No secularism for pagans

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shiv
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No secularism for pagans

Post by shiv »

Please exsqueeze me folks. This is a topic that has been churning through my mind for a while now. The thoughts are generally to diverse and I need to put them down if only to organize my own thoughts as opposed to writing a scholarly article. The whole idea is to arrive at a "grand unifying" explanation that can throw light in diverse and sometimes unrelated feelings, hints and comments that I head from people, or have myself felt.

1) THE PROBLEM

The problem can be defined broadly as follows. There is a set of feelings expressed, or accusations made by Hindus that have no direct proof. And in the absence of direct proof the people who make such accusations are labelled extremist sympathisers because there is "direct proof" that Hindus are killing minorities.

One of the "accusations" that I hear being made by Hindus (which I agree with, that is why the topic interests me) is that there is subtle discrimination against Hindus. Why the furk should Hindus feel discriminated against? Where is the proof? Apart from mad Pakis and some assorted mulah, what evidence can be offered to support this contention? On the other hand, Hindus are clearly murderers who kiil wantonly as exemplified by Godhra, Kandhamal etc.

The other accusation (which I also agree with) is almost a Hindu whine that Hindus are "deracinated" and they end up being anti-Hindu. The latest avatar of this accusation comes from a post by CRamS in the India US thread in the shameless uncovered forum
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 25#p860325
I have nothing against Buddhism, but pretty soon it might be passe to diss Hinduism and embrace Buddhism. Marraige or dating ads from elite Indians might read: "Born Hindu, but spiritually Buddhist" or some other characterization to dis-own their Hindu identity.
I recently came across a question about unregistering" from "Hinduism" on a mailing list which led to what i thought was an interesting discussion although I pissed some people off. I like to think it was cognitive dissonance that sparked takleef when I showed the truth in the mirror.

But I digress. Don't you think that if a person wants to leave and disassociate himself form "Hinduism" he can convert, change his name and associate himself with one of the other existing religions. No. But they rarely do that. The people who are critical of "Hinduism" like to sit inside Hinduism and criticize, or agree with all critics in an as lickingly servile manner? They do not have the courage to put their money where their mouth is and leave forever. And they do not have any pride in what they have.

2) POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS


It is my belief that in order to understand why people behave in the manner described above, you need to clear the slate and re-explore why we call ourselves Hindu and how we view ourselves and how others may view us. And we need to go back a few thousand years.

Once again, I would like to remind all "Hindus" that the name Hindu was first applied on Indian people by someone else. I seem to recall that it was Alexander's record keepers who spoke of Indians as the people east of the Sindhu (Indus). That name was adopted and extended by Arabs and it became normal to refer to the people of India as Hindus. If you were an outsider who travelled through India at that time (and it is still true now) you would be bewildered by the vast array of ethnic groups and practices and would be hard put to give a single name or explanation for the variety.

3) RISE OF "THE RELIGIONS"

About 2000 years ago Christianity was invented, and was taken up as the official religion of the Roman empire. That version of Christianity had a very simple way of classifying people. "us" and "them". If you were Christian, you were "us" and you were a "soldier of Christ". If you were not Christian you were them. Initially Christianity was an urban religion, with a smaller following in the rural areas. The word "pagan" became associated with "them", villagers or "non Christians". The term was later extended as a pejorative term to classify anyone who was not Christian. Christianity itself was imposed by force on all of Europe, converting the pagans of Europe.

Just 700 years later Islam arose. It took a leaf from Roman Christianity, but a new God and a new Prophet were invented. This time this was declared as the final truth. It was spread by the sword, and some very capable armies, united by the religion which took "us versus them" to new extremes. If Christianity had claimed that pagans should be converted and "saved", islam was used to claim that those who would not be "saved" by submission to Islam should be killed.

The early centuries of Christianty were spend in converting pagans, creating vast swathes of Christian lands from the Roman empire. The early centuries of islam were spent in defeating and killing the local Jews and pagans (kafirs) of Arabia and a later expansion into Christian (Europe) lands and Kafir (Persia) lands.

