I only went for the movie as it was lauded by Ram Gopal Verma. Very few Indians make a good figther movie. And yes, Anurag Kashyap and tarantino hate themsleves. An astrologer could tell that this movie is scorpio loaded.
This is a pure male fantasy playing out. PRIVATE jets, cars, brotherly gangs. And the frustration of an urban male youth. Rich brat not doing rich brat things, fightinh for sister, taking over the father’s business and the romance. Whether it is an explicit assertion of Hindu identity, a KarwaChauth scene done well. Otherwise, we were stuck with Shah rukh and all that beta male nonsense… or melodrama by Bhansali, Barjatya, etc.
Shiv Mandirs of Kashmir, swastik steel is not the Hitler’s Hooked cross (taken from the Church)… reaffirming hindu symbolism.
It defies how conventional Indian cinema is.
The critics are caught with their pants down.
This will start a new trend of creativity
Yes, long movies are back.
My taste doesn’t involve mindless violence or the way it is shown in hollywood. It is vulgar and pedestrian. And yes, the character lacks depth as in Kabir Singh, the life is spiolt for a girl, and here for the father.
One movie where father-son is shown with finer contour is Ardh Satya where a father asks him to become a cop and join an alpha male profession, which leads into a quagmire of the nexus between politicans, gangsters ultimalety leading him to the brink. No spoilers. His own incorrputing idealism and reality are a clash.
One thing is for certain that the movie has changed how Indian movies are viewed.
How can I call you mine? My subjugator of conscience, ravager of my soul, devourer of my happiness. You were never mine.
I call myself ‘yours’, a phrase that you once relished upon, and ventured along me into the deepest dungeon of my sentience. You fraudster! Always chided my serious pleas and gratified my whims and vanities. You are a master of puppets! Always rebuked with virtues I never possessed.
We were the ire of the public’s eye. You jeopardized me in public, but treated me with the utmost request in private. Always absconding with half eaten, foolish letters. You came like a dry wind, ruffling all my feathers and yet carrying me away. Oh the Bard of heavens, I never felt like a woman before.
Sometimes you drove me wild with passion or rendered me trembling just amidst your debonair presence.
You were too spiritual to be a seducer in a practical sense. But your suaveness and eloquence made me feel whether I am one?
Nor do I arm myself with a dagger, neither as a boulder which sisyphus had to carry uphill and downhill for eternity.
My curses, my excess language, my dissonant nonchalance, my contemptuous derision of you is itself an atonement of your possesion of you.
Marry a thousand, I am yours.
Flee where you can, I am yours.
In the farthest corner of the world, I am yours.
I place all my pleasures in being your slave!
May the remarkable fire that you are, keep burning by itself, never satisfied.
This is an article which will analyse in-depth the recent Chimerica cold war and the position of India sandwiched between the two. The phrases like “wolf warrior diplomacy”, “salami slicing”, “Sun Tzu’s art of war”, “winning without fighting”,” Chinese Checkers” etc. have become frequent in the newspapers.
American psychology is simple. The country was founded in 1776 by slave traders and risk-takers who had enough of the extortionary taxation policies of the British East India Company. After the protests erupted after the Boston Tea Party episode which allowed them to sell Tea from China without paying taxes. They were aided by the French off course in their war with imperial Britain, the favour which they returned during the French Revolution uprising after 1789. Although, Thomas Jefferson is quoted as “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, Blacks were emancipated by Abraham Lincoln “accidentally” in 1861 and had to wait another 100 years for voting rights. Meanwhile, they amassed wealth by exploiting their colonies and allowing big companies to take the lead meanwhile turning everything into a commodity and every endeavour of theirs into a transactional in nature. After coming out as relatively unscathed in the two world wars, paved the way for American Hegemenon which translated into de facto dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the climax of the cold war in 1989. They have forever been on the lookout for a new frontier. This stems from the Christain dogma, that taking a new faith to ” newly discovered lands” and bringing “heathens” to the only true faith, characterised by their Human Rights lobbies to belittle different countries and direct military intervention in Oil or some other resource-rich country like Iraq, Vietnam, Korea etc. in recent times.
China meanwhile is the only country in the world with the widely available “Histographic Tradition” (Most documented History available, precisely dated and labelled) and a country characterised by frequent peasant rebellions. Their ancient philosophy is best summed as extracting “truth from facts”.They consider them as the “middle kingdom” is the kingdom between heaven and Earth and that it’s neighbours on the periphery being subordinate to it and paying its emperor obsequious. After their “100 year humiliation” (1842-1949) at the hands of western powers which ravaged and plundered their country, they have been vowed revenge and remain firm in their outlook. Even after Mao’s Communist revolution, they have digested communism into their Confucian ethics, not losing their tradition. You see this in the way how China refuses to follow world norms like that of WTO or opening up global internet. Or how they compete in the Olympics, just finishing 2nd after the USA(contrast with India!). While China is producing state of the art work in modern technology(AI, genetic engineering etc.), India struggles to put one university in top 200. Now they have been buying up people by honey trapping for just paying the required sum and even wishing to dislodge the Dollar as the gold standard. They even publish a Human rights violations report for America whenever the USA tries to scold China on their own misdemeanours. The are often at hammer and tongs with the Vatican and the Ummah stating that their intereference in China is foreign.
Henry Kissinger famously commented that “American exceptionalism is missionary in nature, whereas China’s is civilizational” and that “China is a state without a civilization (as the communist revolution destroyed all of it but they still claim leadership of Buddhist Civilizations) whereas India is a civilization without a state.” Where does India stand in the global Kurukshetra?
India is the only civilization which has not succumbed to Islamic or Christain ethics, but also the only one whose History is still controlled by western scholars. It’s high time that India take it back. Most of India’s opinion on world affairs comes from western think tanks. Who will analyse them from an Indian perspective? Watch some Foreign documentary, and you will find Chinese even Arabic subtitles but not one Indian Language.
Indi and USA do not have much in common except that both are democracies and that Indian diaspora has played a pivotal role in America’s growth while exorcising their own American Dream. Meanwhile, India and China as Shyam Saran noted in his book, “How India sees the world from Kautilya to 21st century” that China sees India as:
Land of Cosmic Chaos due to its varied diversity in contrast with Chinese Societies characterised by Order from Confucius to Mao and now Xi.
Land of great Knowledge and wisdom which not only angers them but also is the primary reason for their fears and insecurities.
Fa-Hien and Xuazang for some Chinese Buddhists who came to India to study Buddhism, followed by people from all over the world. Bodhidharma, the First Chinese Buddhist is known of taken Buddhism to the East(China, Korea and Japan) and also the patriarch who pioneered Shaolin which were later adapted to Chinese Martial arts. As Buddhism was wiped out from India by Islamic Invasions and Buddhism declined in China with the rise of communism, the bond between India and China rather subdued and complicated by India’s colonization by Britain, unsettling border questions and opium wars and other semi colonisers of China. Opium to China was imported came from India which crushed the Chinese society and their economy subsided.
Most experts fail to see this but American and Chinese interests converge when it comes to India. China sees India as the only threat who can defeat them somehow, while America does not want another China to irk them.
Krishna is not coming to save Draupadi’s honour this time. India needs to be assertive and firm in her grit and perseverance. She should declare herself as the sole custodian of the world’s Vedic/Buddhist civilization and take control of their destinies, not paying much heed to Sun Tzu she is able to emulate the vision of Chankya. As British historian Toynbee said, the world having th western start will have an Indian end.India’s rise is only inevitable.
