On Gandhi, Mountbatten and Jinnah after 62 years.

India turned 62 this August 15, 2009, marking another year of highs and lows in the arsenal of the Indian experience. Of course, nothing drastic had happened – we were riding the slow horse of the recession just like every other nation. We had not jumped over it and continued to grow at the alarming rate we were once so proud of; we had the stock market rising and falling, droughts and floods wrecking havoc, innumerable bomb blasts leaving pock marks on our faces and the occasional sports victory. This take-it-in-your-stride attitude, however, went to hell come Independence Day. The first step, in my opinion, is when you see the beggars at the traffic signals when you stop your vehicle. They go from window to window, from rider to rider, selling flags and other green-and-orange paraphernalia. I was once sharing an auto with a software engineer while getting back from a friend’s place. He turns to me and asks, “What Independence Day are we celebrating! What independence do we have with bribery and corruption still giving the politician a dictatorial grip over the common man?” These questions are wispy, freely floating in the air, waiting to be asked. First the engineer next to me will ask it, then the auto driver, then a forgotten friend on Facebook. From their, it will jump minds and mindsets, asking and asking. What I don’t like about these questions is they don’t wait for an answer.

Often, arguments beginning on such notes end with something I have come to dislike over the years: Gandhi-bashing. If you were to prowl university campuses around midday and when the tea-stalls are fervently issuing glasses of tea and Gold Flake Kings, you can get a solid dose of “Gandhi was a bastard! He let India be split apart into two factions, and one Islam!” – good enough to make you wonder. I’m an Indian. I know of the infamous partition, and I know of the number of people who died that year. I believe no one can ever come to truly understand the losses of the nation – in terms of numbers, in terms of families, in terms of happiness. But we have moved on; Jawaharlal Nehru captured it in his landmark speech, ‘Tryst With Destiny’. One of our own killed the Mahatma before the nation attained republic-hood and with his demise commenced all that was a face of the Independence Struggle. After that, the early Indian political scenario was dominated by the Congress (INC) – that was inevitable because most of those in Parliament had been freedom fighters.

So yeah, Gandhi and Jinnah together had been responsible for the formation of India and Pakistan, but I don’t think India values Gandhi as much as Pakistan values Jinnah. The general consensus is that Pakistan values Jinnah because he convinced both Gandhi and Mountbatten to conceive those chasms of division that would give birth to the warring nations, while Gandhi succumbed to such pleas and proceeded to divide India of his own volition. Now, before I get down to the specifics, a small story. When Captain Jack Sparrow was detained by Commodore Norrington after saving Elizabeth from the waters, the officer finds out that he is, in fact, a pirate. The Governor subsequently orders Norrington to hang Sparrow. At this juncture, Norrington proclaims that “… one good deed does not excuse a man from a lifetime of wickedness.”

Sparrow: “… but seems enough to condemn him!”

That is the case with Gandhi! The India we all speak of today was because of his efforts. We think we can afford to see Gandhi as someone different from how the world perceives him to be, but in doing that, we go one step too far and condemn him. Yes, we are Indians just as he was and are blest with that kinship, but the truth does not expose itself differently to us and differently to the others. It is the same: Gandhi liberated us from the British  – and that is irrespective of whether it was his ideology or his actions. Gandhi made it possible for us, you and me, to speak of an independent India after 62 years. His efforts went into releasing the country from the relentless talons of the British royalty and he did just that. Blaming him for delivering an India enslaved by money exchanged under the table is like blaming Jack Welch for Dumbledore’s death. And by this time if you don’t already see the fact, you’re retarded.

Now, moving on to the ideological trangle of Mountbatten-Gandhi-Jinnah. As one of the foremost authorities in the Partition Council, Mountbatten was for the Muslim grouping – a solution where the Muslim and Hindu communities would be segregated into two different camps because of Jinnah’s rising demands for a separate Muslim state. Although these demands were not shared by the total Muslim populace nor by Gandhi, Muhammed Ali Jinnah cited the reason for his demands to be the steadily increasing threats of the radically rightist Hindu Mahasabha (popular members of which were Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte). When he (Jinnah) noticed Gandhi’s reluctance to approve of the partition, Mountbatten was faced with the prospect of open civil war in the regions of West Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province and East Bengal – regions that fell under the political protection of Jinnah. The time soon came for Congress to make a decision on what had to be done – it could either go against Gandhi’s sentiments and partition India, or it could agree with Gandhi and suffer a civil war. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the Iron Man of India and our first Deputy Prime Minister, decided to take a firm stand and ensured that Congress went ahead with the partitioning after convincing Gandhi of the adverse consequences of any other decision. A devastated Gandhi agreed.

Following this and the 1947 Indo-Pakistan War, the INC decided to deny Pakistan’s its due Rs. 55 crores as part of a deal brokered by the Partition Council. Sources of tensions within the nation included Patel, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Patel was of the opinion that Pakistan would use the money to escalate the war against India, an idea that the Mahasabha and the RSS shared. The RSS, for its part, began to press for the deportation of all Muslims in India to Pakistan. Gandhi feared that if Pakistan wasn’t paid its share, agitation from across the border would spill over into Indian territories. Result: he undertook a fast-unto-death demanding that Pakistan be paid in full and the Hindu extremist groups recant their threats. This time, the INC had no choice but to listen to Gandhi. As an outcome of this incident, Apte was led to believe that Gandhi had betrayed Indian sentiments and subsequently instigated Godse to kill Gandhi, which he did. They were convicted and executed on November 15, 1949.

Now would you tell me, ye adrenaline-powered Gandhi-bashers, what wrong did Gandhi do?

