Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?

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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by harbans »

Upholding Dharma isn't an abstract thing. Its about upholding certain ideal tenets/values/qualities. Its about understanding these ideals aren't achieved in an "Absolutist Jiffy" but in an endeavour to evolve towards them. The result is a State that upholds or attempts to uphold it or encourages its citizens to uphold Dharma evolves slowly to a better more sustainable and peaceful society. With that comes all the Knowledge and Wealth too. From the Western perspective for example Charity = Good. But from the Dharmic perspective charity can be Adharmic too. Charity for example given with rewards in mind, to oblige etc is charity that is Tamsic, Adharmic. Charity done without the hint of expecting reward is said to be in Sattva. People should read several times Krishnas expositions on these matters in the BG. Once i separated the Western nomenclature from our culture things became much clearer. The BG, MB, Ramayana the messages became much clearer in perspective. I am perfectly convinced that most of the world is innately Dharmic and can be bought into the fold of Dharma. We need to clear the fog and see things in a more unifying more evolutionary and less absolutist perspective and platform to clear the fog.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

An Aatish Taseer essay:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/ ... ical-sense
I grew up in late 20th century India, in a deracinated household. I use that word keeping in mind that racine is 'root' in French, and that is what we were: people whose roots had either been severed or could no longer be reached. A cultural and linguistic break had occurred, and between my grandparents’ and my parents’ generation, there lay an imporous layer of English education that prevented both my father in Pakistan, and my mother, in India, from being able to reach their roots. What the brilliant Sri Lankan art critic, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, had seen happening around him already in his time had happened to us (and is, I suppose, happening today all over India).

‘It is hard to realize,’ Coomaraswamy writes in The Dance of Shiva, ‘how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West.’

This is an accurate description of what we were. And what it meant for me, personally, as an Indian writer getting started with a writing career in India, was that the literary past of India was closed to me. The Sanskrit commentator, Mallinatha, working in 14th century Andhra, had with a casual ‘iti-Dandin: as Dandin says’, been able to go back seven or eight hundred years into his literary past. I could go back no further than fifty or sixty. The work of writers who had come before me, who had lived and worked in the places where I lived and worked today, was beyond reach. Their ideas of beauty; their feeling for the natural world; their notion of what it meant to be a writer, and what literature was—all this, and much more, were closed to me. And, as I will explain later, this was not simply for linguistic reasons.

I was—and I have TS Eliot in mind as I write this—a writer without a historical sense. Eliot who, in Tradition and the Individual Talent, describes the ‘historical sense’ as: a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense, he feels, compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but that [for him]—I’m paraphrasing now—the whole literature of Europe from Homer onwards to that of his own country has ‘a simultaneous existence’.

My problem was that I had next to nothing in my bones. Nothing but a handful of English novels, some Indian writing in English, and a few verses of Urdu poetry. That was all. And it was too little; it left the bones weak; I had no way to thread the world together.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

I think the hindutva-vadi vs secular divide is a serious one and one that needs to be understood and addressed.

Sickular libtards do serve IMO as "fifth column" of self haters who open the door for all sorts of interference from outside. But the problem is that Hindutva-vadis have the same attitudes and the understand the issues under the same framework as the sickular libtards. They have not developed the framework and words to explain why the lbitard mind is wrong, because both libtards and Hindutvavadis have the same Macaulayite education and learn the usage of English words and language the same way. Both think British

The libtards agree 100% with western characterizations of Hindus, "No History. No religion. No ethics. No laws" Hindutva vadis show impotent anger against the seculars because they use the same language as the libtards and simply say "no" to all the things that libtards have accepted as a given.
Libtard says "Indians have no history".
Hindutvavadi says "Of course we have history. We have itihaas"
Libtard laughs and says "itihaas is not history. How can a king live 3000 years?"
Hindutva vadi shows impotent anger because libtard does not accept his explanation. But Hindutva-vadi cannot or does not understand the meaning of "history" the way Brits told the libtards. He wants to use the same word "history" and insist that others are wrong. Others laugh and hindutva vadi gets more angry

The same holds true for words like religion, ethics and law.

In fact JohneeG has just taught me something by adding more English words to the lexicon of things wrong with Hindus and Indians.
JohneeG wrote:The general lack of discipline(and lack of cleanliness, especially public cleanliness) is due to lack of proper infrastructure.
It only illustrates that even the loudest and most dedicated/aggressive self proclaimed hindutva-vadis think in the same framework that the Brits taught everyone - the libtards and the Hindutvavadis. Indians "lack discipline" LOL! It should be possible to find more such examples in the course of this debate of colonized minds - like "Vedas were always written. Ask India's villagers" . The problem runs right down to the way we are taught to think and view the world, including our own nation. Some things cause automatic rejection as "bad" . "Hindus are indisciplined because they don't follow the law of the road". Or "Who says Vedas were not written?

We use the British framework to think. And pointing that out gets people angry. No Hindutva vadi wants to think that his mind is also as colonized as the libtards mind. But it very often is.

About Indian roads and "lack of discipline" I have a different view - but that is for a separate post
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote:An Aatish Taseer essay:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/ ... ical-sense
I grew up in late 20th century India, in a deracinated household. I use that word keeping in mind that racine is 'root' in French, and that is what we were: people whose roots had either been severed or could no longer be reached. A cultural and linguistic break had occurred, and between my grandparents’ and my parents’ generation, there lay an imporous layer of English education that prevented both my father in Pakistan, and my mother, in India, from being able to reach their roots. What the brilliant Sri Lankan art critic, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, had seen happening around him already in his time had happened to us (and is, I suppose, happening today all over India).

‘It is hard to realize,’ Coomaraswamy writes in The Dance of Shiva, ‘how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West.’

This is an accurate description of what we were. And what it meant for me, personally, as an Indian writer getting started with a writing career in India, was that the literary past of India was closed to me. The Sanskrit commentator, Mallinatha, working in 14th century Andhra, had with a casual ‘iti-Dandin: as Dandin says’, been able to go back seven or eight hundred years into his literary past. I could go back no further than fifty or sixty. The work of writers who had come before me, who had lived and worked in the places where I lived and worked today, was beyond reach. Their ideas of beauty; their feeling for the natural world; their notion of what it meant to be a writer, and what literature was—all this, and much more, were closed to me. And, as I will explain later, this was not simply for linguistic reasons.

I was—and I have TS Eliot in mind as I write this—a writer without a historical sense. Eliot who, in Tradition and the Individual Talent, describes the ‘historical sense’ as: a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense, he feels, compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but that [for him]—I’m paraphrasing now—the whole literature of Europe from Homer onwards to that of his own country has ‘a simultaneous existence’.

My problem was that I had next to nothing in my bones. Nothing but a handful of English novels, some Indian writing in English, and a few verses of Urdu poetry. That was all. And it was too little; it left the bones weak; I had no way to thread the world together.
Nice!
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

LokeshC wrote:WRT to road manners in Indian cities, we have to keep in mind that there were very few Indic cities in India. India was mostly made of its villages, it still is.

The cities were born and grew to such an astronomical proportions due to the "concentration of power" in the hands of the colonial mass murderers (Brishits or Mogul). Most of our cities are kabilas or garrison towns.