All through the centuries when Christianity and Islam arose and expanded the Indian civilization existed and carried on as usual. Everything was set to change when the two expansionist religions came into contact with the people of India. You need to remember that representatives of both Christianity and Islam came to India at various times in the early centuries, some in the form of proselytizers and others as looters.

All these people who came to India knew of the people there as "Hindus", but once the two religions arose it was clear that all these Hindus were pagans (or kafirs). By definition, pagans are wrong. Their beliefs are wrong. Their practices are wrong. They need to be saved, converted, subjugated or destroyed depending on which page of the Christian or Islamic holy book you are reading.

4) AN ALTERNATE VIEW OF "HINDUS"

It is important to note that while Hindus were quote happy to be called "Hindu" - nothing wrong in a name, what most Hindus do not realise is that they are basicly pagans. They have pagan beliefs and pagan practices, with multiple gods, worship of images and statues, worship of the elements and nature, even animals. God (in his schizophrenic avatar as both Jehovah and Allah) has clearly stated that all these practices are wrong and the practitioners are also wrong and need to be changed. It says so in the holy books which are the last word on the matter.

So what a Hindu thinks about himself and his faith is only half the story. How he is viewed by others is an important half that is missed as long as the Hindu calls himself "Hindu" and imagines that he belongs to a religious group called "Hindus" who are on par with Christians or Muslims. That is balderdash. Hindus by definition are pagans. If a person is a self declared and devout follower of Christianity or islam then the Hindu is not on par. He is inferior. God does not accept him as long as he retains his false beliefs. It is another matter that the Hindu may accept Christian or islamic gods. That gives him no points. The Hindu pagan imagines that he earns extra points by accepting other gods as his own. But that is silly. It is natural for anyone to accept Jehovah (or Allah). But it is still wrong to accept other gods, practise idolatry and worship of images and beings other than Jehovah/Allah. You still remain a pagan despite all your false claims of being tolerant. "Accepting" the other god is not enough by half. You have to reject everything else. There is a positive and a negative here.

Staring from this you can see why there may be a subtle bias against Hindus. Let's face it. More than half the world gets a Christian or Islamic education. How many of you grew up like me reading about children in the West attending "Sunday school"? Do you think those kids were being taught about matsyavatar and vamanavatar in those Sunday schools? If any child is taught about Christianity and Islam and is compelled to follow those faiths, he will automatically be taught what a pagan is. h may not explicitly be told that Hindus are pagans. But he will certainly know a pagan when he sees one and will realise that Hindus are the very pagans whom he was taught about.

While no holy book has any specific reference to "Hindus" the same holy books are very clear that pagans are wrong. And if Hindus are pagan, guess who's wrong? According to God, at least.

5) INDIAN SECULARISM IN A MONOTHEISTIC WORLD

I will end my post by merely cross posting a reply that I made on a mailing list in response to a question:
Imagine a common or garden pagan who is otherwise called Hindu who is going
about his sorry life in India. He discovers that his pagan beliefs and
practices are all described as being wrong according to the holy books of
some people. He then meets a missionary who explicitly tells him that his
beliefs are wrong and that he needs to change all that to be saved.

If the missionary is physically stopped from doing his proselytisation it
becomes a case of "minority discrimination" and lack of religious freedom.
The missionary after all is only doing what is religion tells him to do in a
country where there is religious freedom.

While it is legal for some religious books to be critical of pagan practices
and preachers to sell the idea that pagan practices, (which are Hindu
practices) are undesirable, there is no law that protects a pagan in India
from the advances of a proselytizer. Any pagan/Hindu who who resists a
persistent and painful pusher of religion gets dubbed a minority basher.

This is clearly a political problem in India. On the ground it is often solved
by violence. If the pagan gets sufficiently angry with the proselytizer who
is dissing the pagan's beliefs he may thrash him, or worse, kill him. That of
course becomes violent Hindutva.

