HINDUISM : WHY I STRUGGLE WITH THIS TODAY.

 I was born into an India torn apart by cultural and sectarian traditions but in which a huge tradition of universalism, negation of dogmas and social constructs and insights into the truth about Deep Reality, was also a major part of the development of Hindu life and thought over some four thousand years. That tradition is now shaking hands with cutting edge science, in particular, quantum theory. It's why I always believed that the two most important traditions of human thought are the Western / Occidental and the Indian. The other main one - the Abrahamic - has been an enormous impediment to that advancement based on ine key issue - the immortality of the soul. The Abrahamic tradition does NOT believe in this and it is central to Abrahamic archaeology: salvation depends on belief (God, Allah, Jesus etc) or you're dead forever. Since NDE reports on their hundreds of thousands ( including near death Christians,  Muslims,Jews and atheists) indicate otherwise, we can be reasonably satisfied that the Abrahamic DOCTRINES are wrong even though God / Jesus / Allah are true.  Neither Western/Platonic nor Indian/ Advaita thought suffer from a serious disparity with the analysis of NDE data which for me is a litmus test of the validation of a thought / idea process. 

 

[13/12, 13:42] Arjun L. Sen: The last time we communicated we disagreed strongly on political and cultural issues.  I accept that these differences are unlikely to be resolved. History takes different parts for different people, I guess.
[13/12, 14:02] Ayan Ghoshal: We are two different individuals. Needn't agree with each other in everything Arjun.The huge change has already started. Let us see - how many of us goes to the new era - Satyayug. This is the last of Kalyug
[13/12, 14:03] Ayan Ghoshal: Had shared this with all my students / friends and family members in 2019 that these things are coming -
[13/12, 14:06] Ayan Ghoshal: 1. Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, storm, other natural calamities ….mass destruction
2. Additionally there will be war, civil wars, food scarcity ….
3. The entire World will be in danger. West / western countries will suffer hugely and there will be change in the World power and economy. Even borders and currencies could change.
4. People will gradually come to a rational point and all man-made religions will cease to exist. No more forced things….enough.
5. India and some other Asian countries will become very powerful and will rule the World.
6. A lot of people will lose their lives. Only few good people will last and they will also get a chance to do good for mankind, animals , birds all….Almighty will show the way !  7. It will be a Spiritual way of life and materialism will cease to exist.
[13/12, 15:08] Arjun L. Sen: Your description of the future according to the traditions looks very realistic but in a couple of important points it may work out differently.

1. The big point us that Satyayug may come out of Kaliyug. Obviously we all hope this is true. The Christians say that evil will be overcome when the Messiah comes. The Buddhists look forward to Kalki/ Maitreya.

Only divine intervention can save us. With human nature alone we are doomed.  Our bad points greatly outweigh our good points.  They always have and they always will. Even if more people become spiritual the power elites will remain masters of war and division. Through these instruments of darkness they will rule the world now and in the future. We are on a trajectory to being all slaves, as we were in the time of Ancient Egypt once again,this time under Capitalism and Technology. In short, if only WE are involved we are doomed. First all the animals will die ( as they are doing) leaving only bugs and microbes to plague us.  Then all the trees and medicinal plants will die. And then finally we will die, sitting in the dust of a giant desert, overrun with bugs and scorpions, drinking sea water. Meanwhile, the power elite will have escaped to a Bubble on another planet using advanced technology.

The alternative is that the old traditions are right and that, answering the prayers of billions, God sends his heavenly Warriors to us and forming a mighty army, defeats the Evil Ones. That battle will make Kutukshetra look like a small affair.

