Hindu Nationalists

"SRINAGAR, May 30, Election Day. It's a small Hindu temple on the banks of the river Jhelum, lost amongst the hundred and one mosques of Srinagar. Its entrance is heavily guarded by BSF forces and it is protected by sandbags on all sides, as it has been hit recently by a rocket fired by militants. Inside, a handful of Kashmiri Pandits are still trying to preserve this sacred place, where a natural lingam is said to have emerged 3000 years ago and where their forefathers have worshipped for 20 generations. "We were once 30,000 in this district of Srinagar," remembers Shyam, a Hindu priest, "but today we are only two hundred. All our brothers and sisters had to flee. Our houses were burnt, our women raped, our sons killed". Shyam and his friends offer us a cup of tea and some biscuits and we leave this temple which seems to be doomed, wondering why nobody ever reports about it."

"When I first went there I discovered an entirely new approach of looking at life. It was as if I had sudden awakened from deep slumber."

""Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards," Mahatma Gandhi once said. He was right -- at least about Hindus."

"At some point, after years or even centuries of submitting like sheep to slaughter, Hindus—whom the Mahatma once gently called cowards—erupt in uncontrolled fury. And it hurts badly. It happened in Gujarat. It happened in Jammu, then in Kandhamal, Mangalore, and Malegaon. It may happen again elsewhere."

"The second thing, is that all the great famines of India happened during the British time. Many historians, such as Frenchman Guy Deleury, have documented the economic rape of India by the British : “Industrially the British suffocated India , gradually strangling Indian industries whose finished products, textiles in particular, were of a quality unique in the world which has made them famous over the centuries. Instead they oriented Indian industries towards jute, cotton, tea, oil seeds, which they needed as raw materials for their home industries. They employed cheap labour for the enterprises while traditional artisans were perishing. India, which used to be a land of plenty, where milk and honey flowed started drying” (Modèle Indou)… According to British records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825-1850, 5 million between 1850-1875 and 15 million between 1875-1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years ! The British must be proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honourable and straightforward to kill in the name of Allah, than in the guise of petty commercial interests and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilisation."

"American archaeologist Mark Kenoyer was able to prove in 1991 that the majority of archaeological sites of the so-called Harappan (or Dravidian) civilisation were not situated on the ancient bed of the Indus river, as first thought, but on the Saraswati. Another archaeologist , Paul-Henri Francfort, Chief of a franco-american mission (Weiss, Courty, Weterstromm, Guichard, Senior, Meadow, Curnow), which studied the Saraswati region at the beginning of the nineties, found out why the Saraswati had ‘disappeared’ : « around 2200 B.C., he writes, an immense drought reduced the whole region to aridity and famine » (Evidence for Harappan irrigation system in Haryana and Rajasthan -Eastern Anthropologist 1992). Thus around this date, most inhabitants moved away from the Saraswati to settle on the banks of the Indus and Sutlej rivers."

"We know that the Greek Demetrios Galianos had translated the Bhagavad-Gita and French philosopher and historian Roger-Pol Droit writes in his classic “L’oubli de l’Inde” (India forgotten) “that there is absolutely not a shadow of a doubt that the Greeks knew all about Indian philosophy”. Alain Danielou quotes Clement of Alexandria who admitted that “we the Greeks have stolen to the Barbarians their philosophy”. And even William Jones, the XVIIIth century linguist of British India, noted that “the analogies between Greek Pythagorean philosophy and the Sankhya school, are very obvious”. German philosopher Shroeder had also remarked in his book “Pythagoras und die Inder” that nearly all the philosophical and mathematical doctrines attributed to Pythagoras are derived from India, particularly the Sankhya school."

"Being married to a "daughter of India" is a natural complement of my being in this country for 30 years. My roots are very much in this country, even though I remain a Westerner."