So people with Indic values which were largely made for a village life, are forced into a highly populous area by means of de-industrialization, then were made to follow an alien value system that they could not quite understand. How can one expect our cities to be livable after this kind of trauma?
This is how I view alleged Indian "indiscipline" on roads:

Indians like any other civilization have used roads for longer than "road rules" or "laws governing traffic" existed. Congested roads were the norm in market towns and around temple towns during festivals.

Shaurya posted a nice link that basically spoke of how Indian concepts of "law and order" were dispersed to the ground level where "order" was (and is) maintained by negotiation (of right and wrong) between people on the ground rather than everyone following a "law" sent down from above by God/government. The latter is the western model imposed on Indian society by the Brits

Indians had their own way of negotiating congested roads and Indians never had any restrictions that elephants, bullock carts or cattle could not use the same roads as pedestrians and hand cart pushers. Roads are roads for everyone and the purpose is to provide a path from A to B. Roads are "negotiated" by Indians. The negotiation depends on the width, speed and intransigence of road user. But traffic does move even today as I am sure it did 2000 years ago.

"Fast vehicles" and "Road rules imposed by RTO (Road Transport Office)" are top-down laws, and are a new concept for Indians and neither gets full leeway on Indian roads. On crowded roads, fast vehicles are simply slowed down and road rules imposed by RTO simply will not be followed. An example of the latter is a narrow road with a solid white line in the center and a bullock cart on one lane with a line of buses and cars behind. The "law" that says white line must not be crossed is broken a thousand times by a thousand vehicles, but traffic moves, by crossing the white line and crawling around the cart. Macaulay minds call this "indiscipline" or "lawlessness". There are laws and systems to ensure fairness, but the colonized mind does not recognize them. For us Macaulayputras, law, like our past, must be "written" and someone vicarious external authority (like "police") has to be appointed to impose that law "to the letter". That is the framework we understand. That is what law-abiding societies are supposed to do.

People cannot be left alone to negotiate justice and peace among themselves. The latter is indiscipline at best and "lawlessness' at worst. Hindoos! Bah! :D
Last edited by shiv on 06 Dec 2014 08:35, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

Here is how I view Hindu indiscipline on the road.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spi ... 48747.html

As long as traffic speeds are under 30kmph, this above can work.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

Some more:
http://publicculture.org/articles/view/ ... -histories
Communal histories of India are premised on one fundamental assumption: that India is a society fractured into two overarching religious communities — Hindus and Muslims. These communities are not only separate and distinct but also irreconcilably opposed. Their cultures, values, social practices, and beliefs have little in common. Their histories are histories of discord: of mutual hostility, hatred, conflict, battles for domination. The boundaries of their identities are well etched, firmly defined, and categorically drawn, the lines deepened by a long history of mutual antagonism
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote:History writing in India:
http://ddkosambi.blogspot.in/2009/03/ko ... raphy.html
Romila Thapar is one of Kosambi's shishyas and is deeply indebted to him. Kosambi, at least, was openly Marxist.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

The things that Hindus need to understand is (IMVHO)

1. There is a difference between "history" and "the past". If there is no written history, was there no past? We have all swallowed the myth that you need "written records" to recall the past. There is no record of my parents' birth. Therefore they could not have existed. We have bought the story that the only way that people recall the past is by "history". That is patently untrue. The past can be recalled without a formal history.

2. There is a difference between worship and religion. You do not need religion for worship. Worship comes first, religion may or may not arise from worship. You can have worship without religion. You cannot have religion without God, but you can have a system of philosophy that explains the world without a God with superhuman powers.

3. A system of small self-regulating communities was the Indian legal system from time immemorial. That self regulation was based on a system of moral rules and "case histories" or examples in the form of moral tales of how those rules could be implemented - included as part of Hindu smritis. This system ensured social order in the absence of a central government. No matter who the king was, the country went on. The apparent lack of "laws" is only the absence of a top-down system which the British had and imposed on India - a model based on the principle that God is supreme and lays down the law. The law then has to be imposed by a law enforcement system. The loss of a central government could lead to anarchy in this kind of top down system

Like I noted earlier, and confirmed by someone else - there is no direct translation for the word "law" in Sanskrit. However there are many words that suggest "justice". How many of us accomplished English speakers know the difference between law and justice? Ancient Indians "laws" came combined with rules about justice. They were not blind laws left hanging and waiting for a judge and police system to do the needful.

"Thou shalt not kill" is supposedly a "law" - a commandment from God. It is a nonsensical one because it is bound to fail.

The Indian way of looking that the same issue is "It is wrong to kill" -i.e it is a moral obligation not to kill, but killing becomes necessary under certain circumstances. These circumstances are laid out in hundreds of commonly told stories and legends across India. A law stated with how it should be implemented and conditions under which it applies is a set of guidelines for justice. Dharma comes across as a justice system, rather than laws because it is always spoken of with examples of what is or what is not dharma. There is no shame in having something that is more than law. But colonized minds will not see this because the British did not see it that way.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

That racist mofo Winston Churchill was supposed to have said that India is no more a nation than the equator.

Now why did he say that? What might he have been thinking when he said that?. I can see two possibilities and I give them a probability of 50% each. One possibility is that he was simply being spiteful and dismissing the "nation" India because he was an angry asshole. The other possibility is that he saw India as not having any of the attributes of "nation" that European Westphalian states have - and he was after all PM of one such Westphalian state and presumably had some thoughts about what a "Westphalian nation state" should appear like for a Brit.

Westphalian nation states arose from the concept of God and Church ruling people from top down and imposing laws at the top that would trickle down and be implemented for every individual to obey. People, if left alone without a government at the top, would only descend into anarchy and chaos. So when you constructed a nation state you had a monarch or a monarch substitute like "president" at the top and a team of "ministers" (LOL even the Church has ministers - the word "minister" comes from the friggin church, fancy that! :D ). The monarch and his ministers at the top would make laws to be imposed down on the population by means of a system to impose those laws.

India did not have such a top-down system. India's system was decentralized and worked at the village/individual community level. Individual communites, jatis and villages had control over their own affairs. But does that mean that there was no concept of "nation"? Because, if Indian had no concept of nation, then India could not be a nation, exactly as Churchill said.

I put it to you that the concept of "nation" for Indians is older than Veer Savarkar. . It turns out that the name Bharata occurs in the Rig Veda. That apart, it is almost an ironic joke that one of the two main epics that define ancient Indian society is called "Mahabharata". So is anyone making a case to say that a concept of "nation" with a well defined and well "attested" sacred geography has existed for Indians for over 3000 years, but no one actually felt any loyalty to that nation? I would like to talk to such a person and rip him a new one. In debate, of course.

Churchill's assertion was based on an inability to understand that "nation" and nationalism can exist without a top-down government based on the model of Jehovah laying down the law and having it imposed via a monarch. India has been structures so very differently that the fact that it was colonized and absorbed a British model of government has distorted our own view of our own country. We are unable to analyse India without jumping back into the "comfort zone" of British descriptions, which require no explanation and no argument because everyone has been taught that.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by RajeshA »

shiv saar,

your explanations on law and justice in Indian terms are quite illuminating. However as a conclusion to this decentralized nyaya system, one may have to accept Sharia too as the specific law which oversees the affairs of Muslims! No?
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

RajeshA wrote:shiv saar,

your explanations on law and justice in Indian terms are quite illuminating. However as a conclusion to this decentralized nyaya system, one may have to accept Sharia too as the specific law which oversees the affairs of Muslims! No?

