ராமர் நானக் இயேசு முகம்மதுவுக்கு பிறப்பு அத்தாட்சி பத்திரம் உண்டா?

தருண் விஜய் எழுதிய நல்ல கட்டுரை..

Strengthening sinews
12 Sep 2007, 1151 hrs IST,Tarun Vijay

Just before we were about to celebrate Dussehra, the government of India swore that Ram never existed. A Diwali–Dussehra gift to the Hindus. Last time, Diwali saw Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati being arrested while performing puja by Jayalalithaa's khaki-clad law enforcers. This time when the nation is ruled under a non-Hindu dispensation, an officer bearing the name of Ram was assigned the job of destructing a bridge known as Ram Setu and another officer, who represents the Ministry of Culture, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on behalf of the government that Ram never existed.

Should we begin saying now, 'He, who Ram?'

Do we need birth certificates to prove Ram, Krishna, Nanak, Jesus and Muhammad? Can the government ask a Muslim or a Christian to file an affidavit in court about having no proofs regarding Hazrat Bal's genuineness or Virgin Mary's immaculate conception? No, they won't even think about it. Fear of death and receiving ostracism. Fear of losing votes and getting thrown out of power. Simple reasons.

Hindus don't do that. Hence get humiliated at the hands of Hindus only. Like Indians were made to testify against Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries so that they could be hanged.

This is how colonial powers do. Using 'natives' against their own blood brothers.

At a time when India shows a new vibrancy and a military exercise in the Bay of Bengal exhibits our raised levels of confidence, we hear noises denouncing it and an affidavit filed by the government certifying that no Ram ever existed, hence the destruction of what people call as Ram Setu doesn't mean destroying an ancient site, and so is a doable act. Bravo. That's the climax of a polity and the state in self-denial. A pitiable mindset, indeed. Honouring people's faith and a collective memory of the nation is also one of the duties of the new borne governance, which remains always subservient and lower in status to the elements of civilisational constitution and cultural continuity several millenniums old. The Left is concerned about ties with America and not the sentiments of the people of India and the UPA is concerned how to appease the Left to safeguard the government. Where's India in their eyes?

A state and its constituents that defy all that and humiliates the majority sentiments through any instrument of a recently-gained superficial power, fails itself and lowers the flag of national pride.

Rakhi and Krishna Janmashtami behind, we are geared up to celebrate a number of colourful festivals like Ganapati, Navratras, Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. Every festival announces a celebrative mood of the people who are accustomed to welcome new births with gaiety and deaths as a window to the new another world. While ultimate happiness is defined in a reunion with the cosmic powers of creation, our gods and goddesses inspire a complete and decisive annihilation of the wicked and establishing the supremacy of the righteousness i.e. dharma . Rama versus Ravana, Krishna versus Kans and Kauravas, Durga versus Mahishasur, and using the instrument of Ganapati festival for arousing the spirit of freedom against the imperialist forces- every story and its finale tells us about a war between the good and the evil and victory of the noble values. It also underlines that those who fear war, get war, hence the compassionate, friendly and all-inclusive spirit should not mean cowardice translating into a meek acceptance of the aggressors' unjust behaviour. Warn him, give time for a correction and if nothing positive comes out annihilate him as ruthlessly as has been the nature of the assault. Krishna annihilated the unrepentant with his celestial weapon, yet gave the greatest sermon of the Bhagwad Gita in the midst of the epic war. But we are disinheriting whatever was bequeathed to us for a mirage of harvesting votes. The inconvenience to millions at the airport, in temples, on railway stations and inside buses due to the security necessitated by the Ravanas and Kansas of jihadi variety is abysmal, but the decision-maker politician doesn't care. He sits safe in his citadel. This festival time may well be a good point to remind him of his dharma as exemplified in the lives of Indian icons.

