Hindu Dharma Newsletter Issue # 7

6th May ‘05
Issue # 7

Dear Friends,
Namaskar,

In this issue, I have summarised a solution to the “Ram-Janmabhoomi” issue articulated by Koenraad Elst in his book “Ayodhya and After”. The whole book is available online and I would encourage everyone to have at least a browse through – It is fairly compelling reading. Elsewhere, I have included the only scientific attempt at explaining the physics behind “Vimanas” in ancient India. There may be other such research but I have not found it so far. If any of you is aware of work in this area, pl. send me an email.
Finally, I have included some excerpts from a couple of articles on Dr Ambedkar. My motive was to find out the background and the context to his conversion to Buddhism in the last days of his life. As much of that research shows, there is so much within the present belief system that should simply not be tolerated – more reform is needed, and quickly – otherwise, we will end up alienating such a large proportion of the population that any hopes of making the core beliefs of Hinduism as a basis for creating national identity will fail.
As always, let me know if you do NOT wish to receive this OR send a reply with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject.

Dhanyawaad and Jai Hind,
Shantanu
hindu_dharma@yahoo.com

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THE RAM-JANMABHOOMI ISSUE
Several months ago (in Issue #3), I included a précis of the arguments that Koenraad Elst had articulately in his book “Ayodhya and After” supporting the case for Ram Janmabhoomi.
A few weeks ago, Sh. L K Advani mentioned that not completing the temple was BJP’s major failure during its tenure and had the BJP secured a mandate in the last elections, work on the temple would have begun by now. This has all the sound and the signs of a lame excuse.
As a lay observer, I felt that during the last elections, the BJP, partly under the pressure of its coalition partners and partly in thrall of its “India Shining” campaign, had all but abandoned the cause of Ram Janmabhoomi.
Now that it finds itself in the opposition once again, this is being raised as a convenient issue to rally support.
I have nothing against these tactics and this perhaps makes political sense (at least tactically). However, is the party serious this time around? At some point, people will get tired of false promises (and worse, may forget the whole issue) and any hopes of rallying support around this cause will vanish.
This “opportunism” has come in for strong criticism even from those within the organisation (e.g. Govindacharya quoted in “Advani cannot be believed on Temple issue’”, PTI news story, 5th Apr 05″ http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1307977,001300020001.htm
In a way though, all this is besides the point, For I am not sure that a case has been made – either articulately or convincingly enough for Hindus at large to become aware of the religio-social aspects of this issue.
I see the Ayodhya movement as inseparably linked to a revival of Hindu pride. Lord Shri Ram’s character can be an ideal template to bring together the disparate elements within present day Hindu religion. Being an earlier epic than Mahabharata, the Ramayana has strong elements that support a cohesive society, much before the degradation of the varna-ashram dharma into the jati-pratha system (e.g. the characters of Valmiki, Shabri, Jatav, Shri Hanuman etc). These need to be highlighted and woven together to win mass support for reclamation of Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya
In the paragraphs below, I have attempted to summarise the solution proposed by Dr Koenraad Elst, including how linking this movement with Kashi and Mathura offers Muslims in India chance to redeem themselves, and Hindus an opportunity to go beyond historical grievances & injustices of the past.