I am not sure I understand the question, but lt me answer from what I understand.

i think you are asking a political question in the sense that if Hindus are to revert to a decentralized system, then Muslims should get sharia.

I was not talking about the future. I was talking about the past and the reason why the British could not understand the system. As things stand today we have retained a part of this decentralized system like the Panchayat system. On Indians roads we have not retained it officially, but the seeming chaos on roads is because people have retained it for themselves and are ignoring top-down road laws. People are not suicidal by nature and while accident rates remain high, it seems likely that people are benefiting from the seeming chaos, which is why they do it. in both examples there are clashes between top-down laws and the people-level self governance.

The Panchayat system allows village level leaders to decide what happens in their area of jurisdiction. To that extent, Khap panchayats have full rights to decide about what their people should do. But they do not have the right to use draconian punishments outside the IPC. If we compare this with the old system, people in villages governed themselves, but that did not mean that they could ignore orders from the king if he chose to order them to do something. With coercive power (like GoI) the king could coerce.

But i am certain that the only "nationally followed system" in India was not "law" in the "orders coming from God" sense but a justice system which was based on Hindu dharma. The problem about such a decentralized system is that the center can be weak or strong depending on the incumbent leadership. Even with a weak center the periphery is self sufficient and can hold law and order for themselves, but cannot unite to remove larger threats. That is why Kings and kingdoms came and went while India lived on in its villages. That remained true more or less even after the Mughals came. But it was the Brits who squeezed the life out of India by imposing coercive top down government at village level.

The Islamic invaders and the British found a weak center. Both the islamic system and the British (ex-Christian) system worked on the basis of a strong central monarch/caliph imposing laws. India had a weak and un organized center because of almost complete autonomy at village level. The British set up a strong center in India, but they also set up similar strong central governance systems in Pakistan and in a whole lot of African nations. The only reason why democracy works in India is because there already was peripheral, village level self governance and stability. That actually helped the British even as they criticized it and tried to change it. The Indian government simply took on the role of monarch.

Can Islam or Christianity destroy the peripheral autonomy of Hindus? I guess it is possible. Hindutva is embodied by the people level justice system in India, Even Muslims in the villages are coopted into this system - sharia does not keep them out of it. Christians are in it too. But the Hindu system will be destroyed by modern Hindus - by the sickular libtards and unwise hindutvavadis who do not recognize the innate strength of people level self governance and who use British and western language, methods and parameters to understand and "explain" India and try and fit India into a British western mould and claim that we are same and equal there as well. It bothers me to see a self-proclaimed Hindutvavadi say that "Indiscipline on roads and lack of hygiene are because of lack of education". This is the language of a modern western educated brain judging Indians with a western eye. There are clashes between an older Indian system and modernity where we consider modernity as "educated goodness" and the old Indian system as "backward iliteracy". I don't think this sort of viewpoint is 100% right, but no one has worked seriously on what was right about the past and what is wrong in modernity. I think there is much scope for discussing some things on BRF.

Other than that I have not put in too much thought.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by RajeshA »

shiv saar,

Rajiv Malhotra has also spoken about Indian's comfort with chaos.

One reason why we don't mind it, is because we do not have the concept of entitlement drilled into us and thus we do not project such thinking of entitlement and competition onto others either, feeling less threatened, less challenged by crowds, by chaos. It is easy to show consideration for others, when one sees others as less hostile and intuitively friendly. One can thus be in comfort with rest of the world. May be there are other psychological reasons.

Principally I consider that to be our natural state, however modernity, goondaism, more competition may have changed this.

I presume other societies, Islamic and Western too have that. In Islamic societies, it is probably the "brotherhood" feeling which mitigates the aggression, and in Western societies it is the prosperity and rule of law, and thus these societies too can function, despite the "entitlement" principle.

However I have a feeling that when Westerners are thrown into our chaos and have to deal with Indian crowds, traffic, they do feel intimidated.

-------------

Regarding decentralization, I would say that since various communities and their rules always formed using same dharmic ethical foundation, others probably did not feel all too threatened. So decentralization has to be strongly coupled with Dharmic principles. It is in this regard that I mentioned Sharia. It does not suffice to think that every community should have the right to choose its own rules of governance and thus we morally accept Sharia for Muslims.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by member_22733 »

RajeshAji,

Sharia is a different beast, if you accept that you accept the rest of the Koran. Koran is primarily a user-guide on how to topple societies exactly like India and install an Ummah with a dictator on top.

Hindu systems and Sharia are completely opposite. Sharia is an existential threat to Hindu systems, because they are completely opposite in their spirit.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by RajeshA »

LokeshC wrote:RajeshAji,

Sharia is a different beast, if you accept that you accept the rest of the Koran. Koran is primarily a user-guide on how to topple societies exactly like India and install an Ummah with a dictator on top.

Hindu systems and Sharia are completely opposite. Sharia is an existential threat to Hindu systems, because they are completely opposite in their spirit.
Exactly.

I just wanted to emphasize this aspect, when we look at decentralization of administration and justice as the natural order of Bharatiya society.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by member_22733 »

Chaos and Indians:

Visit any remote village in India (some villages near my ancestral place are about 200 people in total). You wont find "chaos" that you find in the cities. There is a lot of politics no doubt, but the day to day activities of the people and the businesses there are very simple and self-organizing, and more importantly: smooth.

Chaos occurs primarily when such village behaviors are exported into cities which were not "natural" in India. Natural cities in India, for example: Indus valley cities were equipped with proper infrastructure that resembles "modern western cities", sewage, orthogonal roads etc.

Colonial Indian cities in comparison to ancient Indian cities, were just an amalgamation of villages. And since village life was systematically destroyed by the mass murdering brishits, people had no option but to go to the cities either permanently or periodically (that happens to this day in central India). So a village that had 50 people, had 500 people in the same area, then it became 5000 and nowadays its 50,000.

The fact that people still manage to function in such a crowded environment is actually saying a lot about Hindu system of thoughts and beliefs.

Whenever some auto driver cut me off and said "solpa adjust maadi saar", I used to get angry. Nowadays when I go to Bangalore, I myself say that to other folks, and surprisingly the same auto drivers seem to understand and it draws angry looks from some "modern looking" car/bike drivers :) :)
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

LokeshC wrote:RajeshAji,

Sharia is a different beast, if you accept that you accept the rest of the Koran. Koran is primarily a user-guide on how to topple societies exactly like India and install an Ummah with a dictator on top.