2. Regarding the medium term, it may be doubted that the Asian countries will take over the world because:

a. America has vast resources and controls the world from far away using well funded and well armed proxies.  For instance, in the Middle East it uses Israel and controls the sheikdoms. It has successfully stopped all people revolutions in the area and will continue to do it. In the Pacific it commands the vast resources of Australia.

b. Asia is divided between India and Chiba whose cultures are totally incompatible. India is a regional supremacist power and China is a global supremacist power. They will never agree. They will always fight.

c. Islam remains a divider in Asia and will always be a third force which China will use against India.  There is no chance of Asian world donination. By comparison, despite its many weaknesses, the Western alliance will hold against external enemies.  

d. Where Asia is going to win is in Africa.  The huge resources of Africa will be crucial to world power in the next fifty years. China has a strong profile in Africa. The Western former imperial powers are all hated in Africa for good reason, especially France and Belgium in central and west Africa.  The Saudis are planning to flood Africa with cheap cars running on fossil fuels.  In Africa the West will lose.

e. Russia will become the biggest disaster for all global players. A huge destructive force, occupying a large portion of the Worlds land surface, controlling much of the natural gas, forest reserves, minerals and food production ( Ukraine which they are going to take over again thanks to support from India and China and America losing interest), nobody will control Russia. The Indians and Chinese will try to use Russia against the West. They will succeed.  Russia has always hated the West since about 1500.

So in Africa and Eastern Europe, Asia will defeat the West. But inside Asia the two big powers I and C will hate each other and will fail to cartelise their region. In the Pacific they will struggle to replace the U.S. domination. China and India have never been major sea powers and do not know how to.handle it. America.has great experience of taking over both land and sea since 1800. Unlike in 1800, they will have Japan, S. Korea, Philippines,  Malaysia,  Indonesia, Myanmar and Australia as a string of dictatorship.Asian powers plus White Supremacist Australia who will fight for their lives rather than give in to the Chinese empire. China will not control Asia Pacific the way the Americans controlled Latin America, protected by two vast oceans and focused on fencing off Latin America by the Monroe Doctrine Doctrine since 1823. The success of this policy shows in the Cuban economic disaster, strangled to death by the American embargo because of Castro's defiance. Cuba will get better only if it joins the American system.  China will not be able to strangle Asian countries like that. The Asian countries are too strong. India will never make a major naval power. Those days were gone with the Cholas of the 11th and 12th centuries and before that.  

f. Asia is too complex to entirely push back the West : with India, China, Islamic world and Russia all night players with their incompatible agendas, by comparison the West represents a simpler, more homogenous force around Nato. In absolute terms Asia will definitely overtake the West but in specific terms Asian strength will be dissipated in internal regional rivalries and conflicts. So what will emerge will be a complex, unstable world of warring alliances and regional rivalries.


In all this the Common Man around the world will be enslaved while the Power Elite will be absorbed in their rivalries like football teams except that these political "sports" will kill millions of people and may toxify the Planet.

If you believe that part of the solution is that "people will come to a rational point and all man-made religions will cease to exist " then I am not sure why you are against MKG. Although he was very contradictory and had many bad points of behaviour and personal morality, he did have a rational approach to interfaith solidarity which he inherited from his mother.  The various accounts agree with that. Therefore why would we support a two nation solution instead of a one nation solution ? Should not the Hindus as the obvious majority made more effort to reassure the Muslims that the likes of Jinnah ( a secularist, like a Nazi, not at all a good Muslim) was wrong and that the future would work out best if the quarrels of history were set aside ? Could we not have reminded Muslims of the great example of Akbar interfaith policy? We could have tried harder with the interfaith agenda but the Hindus generally did not, including inside Congress Party.  Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel etc were already committed to two nation. That's what happens with upper caste Hindus. They want to return to a pure uncontaminated Hindu India in which they are in control of everyone and keeping down Dalits, Tribals, Christians,  Buddhists and obviously Muslims. India adopted a secular constitution but after Gandhi's assassination nobody believed in it. Nobody still does to this day except a few old neo Gandhians like myself.

