Academics From India

"If, for example, one chooses the second century AD, one would discover that ‘the major systems extant at that time – Samkhya, Mimansa, Nyaya and Vaisesika, Jainism, the several schools of Buddhism, and Carvaka – are none of them theistic’. But ‘if one slices instead at, say, the fourteenth century AD, one finds that Nyaya-Vaisesika has become pronouncedly theistic, that Buddhism and Carvaka had disappeared, and that several varieties of theistic Vedanta have come into prominence.’ (p.40) I"

"Daya Krishna (1924-2007) had been a member of the Changers’ Club, the debating circle of friends at Delhi University, featuring the later journalist Girilal Jain, economists Ram Swarup and Raj Krishna and historian Sita Ram Goel."

"It is not only that a very large number of Mantras from the Rgveda are repeated in the other Vedas, but that there are substantial repetitions in the Rgveda itself. (p.86)"

"In fact, the very large proliferation of the shakhas [‘branches’, channels of transmission], at least as mentioned in the tradition, testifies to the fact that the Rishis of those days treated their Vedic patrimony with a degree of freedom that seems sacrilegious when viewed in the perspective of attitudes with which the Vedas have been traditionally looked at for a long time. (…) the Vedas were regarded in a totally different way in Vedic times. (p.84)"

"But all that came with a heavy personal price. The more I identified with the 'Revolution' of the 'oppressed', the more unbearably negative I became as a person."

"There was nothing at all good in Hindu traditions or in America or in Capitalist Modernity, for instance, I convinced myself, for I was hooked onto the 'progressive' and 'radical' rhetoric that 'upper' caste Hindus in general (including most of my own family!) and almost every single American was complicit in perpetuating 'oppression'."

"Negativism, then, was a defining feature of being 'progressive', and that's what I began to revel in. But such negativism was almost entirely one-sided in 'activist' circles, for to be counted as a 'real' 'social activist' it was simply unthinkable that the 'oppressed' could be faulted for almost anything at all. For a 'social activist' to even mention, leave alone condemn, the foibles of the 'oppressed communities'--gender injustice or caste rivalries among Dalits or the obscurantism and misogyny preached in many Muslim madrasas or the terror attacks and killings of innocents by Naxalites and radical Islamists--was tantamount to nothing less than treason. Reports about such matters were generally dismissed as 'malicious ruling-class propaganda' or 'malicious Brahminical brainwashing' or even as an 'understandable reaction of vulnerable minority communities to ruling caste/class/imperialist oppression'. Sometimes, if these were grudgingly admitted to be true, they were sought to be passed over in silence in order to 'respect the sensibilities of the oppressed' or as 'minor contradictions' that ought not to be addressed on the grounds that it would allegedly 'divide' the oppressed, 'sabotage' the struggle against 'oppression' and thereby 'play into the hands of the real opressors'. If you only just pointed out that there were serious faults in the madrasas that needed to be urgently addressed (even for the sake of the Muslim children who studied therein) or that Muslim Personal Law was seriously biased against Muslim women or that many Dalits who had taken advantage of the system of protective discrimination behaved with fellow Dalits almost as shabbily as did their 'upper' caste Hindu 'oppressors', you were sure to be shouted down as a 'government agent' or a 'paid stooge of Hindutva forces', not only by fellow 'progressives' but also by a whole host of voices among the communities whom you had spent years trying to defend and promote. If you even so much as mildly hinted that the conditions of Muslims in India weren't half as bad as sections of the Urdu media wanted people to believe or that the Muslims in this country had much more freedom than in any Muslim-majority state or that untouchability was no longer as rampant as it once was in some parts, you were bound to be accused of betrayal and your motives were rumoured to be entirely suspect. If you acknowledged that probably less Muslims were killed by Hindus in riots in India every year than the number of fellow Muslims slaughtered by their co-religionists in the 'Islamic' Republic of Pakistan or in God-forsaken Afghanistan or that the plight of religious minorities in many Muslim countries, particularly those ruled by theocratic regimes, was much worse than in India or that some Dalit officials were neck-deep in corruption, you were bound to be hollered at for allegedly being a 'traitor' to 'The Cause' of the 'oppressed'. The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"In the fascist Hindutva imagination, the Indian Muslims are continuously reviled as Pakistani "fifth columnists," as "enemies of the nation" and so on, and their patriotism is said to be suspect. The Muslim as the menacing "other" occupies a central place in Hindutva discourse, and this has been used to legitimize large-scale anti-Muslim violence."

