RAM SETU AND TIMELESS INDIA

The debate on Ram Setu rages on, with politicians sparing no effort to extract maximum petty political mileage out of the issue which has now become almost completely about Hindu faith, divided along its many fault lines.

In the midst of all this, I came across a very illuminating article by Renuka Narayanan in The Hindustan Times of September 22, 2007, which lucidly brings out how the concept of ‘One India’ was not a creation of the British.

The concept of nation-states itself is a very recent European creation. Most scholars agree that it is only in the nineteenth century that states with boundaries defined mainly by language and culture began appearing in Europe.

Before that, political units were based on multi-ethnic empires and smaller kingdoms, whose boundaries were flexible and depended solely on the relative strengths and ambitions of warring kings and emperors. Thus, Europe had the classic non-national states which were the multi-ethnic empires, (the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire), where the population belonged to many ethnic groups and spoke many languages.

India too, before the advent of the British, was a loose collection of numerous empires and kingdoms. Right from ancient times, various large and small dynasties fought over and ruled different parts of the country.

Yet, as Renuka Narayanan brings out, the sub continent has always thought of itself as ‘one’. The Land of King Bharat, the Island of the Rose-apple (Bharat Varshe Jambudvipe), runs from Rameswaram to the Himalayas since time immemorial.

Our politicians would do well to read through this article and other literature on the subject so that they can find more constructive and positive ways to draw voters to bring them to power, both in the states and the Centre. It is time they shed narrow and hate based slogans reflective of intellectual bankruptcy, and worked with the clear objective of making this country great again.

It may be worth remembering that nobody invades a country unless it offers him much more than he has where he is. It is no accident that people of so many ‘nationalities’ and regions have, for over a thousand years, repeatedly invaded this land looking for their pot of gold, as it were.

Let us not continue to mindlessly demean ourselves by our never-ending ‘family fights’ which have repeatedly cost us dear, all through our history.

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Readers may also like to read:

1. Aryan Ram Dravidian Ravan No Indian
2. Ram setu controversy: respecting faith

ARYAN RAM, DRAVIDIAN RAVAN, NO INDIAN

After being dismissed as a mythical figure in the since withdrawn affidavit filed by the government on the controversial Ram Setu project, Ram has once again become a symbol of the Great Aryan-Dravidian divide.

The DMK is not able to clearly decide whether to consider Ram a mythical character or an emblem of Aryan north who oppressed women and lower castes. Ravan, Ram’s adversary has, quite naturally, been adopted as their hero as they believe he was a Dravidian. That, as per Ramayan and other scriptures, Ravan was a Brahmin, considered Aryans by the DMK, does not make any difference. Their stand, based solely on one of the many colonial myths propounded by the British to perpetuate their rule and racial superiority by dividing Indians on as many dimensions as they possibly could, has completely overlooked the fact that in the available indigenous records and folklore of thousands of years, there is absolutely no mention of any such clash or divide at any point of time, till the British ‘invented’ it.

Such a big ‘clash’ of civilizations and cultures, and there is no native memory or record of it, particularly when neither the ‘Aryans’ nor the ‘Dravidians’ are extinct? Unfortunately, we Indians still do not question and remain slave to the many outlandish concepts and distortions created by the British like this one or the one about ‘marshal’ races, for example, plucked out of thin air by them.

Ram is one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, the ‘Dasavatars’ as they are called both in the North and South. He is just not one stand alone mythical ‘Aryan’ king conjured by Valmiki. Hanuman or Anjaneya, (the son of Anjani) as he is popularly called in the South, cannot be separated from Ram. There are many, many temples of Hanuman all over the South. In Tirupati itself, an idol of Hanuman sits with folded hands, facing Lord Venkateswara, an incarnation of Vishnu, no different from Ram at another level. There is a magnificent, ancient temple of Shiva at Rameswaram (Ram+ishwar, the Lord of Ram or the one whose Lord is Ram, i.e. Shiva). This massive granite structure stands at the spot where Ram is supposed to have worshipped Shiva before the assault on Ravan’s Lanka. There was obviously no Aryan-Dravidian divide in the area that now constitutes the state of Tamil Nadu when the temple was built, or before, or even after!