What was the point of assassinating Gandhi, a leader who had no power over decisions since 1946? Why didn't they kill Jinnah instead? If the Hindu Mahasabha wanted a two nation solution they already had it by 1947 as a foregone conclusion.  Did they think they would get it without spilling blood, given the mixed population of Punjab, Bengal and Andhra/Telingana ? One suspects that Gandhi made an easy target and Jinnah did not. Thats all. That is a coward's way of taking revenge for a situation the separatists actually dominated- and botched - in 1947.
[13/12, 15:24] Ayan Ghoshal: Will reply your points in right time brother. Let's see what happens 😃.
[13/12, 15:32] Ayan Ghoshal: The History - you are talking about is not correct...painted by some communist historians and people loyal to the Congress and Nehru. A new generation of historians are stating facts and they have nothing to do with the current political influence in centre. Whatever they are saying are not baseless as similar texts have been discovered ( written earlier ) from across India written by eminent  historians. Problem is this that these things were not in circulation. And right from School to University curriculum - everything was covered by some pampered historians. Things are getting exposed gradually.
[13/12, 15:33] Ayan Ghoshal: Time will do the talking. Let us watch 🙂
[13/12, 15:39] Ayan Ghoshal: Hope you are doing well....writing fantastic poems...playing the guitar
[13/12, 16:18] Arjun L. Sen: Regarding this point, I will need to see the solid facts before I I revise my view. It is a truism that most people follow mythology, not history: they are interested in a narrative of the past that serves the cultural tendencies of the day, rather than truths about the past that may be unwelcome.  It has been widely remarked that since the BJP gained power there has been a strongly organised revisionism of the story of the past with politically motivated changes in academic staffing to reflect these needs.  The story of the past is once again being revised to suit political requirements. Not necessarily because new relevant facts have emerged requiring us to revisit and revise the narrative.

I fail to see what salient points have arisen to cause me to revise my basic view about what happened and why. If you can point me to the facts and narratives then let me know and I will of course look into it! 😄
[13/12, 16:24] Ayan Ghoshal: I will brother, whenever I get time. There was more focus on the intruders ignoring the valiant deeds of the Indian Kings who were equally great and they didn't need to invade other countries and butcher their women and snatch their wealth.
[13/12, 16:26] Ayan Ghoshal: And Indian history or Purans are not mythology...this is our wrong conception. Like Dharma is not religion. There are a lot of Sanskrit non-translatables.
[13/12, 16:27] Ayan Ghoshal: Puran is not mythology, they are much deeper...having solid base. Ahimsa is not Non Violence and so on....
[13/12, 16:28] Ayan Ghoshal: More Quantum Physics is progressing - better people are understanding about the truths told by sages and said in the Vedas
[13/12, 16:29] Arjun L. Sen: In my passport there is an Indian Visa stamp that says missionary activity is prohibited. 😄 I am not engaging in any such activity but if I were, what of it? Do we not have freedom of choice in our beliefs? If missionary activity is prohibited in India, should we close the Ranakrishna Missions, the Hare Krishna temples or the Sufi or Baha'I clubs in Western countries because we are only allowed to recognise Christian standpoint? Why should anybody be afraid of conversion ? Except maybe upper caste who dear that Dalits, Tribals and others might seek dignity and self organisation against caste oppression through other faiths that may value them more? It is a worrying trend. India us becoming a dominant culture dictatorship like so many other places. The concept of live and let live ( ' jiyo aur jiney do') is disappearing...

Britain had great tradition of learning to live with different religious standpoint from time of Elizabeth I same as Emperor Akbar - the next century they dumped it and led to civil war.  Eventually they learnt to go back to plural rights and tolerance although Catholics did not get legalised till 1829...but now with the racist asylum seeker and refugee policy England us becoming like Nazi Germany.  I am not too impressed...both England and India big supporters of Israel which is racist zionist imperialist war monger terrorist state and lives on war and land grab ...
[13/12, 16:31] Arjun L. Sen: I was not referring to Puranas but division of India in period 1880-1950...
[13/12, 16:38] Arjun L. Sen: Afghan invasions of India very bad but there is nothing in Qur'an that says this is Islamic behaviour. Similarly upper caste have committed land grab, rape of women and murder of Dalits and Tribals for 2500 years but our Hindu scriptures do not say we should do this. Two wrongs do not make a right. For hatmony to work everybody has to.admit past wrongs, apologise and commit to moving forward together. The Muslim community must apologise for what they did in 997 - 1250 A.C. The Hindu castes should apologise to Dalits and Tribals for 2500 years if oppression stop doing it and allow free choice of faith or follow Gandhi's declaration that the work and status of these communities within Hindu caste should be NO LESS than the twice-born. Etc.
[14/12, 18:10] Arjun L. Sen: He is absolutely correct.  Of course that is the basic problem with the Bible religions like Jews, Christians and Muslims : they think only they are right and everyone else is wrong. This leads to endless wars. HOWEVER...the best minds in ALL the faiths see the same overall truth of Sharabhang Giri. But the MAJORITY of all people think only their own culture is right.  They do not see that different cultures are right for different people according to their feelings, upbringing and creativity, they can celebrate spiritual truth each in their own way. See a great church,  temple of mosque. All.three are acts of worship and all three masterpieces of aesthetics.  So the point us obvious to.any enquiring mind. But majority do not enquire.
[28/12, 15:00] Arjun L. Sen: Bhai, this is exactly the kind of bogus revisionism that is going on.

