Times of India, Chennai, Oct 18, 2010
Why is our past any area of darkness?
By Shobhan Saxena TNN
In Ancient India R. C. Majumdar, the doyen of Indian historians wrote, “One of the gravest defects of Indian culture, which defies rational explanation, is the aversion of Indians to writing history. They applied themselves to all conceivable branches of literature and excelled in many of them, but they never seriously took to the writing of history, with the result that for a great deal of our knowledge of ancient Indian history we are indebted to foreigners.”
[The reason for this ‘amnesia’ is simple. The earliest historical records of the persecution of Buddhists date back to Pushyamitra Sunga of the second century BCE. This army general had ascended to the throne after having assassinated the grandson of Emperor Ashoka. Urged on by Brahmin priests to do so, he had rewarded the head of each bhikshu or Buddhist monk presented to him, with a gold coin. The composition of the Manu Smriti or ‘Hindu Law’ is attributed to this period as well. Ever since, Brahminism has succeeded in sporadically and intermittently usurping the once ubiquitous space occupied by Buddhism, with the help of various local kings, satraps and invaders, such as Mihirakula using unbridled aggression. Rites of passage were concocted to make the Rajput invaders into Hindus who were inducted with the specific intent of persecution of Buddhists . The very mention of the name Mihirakula, c. 6th. CE in north western India would instil fear.
This process picked up momentum in an extremely organised way, under the Adi Shankaracharya of the seventh century CE. He is widely revered by Hindus as a reformer, the very manifestation of Shiva who established Sanatana Dharma, etc. in this sub-continent, now generally known as Hinduism. Jains and Buddhists maintain that he is the exact antithesis of divinity!
This so-called saint spared no effort, to annihilate Buddhism and Jainism using the most heinous of means which could be conjured up by imagination. It had rivalled the manner in which Christianity had been made the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius as the 4th CE was drawing to its close. Adi Shankara’s persecution of Jainism and Buddhism during his fortunately short 32 year lifetime is a matter of historical records, and at wide variance with entrenched beliefs of Hindus. Beyond, he usurped and claimed authentic Buddhist sites as having supposedly ancient Hindu origins et al. It is thus logical that excavations of sites throughout this subcontinent invariably reveal ancient Buddhist monuments – a mute witness to its past glory.
He must be commended for the tremendous success he and his latter day followers had in their process of ‘socio-religious engineering’ resulting in the evolution of modern day Hinduism in all its full blown glory with countless anomalies and paradoxes. The most unfortunate aspect of Hindu life is the total reluctance of its adherents to studies and investigations which would empower one to ascertain what could be the truth as distinct from false perceptions. And even those who might be somewhat aware of the above, continue to hang on to their traditions rather than change! It is extremely convenient to hide behind the limited and oft distorted perspectives propounded from various pulpits, whilst shunning personal responsibility for one’s actions! Quoting the authority of the gurus and religious literature of questionable veracity of the various Hindu traditions whose utterances and writings are assumed to be the divine and immutable truth, whether they be so or not, is what continues to breathe life into Hinduism.
Brahminism naturally sought to hide this destruction under the garb of the creations of religious fiction, termed puranas, smritis et al, hardly any different from the Harry Potter series. These were passed them off as authentic religious works, applying the principles so enunciated, to govern and control society for their personal gains. Brahmin priests regaled and cajoled their patron kings with outlandish stories creating time frames beyond human imagination. They range from the bizarre and outlandish to the totally absurd! Such fantasies were then passed on to the masses as being the irrefutable truths.
Two such compositions are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is important to remember that the original Sanskrit Ramayana of Balmiki, circa 1st century CE, has been rendered with countless variations and considerable deviations from the original by poets during the preceding millennium. Amazingly heroes of this epic have been represented as incarnations of various divinities in this Bhakti literature. The Mahabharata is hardly a composite entity having evolved over a period of 6 centuries having gradually evolved into its present form, possibly from the 1st century CE onwards. It was then that Sanskrit had seen its development under the Buddhist King Kanishka, whose capital was at Mathura in modern day Uttar Pradesh. Now of course, hardly any vestige remains in that region of its Buddhist heritage, obliterated by the onslaught on Hinduism! Similarly the Vishnu Purana is a fiction of the 10th century CE delineating the various purported avataras of Vishnu.
These are now considered historical events though disputed. Overbearing tradition, beliefs and hyper-reality, are compulsorily to be adhered to by Hindus, leaving no room for rational or scientific analysis. This is in direct contrast with the perspective of Buddhism which actually nurtures an inquisitive mind. Naturally this serves as the cradle of authoritarianism – of blind adherence to tradition hardly any different in nature from Wahabism.]
For a country which claims to have a 5,000 year old civilization, [actually extending into millions of years if we were to accept mythological Hindu chronology], Indians have a rather poor sense of history. [How can they not?] For some reason, it has always had the culture of the here and now. There was little recording of the past, only a retelling and that too by poets who mixed fact with fiction and myth with reality. Kalhana, the author of Rajatarangini, a 12th century history of the kings of Kashmir, said it all in the book’s opening lines, “Who but a poet can bring back the past in sweet composition, and what can make it intelligible if his art cannot?” India has always had more poets than historians.
So, when we want to know about ancient India, we have to turn to the Greeks – Herodotus’ Histories, Megasthenes’ Indica, Ptolemy’s Geographia. Our knowledge of the “Golden Age” of Indian history is dependent on the travelogues of Chinese monks – Fa Hien, Huien Tsang and I Tsing. We are indebted to Arab travellers such as Al Beruni and Ibn Battuta for richly recording life in medieval India. [Vive la Hinduisme!]
