or the ability to “go deeply into our roots” as you seem to have done, or as countless people like myself are trying to do. Most of us accept “received wisdom” based on positive branding of the particular source by our “social ground realities”. So if a “respected” swamiji from “my own matha” says “all religions are same. Tathastu” it has a deep & profound effect on me, & I’m rendered incapable of contextualizing Krishna’s message to Arjuna in the Gita as a call to “kshatriya dharma”, and am numbed into unresponsiveness when I see a-dharma. I have succesfully learned the art of “self-criticism” and “loving my brother” and excusing his aggressive adharmic ways.
Just as “christian theology is IMPLICIT in “regular” discourse of “Common folk in English”, shouldn’t the Indic worldview be implicit in our gurus’ words? Why expect Non-sanatanis to even know, let alone sympathize with, what you & I sanatanis mean by”religion”? Why the hesitancy in spelling this out?
I’d say simple messages like that of Dr Morales & Rajiv Malhotra (and many other “academically un-blessed” but sincere students of the whole dharma vs a-dharma debate) resonate deeply, since the attempt seems to untie our mentally blocked “hands” that have been tied behind our backs. They seem to be well aware of most of the stark differences between Indic/East Asian & Abrahamic thought, and definitely NOT advocating some kind of quasi-abrahamization of our tolerant ethos, nor any mental or physical violence on others. What they are doing is to give us Indic frameworks to understand Sanatana Dharma’s place in today’s geopolitical/social ground reality.
Your “sword…” article, and most of the Indian Swami / gurus may offer us the “luxury” of experiencing the greatness of Vedantic thought during “pravachanas” & other discourses, and even implementing some ideas in our “strictly personal” lives. What they don’t offer is how to understand & interpret our social realities, especially vis a vis “competing truth claims”. They leave it to the average “hindu” to fumble for it themselves.
Again, “what’s a poor boy to do?” The “poor boy” either gets more & more confused, and lacking some clear & cogent explanations about why sanatana dharma needs to be preserved, is either arguing “sameness” which seems the politically correct thing to do, or jumps the “hindutva” political bandwagon, or worse still, gives up on it entirely. We all know there are highly motivated (though agyaani) people waiting to “save their souls” or “uplift the kaffirs” and the unknowing & unmotivated are the ideal “sheep” for these “shepherds.
Your statement “Dharma forbids us to rob our neighbours. It also forbids us to be passive when the neighbour comes to sack our house and wife and children.” goes well with my understanding of dharma. What about the analogy with Cultural Genocide? While that seems like an extreme term, and I hope it is, we do know that diversity if all forms of life, & thought is being lost through relentless homogenization in the name of “progress”. Again Dr Morales & Rajiv etc are trying, in my opinion, to educate us so we learn to think in Indic/dharmic terms, instead of in Euro-Greco-Semitic trems like “morality” “ethics” “lawful” “secular” etc, which emphatically do not capture the flavor of the sanskrit word “dharma” and are also (IMHO) immature concepts for the long term.
Regarding embracing people of “other faiths” sanatani hindus have & will continue to do so, but it seems a bit a-dharmic to excuse the a-dharmic tendencies apparently canonized in the guiding scriptures that make them so agressive. Dr Morales’ analogy of the “abrahamic horseman and the sanatani on the river bank” is a bit “politically incorrect” but can we, with a long history of knowing that some of this behaviour supposedly falls under their “sacred duty” ignore those tendencies?
Again, I’m impressed with specific instances where you give good defence against misinterpretations of Indic culture in your posts here. My points of criticism of the “Sword..” article still stand, I think. The underlying impression in that article is of good “philosophical understanding“, but also of “sameness in religions exists, it is good“, & of defence of ideas incompatible with Indic thought. While it probably does not ruffle feathers, and gains you admirers (myself somewhat included) it does not give any resonant ideas out of the “dharm sankat” sanatanis find ourselves here & now. Dr Morales article, for all its presumable lack of nuances & subtlety, still resonates.
Again, “chote muuh badi baat” but such is the “equalizing effect” of the web. I again thank you for engaging in this dialogue/conversation. I’m learning…
_______________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
Dear Shri Chittaranjan,
Quite relevant to this discussion is the website “swamiji.com” where your “sword…” article is posted. Most of it is very well put together. However, I’d hesitate to recommend it to people, and let me explain why. After reading your article & getting interested , I naturally gravitated to the explanations on the Hows & Whys of Yoga. Then I went to the “What is Yoga” section & found some descriptions, and found the question “Is Yoga a religion?” So far so good.
It is when I start reading the answers to this question that I start feeling uncomfortable & also sense the un-fragrance, if you will, of the “hindu-shame” that exists among us. The site essentially says, & discusses in detail that “Yoga is NOT a Religion”. While knowing that “Yoga is NOT a Religion” may be edifying for a non-sanatani “Westerner”, or any one who thinks in terms of “Religion” being Christianity or Islam etc with their Rigid & Inflexible Canons, it does Sanatana Dharma injustice by willy nilly applying this implicit definition of Religion.
And there is more. One link sends one to the website of the YogaJournal and an article ( http://www.yogajournal.com/views/283_1.cfm ) by By Phil Catalfo which starts
“At the closing ceremony of the “Yoga into the 21st Century” conference in New York City in September of 2000, T.K.V. Desikachar offered some thought-provoking comments on the subject of the relationship between hatha yoga and religion. “Yoga was rejected by Hinduism,” he noted, “because yoga would not insist that God exists. It didn’t say there was no God but just wouldn’t insist there was.” And, he added, there was an important lesson for yogis inherent in this schism: “Yoga is not a religion and should not [affiliate] with any religion.”