Watch the video carefully. The presenter says the archaeologist "insists " the chariots were horse drawn. No data is supplied. The historians interpret the chariots as Bullock driven using logic : there were no horses in India before the Aryan invasion but there certainly were bullocks!
[28/12, 15:04] Ayan Ghoshal: There could be a point in what you say. I shall share other videos also. It was not like this - that Our kings lost lost and lost against outsiders as portrayed by R Thapar and Company. Moreover there was an attempt to glorify the Mughals ignoring the deeds of Great Indian Emperors...kings and brave Queens
[28/12, 15:06] Ayan Ghoshal: The text books never covered much about the great deeds of the people from the soil. Rather students had to memorize the deeds of the Mughals who butchered the people, their culture, destroyed temples ..everything
[28/12, 16:06] Arjun L. Sen: The problem with Hinduism is that the spiritual / philosophical insights of the Âranyakas, Upanishads and the later schools especially Advaita Vedânta, these were simply positioned side by side with a host of myths, superstitions, pre-Vedic cults etc.  Early Vedas regarded as supreme authorities by Hindus are just bunches of primitive ( but interesting ) speculations and the three later Vedas are mainly concerned with sacrifices although to the credit of the Atharva-veda the sacrifices become more symbolic. But the tendency has been for Hindu way of life to simply allow all sorts of different things to accumulate like clutter so long as the SOCIAL agenda of the caste system was maintained. So all the comings and goings of peoples involved adjustments within the framework of varņa and so long as this is observed everything is okay.  This makes Hinduism AS IT IS PRACTISED both incoherent and disorderly as well as difficult to criticise constructively: practitioners of the Hindu way of life can easily appeal to the formidable spiritual-mystical tradition which obviously makes a huge amount of sense ( cutting edge western science is now talking closely with Indian philosophy, I am following this discussion with major interest !). The MYTHOLOGY which is enormous in scope is what keeps the superstitions and the social hierarchy system linked up to the grand mental tradition- a bit like the Hadîth stories that enable the Muslim ulêma to turn the grand spirit of the Qur'ân into the horrors of Shari'a law and common prejudices ( e g against dogs) to be "valid" and the purdah and all the rest of the nonsense that has made Muslim life annoying and sometimes offensive to people of other faiths.

To return to the Hindus : an example of the nonsense and negative results of amalganating superstitions and myths into a legitimsting force instead of putting philosophy and spirituality first : the Cow is sacred in Hinduism although the tradition is so old that apart from the mythologies there is no clear historical knowledge about why. No other animal is.  Philosophy tells us all animals have souls and the best of the tradition exhort non violence to animals ( Gandhi agreed with this very much). Yet the SACRIFICIAL TRADITION of the Vedas prevails so that animal sacrifice is widespread, all wild animals are persecuted, all other domestic animals are routinely I'll traated ir their welfare ignored, and the Gadhimai sacrifice of thousands of animals in the Nepal-India border to a minor goddess epitomised the continuation of a tradition of blood letting and mass sacrifice going back to the Vedas and Brahmanas that actually prescribed human sacrifice as well ! My point is that a devotion to MYTHOLOGY and ANCIENT PRACTICES works AGAINST the best results of the long Hindu tradition of enquiry into Truth.  That tradition is there on a massive scale but is effectively SIDELINED by the social and power system which has built on the myths, the Vedas,  the Brâhmanas, the Purâņas, and a host of other material in which caste hierarchy legitimized socio economic oppression of defeated peoples and still does, and animal sacrifice continues on a large scale arbitrarily excluding some totemic species like cows. This stuff is totally unsupported by the philosophical spiritual Advaita tradition which is the REAL insight of India, which nobody else had, and which the smartest thinkers in the West are now turning to for inspiration.

