LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -29
HINDUISM FURTHER DEFINED

What is the basic ingredient of religion? Faith. How can it be defined? As bind belief system. We need not bother much. They have no word for honesty. Iman(ईमान), erroneously understood as honesty is belief unshaken by reason or introspection.
Have you ever thought that religion means only Semitic religions? There is no other religion in the world. Even Buddhism, although an organized system ready to proselytize, is so rational as to profess doubt everything unless after considering every aspect you personally are not convinced as to its propriety. Buddhism is a set pattern of duties to be performed and observed by its adherents. Clearly it has no other attribute of Semitic religions, not even conversion by fraud, coercion or violence? Only Semites qualify for religiosity.

Religion is a belief system- against reason, against science, against verifiable knowledge. it is against progress, against individual or collective freedom, against democracy, and as Russell defined, against humanity. It permits all forms of crime without remorse, making some concessions for followers of the same creed.

It is against education, although not against literacy, against books other than THE BOOK, AL KITAB or the HOLY BOOK. The purpose of education is to enable the students to read THE BOOK. After that no other book need be read, because either it shall conform the same things as written in THE BOOK and, in that case, no use wasting time on it, or it shall disagree with THE BOOK, in which case it will confuse human beings and so it must be burnt for the sake of the spread of true knowledge. Even humanity in Semitic religions is limited to just a tribe. Others are born of Satan to be perpetually burnt alive, be it from the day of judgment or earlier still if they refuge to opt the TRUE religion. It was this vision that prompted Pope Innocent III to burn entire city inhabited by Cather followers, sparing none – infants, sick, elderly or pregnant. How innocent he was, can not be judged by non-Christians. All commendable words and epithets are spoiled in these religions.

If Marx held religion to be opium he was quite considerate. If Russel considered religion to be embryo of crime he was frank. I must remind that Marx knew only Semitic faiths. The latter was directly referring to Christianity. If Dara Sukoh said no human can live where Mulla gives prayer call, he was also not mincing words. Religion applies to Semitic religions only because there is no other institution in the world with shared attributes.

My observations may appear severe but none of the allegations is product of my imagination. It all started with Genesis itself. But mind it, Semitic religions were born out of the Vedic Aryans highly influential in northern Iraq and Asia Minor(Anatolia, the country of sunrise) 2000 BC -1300 BC, but borrowed wisdom may be toxic if you fail to assimilate it properly. One man’s meal is another man’s poison.

Secularism in fact is freedom from intervention of Semitic Creeds called religion (मजहब) which have inbuilt urge to dominate and subjugate. Devotional obeisance can not be equated with Semitic religions with complete surrender. But what then is the demand of Lord Krishna, who preaches “desert all the other courses, come to my care, I shall deliver you from all the sins committed by you : सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज. अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः. I have a hunch that this principle was highly admired by Muhammad Saheb. It is this inspiring utterance that could have caused him to state that sweet breezes come from India, if this statement carries any weight. But here again there is a serious misunderstanding from which even Indians are not free because they take it to be a statement by Lord Krishna, whereas he says that he is not a being but Time incarnate. I advance to destroy that has lost its vitality or justification. The outdated, is already dead. You don’t incur sin if you eliminate it. If you behave perfectly according to the demands of time you have nothing else to bother for. All your requirement have to be fulfilled by your dedicated surrender to time. I think after the tenth chapter all that is said is not obeisance to God in abstract, but the expediency at the nick of the moment.

Moreover the abstract or non-spatial entity of time transformed into a visual figure is not anti-art, anti-science, anti freedom, anti-humanity. on the contrary it extends its bonds even to other humans, animals and nature in general. Have you ever stopped to think about the cosmic vision of the time. No one in the world except Indians, before the invention of telescope, had any Idea that there are innumerable suns in the sky.*
दिवि सूर्यसहस्रस्य भवेद्युगपदुत्थिता ।
यदि भाः सदृशी सा स्याद्भासस्तस्य महात्मनः ॥
divi sūryasahasrasya bhavēdyugapadutthitā.
yadi bhāḥ sadṛśī sā syādbhāsastasya mahātmanaḥ৷৷11.12৷৷
Contrary to being anti science it is scientific truth described in evocative language.

We are discussing Hinduism. If secularism is freedom from intervention of religion in state matters, Hinduism is not a religion and it is synonymous with SECULARISM. It keeps aloof from the state affairs in principle.