China has been as busy as a bee. After sabotaging the pandemic and (intentionally?) failing to spread the word about it and then exporting substandard supplies, it has opened border disputes with at least 18 countries while only sharing borders with 14. It has also been claiming the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea as “China’s sea” and exerting more pressures on its surrogates via draconian security, military, economic deals through its one belt and road initiative and the digital silk route using Huawei, ZTE and software applications like Tik Tok etc. Meanwhile, internal conflicts in Hong Kong (with the security law on survalliance and freedom of speech) and Taiwan (with the removal of the word “peaceful” reunification) mounting along with gross human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet. A stern political game seems to be brewing up here as for the first time in history, the WHO chief is not a doctor but a politican. That too who misread COVID 19 in Wuhan and declared that it gave no signs of community transmissions later.
The Chorus on banning Chinese products has amplified with government resorting to banning 59 Chinese apps due to security issues, revoking contracts of Chinese companies in infrastructure projects and thetrade deficit reducing a little since past years. Although India’s still dependent on China for critical ingredients in big pharmaceutical, electronic intermediates and iron and steel to name a few while both from a minuscule part of each others’ imports and exports, a strong consensus on how to face the music is still being arrived at. South Block is abuzz with finally support Tibetan independence and further raise the voice against the internal fault-lines in China regarding Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong while reclaiming Indian territory in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. Indias although has ramped its defence procurements from Russia(Sukhoi MKI 30), Israel(bomb kist) and France(Rafale). PLA isn’t experienced firstly, last fought 40 years ago in Vietnam(ended in akind of stalemate) but is expert in land grabbing and excerbating border conflicts. Also, it’s reversed engineered J8,J9,J11s are inferior IAF’s planes which have pinpoint accuracy and laser munitions.
Also, it got a bloody nose in Rezang La in 1962, and again in Nathu La in 1967 under General Sagat Singh Rathore. The commitment of PLA troops, most of them Han Chinese, to defend distant frontiers populated by rival Tibetan ethnic groups who believe in a living God, is really no match to the commitment Indian troops have to preserving their territories. The fierce loyalty and pride of Indian troops to their paltans is unmatched in most other armies around the world and is a force multiplier.
More than a half-century ago, on March 10th, 1959, Tibetans revolted against the Chinese military occupation of Tibet that began in 1951. This caused the Dalai Lama, with the help of the CIA, to flee with his supporters to India. On March 31, 1959, after a gruelling 15-day journey across the Himalayas on foot, the Dalai Lama escaped from the Chinese and crossed over to India along with 80,000 Tibetans. Even as desperate self-immolations among Tibetans still living in Tibet have increased in the past few years, there seem to be no signs whatsoever of China relenting on its cultural genocide there.
India’s mightiest rivers (Brahmaputra and Indus) all originate in Tibet, and China has started an ambitious project of rapidly building at least 20 hydroelectric dams in Tibet, each with the potential to divert water away from India and into China. Quenching China’s thirst will come at the expense of India where droughts will result in many areas as China seeks to militarise water in Asia.
Tibet is also the military base for China’s nuclear arsenal aimed at India, giving China the ability to reach India within minutes from launch. Tibet is the route through which the China-Pakistan links are transporting military and other goods through modern highways, railroads and pipelines. This enables China to gain access to the Indian Ocean ports that are located in Pakistan, and Pakistan gets instant assistance from China in any conflict with India. With China purusing rapprochement between the Korean nations and Japan and with USA and Iran with the new China Iran deal causing a concern for India on the chabahar port.
Back home, the Chinese Communist party is getting itchy and dodgid which stems from their anxiety of India being the only power capable to thwart China’s plan of global hegemenon. An anxiety that spreads as quickly as the Virus( China promoting Buddhism abroad, while destroying its own Buddhist monasteries; imposing non tariff barriers back home while being global export hub; India saying no to its BRI and S. Korea and Japan being in military allaince with USA; Empowering Islamic terrorism with Taliban etc., while “re-educating” own muslims; dreaming of holding power forever; which drives it’s wolf warriors into uncouth statements and killing the doctor who merely reported the outbreak; dismissing its own CCP officials in positions of power over corruption and inane promises that they make endlessly to the Chinese public). It sees to set the terms straight for India that:
China wants to settle the Tibet question on its own terms.
Cautioning India over security and strategic alliances with USA and Japan, as probe over COVID-19 reaches the tipping point.
Blocking India’s route to Central Asia with CPEC and BRI and possibility opening a front with Pakistan as and when India resolves to take over PoK.
Acknowledging that US hegemony and India’s regional influence in the Indian Ocean posed challenges to the Chinese plan, the authors laid out the inherent deficiencies that China needed to overcome, namely that (a) it is not a littoral state; (b) its passage through key maritime straits could be easily blocked; and (c) the possibility of US-India cooperation against China. They suggested that these deficiencies might be overcome by (1) carefully selecting sites to build ports — Djibouti, Gwadar, Hambantota, Sittwe and Seychelles were specifically named; (2) by conducting activities in a low-key manner to “reduce the military colour as much as possible”; and (3) by not unnerving India and America by cooperating at first, then slowly penetrating into the Indian Ocean, beginning with detailed maritime surveys, ocean mapping, HADR, port construction and so on. Thus, India percieves strong need is felt to pursue a comprehensive underwater strategy as it surrounds her with the “string of pearls.”
Now India can pursue these impasses with soft power diplomacy throw the following ways.One is that Sanskrit and Tibetan script are identical. Plus Kailash Mansorvar are a sacred sight for both Hindus and Buddhists across the world. The other has a back story, here goes:
A text in Tibetan script suspected to be Sanskrit in content. From the personal artifact collection of Donald Weir.
King Trisong Detsen ruled Tibet from 755 CE until 797 CE. He was the second of the Three Dharma Kings of Tibet and played a crucial role for the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, by commissioning further Buddhist texts to be translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan.He invited many great Indian masters to Tibet such as the tantric adept Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche; the master and abbot of Nalanda monastic university in India, Santarakshita, who would establish the monastic order in Tibet; and the eminent scholar Kamalasila. It was through the efforts of the Kings and these masters that the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Nyingma, came into existence.
Padmasambhava is also called Guru Rimpoche, the founder of the Nyingmapa School of Tibetan Buddhism. All through his life he was a controversial figure. On at least two occasions his flouting of convention caused such outrage that people attempted to burn him at the stake – but he emerged unscathed each time. He is the archetype of the embodiment in one person all the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, love and power of the Buddhist tradition. He brought Buddhism to Tibet from India(Born near Swat Valley now in Pakistan) in the eighth century.
Samye monastery was the first monastery built in Tibet and still exists today. It was constructed between 775-779 CE under the patronage of King Trisong Detsen. It located around 3½ hours bus-ride away from Lhasa, in Dranang, Lhoka Prefecture. The monastery layout mirrors a large mandala, and the main monastic building was inspired by the temple of Odantapuri, an ancient Buddhist university of India, located in Bihar.
After being invited by King Trisong Detsen, the abbot of Nalanda monastic university, Santarakshita, found the site auspicious and began to build. At a certain stage however, the building would collapse again and again. The cause for this was said to be the native local spirits. When Padmasambhava, a contemporary of Santarakshita arrived from north India, he subdued the local Gyalpo spirits, which allowed the construction of the monastery to continue. Padmasambhava accomplished this through the practice of the Vajrakilaya dance and the rite of namkha to clear away obscurations and hindrances.
King Trisong Detsen aimed to revitalize Tibetan Buddhism, and as such held a debate between Moheyan and Kamalashila. He had suspected that Moheyan, also known as Hoshang, a Mahayana monk from the Chinese Chan tradition was not teaching the genuine Dharma. Therefore, he arranged a debate with Kamalashila, a scholar-pandit from India. Kamalashila travelled to Tibet from India in order to debate according to the Vajrayana teachings.
Kamalashila, born in 740 in India, is the main disciple of the great abbot “Śāntarakṣita” and became the 12th Abbot of Nalanda University. He was known for his meditation treaties, died in 795, Tibet.