It goes on to the author trying to contextualize the issue & since he appears to have some sympathy & knowledge of our traditions, he tries to show that Patanjali’s YogaSutras are part of “hindu” scriptures, and goes on to say “the various schools of yoga could be considered “sects” of a larger quasi-religion.”
At issue here, to me, is “luminaries” such as Desikachar standing up in a presumably important forum and stating as a cornerstone, his idea “Yoga was rejected by Hinduism”. If this leaves me stunned, I’m sure I am not in a minority of sanatani “hindus”. While we are all entitled to our own variations on the definition of hinduism, how can we be so irresponsible to our culture to state something like this? Is not the Bhagvad Geeta an exposition of the different Yogas, from Bhakti, Jnan, Karm, Raja, etc..? Of course, some would like to question the “hindus” claim to the Gita too?! How does this place “hinduism” in impressionable minds (both western & westernized) ? What kind of “hinduism” is that which cannot & will not use the structure of Yoga to explain & practice concepts of Karma, Bhakti, Jnana, Dhyana…..
I can only say that these people definitely are not speaking to me, or to the billion or so sanatani Hindus. In their anxiety to run away from the “negative brand” of “religion” in general and also with an inability to articulate the positives of Sanatani “hinduism”, they are attempting to cut up the beautiful “superstructure” of our “religion” and offer it to “consumers” in marketable pieces. Their “sameness” or “non-religiousness” while using / appropriating the core concepts of Sanatana Dharma appears to be just a low minded commercial ploy, with disregard to the damage they are doing to our ancient institutions.
_______________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
Refer to your post dated Feb 9, 2005:
I may not be able to continue with this discussion much longer as I have another preoccupation keeping me busy at present, but I would like to leave behind some words in response to your comments. I would also like to express my gratitude to you for giving me an opportunity to clarify certain points in my article, and I implore you not to take my remarks as being directed at you personally.
Your comment: Your statement “When I had said (in my article, The Sword of Kali) that there is an essential sameness in all religions, I was certainly not referring to the institutionalised forms of Abrahamic religions. The reason is simple – they are hardly religions.” brings into focus the real underlying issue, which is the definition of the word “religion”.
The definition of a word does not give to it a new meaning, but clarifies the meaning by defining its pervasion. The word ‘religion’, as I said earlier, comes from the Latin word ‘religaire’ which means to ‘reconnect’. The underlying meaning is that we have come from God and that religion is the way to reconnect to God. The Sanskrit word ‘dharma’ is rooted in Rtam, the yathartha (meaning as it is) in Brahman. In Advaita Vedanta, the disconnection of the self from Brahman is an illusion due to avidya, which is essentially a loss of meanings in the self. It is called adhyasa, the conflation of one thing with another, and presents the illusion that the self is separated from Brahman. When one dispossesses oneself of avidya, the illusion of separation is gone, and one is ‘reconnected’ to Brahman. The Way of ‘reconnection’ is dharma. Sanatana Dharma is the Eternal and Universal Dharma in which abides all the vishesha dharmas of the world.
It would be appropriate for us, in the context of word-definitions, to be guided by the nature of words as given by Vedic religion rather than by the linguistic theories of the Western academies. In Indian philosophy, a word is said to be eternal. Indian philosophy moreover recognises that there is no intermediate thing called ‘sense’ between a word and its object. The word and its object are united, and the word is capable of revealing the nature of reality when its nature is understood. I present here below an extract from Patanjali’s Mahabhashya (on Panini’s Astadhyayi) relating to an explanation of a Rig Veda verse on words and speech:
“There are others who though perceiving cannot see speech; others again though listening cannot hear it. There are others again to whom she reveals herself as a well-dressed wife desiring her husband would do.” (Rg Veda. 10.71.4)
And Patanjali comments as follows:
“‘And others’. There is again some one who though perceiving cannot see speech and there is again some one who though hearing cannot hear her. This half-rk-verse speaks about the ignorant.”
“‘Again to him, reveals herself’. Reveals the body. ‘Like a wife well-dressed desiring her husband’ i.e., just as the wife well-dressed and desiring the husband reveals her own body, so to one who knows speech (she i.e., speech) reveals her own self. Grammar should be studied so that the speech may reveal herself to us.”
Commenting on this, the commentator Nagesa says:
“All the four kinds of words such as nouns, verbs, etc., have four stages – the para, pasyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari. Of these the para represents the Brahman stage of words. The pasyanti is that stage of words in which it is in the form of incipient ideation, and therefore has not the capacity of being used as language. The madhyama is the stage wherein the effort of constructive word-formation is being noticed in the mind and vaikhari is that when it attains the audible stage. Of the four classes of words, each one has these four stages. Of these the first three remain in the darkness of ignorance for the ordinary man. The grammarians, however, by virtue of their wisdom of the sastras can break open the darkness of ignorance and know the word in all its stages. The ordinary man merely speaks. He does not know the mystery of speech or its origins. Grammar is therefore to be studied for attaining such wisdom as has been specified above. The para stage of speech has been declared by Bhartrahari as being like internal eternal Light and by its true intuition a man attains salvation.”