"This was indeed a masterly stroke on the part of the British : thanks to the Aryan theory, they showed on the one hand that Indian civilisation was not that ancient and that it was posterior to the cultures which influenced the western world – Mesopotamia, Sumeria, or Babylon – and on the other hand, that whatever good things India had developed – Sanskrit, literature, or even its architecture, had been influenced by the West."

"Thus, even today, one can hardly find a single reference to Indian philosophy in modern text books. “For instance, writes Roger-Pol Droit, one cannot come across a single mention, in the Dictionary of Philosophers, of the Buddhist philosopher Asanga, whose works are probably as important as those of Aristotle, nor his books can be found in libraries..."

"We also witnessed firsthand the basic hostility of Amnesty International to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. Sunil Bakshi had repeatedly sent invitations to them three weeks before the exhibition. I personally called the head of Kashmir at Amnesty International several times as well as Ingrid Massage, the director, Asia & Pacific Program of Amnesty. First she told us they only reported on first hand facts, I replied these were photographs and statistics which nobody could dispute. Finally, after ten phone calls, she said she had too many files on her desk and that she had no time to come, although the exhibtion was a few blocks from her office. So much for Amnesty's sense of justice."

"In the 80's Ashish Bose had coined the term BiMaRU, for the four states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, owing to their abysmal socio-economic indicators. Since then Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have catapulted themselves out of the status of being diseased or BiMaRU. Bihar seemed right on track once, to come out of it, but now looks trapped again in the chakravyuh of kidnapping, nepotism and failed law and order with the re-entry of Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar politics. The state of Uttar Pradesh was, however, still screaming for development and the SP & BSP have failed miserably to live up to the mandate of the people of Uttar Pradesh for the last 15 years. Even without access to all these macro data and facts, the people of Uttar Pradesh daily lived and observed the pathetic condition of their state. They heard 'Kam Bolta Hai' rhetoric in Akhilesh Yadav's rallies, but while going back home from the rally, they faced bad roads, bad traffic, lawlessness, lack of electricity in their houses, corruption in the process for government jobs selection and no future for their children. It is evident that when the people of Uttar Pradesh voted for BJP, they have voted for aspirations, for a better future for their children and for a prosperous Uttar Pradesh. New Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has huge expectations to fulfill."

"Distorting history is no less a crime than sedition."

"I believe that the word secular is the biggest lie since Independence. Those that have given birth to this lie and those that use it should apologise to the people and this country. No system can be secular. Political system can be sect-neutral. If someone were to say that government has to be run by one way of prayer, that is not possible. In UP, I have to look at 22 crore people and I am answerable for their security and their feelings. But I am not sitting here to ruin one community either. You can be sect-neutral but not secular."

"Sanatana Dharma is the only religion, the rest are all sects and methods of worship. Sanatan is the religion of humanity and if it is attacked then there will be a crisis for humanity across the globe."

"I welcome the Supreme Court verdict. When the Bill is brought in Parliament, I will oppose it. I oppose any move to decriminalise homosexuality and endorse Ramdev's comments."

"When I ask them to rise and protect our Hindu culture, they obey. If I ask for blood, they will give me blood."

"Sun has never deprived anyone of its light and energy irrespective of their caste and religion. Despite this, if it is being linked to communalism then I request such people to stay in their rooms during the day without sunlight."

""Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the first right over the resources of the country is of Muslims. If Muslims have the first right, where will the Scheduled Castes, Jats, Gujjars and other people go," Adityanath said."

"One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India."

"One occasion where I saw US-based Indian Marxists in action was at the 1996 Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin... I knew that excellent and innovative papers by N.S. Rajaram and Shrikant Talageri had been rejected by the organizers, so I felt entitled to expect presentations of top-notch scholarship dwarfing even that of Rajaram and Talageri. Instead, what the audience got, was a canvassing session for the “Forum of Indian Leftists” without any scholarly papers. The speakers disdained to even mention any of the argumentative contents of the AIT debate, except “David Frawley’s paradox” (the AIT’s puzzling implication pointed out by Frawley, viz. that the Harappan civilization had numerous cities but no literature, while Vedic civilization had a vast literature but no cities), which they simply laughed off without discussion ad rem. ... But Frawley’s paradox is entirely pertinent: what are the chances that a literate culture leaves the biggest conglomerate of archaeological sites behind, but only a handful of short inscriptions as the complete corpus of its literature; while the illiterate conquerors produce a vast and sophisticated literature within a few centuries, but leave no sizable architecture behind? What are the chances that the largest civilization of the world loses its language to a conquering band of nomadic tribesmen? The AIT has the weight of probability against it."

