Post 4:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Islamaniacs<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Nice one. Mind if I use that once in a while? If you want, I'll credit you for it.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Hindu trait is not finishing the fight.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->You'll find that that trait is common to all people not used to the concept of 'total war'. The pluralistic Romans, despite knowing the intolerant nature of Christianity, did not eradicate it. It then eradicated their way of life. The deconverted Arabians didn't finish off the muslims even after they won the battle in the 'Apostasy War'. The muslims laboured under no such hesitation.
That is the ultimate problem of good which causes its own downfall: it imagines that complete destruction is always wrong, even the complete destruction of evil. Unlike good, evil has no compunctions about complete destruction and when it's not destroyed, it comes back and finishes off all good. Hence, this is what Christianity did to Rome and Islam did to Arabia. Evil utterly won, because when good was in power, it tried to merely keep evil at bay and not nip it in the bud entirely.
That is why the Right thing (what one ought to do) is to destroy evil when one has the opportunity, else it will destroy everything.
And this is also the lesson in the dilemma central to the MahaBharatam. As my grandmother explained it to us: Arjuna (good) doesn't want to kill his cousins and Bhishma etc who are fighting on the side of evil. But his cousins aren't going to come around and Bhisma, having chosen a side, won't budge. If the bad guys win, which they will if the Pandavas neglect their duty (Arjuna throws down his weapons and would rather be killed than fight the other side), then the Kauravas' adharma will rule Bharat hereafter and plunge the entire nation into adharma with subsequent rulers becoming more and more adharmic. Therefore, Krishna tells Arjuna to do the Right thing (even though this means having to fight his family and those he respects): which is to fight those who will give rise to great adharma if they win.
But enough philosophising for today. If the Romans and the Arabians had had the Gita, they'd not have neglected their duty as we have been doing these days.
I suspect it is the fact that we have been oppressed and terrorised for so long (tyrannical Islamic rule, the terror of European Christian imperialism and the horrible British colonial rule following that), that we cannot imagine a life without oppression anymore and think we need to accept it as a permanent part of life. With such a beaten attitude, we cannot expect to take any action.
Another major problem we face is the battle for Hindu minds. For a long time, others - like the British missionaries and Macaulays, the present day Churches with their schools, the communist education and now the more crude Islamic dawaganda - have all contributed to making the Hindu internalise the notion that his religion is not worth protecting, even thinking it is not a force of good, that his way of life is not worth preserving and that in the end it doesn't matter anyway because 'all religions are one'. No they are not. Whether all non-ChristoIslamic religions are one or not, Christianity and Islam (and their unwanted cousin, communism) are utterly different: these two strive for and demand the destruction of all other ways of life. That might not be so bad if the religions themselves didn't lead to a spiritual cesspool. But, far from them being spiritually uplifting, they lead to complete darkness of mind (besides, Christianity has a fetish with abuse and Islam with terrorism; and sometimes also the other way around). We want evolution of spirit, not devolution.
To solve these two problems (defeatist attitude, internalising the propaganda), will require effort in the opposite direction.
- First, the fatalism has to go. In spite of the misery and denigration of historic oppression, India came through. Hinduism came through. And where is the shame?
We're the only country that has survived an immensely large wave of Islamic marauders and retook our nation (Spain didn't suffer invasions of the same magnitude). Compare that to nations that faced the fell to the Jihad: Arabia destroyed by Islam, Persia destroyed by Islam, Byzantium destroyed by Islam with its region in Anatolia amputated, Parthia (now Iraq) fallen to Islam with its Iranian population chased out or murdered and replaced by Islamists from Arabia, non-Arabian Egypt which was last doing the rounds as a Greek outpost fallen to Islam with Arabians occupying it. And many others. On the other hand, India was only taken after many repeated violent attempts. But eventually Hindus got it back. India survived, though it was amputated (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh now being Muslim areas) and Hinduism lives on.
Then came the Portuguese. They came, they tortured, they destroyed temples, they converted. But they were sent packing eventually.
Our nation killed colonialism and this paved the path for others. It was India that was Britain's jewel in the crown. India, that pumped Britain with its wealth. India made Britain an Empire and without India, there was no Empire. And when India left Britain's control, the latter's little bid for world domination crumbled to dust. In time other oppressed people took inspiration from India which had beaten the giant and had escaped from the long colonial stranglehold. In spite of the crushing poverty, we are making efforts to come out of it. If we succeed, we will be the rolemodel for numerous previously colonised countries stuck under that peculiar 'third-world country' label.
We made it out where none others succeeded and were not defeated. But it is now that we should not fail.
- The disinformation (propaganda, skewed local newsreports) has to be fought with dissemination of factual, verifiable information. And it has to start soon.
Consider that when I was in Chennai recently, the communist TheHindu paper was referring children to Wackipedia in an article on weather. That's their game. They want to introduce children to that site and get the next generation to start seeing it as a source of information.
We have little control over the government at present, so we have to find other ways of disseminating information. To make Hindus active and unite, requires us to speak to the one thing that does unite us: our common religio-cultural root. And to do that we have to return knowledge of what Hinduism is to them, along with the facts of history. They have to know the loss of freedom that will accompany the loss of Hinduism. They have to know its value before they contemplate letting go of it. Unless they value what it is they have, they will not want to fight for its survival or their freedom to practise it.
The damage that propaganda, communism and missionary education has done is to weaken the Hindu mind so that it is unwilling to think of defense.