Your comment: Saying “we are same as you” in one fell swoop prompts the question “then why not be us?” …….. So if a “respected” swamiji from “my own matha” says “all religions are same. Tathastu” it has a deep & profound effect on me, & I’m rendered incapable of contextualizing Krishna’s message to Arjuna in the Gita as a call to “kshatriya dharma”, and am numbed into unresponsiveness when I see a-dharma
So, what is the solution to the problem? Replace the Swamiji who says that “all religions are the same” with Dr. Morales who says that “every religion is a different mountain”? But what does our Sanatana Dharma say about it? Should we be seeking the comfort of saying that philosophy is too difficult to understand or that we don’t have the time to go deeper into its study? And what about the words that our saints like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa say about it? Should we be saying, even without having studied our philosophies deeply, that Sri Ramakrishna wasn’t familiar with the truth of Sanatana Dharma? Forgive me, but it is these kind of responses from within our own fold which causes dharma-sankat in me as much as does the injustice perpetrated on us from outside.
I believe that Dr. Morales has chosen a wrong topic here for public discussion. The problem of sameness and difference is the most fundamental of all problems of philosophy, one which is so abstruse that it can never be resolved in a public forum. It is the end of philosophy because the confusion of sameness and difference is the very cauldron of perplexity that is at the root of the human predicament. In his preamble to the Brahman Sutra Bhashya, Sri Shankaracharya explains how adhyasa is the cause of samsara. In his exposition of the nature of adhyasa, he concludes, after an examination of various theories of error, that it is the conflation of sameness and difference, or the superimposition of one thing on another, that is at the root of samsara. Dr. Morales’ superficial treatment of the sameness and difference of religions is not free of this conflation, and any recommendation of human action based on such superficial treatment is liable to sow the seeds of dangerous fruits to come in the future. It is ironic that Dr. Morales, who is striving to say that each religion is a different mountain, should be deliquescing into a position whereby he ends up saying that Hindus should have the same attitude as the Abrahamic religions in so far as the attitude to other religions (that they are different mountains) are concerned!
Let me also clarify here that I have no issue with the other essays of Dr. Morales. I think Dr. Morales is one of those who are doing much good work to remove the many misconceptions that we Hindus have been harbouring about our own religion. But this is one essay where he has foundered, and a mistake is a mistake no matter how well-meaning the author may have been in writing it.
Your comment: While it probably does not ruffle feathers, and gains you admirers (myself somewhat included) it does not give any resonant ideas out of the “dharm sankat” sanatanis find ourselves here & now. Dr Morales article, for all its presumable lack of nuances & subtlety, still resonates.
Was there not the resonance of some idea in the minds of the soldiers of Islam that went out to conquer and kill the infidels?
Was there not the resonance of some idea in the minds of the Christian soldiers that went out on the crusades, or the missionaries that went out to convert the lost souls of heathen lands?
Merely finding resonance with some idea is not a sufficient ground for being invoked into action. We, as Hindus, need to respond to the ‘dharma sankat’ in our hearts in accordance with the Way of Sanatana Dharma. Ours is the only religion in the world with a scripture that is apaurusheya – free of the colourations of the masks of personae. Ours is the only religion in the world that uses reason as a supplementary arm (upanga) of the scripture. It does not behove us to respond to the anguish within us, or to the injustice perpetrated on us, in the same manner as the Abrahamic religions do. It is not our dharma to do so.
Also, it was not my aim, in writing the reply to Dr. Morales’ article, to find resonance in the hearts of Hindus. The truth is more important than finding resonance. The varnashrama system that I wrote about is very unlikely to find resonance in the hearts of contemporary Hindus who are far more resonant with the idea that the varnashrama system is an evil that should be abolished from the face of the earth. No, finding resonance was not my aim. I am not a Hindu teacher, and I am not in need of followers. I am a learner even as you are. I am just one of the millions of Hindus that Dr. Morales addressed in his article wherein he claimed that the article was meant to be a definitive statement on the issue. I am of the firm conviction that Dr. Morales is mistaken, and that his arguments are fallacious, and that what he recommends as a solution to the problem is not the way of our dharma. If mine should be the solitary voice to say it today, so be it.
