ARE WE HINDUS?
Please read this Article in the backdrop of the present Hindutva battle cry, "India is a Hindu Rashtra. Any one not proclaiming, 'Bharat Mata ki jai', is an anti-national and a traitor".
This Article aims at exposing the present remorseless 'fact-manufacturing' battle of the Hindutva Brigade to suit their convenience by distorting History of India, ignoring the basic tenet of the Indus Valley Civilization, (IVC), as inherited by the Aryans, the tenet of assimilation and tolerance.
This Article is to be read in conjunction with my Article of Apr 07, '16, "22 Reasons To Believe .....".
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ARE WE HINDUS?
Depends.
If the question is related to religion, (As commonly understood), I am NOT a Hindu. There is no 'Hindu' religion. For that matter neither are Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism Sikkhism and so on.
These are all COMMUNITIES.
These are all COMMUNITIES.
If the question refers to the real meaning of the Word, 'Hindu', many like me are Hindus, because we all firmly believe in one Universal God, commonness of human kind and unity of social order.
If screaming, 'Bharat Mata ki Jae' is the test of being a Hindu and a nationalist, many of us are not Hindus and do not qualify as nationalists.
India has always been Patriarchal. As per the very same Hindu Brigade, Bharat, a male, is supposed to be the founder of the Nation known, by his name. The million dollar question is : "From where does the word 'Mata' get attached to Bharat?"
Why not 'Bharat ki Jae' ? or, why not Jai hind, the soldierly way, in which all of us soldiers take pride ?
If screaming, 'Bharat Mata ki Jae' is the test of being a Hindu and a nationalist, many of us are not Hindus and do not qualify as nationalists.
India has always been Patriarchal. As per the very same Hindu Brigade, Bharat, a male, is supposed to be the founder of the Nation known, by his name. The million dollar question is : "From where does the word 'Mata' get attached to Bharat?"
Why not 'Bharat ki Jae' ? or, why not Jai hind, the soldierly way, in which all of us soldiers take pride ?
Personally, I suppose, Indians like me, are Aryan by birth but both Dravidian and Aryan by inheritance and belief of/in its Philosophy. We follow none of the rituals of the former.
Our Bharat is NOT Hindu, if the meaning of that word is contorted by a perverted association with any so called religion.
Our Bharat could be 'Hindu', only and only, if the meaning of the word is associated with universality of humans and if all those who are its citizens, irrespective of their cast, creed and community, of their beliefs and expressions, of their actions and deeds, past, present and future, have an equal right to call it their fatherland/motherland/Godland or any which land they wish to call it as, in whichever language they wish to use.
As Guru Nanak said, "There is neither Hindu nor Mussulman (Muslim), but only man. So whose path shall I follow? I shall follow God's path. God is neither Hindu nor Mussulman and the path which I follow is God's." This is our heritage.
Many Holy Names for God, from many different traditions, are present in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. The Name Hari appears 8344 times, Ram 2533 times, Gopal (Sustainer of the Earth = Krishna) 491 times, Gobind (The One Who takes care of the Earth = Krishna) 475 times, Prabhu 1371 times, Murari (Enemy of Mur Raksh = Vishnu, Krishna) 97 times, Narayan (The One who prevails in water) 85 times, Allah 46 times, Bhagwan 30 times, Madhav 27 times, Krishna 22 times, Rab 17 times, Narsingh (Incarnation of Vishnu with head of tiger and body of man) 16 times, Damodar (Krishna) 15 times, Banwari (Forest One = Krishna) 15 times, Wahe Guru 13 times, and Madhu Sudan (Krishna) 9 times. This is our heritage.
Also, in the words of the Upanishads :
"Bala, darpa, kamam, krodham, moham parigraham,
Nirmamah, Shanto Bhuae Kalpate."
That is the true path of/to God, "Rid of the five sinful ways, born out of the five
human indriyas, we can roam the entire ethereal space of the Universe, in peace,
one with God; this too is our heritage.
