Understanding Sanatana Dharma

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Nazar Hayat Khan.

That was great! From your other posts I knew that your understanding of the hindu psyche was much better than that of the other Pakistani brothers. I did not know that it was much deeper at a philosophical level as well. I read those hindu books when I started practicing yoga in order to find an effective cure for my diabetes from my childhood and I have not turned back since then. Later on I practiced pranayam as well as meditations- I can assure anyone that Yoga will make anyone more humble and at peace with my his self- at least that was my own experience. It is also an effective cure against the fanatic`s desire to eliminate everything that is not in their likeness- because Yoga enables one to see the manifestation of Allah/God etc in everything that is different from yourself-
I would have liked to write something on another varient of yoga- the Nada Yoga that we actually practice in Dhrupad- but more about it late. That was a great piece- but it missed this important thread in all the Buddhistic- Samkhya-Jain theory of liberation- the variants of Yama/Niyama etc that is propounded in Ashtanga Yoga which is common to all these practices.

jang #191 I googled using ``Aurangzeb Shia Mughal`` and here is an extract from the first site that came up:

``It is also notable that as a firm Sunni, Aurangzeb dealt as firmly with the Shia kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda as he did with the Hindus or Muslims. One can safely assert that Aurangzeb acted to preserve and enhance the interests of his own Muslim community, and restored the privileges of the Sunni ulema, but his actions with respect to the Hindus, Shias, and others are more open to interpretation.``

OK??

Ballukhan # 194

(I can assure anyone that Yoga will make anyone more humble and at peace with my his self- at least that was my own experience. It is also an effective cure against the fanatic`s desire to eliminate everything that is not in their likeness- because Yoga enables one to see the manifestation of Allah/God etc in everything that is different from yourself- )

Thanks. I agree Yoga is better than all those pacifiers and tranquilizers - to feel oneself as a part of the nature around.

The subject was far too vast to be encapsulated in 2000 words. The basic intended audeience was the ignorant like me for whom the basic concept was enough doze for one sitting. (also the unfamiliar terminologies/vacabulary)

I know it must have sounded far too elementry for the followers of Dharma.

rahulmal:

`` May I ask what did Mr. Joshi do to earn such a strong reaction from a Hindu with roots in Pakistan and settled in Canada?``

-he is generally described as such by the media
-he was the favourite minister of the RSS
-he was one of the accused in the babri masjid demolition
-he ordered rewriting of the text books seeking to popularise the hindutva philosophy (I agree that some ``dewriting`` of the earlier Marxist rewriting of history was probably par for the course
-he wanted to introduce subjects like astrology in the education system.
Is this enough?

godot:
NHK and I do share a worldview. But do not worry! Neither of us wants to undo the division of either India or Punjab.

HP:
Thanks for a good backgrounder to Karachi politics.

ballukhan:
I am taking a weekly yoga class and can testify to its therapeutic effects. Isn`t it revealing of the Pakistani mindset that although the mother country, it is probably one of the few places where the practice of yoga is practically unknown? [we do have an Indian muslim in our yoga class!)

urstruly (re. political hindu):
Here is my toonie`s worth:
You are right in saying that Jaypaul, Prithvi Raj, etc. did not try to mobilise hindus against the muslim invaders. But this indeed proves the author`s point; they didn`t because they couldn`t...there was no hindu consciousness as such among the people at that time. Faith (religion as such did not exist on the subcontinent) was an individual matter and no big deal, perhaps not very different from what it is today in Japan and China; people perhaps changed their faith like they change political party affliation today without disrupting their family and social lives. You are perhaps aware that islam first came to India not in Sindh but at the Malabar coast without the sword as a peaceful faith and it assimilated there efforlessly with the local faiths just as christianity, judaism and parsees (in Surat) did. Kings like Jaipaul and Prithvi Raj Chauhan fought to protect their kingdoms and not the hindu faith/faiths.