Living in eternity

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” – Albert Einstein

The human mind is an ultimate enigma, the phantom bridge between the physical universe and all the mechanics it encompasses and the ethereal that we deign the source of our spirituality, the ‘inexplicable’. How it interprets the immediate two dimensional array of objects in front of one’s eyes makes all the difference when it comes to philosophy, and a revolution in the field is nothing but another (seemingly revolutionary) explanation as to how the mind works. Thinkers for long have attempted to quantify the emotions of the mind, its fantastic imagery, the way it even functions, but to no avail. Earlier on, there was Hinduism, which hypothesizes that there exists a single universal truth called Brahman. Alongside the Brahman is another entity called Maya, who is the epitome of illusion and all that is untrue. Therefore, the universe was a dichotomy not of good and evil, but of truth and untruth. Within each and every one of us, there existed a piece of this Brahman which the sages called the self. It is scripted in ancient texts that some sages and rishis spent thousands of years trying to attain this self and thus be delivered from the cycle of birth and death.

Amongst the various doctrines of Hinduism, the Vedas and the associated Vedantas play an extremely important role. The Vedas are classified into four volumes: Rig, Sama, Atharva, Yajur, whereas Vedanta represents the ‘end of knowledge’, rather the ‘complete knowledge’ (’anta‘, Sanskrit for end). Now, the Vedas have to do with man’s realisation of Brahman, or the universal truth, whereas the Vedanta focus on the illusions of Maya, or the indescribable. The concept of Maya was first introduced by the great philosopher Adi Sankara, and deals with the illusions of the Universe. According to Hinduism, Brahman is the sole universal truth, thereby depriving Maya of its truisms. On the other hand, Brahman is realised only through transcendental meditation to pierce the veil of Maya, there by restoring Maya’s truth. This is the reason she is referred to as the indescribable, since her truth contradicts itself. The concept of Maya itself is extremely difficult to comprehend. Maya is said to have been born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, and she carries forth the characteristics of the universe that make it perceptible, tangible. There is a good metaphor for godliness in this vision: when the Brahman is reflected on Maya, God is the image.

Here is a good example by Sri Sankaracharya as to the definition of Maya.

“Though the emission of ejaculate onto sleeping garments or bedclothes is yielded by the natural experience of copulation in a wet dream, the stain of the garment is perceived as real upon waking whilst the copulation and lovemaking was not true or real. Both sexual partners in the dream are unreal as they are but dream bodies, and the sexual union and conjugation was illusory, but the emission of the generative fluid was real. This is a metaphor for the resolution of duality into lucid unity.”

The meaning of duality mentioned above is twofold. Duality, in many schools of thought, is the representation of the good powers in the Universe, and the malignant powers. Some religious beliefs recognise both as Supreme Powers (bitheism), whereas some deign the evil as the altercation of the good. Maya, in her being, is born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, which in the case of Hinduism, is representative of the good. The other duality in question is a reference to the two ideas of truth and untruth.

Now, the soul, as it were, is true if one wants it to be. I want it to be. Why? Going by my argument:

• Core argument 1: There is only One Absolute Truth.
• Core argument 2: There can only be one True perception of it.
• Parallel argument 1: we are all part of the same Universe.
• Parallel argument 2: we all concur to the same Truth because of CA2 and PA1.
• Parallel argument 3: Sight (or visual perception) of the body that contains the soul is varied.
• Core argument 3: One perception of the Truth recapitulates that the body outside the soul is illusory.
• Parallel argument 4: I think therefore I am; the illusion I perceive as being around me is so because I think that it exists. In other words, the illusion exists    only because I do. If I were not here to be able to perceive it, then the illusion itself does not exist anymore.
• Core argument 4: An element other than the body constitutes the Truth.

The soul is a hypothesis drawn from these conclusions – like in a physics laboratory; a graviton is hypothesised and simultaneously believed to be existent just so particle physics agrees with its Newtonian counterpart.

If Brahman were to be constituted as the soul of the self, then the mind would come to represent the knot that firmly establishes the relationship between matter and consciousness. Matter, again, is but a section of Maya herself, and therefore, the perception of the self as being real and true is derived from Maya. Does this mean the self is also illusory? If so, then the body is only a garment. If not, then the body is real and assumes the form of the Truth. But Brahman being declared the sole truth, the concept of Karma comes into action. The mortal is, now, enchained to a cycle of births and deaths until he attains Moksha from Samsara. Karma is the causality of everything and not the cause itself. Man errs. In doing so, his payment for his sins results in him assuming multiple bodies (or garments). My grandfather used to say that if I trampled an ant, I would be reborn as an ant in my next life. However, if the act is committed unknowingly or at the behest of fulfilling a higher purpose, it is not constituted as a sin. For example, there was this tale of a rich merchant who proudly harboured the thought that he had never committed a sin in his life. However, one day, he stamped a cockroach to death. Paranoid and attempting to release himself from accusations of being a sinner, he comes out of his house and hands the cockroach to Ram the sweeper on the street, and asks him to partake of the sin completely. When judgment day arrives for both the men, the sweeper is not consigned to Hell. The merchant is curious and asks the Lord why. The Lord replies that in being a sweeper, Ram’s duty was to kill little insects that troubled other people, and therefore, he was not sinning in killing those insects. Anyway, the presence of Karma Yoga is what results in rebirths. However, at the end of these cycles of life, when a person attains Moksha, the elements of the Universe are finally understood as being the various fixtures of Maya, including Karma itself.