By accepting the Rakhi sent by Rani Karnavati, Humayun gave birth to a new social order of a mixed culture. This is our Heritage.
Are the ten Commandments only a Christian faith. Barring three, the other seven commandments are universal in nature :
As Guru Nanak said, "There is neither Hindu nor Mussulman (Muslim), but only man. So whose path shall I follow? I shall follow God's path. God is neither Hindu nor Mussulman and the path which I follow is God's." This is our heritage.
Many Holy Names for God, from many different traditions, are present in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. The Name Hari appears 8344 times, Ram 2533 times, Gopal (Sustainer of the Earth = Krishna) 491 times, Gobind (The One Who takes care of the Earth = Krishna) 475 times, Prabhu 1371 times, Murari (Enemy of Mur Raksh = Vishnu, Krishna) 97 times, Narayan (The One who prevails in water) 85 times, Allah 46 times, Bhagwan 30 times, Madhav 27 times, Krishna 22 times, Rab 17 times, Narsingh (Incarnation of Vishnu with head of tiger and body of man) 16 times, Damodar (Krishna) 15 times, Banwari (Forest One = Krishna) 15 times, Wahe Guru 13 times, and Madhu Sudan (Krishna) 9 times. This is our heritage.
Also, in the words of the Upanishads :
"Bala, darpa, kamam, krodham, moham parigraham,
Nirmamah, Shanto Bhuae Kalpate."
That is the true path of/to God, "Rid of the five sinful ways, born out of the five
human indriyas, we can roam the entire ethereal space of the Universe, in peace,
one with God; this too is our heritage.
By accepting the Rakhi sent by Rani Karnavati, Humayun gave birth to a new social order of a mixed culture. This is our Heritage.
Are the ten Commandments only a Christian faith. Barring three, the other seven commandments are universal in nature :
- Shall not take the LORD's name in vain (Not swear).
- Shall honour thy father and mother.
- Shall not kill.
- Shalt not commit adultery.
- Shalt not steal.
- Shalt not bear false witness.
- Shalt not covet thy neighbor's property, wife or servant.
Can all this not be part our heritage too?
There, however, is a big rider. Since in this multilingual, multi-community Country, every community has its own personal laws, rules and regulations, it is essential to have a common civil code for certain basic actions, behaviors, and interactions to stake our claim as one of the most civilized societies in the World; we must strive to embrace a mixed culture and a new unified social order; otherwise our Bharat shall disintegrate.
Just recently, a circulated study report, painstakingly prepared by an esteemed fellow Indian, under the banner of Virat Hindu Sangam, found its way in my mail box, kind courtesy a fellow Veteran. The report lists thousands of Muslim shrines, mosques, mazars and dargahs, which were either built upon the ruins of or built with the materials of Hindu temples/shrines. Even if the report was taken on face value, most true Indians would not understand its purpose. What is the compiler trying to achieve?
How far in History do we go back? How much of distortion of History do we accept? At which point of time in History do we stop taking stock of the destructions in the past and rebuilding the edifice of a new order, on its ruins?
Before the time of the Aryan migration into the Indian subcontinent, there was a highly developed civilization in ancient India, known as the Indus Valley Civilization, (IVC), which was located in what is now Pakistan and northwest India, on the fertile flood plains of the Indus River and its vicinity. This civilization was attacked and annihilated. As the Vedic group advanced rapidly to the rest of the Indian Sub-Continent, the Dravidians were pushed further East and South, till they had no were else to go. Poor Chaps!
The earliest evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BC, farming settlements began around 4000 BC, and around 3000 BC there appeared the first signs of urbanization. By 2600 BC, dozens of towns and cities had been established and between 2500 and 2000 BC the IVC was at its peak. The evidence suggests that the IVC had social conditions comparable to Sumeria and even superior to the contemporary Babylonians and Egyptians.