It is strange that a large number of our intellectuals, for the reason best known to them, have alienated themselves from Hinduism to show and advertise that they are secular.

*NB. It appears I was carried here in my heat and the the reference to thousand sun is quantitative, but yet merger of space in time द्यावापृथिव्योरिदमन्तरं हि व्याप्तं त्वयैकेन दिशश्च सर्वाः , is something special. On such occasions friends should remind me if any omission or commission comes to their notice.

(to be continued)

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -28
DEFINING HINDUISM

What did Bertrand Russel demand of a modern man with scientific temper? “A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”

How has Sanatan Dharm,been renamed as Hindu Dharma? How has the connotation changed to equate it with religion, conceding at the same time that it has no book controlling its believers and as such is not a religion in Semitic sense? How alternately sects and sampradayas have been again equated to Semitic religions and then with an eye on benefits available to minorities those belonging to those sects have claimed a non-Hindu identity? How the tribal groups whose deities and value system form part of Hinduism have been weened away as non-Hindus to facilitate conversion? How a sect composed of conscripted eldest male child of the Hindu families that reverently attended Sabad Kitran and submited to Guru Nanak was made inimical to Hindus?

These and many such questions demand socio-psychic explanation and apt definition of the term Hindu, but within my limited awareness no such attempt was made. Undefined words like mentally deranged persons are both pitiable and indefensible with little resistance against their misuse.

Hindu may be construed to mean professionally stratified society with irremediable alternative for change of profession, with Brahman as the despot who created and maintained it. Be what it is, socio-economic problems need to be addressed, but they can not be equated with religion.

Intellectual lethargy, dependence of our intellectuals to white race geniuses to solve our problems is the main culprit. What a pathetic state that we are a country without geniuses, and the most powerful among them are those who have artfully stooped to them to conquer their own culture for them.

The term Hind had and still has in Muslim countries, a geographical connotation and those living in that area irrespective of its changing boundaries are Hindus, but once Muslims from Central Asia were collectively called Turk and later Muslims and were identified as a distinct group based earlier on geography and later on religion, the rest of the population was identified as Hindu.

It was a negative term – non-Muslims- subordinating erstwhile geographical identity. The fun of it is that Pakistan which geographically deserves to be called Hindustan has lost its claim to the word and now it is used for India although today there is no country by that name. It is the Muslims who took refuge in India, that desisted affiliation to India and detested calling it Bharat, call it Hind as they have reservations of a sort which only Indian Muslims have today in the world. As a flashback the organised Hindus under RSS who also have some aversion similar to them, call it Hindusthan.

Kabir was perhaps the first to use both Turk and Hindu as communal identities, wherein Hindu stood for the section with irrational social and ritual practices. The irony is that Kabir wanted to create social harmony by the Sanatan value system, replacing God and social ills of both by Yogic self realization.

Hinduism has never been defined as a spiritual or religious entity but as it has replaced Sanātan Dharm we shall use both the terms as synonyms, with freedom to use the shorter term for the longer one.

So defined, Hinduism gives an individual as well as community, a sense of belonging, maximum freedom to act as he thinks fit. Of course, in all his judgments he is required to maintain a high standard so that he may not do unto others, that he thinks others should not do unto him – आत्मनः प्रतिकूलानि परेषां न समाचरेत्।

Do you think it is a maxim never practiced by common man. No doubt it is a norm emulated to the best under personal limitations as all norms and rules are. Listen even an uneducated man or woman having passed through extreme suffering wishing ‘may god put not even my bitterest enemy to such a suffering,’ to know that these maxims are molds in which collective consciousness of Hindus has been cast.

Books and organizations enslave and dehumanize and criminalize their believers and followers as Russel had illustratively indicted. They have been likened to sheep whereas the founder of the religion is held to be the shepherd, or a bàndā or enchained slave, the God as the Master without mercy. No further comment on dehumanization of the organized religions is required.