_______________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
Dear Sri Chittaranjan,
| Once again, you didn’t fail to impress me with your knowledge. Your excerpts of Patanjali & Nagesa’s commentaries on Patanjali’s “ashtadhyayi” were well chosen indeed. What a pity that these are more or less completely unknown, & thus ignored as a frame of reference in the “religions” discussions in the media & amongst most common people. Western Universities & Higher educational institutions, on the other hand, have been studying our Sanskrit literature deeply for years, and Sanskrit Knowledge is the “mostly unacknowledged” mother of so many new western sciences, such a “Jungian Psychology”, all the way to “Sassurian Linguistics” etc. (If you haven’t already done so, I implore you to read some of Rajiv Malhotra’s writings in Sulekha on “hinduism” unenviable mis-understod & undeserved position in today’s geo politics.Adhyatmic knowledge needs to be combined with geopolitical awareness) While you are to be “saluted” in using these frameworks in this discussion, it does not invalidate my point that most of the participants, & the “common public” have the prevailing definition of “religion” in mind, unless other wise stated. Discussions & communication, by definition, has to be based on commmonly agreed terminology, and anything else has to be clearly explained, such as “alternative” or “our” meaning of words like “religion”. Hence “all religions are same” as commonly understood needs a “philosophic” khandana (or debunking if you will). Yes the “different mountains” argument appears relevant. The way things stand, ‘Radical Universalism’ seems to say “Only one mountain. & here’s what is it is. Brahman/Moksha. & let’s all climb together, helping each other“. Meanwhile, other “institutionalised forms of Abrahamic religions” also say “Only one mountain Allah/God/Westernization, & I just defined it for you“. The difference is that anyone can see the definitions do not match, at least in key respects (ie. their ideas about “ours is the last prophet”, “infinite distance between man & divinity/Godhead”, “The Angry Male God’s counterpart is the Evil Satan/Shaitan, & death & destruction to him” “God put man as “lord” of earth and the animals & nature for him to enjoy”,and many more) They moreover, say, “Your mountain is a figment of your imagination, so now climb this one, & I will see to it with all the force at my command that you do.” I respect and share you desire that people understand “religion” as “spirituality” but am not optimistic that it is about to happen without massive intellectual inputs from practising Sanatan Dharmics, & others interested in spiritual growth free of dogma. You say in your post “Was there not the resonance of some idea in the minds of the soldiers of Islam that went out to conquer and kill the infidels? Was there not the resonance of some idea in the minds of the Christian soldiers that went out on the crusades, or the missionaries that went out to convert the lost souls of heathen lands? Merely finding resonance with some idea is not a sufficient ground for being invoked into action.” Resonance may not be sufficient in itself, certainly, but it is a necessary condition. Without an idea resonating with me, I will just ignore it. As we see, “some ideas” as you put it, did resonate with a vengeance, and prompted these”soldiers” into actions of the worst kind. Those ideas really are what is at issue here. In case I wasn’t clear enough earlier, there is absolutely no way that we could consider these ideas “dharmic” in any sense of the word. This is another key point that I keep insisting we don’t ignore. Understanding those ideas with clarity is extremely important. The response, I agree with you, has to be dharmic, (for a good one,with inputs from other revered traditional swamis, etc, ref http://www.vivekanandagospel.org/AwakeArise.pdf ) & we’d be equally adharmic if we did, as you imply when you say “It does not behove us to respond to the anguish within us, or to the injustice perpetrated on us, in the same manner as the Abrahamic religions do. It is not our dharma to do so.” The best option I think is to develop a “shastra” to compile our understanding of these Abrahamic tendencies & share also with them both our self-knowledge, & knowledge of them according to us. They may realise their avidya/agyaan, and realize the “adharmic tendencies” inherent in this type of behavior. Essentially engagement in intellectual debates, with our position clear in our minds.Dr Morales writings appear in this vein to me. Yes I empathize with you sense of anguish at criticism of Sri Ramakrishna, whom you appear to revere. But intellectual criticism is at the heart of debate, and I have already shared my discomfort with some of your descriptions in my first post. I respect Sri Ramakrishna for giving us Swami Vivekananda, and will leave it at that. As I said earlier, Hindu Saints are not shakled with conventional descriptions , anyway. One core strength of our Indic dharmic practices is our sense of preserving a separation between “shruti” & “smriti”. My take on the issue of “neo-hinduism” is that to a large extent it was a “smriti” of 19th century colonized India, and its time may be over. Smriti by nature, being tied to time, place, & context, is limited, and will be replaced by fresh & appropriate smriti. All smriti of course, according to “classical Hinsuism” should be based on shruti. It takes a lot of effort by a lot of individuals over a long period of time to develop fresh smriti. What we see around us (I believe) are the stirrings of the beginning of new smriti, based on the “Developments” in the past 1-2 centuries. Let the events unfold as they may. All we can do is some positive “karma” based on our “viveka” & “Jnana”. I respect your commitment to accumulating & spreading our traditional “vidya” in this regard. I hope all the education wasn’t totally one way… 🙂 ) Namaskaar |
__________________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
I had been intending to reply to your post for many days, but was unable to do it due to a rather busy schedule. To begin with, let me say that I appreciate your open mindedness and reasonable attitude to the discussion. While I certainly respect your right to hold your own opinions, still, I would like to address a few points raised by you in your post because they are important to the topic we are discussing. If you find that my words are a bit strong or spirited, let me assure you that it is not meant for you personally, but it is because I feel strongly about these issues.
On Resonance
It was not resonance per se that I was opposing, but the inclination to act based on the mere resonance with an idea when the idea itself had not been sufficiently examined for its truth and efficacy. Resonance is required surely, but we need to also consider that the situation we are placed in today makes it unwise for us to determine our actions based merely on resonance. The reasons for this are historical. As a people, we have been severed from our roots by an education system that has masked the sublime ideas of Sanatana Dharma under the verbiage of an alien culture, so much so that we have become impervious to the living waters of our own dharma. In this situation, we are susceptible to find resonance with ideas that may only be posturing in the guise of our dharma. The urgent need of the day is to recover the meanings of our philosophies and way of life so that we can find resonance once again with the true and perennial ideas of Sanatana Dharma.
On commonly understood terms
You say that our discussions should be based on a framework of commonly understood definitions.
While you are to be “saluted” in using these frameworks in this discussion, it does not invalidate my point that most of the participants, & the “common public” have the prevailing definition of “religion” in mind, unless other wise stated. Discussions & communication, by definition, has to be based on commonly agreed terminology, and anything else has to be clearly explained, such as “alternative” or “our” meaning of words like “religion”.