By the way, this 'dissemination of factual information' should be another aspect of the many things we need to do to solve our problem.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Hindu trait is not finishing the fight.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->You'll find that that trait is common to all people not used to the concept of 'total war'. The pluralistic Romans, despite knowing the intolerant nature of Christianity, did not eradicate it. It then eradicated their way of life. The deconverted Arabians didn't finish off the muslims even after they won the battle in the 'Apostasy War'. The muslims laboured under no such hesitation.
That is the ultimate problem of good which causes its own downfall: it imagines that complete destruction is always wrong, even the complete destruction of evil. Unlike good, evil has no compunctions about complete destruction and when it's not destroyed, it comes back and finishes off all good. Hence, this is what Christianity did to Rome and Islam did to Arabia. Evil utterly won, because when good was in power, it tried to merely keep evil at bay and not nip it in the bud entirely.
That is why the Right thing (what one ought to do) is to destroy evil when one has the opportunity, else it will destroy everything.
And this is also the lesson in the dilemma central to the MahaBharatam. As my grandmother explained it to us: Arjuna (good) doesn't want to kill his cousins and Bhishma etc who are fighting on the side of evil. But his cousins aren't going to come around and Bhisma, having chosen a side, won't budge. If the bad guys win, which they will if the Pandavas neglect their duty (Arjuna throws down his weapons and would rather be killed than fight the other side), then the Kauravas' adharma will rule Bharat hereafter and plunge the entire nation into adharma with subsequent rulers becoming more and more adharmic. Therefore, Krishna tells Arjuna to do the Right thing (even though this means having to fight his family and those he respects): which is to fight those who will give rise to great adharma if they win.
But enough philosophising for today. If the Romans and the Arabians had had the Gita, they'd not have neglected their duty as we have been doing these days.
I suspect it is the fact that we have been oppressed and terrorised for so long (tyrannical Islamic rule, the terror of European Christian imperialism and the horrible British colonial rule following that), that we cannot imagine a life without oppression anymore and think we need to accept it as a permanent part of life. With such a beaten attitude, we cannot expect to take any action.
Another major problem we face is the battle for Hindu minds. For a long time, others - like the British missionaries and Macaulays, the present day Churches with their schools, the communist education and now the more crude Islamic dawaganda - have all contributed to making the Hindu internalise the notion that his religion is not worth protecting, even thinking it is not a force of good, that his way of life is not worth preserving and that in the end it doesn't matter anyway because 'all religions are one'. No they are not. Whether all non-ChristoIslamic religions are one or not, Christianity and Islam (and their unwanted cousin, communism) are utterly different: these two strive for and demand the destruction of all other ways of life. That might not be so bad if the religions themselves didn't lead to a spiritual cesspool. But, far from them being spiritually uplifting, they lead to complete darkness of mind (besides, Christianity has a fetish with abuse and Islam with terrorism; and sometimes also the other way around). We want evolution of spirit, not devolution.
To solve these two problems (defeatist attitude, internalising the propaganda), will require effort in the opposite direction.
- First, the fatalism has to go. In spite of the misery and denigration of historic oppression, India came through. Hinduism came through. And where is the shame?
We're the only country that has survived an immensely large wave of Islamic marauders and retook our nation (Spain didn't suffer invasions of the same magnitude). Compare that to nations that faced the fell to the Jihad: Arabia destroyed by Islam, Persia destroyed by Islam, Byzantium destroyed by Islam with its region in Anatolia amputated, Parthia (now Iraq) fallen to Islam with its Iranian population chased out or murdered and replaced by Islamists from Arabia, non-Arabian Egypt which was last doing the rounds as a Greek outpost fallen to Islam with Arabians occupying it. And many others. On the other hand, India was only taken after many repeated violent attempts. But eventually Hindus got it back. India survived, though it was amputated (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh now being Muslim areas) and Hinduism lives on.
Then came the Portuguese. They came, they tortured, they destroyed temples, they converted. But they were sent packing eventually.
Our nation killed colonialism and this paved the path for others. It was India that was Britain's jewel in the crown. India, that pumped Britain with its wealth. India made Britain an Empire and without India, there was no Empire. And when India left Britain's control, the latter's little bid for world domination crumbled to dust. In time other oppressed people took inspiration from India which had beaten the giant and had escaped from the long colonial stranglehold. In spite of the crushing poverty, we are making efforts to come out of it. If we succeed, we will be the rolemodel for numerous previously colonised countries stuck under that peculiar 'third-world country' label.
We made it out where none others succeeded and were not defeated. But it is now that we should not fail.
- The disinformation (propaganda, skewed local newsreports) has to be fought with dissemination of factual, verifiable information. And it has to start soon.
Consider that when I was in Chennai recently, the communist TheHindu paper was referring children to Wackipedia in an article on weather. That's their game. They want to introduce children to that site and get the next generation to start seeing it as a source of information.
We have little control over the government at present, so we have to find other ways of disseminating information. To make Hindus active and unite, requires us to speak to the one thing that does unite us: our common religio-cultural root. And to do that we have to return knowledge of what Hinduism is to them, along with the facts of history. They have to know the loss of freedom that will accompany the loss of Hinduism. They have to know its value before they contemplate letting go of it. Unless they value what it is they have, they will not want to fight for its survival or their freedom to practise it.
The damage that propaganda, communism and missionary education has done is to weaken the Hindu mind so that it is unwilling to think of defense.
By the way, this 'dissemination of factual information' should be another aspect of the many things we need to do to solve our problem.