India under siege-II

If one were to look into the record books and find out the names of the longest books ever written,he would end up with two books-"1001 nights" and "Mahabharatha".

The 1001 nights is a Russian book while the Mahabharatha is a Sanskrit book written by Vyasa.It is a book which consists of one lakh verses,describing the rise and fall of various Indian empires,the lives of the illustrious and not-so-illustrious princes,warriors,soldiers and ministers of India.It is an epic story with so many twists and turns,so many characters whose lives are interwoven with one other.There are various plots and sub plots which culminate into a single emotional and heart warming ending in the end.An extract from the Mahabharatha is the Bhaghavadh Geetha,considered by the courts to be the holy book of the Hindus.It would not be an exaggeration to say that any study of Indian cultural ethics is incomplete without reading the Mahabharatha.The following is the last verse of the mahabharatha:

"धर्मार्थु कामन नाबयाँ नालोबाथ

धरमंना थ्यजेथ जीविथास्यापी हेथोहो

नित्यो धर्मः सुखा देखे थ्वानिथ्ये

जीवो नित्यो हेठुरास्य थ्वानिथ्यः "

"Dont ever give up your dharma.

Not due to fear,not due to trivial issues.

Dont give up your dharma even if it is for the sake of your life"

Now,a question arises:

What is dharma?

The literal meaning of dharma is natural property.For example,it is the dharma of dogs to bark,of sun flowers to have a yellow colour,of a typist to type and a teacher to teach".

Nature,if left to itself,takes care of itself. It is only when this natural order is breached that a disturbance occurs.Any disturbance has an effect,and that has repercussions on the surrounding depending on the cause and magnitude of the disturbance.

It is under this context that it is worth mentioning lord Krishna's declaration in the Bhagavadh Geetha

"Whenever the society forgets its duties and goes into chaos,

I take birth to uplift DHARMA"

Thus we see that righteousness from the hindu perspective means playing the game as per the rules of nature.It is the dharma of a cow to moo.It is the dharma of donkeys to bray and dogs to bark".

Unless this inherent dharma is violated,there's not  going to be any difficulty in identifying a crow,dog or cow.It is only if suddenly a cow starts barking that one gets confused whether it is a cow or a dog.

The same dharma applies to human beings also.But,man being the roof and crown of creation,has the sixth sense viz. common sense by which he discriminates between good and evil,right and wrong,virtue and vice.

The common sense is a double edged sword that can be used both for constructive and destructive purposes.Only if it is put to the proper use,can the society benefit.Otherwise,it would only lead to chaos and confusion.

Srimadh Bhagavatham,another Hindu scripture says that merely having 2 hands,2 legs and a backbone doesn't guarentee by itself that one is a human being.One can be deemed to be a human being only if he follows his dharma.One is deemed a dog if he shouts unnecessarily at other people,a vulture if he looks down upon others,a worm if he mixes with bad company and so on.

The Hindu puraanas are full of stories of people who stood up for dharma whenever the need arose.

Ramayan,another hindu epic centered an the life of warrior prince Rama says

"रामो विग्रहवान धर्मः

धर्मो विग्रहवान रामः "

"Rama is the embodiment of dharma. Dharma,if it were to be sculpted,the statue would be a carbon copy of Rama"

Another quote from the Mahabharath before we move onto the main theme:

"यथ कृष्णः थथो  धर्मः

यथो धर्मः थथो  जयः "

"Dharma lies where krishna is.

Victory lies where dharma is".

It is this respect for dharma that drove India as a nation towards greater and greater heights before the foreigners arrived with their savagery,sense of cunning and enterprise.Each invading country had a thing or two to learn from the conquests of the other nations.And this is where the Britishers acted with admirable precision and accuracy.

Their aim was not to demolish temples,rename provinces etc,but far more deceitful,far more cunning.They decided to strike at the very core of India's existence-her culture,in other words,her dharma.

This is what Michael Danino writes in his best selling book,"The Invasion that never was":

"Unlike the Portuguese or the earlier muslim invaders,the British were anxious to clothe their greed in lofty ideals:"the white man's burden" of civilizing(and naturally Christianizing) less enlightened races,the "divinely ordained mission" of bringing India to the glory of Europe's commercialization and industrial civilization..........."

It was this deadly plan which was executed with remarkable efficiency by the Britishers that snuffed the life out of the Indian's lungs.India was to die a slow,silent death on her own.The british-educated indians started believing that only imperialism could bring development to India.The home grown techniques,the Indian traditions,heritage,civilization,the result of nearly 4000 years of civilization were discarded with gay abandon. The british alone knew what to do,how to do and where to do.And Indians were to model themselves in the western ways as quickly as possible in order to please their newly arrived masters and for their own development,as the Englishmen wanted the Indians to believe".

And,the result???

The Britishers won,hands down.

Jawaharlal Nehru,the first prime minister of "independent" India was born with a silver spoon.His father Motilal Nehru was an Indian educated by the British system.The British influence on him was so stark that he decided to to become a Britisher in every sense of the term,by mannerism,habit and language.He insisted on the use of knifes and forks for eating and conversed only in English inside the house,inspite of the fact that his wife couldn't understand a word.(Those were the days in which the wife  was considered as a part of the furniture after the first few years of marriage.)

"Like father,like son".

Motilal's son Jawaharlal Nehru,lived up to his father's expectations to an unbelievable extent.He once remarked that he wanted Indians to remember him as the last British prime minister of India.The less said about his character,the better.He was a womanizer to the greatest possible degree.One of the rather nasty jokes is that it was his affair with Mrs.Mountbatten that ensured early independence for India.

If only he had paid heed to these soul stirring words of Swami Vivekananda:

"The debt which the world owes to our motherland is immense.Taking country with country,there is not one race on this earth to which the world owes so much as to the patient Hindu,the mild Hindu.....Here activity prevailed when Greece did not exist,when Rome was not thought of,when the very fathers of the modern Europeans lived in the forest and painted themselves blue.Even earlier,when history has no record,and tradition dares not peer into the gloom of that intense past,even until now,ideas after ideas have marched out from her,but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it,and peace before it".

It is the dynasty of this great nehru which has ruled India for the greater part of India's so called "independence", Little wonder then,that Indian telecommunications and hrd minister has decided to do away with Devanagari numerals,the basis for the Arabic numerals we use today.

Today,Indian polity,media and education system  are guided by three foreigners who died long time ago viz Max Muller,Karl Marx and Lord Macaulay.

We shall see the contributions of these  powerful man and their impact on the Indian fabric in the next post

P.S:Nostradamus predicts that a sikh called CHYREN ROY will be born in the southern part of India,where the three seas meet(Kanya Kumari) and that he shall rule the world one day.Is he the only hope????

I hope not.  

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