See how these half baked, crude, lewd, morons are posing themselves as Intellectuals and academics, which shows how lecher, brain damaged American society has become. This is the reason, United states is on total decline and with these so called academics USA is doomed for ever.
Their future is very questionable.

Demonizing the Hindu/Indian image in American Academia
By Pandita Indrani, Ph.D.

The recently published book, "Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America," (545 pg) demonstrates how the lack of vigilance and indigenous expertise enabled a small group of western scholars to usurp and assume the Hindu authoritative voice and to use this for defaming, demonizing, distorting. eroticizing and pathologizing the Hindu/India image through Freudian psychoanalysis; and how technology like the Internet facilitated the mobilization of diasporic voices against this trend in American academia. It summarizes the writings of independent scholar, Rajiv Malhotra, who first identified the Hinduphobic trend in American academia and who, for the past decade, has been mounting a challenge to this kind of scholarship. This book, richly illustrates how the media-academia axis worked to suppress critics through a variety of strategies and how the rights of an entire community can be undermined through this power equation.

It also shows how the revolt led some scholars to introspect and re-evaluate academia’s role in scholarship and the scholar’s relationship with practitioners of the tradition that they study. This book is mandatory reading for all concerned about the integrity of India Studies and Religious Studies in academia, India’s image and socio-economic autonomy, multiculturalism, pluralism and diversity, and basic civil and human rights.

This book acknowledges that not all scholars in Hindu/India Studies in American academia are biased but the focus of the book is the Hinduphobic Freudian genre of scholarship practiced by a small albeit powerful group of scholars whose authoritative voices are spreading disinformation about Indic culture and civilization.

Pro-Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Dr Prem Misir, sees the book as “stand[ing] tall and honorable against the ethnocentric writings on Indic thought” and “a timely and superlative response to the distorted rewritings of the history of Hindu culture and civilization.”

Dr Ramakrishna Puligandla (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Univ. of Toledo, USA) chastises the American academic left for encouraging this attack on the Hindu/Indian minority instead of coming to its defence as they traditionally do with other minorities. He calls on “all fair-minded Americans and Hindus” to end this disease in academia.

In Hinduphobic scholarship scholars, although untrained in Freudian psychoanalysis, are inappropriately using this technique along with their own personal pathologies and very fertile imagination to eroticize and pathologize Hindu/Indian culture - from the gods to spiritual leadership to practitioners to the nation that is India - as degraded, immoral, fraught with sexual pathologies, and a hindrance to universal basic human rights. These scholars lack language and translation skills for accessing and interpreting the multi-layered meanings and cultural nuances of the richly symbolic Hindu/Indian culture and their scholarship demonstrates the paramountcy of their personal ideologies over fair scholarship.

Such disinformation in the guise of scholarship is planted in academia, government circles, media and popular culture, by this powerful coterie of scholars who wield great political power within academia because of their seniority in Hindu/India Studies and the influence they wield over students. Since they rule the roost they have now arrogated unto themselves the voice of authority on Indian issues.

For example, Jeffrey Kripal, in his book, "Kali’s Child," tries to demolish Hindu saints and Hindu mysticism by equating mysticism with sexual deviancy. Kripal claims that he authoritatively established that the saint, Sri Ramakrishna, had homosexual tendencies and that he had sexually abused the young Swami Vivekananda. The Encyclopedia Britannica listed this book as its top choice for learning about Sri Ramakrishna. This book also won the Best Book Award from the American Academy of Religion. Although Indian scholars attacked the book for its many mistranslations and other huge errors in scholarship, it continues to be used as an important reference work.

Traditionally, scholars of Hindu/India Studies do not provide their ‘native informants’ (subjects of their study) with any feedback to ensure the veracity of their conclusions. They go to India where they are treated as "devatas" (atithi devo bhava = treat the guest with high honor akin to that for God); they collect their data which can be faulty due to preconceived conclusions, language differences, ignorance of cultural nuances and the inability to interpret the multi-layered meanings in the richly symbolic Hindu culture. When they return to America their works remain far away from the gaze of their native informants, and they set themselves up as experts back scratching each other to ensure control in academia, for example, giving prizes to books and promoting each other‘s writings as mandated reading in college courses.