When I, as a child, was exposed to Hinduism and its various beliefs and scriptures, I was of the impression that they were all true (like how a child thinks the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is true). But I never really thought Hinduism had such firm basis on the argumentative verges of philosophical thinking. I may not know what the Brahman actually stands for other than being the Universal truth, but the reasoning behind it seems intact. The ideas of meditation (as a means to attain Brahman) have totally swept over my head other than for the sole reason of finding peace. But meditation itself has a deep inner meaning I learn. To discover the One true self within ourselves is no simple task. There are tales buried in the many thousand pages of the Hindu scriptures of great sages undertaking strict penances in order to realise Brahman. We, as humans, lay buried beneath the infinitely many layers of Maya and her imagery that, given the complexity of our supposedly illusory lives, we can’t truly recognise Brahman even if we were to stumble across it. In the metaphor I mentioned above, God is the image of Brahman on Maya. It is our belief that godliness is true, and that God as a being does exist. It is a general belief as well as a consensus amongst most believers that the concepts of Maya, Brahman and Karma are very complex and intricate. Many worship God just ask for a favour without really understanding that they are asking the True Self hidden within them for a favour! It is the understanding of these principles that delivers Hinduism its true standing.

'Interview' with a fundamentalist

The Ayodhya debate has been raging in India for hundreds of years, and with the December 6, 1992, demolition of the Babri mosque, the issue emerged with greater focus turned on it with many thanks to the politicisation of the debate. India is a secular nation, and before beginning any such debate involving religious fanatics and politicians, the secularity of the core subject must be stressed. Religion and politics must not be mixed until secularism is to be discarded. A nation founded in the name of God must be run by a religious congress and none else. This is to ensure that the interests of the citizens of the state are always foremost in the minds of those who make decisions pertaining to the future of the state. The same principle extends to a nation founded on a secular basis: the only decisions made by those in power should concern the development of the state as a whole, while also keeping in mind that all men are equal. After 1992, with the steady emergence of groups such as the Shiv Sena, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and anti-secular fundamentalist leaders such as Narenda Modi, the moderation of the oft-baseless hatred amongst the Hindus for Muslims and the Muslims for Hindus has become a momentous task. 

I had the good fortune of meeting up with one such person in my college; let’s just call him BT for now. I don’t know how the topic came up, but eventually, the both of us and Vohra finally managed to steer things into Indian politics and religious fanaticism. When BT finally opened up, the two of us were in for a sumptuous treat consisting exquisitely of brazen moronism. Let me just tell you that before the evening concluded, one of the worst lines I’d ever heard from a guy older than me was when an engineering gradute told me a few minutes prior to his job interview, “I’m not worried about the interview, yaar! Which ever way it goes, I’ll just take a few lakhs from dad, play poker (a double-or-nothing quip thrown in for good measure) and settle down in life!” Perhaps I’ve not met my fair share of such people, or perhaps I’m yet to fully understand the harmless nature of the doggie that barks, but such ‘decisions’ always manage to give me a kick. I’m only left asking “how” and “why” to the walls.

So yeah, BT began with what seemed like a step by step disintegration of the political scenario of India as seen through the eyes of a reasonable man. The Indian National Congress is in command for a second consecutive term, with Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi at the helm. The Bharatiya Janata Party, with a decisive defeat in the 2009 General Elections, has been forced to being a blunt opposition in the face of mindless capitalist drives by those in power. Money is making its way into all forms of life and living with no regard for traditional and cultural values. This could have gone on for as long BT was pissed off with the setup, which he was, so I began to question him as to why he felt that way. In a snap, he replied, “I hate all Muslims in India. The Hindus are a much superior race and must be dealth with so.“

I hadn’t known BT much before that particular evening. He was just a fourth year student here and a happy-go-lucky sort of guy. There were hundreds of people like him here, and that doesn’t have to mean anything, at least first. But seeing an educated individual hailing from an affluent family speaking like that is sure to give anyone a jolt. Although I may not be in a position to question with all authority here, I would like to do it to his reply for the sake of it. And I did. I’m sure BT mistook me for someone who was not very well informed about Indian history, and so, he took me (with him, I think) into the recesses of our past.

Lessons on how to demolish a mosque

The Mughal Empire, which ruled over a vast swath of India from 1526 to 1857, is apparently the root cause of everything. On an unfounded assumption* that Mir Baqi, the chief commanding officer of the Mughal army under Babur, tore down a temple at the sacred site of Ayodhya, which is considered the birthplace of Lord Ram (an avatar of Lord Vishnu), in order to construct the now non-existent Babri Masjid. Furthermore, Babur, followed by Akbar, also commenced the forced mass conversion of Hindus to Islam. “In the process, millions of Hindus became Muslims through what constitutes a needless process of reformation whose sole goal was the sustenance of the Islamic Persianate.” I am only willing to concede that point. Yes, the Mughals wronged severely in doing that. They could very well have chosen to uniformatise the opportunities available to all their subjects instead of ensuring that opportunities would be available only to those who adhered to the views of the controlled-state. All the same, that was around 500 years ago, and let it rest. No?! Why not? Fast forward to the India-Pakistan War of 1965, where Pakistan attempted to infiltrate Kashmir with insurgents in order to precipitate an opposition to Indian rule in the region. “The Muslims, all of them, their whole community, were responsible for this.” If you don’t mind, jump another 6 years to 1971, with the third India-Pakistan war in only 24 years of independence. “India dealt blow after to those bastards.“

All that sufficed to be a good introduction for BT. Now came the issues “that mattered”. By now, he had deciphered the look on my face to be disbelief, and accordingly proceeded to resolve things for me. First in line was the forced conversion issue. “So many devout Hindus were lost to the faith and forced to become people they were not. That is just not done! Today, it is up to us to ensure that what was rightfully ours be returned to us. All the Hindus lost hundreds of years ago must now be reborn. The only solution is to massacre all Muslim men in India (yes, you read that just right) and take the Muslim women into Hindu households through wedlock. That way, the Muslim women will be converted to Hinduism and the babies born therefrom will also be Hindu babies.” I opened my mouth just then, but he cut me short. “See, if Vohra here marries a Muslim woman, his child will be a Vohra. The male gene factor will be carried forth into the baby; I’m sure the child will not be called some ‘Mulla’ or ‘Khan’ or ‘Tikka’ or whatever.” I could say nothing after that. How could I? This little guy sitting next to me was talking absolute logic, and any logical and reasonable man would agree with it!