The debate centered around the attainment enlightenment, also called ‘Bodhi’. It was either attained through activity, as proposed by Kamalashila or if it was attained spontaneously without activity, as proposed by Moheyan. Moheyan represented the Easy Mountain Teachings, also known as the ‘Northern School’ Chan(Zen)(Dhyana in Sanskrit) tradition of China.
The debate lasted for 2 years for 792-794 CE along with the ancient Hindu debating traditions. Can we not emulate them today, when narratives are built in the cesspools of ideologies and suberversion of people in their echo chmabers chasing after heroes and villians and not the truth?
Philosophical debates can be found here.The clinching argument was ““To be attached to a state of “no-thought” would never enable one to attain insight, whereas refuting virtuous practices would imply the rejection of the means, which is a necessary outcome of the compassion of Bodhisattvas. Because “insight” and “means” are the essential elements of Mahayana Buddhism, the absence of them will produce disastrous effect on the way towards becoming Buddha. This is why Kamalshila describes the teaching ascribed to Mo-ho-yen as poison and rebuts it, and it is seldom evaluated favorably by subsequent Tibetan scholars.”
Almost all Tibetan sources state that the King Trisong Detsen decided that Kamalashila was the winner of the debate, however many Chinese sources actually name Moheyan as the victor, understandably which has been falsified by Tibetan sources. Moheyan was asked to leave Tibet and his teachings were gathered and respectfully disposed of as it was decided only the teachings stemming directly from India would be taught and practiced in Tibet. The Great Council of Lhasa is an important event in Tibetan history and shaped the practice of Buddhism in Tibet up until today. From this point on Tibetan Buddhism took on the flavour of Indian Buddhism. As a result of this, Tibetan Buddhist practices, texts and commentaries draw their sources from and are entirely shaped by Indian Buddhism. It is due to the great Council of Lhasa that Buddhism in Tibet was established to follow the traditions and practices from the land of its source, India.
Thus, China cannot claim their control and authority over Tibet and other 4 of the 5 fingers of Mao (Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh) which it seeks to liberate, rather dismantle their Himalayan Hindu/Buddhist traditions.
For one thing, Tibetans urgently initiate the rise of a new face on the world stage under the mentoring of the Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is one such young, charismatic leader with a deep grounding in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and sharp intellect. Unfortunately, he remains largely confined in India.With the Dalai Lama aging, the Chinese know that time is on their side and are willing to wait it out. Without a new Tibetan leader of comparable charisma, they hope to accentuate internal clashes among rival Tibetan groups, offer carrots to some ambitious leaders, and use classic divide-and-conquer tactics to finish off the movement.
A tradition arose in Tibet to commemorate and retell the story of the Council of Lhasa and the subjugation of the Gyalpo Pehar. It is performed yearly to this date at the Kumbum monastery in Qinghai. It is considered a sort of meditation and also an offering to the gods. These Cham dances are also performed during the Monlam Prayer Festival in Tibet as well as in India, Sikkim, Dharamsala and Ladakh.
The Cham Dance originally developed to recount the story of Padmasambhava subduing Gyalpo Pehar and other native spirit beings.
The image, in the chapter on India in Hutchison’s Story of the Nations edited by James Meston, depicts the Muslim Turkic general Bakhtiyar Khalji‘s massacre of Buddhist monks in Bihar, India. Khaliji destroyed the Nalanda and Vikramshila universities during his raids across North Indian plains, massacring many Buddhist and Brahmin scholars
As Buddhism was wiped out from India by Islamic Invasions and Buddhism declined in China with the rise of communism,the bond between India and China rather subdued and complicated by India’s colonization by Britain and opium wars and other semi colonisers of China. Opium to China, was imported came from India which crushed the Chinese society and their economy subsided.As Shyam Saran noted in his book, “How India sees the world from Kautilya to 21st century”that China sees India as:
Land of Cosmic Chaos due to its varied diversity in contrast with Chinese Socities characterised by Order from Confucius to Mao and now Xi.
Land of great Knowledge and wisdom which not only angers them but also is the primary reason for their fears and insecurities.
Fa-Hien and Xuazang for some Chinese Buddhists who came to India to study Buddhism, followed by people from all over the world. Bodhidharma, the First Chinese Buddhist is known of taken Buddhism to the East(China,Korea and Japan) and also the patriach who pioneered Shaolin which were later adpated to Chinese Martial arts. India’s Raj-Mandala (seeking Indian and Indianesque world) through unity and diversity with her ancient philosophy directly collides with China’s idea of Middle Kingdom in heaven, the Tributary system and now as the revenge for 100 years of humiliation.
Dragons are devas, archetypal realities in their own right. They are the Active Powers of the Pancha Mahabhootas which is why we have earth dragon water dragon etc.They represent the chthonic deities of the world and the old gods before humans. India must ride the dragon in a way that it does not refuse, rather enjoys it. This means India must keep its vigil, be on guard and exercise tact. This can only happen once India personifies Chanakya and does not get dismayed by Sun Tzu too much. Germany has a university named after Kamalashila which shows how much the west knows about us then we ourselves. Now is the perfect time for us to revive our glorious and unparalled history and live up to its billing. India as the sole succesor and patron of the Vedic/Buddhist civilsations and leading the world as it once did. We have a sacred and a moral duty to free Tibet.
Traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it in East Asian culture.
The primary reason for writing this post is the recent bois locker room incident and Indian parliament passing the talaq-e-biddat bill. I will juxtapose these recent ratiocinations along with feminist movements across.
The post-modern application of feminism looks at male-female relationships from a Western point of view and almost always disregard and disrupt the pre-existing structures in third world society. This whole exercise is taken with the blatant disregard of the fact that modern feminism practised in the west has an Abrahamic background and misses the important cultural nuances due to deep belief that there is only one right form of gender relations i.e. turning women into men and even encouraging sexual promiscuity and premarital sex in the name of “liberation” which increases divorce rates and makes one more unhappy.
Since there is no equivalent female Goddess in Abrahamics and women as inferior to men, it is more than understandable why these women felt aggrieved and developed militant feminism. This also explains why they want to become men and out-compete them rather than form a mutually beneficial relationship. On the other hand, this is not the case with Hindu households or Hindu religion. For every household, both Shiva and Parvati serve as a source of inspiration on how to run the household. This belief is so deep that Nordic countries like Sweden are taking it to the extreme where they are erasing sex differences even in spoken and written language and evolving genderless pronouns.
The rise of post-modern feminism completely destroyed the black family system and blacks are nowhere close to the social standards that they enjoyed in the 70s.
The problem arises when each kid is sold the story of being a special snowflake where the whole world is supposed to rotate around them. Thus begins the story of entitlement syndrome which follows Gen X from childhood to youth. Unfortunately, the world bites the young boys hard and puncture their ego balloon once they grow up where they are supposed to perform or perish. On the other hand, their sisters turn out to be pretty lucky and their snowflake image only grows over time, which we will refer as Entitled Middle-class Princess (EMP) syndrome.
What makes middle-class girls special is that not only they are treated like a princess by their family members but are fed the constant victimhood narrative associated with being a girl in third world country like India. The only difference is that unlike their poor sisters they hardly face any hardships and live a life of luxury supported by their parents. The protected environment provided by the family ensures that most of their wishes are fulfilled without little to no effort. This point can be confirmed by the praise that most of these middle-class girls have for their father- especially on how they care for them. Also as mentioned above unlike men who still have to go and face the heat of the bad real world, middle-class girls get a free pass even in social life from school to college to work, where all efforts are made to assuage their ego and mistakes over-looked thanks to the political correctness regime and the gender card.
Stringent laws being enforced due to this, make divorces tougher for men even being linked to health issues and sinking to substance abuse for men. And today we see a society which is steeped in societal ills and is addicted to depression pills which is difficult to recover from. Feminism has given rise to reactionary movements like MGTOW, comprising of men who no longer wish to work for a society which treats them like second class citizens and demonizes them for being men and avoid women like a plague or PUA.