The Word 'Arya' has its roots in antiquity, referring to the people who spoke sanskrit or similar languages and settled in Persia and before that in Nordic/Baltic Europe. Whatever be the origin of the Aryans, it is an incontrovertible fact of history that the Aryans were not indigenous to India, were totally a different race than the Dravidians of IVC and that they completely destroyed the IVC and built their own culture upon its ruins.
Even in the face of facts of both Archaeology and modern science, it is becoming fashionable to state on authority, with the support of unverifiable arguments, that Aryans were really the people of IVC and were the original inhabitants of India,
It is also increasingly fashionable to conveniently usurp useful ancient/modern traditions/beliefs/values as Hindu/Sanatan, irrespective of the fact that their origins were non-Aryan.
A few of the IVC seals, show saintly figures meditating in lotus pose. As Cristian Violatti, one of the editors of Ancient History Encyclopedia, has written, "Unlike the peace loving Dravidians of the IVC, Aryans in antiquity, were a nomadic war like tribe of cattle herders". This is borne by many an account, a few of which are :
A number of key battles of'Dasarajna' or the 'Dashradnya Yuddha' or the Battle of the ten kings, spanning many years, described in the Rig Veda, resulted in the total destruction of the pre-Vedic culture and settlements.
Rig Veda also mentions the battles fought by the earlier Aryan King Devdosa, with non Aryan Dasa King Sambara, the death of the latter and the complete annihilation of 99 non Aryan cities.
Then of course, if any further proofs were required, we have our very own Mahabharat, through which the Vedic Philosophy was propounded in the Bhagwat Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedanta.
Who was the non Aryan King Dasa and what was the civilization of the 99 cities completely destroyed by the Aryan King Devdosa? Archaeological excavations of the IVC till date , carried out over almost 100 years, establish IVC's flourishing and advanced civilization, much beyond the reach of the nomadic Aryans. People who still wonder how such an advanced civilization suddenly vanished, have to look no further than the accounts in the Rig Veda, of wars waged by Aryan King Devdosa and also the war of the ten Kings.
By all archaeological accounts of excavations of a number of major/minor IVC cities, this culture had nothing in common with the culture of the Vedic Aryans. IVC people, unlike the Aryans of later years, were largely city bound and peaceful, followed no rituals but believed in philosophy, meditated, practised Yoga, reared or used no horses, had no iron tools/weapons, fought no wars, at least till the ones thrust upon them by the Vedic Aryans, had a language other than Sanskrit and had a script for writing.
Much is made of by some private archaeologists and a handful of historians about certain IVC sites , debunking the erstwhile established fact of the transmigration of the Aryans. I will recommend to these skeptics, the relevant web site of ASI for these latter day excavations :
http://asi.nic.in/asi_exca_imp_gujarat.asp. ASI
which makes no such claims.
Whereas, copious written and Archaeological proofs of the existence of IVC spanning over three millenniums exist even today, there is not even a shred of similar proof of the Aryan civilization thereafter, except their unscripted literature, (For lack of a written script), which is supposed to have survived orally for a millennium, before being reduced to writing around 600 BC.
In fact, a detailed study of the findings of the Archaeological sites will lead to the following conclusions :
(a) The IVC were not conversant with iron technology even as late as 1500 BC
and were still using copper and bronze tools and making artifacts from
these metals.
(b) The seals of the period were still being written in the same script as
before.
(c) Carbon dating, firmly establishes the dating of excavated artifacts as
between 3000 to 1500 BC
(d) No mention of these sites are found in the Vedas or the Upanishads.
(e) IVC seals depict a creature we call unicorn bulls, mistaken as horses by
some eager diggers, out to prove that Aryans were indigenous to
India.