Hindu systems and Sharia are completely opposite. Sharia is an existential threat to Hindu systems, because they are completely opposite in their spirit.
The Indian system has been an "individual, personal" code of conduct that demands that every individual set aside some part of his life to work for the good of society at the micro-level - around him. That is part of an individual's dharma and that is how our parents have treated us. Religion and worship forms a small part of this individual code. One sets aside some part of the day for worship or "learn the vedas"

As long as a non Hindu conducts his personal life in consonance with dharma, his personal religious life way not come into conflict with Indian society. An example of this would be how the wearing of burqas in totally accepted in India, but at the same time no objection is tolerated against the wearing of any other form of dress. These are personal choices where the top down legal system does not interfere. Dress codes are very personal and India does not impose dress codes on anyone at a personal level. That does not mean that there is no Indian dress code. there are dress codes related to worship and dress codes for ethnic groups and soldiers/warriors. But dress codes are not imposed in public spaces and uniformity is not demanded. In this day and age, "public space" would translate to markets, restaurants, theaters, trains, buses etc. The places where I come across dress code restrictions are clubs and educational institutions. I think some Hindus may have absorbed British Victorian views on dress codes - and have begun to believe that there is a Hindu dress code that calls for covering up and they see "revealing dresses" as a western imposition. This is possibly an example of Macaulayite education teaching Hindus to say "You have dress codes in the west and in Islam? We have our own Hindu dress code too" This could be an instance of the person claiming to be a Hindutva vadi simply doing a copy paste of an attitude that is not Hindu, but acquired by Macaulayite schooling.

But both Islam and Christianity come with a "top-down" system that derives its leadership form some far away land in the west. So long as people do not mix their top-down religion with Hindu social life and the requirements of local level "adjustment", peace and harmony continues and, nothing happens. But this allows the top-down religions to get a foothold in Hindu communities. After that the foothold can receive money and ideological inputs from the outside that gradually provoke conflict with Hindus around them. Slaughter houses or the claim that "Religious sentiments are being hurt" by some act or other could be amenable to local level solution. But once a local solution is reached, a new conflict is provoked - because that is how both Islam and Christainity work - by provoking conflict.

So unless there is a central agreement on the protection of ancient Hindu culture it is difficult to stop such conflict. But when Hindus themselves are so Macaulayized that they see Indians as "lawless" and "unhygienic" , and at the same time Hindu political parties take support from "SriRam Sene" type groups who are fighting against "Un-Hindu mixing of boys and girls" we have a deeply colonized bunch of Hindus trying to impose a top-down fake Hindu narrative on others. The completely sold-out sickular libtards get new life from these contradictions within "Hindus". they say - discard it all and simply absorb what the west is saying.

In the meantime the West itself is changing and kicking out both reigion and morality for blind and intense materialism. So we have both libtards and Hindutva-vadis protecting things that should be discarded and adopting attitudes that we should not have. Hindus have not managed to explain Hindu-ism, to themselves because the concept of 'Hindu-ism" has been exposed to them by the Brits and that is the framework from which we see it. We need to wash our minds clean, purge the words used by the British and coin a new method of understanding why we are what we are. Why are we "like that onlee" and why is it so comforting and peaceful for us to to be like that onlee?
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

Pandyan I am not at book level yet. That is why BRF and counter arguments help me see things that I was not able to see till counter arguments are made.

But I have a few more thoughts to write.

Hindu society has existed with a scheme of local level dispute resolution and avoidance of conflict. Dispute resolution invariably means "give and take", at the end of which both parties should reasonably feel that justice has been done. So conflict resolution in the absence of "external authority" like law book, court and enforcement apparatus necessarily has to be a system that ensures justice, and not simply a list of laws. Empirically I suggest that dharma includes a justice system.

We have discussed time and time again that both Islam and Christianity spread by provoking conflict. These systems do not seek to resolve conflict by "adjustment" (or Bengaluru's "adjusht maadi" (please adjust) system). The ideologies seek conflict by commencing with a grievance that those who do not follow the top-down law are hurting their sentiment and a conflict, even death, is inevitable unless the other conforms to that top-down legal system.

This was the fundamental rub between the top-down religions Islam and Christianity and Hindu society which existed on local level conflict resolution. This also explains widespread allegations of Hindu cowardice and not wanting to fight - an allegation that gets Hindutva knickers in a huge twist and makes them want to fight. One might ask, why would Hindutva-vadis be wrong if they are taunted by being called cowards and want to show others that they too will fight. The problem is that taunting that the other person as a coward is a time honoured way of provoking a fight. The Mahabharat has many instances of Duryodhana and his brothers taunting the Pandavas for their weakness while they honourably (dharmically in the story) stuck to a deal before going to war.

This is not about Hindu cowardice. Even rats can fight. It is rat dharma being forced on us by conflict provocation and taunts to prove that we too are rats. If you watch Zaid Hamid (I don't but I see more refs to him than I want to see on BRF) - He is now saying "Hindus have an inferiority complex" maybe he reads BRF, but that is meant to be a taunt. A rat showing its teeth. Civilized conflict resolution is always, well, more civilized.

Bottom line is that we must understand our culture and not destroy it. At a local level Indians have always lived by the rules of dharma that they have gleaned from epics and elders. That peripheral stability was probably India's weak point - allowing Kings to fight or strike deals with foreign forces.

But now we have a central Indian top-down system called democracy and a Republic of India. We need to utilize that to re-establish civilization. India behaves in this way. Note india's penchant for joining UN forces and doing things like what we did about nukes or arms export. India takes a different stand because Hindus are different. There is a fundamental civility, and peace-seeking in our culture that has been dismissed as the culture of savages with no history, no laws, no nation and and unruly cowardly people. These are attitudes that have been put into our heads by education and we now parrot that out, in full agreement with the forces that originally came to India for conflict and nothing else.

If I intend to fight with you I will never say anything nice about you. But if your son learns from me and says exactly what I say - it's your problem. Self hate and the description of Hindu nationalism in a pejorative sense is our problem to sort out because we, with our olde-British Christu-buddhi are doing it to ourselves. Not just the sickulars, but the Hindutva vadis too.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

Shiv, in these stretching the mind to open it mode, this Balu note might be of interest:
http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/03/ethic ... angadhara/
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by csaurabh »

Here is some of Arun Shourie's thoughts on government and reforms.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... ire-ocean/
In every government, including this one, the focus is on announcing new schemes. Each scheme adds a task to the hands of the government/state. People in office think their marks will depend on the number of schemes they have announced. Yet, in spite of all the talk, we do not attach importance to the State — its functioning, personnel, institutions, rules, etc. With the kind of personnel any government in India chooses for institutions, does it show they attach importance to the State? We always think of reforms as one scheme — GST aayega ya nahin, insurance Bill pass hoga ya nahin. But the real theme of reforms has been to reduce the role of the State in our lives. We continue to do the opposite. That’s why things don’t happen. And rationalisations develop for this. An article commented on Mr Modi’s Cabinet. It said there is the Pareto rule that says institutions and governments are run only by 20 per cent. You only need 20 per cent who are good. So, we seem to think of putting good persons in only two-three ministries. Even today, the main instrument relied on is bureaucracy. But bureaucracy is not what it was 30-40 years ago, you don’t have L K Jhas or B K Nehrus. A civil servant I met recently said: ‘I am going to retire in 15-20 months. Ten years after my retirement, I will be subjected to some CBI inspector. So, why should I take a decision? Let the minister take it.’ Thirdly, you could still rely on civil services but induct experts. But that can only be effective if you put them not in decorative advisory positions but in decisive ones.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by csaurabh »