On 18 September, there was a very interesting program on CNN IBN, ‘Clash of Faith: ‘Aryan’ Ram no God down south’. The host, Sagarika Ghose not only chose her panelists with great sensitivity and intelligence, but also asked very pertinent questions covering the important aspects of this great religion-culture divide put in place by the British.

Two questions asked by Ghose from Ponmudi of the DMK were particularly interesting. When asked whether he could say similarly that Jesus and the Prophet were myths, Ponmudi could only say that since he was a so called Hindu he could criticise his own religion. To the question that Ravan, (DMK’s ‘Dravidian’ hero) was a Brahmin, Ponmudi had simply no answer.

The SMS poll results shown by CNN IBN were surprising considering that it is largely in the North that the Ram Setu issue has flared up very visibly, while the south has been largely silent, but for Mr. Karunanidhi giving it that Aryan-Dravidian twist. 79 per cent of those who answered said that Ram Setu was NOT an irrelevant issue down south.

Just goes to show how the silent majority is usually drowned by the loud few. And that, perhaps other than the die hard supporters of DMK in Tamil Nadu, Ram, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, is revered by Hindus in all the states of Southern India, much like their brethren in the North.

The transcript and video of the program on CNN IBN can be found here.

As far as Karunanidhi’s increasingly vituperative remarks on Ram are concerned, one can only say that this is yet another case of the ‘divide and rule’ politics that almost all our leaders have inherited from the British.The only difference is that while the Englishmen divided Indians to rule over them for the glory and greatness of their far away country, our politicians are dividing their own countrymen simply to win the next election for their selfish, narrow personal power, the country be damned.

In this mess where many fractured political constituencies have been created, there is no 'Indian' as far as politicians are concerned.

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Readers may also like to read:
1. Ram setu controversy: respecting faith
2. Ram Setu and timeless India

RAM SETU CONTROVERSY: RESPECTING FAITH

The Ram Setu controversy has started a national debate, all on predictable lines based either on religious beliefs or the usual science-history-myth conundrum for which there really is no clear answer.

The real question is not of science versus faith but of handling faith with due respect and sensitivity. What is history? An evolving story based on current available knowledge, sometimes dubious and often subjective. The Dravidian versus Aryan twist to Ramayan being raked up by Karunanidhi is nothing but a colonial canard with absolutely no historical evidence except the respectability given to it by Nehru and others. Is there any proof that Allah exists save for the word of the Prophet? Does that make Allah mythical? Can there be any historical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus or his birth to a virgin, a medical impossibility? Don’t both beliefs completely belie science? There are studies even questioning the very existence of Jesus. Does all this prove that Jesus or stories of him should be considered mythical? Did not Guru Nanak perform many miracles which can only be called mythical by rationalists?

Where were the media and all others when Christian pressure groups stopped the Discovery Channel from telecasting the film 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus’, as per which a tomb containing the remains of Jesus has been located, thus challenging the resurrection theory. Where was everyone when screening of Dan Brown's ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was banned in a number of Indian states simply because of the theory propounded by the author, and a few others too, that Jesus was in love with Mary Magdalene and even had a child from her?

Miracles and myths are part of every single religion, and cannot stand the scrutiny of the science of today. Therefore, to bring Ram into the issue by questioning his ‘historicity’ to strengthen the case for dredging the ocean at Ram Setu is simply a case of being totally insensitive to the faith of almost a billion people for whom Ram is as living and alive today as Allah is to Muslims and Christ is to Christians.

Just because these people are usually tolerant and do not feel insecure and threatened every time someone says something disparaging about, even insulting to, their Gods, does not mean that there is a license to do so, much less by the government. Had there been the fear of a fatwa, such a reference would never have figured in the government’s affidavit on the subject to the Supreme Court.

The Ram Setu project appears to make good economic sense and does not involve hurting any religious sentiments by itself. The BJP itself would have surely gone ahead with it, had it been in power. The government has, unfortunately, given that party an issue which can fetch it a one-time political dividend. The defense of the government by prominent journalists, particularly in the English media is lamentable. Those who manifestly do not believe in any religion themselves are at their eloquent best expressing cleverly concealed sarcasm of faith, there being no fear whatsoever of reprisal, either from followers of Ram or from those with power. Unknowingly, they are harming the government more by defending its foolishness, to say the least.
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Readers may also like to read:

1. Ram Setu and timeless India
2. Aryan Ram Dravidian Ravan No Indian