On the contrary the Hindu aspires to rise as high as the founder himself – दिवस्पुत्रा अंगिरसो भवेमाद्रिं रुजेम धनिनं शुचन्तः. What was the special attribute of these AŊgirasas : ऋतं शंसन्त ऋजु दीध्याना दिवस्पुत्रासो असुरस्य वीराः । विप्रं पदमंगिरसो दधाना यज्ञस्य धाम प्रथमं मनन्त । They came from the Asura background that was lax in morals, destitute, dependent entirely on bounties of nature, preferred idleness and enjoyment, but they, following the path of stern discipline, rightness, meditation, attained excellence and wisdom and built the base of improved production through their mineralogy and metallurgy. They in fact were pioneers in scientific and technological discovery and inventions.

It does not subordinate and subjugate the members but ameliorates and uplifts: उच्छ्रवस्व महते सौभगाय।
It inculcates a habit of making small sacrifices in broader interest of not only humanity but all the creatures and the environment in general and enthuses moral courage to stand resolutely in the face even of torture and threat to life: “what has not to be done you shalt not do even if you have to die, and you shall not desist from doing that which is to be done, this is universal law : अकृत्यं नैव कर्तव्यं प्राणत्यागेऽप्युपस्थिते । न च कृत्यं परित्याज्यं एष धर्मः सनातनः ।

To be more specific, observance of truth, reticence, forbearance, cleanliness, thrift, sense of guilt, forgiveness, simplicity, appetite for knowledge, pacification, piety, meditation these or perennial duties: सत्यं दमस्तपः शौचं संतोषो ह्रिः क्षमार्जवम् । ज्ञानं शमो दया ध्यानमेष धर्मः सनातनः ॥

We find, even Bertrand Russel in his depiction of a modern, ideal, scientifically tempered society could not imagine the level of moral, mental and social, nay universal vision as was promulgated by Sanātan dharm which Hindus despite their plight through a millennium tried to maintain to the extent possible. (To be continued)

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -27
RE-EXAMINATION

We may now critically examine Russel’s observations with an eye on .

1. Russel appears not to be against any one believing in god, but against making is precondition of being a Christian. A Hindu is not required to believe or not to believe in God, or any scripture.

2. Humanity is divided into religious communities as globe is divided by geographical boundaries.:That is prime reason we are a Hindu or Russel for himself admits that “in that sense we are all Christians.” But because of that no one should hold his religious head to be wisest and most upright, in his case he does “not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.” All the religions – Buddhism, Jainism, islam suffer from this dilemma, but some how Sanatanis kept so safe from the vice that they could ridicule their deities and even the revered ones for their failings in judgment and moral indecencies.

3. The idea of hell was not foreign to Hindus. It could have come with some tribe which had such a belief. It could not hold strong. Instead life cycle held firm including a migratory life of ghosts. On cosmological question we may not place much weight except from the fact that Hindus did agree with scientific advances while others refused to change. Normal Britishers themselves do not show much resilience. They failed to adopt metric system of measurement and weight as yet.

4. A dubious position in which even Supreme deities are helpful but not almighty and yet possessing extra-ordinary power, shared by trinity (ब्रह्मा, विष्णु, महेश) despite omniscience, omnipresence lacking omnipotence yet extraordinary benevolence is part of Hindu (सनातन) tradition, while Omnipotence is the sheer attribute of Semitic faith. He is not Omniscient. He needs intermediaries to be correctly informed, and the Idea of Omnipresence is inconceivable in a God who sits in the seventh sky, aloof from his creation. The responsibility to create an evil free world is his, but his Omnipotence is overruled by Satan. As such he loses that lone power as well. This helpless god is powerful in his punishment alone but there he appears to be on the side of the Satan as innocent people have to bear his wrath mostly. So omniscience and omnipotence is illusory and a matter of baseless belief. In that case, “if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?” That may be a good ground to suppose “that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking.”

(5) I have no comments to pass on the moral rectitude of Christ. We simply remind that those precepts that are repeated often to prove humility and peacefulness of Christians as advised by Christ were borrowed from the east where they were practiced by a large number of elevated souls. Russel rightly commented, ‘Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept”. But that was so contrary to the western culture that despite Christ’s appeal they acted savagely and that shows the real Christian character.

(6) ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ Is another such commandment, which is variously common in day-to-day parlance दूसरों को दोष देने से पहले अपने भीतर झांको. Being at variance with western rowdyism praised as chivalry. No doubt “That principle” he concedes “I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries.”

(7)Then Christ says: ‘Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.’ Russel holds, “That is a very good principle.” But seldom practiced except in recent days when East and West the twain did meet and west was humanised.