Indian Americans started "talking back" to these scholars - something that angered them since their traditionally superior posture shielded them from interactivity. Prof. Anantanand Rambachan (chairperson of the Department of Religion at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA, is a Hindu scholar who dialogues with global Christian groups for better understanding) sees the book as “a valuable historical resource“ and that “scholars should welcome a critical voice from the community that is the focus of their study, for a mutually enriching dialogue.“

A peaceful grassroots movement arose in 2002 centered around Malhotra’s profuse writings on listservs and portals like Sulekha.com that came to define and expose the American academic Hinduphobia that was threatening the global image of Hinduism and India. Malhotra came under heavy attack from the coterie of Hinduphobic scholars but bravely stood his ground, physically entering their courts at conferences and so on, and challenging them on their own turf.

A silent but peaceful revolt started in academia as more and voices started echoing similar concerns in hallowed halls of American academia. Several protests and petitions emerged on the Internet, which became the main communication pathway for dissent. In the process, a few brave scholars broke ranks with their colleagues to protest what they too saw as biased scholarship. The hitherto disempowered started talking back to the Hinduphobic scholars.


The latter then circled their bandwagons, firing back with a plethora of fallacious arguments, for example, ad hominem attacks (attacking the person instead of the issue); straw man (linking critics with already demonized persons and concepts like saying they are "saffron,," "Hindutva" etc.); using fear and scare tactics and emotive appeal (petitions by Indian Americans were hijacked with violent comments which led the scholars to insinuate that their critics wanted to kill them). The scholars painted themselves as innocent victims under attack from untutored savages, with their independence, freedom of speech and intellectual freedom being under similar attack; oversimplifying the issue as one of censorship and emotionalism, claiming authority (that as scholars of religion they alone have the objectivity and scientific methodologies for research in the discipline); using extended and false analogies (associating all their critics with Hindutva and violence in Indian politics); appealing to force (calling on scholars to boycott an Indian publisher); using prestigious jargon to sound like experts; using extended and spurious analogies to taint their critics; and the list goes on.


In other words, these scholars were well schooled in arguing their positions and breaking down the opposition - debating skills inherent in the American education and lacking in similar educational systems in other parts of the world.

Among some of the other ludicrous claims that these Hinduphobic scholars make are:
Hindu mysticism is linked to sexual pathologies

Ganesha is an incestuous son, a eunuch and homosexual;
his trunk symbolizes a "limp phallus" while his broken tusk symbolizes an imagined Indian child’s castration complex; and his large pot belly and love of sweets demonstrate the Hindu male’s appetite for oral sex.

Shiva is an immoral God who is a womanizer and whose temples are seats of "ritual rape" of women, prostitution and murder.

The Devi is a "mother with a *****."

Hindu rituals represent sexual acts

Sacred mantras are nothing by “nonsense syllables from the inarticulate moans that the Goddess makes during intercourse . . . .”

The bindi worn on the forehead represents menstrual blood.

The leader of the psychopathologizing and erotizing of the Hindu sacred is Prof. Wendy Doniger who boasts of heading a parampara (tradition) with several children and grandchildren. She holds powerful positions within academia, has several award winning books to her name, and has tutored many PhD students who continue to propagate her ideology within academia. Her prolific writings are hugely damaging to the Indian image. Though her translations of several Sanskrit texts into English enjoy huge popularity in the academy, her knowledge of Sanskrit has been openly challenged by competent experts.

A BBC link describes her thus:

"Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/asianlife/tv/network_east_late/biogs/wendy_donig...)

She once said:
"The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think ... Throughout the Mahabharata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war ... The Gita is a dishonest book; it justifies war." ( Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 19, 2000).

Supporting this approach to Hindu Studies, another western scholar, Sarah Caldwell, (whose formal conversion to Hinduism in India allowed her more ready acceptance and access into Hindu society) uses the psychoanalytical approach in her study of Goddess Kali, stripping the Goddess of indigenous cultural meaning and winning a book award in the process. Caldwell describes Goddess Kali as the "mother with a *****", "the bloodied image of the castrating and menstruating . . . female."

Cynthia Humes, another scholar, recognizes the deficiencies in both Kripal’s and Caldwell’s research, but she, too, sees sexual psychoses in the people of Kerala with them being consumed by homosexuality, sexual trauma, and abuse.

Paul Courtright, adopting the Freudian approach, concludes that Ganesha’s trunk is a limp phallus, he is a eunuch and homosexual and from the dregs of society.

