Two seers.

Arabindo’s Hindutva.

Sri Arabindo’s 125^th birth anniversary is supposed to be in 1996. The Hindutva group has appropriated the saint as their own prophet for hinduising the whole world. They have been quoting the writings and sayings of Arobindo so as to claim superiority for Vedic thoughts and practices as interpreted by the saint. Some of those sayings exhibit rank communalism keeping in view the conditions today.

When Sri Arabindo started his public life, the country was awakening itself against the British Imperialist rule. Arabindo himself was a political refugee in French enclave of Pondicheri. The isolation from the environment of national struggle might have affected the sage to look for internal solutions for outward problems. Whatever may be the motive for his renunciation of worldly affairs he got interested in religion specifically the sources of Hinduism and its philosophy in Rig-Veda and other ancient texts. The result was a commentary of ancient hymns, based on the modern understanding of the world and its philosophical questions. Arabindo drafted the new theologies prevalent, into the interpretation of Vedic literature asserting new meanings to hymns. I have not gone thru these writings of Arabindo but my own readings of Rig-Veda and some of the Upanishads make me to think that meaning of Rig-Veda is in the preceptor. The language used is very much this worldly as mainly commented by the sage Sayana. The meanings of a mysterious and or spiritual that are being discovered in the wording of the mantras are the result of allegorical interpretations with meanings to confirm with later and modern thoughts. Such interpretation of ancient thoughts is in vogue in all regions of the world. Unlike in the case of ancient Indiaother civilizations disappeared from the face of those countries. Even the people of the original civilizations transformed to other faiths

In certain instances those people of original civilizations, were forced to revert to the past through circumstance brought by new conquerors. But the ancients in India developed through changes and adoptions that became Hinduism at a later date. They survived many an adverse conditions though their sociological thoughts were still governed by their own primitive origins.

It is under such conditions the British rule was felt to be alien rule, by English educated elite Indians. It was they who first started to claim uniqueness of the ancient India. They were much far off from Hinduism as understood today. It is dishonest of the RSS and Sangha parivar to claim today that people like Arabindo and Vivekananda were the promoters of Hinduism as understood and practiced by them. Of course it is true that much of the thought construct by the two Hindu revivalists are amenable to such interpretations in support of Parivar propaganda. There are no separate religions and or gods and they cite the sayings of Shri Arabindo and Swami Vivekananda in support of their main contentions. However, even they avoid explaining the hindutva quotes from these two saints. They seemed to be contradictory to each other that the Hindutvavadies make out a case for hindutva in denigration of other thoughts and other religions.

Whatever may be their motivations one cannot accept the stand of the Parivar that Hinduism must conquer the world for itself since, ancient, medieval and even the modern Hinduism is not amenable to proselytisation. Only the Arya Samajists accept it and practice it. However, orthodox never accept such change of faith to Hinduism from other faith. It is very much known that in Puri Jagannath temple no converted foreigners are allowed to enter inside the premise. For them a Hindu is born and not converted.

The Parivar also selectively quotes from the writings of Babasahib Ambedkar

They were citing Babasahib on the matter of Indian origin of Vedic Aryans (whoever they might be) and also on the Muslim rule of repression against Hindu religion as might be found in the medieval history of India. They quote these later portions with relish, since; Babasahib relied upon the British records for the history of Muslim rule in India.

But those writings were not intended to be a study of Indian history but polemical arguments on the existing repression on the dalits in the Indian society. He was interested to state that the Sudra caste was part of the undifferentiated population ofIndia from ancient times.

ADI SANKARA’S STOTRAMS: A collection

Some days back while I was talking to Anna, he asked me to get a book of the collection Adi Sankara sthotrams in Malayalam lipi. I was sure of such collection available but unable to move about finding it. Then I told our Sethu to find the book from Giri Traders in Matunga when he gets time. It was raining cats and dogs on those days and it took long for Sethu to travel upto Matunga. However, he did it on a day and got two books of the collections, one in Malayalam lipi and second in Nagari as per my request. They were brought here on another day. I kept them for a few days to compare the contents. The Malayalam one has 60 compositions and the Nagari one has more. The extras were longer compositions. The Malayalam had an introduction mentioning the significance of some of them and short life sketch of Adi Sankara. The truth is that there are no reliable sources to know about the life of Sankara; only legends, miracles, imaginations as described in so many Sankara Vijayams.

I read all the stotrams contained in the Nagari edition. On the face of it none of them could be a composition by person like Sankara who dedicated his life to propagate Vedanta teachings i.e. nirguna brahmam. These collections are aimed at so many Hindu deities starting with Ganapathi. More over each deity is attributed with superiority over every other known one. Ganapathi is the highest to whom alone obeisance offered. Similarly on every other Subramania, Rama, Krishnan, several forms of Vishnu, Shiva, Devi and so on. It is strange to see such self contradictory stands on the part of the same person.

Secondly, the stotrams were just words strung together for their rhyme and rhythm. They have no significant meanings. The stotrams in themselves has no continuity with any theme. With these flaws still the stotrams could be memorised and recited through with little effort. Most of them are composed in hard spelling compound words for effect.

Anna who is not familiar with Sanskrit and so will surely find them unpronounceable. I feel pity for him, who has not expanded and diversified his reading habits. When we were there at Charlottesville, he wanted to read Shiva Purana. Saras brought two volumes from her college library but Anna returned then in a week’s time. I think he got bored reading them. Same might happen with Adi Sankara also. Let us wait for that time. Still at an earlier occasion he was trying to read Narayaneeyam in Malayalam. But he never claimed having gone thru it in full.

All the stotrams are male centred offers, even in case of the female deities. The composers whether one or several are one in describing bodily pleasures almost anywhere. While all devies are described as having heavy, high and rounded breasts the males are portrayed as being embraced by their spouses with heavy and high breasts. All human passions are attributed to these deities. But human passion is depreciated and denounced.

Consciously or not there is denigration of female as distraction and fouled. The prayer is always to protect the male devotee from the attraction towards female sex. None of the stotrams seemed to have addressed by any woman even though the prayer is to a female deity. One could see that composers hate females except those deities.

A good number of these stotrams find their way to the home of Hindus for their intonations and not for any meaning. Both girl and boy children are made to recite them devotionally. Nobody bothers to see the downgraded status of the women in all these compositions.

11.8.2007