Tuesday, January 31, 2006

"Where are the poor Hindus ?" -- Francois Gautier

Francois Gautier writes on the danger to Indian culture and tradition from the anti-India rule of Sonia Gandhi.

Francois Gautier writes on Rediff:
Where are the poor Hindus?

January 31, 2006

The consequences of Sonia Gandhi becoming what the French call the eminence grise -- one who controls everything from behind the scenes -- for India are not only visible for all those who care to look, but also have far-reaching -- and maybe irreversible -- consequences.

Occultism, in the ancient sense, was the manipulation of forces which cannot be seen, but which constantly clash in the world.

One could say politics is the art of controlling these forces, overtly and covertly. At the top, great leaders create their own occultism. Their very presence generates certain atmospheres, which make or unmake revolutions.

At the outset, one should first say the world is not Black and White, Good and Evil, Superman versus the Bad Guys, as the Americans would like us to believe.

Hindu groups need not demonise Sonia Gandhi.

She probably was a good wife to Rajiv Gandhi, a good daughter-in-law to Indira Gandhi. And by all accounts she is a good mother to her children, judging by the way they dote on her.

One also hears first-hand reports about her concern for smaller people, her dignity in the suffering that befell her when her husband was blown to pieces, and her courtesy with visitors.

That said, what is happening in India at the moment makes me profoundly uneasy.

I am a Westerner and a born Christian. Yet, I find it absurd that in a country of one billion people -- one of the most ancient civilisations of this world -- Indians cannot find an Indian to govern themselves.

There are many good and talented people within the Congress. And one wonders what is this unconscious, occult urge that makes them look up to someone, who, however well-meaning, is alien to their culture.

Let us first look at the visible, overt consequences of Sonia Gandhi's supreme leadership.

There is, of course,the Quattrocchi affair. Did Law Minister Hansraj Bhardwaj order to defreeze the Italian's British bank accounts only to please Sonia? Or did Bhardwaj do that on her orders, even though the Central Bureau of Investigation took the blame?

Then, we have the Iraqi Oil for Food scam.

Could it be that the go ahead for K Natwar Singh and his son's Iraq trip came from Sonia through her trusted aides?

And what about Kashmir? Is Sonia planning some concessions, which in effect will deprive India of this most ancient and sacred piece of earth?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just held talks with People's Conference chief Sajjad Ghani Lone. What is General Musharraf's game, now that he has dazzled the West, who laid everywhere a red carpet for him?

Is the man who conceived Kargil sincere?

Pervez Musharraf is a clever magician. Nobody in India has found anything to confirm that he is actually holding talks with the Hurriyat leaders, who want Kashmir to separate from India and most likely go to Pakistan.

There is in India an obsession and a fear of a small country that has lost the four wars it initiated with India.

Then, most dangerous of all, we have Nepal.

Because of the intense pressure of India's Communists, India is pushing the king of Nepal into China's arms (Beijing just delivered 25 trucks of weapons to Nepal) and Pakistan, which is opening consular posts everywhere.

If Nepal is taken over by the Maoists, India will be surrounded by three intensely hostile entities: Tibet (under China), Nepal and the valley of Kashmir, which Pakistan wants by force or guile. All of these are on a height, which gives tremendous strategic advantage.

Dr Singh keeps praising China, but there is no doubt that Beijing is New Delhi's deadliest enemy. It does not need to fight a war, as it is invading India with cheap products, encircling India by making deals with hostile nations, beating India in the energy sector and quietly blocking India's entry into the United Nations Security Council.

Is Sonia aware of all this? If she is, then she does not act in India's best interests.

Let's come to the covert, occult signs.

I am a little uneasy when I see how much Christianity is taking over India under the reign of Sonia Gandhi.

According to the 2001 census, there are about 2.34 million Christians in India; not even 2.5 per cent of the nation, a negligible amount.

Yet, there are today five Christian chief ministers in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

I share with Sonia a love for India. Like her, I have lived in this country for over 30 years. Like her, I have married an Indian.

But nevertheless, since she is at the top, Christian conversions in India seem to have gone into overdrive.

More than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries are involved in conversion activities across different states. In Tripura, there were no Christians at Independence; there are 120,000 today, a 90 per cent increase since 1991.

The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1,710 Christians in 1961, but 1.2 million today, as well as 780 churches!

In Andhra Pradesh, churches are coming up every day in far-flung villages and there was even an attempt to set up one near Tirupati.

Many northeast separatist movements are not only Christian dominated, but sometimes function with the covert backing of the missionaries.

In Kerala, particularly in the poor coastal districts, you find 'miracle boxes' in local churches. The gullible villager writes out a paper mentioning his wish: A fishing boat, a loan for a pucca house, fees for the son's schooling, etc. And a few weeks later, the miracle happens!