But unless commonly understood terms are first fleshed out for their meanings, the discussion is unlikely to be meaningful, and can even be dangerous. Hitler was led by the commonly understood meanings of terms like ‘Aryan’, ‘Overman’ and ‘Will to Power’ to exterminating an entire race of people. Commonly understood terms often lack clarity, especially when these terms relate to religion and philosophy. Should we be venturing into discussions without clarity of meanings? What could it possibly lead to other than to a situation of the blind leading the blind? Have we not had enough strife in this world because of misunderstood meanings and faulty communication?
Meanwhile, other “institutionalised forms of Abrahamic religions” also say “Only one mountain Allah / God / Westernization, & I just defined it for you“. The difference is that anyone can see the definitions do not match, at least in key respects (ie. their ideas about “ours is the last prophet”, “infinite distance between man & divinity/Godhead”, “The Angry Male God’s counterpart is the Evil Satan/Shaitan, & death & destruction to him” “God put man as “lord” of earth and the animals & nature for him to enjoy”,and many more)
There is an ‘optical illusion’ in this argument. When the Abrahamic religions negate the God of the other religions, they have God itself as the object (the locus) of negation. In other words, even though the definitions of God in different religions may not match, still, they are all speaking about the same thing – God. And even though one religion may not agree with another religion regarding the nature of God, or the means for attaining God, the fact remains that the object about which they are in disagreement is none other than God. So, the negation is not a negation of the object itself in so far as each religion asserts its own view about the true nature of the object they are negating in the other religion, but a negation of the nature attributed to the same object by the other religion. That is the reason why the denotative name, God, remains the same even in their denial. For the object of contention, God, is already identified, in its substantive, by each religion as the object of the name ‘God’ having the essential characteristics of life and creatorship of the universe. In all such cases, where the denotative name is already given and remains the same, it is always the truth of the object’s nature that is negated by the negation. For example, take these two sentences. ‘The sky is blue.’ ‘No, the sky is colourless.’ Here it is not the sky itself that is being negated, but the attribute blue as being true to the nature of the object, sky. The denotative name ‘sky’ remains the same because it is the object about which its true nature is being debated. Even if one’s conception of the sky were to be erroneous, it would still remain the same object spoken about because it persists even in the erroneous cognition as the same object denoted by the same name. Likewise, the negation that each religion brings to bear against the God of the other religions is, logically, about the nature of the same thing, God, and it is childish to say ‘my God is true, yours is not true’ because both ‘my God’ and ‘your God’ are the same God whose nature as attributed by the other religion is being negated. In all such negations, there is the sameness of the object underlying the attributive differences seen or conceived by each religion. The greatness of Hinduism is that its vision of God goes beyond attributive differences to the underlying Substance that subsumes all these differences. To mistake these differences in attributes as pertaining to a difference in the substance is to fall into the trap of the ‘white horse is not a horse’ fallacy.
The ‘white horse is not a horse’ argument comes from the sophists of the Chinese School of Names. Their argument went something like this: ‘white’ and ‘horse’ are different things. Again, a ‘white horse’ is a different thing than the thing called ‘white’ and the thing called ‘horse’. Therefore a white horse is not a horse. The different-mountains argument is the ‘white horse is not a horse’ argument in a different guise. Actually I am surprised that Dr. Morales should have slipped into the different-mountains argument because he is a Visistadvaitin, and the philosophy of Visistadvaita clearly demonstrates how the sameness of the thing persists amidst the differences of attributes that may be manifested in it. I shall quote here an extract from the Sri Bhashya of Sri Ramanujacharya to illustrate this:
“It may, however, be objected that if these terms denote attributes, and since they are different, it would lead to a differentiation of their object and hence there will not be oneness of the object. In other words, due to difference in these attributes, we will have a plurality of Brahmans. This argument, however, has no force in it, for grammarians define that in a co-ordination terms connoting different qualities are placed in apposition to refer to one object – the very aim of co-ordination is to show that one object is qualified by different attributes.” (S.B.I.i.1)
It is unfortunate that Dr. Morales chooses to argue not from within the praxis of Vedic tradition, but from a Western framework of logic that lacks the precise formalism and rigour of the Indian Nyaya system. It is not surprising therefore that he should be led to the Abrahamic idea of different religions being different mountains. And in trying to reiterate this (Abrahamic) idea again and again, he even ends up belittling Hinduism (though he may not be realising it). I reproduce below the following words from his article:
“Sanatana Dharma, authentic Hinduism, is a religion that is just as unique, valuable and integral a religion as any other major religion on earth, with its own beliefs, traditions, advanced system of ethics, meaningful rituals, philosophy and theology.”
To me, these words sound like an apology, as if Dr Morales is pleading for Hinduism to be recognised as another religion of the world. Notice the words – as unique, as valuable and as integral. Is this all that Dr. Morales finds in Hinduism – another religion – another mountain – just as unique as the others? I am sorry; I reject this thesis completely. It completely misses the uniqueness of Hinduism just as someone who says, “the Unified-Field-Theory is just another theory as unique as the others“, would be completely missing the uniqueness of the Unified-Field-Theory. Hinduism’s uniqueness is that it is not just another religion; it is The Perennial Religion. The name ‘Sanatana Dharma’ means that. And there is no other religion in the world that has this name. There is no other religion that is as rich in spirituality and philosophy as Hinduism is, there is no other religion that has attained such lofty heights of philosophy as Hinduism has, there is no other religion that has pursued truth with such single-minded devotion as Hinduism has, there is no other religion that stands on the bedrock of rationality as Hinduism does, there is no other religion that has such wealth of scriptures and literature as Hinduism has, there is no other religion that has the immense panoramic scope and breadth that Hinduism has, and there is no other religion that is like a Light of Effulgence on earth, perennially watered by the lives of great sages and saints that do not merely speak religion but literally live religion. Hinduism is not just another religion: it is the Universal and Perennial Religion. And the Universal Vision of Hinduism stands on logic, and it is a logic that does not deny to me the capacity to recognise the unparalleled greatness of Hinduism, or to be proud of the sublime greatness of my religion. But with his ‘white horse is not a horse’ kind of argument, Dr Morales not only generates a schizoid view of religions as being different mountains, but also gives to us a myopic perspective that reduces Hinduism to another mountain that is just as unique as other mountains! It is an insult to the very name of Sanatana Dharma to call it another mountain just as unique as the others. Let us not be ashamed to hold our heads high and proclaim to the world that Hinduism is the Greatest Gift to humankind, a timeless treasure that shall not be emptied even by giving bounteously of it to the whole world. Sanatana Dharma is the Perennial Religion of the Universe.