That the IVC people did not rear or use horses, is one of the corner stones, (Not the only one), for establishing that they were a race different than the Vedic Aryans. A number of authors have tried to debunk this theory, but none more than N.S. Rajaram in his, "Horseplay in Harappa", published in the Oct 13, 2000 issue of the Frontline. Rajaram's desperate ruse to establish presence of horses in the IVC, by wrongly depicting a seal, was exposed immediately by Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola, two of the world's leading experts on the Indus script,
This is how Rajaram published his depiction of the seal :
There, however, is a big rider. Since in this multilingual, multi-community Country, every community has its own personal laws, rules and regulations, it is essential to have a common civil code for certain basic actions, behaviors, and interactions to stake our claim as one of the most civilized societies in the World; we must strive to embrace a mixed culture and a new unified social order; otherwise our Bharat shall disintegrate.
Just recently, a circulated study report, painstakingly prepared by an esteemed fellow Indian, under the banner of Virat Hindu Sangam, found its way in my mail box, kind courtesy a fellow Veteran. The report lists thousands of Muslim shrines, mosques, mazars and dargahs, which were either built upon the ruins of or built with the materials of Hindu temples/shrines. Even if the report was taken on face value, most true Indians would not understand its purpose. What is the compiler trying to achieve?
How far in History do we go back? How much of distortion of History do we accept? At which point of time in History do we stop taking stock of the destructions in the past and rebuilding the edifice of a new order, on its ruins?
Before the time of the Aryan migration into the Indian subcontinent, there was a highly developed civilization in ancient India, known as the Indus Valley Civilization, (IVC), which was located in what is now Pakistan and northwest India, on the fertile flood plains of the Indus River and its vicinity. This civilization was attacked and annihilated. As the Vedic group advanced rapidly to the rest of the Indian Sub-Continent, the Dravidians were pushed further East and South, till they had no were else to go. Poor Chaps!
The earliest evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BC, farming settlements began around 4000 BC, and around 3000 BC there appeared the first signs of urbanization. By 2600 BC, dozens of towns and cities had been established and between 2500 and 2000 BC the IVC was at its peak. The evidence suggests that the IVC had social conditions comparable to Sumeria and even superior to the contemporary Babylonians and Egyptians.
The Word 'Arya' has its roots in antiquity, referring to the people who spoke sanskrit or similar languages and settled in Persia and before that in Nordic/Baltic Europe. Whatever be the origin of the Aryans, it is an incontrovertible fact of history that the Aryans were not indigenous to India, were totally a different race than the Dravidians of IVC and that they completely destroyed the IVC and built their own culture upon its ruins.
Even in the face of facts of both Archaeology and modern science, it is becoming fashionable to state on authority, with the support of unverifiable arguments, that Aryans were really the people of IVC and were the original inhabitants of India,
It is also increasingly fashionable to conveniently usurp useful ancient/modern traditions/beliefs/values as Hindu/Sanatan, irrespective of the fact that their origins were non-Aryan.
A few of the IVC seals, show saintly figures meditating in lotus pose. As Cristian Violatti, one of the editors of Ancient History Encyclopedia, has written, "Unlike the peace loving Dravidians of the IVC, Aryans in antiquity, were a nomadic war like tribe of cattle herders". This is borne by many an account, a few of which are :
A number of key battles of'Dasarajna' or the 'Dashradnya Yuddha' or the Battle of the ten kings, spanning many years, described in the Rig Veda, resulted in the total destruction of the pre-Vedic culture and settlements.
Rig Veda also mentions the battles fought by the earlier Aryan King Devdosa, with non Aryan Dasa King Sambara, the death of the latter and the complete annihilation of 99 non Aryan cities.
Then of course, if any further proofs were required, we have our very own Mahabharat, through which the Vedic Philosophy was propounded in the Bhagwat Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedanta.
Who was the non Aryan King Dasa and what was the civilization of the 99 cities completely destroyed by the Aryan King Devdosa? Archaeological excavations of the IVC till date , carried out over almost 100 years, establish IVC's flourishing and advanced civilization, much beyond the reach of the nomadic Aryans. People who still wonder how such an advanced civilization suddenly vanished, have to look no further than the accounts in the Rig Veda, of wars waged by Aryan King Devdosa and also the war of the ten Kings.
