"The Hindu" Newspaper and Anti Hindu writings !!
It was the year 2001 and I was not much versed in the teachings of the great scriptures of my desam. I was just doing my bit as another father of two, a proud son to my parents and a loving and concerned husband to my wife.
This article shook me. It appeared in the open page of the Hindu newspaper, which was my must read every morning (like lakhs of brahmins of that time). I thought it was good on the paper's part to put contrary opinion. Nevertheless, I wrote a rejoinder to the article. The Hindu never published it. It took me some more time to understand the machinations going on in the Hindu group and how the whole new management became anti India and Anti Hindu. I severed my twenty five year connection with the newspaper suddenly. I have successfully argued with hundreds of friends to stop patronizing this newspaper.
The article is here (click on the title)
In another sweeping
statement, he terms Christianity, Buddhism and islam as the three great
religions of the world. Without any prejudice to those three, a religion, on
whose name not a single war has been waged, the oldest in age but an ever
evolving religion whose base neither the sword of the moghuls nor the tyranny
of the trader-ruler-missionary network of the Christians and which integrated
Buddhism into its own- deserves to be at the top
It was the year 2001 and I was not much versed in the teachings of the great scriptures of my desam. I was just doing my bit as another father of two, a proud son to my parents and a loving and concerned husband to my wife.
This article shook me. It appeared in the open page of the Hindu newspaper, which was my must read every morning (like lakhs of brahmins of that time). I thought it was good on the paper's part to put contrary opinion. Nevertheless, I wrote a rejoinder to the article. The Hindu never published it. It took me some more time to understand the machinations going on in the Hindu group and how the whole new management became anti India and Anti Hindu. I severed my twenty five year connection with the newspaper suddenly. I have successfully argued with hundreds of friends to stop patronizing this newspaper.
The article is here (click on the title)
Hindutva: the religious incongruity
My friends will be infuriated even now reading the nonsense that Debashis Chakrabarti wrote in that article. Believe me, it was 2001 and BJP was in power and newspapers were not known to spit falsity and venom on religious ideas. Yet, the Hindu did it. As I predicted, they continue doing it without the least regret.
By the way my friends might be interested to see what I wrote against that article. Though, it did not see the light during that period, internet is now helping me to share it. It is in immature language and the references are poor. But, I am posting out of an impulse somewhat blinded by nostalgia.
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The article “Hindutva: The religious incongruity” in the open page of The
Hindu dated 6-2-1001 by Mr Debashis Chakraborty lacks substance from the
heading onwards. His equating Hinduism
with Hindutva shows how poor his understanding is. Hindutwa is the reactionary
voice of a self proclaimed tribe out to protect the religion or rather its
symbols. Hinduism, if it is to be defined, can be largely called a collection
of theisms with a common root.
The ancient thinkers or sages, through
various routes of thinking realised the futility of materialistic pursuit and
self enlightenment was the purpose of human life. This further led to their
understanding of other schools of thinking. Armed with the knowledge that self
realisation will answer man’s all questions about him, the world around and
power behind both, they were clearly able to see the quest of other religions
were also the same though the route taken was different. Even atheism was
accepted as part of Hindu thinking. The nobel laurate and Astro- physicist,
Prof Chandrasekar called himself as a Hindu athiest. If Mr Chakraborty calls this colossal
discovery “ the truth is one, sages call it in different names” as a political
statement, even a lay Hindu will smile at his ignorance. Even politics needs
philosophies, and hence it has hijacked this theory. It is this grand discovery from where one of the
world’s most inclusivist culture was born.
The author quotes conveniently from many
scriptures which support his incongruity theory and, that too, in part. The
author’s singling out of a statement from Brighu that matter is ultimate as
without first reading all the text is nothing short of a mischief. He
conveniently forgot to mention that Brighu was a full blown sage who renounced
marerial object( read matter) and also a devout bhaktha as the Hindu knows from
other literature. From Krishna to Shri Ramana of recent times have explained
that matter lies in thought form only in human consciousness and subject to the law of change and that self
realisation is possible only when man is free of all bondages (which are his
thoughts). Can there be anything apart from truth that matter is ultimate ?
After terming the religion as incongruous,
he takes the opinions of its
‘scholars’ about what they think
of the vedas and upanishads without, at
any time talking about the Gita for the fear that all his innocent
questions had answers there. Krishna ridicules the institunalisation of
religion ( read spiritual pursuit) and cautions that the saguna upasana or
symbolic prayer is for the uninitiated and that prayer for prayer’s sake,
gathering knowledge for knowledge’s sake in short work or Karma for its own
sake will lead man to self realisation. In this process, he criticises exploiting
people in the name of the vedas. But he stresses the importances of a symbol
for a starter. Even the sage Thiruvalluvar says ‘ catch Him with no bondage-
for there is your liberation from Bondage’. So much so for the necessity of
symbols. From this only flowed the ishta devata concept which let every man
choose his own symbol or God. The single most failure of the author has been a
gross misunderstanding of this and which the christian missionaries labelled as
paganism.
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