"Here [Witzel] throws a bombshell: “Kazanas is heavily influenced here by Frawley’s most amazing paradox”. (Elsewhere I borrow from Kak or some other “fundamentalist-colleague”.) I was not heavily influenced by Frawley’s paradox. I simply acknowledged (after some research) that Frawley had “first noted” this paradox, namely that the literate Harappans left no literature while the non-literate, archaeologically unattested Aryans left their voluminous productions. With this I suppose [Witzel] tries to draw attention away from the fact that he has no explanation for the Aryanisation of North India. In [Witzel]’s mind Frawley is a fiendish figure of fundamentalist Hindutva, Astrology and the like, and therefore cannot utter any truth; if [Kazanas] is “influenced”, [Kazanas] also cannot utter any truth."

"Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedanta and the Vedic view of history should be taught in India's schools as part of the national cultural heritage. If western views of wellbeing, psychology, history and culture can be taught, it is colonialism to exclude the legacy of Bharatiya traditions."

"What happened India today is probably the only country in the world in which the colonial narrative against it has not been changed.... what happened is that the Marxists perpetuated the negative colonial narrative... so instead of the British being the enemy the Hindus became the enemy...."

"According Dr. David Frawley eminent teacher and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine: "No religion, perhaps, lays as much emphasis on environmental ethics as does Hinduism. It believes in ecological responsibility and says like Native Americans that the Earth is our mother. It champions protection of animals, which it considers also have souls, and promotes vegetarianism. It has a strong tradition of non-violence or ahimsa. It believes that God is present in all nature, in all creatures, and in every human being regardless of their faith or lack of it.""

"“David Frawley is one of the most important scholars of Ayurveda and Vedic Science today. I have great respect and admiration for his knowledge and the way he has expounded the ancient wisdom of the Vedas.”"

"Wikipedia has published many questionable statements about Hindu writers, leaders, causes and historical issues. Is not an unbiased forum. Hindus should protest against its anti-Hindu views."

"Mosques built over important traditional Hindu temples like Kashi Vishwanath were not monuments to secularism, nationalism, religious pluralism or Bharatiya heritage. They were products of domination by hostile rulers trying to suppress the majority Hindu population."

"Social media owners and directors have long allowed or promoted an anti-Hindu and anti-India bias. Are not providing a neutral platform but have their own political agenda. This extends to Wikipedia as well. Time for them to be made accountable."

"However, the entire right-left division reflects the conditions of western politics and is inaccurate in the Indian context. We must give up such concepts in examining Indic civilization, which in its core is spiritually based, not politically driven. It reflects older and deeper concerns that precede and transcend the West's outer vision. As long as we define ourselves through politics our social order will contain conflict and confusion. Democracy may be the more benign face of a political order, but it still hides the lack of any true spiritual order. We must employ the vision of dharma and subordinate politics to it, which should be a form of Karma Yoga."

"The causes taken up by the Hindu movement are more at home in the New Left than in right wing parties of the West. Some of these resemble the concerns of the Green Party. The Hindu movement offers a long-standing tradition of environmental protection, economic simplicity, and protection of religious and cultural diversity. There is little in the so-called Hindu right that is shared by the religious or political right-wing in western countries, which reflect military, corporate and missionary concerns. The Hindu movement has much in common with the New Age movement in the West and its seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge, not with the right wing in the West, which rejects these things. Clearly, the western right would never embrace the Hindu movement as its ally."