By all archaeological accounts of excavations of a number of major/minor IVC cities, this culture had nothing in common with the culture of the Vedic Aryans. IVC people, unlike the Aryans of later years, were largely city bound and peaceful, followed no rituals but believed in philosophy, meditated, practised Yoga, reared or used no horses, had no iron tools/weapons, fought no wars, at least till the ones thrust upon them by the Vedic Aryans, had a language other than Sanskrit and had a script for writing.
Much is made of by some private archaeologists and a handful of historians about certain IVC sites , debunking the erstwhile established fact of the transmigration of the Aryans. I will recommend to these skeptics, the relevant web site of ASI for these latter day excavations :
http://asi.nic.in/asi_exca_imp_gujarat.asp. ASI
which makes no such claims.
Whereas, copious written and Archaeological proofs of the existence of IVC spanning over three millenniums exist even today, there is not even a shred of similar proof of the Aryan civilization thereafter, except their unscripted literature, (For lack of a written script), which is supposed to have survived orally for a millennium, before being reduced to writing around 600 BC.
In fact, a detailed study of the findings of the Archaeological sites will lead to the following conclusions :
(a) The IVC were not conversant with iron technology even as late as 1500 BC
and were still using copper and bronze tools and making artifacts from
these metals.
(b) The seals of the period were still being written in the same script as
before.
(c) Carbon dating, firmly establishes the dating of excavated artifacts as
between 3000 to 1500 BC
(d) No mention of these sites are found in the Vedas or the Upanishads.
(e) IVC seals depict a creature we call unicorn bulls, mistaken as horses by
some eager diggers, out to prove that Aryans were indigenous to
India.
That the IVC people did not rear or use horses, is one of the corner stones, (Not the only one), for establishing that they were a race different than the Vedic Aryans. A number of authors have tried to debunk this theory, but none more than N.S. Rajaram in his, "Horseplay in Harappa", published in the Oct 13, 2000 issue of the Frontline. Rajaram's desperate ruse to establish presence of horses in the IVC, by wrongly depicting a seal, was exposed immediately by Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola, two of the world's leading experts on the Indus script,
This is how Rajaram published his depiction of the seal :
The "eye" of Rajaram's "horse" (Seen in the Figure above) is created by a tiny flaw (probably caused by abrasion) in the ancient seal, highlighted by light falling on the seal from the right, which prior to its discovery lay buried in the ground for some 4,000-odd years. The lighting also causes other Rorschach-like illusions that vanish when the seal or its impressions are viewed in other conditions as seen in the Figure below :
Rajaram's 'Hop Step and Jump From Bull to Hindutva' is further exposed by the following misrepresentation of IVC seals :
On the left of the above three pictures, is the original of the so called "horse seal" impression (Mackay 453). Comparison with dozens of seals shows that the image is that of a unicorn bull; In the middle, is the photocopy of Mackay 453 sent by Rajaram to the great Indian scholar Iravatham Mahadevan in September 1997. The photocopying was careless, but the image was sharp enough for Mahadevan to recognize that the seal was broken.
Mahadevan noted the annotations at the lower right that in part identify the seal location. On the right, is the "computer enhancement" of Mackay 453 printed in Rajaram's book. In the "enhancement," it is no longer possible to tell that the seal is broken; the crack in the seal turned into the "front legs," "neck," and "head" of Rajaram's deer-like "horse."
In the above representation, the annotations were covered over by Rajaram, creating what some Indologists have mistaken for a common Harappan icon - a "feeding trough", often seen at the feet of animals in Indus inscriptions. Graphics specialists of Frontline have testified that many pixels were removed from the image during the "computer enhancement" - but not data, enhancing the illusion; like the large dot often mistaken for the "eye" of the deer-like creature.