But the fact of birth as a pagan in India puts the pagan at risk of being told
that his beliefs are bullshit and no law can protect him against  "freedom of
religion" being used against paganism. Someone else's religious rights trump
the pagan's right to be a pagan without interference. This in fact is what
the BJP and other Hindu organizations have been pointing out. They have
widespread support despite the efforts to make them out to be murderers
because one has to be a pagan first to see what it feels like to have half
the world technically following faiths whose books explicitly say that you,
as a pagan, are to be discriminated against, destroyed, changed or saved. And
the people who want to save you or destroy you are  funded by religious
charities abroad, and those people hide behind the "religious
discrimination"/minority discrimination" excuse at the slightest provocation.

That is one of the connections between religion and politics in India - in
case anyone had not figured it out. Ideally it must be settled without
killing. but since killing is easy it's not going to happen that way.
I have a few things to add. Will do so in a later post. This has been too long and I still haven't got to an explanation of the "problem" as defined above.
shiv
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by shiv »

What are the major religions of the world?

Check this image
http://www.tandemproject.com/program/rel_pie.gif

You say you are Hindu? Fine. You call it a religion. Fine. But Hindu is pagan. And pagans are wrong according to Chrstianity and islam. In other words you can pretend that you exist in a healthy tolerant world as long as you delude yourself into thinking that you belong to a "religion" calle Hinduism.

But you are a pagan and there is no religion called paganism. There is no escape clause or bypass clause for pagans just because they call themselves "Hindus". In India religious freedom protects the religious right of Christians or Muslims to save or change pagans. What laws in India protect the pagans when paganism itself is not accepted as a religion?

Remember that Indian laws allow for the banning of literature that might hurt religious sentiment. Can the Bible and Quran be banned for hurting pagan religious sentiment?
naren
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by naren »

Let me share my view.

How did religions evolve ? Religion is a top down way of understanding the universe. Every society needs a code of conduct. In the early days of the human society, these laws were based on the limited perception of universe - religion. (ie) Early societies were all theocratic. Tribes evolved into bigger communities - fiefdoms, kingdoms, empires so on. As the societies expanded, so did the religion. Survival of the fittest principle was applied and paganism became monotheism.

From http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Compl ... he_Vedanta :
We observe in the histories of Babylon and among the Jews an interesting religious phenomenon happening. We find that each of these Babylonian and Jewish peoples was divided into so many tribes, each tribe having a god of its own, and that these little tribal gods had often a generic name. The gods among the Babylonians were all called Baals, and among them Baal Merodach was the chief. In course of time one of these many tribes would conquer and assimilate the other racially allied tribes, and the natural result would be that the god of the conquering tribe would be placed at the head of all the gods of the other tribes. Thus the so-called boasted monotheism of the Semites was created. Among the Jews the gods went by the name of Molochs. Of these there was one Moloch who belonged to the tribe called Israel, and he was called the Moloch-Yahveh or Moloch-Yava. In time, this tribe of Israel slowly conquered some of the other tribes of the same race, destroyed their Molochs, and declared its own Moloch to be the Supreme Moloch of all the Molochs. And I am sure, most of you know the amount of bloodshed, of tyranny, and of brutal savagery that this religious conquest entailed. Later on, the Babylonians tried to destroy this supremacy of Moloch-Yahveh, but could not succeed in doing so.


It seems to me, that such an attempt at tribal self-assertion in religious matters might have taken place on the frontiers and India also. Here, too, all the various tribes of the Aryans might have come into conflict with one another for declaring the supremacy of their several tribal gods; but India's history was to be otherwise, was to be different from that of the Jews. India alone was to be, of all lands, the land of toleration and of spirituality; and therefore the fight between tribes and their gods did not long take place here. For one of the greatest sages that was ever born found out here in India even at that distant time, which history cannot reach, and into whose gloom even tradition itself dares not peep — in that distant time the sage arose and declared, एकं सद् विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति — "He who exists is one; the sages call Him variously." This is one of the most memorable sentences that was ever uttered, one of the grandest truths that was ever discovered. And for us Hindus this truth has been the very backbone of our national existence. For throughout the vistas of the centuries of our national life, this one idea — एकं सद् विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति — comes down, gaining in volume and in fullness till it has permeated the whole of our national existence, till it has mingled in our blood, and has become one with us. We live that grand truth in every vein, and our country has become the glorious land of religious toleration. It is here and here alone that they build temples and churches for the religions which have come with the object of condemning our own religion. This is one very great principle that the world is waiting to learn from us.