Of course, the whole family converts, making others in the village follow suit.

During the tsunami, entire Dalit villages in Tamil Nadu were converted to Christianity with the lure of money.

Then there is this rapid Westernisation of India.

There are good things in the West -- its material consciousness, care for nature, logical mind -- but it is nevertheless in crisis. Its Church is in disarray, three marriages out of five end in divorce and some children need to go to psychiatrists before they start shooting other children.

Yet, if you have a look at most of the mainstream English-speaking Indian magazines and newspapers today, you will notice that all their cover stories deal with Western concepts, that they are looking at India from a Western point of view, such as talking about 'New Age' spirituality.

As if spirituality is new to India!

You will notice that there is never any reference to India's great past, or to India's philosophy, or medicine -- which, by the way, is becoming fashionable in the West.

Brinda Karat went after Swami Ramdev and Ayurveda, the oldest medical system still in practice in the world, although she did not get much support.

Notice also that when the Shankaracharya of Kanchi is arrested, a section of the Indian intelligentsia applauds, though he has still not been proven guilty.

And that when a new Pope is elected in Rome, we get in India hours of live coverage and countless cover stories.

The occult effect of it is that nobody realises that in a country of 850 million Hindus, you have now a Sikh prime minister -- when Sikhs constitute only 2 per cent of the country's population; a Muslim President -- when Muslims make up 10 per cent of India; a Communist Speaker in Parliament -- when Communism is moribund the world over; and a Western and Christian supreme leader, when Westerners constitute only 0.0001 per cent of India and Christians 3 per cent.

Where are the poor Hindus?

What will happen if India becomes enough Westernised at the social level, Christianised and Islamised at the religious level and taken over by the Marxists at the intellectual level?

Not only will India lose its unique soul and just become another Western clone in the developing world, but the earth will lose something very precious.

It will lose an ancient knowledge, a irreplaceable way of being, which makes even the most ordinary farmer or coolie carry something unique in his or her genes: A tolerance, an acceptance that god can take many forms, an innate philosophical mind, an understanding that there is something beyond us, beyond death.

Indian Christians are different from any Christians in the world, Indian Muslims different from any Muslims in the world. They would also lose.

Maybe it is thus necessary for Indians to see for themselves the harmful effects of Sonia being queen.

Only then will they realise that it is important to have an Indian at the top, someone who is in touch with India's ideals and spirituality.
... Read more !



posted by Harsh Vardhan @ 10:04 am
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Monday, January 09, 2006

In defence of Hindu gurus -- Francois Gautier

Francois Gautier defends Hindu gurus at a time when hinduism is under attack in India, with the Shankaracharya being arrested for murder, and Ramdev under attack from Communist "leader" Brinda Karat.

Francois Gautier writes on Rediff:
In defence of Hindu gurus

January 09, 2006

When Marxist leader Brinda Karat attacks Swami Ramdev, she is not attacking Ramdev in particular, she is attacking Hinduism in general.

This guru or that guru makes no difference to her; she is against all gurus.

Other gurus might think they are safe, that Ramdev committed some sin for which he is paying. But one of them will be the next in the line of fire!

Hindu gurus are all vulnerable in today's India: The Kanchi Shankaracharya has already been hit. So has Satya Sai Baba. Amritanandamayi has to live under the constant shadow of a hostile Kerala Communist-dominated government. Dhirendra Brahmachari is dead and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is periodically targeted as the 'Guru of the rich', the 'Glib Godman' etc.

May I be forgiven my arrogance, but what Indian gurus have to understand is that for Indian Communists, Hinduism is the Number 1 enemy. Mao called religion 'the opium of the people'. But for Indian Communists, what stands between their ambition for absolute power in India (and eventually the triumphant return of Communism in the world -- as Indian Communists believe) is the hold Hinduism has in the hearts of the rural people of India, who constitute 80 per cent of this country.

Yet, the humble farmer from Uttar Pradesh to Tamil Nadu has a natural understanding of the universality of God, who takes many names throughout the ages who could be Buddha, Jesus Christ, Ram or Mohammad. This humble farmer possesses the knowledge that there is a something deeper than the skin and the mind, and a life beyond death. This knowledge is inbred, it is not in his head, not even in his heart, but in his or her genes from generation to generation.

Of course, the English-speaking media is too happy to oblige Brinda Karat and come down hard on gurus with all kind of accusations.

Before Ramdev, they came down on the Kanchi Shankaracharya, before him on Osho, before him on Dhirendra Brahmachari. You can even go back to Sri Aurobindo, who was accused in the early 1900s by the moderate Congress-controlled press to be a 'fanatic', when he was only demanding total independence from the British long before Gandhi took it up.