A PROPOSED SOLUTION
One of the favourite arguments of opponents of the temple is that, “”Two wrongs don’t make a right”. But let us probe deeper into this line of reasoning.
In his book, Dr Elst concedes the point regarding the legitimacy of righting wrongs by doing another wrong. To quote:
“And it is true: if someone has stolen from you, it is not right to just steal it back from him, or from his children. Not even if it is a place of worship. The best solution would be, that the culprit, or his juridical successor if any such be, returns the stolen good of his own free will. The second best solution is that an impartial competent authority, in application of principles universally in force or mutually agreed upon, imposes a settlement that undoes the wrong done. Either way, the matter should be settled openly, not by counter- theft.
In the controversy under consideration, the best solution is, that the Muslim community makes a gesture to undo the wrongs it has inflicted on the non-Muslims for centuries. Failing that the second best solution would be, that the government imposes such a goodwill gesture: that would then not be a gesture of reconciliation, but at least an official recognition of the injustice done and the resolve to at least symbolically undo such injustice.”
Having said that, it would be hard and impractical to make the case for demolishing the thousands of mosques that have been built on the foundations of razed temples. “Hard” because these temples are after all, a “symbolic” manifestation of our beliefs and no peace-loving Hindu can justify such large scale destruction in this day and age; It would also be impractical for obvious reasons and our energies would be better concentrated in other areas, in particular, restoration of Hindu self-awareness and pride.
Instead, it would be better to demand that “the truth be told on every appropriate occasion” – that as many of these temples carry text that explain the history and the circumstances behind the new structures. This needs to be done sensitively, for there is “no point in troubling simple Muslim villagers with the unasked-for-truth about the crimes of Aurangzeb. They did not commit these Islamic crimes, and educating them should ideally not proceed via instilling in them a feeling of guilt.”

Kashi and Mathura
Dr Elst however makes a special case for Kashi and Mathura. The neo-modernists and pseudo-liberals argue for certain things to be time-barred. But, as Dr Else argues, “who are they to rule that history should be held to be of no consequence? Perhaps the Hindus do think that certain historical wrongs have been so vast as well as profound, that they need righting even today. Especially because the ideology that motivated these wrongs is not yet a part of history.
The situation is this, Muslim conquerors and rulers have made systematic attempts to destroy Hindu culture, and as long as that was not immediately possible, many of them have done everything to humiliate the Hindus. And this was not an accidental list of cruel rulers, to be joined to the list of Genghis Khan, Ch’in Shih Huang, Tiglatpilesar and other classics of cruel conquest and rule : there was an ideological backbone in this sustained effort to impose Islam and persecute the Kafirs. Aurangzeb is gone, but that ideological backbone may still be there. One of the crowning symbols of the Muslim persecution of the Hindus was the replacement of the most sacred Hindu temples with mosques”.
Now, either the conflict between Islam and Hinduism no longer exists. The Muslims no longer identify with the persecution effort of their forebears. In that case, they will have no problem in distancing themselves from the take-over of temples, and in understanding the Hindu sensitivity concerning this painful past. They will understand that they themselves would not like to be robbed of their Kaaba, and they will give back the chief places sacred to Shiva and Krishna.
Or, in the other case, the Muslims do identify with Babar and Aurangzeb, and stick to the doctrine that the Kafirs must be fought and their temples destroyed. In that case, they are the heirs to the responsibility for the temple destructions, and then the Hindus can demand reparations from them. Either way, some symbolic reparation should be made. Some gesture of finishing this history of temple-destructions and attempted destruction of Hindu Dharma, should be made.
Dr Elst suggests that Hindus should ask Muslims to handover the most revered places of Lord Shiva and Shri Krishna as a gesture of goodwill, a symbol of acceptance that unspeakable wrongs were committed and persecution happened.
To those who are tempted to use this same line of argument (gestures of goodwill) to defend the staus quo on Ayodhya should remember that Ram-Janmabhoomi is different; it had already become a Hindu temple again in 1949. Is it not “unbelievably arrogant that some Muslims could be against the hand-over of even one of the thousands of stolen Hindu places, and still have dared to demand the hand- over of that one mosque that they let slip through their fingers in 1949?”, asks Dr Elst.
He concludes his argument thus:
“To sum up : on the Ram Janmabhoomi, the Hindus should concede nothing. It is their own temple again since 1949, and if they want to architecturally redesign it along the lines of traditional Mandir architecture, then that is an entirely internal affair of the Hindus. On Kashi Vishvanath and Krishna Janmasthan, the Hindus may choose to leave it at the present compromise situation (temple rebuilt next to mosque), but it is not unreasonable and they are within their rights if they make a moral demand on the Muslim community to return these two sacred places. The demand should focus not on the buildings, but rather on the free-will gesture of a hand-over to formally finish the history of Hindu-Muslim conflict.”