Here is a positive article by a westerner about India and 'secularism'.

http://www.niticentral.com/2014/08/27/j ... 36623.html
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

csaurabh wrote:Here is some of Arun Shourie's thoughts on government and reforms.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... ire-ocean/
In every government, including this one, the focus is on announcing new schemes. Each scheme adds a task to the hands of the government/state. People in office think their marks will depend on the number of schemes they have announced. Yet, in spite of all the talk, we do not attach importance to the State — its functioning, personnel, institutions, rules, etc. With the kind of personnel any government in India chooses for institutions, does it show they attach importance to the State? We always think of reforms as one scheme — GST aayega ya nahin, insurance Bill pass hoga ya nahin. But the real theme of reforms has been to reduce the role of the State in our lives. We continue to do the opposite. That’s why things don’t happen. And rationalisations develop for this. An article commented on Mr Modi’s Cabinet. It said there is the Pareto rule that says institutions and governments are run only by 20 per cent. You only need 20 per cent who are good. So, we seem to think of putting good persons in only two-three ministries. Even today, the main instrument relied on is bureaucracy. But bureaucracy is not what it was 30-40 years ago, you don’t have L K Jhas or B K Nehrus. A civil servant I met recently said: ‘I am going to retire in 15-20 months. Ten years after my retirement, I will be subjected to some CBI inspector. So, why should I take a decision? Let the minister take it.’ Thirdly, you could still rely on civil services but induct experts. But that can only be effective if you put them not in decorative advisory positions but in decisive ones.
It suddenly struck me that the entire Western nation state system is a top down model of Christianity. Islamic states again are top down models of Islam. There is no top down Hindu model - it is a bottom up model. And the absence of a top down model makes the nation vulnerable to criticsim and attack as "not being united", as being too diverse, oo argumentative, too much variation etc.

The bottom up model built up over centuries based on a framework of personal, individual level duties (dharma) and micro level dispute resolution is what makes India both unique and vulnerable to outside preying. No outsider, accustomed to laws imposed from above can fathom how India is one country - at least at first glance. That is why the central government in India needs to take special steps not to misuse secularism to kill Indian culture.

You see, we have spoken so much about "history" and how the west and others have been so soo honest and accurate about recording history in writing in the last 2000 years. And yes, it is true that both Christian and Islamic historians have on occasion written about massacres of unbelievers. But that part of history is left to small footnotes and mostly ignored.

When the Hindu brings up the plain and simple fact that top-down religions were spread by provoking conflict and then killing/defeating unbelievers in the name of God he is called a fundamentalist and in an instant we are told about Hindus massacring others . Our sickulars, with completely colonized minds lead the charge,with no knowledge of history or they are simply too embarrassed to point out facts. The spread of top-down "religions" is always by conflict. There is always a sword behind the talk of peace and love and that sword points the direction you need to go unless you want to impale yourself on the sword.

Explaining this to the world requires a special degree of scholarship, given that Hindus have to fight their way out of bad reputation and attacks from everyone and our own people who tell us all that is wrong with us "No History. No ethics. No laws. Indisciplined. Corrupt"

We need a special effort to understand how these accusations came and to turn around and point out without fear and embarrassment that Christianity and Islam are by design going to attack anything Hindu, in the same way they attack each other and Jews. In a sense , western nations are "escaping" from their history by seeming to move away from religion and then claiming that "religious conflict is for lesser races". The fact is that Westphalian nations states are built on the top down model of God is sovereign and my God is better than yours.

Very very very few Indians are looking at these things or saying these things. Just like there is a paucity of engineers to fashion a working aero engine in India there is a severe paucity of scholars to study others from a pure uncolonized Indian viewpoint. All Indians get colonized mentally from education. We all have to decolonize ourselves to think Indian.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by JE Menon »

csaurabh wrote:Here is a positive article by a westerner about India and 'secularism'.

http://www.niticentral.com/2014/08/27/j ... 36623.html
FYI, Bryon Morrigan is a self-proclaimed Hindu, and a former US Army Intelligence officer.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

For those who might find it difficult to follow exactly how our minds are colonized and how we are trapped by the language and "framework" that we refer to while we talk to each other, I would like to use the examples of Modi's reference to plastic surgery and another MP claim that an Indian sage had conducted a nuclear test.

If you look at the facts available to us at least as a legend, an inanimate doll was "given life" by Parvati and asked to guard the area. To cut a long story short, Shiva cuts off the head of this being and later when Parvati throws a fit, he restores the head using an elephant's head. Even in the days before robotics and artificial intelligence, it would have been possible to explain this story as one of advanced technology. Science fiction in the west has served just such a role for the west. The mental attitude that one needs is simply that "Such things are conceivable given the right knowledge"

But in India we have lost the conviction that our forebears could have had, or that it might be possible in future to have, the necessary skill to achieve such things. These things have been declared as "mythology" as you might have seen from the outraged reactions of the leftists and the media. Now we have a population of Indians who believe that
1. Indian legends are false and represent mythology
2. Truth is what is visible to us as western technology.

So any Hindu who wants to represent Indian stories as something that falls within the realm of possibility has to use terminology that we have learned from the west like "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering". The use of such words are mocked as blasphemy (see footnote) . How could any Hindu past, totally fake, and totally untrue as it is, be equated with the holy grail of "Technology" and "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering"? Sickulars are embarrassed. Some Hindutva vadis may be inspired. But I digress.

The point I was making is how there are colonized minds on both sides - among sickulars and hindutva vadis and how hindutva vadis are unable to use language effectively because they end up using western language to communicate even to inspire colonized hindutva vadis

The sickulars of course mock all this. Nothing on earth will convince them that anything in the Hindu past is remotely credible - and that attitude is perfectly in line with what the British said and taught. But Hindutva vadis also need to be taught to admire their past by using terminology derived from the west - like "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering" because they too have been brought up to believe that the Hindu past was probably fake.

I am reminded of a joke that i first heard when I was studying basic psychiatry as part of the MBBS course: The difference between a neurotic and a psychotic is that a psychotic knows that 2+2=5 and is quite happy about it. A neurotic knows that 2+2 =4 but he worries about the answer. Our sickulars are like psychotics, "beyond the pale"; they are lost to us. They are sure that the Hindu past is rubbish. But hindutva vadis are not much better. They are like neurotics, themselves unsure about some things because they have been taught that their past is all balls - heck Hindus "don't even have a properly written history for fuks sake!!" To talk to and inspire this latter bunch other Hindutva vadis have to pick out examples from western tech, like plastic surgery and genetic engineering. While this may be inspirational for some Indians it is simultaneously exposing India's backwardness vis a vis the west. So it's like one step forward and one step back.