Anthropologist, Stanley Kurtz, psychoanalytically claims to prove that Hindu mothers do not have an emotionally close relationship with their babies as Western mothers do.

David Gordon White, a protégé of Doniger, in his book, "Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Context" seeks to strip Tantra of its spirituality, seeing it as a decadent form of South Asian sexuality, that was practiced by Brahmins in order to dupe and oppress lower caste people.
Students from the lowest grades to college are presented with these kinds of degraded images of the Hindu sacred and India. This demeans the self-esteem of Hindu-Americans, especially youths facing peer pressure in American classrooms that are already dominated by the Abrahamic worldview; it also problematizes human rights in India, paving the way for US intervention in the country’s domestic affairs; and by programming these false images in young American minds it disadvantages America in its foreign relations with India.

Prof. Bal Ram Singh (Director, Center for Indic Studies, Univ of Massachusetts, USA), notes that the civilizational portrayal of the over 20 million diasporic Indians has been controlled by outsiders for centuries and sees this book as making a path-breaking response to the biases and stereotypes in western scholarship.

Lord Rana (House of Lord, UK) likens Hinduphobia to hate speech that led to attacks on some minority communities. He credits the book with generating better standing across communities, and calls on leaders and thinkers in the UK to engage in debates with Hindus and other minority groups “to expose and counter Hinduphobia” on the way to creating a “truly diverse and pluralistic society.”

Nathan Katz (Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality, Florida International University, USA) sees the book as “a thoughtful, reasoned, yet passionate plea that the perspectives and sensitivities of Hindus be considered in the presentation of Hinduism in scholarship, textbooks and the media. What is remarkable is that many western academics are so resistant to it.”

The contributors to "Invading the Sacred,” do not believe in censorship. They want additional voices in the debate. They are exercising their freedom of speech to participate in correcting the disinformation of their sacred traditions and are calling for more ethical peer review in Hindu/India scholarship.


Pandita Indrani has written Section 1 in "Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America," edited by Ramaswamy, de Nicholas and Banerjee, published by Rupa Co., India, 2007.
See www.invadingthesacred.com

By Gautam sen Jul 7 2007

Scrutinizing religious belief and history through scientific reason
will unfailingly expose serious lapses of logic and therefore their
credibility. But historical 'myths' and myriad invention underpin all
cultures and civilisations. Nevertheless, serious academic study of
such imaginative constructs also highlights how they underpin the
moral universe of societies despite seeming illogical to the modern
mind. It hardly needs reiterating that few of the founding figures of
Semitic religions are invulnerable to the application of the mildest
dose of scientific skepticism! Such 'exposes' have been undertaken
successfully for hundreds of years and are nothing new. Yet the claims
of rationality and science itself have also been critiqued savagely
since at least Friedrich Nieztsche and increasingly so during the
twentieth, Cf., Horkheimer and Adorno's, The Dialectic of
Enlightenment.

At the same time, imagine what one could do with the
sanctified official account of a 53 year-old man wishing to marry a
five year-old girl and deflowering her when she reaches the age of
nine. I have an irrepressible suspicion that no one would dare. And
therein lies the rub. The Semites are good at protecting their own, by
committing murder if necessary.

The real point is not whether a Narasingha Sil or Jeffrey Kripal are
playing fast and loose with facts and, more importantly, on whose
behalf. Sil's work on Ramakrishna is in fact much shocking than
Kripal's, Kali's Child. However, he wrote a fierce review of it that
seemed to wash away his own sins in the eyes of the votaries of
Hindutva, presumably because they, as usual, did not know, how vicious
Sil himself had been. His scholarship was faulty as well, as William
Radice pointed out in his review of the work. The real issue is the
ability of traditionalists to dominate the universe of debate about
Semitic faiths and easily overcome the critiques of modernists/
atheists/rationalists, etc. with ease. The latter are marginalised,
which is not the case where Hinduism is concerned. Even a devoted
follower of Ramakrishna like the formidable, late Bimal Matilal,
(Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford) was
politically hostile to Hinduism (yet he was a gem of a human being).
It might be noted in passing that, quite amazingly, American and
European scholars of Islam are also its most effective defenders. One
major treatise by a feminist Professor from Harvard misinterprets
hilariously in attempting to present the Islamic harem as a positive
experience for women. She suggests that the slaves of the harem could
refuse sexual intercourse with their master by placing their slippers
outside the door of the bedroom. The silly feminist professor, a
woman, god help us, does not realise that they only did so to indicate
they were menstruating because recalcitrant sex slaves were dumped
alive in the sea, sealed in a bag. Even someone like Bernard Lewis is
mainly critical of political Islam and the formidable Ira Lapidus only
critiqued its political forms in his seminal 1967 book. And a
magnificent book by an Iranian graduate student in the US is able to
defend Islam and the Prophet extraordinarily effectively - it is truly
a model of how to do exactly that ((No God, but God, by Reza Aslan).