(8) “He says: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.’ That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to.” East had sizable number of figures who lived up to that principle whom Christ had emulated.

(9) “When He said, ‘Take no thought for the morrow,’” he in fact was again repeating a precept common in eastern value system that had come down from hunting-gathering days and was preached as अपरिग्रह a lesson against hoarding, variously repeated in different books such as Ishopanishad’s त्यक्तेन भुंजीथा:, consuming moderately so that others are not deprived. Again a foreign concept to the West which was beyond its imagination. Even Russel fails to comprehend its import.

(10) The idea of hell as punishment has been not criticized by Russel but the fact that it is irredeemable, “He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment.” In Hindu idea of hell it is concomitant with the gravity of the sin and both heaven and hell are time bound. As far the kindness to other creatures is concerned, it has no place in Semitic imagination. “Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming to divide the sheep and the goats He is going to say to the goats: ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’ He continues: ‘And these shall go away into everlasting fire.’ Definitely “that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty.”

(11) An impact of Indian civilization has been missed by others as well as Russel, “He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: “Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away”.’ This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree.”

Agreeing with the conclusion drawn by Russel let us remember that in the genesis the Adam is forbidden to taste the fruit of knowledge and once he commits that sin, his eyes open he was likely to eat the fruit of immortality, the fig tree, he was at the verge of becoming पैप्पलाद, the fruit of ashvattha, the fig tree, that he was exiled from the garden of Eden. In this episode the same bite has come with a different garb.

(12) Russel says “I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.” But even religious books rightly interpreted can yield crucial information. For example, Adam was exiled from Eden Garden. Where was Eden Garden according to the western tradition? Somewhere in the East no doubt. And where does Adam reach, in the west, close to fertile crescent. Where from he reaches there with the knowledge of cultivation. And still you force us to believe that knowledge of agriculture came to east (India) from the west (Fertile crescent) while a similar and more convincing account is found in our tradition in which due to violent opposition from the Asuras, those determined to practice artificial production ran helter-skelter in all direction before in Indian environs they settled in the North East.

(13) “That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”
He was not a Christian yet he was part of a circle most of which were Christian and as such he had to be only tolerably severe. In a state of total lack of concern he should have added that the more inhuman and wretched a Christian was in his dealings with non-Christians the more revered he was and as such most of those raised to the office of papacy, and those who counted as Saints belong to this very category of criminals.Theodores, Piuses and Innocents can be rated not above dreaded criminals. As such the specious ground on which a Christian is “a person who attempts to live a good life” needs a redefinition in which the bad is good and good is bas, in Christian parlance.

“ And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and of improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. ‘What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.’

“ Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.” Says Russel. True. That has been seminal teaching of all the Hindu books be they scripture or fiction. But his view that “ The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. “ is in fact based on the near east beyond which the Europeans had seldom reached. How Brutal were the Egyptian and Babylonian autocrats, how they resorted to mass massacre time and again has been properly delineated by Will Durant. Mill extended it on the plea of Brahmanical supremacy and Marx uncritically appropriated it. The same mistake has been committed by Bertrand Russel here.

Conclusion:
Summing up his critique Russel says, “A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”
This is how Sanatan Dharm has been defined as we shall detail tomorrow.

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -26
TO BE or NOT TO BE

While I feel threatened by advancing strides of papacy*, I recall that exactly 91 years and 6 months back Bertrand Russell delivered his historic lecture that has inspired a number of geniuses to re-examine their moral and intellectual stand. A friend of mine, senior by 10 years, wrote a booklet having made some initial experiments in other religious practices. He had gone as close to Christianity as to be baptised when compulsory requirement of beef eating repulsed the vegetarian. He reverted to tell why he was a Hindu with added vigour. Another friend, junior by 15 years, wrote a booklet to tell why he was not a Hindu to prove that he was secular.

(Note: *The Lecture …was delivered at the Battersea Town Hall on Sunday March 6, 1927, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society.)

Right from my childhood I did not observe anything which others thought necessary. Weeping helplessly in my solitude, remembering my mother, I lamented why I was not borne a Muslim. In that case I could visit her burial site and weep inconsolably till she herself rose to hug me.