"The very same folks who egged you on to write about their problems and to take the Hindutva beast by its horns (for they were either too scared to do it themselves or didn't have the same writing skills or the same access to the English media) would shrilly denounce you as an 'agent' of this or the other 'power' if, in your quest to be honest and balanced, you pointed out even some of the mildest of their faults. It was as if by definition the 'oppressed' were spotless angels who could do no wrong and their 'oppressors' wholly and incorrigibly demonic."

"In 1991 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ... published a book titled Genocide of Hindus in Kashmir. It claimed among many other things that at least forty Hindu temples in the Kashmir Valley had been desecrated and destroyed by Muslim militants. In February 1993 journalists from India’s leading newsmagazine sallied forth from Delhi to the Valley, armed with a list of twenty-three demolished temples supplied by the national headquarters of the BJP, the movement’s political party. They found that twenty-one of the twenty-three temples were intact. They reported that "even in villages where only one or two Pandit families are left, the temples are safe ... even in villages full of militants. The Pandit families have become custodians of the temples, encouraged by their Muslim neighbours to regularly offer prayers." Two temples had sustained minor damage during unrest after a huge, organised Hindu nationalist mob razed a sixteenth-century mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya on 6 December 1992."

"On 15 March 1990, by which time the Pandit exodus from the Valley was substantially complete, the All-India Kashmiri Pandit Conference, a community organisation, stated that thirty-two Pandits had been killed by militants since the previous autumn."

"All that energy and enthusiasm that went into my contribution as a 'social activist' and in the cause of the 'Revolution' paid me well in material terms, however, though I have to say that this wasn't the only or even major reason why I was in the business of championing the 'Revolution' in the first place. I won generous scholarships to go abroad to do a Ph.D. and then two post-doctoral projects to study various aspects of 'marginalised groups' in India. I was invited to attend conferences in over two dozen countries to pontificate on the same subjects. I was appointed as a full professor in an Indian university and was paid handsomely for the articles and books that I continued to churn out, machine-like, all about the 'oppressed'. In addition, I was assigned projects by several NGOs to study the 'oppressed', for which I was well rewarded financially. Although I have to say that I did not quite intend this to begin with, writing and conferencing about the 'oppressed' soon turned into a lucrative source of livelihood for me. I was actually, and quite literally, living off the misery of the 'oppressed', although I did not fully realise it then."

"Among the earliest Indic scholars was Har Bilas Sarda, whose book Hindu Superiority, which was published in 1906, apart from being relevant to his times, was way ahead of its time when seen through a decolonial lens. Throughout the book, Sarda uses the term ‘Hindu civilisation’ while referring to ‘ancient India’. In his discussion on the defining feature of the Hindu/Indic civilisation, Sarda underscores the integral and indispensable role of nature in the schema of ‘ancient Indians’, which formed the basis of Hindu laws and institutions. This brings out two significant aspects: (a) that the native identity of Bharat being the Indic/Hindu identity never appeared to be a matter of contestation in Sarda’s discussion, and (b) that a harmonious relationship with nature defines the Hindu/Indic consciousness, from which emanate its worldview and institutions."

"In the first chapter (Fargard) of the part which bears the name Vendidad of their sacred book (which is also their most ancient book), Hurrnuzd or God tells Zapetman (Zoroaster): “I have given to man an excellent and fertile country. Nobody is able to give such a one. This land lies to the east (of Persia), where the stars rise every evening.” “When Jamshed (the leader of the emigrating nation), came from the highland in the east to the plain, there were neither domestic animals nor wild, nor men.” “The country alluded to above from which the Persians are said to have come can be no other than the North-west part of ancient India—Afghanistan and Kashmir—being to the east of Persia, as well as highland compared to the Persian plains.”‘"

"The critics who resolutely deny the existence of the art in Ancient India on the plea that none of the productions of the art are to be found, will do well to consider the fact that even the Vedas would have been lost had the Mohamedan rule continued a century or so longer without giving birth to a Dayanand. When such has been the lot of their most adored possession, what better ‘handling could the poor Art of History have aspired to obtain ?"