Issue #2: the Indian National Congress. “What’s wrong with the Indian National Congress?” (In my mind, there was a voice: “How can you ask that question?!”) “Arre, starting from Gandhi and Nehru, all of them were [expletives]s. This Gandhi [expletive] let all the Muslims stay in India. How could he do that? He has no sense of our griefs or what?! And then there was the [expletive] Nehru. You know one thing?“ “What?” “Nehru slept with Mountbatten’s wife! You don’t know that? And then, after Nehru came Indira Gandhi. She was another [expletive]! When the Sikhs of Punjab wanted a separate state, she imposed an emergency on the whole country and got her way with it! These mindless [expletive]s don’t know how to rule the nation! The people who voted for them to come into power should all be killed.“

“Tell me, if you were to vote to decide the future of your country, who would you vote for?” “I’d vote for anyone who I think is fit to rule the nation.” “Arre, that is wrong! You must be proud to be a Hindu, and this is Hindustan. You know what Hindustan means? It means ‘the [home] of Hindus’, and that is the way it should be. The INC came to power only through the votes of the Muslim people. Why do you think that is?” “Why?” “Because no sane Hindu would vote for them. By letting loose their grip on Kashmir and allowing Muslims to consturct the PoK [Pakistan-occupied Kashmir], and by allowing for unfair Muslim quotas in a Hindu nation, the INC has pocketed all of those bastards! They are no different from the Mughals!“

At this point, Vohra, who was till then engrossed in a futile RA2 skirmish, chipped in. “What’s wrong with quotas?” “What’s wrong with quotas! Arre, for example, if I have scored 70% in an examination and if a Muslim fellow gets 60%, he will get the preference in a university which has that quota. Isn’t that a disgrace to my education? I am losing a seat for nothing! The government is giving aids to everyone in the nation, all the farmers and even the poor… they are giving books and the opportunity to attend a school. Why do you think the ranking system exists? If I have ranked more than some other guy, it means I have scored more marks than him. If a university admits students on the basis of the rank, then how is it feasible to have quotas?!” Vohra: “Than don’t you think you should also be crying out against the state quotas? Like how institutions have a specific number of seats set apart for people from their own state?” No response. Vohra: “Ok, let me give you another example. In this college, haven’t you noticed how the Tamilians stick with the Tamilians, how the Punjabis stick with the Punjabis, how the Telugu people stick to other Telugu people? It’s because everyone in this world feels better when in the company of their own kind. When such quotas can exist, it only makes sense to have the other quotas as well.”

“Ok, but that doesn’t explain quotas for SC/STs! These slum dwelling people, they are doing quite well these days. If they think they are deserving enough to receive higher education, why not make use of the money the government gives them? Every year, the government is setting apart hundreds of crores for them, and those people are only wasting the money on black activities. When the time comes, what sense does it make for me to lose my seat for people like them?!“

Vohra: “Listen! It is easy for you to sit here on my bed and lift a finger, but have you ever tried washing your own clothes? Have you ever tried sitting down for four hours by a pool of dirty water and removing the stains from your own underwear? You spend two dirhams once every two weekends to grumble about a washing machine that does not do YOUR job too well! Have you ever had to come back from college on a hot day and then immediately leave for work in a garage just because your father and mother aren’t able to sweat enough for your dinner? Then you’ll know [expletive]!” No response. “I’m sure that when your father was your age, he didn’t go to his friend’s room, sit on his bed and sing his tale of woes. I’m sure that when he was 21, he would have begun earning, whether it be in tens or crores, just so you, his son, could have a good life and a good education. What you’re saying is simply not what I would expect from an educated fellow!”

There was a dense lull in the room after this. I had succesfully managed to divert my attention to the laptop screen, where Vohra had resumed his campaign, while BT sat in silent self-contemplation. However, this truce did not last long. Soon, BT looked as though he had warmed up enough to provoke and elicit a response from either one of us with this: “You, my friends, are not getting the gist of what I am trying to say here. We are a Hindu country, and Muslims have no place in it. You are a Tamil fellow-” [to me] “-and you can never fully understand the extent to which the people near the Indian border during the partition were harassed. Do you know that Atari train incident, in Punjab, near the Wagah border? That train was full of peaceful Hindu devotees. All the Muslims in the region mercilessly halted and encircled it, and set it on fire. I will remember that incident because it is burnt in my heart. They wrote on the train, ‘Pakistan’s gift to India’. When we reciprocated later, I felt so happy, you know that! We wrote ‘India’s gift to Pakistan’ – I still have the image saved on my laptop. It was the perfect response.“

Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray

After that, BT had to leave. He had one last thing to say before he exit the room, though. “At this point, we must decide to give the reins of the nations to more capable people. Some years back, we made Abdul Kalam our President. Alright, he made some nukes for us, but is that a reason to empower him with complete command of our armed forces? We could have satisfied him very much by just doubling his salary. This nation has no sense of purpose. Who knows, he might have even sold a few nuclear missiles to Pakistan as a side business. Can you refute me on that?” I could not. “We should make Narendra Modi our President, Bal Thackeray our Prime Minister, and Lal Krishna Advani our Chief Justice. Then, the nation will know.“

What will it know, I wonder.