I disagree with the author that the politicisation of hindus started with the British. It was probably given to them by the muslims. When they first started to calling the natives hindus, it was probably just a geographic entity, but things changed when they started to implement political islam which distinguished, if not discriminated, between muslims and hindus. A political entity was then forced upon them as they were forced to think of themselves as one entity. Still, it did not take a pan-indian form perhaps until the British period.

Why did `hindus` not fight back against the alleged persecutions and conversions? Here, I think, your notion of the hindu being coward/docile is perhaps on a more solid footing. For answers, one has to go to the pre-islamic history. It has been noticed by historians that India became vulnerable to foreign conquests after the sway of buddhism and jainism. It is not only that these two religions placed greater emphasis on ahimsa and non-violence, they also placed greater emphasis on individual salvation (moksha/nirvana) and neglected one`s duty/dharma to the society placed by Bhagvad Geeta and earlier indic thoughts, even by the caste system. Another factor to be noticed is that both these religious leaders came from the warrior kshatriya caste and their earlier followers also had a preponderance of their kshatriya brothers, thereby weakening the very segment of the society responsible for its protection. Thus, when Somnath was attacked, al beruni observed rather contemptuously that the hindus wanted their gods to protect them rather than protecting their places of worship against those who wanted to destroy them.

But as persecutions/discrimination persisted political consciousness increased. It manifested itself at the time of Jehangir and was led in the Punjab by the sikh gurus. The sixth guru started this movement after the cruel killing of the fifth sikh guru. You would notice that to assume a political posture, the sixth guru had to borrow the terminology of the conquerors when he said he was from then on combining `peeri and meeri` in the same guru; this despite the fact that most of the gurus` compositions were in sanskritised panjabi. In Maharashtra, this manifested itself in the Maratha pride and was more explicitly in the name of the hindu pride.

There is also the Marxist theory that the politicisation of hidus was started by the British to promote their divide and rule policy in India and resurrected a non-existent hindu history. That theory may not be true completely but they did use the existing differences to accentuate the divisions.

197 by dost-mittar on July 3, 2004 4:36am PT
I still regret not having made enough efforts to get my cousin to yoga classes- he was a brilliant sitarist and a chain smoker- he wanted to but.........he passed one night of a massive heart attack ...I am sure yoga classes in PAkistan may turn out to be a great antidote to proper channelizing of the youthful energies - which have been channelized by the evil mullahs into suicidal jehadism amongst some of the youths.

dost-mittar #198
When idols were destroyed, some people say that Hindus and Jains did try to compensate/defy. However, people are lacking who would be be interested in writing an authentic or authoritative history of such defiance.

For example, from a yahoo discussion of the Agarwala community

``It was a harsh time for idol-worshippers. It was against the law. Tarikh-i-Firoz mentions that an old Brahmin was arrested for idol worship in Delhi. He possessed a cabinet with paintings of gods. When he refused to convert, he was cast into a fire along with his cabinet. In his own work, Futuhat-i-Furuz Shahi, Feroze Shah mentions that people at Maluh were organizing idolatrous festivals and someone had constructed an idol-temple at Kohana, both in the vicinity of Delhi. Feroze Shah had the leaders of these activites executed, temples demolished and books burnt.

Agrawals[from Hissar, Haryana] migrating to Gwalior found religious freedom. At that time Gwalior was ruled by the Tomars. It should be noted that Tomars too had an association with Delhi. Modern Delhi began with Tomars around 736 AD, and they practically ruled it until the arrival of the Turks. That is with the exception of 1180-1191, when it was taken by Chauhan Rai Pithora. The fort called Qila Rai Pithora was actually a creation of the Tomars.

Tomars, after losing Delhi, eventually came to possess Gwalior in 1394 under the leadership of Virasingh, who was also a scholar whowrote two books. He attracted Agrawals to his domain who were skilled money managers. Together they created a state where old India still flourished and idol-worship was permitted. Gwalior became a great and wealthy city. Raighu mentions it was full of mansions, temples, alms- houses, residences of scholars and markets of gold, silver, diamonds and pearls.