India needs to protect its women better and no woman should be made to go through the horrors of rape. But it is time for Indians to stop listening to the racism inspired rancour of the west and fall for the false media-generated hype to denounce the whole culture based on few incidents.
As Swami Vivekananda put it “First, it was the Assyrian race, coming of Semitic blood, which proclaimed the doctrine that girls have no voice, and no right, even when married. The Persians drank deep of this Babylonian idea, and by them, it was carried to Rome and to Greece, and everywhere woman degenerated. Another cause was instrumental in bringing this about — the change in the system of marriage. The earliest system was a matriarchal one; that is, one in which the mother was the centre, and in which the girls acceded to her station. This led to the curious system of polyandrous marriages. Things took the wrong turn when Buddhists put that Woman need to reborn to attain nirvana and every vice, was blamed on women (Gateway to hell or being less intelligent etc.).” Confucius declares women need constant protection. Ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle equated women to slaves.
Swami Vivekananda’s view on women “For us, women are ‘Sabatini [saha-dharmini],’ or co-religionists, as the Vedas call them. On every page, the Vedas preach personal purity. The most conspicuous example of it is to be found in the capture of Chito [Chitor] by the Mohammedans. In India the mother is the centre of the family and our highest ideal, She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the Universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in one of the first hymns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal, female.”
No wonder there is no word for divorce(Latin-Old French) and talaq(Arabic) in any Indian langauge.
Most of them had a tough life but hardly any time to reflect on or cry about gender inequality. This is true even for the current generation of poor farmers, where despite great efforts of foreign NGOs and domestic feminists, women hardly show any inclination to react to post-modern feminist concepts due to their lived experiences which are orthogonal to what the feminists want them to believe. The destiny of these men and women are tied together by their social and economic circumstances to such an extent that western feminist notions will hardly achieve anything for them.
Women cannot be understood unless we see her for what she fundamentally is: a spiritual force of God at work. And this enrichment of understanding is not possible until the society as a whole becomes aware of its own innate spiritual existence, and, in broader moments of intuitive illuminations, of the “Oneness of Existence.” Women certainly need more space, not only on the dead pages of laws and regulations but in the humane hearts of men too.
I’ll end with an excerpt of Sri Aurbindo’s poem on Savitri.
World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.
My will too is a law, my strength a god.
I am immortal in my mortality.
I tremble not before the immobile gaze
Of the unchanging marble hierarchies
That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.
My soul can meet them with its living fire.
Savitri wrestling back her husband from Yamraj-Dharamraj(Death God).By her Tapasya and yoga siddhi, she becomes great, mighty and invincible.
Ardhanareshwar(Shiv-Parvati[Shakti]), showing cosmic unity (Sushumna) of Male (Ida) and Female(Pingala)
India is probably the only nation-state, inheritor of the greatest civilization on Earth which has given birth to so many scholarly works in the field of learning and education in the 20th century let alone the start of time immemorial. Be it Sri Aurobindo,Tagore, Gandhi, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, J.Krishnamurthy et al; all of them have made invaluable contributions in the field of learning in sync with Indian ethos. It is a shame that India, with her contributions to the world in the field of Mathematics, Astronomy, Metallurgy etc. Still is the custodian of the imperial colonial British system which in the words of Macaulay was to produce “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”.
Some of the steps we should take to turn the tide in our favour are:
The medium basic education i.e up till primary or even secondary should only happen in the mother tongue. Students should learn 3 languages at the minimum, barring the politics around them: English(for global competitiveness), Mother Tongue (expression medium and social mobility) and Sanskrit (unifier of the masses due to its sheer application in modern-day computing and the scientific ness of its frequency).
Gandhi laid the foundation of education in mind, body and spirit with his primary focus on vocational training, which is an indispensable part of education anyway.
Tagore believed in education in natural surroundings clubbed with his ideals rooted in naturalism, internationalism and humanism. In the increasingly claustrophobic and shrinking global village, this is something to stand by
Acharya Vinoba believed education as seed thought and a cause for the spiritual awakening of man, by his control over the senses. This is his principle of self-reliance.
Swami Vivekananda said that the goal of education is to unlock the infinite potential in us which is the manifestation of Satchitananda(existence-consciousness-bliss) and should give us a purpose in life.
Sri Aurobindo’s integral education emphasized the need for synchronization of mind, body and spirit in pursuit of our true purpose in life.
India was undoubtedly the intellectual capital of the world. Our books fail to tell us that as they are suited for a particular agenda. Sanitization of history and coming to terms with it is I think an important part of this battle.
Education throughout the world has deracinated. Thousands of dollars are paid for massive open online courses (MOOCs) and skilled teachers.
Subjects need to cross-pollinate. The era of superhuman polymaths is bound to return as the future with the internet is uncertain.
Education should become cheap as brick and mortar universities redundant with time. We need to adapt to that quickly.
Community learning/peer reviews need to come into fashion again. Brainstorming is the mantra. Student evaluation will become an essential paradigm.
Online education must reinvent the learning process. Teachers must be practitioners.
Even during the height of exploitation, loot and plunder of the might British Empire we produced scientists like Srinivas Ramanujan, JC Bose, SC bose, CV Raman etc. and during medieval invasions, the USP of mathematics, astronomy, botany etc. shifted towards South of India when the Indians in North start falling like bricks with Kerela School of Mathematics and the golden chest of knowledge which Jesuit missionaries took with them to Europe and other places.
India(Bhaarat) was always the El Dorado to knowledge and Enlightenment. Time is ripe to reclaim the lost glory.
This was one my speech on climate change as PM of India.
India’s Challenge to Climate Change
Respected dignitaries, I, Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India will speak on India’s face-off with climate change.
Scientists say countries need to stop burning fossil fuels by 2050 at the latest to ensure global temperatures don’t rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century.
2019 was declared as the second warmest year ever by the European weather agency’s Copernicus climate change programme. Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had said 2019 was the seventh warmest year on record for India. With Australia witnessing perhaps the worst spate of forest fires in its history, attributable to global warming, 2020 has started with a series of grim news on the climate change front.
United Nations Secretary-General,António Guterres expressed his disapprobation at the stalemate in COP 25 climate talks in Madrid and rued the fact that ignoring climate change as potential catastrophe for the world would allow only the “survival of the richest”.The failure of the COP 25 talks underlined starkly the massive gap between what scientists say the world’s nations need to do on climate change, and what powerful political leaders are prepared to even discuss, let alone actually do.
The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that changing the amount of solar energy our planet receives.
Past warming does not automatically mean that today’s warming is therefore also natural. Ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US claims Global Warming is a major aspect of climate change and has been demonstrated by Humidity, Tropospheric temperature, Sea level rise, Sea surface temperature, Temperature over oceans, Ocean heat content Temperature over land which increase in a warming world and Glaciers, Snow cover, Sea ice which decrease in warming world. Human activities contribute to climate change by causing changes in Earth‟s atmosphere in the amounts of greenhouse gases, aerosols (small particles), and cloudiness.
IPCC current report talks about the contribution of land-related activities to global warming — how the different uses of land, like agriculture, industry, forestry, cattle-rearing, and urbanisation, was affecting emissions of greenhouse gases. An important part of the report talks about the manner in which even existential activities like food production contributes to global warming and is also affected by it.
Also, changes in ozone and climate are directly linked because ozone absorbs solar radiation and is also a greenhouse gas. Ozone depletion and global climate change are indirectly linked because of both ozone-depleting substances and their substitutes
are greenhouse gases.
We hold the dual distinction of being a victim as well as a contributor to climate change as the fourth largest carbon emitter, although with per capita emissions remain one of the lowest among emerging economies.