A tradition to provide safety and succour to the patriots sacrificing our own best and the dearest has well been portrayed in the life and times of Guru Govind Singh. When Kashmiri Pandits approached Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib to protect them from the barbarities of Aurangzeb, the great father asked his son Govind Rai who would be the best saviour to the hapless Brahmins? Govind replied,' who else father, than your own noble soul?' Tegh Bahadur Sahib protected the Kashmiri Pandits, was martyred for a noble cause and became immortal as 'Hind ki Chadar' -the protector of Hindustan and his brave son established the Khalsa, pure path of the devoted shishyas , the Sikhs. Truly Vivekananda said that the only ideal that we can have is of Guru Govind Singh whose steel will would fight the hundred thousand foes with a solitary sword. He lost his father, mother and four sons fighting a battle for dharma against Aurangzeb, but never ever showed weakness of his resolve and kept the fight on till last. And look what the so-called followers of Ram and Guru Govind Singh are doing to the nation!!

The ideals of our women symbolised an indomitable personae, marked with courage, valour and unflinching adherence to the truth. The characters of Sita, Anusuya, Ahilya, Gargyi, Maitreyi, Chennamma, Mata Gujri and Sharada are the glittering examples of empowered womanhood that sustained social and cultural values on an equal footing. Only the semi-literate colonised mind would depict them otherwise. Our ideal of sewa or service has been based on a one-way devotion -without accepting the hot money or waiting people to die with a last moment baptismal and a cross hung on the neck they know nothing about.


When Europe was declaring women 'soulless' and burning them as witches, we were having the great exponents of the celestial poetry and citizen-queens in Ahilya Bai and Durgawati.

The galaxy of heroes and the most modern values of all times, changing the contours of the surface in each era yet preserving the essential everlasting, sanatan values deeply ingrained in our collective psyche has been symbolised in our ancestry, traditions and lineage. If we don't remember what we were and get stuck in a sixty-year-old shrub of recent activism as a substitute for a five-thousand-year-old flow of the tested tradition, we will be bartering gold with a soiled newspaper. Those who do not remember their past can have no future -Winston Churchill said and it should be remembered by those who understand their ancestral wisdom through foreign translations only.

So much self-denial has crept into us that we feel gratifying to honour a painter who revels in offending Hindus with the nudity of his ideas and oppose teaching Gita in schools on the premise that it's a Hindu scripture. Has it ever occurred to you why schools don't teach Vedas or Upanishads or the stories of Luv and Kush and Rama, but are quite comfortable teaching Narcissus, Romulus and Remus, Humpty Dumpty, and Jack and Jill? Because Jack and Jill are secular and Luv-Kush or Gita belong to Hindus, hence, are communal? Then whatever belongs to India gets banished automatically, being Hindu? Why should our own brothers, inheritors of the common legacy and cultural heritage dispossess everything that is theirs, just because a change in the way of worship? It reminds me of a true incident, whence an overenthusiastic education minister of Madhya Pradesh, in his late fifties, changed the nursery class primers of Hindi alphabet showing Ga for Ganapati, saying its communal and replaced it with Ga for Gadha,(donkey) as a secular representation!

I would consider blasphemous and an un-Hindu trait if, for example, American Hindus refuse to read and honour great icons of the American nationhood like Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King because they all were Christians. No, they are universal and America can't be interpreted without understanding them. Life and sacrifices of Jesus remain a great inspiration, though what the organised church does in his name is a different story all together, which made Vivekananda to say,' you are not Christians, go back to Christ'.

India's Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, Alvars, Krishna Dev Rai ,Shivaji and the great Gurus belong to all Indians irrespective of their way of worship. Their message is universal and not sectarian. To divide them in small religious segments and follow the alleys of segregation and hate created by the colonial rulers is an unbecoming act. This is a tyranny of the intellectual dishonesty which has robbed India of her real grandeur and a rightful place. Kolkata, always known for the colours of Puja, Ramkrishna Mission, Subhash Chandra Bose and Ganga, became known as a city of poor, hungry, dying, and destitute that needed a Belgian nun to get 'salvation' at the last moment. Previous invasions took away our wealth, later they came to disrobe us of our archaic memories and a sense of pride in being what we were. Nowhere is it taught that we were more literate and had better scientific temper before the British crushed our centres of scholarship and implanted such alien routes to excellence our masses could never get connected to. This harmed our ethical and social patterns, making us less confident. Though deprivation is considered the biggest maximiser of conflicts, we saw intolerance as the main source of socio-economic and military interventions.