What is going on with all this "archaeology " is just revisionism " with goal of clothing the ancient golden age of Hindu India mythology with the "data", the revisionists are trying to prove that their nonsense is factual.  Their obvious target are classic modern historians like Thapar etc which they have to shoot down because of their anti mythological approach.  So they will make genuine new archaeological discoveries, of course, but then interpret the content in a highly speculative, non parsimonious manner to suit the revisionist narrative.

Ancient and classical Indian history lends itself very easily to speculation more than other ancient and classical histories for several reasons :

1. Those other ancient civilisations- Babylonia, Egypt,  Greece, Rome - are dead in as much as those societies so not exist today and have no political agenda.  By contrast, Hindu India is very much alive,has very much a political agenda, and a continuous existence and evolution for close to 4000 years.

2. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans developed an increasingly rigorous and serious approach to historiography: writing and recording key events and processes within a chronological framework relating to existing peoples and their lives. Their accounts can be compared and adjusted with archaeological evidence.

By contrast the Hindus had no such interest in chronology or history in the sense that we recognise today. They had monuments and ovations to kings, genealogies that faded into mythological states going back far enough, and the greater and lesser traditions ( philosophy-spirituality-meditation- Tantra-Vedanta versus myths-legends-Vedas-Brâhmanas-Purâņas etc) had NO INTEREST in strict chronology or accounts of critically compared actual events.  To the one, the temporal life had no ultimate meaning, and to the other, socially reinforcing myths and traditions were and are much more important.

 [28/12, 16:17] Ayan Ghoshal: Not exactly boro bhai 😃. By the way Mythology [ as westerners see it ] and Puranas, Upanishads are not the same. Religion is not Dharma, dharma is much broader. Caste system and Varna system - as shown by the britishers and these so called historians is a flawed / well thought out theory to divide and rule. The britishers even taught the Sikhs that they wer different - not Hindus. There are other things to say, but let TIME do the talking. All said and done the Hindus [ unlike Christians and Muslims ] didn't require to either bribe like Christian missionaries and others or force [ brutal force and torture ] like Islam for converting people / bring them to the folds of Hinduism !
[28/12, 16:24] Ayan Ghoshal: And one has to understand Vedas, Upanishads and Vedanta properly [ which is not so easy ] before coming to a conclusion. These things can't be understood by Western outlook of things . All that Quantum Physics is saying today about energy, matter and so many other things are products of these great texts. Vedanta had told these long ago. These are very deep and not for all to interpret 😃
[28/12, 18:13] Arjun L. Sen: Chhoto bhai I do not think you understood too much if my discourse.  This is clear from your observations. 😄 in the first place I did not lump the Upaniśads with the Purâņas and Vedas but placed them within the philosophical tradition, what I call the Great Tradition as opposed to the Little Tradiyion of myths. Legends and cultural constructions.

Also you have not picked up on the contradictions such as the animal life issue: you just ignored it ! 😄

Sikhs are NOT Hindus. If they were , why would the Hindus have a big fight with them ? Sikhs are strict monotheists. This is close to Islam, hardly Hinduism! Under pressure from the Muslims they were forced to get closer to Hindus who have since seriously betrayed them. What a disaster and a travesty !

Why blame missionaries and Muslims for conversion ? Most of the people who converted decidee they were better off in a different religion than treated like shit by the Twice-Born. They are not wrong.