The kernel and the shell
The question of meanings brings us to another important point: What is it that makes us Hindus? Opposing Radical Universalism does not make us Hindus. Adopting the different-mountains argument does not make us Hindus. We shall be Hindus only by adhering to our Dharma and not by any of these means. And adhering to dharma does not mean merely avowing allegiance to it, but being permeated and guided by dharma in all our actions. The threat of Radical Universalism is an illusion. The term ‘Radical Universalism’ is a meaningless term borrowed from Western philosophy. In Indian logic it reduces to a self-negation (absolute negation, atyanta-bhava) that is devoid of meaning.
Look at what is happening to us today. We Hindus are rising by the thousands to correct the injustices that have been done to our country in the past, and for striving to remove the bias that the Western Academy and Media displays towards us, and this number is swelling by the day. But how many Hindus are there among us that still follow the way of Sanatana Dharma? The number is dwindling by the day. If this trend should continue, we shall soon be a nation of people fighting for Hinduism, but with hardly any Hindu left for whose sake we shall be fighting! What use is the shell when the kernel has been lost? Is this not what has happened to the Abrahamic religions?
The ‘different mountains’ argument is a gift to Max Mueller
(Discussions & communication, by definition, has to be based on commonly agreed terminology, and anything else has to be clearly explained, such as “alternative” or “our” meaning of words like “religion”.) Yes, the ‘different mountains’ argument appears relevant.
But I would like to ask once again: Is the different-mountains argument really relevant?
I don’t think it is. I don’t think it is necessary for us to reject the Universalism in Hinduism in order that we may be able to oppose the work of Christian and Islamic missionaries (and other forces inimical to our religion) than it is necessary for us to reject them as human beings in order that we may be able to oppose their ulterior designs. The recognition that their religion is essentially same as ours, in respect of being religion, is not going to hamper our actions any more than the recognition that they are essentially same as us, in respect of being human beings, is going to hamper our actions. Our actions are governed by dharma, and dharma is not opposed to Universalism. By needlessly bringing in the different mountains argument, we are diluting the great Universal Vision of our own religion. By needlessly bringing in the different-mountains argument, we are belittling the great saints of our own religion. By needlessly bringing in the (Abrahamic) tendency to view each religion as a ‘different mountain’ we are unwittingly making our own religion its target. Hinduism is a varied and diversified religion, and the different-mountains argument has the potential to fragment and destroy us. The ramifications of the different-mountains argument are far more ominous than at first meets the eye, for once the idea takes root in our minds, it would become like a self-destruct mechanism that is capable of disintegrating us into many warring sects, dissipating our energies and leading us to utter annihilation. We would have done the work for the missionaries of the Church to walk in. Acceptance of the different-mountains argument would be our greatest gift to Max Mueller.
But I have trust in the strength of Sanatana Dharma to withstand any threat, be it from within or without. Let me therefore end this post on a positive note – by responding to the spirit of your words:
What we see around us (I believe) are the stirrings of the beginning of new smriti, based on the “Developments” in the past 1-2 centuries….. Let the events unfold as they may. All we can do is some positive “karma” based on our “viveka” & “Jnana”.
Yes, we Hindus are waking up, and we are even beginning to act. There is a new ferment today, and out of this ferment will surely arise a new generation, a new wave of light that will burst forth on to the shores of tomorrow…..
Warm regards,
______________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
There is a small correction in my previous message.
That is the reason why the denotative name, God, remains the same even in their denial. For the object of contention, God, is already identified, in its substantive, by each religion as the object of the name ‘God’ having the essential characteristics of life and creatorship of the universe. In all such cases, where the denotative name is already given and remains the same, it is always the truth of the object’s nature that is negated by the negation.
Please read:
“In all such cases, where the denotative name is already given and remains the same, it is always the truth of the object’s nature that is negated by the negation.”
as
“In all such cases, where the denotative name is already given and remains the same, it is always the attributes of the object as asserted by the other religions (purva-paksha), that is negated by the negation.”
Regards,
_____________________________________________________________
Karigar posted 2 years ago
Can sameness be one-sided?
If X is the same as Y, then Y must also be the same as X. [14]. This gives us a reliable method to empirically test the sameness hypothesis in the real world.
How many Christian denominations would be willing to hold Vishnu worship ceremonies in their church? Besides a few relatively small denominations such as the Unitarians (who in combination have less than 10% share of the US Christian population), almost all mainstream denominations reject such proposals outright. Try launching a sameness program with leaders of Mormons, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Pentecostals, etc. To be genuinely the same, Hinduism would have to be given equal and explicit treatment inside their congregation, and not in special meetings for PR purposes.