By contrast, scholarship on Hinduism is in the hands of mediocre
scholars (no one of Lapidus' calibre) most of whom seem to have
official connections in a seamless web of church and state, i.e. the
intelligence services. The three operate as a single endeavour that
aims to change the political complexion of India permanently by
recruiting just enough adherents to Christianity that would constitute
an irresistible political lobby within India. This is the main goal
that scholars, evangelists and officials pursue. The existence
charlatans among Hindu Swamis (which Ramesh highlights) is quite
beside the point because it is to be expected. The main issue is how
to stop their 'normal' prevalence being used to attack the entire
fabric of the Hindu order, its society and the Indian State, or what
remains of it.

In the end, political power is all. The Indian State has always been
hostile to Hinduism, for reasons that need not detain us, but which
are the bedrock of its travails and descent into extirpation. The rise
of half-wit, anti-Hindu Indian Leftism (very poor scholarship compared
anything in the West) that has managed to seize most academic
institutions (with the help of the BJP HRD Minister during the NDA's
tenure as well, by the way!!) and their control over journals is
proving devastating. The Indian State is hugely incompetent, but the
fulcrum of potent ruling elite (the reason for every criminal
entrepreneur wanting to become a politician) that includes the
bureaucracy and most leading economic players. This is why in such a
huge country no industrialist will openly declare loyalty to Hinduism
and fund its defence and regeneration. It would mean their demise as
one privately explained to me though he is fiercely pro-Hindu though
not in public of course! A Anil Ambani will only take on the political
party in government by teaming up with a another political party, but
never rule himself out of favour completely by announcing fealty to
Hinduism (both these happened to be Islamist anti-Hindu political
parties). Without political power and control over the Indian State
all endeavours to defend Hinduism will remain painfully difficult.
India will soon be ruled directly from Brussels, headquarters of NATO
- mark my words.

FIRST TIME AN INDIAN REBUTTAL TO WESTERN BIAS
By R. Balashankar

Can perversity get lower than this? In the name of religious studies, a syndicate of scholars in America is spewing muck on Hinduism.

Religions In South Asia (RISA), a department under the American Academy of Religion (AAR), has been sponsoring studies for years now to deride Hinduism. Our gods and goddesses like Ganesha, Shiva, Parvati, Laxmi and Kali, our rituals like Upanayana our saints like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa and scriptures, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Gita all have come under such distasteful sexual connotation and nauseating voyeurism that one begins to wonder if it can at all be called academics.

And for the first time ever, the Hindus are replying them in an organised, cohesive manner. A recently published book Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America has documented the Hindu response to this academic distortion. Edited by Dr. Krishnan Ramaswamy, a scientist, Dr. Antonio T. de Nicolas, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook and Aditi Banerjee, a practicing attorney in New York, the book opens our eyes to the way the western mind perceives us.

The book exposes how and why the image of India as a culture of series of abuses like sati, dowry, caste conflicts and worship of grotesque deities has persisted. This is not the result of mere personal prejudices but is the result of a sustained, well-entrenched institutional mechanism. “Starting in well-respected, ostensibly ‘research based’ but culturally parochial halls of American and western academe, these images filter down into mainstream western culture where they acquire an incredible force in shaping how India is seen.” (p 2, Why this book is important).

While the American business schools view India as a nation throbbing with creativity, the academia views it as chaotic, backward looking and negative. Organiser cannot and will not repeat what the American scholars on Hinduism have said for which they received Ph.Ds and awards because they are lewd, below the dignity of any self-respecting Hindu to read.

In this scheme of the westerners, the Indian scholars are carefully recruited into, in the lure of foreign scholarships, degrees and placements. The Indians into the club are chosen carefully. They are the traditional looking ones—women in saree and big bindi and men in the traditional dhoti and kurta.