"The courtyard between Buland Darwaza and the inner courtyard covers underneath it, cellars of old Hindu temples of which many rooms remain intact. In fact, the whole of the Dargah appears to have been built, as was usual in the times of the early Mussalman rulers, on the ruins of old Hindu temples, partly by converting and partly by adding to the structures already existing."

"Sultan Alla-ud-din Khilji burnt the famous library at Anhalwara Patan. The Tarikh Firoz Shahi says that Firoz Shah Tughlak burnt a large library of Sanskrit books at Kohana."

"During his short stay, the Sultan, “ destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples.” Visaldeva's College ’was destroyed, a portion of it converted into a mosque, to which Shamsuddin Altarnash (1211-1236 A.D.) added the present screen of seven arches."

"Colonel Tod supposed that the building was a Jain temple which was converted into a mosque by the early Mussalman invaders, while General Cunningham supposed that it was built in two and-a-half days, as its name implies, of the spoils of Hindu temples demolished by the bigotry of the conquerors."

"Jahangir, after he came to the throne in 1605 A.D built Daulat Bagh, and put up palaces in it, which have disappeared. In 1615 A.D., he had the Visla, which he called Bil Tal, repaired. He is said to have built a palace on the Visla Lake. The same year he broke the temple of Varahji at Pushkar, and built a residence for himself on the Lake which still stands, though in ruins, behind the Jodhpur Ghat."

"Cultures may be said to have overall tendencies to idealize, and think in terms of, either the context-free or the context-sensitive kind of rules. Actual behavior may be more complex, though the rules they think with are a crucial factor in guiding the behavior. In cultures like India's, the context-sensitive kind of rule is the preferred formulation."

"Various taxonomies of season, landscape, times, gunas or qualities (and their material bases), tastes, characters, emotions, essences (rasas), etc., are basic to the thought-work of Hindu medicine and poetry, cooking and religion, erotics and magic. Each jati or class defines a context, a structure of relevance, a rule of permissible combinations, a frame of reference, a meta-communication of what is and can be done … Even the Kama-Sutra is literally a grammar of love, which declines and conjugates men and women as one would nouns and verbs in different genders, voices, moods and aspects. Genders are genres. Different body-types and character-types obey different rules, respond to different scents and beckonings."

"Whatever his context — birth, class, gender, age, place, rank, etc. — a man is a man for all that. Technology, with its modules and interchangeable parts, and the post-Renaissance sciences, with their quest for universal laws (and 'facts') across contexts, intensify the bias towards the context-free.'"

"I salute you for your courage, bravery and decades of sacrifice. As an unarmed group with science and technology not at your side, you have ousted the most advanced forces from your region. It will now bring an era of peace for Afghanistan and the region."

"One has only to read Manu after a bit of Kant to be struck by the former's extraordinary lack of universality. He seems to have no clear notion of a universal human nature from which one can deduce ethical decrees like 'Man shall not kill', or 'Man shall not tell an untruth'. One is aware of no notion of a 'state', no unitary law of all men … The main tradition of Judeo-Christian ethics is based on such a premise of universalisation. Manu will not understand such a premise. To be moral, for Manu, is to particularise – to ask who did what, to whom and when … Each class (jati) of man has his own laws, his own proper ethic, not to be universalised."

"If Sharma and Thapar are not overtly anti-Hindu, writers like Upinder Singh certainly are. Her repugnance to find any echo of Hinduism in the religion of the Indus civilization is absolutely amazing, because everybody with knowledge of Marshall’s analysis of the Indus religion will know that the basic parameter of that analysis was Hinduism. How on earth does Upinder Singh deny it, especially after the discovery of a terracotta replica of lingam in a yonipatta in the mature Indus context at Kalibangan? How on earth do historians like Upinder Singh explain Jainism and Buddhism as examples of multi-religious diversity in ancient India when both these religions were offshoots of Hinduism? The blind belief of this type of scholar in Aryan invasion is palpably rooted in their belief that Hinduism, like Islam and Christianity, are immigrant religions in India."