Would the US government print currency in which ‘In God we trust’ is replaced by ‘In Shiva we trust’ or ‘In Allah we trust’?
Only after one tests the hypothesis in the real world (which is different than the academic cocoons and staged ‘interfaith dialogs‘) could one begin to understand the sameness hoax that Hindus have been sold.
[14]Plus for X and Y to be interchangeably equated means that they must necessarily be the same in every respect.
Extracted from Rajiv Malhotra’s Myth of Hindu Sameness at:
http://sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305972
______________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
I have great respect for Rajiv Malhotra, but I’m afraid I will have to disagree with him here.
“If X is the same as Y, then Y must also be the same as X. This gives us a reliable method to empirically test the sameness hypothesis in the real world.”
Let us take some examples from the real world. Take any two objects from the real world that you call same such as two apples or two Mercedes cars of the same model. Can you find any two apples in the real world that are same in every respect, or any two Mercedes cars in the real world, even of the same model, that are same in every respect? Two things in the real world are never same in every respect, and yet we recognise that there are things in this world that are same, such as two Mercedes cars of the same model, or two apples, despite there being many differences between them. Or take the case of two Christians in the real world. Would you be able to find two Christians in this world that are same in every respect? Do you think that any two Christians would have the same ideas in every respect about God, or the same ideas in every respect about Christianity? But these two Christians would still be Christians, wouldn’t they? Sameness comes from samanya (universals) and not from the sameness of attributes. Universals are the ‘stamps of forms’ in the sakshi and it is given my sakshi-pramana; without them we wouldn’t be able to account for the fact that we recognise things in this world. So, when A is said to be same as B, it means that there is sameness in the substantives A and B in terms of their jatis (species), and not that there are no differences between them.
“How many Christian denominations would be willing to hold Vishnu worship ceremonies in their church? Besides a few relatively small denominations such as the Unitarians (who in combination have less than 10% share of the US Christian population), almost all mainstream denominations reject such proposals outright.”
This only goes to show that Christians belonging to these denominations don’t have a universal vision. But how does that make Universalism go away from Hinduism?
“Try launching a sameness program with leaders of Mormons, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Pentecostals, etc. To be genuinely the same, Hinduism would have to be given equal and explicit treatment inside their congregation, and not in special meetings for PR purposes.”
Universalism in Hinduism comes from its intrinsic vision. It does not depend on religious or political agreements to be reached with Christians, Muslims and other religions.
“Would the US government print currency in which ‘In God we trust’ is replaced by ‘In Shiva we trust’ or ‘In Allah we trust’?”
I don’t see why the US Government should come into the picture here, but since you raise the point, let me say that I don’t find anything wrong with the word ‘God’. The English word ‘God’ translates to the Sanskrit ‘Deva’, and we may take it that the Monotheistic God of the Christians is none other than Mahadeva, which is one of the names of Shiva. Strictly speaking, the Creator God of the Christians is the equivalent of the Vedantic Ishvara.
“Plus for X and Y to be interchangeably equated means that they must necessarily be the same in every respect.”
Why should we be interested in making Hinduism and Christianity interchangeable? That is not what Hindu Universalism is about. Sanatana Dharma recognises that variations in religions are natural features of Reality. These variations are vishesha dharmas in the One Eternal Sanatana Dharma.
And lastly, let me clarify here that I may disagree with Rajiv Malhotra on certain philosophical points, but it doesn’t stop me from recognising the great work he is doing for the cause of Hinduism.
Warm regards,
______________________________________________________________
Chittaranjan Naik posted 2 years ago
In one of your previous posts, you had written something about Shruti and Smriti, and I find that the same view is expressed by Rajiv Malhotra.
One core strength of our Indic dharmic practices is our sense of preserving a separation between “shruti” & “smriti”. My take on the issue of “neo-hinduism” is that to a large extent it was a “smriti” of 19th century colonized India, and its time may be over. Smriti by nature, being tied to time, place, & context, is limited, and will be replaced by fresh & appropriate smriti. All smriti of course, according to “classical Hinsuism” should be based on shruti. It takes a lot of effort by a lot of individuals over a long period of time to develop fresh smriti. What we see around us (I believe) are the stirrings of the beginning of new smriti, based on the “Developments” in the past 1-2 centuries.
I would like to present here an alternate perspective on Shruti and Smriti and the relationship that abides between them in the structure of Vedic vidyas:
Shruti refers to the Vedas. The Vedas are unauthored, apaurusheya and eternal. They were never composed. And there is only one Veda, not four, and what is commonly known as the four Vedas – Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda – are four branches of one Veda. And the Upanishads are parts of the Vedas themselves.
Each branch of the Veda is divided into four sections called Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka and Upanishad. The Samhitas comprise the Vedic mantras, the Brahmanas comprise the rituals, the Aranyakas comprise the meditations, and the Upanishads (the last part of the Aranyakas) comprise the Supreme Teaching of the Vedas. These four sections correspond to the four stages of the Vedic ashrama system – the Samhita is the section that is learnt during the stage of brahmacharya, the Brahmana is the section that tells a man in grahastashrama the yajnas to be performed, the aranyaka is the section that deals with the meditations that a man in vanaprasthashrama has to perform, and the fourth, Upanishad, is the section that is to be learnt by a sannyasi sitting by the side of a guru (Upanishad means sitting by the side).