The first National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) was released in 2008, outlining eight-core national missions running through 2017. Four out of eight missions related to habitat, water, Himalayan ecosystems and agriculture have adaptation as a central focus, while the mission on “Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change” equally deals with mitigation. To put it into context, all the existing programmes and campaigns—Make in India, More crop per drop, Soil Health Card, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Programme, National Rural Health Mission, Right to Education—need to incorporate mechanisms such as setting up joint commissions or task forces for vulnerability assessment, planning and monitoring will go a long way in harmonising existing efforts on income generation, agriculture, water management etc.
To enable informed participation and women’s leadership in the decentralised and inclusive governance system, capacities of local communities and the authorities at the district and sub-district levels need to be the core tenet. Therefore, adequate finance and material must be made available for the implementation of local adaptation plans by village-level panchayats and urban local bodies.
The current missions lay focus on high-end technologies, whereas a knowledge-driven approach is required across the sectors to plan and build resilience on the ground. The tradition of indigenous knowledge and the local improvisation of appropriate technology, popularly known as jugaad across north India, will need to be recognised and coupled with modern sciences.
Successful examples of rainwater harvesting in the cities of Bengaluru, Chennai and the revival of mountain springs in Sikkim state must be replicated widely. Curbing the production of rice is one such process in that direction which will not only solve water/electricty shortages, but also pollution crisis of North India during winters along with the adoption and successful implementation of Carbon Capture and storage facilities with utmost efficiency. Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) issued to Indian projects is 235 million (12.6%) of the total 1869 million CERs issued under Clean Development Mechanism and 40% of India’s energy dependence on renewable sources by 2040 go a long way in solving the problem.
Oxfam estimated that the richest 10 per cent of people produce half of Earth’s fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contributes a mere 10 per cent. The same richest 10 per cent grab 52 per cent of the global income, leaving the poorest 50 per cent with a paltry 8 per cent. The 2018 IPCC report puts it firmly, “Equity is not a moral or academic nicety, but a practical necessity in meeting the Paris goals.” With that in our hearts and minds, India poses as a firm crusader in solving the herculean task of disasters and mishaps due to climate change.
This repetitive alliteration might remind you of the great Bharatiya poet Harivanshraya Bachchan and his poem by the name of Agneepath. If you have a good memory of middle school (if you didn’t spend time chasing girls or falling in love with half of your teachers) then the three battles of Panipat would be reminiscent.
I went on a recent road trip to Kasauli (not to be confused with casual), Himachal Pradesh. It is maybe one of the few destinations that make you see that Punjab during Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s time was present-day Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh in India, west Punjab of Pakistan and maybe Sindh and kyhber, parts of Tibet and Afganistan too.
Anyway, I made a point to make a stop at Panipat. Little did I know that this city for textiles and its huge factories still has some relishes of a well sad and unfortunate history for the people who currently reside there.
We had a time constraint so I will not quell about my anguish to not to visit all the places that it had. I was extremely agitated. I could only pay my homage to the Kale-aambattlefield memorial of Maharathas Vs Abdali in the 3rd battle of Panipat which has its own interesting story, reserved for some time later. In my eagerness and awe at the site, I forgot to click a photo of mine, not to mention I seldom do.
Well, my focus is on the 2nd battle of Panipat.
It is a story of about a small town boy from south-west of Delhi, present-day Rewari in Haryana coming from a family of grocers. Very little is know about his life, because well, he wasn’t probably belonging to the jati(caste) of a ruler, he ruled for a brief period and didn’t have treatises like Prithviraj Raso or Akbarnama, by courtiers like Chand Bardai or Abu-l Fazl in Braj Bhasha(A common dialect of Hindi) or Persian Langauge respectively. He was a Dhansar baniya.
Then why talk about him? Well, our colonized or else ideological historians have done well to hide his legacy. Why even know about him? Let him be just one of the countless Hindu kings missing from our textbooks.
A statue of Hemu at Panipat in modern Haryana
There comes the twist.
As a noted historian, RC Majumdar states, he is the shining example of a Hindu, born in a Muslim state who was capable and talented to gain effective control of large parts of North India ranging from Ghazni to Chittagong euphemistically without any advantage of birth and advantage. India had to wait for Shivaji till 1630.
We all know Sher Shah Suri an afghan Pathan born in Bihar chased away Humayun out of India by defeating him twice and controlled his empire and installed his vassals throughout India notably in Bengal, Punjab etc.. He is generally sated very tolerant of Hindus, although he demolishing Jain temples does come up but he is maybe more liberal than most and nearer to Akbar. Although their liberalism is subject to scrutiny. He was a military and a tactical genius, reorganised most of India paved the modern day Grand Trunk Road and Humayun refers him as ‘Ustad-e-badshah’, teacher of kings although being his arch rival.
When Babur had come to Delhi, in 1526 the Delhi Sultanate had shrunk to the areas described above. A lot of Hindu kings had revolted and had gained independence the most notable being the Vijayanagar empire controlling Deccan and whole of South India, even central India was separate.
Sher Shah Suri’s Empire
His son, Humayun had a troubled time itself at Delhi, eventually being chased out by 1540 after beating him twice. Sher Shah on his expansion mission died in a gunpowder explosion in Bundelkhand in 1545. His descendants were not as efficient as and able as him, except his son, Islam Shah Suri who had a taste for flattery else, an apt successor.
He was succeeded by his 12-year-old son, who was assassinated by his uncle Adil Shah Suri in 1554. And then, comes Hemu in the picture.
A few of his governors did a military upheaval as repercussions of the assassination of his nephew against him notably being Sikander Shah Suri of Lahore, Ibrahim Shah Suri in Agra and Bengal to Muhammad Shah Suri. Rest was left to Adil Shah. Hemu, under him, became the superintendent of the market and later a high military official, as he was active during the time of Islam Shah Suri.
Soon, he became the Prime Minister of Adil’s empire, his wazir and all the task of expansionism was delegated to him.
A Mexican Standoff, usually a 3-way fight. Scene from GTA 5
This infighting gave Humayun to re-establish himself, which he did offcourse he couldn’t do it till Sher Shah was alive. Although these three rebels, were consistently defeated by Humayun and his general Bairam Khan and my Hemu and they stayed put.
This all shows a three-way fight for the throne of Delhi, hence a Mexican standoff. Sikandar was defeated by Humayun who came back to Delhi then. Hemu defeated Ibrahim at least thrice despite his deceitful and complicit ways, and when muhammad shah decided to fight against Adil, once again Hemu came to his rescue and defeated Muhammad. He also defeated other afghan rebels Khurrani and Nuhani in a victory spree of at least 22 battles, as even enemy historians Abu-l Fazl and Badauni note.
He was attacked while retreating after hammering Ibrahim, in the night as well but forced him in and out of Gwalior and Kalpi from Agra.
Gwalior Fort, the base for many of Hemu’s campaigns.
Agra Fort, captured by Hemu before the Battle of Tughlaqabad(Delhi)
Here back in Bengal he completely exhumed the other fringe rebels. Hardly, any of this happened under Humayun’s watch. He had died too by now by falling from the stairs, anyway and Akbar ascended the throne, Bairam Khan being the chief and his guardian as Akbar was just 13.
Now he had to confront the Mughals, knowing Adil’s inability to fight to assist him he marched in one of the most ambitious campaigns in Indian history. From Bengal ran rampant on the Mughal forces absolutely annihilating them through Bayana, Etawah, Sambhal, Kalpi, and Narnaul. In Agra, the Mughal governor didn’t even put a fight to him.
Now, came the battle of Delhi in 1556(Tughlaqabad) against Tardi Beg Khan, one of the governors of Akbar as they rested in Jalandhar fearing an onslaught. Also, Sikander was still a threat. Fearing Hemu, Bairam Khan sent another general Pir Muhammad Sharwani to assist him.