"The idea of a peace-loving, nonviolent India exists, persists, as part of a selectively constructed and assiduously cultivated national self-image in the midst of a society pervaded by social and political violence. It lives along with the memory of the three great ideologues of nonviolence in ancient India—Mahavira, the Buddha and Ashoka. But the amnesia toward the contexts of intense social and political conflict and violence in which these thinkers emerged and with which they engaged of ten reduces them to simplified stereotypes, invoked from time to time for self-congratulatory rhetoric or political gain."

"Very early dates for the Rig Veda that fall within the 7th or 6th millennium BCE are clearly not acceptable. … Dates falling within the late 3rd millennium BCE or the early 2nd millennium BCE (calculated on the grounds of philology and/or astronomical references) cannot be ruled out. The date of the Rig Veda remains a problematic issue."

"Delhi’s history is etched over its landscape in stone. Magnificent forts, mosques and tombs of the Sultanate and Mughal periods evoke the aura of the medieval world while the stately layout and architecture of bear the imposing imprint of British imperial rule."

"The Delhi area has an incredibly long and eventful ancient past, beginning thousands of years ago in the stone age and merging at the other end into the medieval period when the Rajputs made way for Delhi Sultans in the twelfth century."

"CWG 4: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (2001). Theology of Liberation: An Indian Biblical Perspective, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., *Vol.4. D’Sa, Francis X. (ed.). Pune. Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series."

"CWG 3: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (2003). Biblical Spirituality of Liberative Action, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., Vol.3. Kuthirakkattel, Scaria. (ed.), Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series."

"“Liberation is an experience of unconditioned freedom resulting from an experiential realization of the radical relativity of the empirical world, a state of absolute freedom from psychological and sociological bondage, which finds its concrete, institutionalized expression in the Buddhist monk (bhikku) or the Hindu wandering ascetic. Liberation for the Asian psyche is liberation which leads to that poverty which is freedom from illusion, attachment and greed.”"

"“Jesus did not come to rescue a few individuals from a condemned mass; but to open up a new future for man, thematized by him as the New Israel, this is as a universal community of love, leavened by the values of freedom fellowship, and justice. Such a community is possible only when the oppressive structures that hinder its growth are overthrown. His miracles are complemented by his controversies in which he stands up against the established structures of institutional oppression: the law, the cult, priesthood, and the Temple.”"

"“What makes a person a Christian is not professing certain beliefs, nor practising particular rituals, nor undergoing an initiation rite, nor belonging to a recognizable social group, nor even confessing the name Jesus, though these are inevitable stages in the evolution of a religious tradition. To be disciple of Jesus means to experience God the way that Jesus experienced God.”"

"“The poverty of most Asian countries, and the alarming extremes of social and economic inequality to be found in them, derive from and are maintained by their stagnant social and religious institutions (like the caste-system in India), which as popularly understood and practised, are often “a tremendous force of social inertia”. But it would be unfair and unrealistic to stop here. For Asia’s underdevelopment is at least equally the result of induced socioeconomic processes.”"

"“Poverty in India is not just an economic category, it is a religious value as well. Caste, even in its most degrading form of untouchability, is legitimized by India’s dominant religion and tolerated by others, Christianity included!” (Soares-Prabhu, “Interpreting the Bible in India Today,” CWG 4, 6.)"

"“In places like India Jesus brings something radically new. A new experience of God, which allows him to rename Yhwh as ABBA. God is experienced not so much as 'holy' but as gracious and compassionate; and people are not just members of an exclusive tribe or a separated 'clean' caste, but as members of an open family, marked by freedom from consumerism and an attitude of radical service.”"