Says Rajiv Malhotra, one of the early persons to respond to this academic fraud, that “while Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Korean, Arabs and even the various European cultures such as Irish, Italian and French have actively funded and managed American academic representation of their cultural identities, Indian-Americans have been largely content with building temples, while their cultural portrayal in the education system and in the media has been abandoned to the tender mercies of the dominant western traditions.’

The book extensively quotes from Malhotra’s RISA Lila-1, Wendy’s Child Syndrome an essay that exposed the games that the Religions In South Asia played under the leadership of Wendy Doniger, a past president of the AAR. She is the leader of the syndicate working on the anti-Hinduism campaign and is now the director of a centre in the University of Chicago and is part of the decision making in several academic bodies. She is influential and an “acknowledged” Sanskrit translator. Her translations are relied upon as the main source by many students of religious studies throughout America.

The studies sponsored by and under her have this to say. Ganesha and Shiva were in a war because of jealousy over Parvati. That Ganesha’s tusk represents a limp *****. That ‘tantra’ is a sexual exercise and Devi is a female with male genital, representing extreme sexuality, that Ramakrishna Paramahansa was a pedophile. We now know where M.F. Hussain got his inspiration from.

An allegedly ‘well-researched’ book on Paramahansa, written by Jeffrey Kripal, who stayed at the Ramakrishna Mutt in Calcutta to research for the book, shook the disciples of the mutt so much that they were stunned to silence initially. A student of Doniger, Kripal won an award for his book from the AAR and the Encyclopaedia Britannica listed it as the best reference on Ramakrishna. Swami Tyagananda of the Mutt then wrote a rebuttal to this book and asked Kripal to annex it in his book, for the sake of academic ethics, but he refused. The normal course in which this material should be available—journals, university press, appointment committees, curricula development and conference—are controlled by the Wendy syndicate so that Swami Tyagananda’s rebuttal is not available for either purchase in bookstores or in universities and libraries for reference. (p. 111)

Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopaedia, one of the most widely referred sites by children, had a section on Hinduism, contributed by Doniger. Sankrant Sahu, an independent scholar and a manager in Microsoft pointed out the biases it contained. Finally, Microsoft withdrew the entry and replaced it with a version authored by Arvind Sharma, from McGill University, Montreal.

Stanley Kurtz, an anthropologist in Indian studies, says in his book Vishnu on Freud’s Desk, co-edited incidentally by the infamous Kirpal that the mothers in India do not have “a western-style loving, emotional partnership with their babies.” (p 60)

Islam, however, does not receive this treatment from the western scholars. They in fact struggle to reinterpret Islam and give it an emphasis of higher learning despite resistance from within Islam. “The western academic repacking and facelift of Islam is certainly a good project … Unfortunately, a different standard is being applied in Hinduism, despite the fact that its history and liberty of texts cry out loudly and clearly in favour of multiple layers of meanings and interpretations.” Probably, terror works on academics and Hindus might learn an underlying meaning in this.

In all the distorted writings on Hinduism, the Hindu scholars see the hidden hand and thread of Christianity running. Dr. Balagangadhara, Director of the Research Centre of Comparative Science of Cultures in Ghent University, Belgium, says, “Christianity spreads in two ways: through conversion and through secularization.”

While we in India are directly familiar with the first way, we are also familiar but probably not aware of the latter way. What secularization means he says, “is to de-de-Christianize Christianity… Christian doctrines spread wide and deep (beyond the confines of Christian believers) in the society dressed up in ‘secular’ (that is, not in recognizably ‘Christian’) clothes.” (p 129). That is the reason how we have a whole population of “secular” Hindus.

Any attempt to counter this academic cartel is branded vociferously as ‘Hindutva’, ‘saffron’ and ‘fundamentalism.’