Jadunath Sarkar describes the battle as thus,
The choice Turki cavalry in the van and left wing attacked and drove back the enemy forces before them, and followed far in pursuit. In this assault the victors captured 400 elephants and slew 3,000 men of the Afghan army. Imagining victory already gained, many of Tardi Beg’s followers dispersed to plunder the enemy camp, and he was left in the field very thinly guarded. All this time Himu had been holding 300 choice elephants and a force of select horsemen as a reserve in the centre. He promptly seized the opportunity and made a sudden charge upon Tardi Beg with this reserve. At the impetuous advance of the huge beasts and the dense cavalry behind them, many of the Mughal officers fled away in terror without waiting to offer a defence. At last Tardi Beg himself took the same course.
What we call the adrenaline rush, 100 times or even a million times for a general like that instilled him and at the Purana Qila in Delhi, he declared him as “Vikramaditya” as most ancient Hindu kings did. Now, historians differ from his claim of being independent of Adil Shah and some say that he still continued to humour Adil Shah. It must also have been his connivance to Afghans, whom he had thrashed left right and centre and the Mughals off course and distributed the spoils evenly.
Coins Issued by Hemu
Satish Chandra and Abu-l Fazl have to differ from this view of course. I grouped their flawed views together. But, he WAS “Vikramaditya”, Sultan of Al-Hind, King of the lands from Kabul to Chittagong whatever you want to call him. he even started issuing coins in his name.
The portrayal of Hemu Vikramaditya
He ascended the throne on October 7, 1556, but this was short lived.
On hearing the disastrous news from Tughlaqabad, Akbar immediately set off for Delhi. Ali Quli Khan Shaibani who had been sent ahead with 10,000-strong cavalry force chanced upon Hemu’s artillery which was being transported under a weak guard. He was easily able to capture the entire train of artillery. This would prove to be a costly loss for Hemu.On 5 November 1556, the Mughal army met Hemu’s army at the historic battlefield of Panipat.
It was a desperately contested battle but the advantage tilted in favour of Hemu. Both the wings of the Mughal army had been driven back and Hemu moved his contingent of war elephants and cavalry forward to crush their centre. Hemu was on the cusp of victory when he was wounded in the eye by a Mughal arrow and collapsed unconscious. This triggered a panic in his army which broke formation and fled.
The battle was lost. The elephant carrying the wounded Hemu was captured and led to the Mughal camp. Bairam Khan asked the 13-year-old Akbar to behead Hemu, but Wikipedia says he refused. But, RC Majumdar notes that indeed Akbar had to be given the title of Ghazi by killing an infidel and yes he beheaded a weaponless man, who still did not give up and looked courageously in the eyes of his demise but did not flinch.
The defeat of Hemu, a 1590s painting by Kankar from the Akbarnama. Neither Hemu nor Akbar is depicted here suggesting that this might be part of a double-page composition
But the tragedy does not end here. Hemu’s head was sent to Kabul while his body was gibbeted on a gate in Delhi. A minaret was subsequently constructed of the heads of the other dead, as usual. His father was caught and was asked to convert to Islam, but refused and was killed. His wife, I suppose did manage to escape.
Mughal empire was here to stay. Rebel afgans were all slain.
This came to an unfortunate end, a dream of a place being re-establishing of Sanskritic/Sanatan Dharma Sanskriti (culture) a placed being oppressed and subjugated by Muslim rule for centuries. Apparently, this soil never stopped producing lion hearted valourous noblemen. India had to wait for at least 150 years to get back the majority of its territories, although as far as I recall we have been defending our land, one wonders what’s so special about us or the country we belong to.
This story puts tears in my eyes. Just like the Raja Dahir, no one really knows about this. Our historians should have been writing fiction seriously. America teaches us slavery, Germany about the Holocaust so as is never repeated again. But, we don’t because of some people STILL dreaming about a communist revolution or a mass Islamization campaign as it happened with the Hindus of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Folks know about Bappa Rawal, Lachit Borphukan, Rajaja Chola, Krishna Deva Raya, Marathas not through distorted garbage but as the cult heroes. But not about the Vikramaditya of whole of North India. Yes, Kabul and Chittagong are BHARAT. We had to wait for Marathas and Sikhs mainly to see another sabotaging experience.
This also proves again, the Varna is not fixed by jati or caste, but by karma or deeds.
I am not here to do some fiction, fantasy or wishful thinking about what could it have been? . But, I can’t fathom the legacy of Hemu to be forgotten by his countrymen. This is saddening and depressing. I promise, someday we will resuscitate your memory. Apologies for gross indecency by some Indians. You were my King, just like Prithviraj. I bow down to thee.
Apparently, a Muslim MLA allowed encroachment, and we have a dargah where he was killed my Akbar. Shameful and disgraceful! As my favourite historian, TrueIndology claims.
With that, I plan a FULL day roam about the streets Panipat. I hope I don’t become overwhelmed and weep incessantly, just like the last time.
You inspire and galvanize us!
Doesn’t this story, the history of us deserve to eclispe the politicization of social studies of the subaltern? Shouldn’t the life of the son of a grocer, from a non warrior class claiming the long lost empire of his forefathers after almost 300 years of abject misrule, abhoringingly shoved down the throats and the hearts and minds of a civilization at the forefront of science, technology, mathematics,astronomy,economy,polity,botany etc be sung, danced and written on the walls?
It is by the effort of first Sher Shah Suri and then Hemu(who beat mughals and Suris both)that Akbar gota a handsmaid tail empire laid out to him.
I don’t know how to end, or how could I do justice to all your efforts for us, your descendants.
Perhaps, leave it as is?
Hemu’s supporters erected a memorial for him at Panipat now known as Hemu’s Samadhi Sthal.(pic above)
Let us evaluate things in a very liberal neutral sense which is indispensable and truly certified wherewithal of the dissertation. Neutrality and liberalism are complementary to each other. They go hand in hand.
“Nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”
Samuel Johnson
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”
Oscar Wilde
“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons”
Bertrand Russell
“Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism”
George Orwell
“India is no more a political personality than Europe. India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator”
‘Sir’ Winston Churchill
I do not claim this to be the ultimate compilation of all the eminent personalities that have enlightened us about their conception of nationhood, nation states and identities and in one case with special focus on India.
This can never be a comprehensive list on the topic of territorial expansionism as evident from the above retorts on the idea of a sovereign state, empire, kingdom, superpower etc.
This disgust and condemnation for all these ideas might stem for various methods of bloodshed that human’kind’ invented in order to suit their own malicious ambitions. If we analyze this closely, we will see that modern-day Africa, America or even Europe has not even a remote similarity with the present day boundaries. So, yes this is a modern construct. Before, the advent of the Hebrewic religions, regional culture formed the norm in most parts of the world. But, as the semities from their theological presuppositions, started to conquer the world due to their compulsion to homogenise based on their debatable concept about God, we started to see the most of countries as they are.
Saxons have not even reached UK now which we call as Anglo Saxon
Europe was busy in fighting with many of kingdoms emerging later. The regional tribes were going at each other hammer and tongs for supremacy.
Later with the rise of Christianity and Islam we get a hunch of what modern-day Europe looks like.
The ancient Greeks, the cradle of European civilization got digested by the Spartans, Romans and then later by Christianity. The Arabs with their conquest of Northern Africa, Turkey, Mongolia and central Asia gave rise to the modern nation-states after defeating the Byzantine empire, Sassanids and even fighting with the Christians in Europe.
With the crusades defeating the caliphate after years of war, Europe was “taken over” by them. Crusades was a series of religious war commissioned by the church to recover ‘holy lands’ and can be used by other church sanctions, similarly the sanctions of the caliphate and their concept of jihad.