- Swami Vivekananda
Curiously, Christianity and Islam's prophet-law-community structure came from Buddhism - Buddha, Dharma & Sangha ! Buddhism was the template which both Roman empire & Arabia followed ! (Though the Buddhists, being civilized hindus, never engaged in any commie/taliban style cultural destruction.)

Bashing on pagans is only a form of collectivist d0uchebagism. No need to lose too much sleep over it. Infact, the world is recognizing the evils of church-state integration, religious exclusivism and moving away from it. Nobody takes these guys seriously anymore :mrgreen:. Europe was very rich in culture before they embraced Christianity. Rome and Greece had very beautiful art works. Christian collectivism plunged them into dark age. It worked well for Arabia though. They were primarily tribal. Embracing collectivism moulded them into a formidable force in history. Else they would have probably been overrun by the Romans. Good for them. (bad for us kaffirs though)

When Europe first made contact with India, they were terribly appalled by the "paganism" they witnessed (like the Khajuraho temple :twisted:). Infact, colonization of India was sold internally as bringing Christianity and Culture to pagan lands (much like "freedom & democracy" for Iraq as sold today). Those days, Hinduism was a widow burning, dead body eating, devil worshipping evil cult. Today, the principles of Hinduism - ahimsa & religious harmony (acceptance, not just tolerance) is widely recognized. When Barrackus got his Nobel, he acknowledged Gandhi & our principles of ahimsa. Many people in the west are increasingly turning to Buddhism and Hinduism for spiritual comfort. Something unthinkable 100 years back.

As for the future, the inter religious conflict and science-religion conflict cannot go forever. At some point, they have to come together. The only precedent for such harmony is in India. Swami Vivekananda proposed Advaita school of thought for this purpose (read it long time back, still trying to find ref, will post if I do). I for one strongly believe that in the future, when people have had enough with religious fanaticism, they will turn to India for solutions. Swami Vivekananda already laid the ground work. His Holiness is doing great work in this area. He calls Himself "messenger of India" and "son of India" (something which irritates Cheenis to the core :mrgreen:).
Viv S
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by Viv S »

I disagree strongly with parts of your comment below.
Imagine a common or garden pagan who is otherwise called Hindu who is going
about his sorry life in India. He discovers that his pagan beliefs and
practices are all described as being wrong according to the holy books of
some people. He then meets a missionary who explicitly tells him that his
beliefs are wrong and that he needs to change all that to be saved.

If the missionary is physically stopped from doing his proselytisation it
becomes a case of "minority discrimination" and lack of religious freedom.
The missionary after all is only doing what is religion tells him to do in a
country where there is religious freedom.
If the missionary is physically stopped, its not a case of minority discrimination but simply curtailment of the missionary's civil rights. As long as he doesn't abuse the Hindu religion, I don't see what problem anyone has with the situation.
While it is legal for some religious books to be critical of pagan practices
and preachers to sell the idea that pagan practices, (which are Hindu
practices) are undesirable, there is no law that protects a pagan in India
from the advances of a proselytizer. Any pagan/Hindu who who resists a
persistent and painful pusher of religion gets dubbed a minority basher.
The operative words being 'persistent and painful'. If that's case, than its the Hindu person's constitutional right to be protected from the missionary.
This is clearly a political problem in India. On the ground it is often solved
by violence. If the pagan gets sufficiently angry with the proselytizer who
is dissing the pagan's beliefs he may thrash him, or worse, kill him. That of
course becomes violent Hindutva.
It depends on what 'dissing' the pagan's beliefs entails. As long as the proselytizer sticks to expounding his or her religious tenets and stays clear of insulting the Hindu religion, it shouldn't be an issue.
But the fact of birth as a pagan in India puts the pagan at risk of being told
that his beliefs are bullshit and no law can protect him against "freedom of
religion" being used against paganism. Someone else's religious rights trump
the pagan's right to be a pagan without interference. This in fact is what
the BJP and other Hindu organizations have been pointing out.
Not at all. You have the same right to call Abrahamic religions bullshit(without ofcourse overtly abusing it). Christians and Muslims have the same right vis a vis each other.
They have widespread support despite the efforts to make them out to be murderers
because one has to be a pagan first to see what it feels like to have half
the world technically following faiths whose books explicitly say that you,
as a pagan, are to be discriminated against, destroyed, changed or saved. And
the people who want to save you or destroy you are funded by religious
charities abroad, and those people hide behind the "religious
discrimination"/minority discrimination" excuse at the slightest provocation.
Do you have a solution to the 'problem'?
Mahendra
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by Mahendra »

