FALL 2013 ISSUE Canadian Hindu Linkhindueducationlink.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/...be able to...

ISSN# 1920-9339

Canadian Hindu Link

FALL 2013 ISSUE

A Free Quarterly Journal Dedicated To Educating The New Generation Of Canadian Hindus

Volume 5 . Issue 4 Oct / Nov / Dec 2013INSIDE THIS ISSUE

From Editor’s Desk ............... 3

Amazing Facts About Ganesha .............................. 4

Goddess Durga: The Mother Goddess & Her Symbolism .. 5

Diwali: The Festilval Of Light ............................... 6

Let’s All Be Hindu Fundamentalists ................... 8

Hindu Women As Spiritual Leaders ................................ 10

Baijnath Mahadev: The Only Hindu Temple Built By An English Couple In India ......... 12

Why Arranged Hindu Marriages Succeed................13

Kali As The Yuga Shakti: The Power To Create A New World Age ................... 14

Youth Corner: My Likes And Dislikes About Hinduism ......16

The Europeanization Of The Vedas And Its Distortions ..... 20

Geeta Jayanti ........................23

Practice Pranayama To Access Higher Energies ................... 24

God - People’s And Mine .... 27

Kurukshetra ......................... 28

Devichand, The First Hindu Immigrant In Canada ........... 29

Book Review: Indian Diaspora Handbook ............ 30

Himalayas............................ 31

Caste As Social Capital ........ 32

Reader’s Feedback ............... 34

O Lord! Lead us from untruth to Truth, Lead us from darkness to Light,

Lead us from death to Immortality.

Shat Path Brahman - Kanda 14 Ch.1

CANADIAN HINDU LINK | VOLUME 5 . ISSUE 4


From Editor’s Desk: Keep Hindu Dharma Alive in Canada

Help us Keep Canadian Hindu Link Alive

This Fall/Diwali 2013 edition of the Canadian Hindu Link brings us to its 5th anniversary. We made a very humble beginning in January 2009 with only eight pages and 2500 copies and with the help of four sponsors. Since then, it has been steadily growing both in pages, popularity and readership.

This is a non-profit, regularly published Hindu educational publication in Can-ada. Our only mission is to educate Hindu parents and our new genera-tion in order to help them keep Hindu Dharma alive in Canada. We are sad to observe that our well-established Hindu organizations in Canada are numerous but none of them have done what we have accomplished during the last five years.

Canadian Hindu Link is an independent magazine. We are not affiliated to any temple or organization in Canada or India, nor do we promote any particular Swami, Baba or sect. We do not propagate any particu-lar ‘brand’ of Hinduism. We publish well-researched articles expressing a great variety of interpretations, thoughts and opinions on our Dharma and culture.

In addition to publishing this magazine, we also orga-nized an essay writing contest in 2012 for Hindu youths, and a survey in order to gauge their knowledge about their Dharma and culture. The response was over-whelming. The contest and prize distribution function was followed by a Workshop for the participants in or-der to clear some popular misconceptions about Hindu beliefs and traditions that were found in their essays. If

we could find a financial sponsor for printing, we would publish a guide to Hindu

parents to help them transmit Hindu Dharma and values to their chil-dren.

This non-profit magazine is well and alive only with

the financial support of our sponsors who advertise their products and services in it,

and dedicated and selfless vol-unteers who donate their time

and energy to do all the work involved in bringing the magazine into your hands: writing; research-

ing & reviewing articles; graphic-design; technical consultation, copy-editing and distribution.

Sadly, the amounts of donations we receive are very meagre and negligible, even though Hindus in Canada are considered an affluent community. Some-how, their desire to donate a tiny part of their wealth for community causes is missing. Therefore, our revenue to meet the printing and publishing costs has been steadily dwindling. The stark reality we face is that we may not be able to continue publishing the Canadian Hindu Link beyond 2014 unless we receive donations and more sponsorship revenue. Please help us in our efforts to keep our Dharma and cultural heritage alive in Canada.

Ajit Adhopia, Volunteer Editor [email protected] Tel. 905-273-9563

“Thy right is only to work, but never to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor let thy attachment to be inaction.” – Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 47


There Are 250 Temples Of Ganesha In Japan In Japan, Ganesha is known as ‘Kangiten’, the God of fortune and the harbinger of happiness, prosperity and good. An Oxford publication claims that Gane-sha was worshipped in early days in Central Asia and other parts of the globe. Ganesha statues have been found in Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Borneo, Bulgaria, and Mexico and other Latin American countries. It means that the cult of Ganesha was prevalent all over the world in the ancient times.