The Ottoman Empire (1300-1922) ruled a vast territory that included much of the Balkans, Anatolia, the central Middle East to the borders of Iran, and most of North Africa. It was a multiethnic, multi-religious state ruled through an extensive administration under laws derived from Islam and by the sultan dictates. The Ottoman Empire was a world power and a significant player in European politics. By the turn of the 18th century, Ottoman power was beginning to weaken. In 1683, the Ottomans had staged an ultimately unsuccessful siege of Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Less than 100 years later, in 1774, for the first time in their long history, the Ottomans were forced to give up significant Muslim territory to an opponent, Russia, in the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca.
This didn’t happen in new lands taken from the ‘heathens’ in Asia particularly in India, due to a constant struggle from the rulers in Indian State. But what was the Indian State?
While the caliphate focussed on new lands snatched from the indigenous cultures in central Asia, subcontinent and south-east Asia, the infighting among Europe over territories resulted in the thirty years’ war. This concluded with the treaty of Westphalia(1848). It pitted Protestant against Catholic, the Holy Roman Empire against France, the German princes and princelings against the emperor and each other, and France against the Habsburgs of Spain. The Swedes, the Danes, the Poles, the Russians, the Dutch and the Swiss were all dragged in or dived in. Commercial interests and rivalries played a part, as did religion and power politics. Modern day Europe appeared as it is today and the prospect of a Roman Catholic reconquest of Europe vanished forever. Protestantism was in the world to stay.
This was preceded by the Treaty of Tordesillas, (June 7, 1494), an agreement between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and other late 15th-century voyages. The other side of the world was divided a few decades later by theTreaty of Zaragoza, signed on 22 April 1529, which specified the anti-meridian to the line of demarcation specified in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Under this, the ‘doctrine of discovery’ and the ‘white man’s burden to civilize indigenous cultures’ sprung about from ecclesiastical scriptures. The Spanish, Portuguese were joined by the Dutch, Belgians, German, French and of course, are very own British. Within a matter of time, the Americas and Africa were colonized. With a series of revolutionary wars, the Americas and Africa fought for independence. But there was a big problem.
That is why Brazil speaks Portuguese and the rest of South America and Mexico Spanish.
Illustrates why Europe is facing an immigration problem.
Here, the concept of ‘nation states’ comes in. In the case of Africa, The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period and coincided with Germany’s sudden emergence as an imperial power. Its outcome, was the formalization of the as the occupation, division, and colonization of African territory by Western European powers during the period of the New Imperialism, between 1881 and 1914.
A nation-state is a sovereign state of which most of its subjects are united also by factors which defined a nation such as a language or common descent. This created a big problem in Africa, as common ethnic cultures and languages were destroyed by colonial forces. Thus, the Berlin conference formed the new nation-states on the basis of European Colonies and it did not involve any single representative from Africa. Similarly, as regional groups started taking independence via force from the colonizers, new nation-states were formed on European parameters as their local cultures were destroyed. Americas was comparatively less painful as the local cultures and their people were totally annihilated in upper parts of North America(Canada, USA). Similarly, like the South American countries, 5 central Asian countries like Tajikistan, etc. disintegrated from USSR. The Ottoman Empire divided under the Paris Peace Treaty of 1919 after the end of world war 1, but in spite of inner struggles, still, aspire for solidarity.
This is not a Eulogy on the great civilizations like Incas of Peru, Native American (red Indians of present-day US,as Colombus wanted to find India), Bisons of Canada, Maoris of New Zealand,Aboriginals of Australia, Tengris of Turkey and Mongolia, Zorastrian-Buddhists of Iran, Hindus of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jews of Europe etc.. <disclaimer: these nations signify the modern locations, as these countries did not exist in olden times> and how brutishly and Barbically destroyed and good attributes were digested by our fellow Abrahamics or Europeans/Arab-Turks.
Or how did the only pagan civilization like the Hindus of India did JUST manage to survive but still face an existential threat? These are topics for another post.
But this does explain the current geopolitics of our world, recent mass genocides in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Syria, Israel etc. and forceful occupations of Offence(not defense) industries of powers like USA and Russia. How these leftovers of colonial sins resulting in the fighting of ethical/racial belief systems related cultures who have lost their roots and in no way find peace?
Enter Bharat.
As Sadhguru explains that our ancient Puranas and Itihasas clearly state as I paraphrase that one of the great kings of our past was Bharata. People say the country is named after him, but actually, he was named after the country. King Bharata had nine sons, but when the time to hand over the empire came, he gave it to Bhumanyu, who was the son of the sage Bharadwaj. (benchmark of Democracy and personal sacrifice).
Bharat Mata in the eyes of Abaindranath Tagore
Bharat comes from bha – ra – ta. Bhava means sensation. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is different types of sensations. Ra means raga or the tune. The tune is not yours – existence has already set it. Now you have to find the rhythm, which is the tala.
Rajiv Malhotra states that our own left wing-right wing business is fixated in that corollary of the west which is incorrect and does not suit us. He explains that we have the Rajya, which is the government and their officials. Then we have Rashtra, the people who make the nation. The Rashtra makes the Rajya, it is not top to bottom like the west and middle east did throughout their history.
8th century AD
The above are examples from Bharat’s past about their philosophical, cultural and traditional unity, not just geographical as the mass murderer Nobel laureate Churchill claims who wanted to fight the Germans with the last Indian and killed 2.5 million in Bengal famine in 1943, whose effects still reverberate us today.
Our liberals try to fix same eurocentric models over our Rashtra. This not only gave rise to the term they love ie Populist Majoritarianism but also fear monger with their identity politics which is facing a global collapse with the rise of Erdogan, Ader, Trump, Putin, Modi, Xi etc. clearly, these same size fit all model is down to shreds(which their fellow white men try to instill in them, still due to their inferiority complex or big money or even blood money).
Clearly, Rajyas like China(clearly tracing its root now), Japan and Korea and even Southeast Asia with ASEAN are progressing and advancing in all fields without the free, fair, let live model of our liberals. The don’t try to homogenize their Rashtra with these debunked and inherently faulty theories of the subalterns.
When the admirers of the ‘Delhi Sultanate’ or the ‘British Raj’ claim that India was never a nation, and question Bharat’s philosophical unity it is not only a direct assault of the sacrifices of the personalities which have no epithets in the colonial dictionary to dedicate them with of a Rashtra which never invaded any country, respected all beliefs, lead the way with their knowledge of Astronomy,cosmology,mathematics, philosophy, Literature, Dance, Music, Arts , Sculpting and Painting etc. but also ignorance which destroyed their libraries, temples and encouraged infighting dividing people on the basis of religiosity, languages, communities, gender etc, which was a never a part of Indian ethos. Plenty of further rebuttals are enlisted in the book Indra’s Net by Rajiv Malhotra and his collaborators like Sankrant Sanu and even in the pulse of the nation.
We probably didn’t have a Rajya, but clearly, the Identity was there probably the reasons we lived on the relentless and still continuing onslaught. But till when can we survive this?
Verse 1 states, there is a land having the Himalayas in the North and an Ocean in the South, the name is Bharat.
Verse 2 outlines, that we are all Bharat’s sons and daughters and must protect her sanctity.
We are not unlucky as the other extinct civilizations were, we should get rid of all this nonsense which hands over the remote control to immoral and unethical people of foreign lands and our own people who have collaborated with them, but revive our own systems for not only saving ourselves but the world.
We have lost land, we have lost lots of people. But we must rise above fear and sabotage anyone who threatens us.
May we stand in front, keep waking in our nation
– Yajurveda – 9.23
Earth is my mother and I am the son of her.
– Atharvaveda – 12.1.12
For all those who think, Bharat Mata is a modern construct or even communal. योनोद्वेषत्पृथिवीयःपृतन्याद्योऽभिदासान्मनसायोवधेन । तंनोभूमेरन्धयपूर्वकृत्वरि ॥१४॥ 14.1-14.2 Bhumi Sukta, Atharveda He who hates us, O Earth, he who attacks us or mentally considers us as Enemies, or he who strikes us, Him, O Mother Earth, subdue, as You have done since earliest times.