All this was faced by us like no other community faced in the entire history. Now, a mood of rebellion seems to be taking shape in a positive sense. Revenge of history is an unstoppable phenomenon and we may accelerate it by growing too tall in comparison to our foes and push a rebellion against the shackles of rituals and idioms mismatched with the new times of India. The past has taught us the art to wait and not to show an undue anxiety. Shivaji waited too long and didn't lose his cool despite Afzal Khan desecrating the highest revered temple of Tulaja Bhawani, the royal deity. He just remained alert and when the opportune time arrived, Afzal was eliminated. Hence all the denials to self-rejuvenation should be resisted without losing calm as they also help in precipitating the angst against colonial hangover.
The atmosphere of self-goals and negationism will change in its own way. The signs are quite visible now. It may not be the way many of us might have conceived or envisioned. It could be an entirely new brave world of an assertive, proud Indian, nation being the only God relevant to his world view. Signatures of such an unprecedented rejuvenation have started showing up in an all-pervading air of new hopes. That's what our destiny is, and that's what we are going to achieve, defying all doomsayers. This will happen through dharma alone, that's the life line and solitary power centre of energies for us. See the huge crowds, lined up with folded hands and a prasadam in Connaught Place's Hanuman temple in the Capital, wearing Guccis, Prada, Zac Posen and Zandra Rhodes with our with Rohit Bals, Rina Dhakas and Tarun Tahilianis. No one squirms. The new religious channels are mushrooming without losses and ashrams , yoga centres (not withstanding the foolish clergy of a small church in UK ), Gita classes, top management courses based on Hindu scriptures from Manhattan to Madras are crowded more than ever with youngish twenty to thirty somethings outnumbering the retired genre. Dior Femme is a simpleton on a Gurgaon street and highrises don't surprise.

But it's a minority scene. A chaos on political front has to be noted and eliminated like Shivaji did, patiently but decisively. Farmers' plight remains unaddressed and the disadvantaged are simply brushed aside with traitors and insurgents getting a fashionable shelter by fossilised seculars. Their days are numbered and an Indian surge, the saffron hued, is the sunrise sign. Listen to the small talks on street corners and the coffee houses of the IIC variety. The convergence on national interest is astonishing.

Dharma guides it all. Small things matter most, like 'Rohtak Express', Komal of the Chak De fame!

In Gujarat a girl lit the pyre of her father, since he had no son, in spite of a long-cherished tradition of having this last duty performed by only a male heir. In Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra, female priests are flourishing without even a murmur of inconvenience to the traditionalists. The attires of the grandpa and grandma have changed and through soaps, however nauseating and devaluing they might have been declared, the Ekta Kapoors have transformed evening chats in small towns and villages. Our dreams are wider and more ambitious. Pandits work on computers, deliver on the Internet, Vedic knowledge is digitalised and secular universities have quietly introduced Vedic mathematics too.

Change the path, break old dilapidated conventions, discard the rituals and consider nothing sacred except our people and the nation. To crib about the attire, language, protocol, all those choti choti baatein , you know, is passé, the sole copyrighted repository of the old-fashioned and to rebel against all odds and the beaten track announces youth and future. Invite the wrath of the well-established, the seasoned woods are often moth-eaten. India's new avatar is seen in many facets. You may like, dislike or simply despise them, but they are occurring. The biggest sign is the language that has changed. Both the spoken as well as the written one.

Foes, we know them well, why to disclose strategies in the Press Club? It's the redoubled confidence that we talk to China and Pakistan and didn't care for the sanctions. We can take the low tides and the high tides in foreign relations in our stride but Mother India was never known to have nincompoop children. From Vajpayee to Manmohan, let every one have his share of glory and without prejudices. Doesn't this enliven and re-energise our grit and resolve to emerge victors finally? The more you hate and distrust, the more shakti you lose. Wrong doer's hisab kitab will be done, by history. None will be spared. Why try writing that in times of creating new rainbows?

Aches are a part of life, only the headless will have no headaches. So face the pains boldly and charter a path for your own actions.

So, the next time, you must ask one question standing before a mirror: What have you, the eternal complainant done for the nation? The answers to it, by a billion Indians, shall strengthen our sinews like never before.


The author is the editor of Panchjanya, a Hindi weekly brought out by the RSS.