"“The world of today is full of refugees. We live among thousands of “guest-workers” driven by need to work as unwanted aliens in the affluent Egypts of the Western world. We hear of tens of thousands of political refugees hunted out of their homes, to sit hopeless and forgotten, by the rivers of dingy Babylons in the vast refugee camps of Palestine or Cambodia. We know of the many million victims of caste or race discrimination, who suffer as harassed aliens in their own land, living a constantly threatened life in the “harijan” (ex-untouchables) quarters of half a million villages in India, or the segregated black townships of South African cities. We rub shoulders with hundreds of millions of the desperately poor, denied access to the “land”, eking out a precarious existence on the margins of their society in the endlessly sprawling shanty towns of the Third Word or the squalid “inner cities” of the West. For all of them, and for us living among them, the story of Jesus in Egypt read in this way may cease to be just another Christmas story and become a Christmas gospel of challenge and of hope.”"

"“A growing awareness of the massive social evils that plague our land (in which eighty percent of the people are below, on, or just above the poverty line, and fully seventy percent are totally illiterate; where just ten percent of the rural rich own more than sixty percent of all the cultivable land, and ninety percent of private-owned industry is producing consumer goods for less than fifteen percent of the population) is having its impact on Indian theology - particularly among Indian theologians who have been exposed to a social analysis which points, correctly, to institutional structures rather than personal ill will as the source of social ills.”"

"“In the universe of Indian exegesis there is room for a wide variety of methods - historical criticism to determine the origin and the transmission of a text, literary criticism to analyse its literary and linguistic structures, canonical criticism to find out what function the text had in successive believing communities. But all these must be completed, if the interpretation is not to remain barren, with a hermeneutical reading which will determine the significance of the text for the reader here and how, by engaging text and reader in a critical conversation, that respects not only the meaning trajectory of the text but the new Indian context in which the text is now read.”"

"“Jesus appears in the Gospels as non-clerical, even as a somewhat anti-clerical figure. He is not a priest, for he does not belong to a priestly family; and he is shown in continuing conflict with the priestly establishment which ultimately arranges for his death.”"

"“Indeed commitment to the poor is demanded of the Indian exegete, not only by his Third World situation of overwhelming poverty which is the true context of his interpretation (however much he may try to isolate himself from it), but also by the thrust of the Bible itself. For the Bible, in spite of all the efforts of Western exegesis to domesticate of remains a revolutionary text proclaiming ‘good news to the poor’”"

"“The radical commitment to the poor which is the starting point of any genuine Indian hermeneutic in India must be made within the distinctive under¬standing of humankind and its world, which constitutes the Indian world-view, and gives particular shape and colour to its Third Worldness. An Indian hermeneutic will respect the specific sensibility shaped by the Indian world-view - or, more accurately perhaps, world-views.”"

"“For a change of structures without change of hearts will lead to new forms of oppression; while a change of hearts without change of structures will leave the present crushing form or oppression intact. Attitudinal and structural change are both necessary, because ultimately attitudes and structures are dialectically related.”"

"“Jesus (1) identifies himself with the poor, in order (2) to show them an active and effective concern. Such a concern looks to (3) the ending of their “social” poverty, while calling for (4) a “spiritual” poverty that will set them and their rich exploiters free from “mammon”, the compulsive urge to possess. Together, these four elements spell out the “compassion” of Jesus (Mt 9:36; Mk 6:34; 8:2) — that active, caring and passionate love which defines so sharply his life-style and sets a pattern for the life style of his followers.”"

"CWG 1: Soares-Prabhu, George M. (1999). Biblical Themes for a Contextual Theology Today, Collected Writings of George M. Soares-Prabhu, S.J., Vol.1.Padinjarekuttu, Isaac (ed.) Pune: Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth Theology Series."

"“Jesus opted for a radicalism which sought to realize as perfectly as possible, the spirit of the Law, which he saw embodied in love (agape), that is in interhuman concern.”"

"“When the revelation of God’s love (the Kingdom) meets its appropriate response in man’s acceptance of this love (repentance), there begins a mighty movement of personal and societal liberation which sweeps through human history. The movement brings freedom inasmuch it liberates each individual from the inadequacies and obsessions that shackle him. It fosters fellowship, because it empowers free individuals to exercise their concern for each other in genuine community. And it leads on to justice, because it impels every true community to adopt just societal structures which alone make freedom and fellowship possible. Freedom, fellowship and justice are thus the parameters of the Kingdom’s thrust towards the liberation of man.”"

"“The Eucharist has always carried the memory of Jesus’ meals with tax collectors and sinners.”"