A similar thing holds when the MP from Haridwar said that a sage had conducted a nuclear test long ago. If we look at what we know - our legends speak of weapons that could destroy the world or envelop whole armies in flame. It should normally be sufficient to simply say this without jumping into the lungi dance of drawing western parallels. But the Haridwar MP himself has a colonized mind and maybe his teacher did too. The frightening significance of a millennia old story of a weapon that could destroy the world is remarkable in itself. How did any Hindu know or think of such a possibility? But Hindus don;t think like this and it is not credible enough. It starts becoming credible only when we take a western example 'nuclear test' and say ' A nuclear test was conducted"

Mental colonization works in invisible ways to show up our attitudes of acknowledging western superiority and accepting a lesser Indian status. Like the neurotic who knows 2+2=4 but is not fully convinced, Hindutva vadis take western examples and framework to validate Hindu achievements.

I am not sure if people can understand where i am coming from as I say this - it is an abstract subject about "knowing one's own mind".

Footnote: See how i use the word "blasphemy" to illustrate a concept that is so utterly worthy of condemnation. I am using Christian/ Abrahamic religion metaphor to illustrate the way sickular react to any claim of anything good or useful from Hindus. By using English I must use Christian metaphor from time to time. We all understand blasphemy the word, but I think many of us don't understand the Christian past of words s like "law", rights" and 'sovereign". There is a difference between knowing the meaning and usage and knowing the context from which the word arose.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by Abhi_G »

I think this might seem to be tangential to the topic, but after deep thinking, I feel that this is a positive news that belongs here.

Long back, I had heard that the Qutub Minar Complex was built from stones obtained by ravaging several Hindu and Jaina temples in the vicinity of Delhi. Since the Sultanate and the Mughals had the center of their power in Delhi, it is not surprising to observe a complete absence of ancient temples in this area. Some people, I know, have sniggered about the complete absence of majestic Hindu temples in North India. I realized much later the real reasons which they were not aware of.

So, here's something to rejoice and it came during a tube light moment to me. There is a Chattarpur temple complex in Delhi on the way to Gurgaon. It is a huge temple complex with exquisitely beautiful temples built by following the various Hindu architectural styles. I have a feeling that the memory of erstwhile destruction was kept alive in the layers of people's minds away from the consciousness of fake city bred seculars. When the moment came, the non-Macaulyte Hindus have rebuilt their temples in an area near the Qutub minar - where several centuries back their temples were destroyed.

Here's the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatarpur_Temple

So now, whenever I come across a "Prachin Bhairav Mandir" or a "Prachin Hanuman Mandir" dotting the northern Gangetic plain, I feel that there is a high probability of existence of some old memory in the people belonging to that area. There may be some fakes also. But a lot of them might be really the sacred spots from the past. So, now, I have stopped questioning or suspecting the claims or veracity of *prachin-ness* of the spot. I just bow my head irrespective of prachin-ness. There is no point...since Hanuman or Bhairav are already prachin concepts.
Last edited by Abhi_G on 07 Dec 2014 22:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by Abhi_G »

Hmmmm...it seems I am not that wrong. In fact there is a Jain temple called the Dadawadi complex very close to the Qutub area. This is definitely a resurgence.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by ShauryaT »

shiv wrote: Footnote: See how i use the word "blasphemy" to illustrate a concept that is so utterly worthy of condemnation. I am using Christian/ Abrahamic religion metaphor to illustrate the way sickular react to any claim of anything good or useful from Hindus. By using English I must use Christian metaphor from time to time. We all understand blasphemy the word, but I think many of us don't understand the Christian past of words s like "law", rights" and 'sovereign". There is a difference between knowing the meaning and usage and knowing the context from which the word arose.
It is well known that the King James Bible is a very good way for someone one to raise their vocabularies and idioms that are used in the English language. It was a singular book that was mandated reading in all of England in the early 17th century and its influence is seen in the works of Shakespeare, the most popular reading in schools of classical English literature.

Many such concepts and terms we use can be either directly or indirectly traced to the the society, where this language developed. It is well known, that language encodes cultural contexts within it. When we use English to describe the Indian situation, all should be aware of these facts and are best advised to learn about the antecedents of the terms, for these terms many times do not capture the proper context and situations as applied to India.

To a degree, by the use of the English language, we have all devalued not only local language but local concepts and ideas, values and systems.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by RajeshA »

shiv wrote:So any Hindu who wants to represent Indian stories as something that falls within the realm of possibility has to use terminology that we have learned from the west like "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering". The use of such words are mocked as blasphemy (see footnote) . How could any Hindu past, totally fake, and totally untrue as it is, be equated with the holy grail of "Technology" and "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering"? Sickulars are embarrassed. Some Hindutva vadis may be inspired. But I digress.

The point I was making is how there are colonized minds on both sides - among sickulars and hindutva vadis and how hindutva vadis are unable to use language effectively because they end up using western language to communicate even to inspire colonized hindutva vadis

The sickulars of course mock all this. Nothing on earth will convince them that anything in the Hindu past is remotely credible - and that attitude is perfectly in line with what the British said and taught. But Hindutva vadis also need to be taught to admire their past by using terminology derived from the west - like "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering" because they too have been brought up to believe that the Hindu past was probably fake.

...

But hindutva vadis are not much better. They are like neurotics, themselves unsure about some things because they have been taught that their past is all balls - heck Hindus "don't even have a properly written history for fuks sake!!" To talk to and inspire this latter bunch other Hindutva vadis have to pick out examples from western tech, like plastic surgery and genetic engineering. While this may be inspirational for some Indians it is simultaneously exposing India's backwardness vis a vis the west. So it's like one step forward and one step back.

A similar thing holds when the MP from Haridwar said that a sage had conducted a nuclear test long ago. If we look at what we know - our legends speak of weapons that could destroy the world or envelop whole armies in flame. It should normally be sufficient to simply say this without jumping into the lungi dance of drawing western parallels. But the Haridwar MP himself has a colonized mind and maybe his teacher did too. The frightening significance of a millennia old story of a weapon that could destroy the world is remarkable in itself. How did any Hindu know or think of such a possibility? But Hindus don;t think like this and it is not credible enough. It starts becoming credible only when we take a western example 'nuclear test' and say ' A nuclear test was conducted"
I don't understand this view. How is India's backwardness exposed viz-a-viz the West?

What the West calls "Plastic Surgery" is indeed known to Indians since much before any record of it is available in West. Suśruta Samhita does talk of Plastic Surgery, or reconstructive surgery. The point is not to compare it to bleeding edge use of tools of today's medicine but simply competent plastic surgery.

Link
Sushruta as early as 600 BC used cheek skin to perform plastic surgery to restore and reshape human nose, ears, and lips with incredible results. Shushruta describes the details of more than 300 operations. He worked with 125 kinds of surgical instruments including scalpels, lancets, needles, catheters, etc.
I haven't read it, but for the more inquisitive, they can look further into it.

So I really don't understand why do the Seculars cringe when they hear someone talking about "Plastic Surgery" in ancient India.

Also when the talk is of ancient Indians having access to nuclear "bombs", it is not just based on Puranic or Itihasic stories, but also on "rumors" like these

Link1 Link2
When excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reached the street level, they discovered skeletons scattered about the cities, many holding hands and sprawling in the streets as if some instant, horrible doom had taken place. People were just lying, unburied, in the streets of the city. And these skeletons are thousands of years old, even by traditional archaeological standards. What could cause such a thing? Why did the bodies not decay or get eaten by wild animals? Furthermore, there is no apparent cause of a physically violent death.