The truth is: Hinduism as PRACTISED is a socio political phenomenon as oppressive and assimilationist as any other exclusive society. So long as you were prepared to GIVE UP your original culture and be absorbed into Hindu caste and varņa system then you could be accepted. There was no alternative except conversion to another religion. So naturally ancestors of Rajputs coming from central Asian Scythian tribes got absorbed. They became kśattriya kings and landowners.  Some were so savage they display those barbaric Scythian characteristics today : like the Jâț landowner high castes, always fighting, more or less illiterate and bashing up the lower castes with guns and sticks and raping their women. All the way this type as far as Bihār. By contrast, the Rajput tribes that came earlier ( 7th to 9th centuries) became comparatively civilised as Hindu society had not yet fully degenerated.  In all cases, so long as you get absorbed. For one thousand years before that Buddhism represented a serious threat to Hindu caste system by advocating an equally formidable spiritual philosophy but NEGATING the caste system. Between 500 BCE and 500 ACE approximately, the priest and king class stamped them out. It survived in Bengal until the Islamic invasion of 12th Century.

So Islam was not the first civilisation and viewpoint to be faced with eviction: the Hindus did it to Buddhism before.  The difference is that the Muslims came to stay, could not be evicted and could not be assimilated.

The revisionist programme going on today is a continued development of an ancient dynamic: if a new social group cannot be assimilated into the caste system, push it out or destroy it.
[28/12, 18:54] Ayan Ghoshal: Shall reply. Sikhs are very much Hindus ..all the Sikh Gurus worshipped Hindu Gods. But if someone acts against the interest of Bharat, demands a separate land for themselves, carry out terror activities , tear / dishonour the Indian flag - obviously there will be conflict. And by the way, there is no problem with the majority Sikhs who agree on the integrity issues, know that the heritage is all same. There is a problem only with the group - who are a product of the British / International brainwashing
[28/12, 18:56] Ayan Ghoshal: Actually West is not being able to digest the rise of India and some other Asian countries. Unfortunately they don't have much choice/ say. The shift of power and influence has already started... gone are those days.
[28/12, 18:58] Ayan Ghoshal: Hindus - We have accepted all. And for this reason people of other religions are still growing. Give me time - shall reply
[28/12, 22:27] Arjun L. Sen: Sikhs were repeatedly betrayed and misused by Indira Gandhi who tried divide and rule in time honoured imperialist fashion. That is the irony. Hindu government of Indira provoked Khalistan. Then it is easy to turn round and blame them. Same problem was in Nagaland etc where force of Hindu imperialism finally broke them.
[29/12, 10:56] Arjun L. Sen: Chhoto bhai, - here we should part ways.  You are of your generation and I am of fine.

In the final analysis, you believe in Hindutva and I do not. We will not convince each other.

But I will make one prediction: with Hindutva things will not end well.

To fight the Battle of Kurukshetra again with your enemies real or imaginary, can lead only to ashes, not to.glory.

To discount the West is also a great mistake. Everything that gives you power today was invented by Western creativity : science, technology, systems of organisation and government, laws...

Everything that makes you weak and look backward will bring you down: looking back at a fake 'glorious past', imagining that everything was invented in India before anybody else thought about it, the idea of a 'pure' India ( plus a fee miserable tribal and Dalits who have to be shown their place) before the place got messed up by foreigners ( Muslims, Christian's, Westerners in general)...this 'pure' India idea is a cultural fake or myth : India was always a complex mixture of peoples. Its chief dynamic is and always has been assimilation into the varņa system and acceptance of the key religious concepts. In that sense it has always had a broadly monolithic dynamic. It has never been able to allow a genuine co-existence of other cultures through mutual  toleration and respect. Of course the Muslims and Christian's do not have it either but my point is that for Peace to work the Majority group has to hold out the hand of peace FIRST. That is the point most people in the world miss and you Indians also. It is the lesson of history.

If I were to point to two great personalities in the long history of India that exemplify this wisdom, they are AŚOKA ( 3rd Century BCE) and Akbar (1556-1605). They both started with war and defeated all their enemies. Then they HELD OUT A STRONG HAND OF PEACE TO THE DEFEATED.  Just as we could and should do to all our minorities no matter what some of them might say or do.

IT IS THROUGH PEACE WE WILL VANQUISH OUR ENEMIES. IT IS THROUGH WAR WE WILL VANQUISH OURSELVES.

That's the big lesson of the history of India and also the history of the world.

I am as certain of this as I am that the Sun exists in the sky.

You are a young man with something to learn still. Not from me, I accept that.  But the experience of the coming decades will teach you as it must.