Accusations against Hinduism of superstition, brainwashing, ritualistic ignorance, date back from British missionaries and have been taken up today by the Communists. Yet, Hinduism -- at least the Hinduism which goes beyond the rituals and becomes universal spirituality -- has nothing to do with superstition and conmanship: it is all about science, knowledge and light.

Look at Pranayama, a science that has known for thousands of years how to harness breath and use it for controlling the mind, for a better, more healthy, more spiritualised life. If you read Osho's books today, you find a lot of solid common sense, wisdom, even light.

Satya Sai Baba cannot have millions of disciples from the most humble to the Presidents of India without 'something' which is beyond superstition. So goes for Amritanandamayi, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ramdev, or Guruma of Ganeshpuri.

And why should Brinda Karat target Ayurveda, the most ancient medical system in India still in practice, the first medicine to realise 3,000 years ago that plants and minerals offer the best cure, that many illnesses have a psychosomatic origin, the first to practice plastic surgery on patients?

In India today, every third shop is an allopathic medical shop, whose profits go to Western multinationals (hello Mrs Karat!) at a time when Ayurvedic medicine is becoming increasingly popular in Western countries, after being disillusioned by antibiotics and other heavy-handed medicines.

We are witnessing an interesting phenomenon in India today. Some Communists, some Christians, some Muslims and some Congress leaders -- all of whom have nothing in common and often hate each other are united against Hinduism and Hindu leaders.

In contrast, look at the Hindus: Swami Ramdev himself criticised Sri Sri Ravi Shankar live on television, advising his followers not to practice Art of Living breathing techniques. During the tsunami relief operations in Nagapattinam, disciples of Amritanandamayi and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar nearly came to blows over who would give relief to whom, instead of networking and uniting their efforts.

And who came to the rescue of Osho when he was maligned to death, or Dhirendra Brahmachari when the entire press came down on him, or Satya Sai Baba, when he was slandered, or the Shankaracharya when he was thrown into jail, or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, when Javed Akhtar accused him of coming 'from a cave to live in a palace' (and not from a palace to a cave like the Buddha)? None of the previously mentioned. Yet, Indian politicians can commit any crime, have any number of court cases against them, and they still end up as Union ministers and get positive press coverage.

The greatest curse of Hinduism throughout the ages has been its disunity -- and more than that -- its betraying each other. The British did not conquer India, it was given to them by its warring Hindu princes, jealous of each other. The same is true of Islam: the last great Hindu empire, that of Vijaynagar, was betrayed to the Muslims by the Lingayats.

I know there is something mysterious and unfathomable in the manifestation of the Divine upon earth, and that each guru has a defined task to fulfill and that the combined task of all the gurus may solve the great puzzle that is this ignorant and suffering earth.

Thus, it may not be necessary for each guru to communicate with each other. But nevertheless, it is of the greatest urgency today that Hindu leaders unite to save Hinduism, rather than 'each one for his own' that we see today.

The Catholics have their Pope and his word is binding on all Catholics. Muslims have Prophet Mohammed's words and that binds all of Islam together. Indian Communists have the words of Marx and Lenin, even if it has become irrelevant in Russia, Germany, and also in China. But the poor Hindus have nobody to refer to, so as to defend themselves.

Yet, if you take the combined people power of Satya Sai Baba, Amritaanandamayi, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev, Guruma of Ganeshpuri, the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram, and so many others I cannot mention here, it runs in hundreds of millions.

Again, in all humility and conscious of the limitation of mind compared to some of these great gurus whom I have met, I propose that a Supreme Spiritual Council, composed of at least seven of the most popular Hindu leaders of India, be constituted, maybe under the leadership of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the most travelled of all these, the one who has disciples and teachers of all religions, both from India and the West.

It should be a non-political body, and each group would keep its independence but nevertheless. It could meet two three times a year and issue edicts, which would be binding on 850 millions Hindus in India and one billion over the world.

Then and then only can this wonderful spirituality which is Hinduism, this eternal knowledge behind the outer forms, the wisdom to understand this mad earth and its sufferings, be preserved for the future of India, and for the future of humanity.

I bow down to each of these gurus mentioned above and to all those not mentioned, to Swami Vivekananda, the initiator of modern Hinduism, to Sri Aurobindo, the great avatar of the supramental, and to all the great gurus who have graced over the ages, this wonderful and sacred land which is India and beseech them to hear my prayer:
Hindus leaders, unite, if you want eternal Dharma to survive.
... Read more !



posted by Harsh Vardhan @ 5:53 am
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