These skeletons are among the most radioactive ever found, on par with those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At one site, Soviet scholars found a skeleton which had a radioactive level 50 times greater than normal.
One can say that our Pracheen Bharata texts refer to weapons and their use, which sound uncannily like nuclear weapons.

One solution may be that one brings up one possibility, for consideration and further research, without necessarily claiming it to be a fact.

Basically the secular stranglehold on the media, means that they would only ridicule anybody making such claims, rather than accept it as a contention and demand more research into it.

But the Hindutvavadi has no reason to "cringe" or feel ashamed. He has heard these things, he has read these things, and he can say out these things.

It is one thing to say that words like "religion", "law", etc. have a specific sociocultural context of etymology, popularity and thus semantics, and one cannot transfer this to another sociocultural context.

But scientific and technological terms can to a large extent be considered neutral, and thus why is there a reason to avoid their use when making own claims?
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

Rajesh - you may have missed my comment about Sushruta made many weeks ago in the WU thread, soon after Modi used the Plastic surgery analogy
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 1#p1744271

But the point I am making is about how one person may communicate to another person a concept that might be alien or new to the person who is listening.

For example a foreigner visiting India for the first time sees rotis and goes back to call them "a type of pancake". Even if he learns the word "roti" and says "i saw and ate rotis in India" the listener would be mystified. So the teller explains using analogies that the listener can understand readily. Similarly imagine an Indian who goes to Europe and sees and eats cake for the first time. He might explain that as a type of "mithai"

How do you tell an Indian that the concept of Ganesh - i.e a being that was created by putting an elephants head on a human body might be technically possible?

One way of explaining this would be religious one "God (Shiva) did it. he had supernatural powers"

But suppose you did not want a religious explanation and a secular/technical one, what could one say? Here one is faced with the issue that I pointed out above - that is explaining a concept to another person using words that he can understand. It turns out that Modiji used the example of plastic surgery because he possibly believed that this concept could be understood by his audience.

Was Modi wrong? Could he have used a better example?

Modi was not wrong in trying to inspire Indians to see India's past and aspire to a great future. But the examples he used IMO left much to be desired.

For example, what would Shiva have done to create Ganesh in technological terms? Whatever he might have done we don't know for sure that it was plastic surgery.. We do know that technological feats are possible. In fact if a head transplant has to be done, it would probably not involve plastic surgery at all. It would be done by neurosurgeons, orthopaedic surgeons and vascular surgeons. In fact it might not be surgery at all. It could have been robotics and artificial intelligence. Whatever it was, it was an advanced concept that we should aspire to achieve in future. By using words like "plastic surgery" and "genetic engineering" Modi has lifted words invented in the west and has tried to fit them into concepts that really existed in India (like Sushruta) or concepts whose names we do not know. Sushruta himself never used the words "Plastic surgery". But what he did was copied by plastic surgeons 3000 years later.

Unfortunately, our colonized minds do not know Sushruta and his achievements. But we do know the word "plastic surgery" Like the man who knows "pancake" and not 'roti" and needs to be told that roti is like pancake, Indians need to be told "Plastic surgery" to describe what Sushruta did thousands of years ago. This means that we are seeing and describing India through western eyes.

The same problem exists when an MP says that someone "conducted a nuclear test" in India many thousands of years ago. It is true that our ancient texts have many references to weapons that could burn up cities or consume the entire world. We have no "knowledge" that these were "nuclear weapons". We have no knowledge that "nuclear tests" were conducted back then.It could have been advanced technology that we have no idea about. Antimatter weapons or something even more exotic - "Thought weapons". But our Haridwar BJP MP does not think of or understand all this. His knowledge only extends as far as what he has been taught in his Macaulayite education - i.e "Nuclear weapons" and "Nuclear tests". And he speaks of ancient Indian weapon descriptions using western terminology that every Indian can understand. Once again this is a case of Indians describing ancient India using a western framework and western example. We see ourselves and our past through western eyes and use words given to us by the west. That is mental colonization.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

^^^ like seeing idlis and coconut chutney as "rice dumplings and coconut sauce".

b.
Whether or not some story about our past took place on earth or not, such a ‘fact’ is utterly irrelevant to accepting these stories. This attitude works as long as we are not brought up with the idea that the ground for accepting such stories is their ‘historical truth’.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote:^^^ like seeing idlis and coconut chutney as "rice dumplings and coconut sauce".

b.
Whether or not some story about our past took place on earth or not, such a ‘fact’ is utterly irrelevant to accepting these stories. This attitude works as long as we are not brought up with the idea that the ground for accepting such stories is their ‘historical truth’.
The meaning of the above sentence (from Balu I think) is as follows

When you speak of ancient Indians having used weapons of unimaginable destructive power in ancient wars, it is utterly irrelevant whether those wars actually took place or not or when they took place - you still retain the knowledge that such a deadly weapons could exist, as a concept, and were known to ancient Indians. That is our past. This remains true until someone comes along and convinces you that the only "truth" is what people have written down in the past in a particular "historiographical" format, and if your concept of that weapon does not appear in such a document, it is myth and not "historical truth".

In the process of mental colonization, Indians have begun to accept the latter conditionality about our own past. Our own past has been converted to myth by the applications of conditions that British/European historians placed on us. After we accept their conditionality about what "history" means, we cannot go back and tell them that our past (that has been converted to myth by the acceptance of that conditionality) is actually history and not myth. Checkmate!
Last edited by shiv on 08 Dec 2014 07:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by csaurabh »

shiv wrote: Footnote: See how i use the word "blasphemy" to illustrate a concept that is so utterly worthy of condemnation. I am using Christian/ Abrahamic religion metaphor to illustrate the way sickular react to any claim of anything good or useful from Hindus. By using English I must use Christian metaphor from time to time. We all understand blasphemy the word, but I think many of us don't understand the Christian past of words s like "law", rights" and 'sovereign". There is a difference between knowing the meaning and usage and knowing the context from which the word arose.
Exactly. :mrgreen:

One point I would like to make is that 'translation' doesn't truly help either. Although a word is translated, it is not in any way meaningful missing the context and history behind it.

For example, the word 'buddhijeevi' is often translated as 'Intellectual'. This word was used to deride CPI-M 'intelligensia' in the same way that Western 'right' often mock 'leftist' academics as 'ivory tower intellectuals' who don't understand the common man's situation, etc.

But 'buddhijeevi' actually means is 'thinking life'. Swami Vivekananda says that man is the only form of thinking life, and thus every person should try to be a buddhijeevi. The term is used in a positive sense.

I am not any supporter of commies but just think we should be able to discredit commie thinking without the use of language and framework used by the west ( whose commies are very different from 'our' commies ).

'Sampradayik' ( communal ) is another word that is used as a curse word ( describing 'Hindus who riot and kill muslims' ) rather than its positive sense 'Of a community'- implying team work. In fact even 'communal' doesn't have a negative connotation outside India.