On the other hand for quite some time I sat after morning bath for puja, reading Hanuman chalisa (हनुमान चालीसा), Bajarang Bana (बजरंगबाण) and some part of Rama charitmanas(रामचिरत मानस), meditated on Dipavali nights to achieve mantrasiddhi( मंत्रसिद्धि), out of my own curiosity to achieve or show myself a bit extraordinary. Even at a late stage I made another trial reciting Durga Saptsati (दुर्गासप्तशती), concentrating hard before the icon of sarvmanagala (सर्वमंगला)’
, ultimately to realise that it is all self-deception. I found neither any additional piety nor spiritual improvement in me. But it was not as a devotee but a seeker of spiritual elevation.

To be or not to be a Hindu was never a moot point. It was settled issue beyond the reach of any speculation as much as I was son of my father, member of my family, resident of my revenue village which was part of my postal village, that fell in my subdivision, and my revenue circle and finally in my district. Before I learnt my alphabet, I had crammed my identity details. If someone simply asked my name he would get a long reply trying his patience: मेरानामभगवानसिंहवल्दरामधारीसिंहग्रामहरियरसीयरबुजुर्गकिताखुर्दतप्पागगहातहसीलबांसगांवपरगनाभौवापारजिलागोरखपुरकारहनेवालाहूं। No break to separate words, no pauses for clauses, no respite for taking breath. It was as if embosomed on my mind as a stamp mark – Inseparable, unterminable by any doubt. Exactly the same was with my communal identity, HINDU. Interminable, immutable, unquestionable.

The main reason for this immutability was that my Hindu identity never disturbed me in my thought and action in any way. Although Semitic religions had their inspiration from ‘Hindus’ settled in Asia Minor, they all were set in their socio-economic moorings. Religion in their sense never prospered in India. We had sects or sampradayas which not only differed but had also clashes, but in that sense Hinduism is not a religion but a conglomerate of religions, all of them similar except in the belief of the superiority of their deity – Shiva (शिव), Shakti (शक्ति) – Durga(दुर्गा), Kali(काली) in different manifestations . If we take these sects to be separate religions then, in that case every househoould have as many religis its members. Nay, the same individual could profess a number of religions.

We have ample material to trace the birth, development, ascendancy and decay as well of the deities , but we shall not indulge into that beyond telling that the same Mother Earth (the source of मातृभूमि > वन्देमातरम्,) has been symbolizing space with its four quarters, चतुर्भुजा, with added angular quarters अष्टभुजा, plus the vertical dimensions दशभुजा and temporally काली, consuming any and everything existing कराला. In a synthetic conception of space and time born of famines and death caused by it makes it कपाला bearing necklace of skulls, चामुंडा). We can trace why to avert personal harm, blood of animals harming agricultures – water buffalo and goat – came to be shed to satiate her. This makes even these sects rationally explicable and therefore with much less blind faith ascompared with the religions which defy explanations and are therefore called belief systems.

Dharm is purely a scientific concept. It defined essential and innate attributes of objects and beings, in absence of which they cease to be.; they can not be conceived even. Look at the fire without heat, lamp without light, poison without toxification, snake without fang. In a word dharm is above good or bad. Use of dharm as religion is tautological error.

II

Now we may examine the grounds which forced Bertrand Russel to dissociate himself from Christianity
(1) There are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature—namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. … Of course there is another sense which you find in Whitaker’s Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. … I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.

(2) Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

(3) You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the Freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason, and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.

(4) …as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be…. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all.

(5) … You have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because He is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am travelling on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard, intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.

(6) THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN …it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?

(7) THE MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR DEITY … You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was sceptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother’s knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much emphasise—the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times…. If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. … a line which I often thought was a very plausible one—that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

(8) THE ARGUMENT FOR THE REMEDYING OF INJUSTICE… ,Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue: ‘The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.’ You would say: ‘Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment’; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. …

Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people’s desire for a belief in God.

(9) THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST : … You will remember that He said: ‘Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. … Christ said: ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and they none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did. Then Christ says: ‘Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.’ That is a very good principle…. I cannot help observing that the last general election was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must assume that the Liberals and Conservatives of this country are composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away on that occasion…. He says: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.’ That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to.

(10) DEFECTS IN CHRIST’S TEACHING : …. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance: ‘Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come.’ Then He says: ‘There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom’; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, ‘Take no thought for the morrow,’ … He was not so wise as some other people have been, and he was certainly not superlatively wise.