Many pious Agrawals poured their money into what they were denied in the Delhi region. They built idols with a vengeance. They worshipped, not just privately, but very publicly, creating open-air shrines out of the cliffside, where they can be seen by all those entering and leaving the fort`s Urvahi gate. And some wanted their idols to be as large as anyone has ever seen. This was an act of defiance. Perhaps they thought Gwalior would remain their bastion. Unfortunately they were wrong.``

`` Tomars lost and the fort came in the hands of Lodhis in 1517. They lost to Babar the Mughal. Babur himself visited Gwalior on 26th September, 1528. He loved the fort, but was bothered by the statues. He write in Baburnama: ``We arrived at a place called Urwa.. Urwa is not a bad place .. Its biggest blemish is its statues. I ordered that they should be destroyed.`` The statues are still there, Babur apparently caused only minor damage, there were too many statues.``

Also

`` A wealthy JainJivaraj Papdiwal of Mudasa in Rajasthan, decided that he wanted to gift a few idols to any town that wanted them. He had thousands (one lakh according to some) of them created, consecrated on an auspicious day in 1491 AD, and arranged to have them delivered to towns throughout India. They can still be seen in perhaps thousands of temples, bearing an inscription mentioning his name.``

dost-mittar #197
``Isn`t it revealing of the Pakistani mindset that although the mother country, it is probably one of the few places where the practice of yoga is practically unknown?``

Not sure how Pakistan is `mother country` of yoga? History is quite unclear about where Patanjali of the Yoga Sutras, for instance, was from.

Ballukhan # 199

Yoga is there in the big cities - but perhaps not as much as in India. Where I live, there are Yoga classes twice a week.

Besides Yoga, a few other antedotes are also needed - clear correct text books, a little more of democracy, a little more of revival of ethnic cultures, normal working relations with India.

Dost-Mitter # 198

Thanks for the Post. Balanced assessment. I know I have my own slant in interpretations; while putting across.

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Nice Article.Though I would have liked some more discussion on the bane of Hinduism, the caste system.Can any of us modern Hindus say that they are not casteist?I think to some extent we all are. Even among the four broad class divisions, we have multitudes of class distinctions.Even the candidates in elections are chosen according to caste equations.Intercaste marriages are still not the norm. And then there are these regional fights like that of punjabis vs south indians we see on chowk. Though this is not directly related to hinduism, I think it has got something to do with the Hindu habit of dividing people into classes. I wonder if there is some psychological reason why we keep dividing people into smaller and smaller groups.

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barachota #204
Say what you will about me, but the harsh truth is this

1. As long as Pakistani ` liberals` use Pakistani extremists and daily death tolls as leverage in their relations with their allies and neighbours, their `liberalism` has little credibility.

It is like a pirate ship sending distress signals for help to passing ships on the port side while killing their `helpers` on starboard side. After a while, people stop responding to the distress signals.

2. All the Americans and Hindus in the world put together cannot find theological answers to debunk the Islamic ideologies underlying the terrorism and intolerance in Pakistan. Only Muslims specifically Pakistani Muslims can do that, namely push the pirates off their own ship.

Indians and Americans can do nothing about religion minister Ejaz ul Haq, for example, who says he wants to strap on explosives and blow himself up as a suicide bomber. Indians and Americans can do nothing about Pakistani Taliban leader Fazlur Rehman being appointed Opposition leader and being urged to sit on the National Security Council.

Indians can do nothing about Taliban crossing over from Pakistan to kill Afghans engaged in voter registration or reconstruction. India can do nothing about banning of public performances of music in NWFP.

India can make not one comma`s change in the blasphemy law, or Hudood ordinances, India can not get Pakistani madrassas to register with the government and modernize their syllabus.

If anything, American or Indian cooperation is cited by opponents of Pakistanis confronting Islamic ideologies of violence to undermine their credibility. So, shouldn`t Pakistani Muslims confront Islamic extremism and its advocates for their own sakes and for the sake of their own beloved religion without dragging nonMuslims into the equation.

To the discussion of Hinduism, please add the following news item:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3862387.stm