Mahadevan noted the annotations at the lower right that in part identify the seal location. On the right, is the "computer enhancement" of Mackay 453 printed in Rajaram's book. In the "enhancement," it is no longer possible to tell that the seal is broken; the crack in the seal turned into the "front legs," "neck," and "head" of Rajaram's deer-like "horse."
In the above representation, the annotations were covered over by Rajaram, creating what some Indologists have mistaken for a common Harappan icon - a "feeding trough", often seen at the feet of animals in Indus inscriptions. Graphics specialists of Frontline have testified that many pixels were removed from the image during the "computer enhancement" - but not data, enhancing the illusion; like the large dot often mistaken for the "eye" of the deer-like creature.
Rajaram, a historian who is a hard line Hindutva stalwart, has been out to debunk the theory of Aryan invasion of India and prove that they were indigenous to this Country. Even after pictures of the IVC seals, earlier published by him as above in his article in Frontline, were proved to be fakes, went ahead to also publish, "Aryan Invasion - History or Politics", (Published 2006).
The word 'Arya' was used by the Indic people of the Vedic period in India to refer to the noble class and a geographic location known as Aryavarta, where Indo-Aryan culture was based.
(Gopal, Madan (1990). edited by K.S. Gautam, 'India through the ages'. Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. p. 70.)
The closely related Persian people used the same term as an ethnic label for themselves in the Avesta scriptures, and the word forms the etymological source of the country Iran. (Mallory 1991, p. 125).
'Aryan' was also a self-designation used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans, like the Germans, ultimately gaving rise to Nazism.
It is difficult to understand how the word Hindu, coined by Persians in the 7th century BC, got hitched to a culture and oral literature at least a thousand years older ! Even if the existence of a Dravidian IVC culture is ignored, there is no Hindu connection to the origin of the Vedic Culture.
In any case, when the Persians referred to all Indians living on the other side of the Sraswati R as Hindus, the Dravidians and a number of other native tribes of Eastern, Central, and Southern India too were part of the milieu.
(Gopal, Madan (1990). edited by K.S. Gautam, 'India through the ages'. Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. p. 70.)
The closely related Persian people used the same term as an ethnic label for themselves in the Avesta scriptures, and the word forms the etymological source of the country Iran. (Mallory 1991, p. 125).
'Aryan' was also a self-designation used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans, like the Germans, ultimately gaving rise to Nazism.
It is difficult to understand how the word Hindu, coined by Persians in the 7th century BC, got hitched to a culture and oral literature at least a thousand years older ! Even if the existence of a Dravidian IVC culture is ignored, there is no Hindu connection to the origin of the Vedic Culture.
In any case, when the Persians referred to all Indians living on the other side of the Sraswati R as Hindus, the Dravidians and a number of other native tribes of Eastern, Central, and Southern India too were part of the milieu.
Given the mass of evidence, only a small part of which has been enumerated above, should one ask for the restoration of the Dravidian Institutions and culture of the IVC after destroying everything Vedic-Aryan? Preposterous? Yes, most definitely.
How logical is, then, the painstaking efforts of the Hindu Brigade under the encouragement of the Parivar, to reverse History, by listing destroyed so called Hindu shrines, with shrill calls for rebuilding all real or imaginary Hindu temples/shrines after destruction of the present Muslim monuments?
At the end I come back to the starting question : ARE WE HINDUS?
The answer has to come from you, my readers.
The future of our Country depends on your answer!
How logical is, then, the painstaking efforts of the Hindu Brigade under the encouragement of the Parivar, to reverse History, by listing destroyed so called Hindu shrines, with shrill calls for rebuilding all real or imaginary Hindu temples/shrines after destruction of the present Muslim monuments?
At the end I come back to the starting question : ARE WE HINDUS?
The answer has to come from you, my readers.
The future of our Country depends on your answer!
Well explained and argued.
ReplyDelete