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THE SCIENCE BEHIND VIMANAS
Some of you may recall a brief piece I had included in one of the recent newsletters about “Vimanas” in ancient India.
While doing some more research on this, I came across this website, http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/anomalies/unidentified_flying_vehicles.html
Peter Thomson, the author of the website, is a Physics Tutor and an “originator” of the charged sheath vortex theories. His focus of work has been “the development of ideas for the charged sheath vortex…”. Although his initial interest started with tornadoes, he realised that the theory could be extended to a number of areas…As he says on his website, “…It was only later that I considered how it might apply to a containment vessel for fusion power, and for a flying vehicle.”
His hypothesis was that if such a flying vehicle did indeed exist, it should demonstrate several common features cited in UFO sightings. The mechanism (that explains the science of the flight itself) as well as of the characteristics, should be “based on simple physics – with no factor X that answers everything and explains nothing.”
He concluded that it was possible to explain and justify all the design features, mechanisms and characteristics of such objects by the theory behind a “fusion vortex engine”
As he delved deeper into existing literature around conventional fusion research, “…to see if anyone had considered this…. or whether anything anomalous had been reported when working with mercury or mercury vapour in conditions where a charged sheath might develop….what did appear were some ancient Indo/European stories translated from Sanskrit.”…
Read on:
“I could dismiss stories of flying people and chariots as being the stuff of story tellers and legends, but it was the incidental detail that caught my attention. Detail that made coherent sense if the vehicles described were powered by a charged sheath fusion engine. Too many technologically consistent details for the stories to have been created by an agricultural culture moving out of the stone age!
These flying vehicles are described as being powered by a vortex of mercury. In order for the mercury vortex to work it needs an iron box. If you open the iron box, radiation from the contents of the box will burn your skin, like bad sunburn. These vehicles fly with a musical hum. They don’t have a powerful rear exhaust, and they only fly within the atmosphere. There are other vehicles that fly with a powerful rear exhaust, and a roar like thunder that can be used to fly into space. The stories make a very clear distinction between the capabilities of these two types of vehicles.
We also learn that over time this knowledge was lost, and the mercury vortex ceased to work when the contents of the iron box no longer burnt.
The stories also describe complete flying cities, which if this technology were real would not be a problem. What makes me guess that the technology was real is the way the story describes the way the inhabitants of the city behaved after their city was shot down in a battle. Not as people with their roots in agriculture would behave, but as we might expect people whose only experience of life is a modern technological civilisation might behave on losing their technology.
Unfortunately the weapons described in these stories could also be made using fusion power from a charged sheath vortex. When you know how the technology works it is very difficult to see these writings as pure stories from the distant past. There is simply too much consistent and working technology in them. These stories can only be fragments of history from the distant past. Twisted, altered, misremembered, but still enough technology remains in these accounts to say with a lot of certainty, we are not the first technological civilisation on this planet.
Such a civilisation may have been very local, not a world-wide global civilisation like our own. Somewhere it must have left its traces. Many of those traces may remain on the continental shelf exposed for the duration of the ice age and now submerged, but there is another vast depository of technological activity on this planet – the ice fields of Greenland and Antarctica that have collected the atmospheric dust year by year since the last ice age started. The ice that formed at the time of the Roman empire stores the lead and copper dust of its smelters and mines, but what of the many centuries and millennia before that?..”
In spite of extensive research, I have not come across any other scientific interpretation and analysis of the ancient texts so far – If any reader is aware of more work in this area, please do let me know.
Another interesting book in this context is “Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India and Atlantis (Lost Science Series)” by David Hatcher Childress, Ivan T. Sanderson which apparently has extensive translations from the Vyamanic Shastra (I have not read the book yet, so cannot comment on it)

