Below is a lurker's rebuttal my statement which I post "as is". On Friday 13 Jul 2007 11:35 am, shiv sastry wrote: > On Friday 13 Jul 2007 10:53 am, Charles Haynes wrote: > > ot to keep harping on this, but do you consider the LTTE to be Hindus > > fighting against Buddhists? I know I see graffiti calling on the CM to > > support "eelam an [sic] Hindu nation." They certainly predate the RSS. > > Srilankan Civil war. No Hindu-Buddhist business. > > Hinduism and Buddhism do not carry enough dogma for a large number of > adherents to seriously believe that fighting is needed for protecting > faiths that transcend humans and are a defining principle in life and the > Universe itself
------------------- > From: "N Kalyan Raman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: shiv sastry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Hello: > > I am not a member of silk-list, but I do read the archives sometimes. > > This thread on Indian history has been most interesting. I would > like to make two points, which I believe the thread has use for. > > One, organized religion has always held and used power for political > ends. Recall that all monarchies were legitimized by "divine > sanction" and once you arrive at "divine sanction", it had to be a > specific deity of a specific religion (or his human agency, as in > the Pope, for example) who necessarily superseded all other > religions and their gods. Because of this marriage of religion and > power, until a few centuries ago, religion has always been at the > centre of bloody conflicts. Even co-religionists fought on sectarian > lines. Waging war for purely (!) territorial reasons was the > province of Hannibal, Attila the Hun, Genghiz Khan and Alexander. > Otherwise, everyone fought and killed with "God on their side". > > Two, your assertion that Hinduism was never something to be defended > and certainly not through violence. This is not true at all. Around > 8th century AD, when both Jainism and Buddhism were flourshing in > large parts of the country, especially Souht India, Adi Sankara > toured the country on a spree of militant polemical debates with > Buddhist scholars. Under his influence, several kings in South India > committed genocide on Buddhist and Jain monks and sacked Buddhist > viharas to the ground. The native Oriyans who were Buddhists were > forced to flee by sea and seek refuge in Sri Lanka, where they > evolved into modern-day Sinhalese. To this end, the Brahmin class > broadbased the relgiion for the first time to include the lesser > castes; and this saw the outpouring of Bhakti literature in Tamil > and the founding of the Vaishnavite sect under Sri Ramanujan. > Thiruvasagam is a fiercely monotheist text, which recommends that > those worshipping anyone other than Siva should be hanged. > > These were the ways in which the then floundering Hindu order > sustained itself agaisnt threats and survived. That is why we have > the paradox of the Indian subcontinent being the cradle of two more > Great Religions of the World which have been completely driven out > or seriously marginalized. That is why the region around the great > Bahubali monument in Shravanabelagola is not teeming with followers > of the Mahavira but with - surprise, surprise - land-owning > Vokkaligas. The majoritarian might of the Hindutvavadis owes a lot > to genocides past. And yes, those Buddhists - including Siddhartha > himself - were not outsiders. They were evicted, forced to flee the > Himalayas, China, South East Asia, Japan and so on. We have that > kind of record, too. > > Further, the Hindu order has been brutally violent to its own people > for most of its existence. What can you say about a Vedic culture > which kept most of the population out of the ambit of education and > confined it to a narrow community for millennia; and judged its own > people (including women) as inferior and polluted from a narrowly > defined (but divinely sanctioned) Brahminical perspective? They did > not have the social vision to build universities for everyone(like > the Buddhists did in Nalanda) or to give women their due space in > the order (like the Buddhists and Jains) or to stop condemning > people based on the circumstances of their birth. > > All this is well documented, argued not merely by Romila Thapar, but > by Dalit thinkers (born Hindu) who were at the receiving end > of 'OUR' glory for too long. > > It is the unravelling of this anachronistic and worthless order with > the growing democratic impulse that would be the biggest threat to > the Hindu order, not any external force, including the proponents of > Islam. > > Kalyan Raman (not the "bloody idiot", cited in the silk thread!)