So what we have is Indians arguing back and forth using words and terminology created by the west which is not in any way meaningful, even if 'translated'. IMO we could use a new thread for language issues alone.. We have discussed the words 'secular', 'religion' , etc. but the rot goes a lot deeper than that.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by shiv »

csaurabh wrote: So what we have is Indians arguing back and forth using words and terminology created by the west which is not in any way meaningful, even if 'translated'. IMO we could use a new thread for language issues alone.. We have discussed the words 'secular', 'religion' , etc. but the rot goes a lot deeper than that.
+1
Language and the mind are completely interlinked and the interlinking occurs when we are infants, learning language for the first time. Understanding what words and language do inside your mind is a deep investigation of your own mind.

Ironically the people who gave us the Vedas and generations of scholars and yogis after that were past masters at knowing and exploring the mind and using the mind to do things that seem impossible. Once again I suggest the (free online) volume, Aurobindo's "Secrects of the Veda" written in English by a completely uncolonized mind.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by A_Gupta »

shiv wrote: When you speak of ancient Indians having used weapons of unimaginable destructive power in ancient wars, it is utterly irrelevant whether those wars actually took place or not or when they took place - you still retain the knowledge that such a deadly weapons could exist, as a concept, and were known to ancient Indians. That is our past. This remains true until someone comes along and convinces you that the only "truth" is what people have written down in the past in a particular "historiographical" format, and if your concept of that weapon does not appear in such a document, it is myth and not "historical truth".
Yes. To ask the questions in terms of the Western categories of knowledge:

1. Is this knowledge Biblical in nature? No, these are not claimed to revelations from a "God".
2. Is this knowledge Historical in nature? That somebody had concepts is an indisputable feature of the past; when and where exactly these concepts arose, we have not chronicled.
3. Is this knowledge scientific or technological? In terms of being able to create such a deadly weapon, we don't have the knowledge or the means.
4. Is this knowledge purely imaginary or fiction (e.g., ancient science fiction)? These concepts are embedded in a "world system" - what we might say a philosophical system describing the world, though the Western world "philosophy" is a misfit - and so no, it is not meant to be imaginary or fiction.

E.g., people in modern times have talked about a 'space elevator'. This would be a structure about 36,000 kilometers in length, extending from the Earth's equator to geosynchronous orbit. Once built, the incremental cost of sending payloads into space would be tiny. Of course, today a lot can be said about what would be necessary to build a space elevator. Can such a structure be realized? Suppose two thousand years from now people read about the 21st century concept of "space elevator". Is it imaginary or fiction? Well it was never actually built. Similarly, we think that the ancients thought that the world had certain properties that might make some things possible; and in this sense it is not fiction.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by csaurabh »

shiv wrote: It suddenly struck me that the entire Western nation state system is a top down model of Christianity. Islamic states again are top down models of Islam. There is no top down Hindu model - it is a bottom up model. And the absence of a top down model makes the nation vulnerable to criticsim and attack as "not being united", as being too diverse, oo argumentative, too much variation etc.
Shiv ji, it is not just a matter of the nation state system. It is their entire line of thinking.

It is based on a presumption that a few people know what's best for everyone everywhere, and the rest must rigidly tow the line without using their own brain. McDonalds is a good example. It presupposes that everyone working there is a moron, and writes the rules very clearly ( slice potatoes this way, boil for exactly X minutes and so on ), so that the end result is something that is 'standard'. Even if it is fairly bad, you always know what to expect from a McDonald and this allows for a certain comfort of the mind that prevents it from exploring diversity.

The word 'standard' and it's concept is not something that occurs in Indian languages. Yet you will see its ubiquitous usage and application everywhere.

Software industry is a prime example. The nonsensical documentation rules , 'process' and 'project management' jargon, 'automation testing' and other types of completely unnecessary stuff dominates and makes everyone really, really inefficient at actually doing anything. It would be hilarious if it were not so pathetic. 'Certification' is a particularly nasty one. In order to become an 'Oracle certified Java Programmer', you must give an exam in which you have to answer 50 questions that come out of a book that has 300 or so. Most people 'game' the system by simply memorizing all of them and getting 95, 100% completing the exam in 15 min. The scary part is the people who think this stuff actually makes them better at Java. Repeat a lie a hundred times, and it becomes truth.

Even so, Indics find novel ways to beat the 'system'. For example, writing the anooyingly useless 'planning documents' after completing the project ( or even better, auto-generating it ). Also the small scale startups where this stuff is rightly ridiculed for what it is - the emperor with no clothes. The master-slave model of Western outsourcing is slowly changing.

Same story in the manufacturing industry. You must use this particular brand of cleaning fluid. You must use the machine exactly this way. So on and on. Even more problematic: Most western manufactured products and machines we rely on come with specific clauses: You must not open or tamper with it. Else it will void your 'guarantee'. This makes us all afraid.

The Indic mind has a natural aversion to all this. It yearns to understand and find the solution. Don't have a specific type of LED? Plug in another type. It works exactly the same. I myself only really understood this kind of thinking after working with various mechanical equipment, taking apart laptops and plastic clocks and so on. Often, a screwdriver is all one needs to solve the problem. Of course, you cannot solve 'every' problem with the screwdriver. That goes without saying, once you understand the thought process.

In colloquial terms, this is called as 'Jugaad'.

The same thing applies to big 'chains', 'brands' and roadside kirana shops. We don't want anything local anymore. We want 'brands'. Often we want to be 'international' without first being 'national'. People from big metro cities are the most mentally colonized. I have just had to hear some annoying whining about there not being a 'multiplex' in town. Why is there any necessity to combine a cinema theatre with a shopping mall, and have that everywhere?

I feel disheartened with most people everywhere ( keep in mind I'm talking about the so called 'top' institutions ) and their complete inability to think. Perhaps that is the greatest failure of our 'secular education'. It actively teaches people not to think.
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by csaurabh »

Top down model nice pic :mrgreen:

Image
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by member_20317 »

You are going OT, now.

Yes that is truly the case (same experience here too), but how does Hindu Nationalism and the drag-along obligations, that some people feel because of Hindutva vaadis, figure in all this?
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Re: Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sen

Post by Pratyush »

Shiv Ji,

Have been absent from the thread for some time. But having returned to the thread. The discussion that I am seeing is not attempting an answer to the question asked?

What I am seeing is a discussion on why we are the way we are as a society. But I don't think that this answers the question why.

To me the answer is simple.

It was intended by the leadership of the nation to make sure that we loose all sense of self respect in the nation. Once that is accomplished, they were sure that the voters will make stupid choices and voters have been making stupid choices for a long time. In so doing we became accustomed to the phenomenon of nothing will change in this country, regardless of who is voted for in the nation.

I am sure that you have observed that the opposition in the fist 6 months of the NaMo rule has been making statements that this govt has not changed any thing, the same theme is all around in the so called MSM.

All these statements are made to make the people continue to believe that nothing can & will change.

On top of this you have near a constant propaganda that Hindus are divided and a conquered race. It is easy to see why that will lead to negative projection by the "media and those who claim to set the agenda".

So regardless of what you do and or not do, this sense will remain. The only way to change it is to make sure that the nation develops explosively and becomes a rich nation. With people engaged in productive occupations.

IOW, we need a cultural revolution, in the economic sphere, while preserving the democratic setup. In order for the prejudices to be removed.

Still you will have morons who will not have gotten the memo. But the numbers would have reduced considerably.
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