"Can we trust transnational internet groups like Wikipedia, which are self-regulating and unaccountable, to determine or censor information for the public, to decide what are the facts in nearly all fields of life and learning?"

"Using Marxism to understand India's ancient and vast dharmic civilization is like consulting a frog in a well for explaining the ocean. Those trapped in dialectical materialism cannot understand the unity of Self and universe, humanity and the cosmos."

"“Frawley is an Indian in an American body. The ease with which he enters into the spiritual of the Indian tradition and renders its deeper concepts in terms of modern thought shows an unusual familiarity with this ancient wisdom.”"

"When native Americans ask for a return of their sacred sites, the left in America supports them. When Hindus ask for a similar return of their sacred sites, the left in India opposes them and brands them as intolerant for their actions! When native peoples in America or Africa protest missionaries for interfering with their culture, they are supported by the left. Yet when Hindus express the same sentiments, they are attacked by the left. Even the Hindu demand for rewriting the history of India to better express the value of their indigenous traditions is the same as what native Africans and Americans are asking for. Yet the left opposes this Hindu effort, while supporting African and American efforts of a similar nature."

"The Hindu cause is similar to the cause of native and tribal peoples all over the world, like native American and African groups. Even Hindu concerns about cultural encroachment by western religious and commercial interests mirrors those of other traditional peoples who want to preserve their cultures. Yet while the concerns of native peoples have been taken up by the left worldwide, the same concerns of Hindus are styled right-wing or communal, particularly by the left in India!"

"Not surprisingly, the same leftists in India, who have long been allied to communist China, similarly style the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause as right-wing and regressive, though the Dalai Lama is honored by the American left. This should tell the reader about the meaning of right and left as political terms in India. When one looks at the Hindu movement as the assertion of a native tradition with a profound spiritual heritage, the whole perspective on it changes."

"Hence, examining astronomical references in Vahara Mihira and Vedanga Jyotish, we arrive at the equinoctial positions of about 1280 BC. This is found as the latest reference in later Vedic texts like the Brahmans, with the new Moon in Magha marking the winter solstice. Using the different points of Krittika as marking the vernal equinox and the lunar positions earlier in the month of Magha back to the eighth day of the waning Moon (Ekashtaka), we get a period of 2800-1760 BC. Vedic references show an ongoing adjustment of their solstice-oriented calendar, proving the existence of Vedic culture at this time along with the existence of a sophisticated system of astronomical observation."

"Hindu Sidereal calculations are thus more complicated than Tropical ones. Hindu astronomy is a very specialized system that requires precise astronomical observations and shows an ongoing knowledge of the exact placement of the planets and equinoxes relative to the fixed stars. Such Sidereal measurements show how much the Hindus relied on actual stellar positions. On this basis it is hard to dismiss the positions of early Hindu astronomy as having no basis in observation."

"However, if we look at their actual views, Hindu groups have a very different ideology and practices than the political right in other countries. In fact many Hindu causes are more at home in the left in the West than in the right. The whole idea of the 'Hindu right' is a ploy to discredit the Hindu movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it. The truth is that the Hindu movement is a revival of a native spiritual tradition that has nothing to do with the political right-wing of any western country. Its ideas are spiritually evolutionary, not politically regressive."

"The Hindu movement in India in its most typical form follows a Swadeshi (own-country) movement like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. It emphasizes protecting the villages and local economies, building economic independence and self-reliance for the country. It resists corporate interference and challenges multinational interests, whether the bringing of fast food chains to India, western pharmaceuticals or terminator seeds."

"References to seas and oceans and a vision of the universe as a series of oceans cannot be explained away by supposing that some big river was imagined to be the ocean by the primitive mind. This is not a rational interpretation of what is said but an irrational reduction of it according to the imposition of outside ideas and preconceptions. Yet this has been part of the general and accepted method of Vedic scholarship. Most of what has been done on the Vedas so far remains largely the unquestioned work of nineteenth century Western scholars who were often trapped in the cultural and sometimes imperialistic bias of their times."