The problem is with religious texts explicitly stating that Pagans are to be discriminated against, destroyed, changed or saved. The solution lies in being able to modify these texts to allow Pagans to lead their lives without people trying to show them the light.
Last edited by Mahendra on 25 Apr 2010 16:36, edited 1 time in total.
shiv
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by shiv »

Viv S wrote:As long as the proselytizer sticks to expounding his or her religious tenets and stays clear of insulting the Hindu religion, it shouldn't be an issue.
Well his religious tenets say that the Hindu/pagan's beliefs are wrong. That is an issue.
Viv S wrote:Do you have a solution to the 'problem'?
Several. I will suggest them in due course.
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by Viv S »

Mahendra wrote:The problem is with religious texts explicitly stating that Pagans are to be discriminated against, destroyed, changed or saved. The solution lies in being able to modify these texts to allow Pagans to lead their lives without people trying to show them the light.
Well India being a secular state, religious texts aren't relevant to policy. Religious discrimination is illegal and that's the way its going to stay.
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by Viv S »

shiv wrote: Well his religious tenets say that the Hindu/pagan's beliefs are wrong. That is an issue.
Religious tenets don't matter to the state. And Hindus/pagans haven't been obstructed or discouraged from practising their faith in secular countries where monotheist religions are dominant(the West).
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by brihaspati »

Shiv ji,
where are you heading for? You are aware definitely of previous legal fights that sought to move against parts and portion of the Qurana etc because of potential "religious sentiments hurt" issues, and you are probably also aware that very "Hindu" judges at the highest level dared to define what Hinduism is and actually quashed all such cases by declaring Hinduism to be something that "tolerates everything".

So legal procedure will not work.

The only other procedure left is a consolidation of the "Hindu" identity - underwhatever new name you can give it - if "Hindu" is a bad word. However, there are well tested social procedures of mobilization and consolidation, but which may not be palatable to many "Hindus". The key is for a Hindu to feel proud to be a "Hindu", and among many other methods one essential tactic is the visual identification in public and sense of belonging to a huge, identifiable assembly. Visual identification will need things like the "upaveetam" being given to "all Hindus", perhaps in mass public ceremonies, drawing symbols on the forehead, etc. Assembly means joining formal marches or gatherings or processions.

Both are feasible, but requires a conscious decison by a determined "minority" among the "Hindus" - maybe call them "Sanatani"'s instead of Vedanti's or Aryas or Vaidic, since all of them are politically problematic. Such an effort requires an initial seed of a core group who mutually help each other and recognize each other in this effort. The ideological suuport needed can be worked on and developed over time - but the key is that individual decision and commitment.

Otherwise we can debate and talk and be sarcastic and going at each others throat or glean psy-ops pleasure, but then your exercise here will be meaningless or rather fruitless.
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by shiv »

brihaspati wrote:Shiv ji,
where are you heading for?
Frankly I am not aware that I will actually head anywhere and am just throwing thoughts into the air.

Claiming that something or someone is anti-Hindu is not good enough. Technically nobody in the world is anti-Hindu. It's such a friendly world. It is only pagans/kafirs who need to be corrected.

Hindus first need to see if they are pagans or not. I say they are. if they disagree there is nothing I can do.

I believe that pagan religions of Europe are making a comeback of sorts because laws allow them to speak up against the "knowledge" that is being forced on them.