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THE CHALLENGE FACING HINDU SOCIETY
It is my belief that the biggest and the most important challenge that we, as Hindus, face today, is how to overcome the divisions and the fragmentation within the society and dispel the sense of frustration, alienation and disenchantment amongst a large (indeed the major) proportion of our population.
In short, how do we get people back in the fold, not just notionally (e.g. Dalits and Harijans do consider themselves Hindus) but in way that they enthusiastically join in the revival of Hindu Rashtra and Hindutva.
In this context, I came across a paper authored by Edward Weber which indicates that when Dr Ambedkar was contemplating conversion from Hinduism, at no point did he consider Christianity and Islam as alternatives [“Ambedkar and the Hindu Culture. Journal of Religious Culture No. 18b (1999)”, Edward Weber, on the web at http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/irenik/relkultur18b.html ]
Weber draws interesting and thought-provoking parallels between Dr. Ambedkar’s motivations and the aims of the Hindu Mahsabha and other Hindutvawadis.
Commenting on the factors that Dr Ambedkar considered when he chose to convert, Weber mentions his strong attachment to Hindu culture and the political consideration of minimising conflict with any existing orthodoxy or hierarchy (bear in mind that at the time there were no extant “ritually pure” Buddhist castes in India and there was no entrenched Buddhist orthodoxy).
Even when he was considering the possibility of converting to Sikhism, it was clear what his over-riding criteria was: “Looking at these alternative faiths purely from the standpoint of Hindus, which is the best – Islam Christianity or Sikhism? Obviously, Sikhism is the best.” …If the Depressed Classes join Islam or Christianity, they not only go out of Hindu religion, but they also go out of Hindu Culture. On the other hand, if they become Sikhs they remain within Hindu culture”[25b].
Weber then goes on to demonstrate how the objectives of Hindutvawadis (the creation of a united Hindu nation) and that of Ambedkar (destruction of the caste system and eradication of untouchability) converge.
In his words, “… Hindu nationalism is nothing else than the political will to strengthen the Indian nation by unification; but the unity can only be reached through a casteless society of equal citizens.
That fundamental interest of the Hindutva movement makes (it) clear that in spite of some important differences there is nevertheless a basic ideological convergence between Ambedkar and Hindutva: the maintenance of Hindu Culture. Ambedkar wanted the destruction of the caste system by (due to) caste-motivated reasons, Hindutva wants the same by (for) national ones.”
Weber cites specific examples to demonstrate the close relationship between Hindutvawadis and Dr Ambedkar.
“Due to this common interest it is no wonder that “Ambedkar had intimate relations with the Hindutvawadis”[29] of the Hindu Mahasabha and its president V. D. Savarkar. Both were joined together in the decisive will to extinguish untouchability from the Hindu society. The judgement of the Hindutva movement on the untouchability was classically formulated by Savarkar as follows: “This system of untouchability is unwarrantable and suicidal, hence only for the sake of humanity we the Hindus should eradicate it”[30].
With the official(s) of the Hindu Mahasabha, Munje, Ambedkar exchanged extensively letters; once he asked him concerning his possible conversion for advice [31]. Later on he criticised Savarkar for not doing enough to defend the Hindu interests in face of the British-Muslim conspiracy! [32]
During the second world war, “Savarkar blessed Ambedkar’s programme of militarisation. He expressed confidence that under the able leadership of Ambedkar the Mahar brethren would exhibit their military merits and strengthen the ‘collective power’ with their militancy”[33]. That the chief of the Hindu Mahasabha appreciated the military arming of the Untouchables, shows very clearly the kinship between Ambedkar and Hindutva [34].
Therefore, it’s not surprising that Ambedkar writing the Indian constitution co-operated narrowly (sic) with the Hindu Mahasabha [37]. Together with the Hindutvavadis he fully shared the idea of ‘Hindu nationalism’.
To surmount the traditional social isolation of the Untouchables in India, Ambedkar realised sharp-sightedly that this was possible only by the integration of the Dalits into the Hindu fold, into the majoritarian dharma society; otherwise the converted Dalits would give up or loose the solidarity of all the other Hindu Dalit castes.