(11) THE MORAL PROBLEM : … There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, … You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’ That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: ‘Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world of come.’ That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come.

Then Christ says: ‘The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth’; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming to divide the sheep and the goats He is going to say to the goats: ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’

He continues: ‘And these shall go away into everlasting fire.’ Then He says again: ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.’ He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. …You remember what happened about the fig-tree. ‘He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: “Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away”.’ This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects

(14) THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR:.. As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. …That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. …

There are a great many ways in which at the present moment the Church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and of improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. ‘What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.’

(15) FEAR THE FOUNDATION OF RELIGION: ….Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -25
KNOW YOUR WORD

It is not necessary that we should know etymology or history of each word we use. But those of us, who try to educate or inform others, must know what they exactly mean by the seminal words they use. In absence of this, they have no moral right to teach or preach others. No one would like to be guided by a person who does not know what he is talking about and what his stand is.

For the last five hundred years Christianity has been trying to present the dirtiest caricature of Indian society as if it was all because of Hinduism. No such attempt was made during the seven hundred years of Muslim rule despite its other manifestations of monstrosities. As a sample we may pass a glance over the comment by two of the most influential Englishmen, devoted to missionary cause:

“The Hindu divinity is where absolute Monsters of last, injustice, wickedness, and cruelty. any short, their religious system is one grand abomination.” Wilberforce speech in Parliament of Great Britain parliamentary debates, xxvi. June 22, 1813, p. 164. kopf 142

Another powerful missionary, Charles Grant thought “Indian civilization was Barbaric because it’s religion was degrading. It was a dangerous violation of the Christian spirit even to tolerate such a culture. The British Civil Servant was to be an agent of cultural change and not an agent in the perpetuation of Hinduism . (in his famous proposal submitted to Company Govt. of Bengal)

I quoted them not to support or condemn them but simply to remind that there has been no change in the standard canard throughout, although methods adopted have steadily degenerated to resort to ugliest and filthiest tricks to disorient the weak headed from Hinduism to facilitate expansion of Christianity. It should not disturb me but for the fact that even highly educated scholars with secular bearings promoted and encouraged as part of the design of Christendom or those posturing as such continue the same refrain mindlessly as self-certified Hindus of a modern breed.

It becomes imperative to know what those terms, practices, words and symbols mean on the one hand, and on the other to know if they really understand what Hinduism was apart from what has penetrated it as antibody due to its openness and softness. If they neither understand nor care to understand and yet do not have the decorum to maintain their reserve, we must examine them and tell them and others what exactly they are, how and why they present their own misconceptions to disturb the fabric of our society. We must also know whether they are Hindus or just bear a Hindu name but are metamorphosed and baptized within.

Hindu

Take the word Hindu itself. Even an idiot knows that barring the followers of Semitic religions the rest of Indians are Hindus, even though inclusively all the inhabitants of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh are Hindus as an extended meaning of Hind/Ind or erstwhile India, initially covering a limited land mass identified with Sindh and Punjab. All the inhabitants of erstwhile India are addressed as such even by Muslims outside. Because of exclusivity it has been reduced to those who follow universal value system, i.e. सनातन धर्म (code of duties) that demands that not only other individuals and societies but all the living beings and thing must not be disturbed or harmed unless they pose a threat to your own existence, in which case they can be eliminated. This value system evolved through thousands of years right from hunting-gathering days. Because of its unparalleled longevity, it has permitted, rather demanded adjustments and modification and prohibited the outmoded rules and practices. This renovated value system has been called युगधर्म which we may loosely put as modernized or modified value system according to the Time and Locale.

We shall examine the historical phases through which it has passed in the next post.

The party which fought to emancipate the country and the people from subjugation is, to day, used by a family to submitt the emancipated to a more heinous subjugation to papacy. No one in that party has moral courage to stand and save the party. They all behave like barking dog with their leash in her/his hand for dog-biscuits. More strange is the fact that even a sizable section of INTELECTUALS has formed a taste for dog-biscuits.