It is not difficult to look in the texts of the religions to see what is criticised as undesirable. If it happens that polytheism and the worship of images, animals, nature or idols is said to be undesirable or wrong, requiring change or punishment, then it means that those people who worship all those things are having their beliefs dissed by the holy text in question. The people who do these things are pagans and once again Hindus must decide on a case by case basis if they are pagans or not. If Hindus, by and large consider that they are not pagans, but belong to some special group that falls outside paganism, then they have founded the right country and laws for themselves. I wish them well. I will stick to fighting for the rights of pagans, who in that case will not be Hindus.
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by Viv S »

shiv wrote:Hindus first need to see if they are pagans or not. I say they are. if they disagree there is nothing I can do.

I believe that pagan religions of Europe are making a comeback of sorts because laws allow them to speak up against the "knowledge" that is being forced on them.

It is not difficult to look in the texts of the religions to see what is criticised as undesirable. If it happens that polytheism and the worship of images, animals, nature or idols is said to be undesirable or wrong, requiring change or punishment, then it means that those people who worship all those things are having their beliefs dissed by the holy text in question. The people who do these things are pagans and once again Hindus must decide on a case by case basis if they are pagans or not. If Hindus, by and large consider that they are not pagans, but belong to some special group that falls outside paganism, then they have founded the right country and laws for themselves. I wish them well. I will stick to fighting for the rights of pagans, who in that case will not be Hindus.
Yes, Hinduism in the from being practised by the majority of people(not necessarily specified by the faith) can probably be defined as paganism. And I don't understand why you refer to conversions as something being forced on the pagan population.
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Re: No secularism for pagans

Post by RamaY »

Excellent topic Shiv-ji. Let us all use this opportunity to have a matured, logical, and frank discussion on this topic as this discussion can positively influence hundreds of millions of people.

That said, this is how I see this issue:

* Today there is a genuine and justifiable complaint from many hindus on Hinduism. We need to analyze how much of the problem is due to Hinduism, as a religion/dharma, itself and how much of it is due to the way Indian society evolved over many hundreds of years prior to, during, and after foreign occupations.

* In my journey to study and understand various Hindu scriptures, I have not come across a single scripture that could cause the current disenchantment provided the scriptures are approached and understood from a literal as well as traditional perspective.

* The hesitation of the disenchanted Hindus to move into another fold could be due to the following reasons: For this purpose, I would like to separate the naysayers into two groups

1. Intellectuals - This group studies the religion, observes its impact on the society and see the religious justifications (correctly or wrongly) for those inequalities. This group is equally (intellectually) equipped to study and understand the alternative solutions. That awareness of alternative systems make them clearly see the equal or greater fallacies in those alternative religions. That could explain their hesitation to leave Hinduism for another religion. Since there is no satisfactory alternative, these intellectuals tend to fight the system staying within the camp.

2. Commoners - This group has little time to study and analyze the religion on its own. Their understanding of the religion is stemmed from various stories, legends they heard thru various social streams (Stories, movies, serials, hearsay, parents, tradition etc). They also see (and often are the victims) the social injustices obvious in the system and they do not see any help coming from the religion (it is a different thing whether it is correct to expect a solution from religion in a "secular" society). This group is so interdependent on their family and social tree, they have very little incentive to move (alone) to another religion and has very little value coming out of it intellectually as they have no time for such intellectual explorations. This could explain the majority of commoners converting to EJ-religion for a monthly stipend while maintaining >80% hindu traditions.

* My (limited) knowledge tells me that - The true meaning and intellectual richness of Hinduism/SanatanaDharma is not available to 99.9999999% people. It requires a concerted effort to make the true meaning of Sanatana Dharma available to commoners. This helps them immensely in terms of
1. Appreciating their religion, heritage and culture - This understanding, associated with a positive correction of social structures will pacify the current friction between various sections of society.
2. Better awareness of the intellectual foundations of Bharatiya society - This brings a matured understanding on the interdependent nature of various social structures; and relationship between society and rashtra (B-ji's definition).
3. A happier and healthier personal and family environment.
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