—-

While we continued to play the game after that, BT returned later in the evening. This time, he seemed hell-bent on making me ‘admit’ that I was proud to be a Hindu, which would have been in line with BT’s belief that he was more proud to be a Hindu than he was proud to be Punjabi or Indian. At that time, I simply refused to say it not because it would appease him, but because I hadn’t really given the idea any thought ever. Now, I just think why importance must lie at all in being the follower of a certain faith. In my honest opinion, that is the mistake. When one confuses one’s faith to be the guiding rule for one’s decisions in a secular state, turbulence is sure to follow. Even in a non-secular state, due importance must be given to the individual and his or her choices, greater than to the wishes of the state. The state exists only if its people do. Individual actions being generalised to the extent of blaming his or her whole community for it is plainly inexcusable. One must be taught to teach oneself, willingly learn from his or her mistakes, than be given the luxury of blaming a collective. That is childish mob behaviour, and such people have no place in a society built on reason. They must either change as tomorrow demands or stay one with the past. As for religion: what every religion preaches is not just the belief in a God, but certain values that a devotee must be imbued with in order to attain deliverance from one’s sins if there be any. Screaming “I am proud to be a Hindu!” and “Kill everyone who has wronged us!” is absolute shit when you don’t follow one of Hinduism’s foremost values, that of tolerance.

Blessed Death Psychedelium

Most of my posts concern themselves with how perception varies from person to person, and how understanding (of anything and everything around us) is innately tied up as a Gordian knot with it. It takes an Alexander to cut through it, and that is what constitutes self realisation. Anyway, today, I was pondering on death. All my previous contentions were as to how the experience of living seems to be the same even though its perception is varied. On stumbling upon the concept of death, I understood the meaning of the inevitability it carried around dignifiedly. Even though what we make of everything that comes between birth and death is different, the beginning and the end remain the same for everyone. They cannot be changed nor altered, and remain perpetually unasked for; a part of the package, if you will.

Suppose that there is a table. On that table are two objects, for example two wooden cubes – one painted blue and one painted red. If the table were to represent reality, and the cubes represent birth and death, you are now witness to the way I take to these phenomena. In one of my previous posts, I had described about the concept of Maya and Brahman in Hinduism. Maya is the universal illusion, whereas Brahman is the Universal Truth. Truth and realism are one and the same – although their perception is not. Truth is an absolute concept. If person A says person B is not speaking the truth, then it may or may not be an assumption on A’s part that B is not speaking what constitutes A’s realism. In other words, A sees something in one way, and the bone of contention happens to be that B does not see things in the same way. If the ability to conceive varied perception was unavailable, then realism will cease to exist. Only the Universal Truth will be present and understandable. 

However, the untruth and illusion are not the same. The untruth is the negation of the truth. On the other hand, illusion is the perceived truth – or realism as we see it. Therefore, under our perusal, we have:

1. Truth
2. Illusion
3. Untruth

Birth is truth. Death is truth. Realism is illusion. The children of Maya are not necessarily illusions. The can of deodorant in front of my eyes is illusion. The fragrance it emits is true. The lava lamp above the shelf is illusion. The light it emits is true.

That being established, I now come to the concept of the soul. The soul, as it were, is true if one wants it to be. I want it to be. Why? Going by my argument:

• Core argument 1: There is only One Absolute Truth.
• Core argument 2: There can only be one True perception of it.
• Parallel argument 1: we are all part of the same Universe.
• Parallel argument 2: we all concur to the same Truth because of CA2 and PA1.
• Parallel argument 3: Sight (or visual perception) of the body that contains the soul is varied.
• Core argument 3: One perception of the Truth recapitulates that the body outside the soul is illusory.
• Parallel argument 4: I think therefore I am; the illusion I perceive as being around me is so because I think that it exists. In other words, the illusion exists only because I do. If I were not here to be able to perceive it, then the illusion itself does not exist anymore.
• Core argument 4: An element other than the body constitutes the Truth.

The soul is a hypotheses drawn from these conclusions – like in a physics laboratory, a graviton is hypothesised and simultaneously believed to be existent just so particle physics agrees with its Newtonian counterpart. So, getting back to the topic at hand, I believe the soul to be existent. As a side note, I would like to stress the independency of the soul as such from religion and religious beliefs. Pondering on one’s existential truths need not have anything to do with God or any of His minions. Yes, I am a religious and God-fearing man, but that only means my Absolute Truth takes the form of a Supreme Being. To some, it may be moral values. To some others, it may be power. It can be anything. But everything that has nothing to do with the form of the Truth doesn’t have to be religious.

To be sitting on the floor of a 80 sq. ft. bedroom and contentedly typing away on a Razer (Arctosa!) keyboard is my realism. And thus is born life: as each one of us takes to Maya and Brahman in a unique way, we come across perceptions and experiences. Just as my senses bring to life the illusions of Maya, my experiences tell me that I am walking on the road that is life. Just as my experiences tell me that changes are happening and that I am finally blessed with the ability to track them, my death will tell me that my soul will break free from the container that is the body. Some people take to these things warily, and I don’t blame them. If we had been born such animals with the inability to look downwards at our paws, then mathematics would have been a distorted and bizarre dream. We are because we think. What we think of is up to ourselves. I believe in there being a Universal Truth. To a person to whom such a thing is absurd, his realism and his truths and untruths will lie elsewhere. The beauty of it all is that such things as the Truth and the Untruth will always exist in one form or the other. Our realism, as a last word, exists because of perception but, more so, in the self-assertion that whatever is perceived is real.    