Ganesha In Europe, Canada And Usa Ganesha’s idol and paintings are exhibited in all the important museums and art galleries of all the European countries specially in UK, Germany, France and Switzerland. Ganesha idols and paintings(as a good luck charm) are also present in thousands of houses/offices of successful business/writers/artists in all the European countries and in Canada and USA. Recent-ly a figure of Ganesha was un-earthed in a village near Sofia, Bulgaria. Like Indians, Romans worship Ganesha before a work is begun.

Irish Believe In Ganesha Luck The embassy of Ireland at New Delhi became the first European embassy to invoke the blessings of Ganesha when it installed a statue of Ganesha at the main entrance of the embassy.

Silicon Valley In USA Silicon Valley selected Ganesha as the presiding Deity of cyberspace technology.“Ganesha is the God of knowledge and Ganesha’s vehicle is the mouse and, as you know, for software engineers the mouse is the vehicle that they use to take their ideas and innovations from one place to the other.”

Hence it was decided by the computer industry as-sociation to select Ganesha as the presiding Deity of Silicon Valley.

Ganesha On Greek Coins Early images of an elephant-headed Deity, including those on an Indo-Greek coin and elsewhere, dating between the first and third centuries BC, represent Ganesha as the demi-god Vinayaka.

On Indonesia Currency Notes Indonesia Currency notes carries the picture of Gane-sha. One of the Indonesian currency notes carries the picture of Ganesha.

Vedic Origin Of Ganesha 10,000 years old secret of

success: Devotees of Ganesha make reference

to his Vedic origin which is around 10,000 years old to

push his antecedents back in time. The vedas have invoked

him as ‘namo Ganebhyo Ganapati’ (Yajurveda,

16/25), or lord of obstacles, Gana-

pati, we salute you. The Mahabharata has

elaborated his personal ap-pearance and upanishad as his personal appear-ance and upanishads his immense power. “Scholars

say, artifacts from excava-tions in Luristan and Harappa

and an old Indo-Greek coin from Her-maeus, present images that remarkably

resemble Ganesha”. (“Robert Brown in his Book Ganesha: Studies of an Asian God:State University of New York, Albany).

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT GANESHA


GODDESS DURGA: THE MOTHER GODDESS & HER SYMBOLISM

By Gyan Rajhans

Goddess Durga is the mother of the universe and believed to be the power behind the work of creation, preservation and destruction of the world. Since time immemorial she has been worshipped as the supreme power of the Supreme Being and has been mentioned in many scriptures - Yajur Veda, Vajasaneyi Samhita and Taittareya Brahman.

The Meaning of “Durga” The word “Durga” in Sanskrit means a fort or a place which is difficult to overrun. Another meaning of “Du-rga” is “Durgatinashini,” which literally translates into “the one who eliminates sufferings.” Thus, Hindus be-lieve that goddess Durga protects her devotees from the evils of the world and at the same time removes their miseries.

The Many Forms of Durga There are many incarnations of Durga: Kali, Bhag-vati, Bhavani, Ambika, Lalita, Gauri, Kandalini, Java, Rajeswari et al. Durga incarnated as the united power of all divine beings who offered her the required physical attributes and weapons to kill the demon “Mahishasur”. Her nine appellations are Skondamata, Kusumanda, Shailaputri, Kaalratri, Brahmacharini, Maha Gauri, Katyayani, Chandraghanta and Siddhidatri.

Durga’s Many Arms Durga is depicted as having eight or ten hands. These represent eight quadrants or ten directions in Hinduism. This suggests that she protects the devotees from all directions.

Durga’s Three Eyes Like Shiva, Mother Durga is also referred to as “Triyam-bake” meaning the three eyed Goddess. The left eye represents desire (the moon), the right eye represents action (the sun), and the central eye knowledge (fire).

Durga’s Vehicle - the Lion The lion represents power, will and determination. Mother Durga riding the lion symbolises her mastery of all these qualities. This suggests to the devotee that one has to possess all these qualities to get over the demon of ego.

Durga’s Many Weapons The conch shell in Durga’s hand symbolizes the ‘Pranava’ or mystic word ‘Om’, which indicates her holding on to God in the form of sound.