Conversion to adharmic communities (would make) the Dalits fully helpless victims of their oppressors inside and outside their new community. Beyond that: conversion to adharmic communities (would) weaken the possible power of the Dalit community as a whole and was therefore nothing else than a disastrous betrayal of the solidarity of the Untouchables.
Logically, the dharma nationalism was an essential item for the emancipation of the Untouchables. Separating the Untouchables from the Indo-genous dharma didn’t mean (anything) else than their denationalisation. …Ambedkar believed in the emancipate (sic) power of the Indo-genous dharma for the Dalits: neither Christianity nor Islam could give the Dalits the chance to become free. Therefore it was very clear that Ambedkar didn’t want to strengthen Muslims or Christians although they always disseminated to be egalitarian and casteless religious communities [39]”
Weber concludes that Ambedkar’s nationalism was primarily rooted in religio-cultural beliefs (“dharma” in a cultural context) rather than race or caste, and in this sense, is ideologically identical to the position held by Hindutvawadis.
P.S. I have not verified this but apparently the Indian Constitution treats Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as Hindus. Can any reader(s) help?
SOME SPECIFIC IDEAS
Coming back to the central issue:
If the conditions/ circumstances that created intense frustration and a sense of alienation amongst the Dalits and untouchables still prevail, we as a society will continue to decay and weaken – and nothing will change unless a radical, sincere and concerted effort is made to remove them.
Here are some of my thoughts; initial ideas that may be starting points in this effort.
Temples in India are one of the strongest source of religious authority and in certain situations, embody the discrimination that has spread its roots deep within the Hindu community. Thus, they often deny entry to entire groups of people such as Harijans and women. It is hard to imagine how this came about – but certainly there is absolutely no justification for it to continue.
What I am proposing is to take the temple to the masses and thus democratize religious authority.
How does this translate in actual practice?
· Construct temples in areas where Harijans and Dalits are in a majority – make them accessible to everyone, without any restrictions
· Make these temples models of cleanliness; Even better, have the priests involved in the cleaning and maintaining of the premises (this is necessary to break barriers and very important from a symbolic point of view)
· Make them useful to the community e.g. imparting free education to children (not just Ramayana and Mahabharata but English, Science and Maths)
· Make them the basis for creating a sense of kinship. Involve them in activities such as vaccination, inoculation, free meals. Ideally, the priests and the temple staff must be involved in cooking the meals; more importantly, they should share and eat their meals together with the children and devotees – this will be a strong, and very visible action against untouchability
· Lead by example: The temple managers/ priests should go to the extent of cleaning the utensils and doing other “menial” jobs. Such actions would have 10 times more impact than all the talk about eradicating untouchability and equality
Thoughts, comments and more ideas welcome.

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LAST WORD:
In one of the earlier issues, I had asked if any reader had specific information on the Muslim Birth rate in India and the factors driving population growth amongst Muslims. In this context, I was recently forwarded this excerpt from a book by Koenraad Elst, “The Democratic Siege” http://voi.org/books/demogislam/
This information strongly supports the point that I had made earlier about Muslim growth rates not being determined by socio-political reasons but by religious factors ( – Dhanyawaad, Harish). Excerpt below:
“…shows that the Kerala Mus­lims have a higher birth-rate than the natio­nal Hindu average and even than the Hindu average in poor and back­ward states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
…(The) population growth (+28.74% for 1981-91) in the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram (with female liter­acy at 75.22%, far higher than among Hindus in the Hindi belt) is more than twice as high as the aver­age for Kerala (+13.98), and well above the Hindu national aver­age (+23.50).[5]
A secularist journalist confirms: “In spite of this ‘near total literac­y’ the popula­tion growth rate of Muslims who constitute one-fourth of Kerala’s population is as high as 2.3 per cent per year, which is more than even the natio­nal PGR [= population growth rate] of 2.11 per annum and is almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala it­se­lf”.
Need I say more?

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