Maya, Brahman & Karma: The True Standing of Hinduism

(I’ve written this more like a rhapsody because I got terribly confused in between!)

Amongst the various doctrines of Hinduism, the Vedas and the associated Vedantas play an extremely important role. The Vedas are classified into four volumes: Rig, Sama, Atharva, Yajur, whereas Vedanta represents the ‘end of knowledge’, rather the ‘complete knowledge’ (‘anta‘, Sanskrit for end). Now, the Vedas have to do with man’s realisation of Brahman, or the universal truth, whereas the Vedanta focus on the illusions of Maya, or the indescribable. The concept of Maya was first introduced by the great philosopher Adi Sankara, and deals with the illusions of the Universe. According to Hinduism, Brahman is the sole universal truth, thereby depriving Maya of its truisms. On the other hand, Brahman is realised only through transcendental meditation to pierce the veil of Maya, there by restoring Maya‘s truth. This is the reason she is referred to as the indescribable, since her truth contradicts itself. The concept of Maya itself is extremely difficult to comprehend. Maya is said to have been born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, and she carries forth the characteristics of the universe that make it perceptible, tangible. There is a good metaphor for godliness in this vision: when the Brahman is reflected on Maya, God is the image.

Maya

Here is a good example by Sri Sankaracharya as to the definition of Maya.

“Though the emission of ejaculate onto sleeping garments or bedclothes is yielded by the natural experience of copulation in a wet dream, the stain of the garment is perceived as real upon waking whilst the copulation and lovemaking was not true or real. Both sexual partners in the dream are unreal as they are but dream bodies, and the sexual union and conjugation was illusory, but the emission of the generative fluid was real. This is a metaphor for the resolution of duality into lucid unity.”

The meaning of duality mentioned above is twofold. Duality, in many schools of thought, is the representation of the good powers in the Universe, and the malignant powers. Some religious beliefs recognise both as Supreme Powers (bitheism), whereas some deign the evil as the altercation of the good. Maya, in her being, is born from the dream of the Supreme Lord, which in the case of Hinduism, is representative of the good. The other duality in question is a reference to the two elements of body and mind.

If Brahman were to be constituted as the soul of the self, then the mind would come to represent the knot that firmly establishes the relationship between matter and consciousness. Matter, again, is but a section of Maya herself, and therefore, the perception of the self as being real and true is derived from Maya. Does this mean the self is also illusory? If so, then the body is only a garment. If not, then the body is real and assumes the form of the Truth. But Brahman being declared the sole truth, the concept of Karma comes into action. The mortal is, now, enchained to a cycle of births and deaths until he attains Moksha from Samsara. Karma is the causality of everything and not the cause itself. Man errs. In doing so, his payment for his sins results in him assuming multiple bodies (or garments). My grandfather used to say that if I trampled an ant, I would be reborn as an ant in my next life. However, if the act is committed unknowingly or at the behest of fulfilling a higher purpose, it is not constituted as a sin. For example, there was this tale of a rich merchant who proudly harboured the thought that he had never committed a sin in his life. However, one day, he stamped a cockroach to death. Paranoid and attempting to release himself from accusations of being a sinner, he comes out of his house and hands the cockroach to Ram the sweeper on the street, and asks him to partake of the sin completely. When judgment day arrives for both the men, the sweeper is not consigned to Hell. The merchant is curious and asks the Lord why. The Lord replies that in being a sweeper, Ram’s duty was to kill little insects that troubled other people, and therefore, he was not sinning in killing those insects. Anyway, the presence of Karma Yoga is what results in rebirths. However, at the end of these cycles of life, when a person attains Moksha, the elements of the Universe are finally understood as being the various fixtures of Maya, including Karma itself.

When I, as a child, was exposed to Hinduism and its various beliefs and scriptures, I was of the impression that they were all true (like how a child thinks the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is true). But I never really thought Hinduism had such firm basis on the argumentative verges of philosophical thinking. I  may not know what the Brahman actually stands for other than being the Universal truth, but the reasoning behind it seems intact. The ideas of meditation (as a means to attain Brahman) have totally swept over my head other than for the sole reason of finding peace. But meditation itself has a deep inner meaning I learn. To discover the One true self within ourselves is no simple task. There are tales buried in the many thousand pages of the Hindu scriptures of great sages undertaking strict penances in order to realise Brahman. We, as humans, lay buried beneath the infinitely many layers of Maya and her imagery that, given the complexity of our supposedly illusory lives, we can’t truly recognise Brahman even if we were to stumble across it. In the metaphor I mentioned above, God is the image of Brahman on Maya. It is our belief that godliness is true, and that God as a being does exist. It is a general belief as well as a consensus amongst most believers that the concepts of Maya, Brahman and Karma are very complex and intricate. Many worship God just ask for a favour without really understanding that they are asking the True Self hidden within them for a favour! It is the understanding of these principles that delivers Hinduism its true standing.

Who is an atheist?

I want to begin with discussing the question: does our past really play a role in the shaping of our future? If so, how does it? I was reading the Srimad Bhagavatam, a translation and transliteration of the holy Vedas by Vyasa, a Sanskrit scholar, and was browsing through the Twelfth canto when I found a section on the Karma Yoga. I could not understand the slokas, and the translation and meaning sections also didn’t help much. It was too deep, too blue. I gave up, but not before reading the summary of the chapter: the Karma Yoga dealt with one’s actions and their reformation in order to live a full, wholesome life.