Does this mean Indians don’t have a sense of history? Or are they incapable of writing it? Author Pavan K. Varma believes Indians don’t have an immediate connect with their history [simply because they are so involved in their mythology.] “We take pride in the golden age of the Guptas or the era of the great Mughals, but care little about the history that is a part of our lives. People living in Hauz Khas in Delhi don’t know what it stands for; those in Masjid Moth have never bothered to find out what it connotes,” writes the diplomat who has written a series of books on contemporary India. [However, when it comes to religious fiction – epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Hindus are far more knowledgeable and they swear by their purported authenticiy. This is because Brahminism has ensured the crushing of the spirit of inquisitive learning fostered by Buddhism which it displaced, by the dead weight of adherence blindly to tradition.]
American Howard Zinn’s bestselling People History of the United States opened his compatriots’ eyes to little acknowledged truths about their history. There has been substantial work on subaltern history in India, but it is yet to have an impact on ordinary people. Vamsee K. Juluri, professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco and author of The Mythologist, believes that Indians have just started to write popular history [naturally under the influence of modernism.] “We have too many extremes in the telling of the national story. The popular one, the one of movies, is frequently shallow and elitist. The academic one tends to be too narrow and insensitive to sentiments and realities. We need histories that move people [in the same manner as the epics do], that begin with things the average reader knows, and then expands their understanding from within about why things are the way they are,” he states.
Varma states, “As a people we tend to fall in love with the dominant mythologies about ourselves. My books ruthlessly interrogate these myths. The answers they provide are not always negative, but the requirement to put a mirror before ourselves is particularly important for post-colonial societies who have faced cultural rupture and discontinuity.” [This would include the rupture caused by the onslaught of Hinduism so-called on the pan Buddhist culture of ancient India. In fact the charge of ‘divide and rule’ attributed to the East India Company had in actuality been created by Brahminism in various ways, including solidified casteism, to secure its own frontiers!]
Largely contemporary India awaits its historians. Indians have not even been keen to tell the story of India that has emerged since 1947,” says Mihir Bose, journalist and author who has written on the history of Bollywood and cricket. “The wall between academic historians and popular historians seems as strong as the old Hindu divide between the higher castes and the untouchables. Often the best material on India is to be found in western libraries.” [This is a telling critique of the Hindu mind steeped in mythology and thus in the grip of fuzzy logic, vis a vis western scholarship based on binary logic.]
Is that the reason that the best known book on Indian independence, Freedom at Midnight, was a collaboration between a French and an American?
[At some stage in life, the Indian has to choose between his traditional beliefs and modern realism deriving from questioning and analysis, as had also been urged by the historic Buddha – ‘atta deepo bhava’: Be a light unto yourself! His injunctions in the Kalama Sutta stand as an unquestionable testament to the empowerment of the individual. The inevitable choice remains even as the totally disempowered Hindu is urged to adhere to these myths and traditions without so much as even an analytical glimpse at one’s belief systems. Were this to happen, the Hindu would rapidly loose his belief system and enter a religious vacuum one would find the more difficult to handle. Moreover the religious powers that be would lose their spheres of influence, sources of earnings, much of which is parasitic in nature, but conveniently passed off as legitimate under the garb of religious beliefs, repository and dissemination of knowledge, and its concommitant self aggrandisement -- all integral aspects of organised religion!
It may be plausibly averred that Sanatana Dharma, ranks amongst the biggest of perfidies ever to be hoisted upon human civilisation! And yet it finds millions of takers – comprising groups of peoples who simply conform blindly to what they refer to as their traditions sacrosanct from time eternal! The very strength of Sanatana Dharma lies in that those who are enmeshed in the net of its intricacies, mayajaala, effectively lose their capacity of logical discourse and discernment even as they become blind adherents. This creates a fertile ground for Hindu leadership. It is totally devoid of Love and Compassion, be it religious, political or acclaimedly spiritual, to accumulate wealth, power, prestige, sexual partners and moreover engage in criminal activities, as has been repeatedly revealed. Adi Shankara had regaled himself by having a bas relief cut in a large rock face depicting the Buddha milking a cow even as Krishna and his Gopis regale themselves above – Mahabalipuram, Pallava Dynasty, 7th. CE. His lineage holder of Kanchipuram had gifted a bejewelled crown costing Rs. 50 million to the mythical Tirupati Balaji Oct 2010 as also sponsored the largest Nandi statue of stone at a cost of Rs. 25 million installed in a park nearby. Perhaps this is their way to express Love and Compassion to others!
Thus it has become the norm to make bounteous offerings to temples and deities whereas the humanism manifest by the blessed Mother Teresa is shunted aside as irrelevant! It may be stated with certitude that the level of authentic spirituality which permeates Mother Teresa’s Nirmal Hridaya hospice, the Temple of Love, in Kalighat, Kolkata, is far greater than the spirituality found within the awe inspiring magnificence and overt opulence of all the institutions of Hinduism, together with its purported asceticism, from time immemorial clubbed together! The reason for this is very simple – the focus of Hinduism is solely on one’s ownself, one’s own accomplishments; not at all on the love of and compassion towards humanity and all that lives and moves!
The Blessed Mother Teresa’s injunction is extremely pertinent – ‘How can you love God whom you cannot see when you do not love your neighbour whom you see every day?’ Hinduism has yet to learn this basic principle!]
Statements in square parentheses, in Arial Narrow font have been inserted by Lama Shree, the intent being to inspire the reader to think for one’s ownself. Munger, Bihar, India -- Winter Solstice cum Lunar Eclipse, Dec 21, 2010.
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. -- Socrates.