To further reiterate, the kinship of the “Nation states” can never ever, even in their dizziest daydreams or a prudish sense of conquering the world in the name of God or some kind of twisted ideologies that they might want to invent; I think it is very burdensome and intellectually challenging for these social convenors and terror sympathizers to actually see the all-pervasive and pervading sense in the sacred(and not holy) scriptures of this ‘entity’ that the concept of Rashtra is embedded in their Chitti. The very notion that there is clear direction about the location of the region and why is it worth worshipping. It might seem hogwash for these dignitaries of imminence that the Conviction of Rashtra is perspicuously manifested in their dangling dances, surreal songs, phenomenal paintings, extravagant dramas, classic literature and the list is incessant and unrelenting.
Now to the topic, the ‘last lesson’: As Dr. Koenraad Elst illustrates
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata “dispenser of India’s destiny”, while not it’s past or present ruler, unambiguously signifies the divine Guide, the eternal Guru, Krishna.
The Jana-Gana-Mana
India’s anthem is not rule-oriented like Heil dir im Siegerkranz(Germany). It is not ruler-and God-oriented, like the Wilhelmus(Dutch), God save the Queen(UK), or Gott erhalte unsern Kaiser(Austrian). It is not secularly nation-and-state-oriented, like the Marseillaise(French), the Star-spangled Banner(USA), the Brabançonne or Das Lied der Deutschen(Belge). It is emphatically nation-and-God-oriented, God in this case probably being identifiable as Krishna, or more abstractly, the idea of the Divine involving Itself in this world whenever Dharma requires it.
The song does not commit itself to a specific political system, such as monarchy, by glorifying the ruler. It merely expresses love for the nation through all its variegated landscapes and experiences – plus a veneration for the divine Guru. Usually, only the first stanza is publicly sung. But if you read on or sing on to the third stanza, it all becomes clear enough. The iconography of Vishnu and Krishna (chariot, conch, the expression yuge yuge, “age after age”) is exuberantly sung there, and the singers describe themselves as yatri, “pilgrims”. This was clarified by Tagore to the British Officials in a letter in 1937.
According to Rabindranath Tagore, and according to all Indian citizens who intone or honor his anthem, India is not complete without a heaven-oriented, sacred dimension much to the dismay of foreign media and very own sold out sepoys.
Which validates the divine presence in every being whether living or non-living in the Semitic sense, one of the core foundations of Dharma.
India galvanises herself for the prime ministerial elections once again post-independence.
Politics as a subject of discussion has always fascinated me. It is, In my view the most important matter for intellectual warfare for any individual.
But there is nothing scientific about it, or is it?
We have to deal with political science as a subject if we delve into the nitty-gritty of the subject.
Art is expression, aesthetics, creativity personified. Science is verified, tried and tested rational observations. So, politics might not come under the arts per se. The ancient Greeks, like Plato, espoused for a system of government where kings are nurtured in such a manner that they blossom to become philosophers or philosophers themselves become kings. Even in India, Chanakya is regarded as the custodian of the Mauryan empire perhaps the grandeur of which might not be paralleled by any authentic source since humans became timekeepers. (and supposedly thought world never existed before them.
But as the present day and age have evolved the politiks have evolved to be more artistic. Democracy has to be the protector and preserver of such a school of thought.
But the policy of replacing a dynasty with a leader elected by the people themselves as ‘one of us’ has some challenges. One is the that even democratically, dynasts have the fame and the name to be elected. This generally happens.
Also, in order to be selected the leaders often come up with tips and tricks to disintegrate people for their personal gains. They might resort to fake atrocity literature, distorted facts, half-truths to dissuade people from real issues in public discourse and to seek after doling out remuneration (not from their pockets).
The matters of the 21st century must be overpopulation, climate change, tackling AI/ML etc. For a sustainable future (and not just a conference in Davos or the Alps and another tomfoolery which we have done in the past).
These are some commonplace insights. Other things we might notice that in order to proclaim their belief systems, the representatives’ political parties may / may not support their own party.
As is the example, of the referendum (s) during Brexit where people from their own labour party opposed the PM Theresa May. Sadly, this is not the case in India. The feudal system with which the Europeans have left us is ingrained in the psyche of all of us.
Also, the rule of the majority is no proof of what they want or know is beneficial for them. With the propagation of fake news and other social media, vulnerabilities have had grave consequences in countries like the US, so India is no different here.
Muscle power and Money and celebrity fame are often used as an effective tool to win elections. Democracy is: fools have the right to vote and right to rule. But this story is not about the pros and cons of Democracy.
This is what you want it to be.
2014, was a historic moment for Indian politicians, not because one party got more than 50% majority after almost 30 years(in wake of the assassination of a top leader), but for the first time India had a leader that was ‘pan India’(Bharatiya) and from the roots of the country which he was about to govern after maybe Prithviraj Chauhan and other small kingdoms in India.(which have little mention in textbooks)
After him, there was the rule of invaders, the pan Indians were busy fighting them or being oppressed by them. Then the famous colonizers broke the very backbone of this civilization.(whether the bone is mended or not is another topic)
But yes, it was a happy ending or not we got independence(But Swaraj or not, is yet another topic). We had to pay a price for it, in many forms too, it still haunts us, but okay we are sovereign.
After independence, the leadership was replaced by some Brits with Bharatiya names having little to no connection with the very essence with it managed to preserve itself(after the losses of innumerable lives, knowledge systems, land, architecture, manuscripts, and what not again separate topic) after havoc from the 7th century. (after the conquest of Sindh)
Some Bhartiyas came about, but the situation at that time was very nascent and motherly affection was needed more than the determined march past the post in the race to be a global leader.
But the irrevocable damage in the morals of the society was already prevalent and perceivable too.
Then came about the rise of the political party which is ruling party now. Then again, if you have wanted to change, you have to work for it.
But people make mistakes, but there were no second chances then.
After the coalition fiascos in the 90s kids decade, it was a stable government, which lasted 5 years but never got the complete majority.
So, coalition politics also lead to the coalition of benefits to parties, and their ulterior motives.
2012 saw an upsurge in the suppressed voice of the Bharatiyas which is not subjected to the cushions of articles in national and international dailies, economic policies in their big busty multiplex offices, journalistic newsrooms (who claim to represent the country, often ignorant, apathetic and alienated of the very people they claim to represent or cater to). This is accepted to not to be the case with politicians as they come from the people, but well this not a la la land.
2014-2019 is a special period. The quality of work, the ethics of practices, allegations of corruption, alleviation from distress, investments in capital and technology, the feasibility of international trade, the making of swadeshi products and people, foreign policies is the matters of interest for morons who quib and scrabble amount minutest of things.
Although intense endeavours are necessary for being politically aware if not politically educated.
We must think of what we want and what the nation wants. Our one vote in the national interest and personal right will surely have results for a better and progressive nation-state. Because we not only elect our leader but also for the country as a whole. Our own shortcomings have cost us some prime ministers that India would have had(should/or shouldn’t is then again subjected to the Cacophonies of quarrels over half-truths, namesake claims and presumptions of our own people who haven’t yet developed mental faculties of a higher order)
Every society deserves the politics that it chooses to govern itself.
{This is a tribute to some prime ministers India never had:
“Netaji” Subhash Chandra Bose, Unified Bengal(now parts in Bangladesh)
“Sardar” Vallabhbhai Patel, Gujarat
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan “Badshah Khan” “Frontier Gandhi”, North West Frontier Province(now part of Na-Pakistan)
K.Kamaraj, Tamil Nadu
Jai Prakash Narayan, Bihar
Lal Krishna Advani, Sindh(now part of Na-Pakistan)
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