Now, just consider the contemporary scenario. The world around is powered by science, and education plummets us forward and ahead of the illiterate. There is nothing to be done, nothing to be learnt or taught, if there is no education. In turn, the education that powers us does so by filtering out an immense amount of information, thereby creating knowledge. Our knowledge is most probably restricted to those matters that aid in the improvisation of our lives. Education imparts perception, perception imbues understanding, understanding delivers belief. I for one cannot simply accept when someone says there is a God. I need proof because I deign myself a man of science. I base my faiths in logic and reason. They have suited me well in many matters and thus, I effect that they aid me in my religious principles as well. For, religion is hollow sans belief, is it not? Anyway, I simply can’t come to terms with God – science presents me with the option of basing my faith in some other cause, a cause that is logical and reasonable. Let God exist for those who cannot switch to science and its “explanations” abruptly (I’m, of course, talking of the elderly, who saw drastic changes in their lives as they moved through the Industrial Revolution), or to those who consider science’s prowess a sign that points to it being another of God’s innumerable creations. For that matter, science itself might not be absolute but that’s a different issue. What I’m saying is that intelligence has transformed me into an atheist, but not a complete one at that. I would like to believe in a God at the borders of science, where logic itself fails at explaining phenomena like the structure of space before the big bang.

बुद्धीन्ध्रियार्था रूपेण |
जनानाम भाति ताधाश्रयम ||
ध्र्श्यथ्वाव्यतिरैखाभ्याम |
आध्यांतावाद अवस्तु यात ||

Therefore, in the absence of a spiritual power or, say, the Absolute Truth, my future continues to be the enigma it is in the absence of Karma Yoga. There is no Heaven or Hell to judge me, I am not part of a cycle of birth and death, I don’t have to pay for my sins by the eye-for-an-eye principle. It is my mind which is at work behind all these things, and it is me who is responsible.

Karma Yoga dwells on those sections of life that are sometimes derived from just experience (the past). If a car hits me while I’m crossing the road and I break my leg, some would say I might have broken someone’s leg in the past like that. Even then, if I have, I would not beat myself up for committing that sin. I would blame it on me, my decisions and values, my behaviour, my self. I would place my values and morals above my spirituality. Even in such cases, Karma Yoga seems to resurface when you subconsciously establish a connection between your past and your present – a form of the placebo effect.

* * *

Some elements that guide you in life are, like I said, your education, your understanding of the world derived from your perceptions. Who you are is completely by determined by these elements and there is no refuting that. If your parents have screwed you over, it is you who has decided to blame them for it and continue being screwed, instead of learning from your mistakes and building your strengths and weaknesses. When you believe that your past is connected to your present, it is your education which is being dwelt upon: when you try and recollect as to why you performed such an act in the past, the lessons you may not have learnt at that time are costing you your health or wealth now. The spiritual in us seeps into our personality when we refuse to accept our insecurities for what they are and, instead, choose to mask them with reasons that suitably plug the hole. Theism only makes us feel secure in a small period of time, and it holds us and hugs us all through our lives if only we trust our minds with it.

One of the greatest political leaders and scholars I know is Periyar (original name: E. V. Ramasamy), a Dravidian social activist in Tamil Nadu, India. An important contribution of his to the Indian society was the awakening of the non-Brahmins, and the instilling of self-respect in them. His many speeches and articles and essays spoke about the Brahmins who claimed to be superior just because they controlled the temples and performed archanas. He implored the people to realise and understand that spirituality and godliness was not everything: he believed that everything was what it was only if we, the people, made it to be. Above everything stood us, our morals and values, us as who we were and us as what our duties were. God was no obligation.

That religion is only as strong as the weakest believer is very true. More than those who devoutly believe in a God and His/Her prowess, there are those who use religion as a mask, as a shield. The following is a quote that summarises what most atheists believe in, in that we are only non-believers, not fundamentalists.

“…the talk of the atheist should be considered thoughtless and erroneous. The thing I call god… that makes all people equal and free, the god that does not stop free thinking and research, the god that does not ask for money, flattery and temples can certainly be an object of worship. For saying this much I have been called an atheist, a term that has no meaning“

– Periyar

However, I am an atheist – in that I believe in Periyar’s definition of God, and therefore am inevitably an atheist because I don’t believe in God as He is otherwise. I don’t know if I am an agnostic. But I am not an atheist or an agnostic like some of the many people I know: people who think intelligence recapitulates atheism. I have reasons for my choices, and I have given them.

Nietzche & The Vedas: The Contradiction Trap

You all know of Friedrich Nietzche, of course, as the founder of the nihilistic basis of thought. The Vedas are ancient texts which were written some 4,000 years ago by Indian sages. Although it was passed down orally from generation to generation, Vyasadeva, the manifested literary incarnation of God (Hinduism), was insipired by their profound wisdom and pit them down in the form of Srimad Bhagavatam. Now, the Bhagavatam consists of many different chapters grouped as cantos, and each chapter deals a specific element of either the Supreme Being, the Universe, Nature, or man. A recurring phrase throughout the books is that of the ‘Absolute Truth’, a reference to pure Krishna consciousness, the ultimate realisation that stems from completely understanding the world.

