http://contenderministries.org/hinduism/hindubeliefs.php
This Christian website also agrees that Hindus believe in these three things I
talked about. If you want some book to be shown as a reference that should not
be a problem either - but are we talking about Hinduism practiced by 800
million people or some cult which has a couple of hundred followers in some
remote area.
Umesh
umesh sharma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Rajen-da,
Tell me the name of a couple of Hindus who are atheists? We will take up your
other objections later.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 11:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu
beliefs list
Rajen-da,
You try to put me in a spot but I think the answer is not tht elusive-lets
see:
1. ALL Hindus believe in God
WRONG-Some Hindus are Atheists (Nastika)
2. All Hindus believe in reincarnation - rebirth
WRONG again. Why do you think ALL Hindus beleive that?
3. All Hindus believe that it is possible to attain Moksha/Nirvana
through meditation/Yoga , prayer etc -- that is meet God in one own's
lifetime..
Let me add some more points - which actually are more central to my comments.
WRONG again. You are trying to generalize may be your own belief to ALL
Hindus.
4. All Hindus that caste system has been part of Hindu society for long -
that means they believe in some system which has a religious head
(Brahmin)-who has a job to assist others in their prayers --so that means that
person should have some qualification. That qualification should be common to
ALL jobs who hold that job across India/Hindu society
Why do you think ALL Hindus belief these whatever you are saying.?
5. ALL Hindus believe that there was a city called Indraprastha (current
Indian capital Delhi) and that Mahabharat war was fought near it -at
Kurukshetra - and its participants were then real persons.
Why do you think ALL Hindus believe all these. Have you tested with any
other Hindus?
If one does not believe in the above (atleast the first three) that person
cannot be
called a Hindu. In social science -exceptions do not change the rule - it is
a mater of a significant number of the group acting or believing in a
certain way. So even if 5% of the Hindus (read the so-called westernised
educated ones) do not believe in any of the above - their views can be
disregarded.
I am sorry, It looks like in your tall standard, most of the 800 millions
are not Hindus at all. Ask some Hindu netters to give their views on these
and see.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>The only logic many vested interests do not want to
acknowledge that Indians could have (or have had) a collective vision - a
harmonious culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
I don't want to argue or comment on anybody's belief. But don't you
think the above is correct ie Hindus (forget Indians) don't have a
collective vision? Is not that the problem with present India? The Hindus
(forget the Indians) donot have a common harmonius culture sharing common
beliefs, holidays and celebrations. If you don't want to acknowledge
that, then please cite at least just (3) THREE things which in your
opinion ALL Hindus believe. I think you would have a hard time to answer
that and find even this small section of netters to agree with your view.
In fact for the last two hundred years that is what all scholars, Indian
and non Indian, (including Vivekananda, Tegore, Ram Mohon Roy,
Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and others) have been trying
to answer that question without much success. So before we blame the West,
let us at least try to understand where we are. Let us hear
from you.
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Ram Sarangapani ; barua25
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Ram-da and Rajen-da,
The point is not whether Jesus or Krishna or Rajen or Umesh or Ram
existed - it is that they are believed to be so - just liked USA is
believed to be the only Super Power in the world. Someone in remote
India may have NO inkling what is Roman empire or that any such country
ever existed -- but that person should or would bow down to the fact
that so many educated Indians believe it does. Why cannot someone
in the West understand that most Indians (read Hindus 800 million of
them) believe Krishna and Ram lived on earth - just Westerners (even
athiests ) believe that Abraham lived on earth to the age of 800 years
(as per Bible) and that Jesus was born of Virgin Mary.
Belief of a group can be put on wikipedia etc - why do westerners oppose
even that ? Why belittle it as some minor literary text characters aka
Ian Fleming's (I refer to Ram or Krishna here) -- which has no
consequence to spiritual or religious beliefs of Hindus.
The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that
Indians cuold have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious
culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. Isn't it much
easier to paint a picture where every Indian was following his or her
own thing --someone worshipping in the east another in the west. One day
one person celebrating , next day another celebrating something --so the
whole city or region never saw eye to eye ----so NO culture!!
I was surprised to learn that Krishna is the most revered person in way
down India's south Guruvayoor temple --same as in Manipur (far east )
just as in far west at Dwarka and up above in Badrinath, Gangotri etc.
But some westerners would assert that Hindus are a bunch of
individualists - who believe different things - have no religion except
caste system (the only unifying social force or common thought).
SCIENCE:
So when a nation/civilization has no common social system except caste
system (as per above logic) then how can it have intellectuals sitting
together to do scientific work and promoting and rejecting hypothesis
and building consensus.
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Barua,
Just couldn't resist not butting in.
Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here
is a site about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta
(Math) and Kautilya(Politics & Governance).
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html
(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured
up in India:)
--Ram
On 8/10/07, barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not
about our religious heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics
and when?
Can you produce any written evidence that India invented
the Zero and when? It is difficult.
I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva,
Krishna etc. I consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical
figures transformed from some original tribal religious cults. In my
opinion, Shiva was orginally a local god in the Harappa civilization
and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal god. This much history
tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that , not who
believes what?
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ;
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western
mythology
Rajen-da,
Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree
that most Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and
believe that he lived in India thousands of years back --- I
wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of Krishna - and they asked
for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I believe wiki is a
good example of people over the globe trying to have "sameness" -
even here there is bias.
Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians
believe that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added
a BBC report on that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying
this is no research evidence -- for Indian news on Indian culture
even an obscure reference (with no weblink) in any newspaer
article in remote India is considered okay by its editors --
incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the
page. Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc --
thats free for all.
whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
Umesh:
What you are saying is right.
The West has a Eurocentric view of the world.
They claim that the basic foundation of the Western
Civilization, especially on science, is mainly based on Greek
civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to the
Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science.
I would say, the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they
have a point. Indians basically donot have any record of what
they did. If you want to counter the present Eurocentric view,
the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID facts and
figures and not with rhetoric.
If you have any specific issue, I would be glad
to discus.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus
Western mythology
Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in
US was surprised to learn that India had a glorious history -
he hardly believed me though.
And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that
every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek
and Roman civilization are promoted as ideals (closely
followed by Egyptian one) -- Indian and Chinese ones are
lesser ones.
Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western
univs just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian
college fashion shows.
However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of
non Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the
world's foremost/only reliable experts on their chosen area of
expertise - namely hows and whys of other civilization. Most
believe (I believe) that those in non-western world/developing
world are too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to
understand and appreciate the distinction between good and
bad; and right and wrong.
I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views
than these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend
on promoting what they have always held as true).
I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking
against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and
remove my arguments).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just checked
--someone has deleted the page itself.
Wiki seems to be about might is right -
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
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Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
---------------------------------
Too much spam? Try Yahoo! Mail and we'll help keep the junk out of your
inbox.
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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