Commenting on the kind of introductory lessons prescribed in courses, the book asks if the reverse is applied to Christianity, for example if we have an introductory lesson on that religion which states that “Catholic churches are notorious for all kinds of extreme practices from rape of children to official protection for the rapists over the decades.” Would a lesson like this ever be allowed in India, though all these can be proved by supporting data? (p 57)

For someone who has made a living out of Hinduism, Wendy Doniger accused the Hindu right in India of “shoving Sanskrit down the throat” of Indians. T. Desai, a student of University of Chicago, relates an anecdote on Wendy. While attending a lecture by her on Mahabharata, he was amazed “how she lectured on Indian politics. I wonder if they also discuss Bush’s funding of faith based organizations in Latin classes … She even described the meeting between Arjuna and Indra, (son and father) when Indra places him in his lap and caresses his arm, as ‘homoerotic.” (p 465)

Martha Nussbaum, one of the so-called scholars of the Wendy team, said this about India in the presence of Amartya Sen, at a conference in Chicago recently, “Thinking about India is instructive to Americans, who in an age of terrorism can easily over-simplify pictures of the forces that threaten democracy…In India, the threat to democratic ideas comes not from a Muslim threat, but from Hindu groups.” (p 3). Could anything be more bizarre than this? Sen is not known to have countered this either at that forum or later.

The book also has a section devoted to how the American media, both the mainstream and the regional, have treated the Hindu stories. How the Indian and Hindu scholars have been left aghast by the twists given in the article, for which quotes were taken from them.

Invading the Sacred gives voice to millions of Hindus world over who have been hearing and suffering the abuse of our religion. The issue is now joined and joined well.

Invading the Sacred, An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America; Publisher: Rupa & Co. 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002; pp 545; price: Rs. 595

Prof. Kapila Vatsyayan, one of the most respected scholars of Indian culture in the world, notes that scholars have tried to over- sexualize and reduce the rich, complex, and multilayered world of Indian symbols, icons and mythology “through a single perspective of a Freudian psycho-analytical approach applied to the exclusion of the others. Also there is a sense of bewilderment when one notes that rather outdated and almost passe theories of the psycho-analytical are being applied, when the discipline has taken in many more penetrative paths.”


Pandit Jasraj, the Hindustani music maestro, pleads, “To American scholars whose negative scholarship on Indian Divinity has been highlighted in this book—If you do not have enough knowledge about a culture and religion, you should not write about it!” The book inquires whether these are isolated instances of ignorance, or whether there is an institutionalized pattern of bias driven by certain worldviews? Are these academic pronouncements based on evidence, and how carefully is this evidence cross-examined by other scholars? How do these images of Indians created in the American academy influence public perceptions through the media, the education system, policymakers, and popular culture?

Prof. Anantanand Rambachan at Saint Olaf College, Minnesota, describes the book as “a valuable historical resource for those who want to understand better this debate, and those who wish to become participants in the conversation ... Scholars should welcome a critical voice from the community that is the focus of their study, for a mutually enriching dialogue.”

Prof. Kapil Kapoor, the former pro Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, sees this book as a very valuable contribution to the dialogue of civilizations. “The intellectuals featured in this book, with their bold decision to take on this scholarship, have entered into a serious dialogue about motives, methodology and substance and, using their own tools, have reversed the gaze back on to the scholarly establishment to their understandable discomfort.”

The issues here are so critical that Air Marshal Raghavendran says: “It should be required reading for every Indian diplomat, the defence department and those in foreign affairs, and especially for Indian scholars.” The book hopes to stir serious debate on topics such as: How do Hinduphobic works resemble earlier American literature depicting non-Whites as dangerous savages needing to be civilized by the West? Are India’s internal social problems going to be managed by foreign interventions in the name of human rights? How do power imbalances and systemic biases affect the objectivity and quality of scholarship? What are the rights of practitioner-experts in “talking back” to academicians? What is the role of India’s intellectuals, policymakers and universities in fashioning an authentic and enduring response?

:rolleyes:My friend Suresh Parmar from Dewas,MP has dispatched this e mail which is wort reading .Do read.