What are the texts called the Smritis? In the Vedic structure, any agama is not considered to be Smriti. The Smritis constitute only those texts that are studied along with the Vedas. Those texts are called the arms of the Vedas. There are six primary arms called Vedangas and four subsidiary arms called Upangas. The Vedangas and Upangas are as follows:
Vedangas
Siksa – pronunciation
Vyakarana – grammar
Chandas – metre
Nirukta – etymology
Jyotisha – astrology
Kalpa – ritual
Upangas
Mimamsa – interpretation of Vedas
Nyaya – study of logic
Purana – anamnetic literature
Dharmashastra – code of dharma
Together with the four Vedas, the six Vedangas and four Upangas make up the fourteen vidyas called “chaturdasa vidyas”. These 14 vidyas form the Vedic corpus of Shruti and Smriti.
The term ‘Smriti’ refers to the 10 vidyas of the Vedangas and Upangas that accompany the study of the Vedas.
The word Smriti is also used in a more restricted sense to refer to the set of 18 texts of the Dharma Shastras brought to us by the 18 Vedic sages, Manu, Parasara, Yajnavalkya, Gautama, Harita, Yama, Vishnu, Sanka, Likhita, Brihaspati, Daksha, Angiras, Prachetas, Samvarta, Asanas, Atri, Apastamba, and Satatapa. But in a more general sense, the word Smriti refers to all the 10 vidyas that constitute the Vedangas and Upangas.
The chaturdasa vidyas constitute the study of Vedic Dharma.
Shruti is heard. Smriti is remembered. What is heard is the eternal sound, the very breath of Reality, as it were. It is the sound in Brahman through which Brahman creates this universe. And the word is one with its object. The sound of the Vedas can be heard when the masks of personae have been cast off. When the self becomes naked, as it were, by casting off the masks that pollute it, including the mind and intellect itself, then it becomes transparent to the sphurana, the silent vibration, at the heart of Reality. He that sees this truth is a mantra-drishta. Therefore, the Vedic seers are called mantra-drishtas. Smriti, on the other hand, is that which is remembered, it is the anamnesis of what lies in Reality, and which has been brought to us by Vedic sages that had acquired immense power and insight.
Shruti and Smriti form one inseparable body of knowledge. Shruti is unauthored, whereas Smriti is the same truth come to us through human authorship. Because the Smriti has been sullied, as it were, by coming through the cognising instruments of a purusha (a human author), it does not have the same authority as Shruti has when considered as a pramana for Mimamsa (Vedanta). The separation of Shruti and Smriti is not due to a difference in the truths conveyed by them, but is due to the difference that comes from their natures as unauthored and authored.
The word ‘Veda’ comes from the root ‘vid’ which means ‘to know’. To know the Truth revealed by the Vedas, one needs to approach it with accessory vidyas, and these accessory vidyas are called the angas (arms) of the Vedas. They are the Smriti. The study of Smriti provides the accessory knowledge that one needs for comprehending the Supreme Truth of the Vedas (Vedartha). Shruti and Smriti are not roads to disparate knowledge, but different expressions of the same knowledge tree. According to the poet Kalidasa, the Smriti follows the Shruti faithfully, even as a chaste wife follows the husband.
‘Sruterivartam smritiranvagacchat’
This verse from the Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa describes how Sudakshina follows her husband, Dilipa, by comparing her action to the Smriti that closely follows the Shruti. Kalidasa’s simile shows how this intimate relationship (between Shruti and Smriti) was a feature of Vedic dharma in ancient times. All the great Acharyas of Sanatana Dharma, including Sri Shankaracharya, Sri Ramanujacharya, and Sri Madhvacharya considered the Smriti and Shruti to be speaking the same truth. Their bhashyas on the Brahma Sutra and the Upanishads are profusely enriched by quotations from the Smriti. There is no evidence anywhere in our literature, or our history, to show that the Shruti and Smriti are imparting different knowledge.
Apart from Shruti and Smriti, there is a third category of Vedic literature called kavya (poetry). Together, these three – Shruti, Smriti and Kavya – form the bulk of Vedic literature that has come down to us from the past. In Vedic culture, the utterances of Shruti are considered Prabhu-sammiti. The utterances of Smriti are considered Suhrit-sammiti. The utterances of Kavya are called Kanta-sammiti. Prabhu means Master; the utterances of Shruti are like the words of a master, authoritative and unquestionable. Suh-rit means good-hearted friend. The utterances of Smriti are explanatory and persuasive like the words of a good friend. Kanta means wife; the utterances of kavya are playful and cajoling like those of a loving wife. Sri Chandrashekharendra Saraswati, the late Sankaracharya of Kanchi Math, has this to say about Shruti, Smriti and Kavya:
“What does poetry do? What does the poet do? He mixes his creative intelligence with factual stories. He creates stories out of his imagination. Some matters, he repeats again and again. This is his poetic license. He decks simple facts with frippery and weaves a glittering pattern for all to admire and adopt. Instead of presenting the matter in a straightforward way like a friend, the poet behaves like a good wife. In order to bring round a recalcitrant husband, she quips, cajoles, humours, entreats and does everything to gain her point with him. Poetry plays the role of wife, Vedas the role of the master and, in between, is the role of the friend, Puranas, all of them inculcating dharma into our minds.” (From ‘The Vedas’ by Sri Chandrashekharendra Saraswati)
RANDOM MUSINGS 