खोने के सिवा क्या था बिसाते हयात पर।
यह उम्र भी लगा दी और उठ कर चल दिए।

आईना आईने के सामने है
देखिए कौन किसको देखता है।
2.9.18

अभी बचपन है, खुद पर मर मिटेंगे,
हटा लो सामने से आईने को ।।
3.9.18

अक्स टूटा है आईने के साथ
साथ ही कितने भरम टूटे हैं।
3.9.18

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -24
Display of histrionics

II
Can we count the hours and days spent on the histrionics surrounding the Manuvad and Manusmriti by those who despise history, but revive myths and characters from epics and Puranas? Don’t they enact shadow war to avenge injustice of yore to divest themselves of pressing modern responsibilities? Can we identify the forces behind the curtain prompting them as and when they forget the crammed dialogue? If not, then we ignore what is obvious and fool ourselves.

The bane of social discrimination is endemic to Indian society from top to bottom. It has frustrated all agitations and movements launched against it, from Rigvedic period to the present- those of the Asuras(Bhargavas in RV), Upnishadic teachers, proponents Yoga, Sankya and Vaisheshik schools, Buddha, Mahavir, Shavites, Tantriks, Siddhas, down to medieval saint movement under the leadership of numerous thinkers from Ramanand, Kabir, Nanakdev to Namdev and later Brahmasamaj, Arya Samaj.

Can we ignore the inner turmoil of Indian society? Have we any parallel in world history of the urge for freedom, equality and justice for all? Had not all these movements been spearheaded by those who did not belong to the socially discriminated and economically deprived section, including the progressive Brahmanas?

There is something in Indian society exclusively of which it felt so proud. Sarve bhavantu sukhinah sarve santu niramaya, sarve bhadrani pashyntu ma kashcid dukkhabhag bhavet (May everyone be happy, may everyone be free from disease. May everyone reach the summum bonum of life, may none suffer pain) is not a vain cry, but a widely felt urge of Indian society at a time when there were societies that held that the niggers have no soul so they don’t feel any pain when tortured and lynched.

For the first time missionaries inspired some socially oppressed leaders to revolt (Jyotiba Phule and a few others) but they were not moved by humanitarian concerns. They simultaneously and even much after, met out worse treatment to the slaves, liberated slaves and bonded laborers without any remorse and biting of conscience ( To Kill a Mockingbird). They made disruptive use of their sufferings for augmenting proselytism.

Whatever their motive but the outcome was salutary and the role of such leaders in modern awakening can not be underplayed. But it shall be thanklessness not to show gratitude to those luminaries counted above whose labour was not entirely lost. They created a moral justification for social justice that even the most cynical of the castes blamed for discrimination could not raise even a whisper when exceptional favour was granted and discrimination was judged as punishable offence by constituent assembly and the law-makers later on.

Not a single study by sociologists, anthropologists or historians has been made to explain the origin, support base, dynamics of this institution, that it survives all the assaults without making much fuss on visible plane. This was a real challenge for the intellectuals coming from oppressed section and making headlines by tales of their plight which is broadly known and variously felt by all. Placing the blame on Brahmanas alone is too facile and misleading . Can the backwards embrace the socially oppressed or the various substrata among the Dalits free themselves from intra-Dalit discrimination?

It is a vicious circle in which transfer game may relieve you of your responsibility, and prompt you to present a melodramatic solution of a deep malaise, only to further aggravate the problem.
{ I have treated the evolutionary and cosmological philosophies as revolt against social discrimination despite the fact that they have not been treated earlier as such because these philosophies have no place for segregationist and discriminatory social system.}

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -24
History versus Histrionics

Those who consciously avoid history opt, unknowingly, for histrionics. Some of my friends complain, why I am so obsessed with history. I tell them I am talking of the present and trying to understand its complexities. I am trying to salvage those suffering from histrionics. Those who feel disturbed by existing problems but instead of solving it play their blame game, shifting the onus on events and characters they themselves hold mythical, unhistorical, suffer from spells of histrionics. It is they who charge distorted stories with disruptive power to create ugly scenes in order to further aggravate the problems. They in fact play in the hands of those who know the art of using their ignorance and abhorrence for the past to their advantage.

The man with some knowledge and sense of history is likely to see the same problems differently. Recounting the progress made from the yore days of social injustice he can suggest how to proceed to fully resolve the problem.

Ironically, those refraining from the past spend more time in imaginary past and live in imaginary present, than those who know history. Knowing history amounts to knowing the new and the immanent, knowing the surviving redundant past, and at the same time the forgotten past that can play remedial role.

Those who plead that by ignoring past they save time so as to know the present more deeply and widely, in fact know it more superficially and more narrowly.