My father had all the 18 volumes of the text, and when we shifted out residence from Chennai (India) to Uppsala (Sweden), we had to separate the set into those books which we could afford to carry (or wanted to finish reading) and those that could be left behind. I think only two or three books made it that way. One among them, the Twelfth Canto, caught my eye. It dealt with the annihilation of false egos and the glaring mistakes and faults of the Kali yuga which would lead to the downfall of mankind in the Great Flood. Here is a line from the canto (in Sanskrit):

na hi sathyasya naanaathvam|
avidhvaan yadhi manyathe||
naanaathvam chidhrayor yadhvaj|
jyothishor vaathayor iva||

It translates as:

“There is no material duality in the absolute truth. The duality perceived by an ignorant person is like the difference between the sky contained in an empty pot and the sky outside the pot, or the difference between the reflection of the sun in water and the sun itself in the sky, or the difference between the vital air within one living body and that within another body.“

The duality mentioned, if you will observe, is a relative duality. Vyasa says the duality is restricted to materialism, which is also false and illusory. When you perceive an object, the perception assumes meaning when you can observe the effect of the object in its environs. For example, you can know the saturating power of water only when you see and feel a damp cloth or sponge. You can understand the burning power of fire only you feel the heat or when you see ashes. Therefore, the duality in materialism simplifies to the duality of cause and effect. Yet again, the effect of a phenomenon deserves perception only when the cause is perceptible, and there can be no effect if there was no cause. But, as per our earlier argument, the cause itself is realised through but the effect it has come to give birth to. Does this mean the cause and effect of any event are relative to each other? Yes, it does.

Duality?

A: The fire is burning.

B: How do you know?

C: You can feel the heat.

A – cause; C – effect

____________________

A: The fire is burning.

B: How do you know?

C: Why? Don’t you feel the heat?

D: No.

E: Then, it is not fire but something else.

If you were to deductively continue along these lines, you will observe that materialism is proven to be false and illusory. The Vedas decry it, and uphold its defeat in the search for the truth. Everything that has a beginning will have an end, and everything with a beginning and an end will beguile cause and effect, and therefore must be shunned from the self. For example, the cycle of life and death culminates in the attainment of Moksha, or deliverance, and through the deliverance, man attains Heaven. Therefore, the cycle of life and death, in this case, becomes an illusion, and everything contained within dissolves into a tiny atom of the Absolute Truth.

Now, Friedrich Nietzche’s arguments are also along the same lines, although he also furtively discarded the concept of God Himself. Nietzche argues that objective morality does not exist in this world, thereby diffusing the values of objective morals with which to prefer one action over the other. Therefore, even if a God exists, humans have no obligation to worship them. The following is a famous quote by Nietzche.

“To the clean are all things clean’ — thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): ‘The world itself is a filthy monster.’ For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE — the backworldsmen! TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside, — SO MUCH is true! There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!“

The relativism established in perception by Nietzche is unmistakable. “To the clean all things are clean; to the swine, all things become swinish!” – a statement that purports the perceptional reflectivism, a relativism on its own, that becomes clear when the Vedas are taken up as reference. Although the Vedas assume a Supreme Being in order to quantify the cause, they give the Supreme Being no end – fortifying the effectlessness of the cause. Therefore, the Supreme Being is no illusion and exists. However, this is an argument wherein the posteriori argument and the priori justification resemble the head and tail of Kekule’s snake!

Anyway, Nietzche’s nihilism seems to have been borrowed from the Vedas with a few aspects removed. Either which way, the absence of a moral absolute as put forth by both sources is the same: the Vedas argue for no such thing, but by condemning materialism the morals established thus also find themselves set aside. Our search for an absolute being is vain. We are trapped in our own contradictions: we live in a materialistic world, we define our own morals. The absolute we look for can not manifest in such an environment wherein the Creation, a part of the Absolute Truth, dwells, for the reaches of our argument only span something that does not exist. “To the clean all things are clean“. The only truth is the self when everything perceived by the self and everything understood by the self is a reflection of the self again. I am because I am. There is no disputing that. The fire is fire to me if I am me while the fire is: I have to be consciously aware of the self while I touch the fire, and if it is hot, then I describe the fire as ‘hot’ while taking for granted that I am me. Everything else is there because I am. I am the cause. I am the effect because I perceive it and make it seem real.

Except, of course, love failures!

Natura

Being a Hindu, I will never know what true paganism means. We Hindus worship idols, which total up to 33 crores, and we have all sorts of rituals all through the year. We follow the lunar calendar like many other religions, and most of our prayers involve the invocation of nature’s blessings. However, this is strictly limited to Paganism as a religion, as a belief wherein we humans believe that nature and the forces She bears are the source of all life and the spirit that ceaselessly consumes them through their journey in time. For me, paganism also assumes a different form. Perhaps, in fact, it might not be paganism but a placebo influenced largely by my upbringing. Anyway, I have noticed that when I am in the worst of my moods, the clouding of the skies relieves everything. I feel as though a new beginning that was promised somehwere in my bleakly recollected history has come to life and also at the right time. Does nature really influence us so much, or is it just me? I need to know, because such a thinkg has not happened once or twice to me, but lots of times. I prefer to stay indoors in such weather, but while inside, I become hyperactive. It feels as though the cycle of day and night has been broken just to give mankind a glimpse of what else exists out there in the mighty universe and the forces it represents: I take this as a paganistic metaphor that God is watching over us, whomsoever He may be. However, when I am down and the sun is shining bright, it feels as though nothing has changed around me. It feels as if no one is bothered that I feel so. I mean, I know I am getting a tad too fundamental here, but I can’t help but notice the impact of natural phenomena on the human mind, and how it shatters all perception and establishes some of its own, whether right or wrong being out of question. In a few of my older posts, I have mentioned how I take to the rains: as if they were cleansing showers sent up from up above, to cleanse us all off our sins and to return us to the womb whence we came as who we really were, as who were born, as whom we should live as, and as whom we should leave our mark upon this good earth. I don’t really know if paganism is all this, less than this, or may be more, but I don’t have the time to look up on all of that. As long as it continues, as long as this seemingly inexplicable impact continues to have its ways whenever it finds the need to, I will rest assured that mankind is, indeed, in safe hands.