"I could sense the march of Vedic dawns unfolding a continual evolution of consciousness in the universe. I could feel the Vedic wisdom permeating all of nature, unfolding the secrets of birth and death, the days and nights of the soul. The Veda was present at the core of our being like an inextinguishable flame and carried the spiritual aspiration of our species. It was sad to contemplate how far we had fallen – that culturally we had closed the doors on these ancient dawns and become mired in a dark night of greed and arrogance."

"A culture would not likely have developed the myth of the winning of the rivers to flow into the sea if it had never seen the ocean. Moreover, the winning of the Waters and the winning of the Light are presented in the Rig Veda as a single victory; the Waters are those of the Sun world. Why should a culture equate a daily light myth with a yearly water-rain myth? In north India there is a unique climatic condition wherein the rains occur at the summer solstice, the time when the days are longest. Inhabitants of such a land would quite naturally associate the light with the rains. Equating the rains with the year and the Sun would thus suggest north India as the land wherein this myth originated."

"In this way I can speak of an American Hinduism and call myself an American and a Hindu – an American connected with the land and a Hindu connected with the spirit and soul of that land. Hinduism has helped me discover the forces of nature in which I live, their past and their future, their unique formations and their connections with the greater universe and the cosmic mind."

"It is not necessary to live in India to be a Hindu. In fact one must live in harmony with the land where one is located to be a true Hindu."

"I also remember reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East. I learned that there were great spiritual and mystical traditions in the East that perhaps still existed. I began my own journey to the East. Meanwhile I also studied European poetry and art. I particularly enjoyed the French symbolist poets like Rimbaud and Mallarme who had a mystic vision. The German mystic poet Rilke, however, was my favorite and best epitomized what I thought real poetry should be. Poetry had a depth and ambiguity that philosophy could not reach. I realized that it was a better vehicle to reflect this mysterious universe in which we live. ...My own poetry became more imagistic, reflecting a symbolist base like that of Rilke or Rimbaud. Images of the dawn and the night, the sun, wind and fire arose in mind like primordial forces, with vague images of ancient Gods. These poems also had eastern affinities that I was gradually discovering."

"Some Greek astronomers and astrologers knew of the precession, though they did not know exactly what it was or how to calculate it. Hipparchus appears to have discovered it among the Greeks and calculated it at 36" per year, which Ptolemy, the most famous Greek astrologer, adopted. The Hindus, in the Surya Siddhanta calculated the rate as 54", much closer to what is observed today as 50.3" per year.a While modem scholars consider this figure a lucky guess on the part of the Hindus it may reflect a better knowledge of the precession, perhaps arrived at by long term observations and necessary calendar shifts through time. For this reason, it is hard to derive Hindu astrology from the Greeks, as most Western scholars do. The Hindus compute the zodiac differently and the precession more accurately than the Greeks. Yet we are told, based upon the appearance of minor Greek terms in later Hindu astrology, that any accuracy in Hindu astronomy comes from the Greeks. Hindu astronomy has a long history and an extensive literature following different methods than those of the Greeks. As Vedic astrology is Sidereal, we cannot discountenance the astronomical references we find commonly in Vedic literature relative to the precession. Precessional changes are the hallmark of Hindu astronomy, the essence of the system. We cannot ignore them in ancient texts just because they give us dates too early for our conventional view of human history."

"The American Christian right is still sending missionaries to the entire world in order to convert all people to Christianity, the only true religion. It is firmly fixed on one savior, one scripture and a rather literal interpretation of these. Yet when Hindus ask the pope to make a statement that truth can be found outside of any particular church or religion they are called right-wing and backwards, while the pope, who refuses to acknowledge the validity of Hindu, Buddhist or other Indic traditions, is regarded as liberal!"

"“Certainly America’s most singular “practicing Hindu.””"