A Compassionate Heart
by Suresh M. Parmar


There are seven sets of books worth studying by every human being born on earth. The eleven principal Upanishads (on which Shankaracharya has commented). The Geeta. The commentaries of Shankaracharya on the Upanishads, the Brahm Sutras & the Geeta. The biographies of Ramakrishna Paramhansa & Swami Vivekananda by their disciples. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – especially the second volume (containing Jnana Yoga), the third volume (containing his lectures delivered in India from 1897 onwards) and the volume containing his letters. The books by Rajnish transcribed from his extempore lectures. And the monthly Reader’s Digest – especially the volumes from 1920s to 1970s.
These seven sets of books – which require a couple of
decades to thoroughly study & sink in -- are of eternal value for they constitute the spiritual education of man – in that, first, if an individual has thoroughly mastered them & begun practising them in his life, the society has no fear from him because no evil can ever emanate from him and, second, only good flows from him towards the others. (Of course, this does not mean that these constitute his complete education. No, for complete education – and even for a livelihood – the primary requirement of every individual -- he has to study, learn and know a lot many other things and books also. But these latter set of things and books do not necessarily make him a good person. That is all.)
If I had to choose the crown even among these seven indispensable sets of books, I would choose three books: the biography of Swami Vivekananda by his disciples, the volume containing his lectures delivered in India and, most important, that containing his letters. The reason is very simple. As these volumes show, Vivekananda was at least as compassionate as -- if not more than -- Lord Buddha and Mahavir Swami. His heart overflowed with compassion and tears flooded his eyes whenever he saw – or even thought of – the suffering, the deprived, the destitute, the poor, the downtrodden. As we study these volumes, we begin to change unwittingly. Our hearts become more compassionate. We become more sensitive. And our tears join his.
An enlightened mind and a compassionate heart (in
addition to an ever active body and a sensitive mind) are the four preconditions that constitute a true human being. Otherwise one is merely an animal without a tail, as the saying goes in Sanskrit. Nay, I would go even a step further and assign first place to a compassionate heart.
There are many occasions in every individual’s day-to-day life when he feels hard pressed and wishes somebody would come along and help him out. If we are sensitive and compassionate, we shall instinctively know his plight and of our own accord shall come along and help him out. This little act of ours not only gives us heavenly joy but also frees the other person of tension and wins his heart and he becomes our friend for ever.
If we possess a sensitive mind and a compassionate heart (these two are the obverse and reverse of the same coin), we instinctively feel one with the suffering person and then we cannot help reaching out and lessening or removing his suffering. When we see joy replace suffering on his face and in his heart, we feel as if we have worshipped the living God. We verily feel so. And then another feeling emerges in our heart, viz. that we have not lived in vain.
We already know two contemporary individuals with a compassionate heart – Dr. Kalam and Mohd. Yunus (of Bangla Desh of microfinance fame). I think M.L.Kotru (of Sunday Free Press’s “Men, Matters, Memories” fame) is a third such individual having a compassionate heart.
Time and again I have seen that the Forbes’ list of the world’s richest or the untold crores of IPL or such stupid parades of unearned riches (with which the pages of all modern-day newspapers and magazines are filled) have no effect on him but the common man’s – the poor man’s – woes always remain uppermost in his mind and move him to vent his feelings of empathy in words. Just read a few of his words in FP of 15 June.
After describing the unearned riches of cricketers and bureaucrats he says, “Not for them the worries of making the two ends meet. They don’t feel the pinch of 80% rise in the prices of wheat, flour, rice and dal – and the spiraling prices of vegetables, edible oils and other groceries. Not for them the long weekly drive to the nearest mandi to cut corners by buying in bulk for a week or revenue sharing the cost with a neighbour.
“The rising fuel prices are bound to add to our woes in terms of being asked to pay even higher prices for essential commodities. The ‘middle class’ may survive the crisis but then it constitutes but a fraction of the Indians living in the towns and villages. A grim picture, it indeed makes. Add to that the suicidal deaths, the number of landless, homeless farmers. You will be told of information technology having reached the remotest of villages courtesy the mobile phones – but does that really make a difference to the poor landless farmer, who must keep guessing where his next meal is going to come from?
“The babus manning the government offices needn’t worry. They have already received hefty pay rises.”
As these words show, Mr. Kotru is a specimen of a rare species of man. The socalled ‘globalisation and liberalisation’ – which are simply euphemisms for America’s stratagem of turning the entire world into a global East India Company -- have unleashed the demons of unlimited greed and unlimited gratification of senses out of the human heart. As the Lord says in the Geeta, these demons are sufficient to destroy a human being. Add to that the stupidity of digging one’s own grave inherent in most people’s minds. And you have the ideal combination for turning this planet into a hell, towards which end we seem to be heading.
Oh, how I wish there were more of Lord Buddha, Mahavir Swami, Jesus Christ, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Kalam, Mohd. Yunus and M.L.Kotru amidst us sharing with us our woes, crying in our sufferings and trying to lessen or remove them! Oh, Lord, please send more of such little incarnations of yours in our midst! Do send!