The bow and arrows represent energy. By holding both the bow and arrows in one hand Mother Durga portrays her control over both aspects of energy - potential and kinetic.

The thunderbolt signifies firmness. The devotee of Durga must be firm like a thunderbolt in one’s convictions. Like the thunderbolt that can break anything against which it strikes without being affected itself, the devotee needs to accept a challenge without losing his confidence.

The lotus in Durga’s hand is not fully bloomed, symbol-izing certainty of success but not finality. The lotus in Sanskrit is called “pankaja” which means born of mud. Thus, lotus stands for the continuous evolution of the spiritual quality of devotees amidst the worldly mud of lust and greed.

The “Sudarshan-Chakra” or beautiful discus, which spins around the index finger of the Goddess, while not touching it, signifies that the entire world is subservient to the will of Durga and is at her command. She uses this unfailing weapon to destroy evil and produce an environment conducive to the growth of righteousness.

The sword that Durga holds in one of her hands symbol-izes knowledge, which has the sharpness of a sword. Knowledge which is free of all doubts, is symbolized by the glitter of the sword.

Durga’s trident or “trishul” is a symbol of three qualities - Satwa (inactivity), Rajas (activity) and Tamas (non-activity) - and she is the remover of all the three types of miseries - physical, mental and spiritual.

Devi Durga stands on a lion in a fearless pose of “Abhay Mudra”, signifying assurance of freedom from fear. The universal mother seems to be saying to all her devo-tees: “Surrender all actions and duties to me and I shall release thee from all fears”.

Source: www.Hinduism.About.com


DIWALI: THE FESTILVAL OF LIGHT

Diwali is a festival where people from all age groups participate. They give expression to their happiness by lighting earthen ‘diyas’ (lamps), decorating the houses, bursting firecrackers and inviting near and dear ones to their households for partaking in a sumptuous feast. The lighting of lamps is a way of paying obeisance to god for attainment of health, wealth, knowledge, peace, valour and fame.

Diwali In History The history of Diwali is replete with legends and these legends are moored to the stories of Hindu religious scriptures,

mostly the Puranas. Though the central theme of all legends point out

to the classic truth of the victory of the good over the evils, the mode of their presentation and the characters differ. Diwali, being the festival of lights, lighting the lamp of knowledge within us means to understand and reflect upon the significant purpose of each of the five days of festivities and to bring those thoughts in to the day to day lives.

The Five Days Of Diwali The first day of Diwali is called Dhanvantari Triodasi or Dhanwantari Triodasi also called Dhan Teras. The second day of Diwali is called Narak Chaturdasi. It is the fourteenth lunar day (tithi) of the dark fortnight of the month of Kartik and the eve of Diwali. On this day Lord Krishna destroyed the demon Narakasur and made the world free from fear. The third day of Diwali is the actual Diwali. This is the day when worship for

Mother Lakshmi is performed. On the fourth day of Diwali, Goverdhan Pooja is performed. The fifth day of the diwali is called Bhratri Dooj. It is a day dedicated to sisters.

Hindu Mythology The Story of Rama and Sita: Lord Rama was a great warrior King who was exiled by his father Dashratha, the King of Ayodhya, along with his wife Sita and his younger brother Lakshman, on his wife’s insistence. Lord Rama returned to his Kingdom Ayodhya after 14 years of exile, in which he put an end to the

demon Ravana of Lanka, who was a great Pundit, highly learned but still

evil dominated his mind. After this vic-tory of Good over Evil, Rama returned

to Ayodhya. In Ayodhya, the people wel-comed them by lighting rows of clay lamps.

So, it is an occasion in honor of Rama’s victory over Ravana; of Truth’s victory over Evil.

The Story Of King Bali And Vamana Avatar (The Dwarf): The other story concerns King Bali, who was a generous ruler. But he was also very ambitious. Some of the Gods pleaded Vishnu to check King Bali’s power. Vishnu came to earth in the form of a Vamana(dwarf) dressed as priest. The dwarf approached King Bali and said “You are the ruler of the three worlds: the Earth, the world above the skies and the underworld. Would you give me the space that I could cover with three strides?” King Bali laughed. Surely a dwarf could not cover much ground, thought the King, who agreed to dwarf’s request. At this point, the dwarf changed into Vishnu and his three strides covered the Earth, the Skies and the whole Universe! King Bali was send to the underworld. As part of Diwali celebrations, some Hindus remember King Bali.

The Defeat of Narkasur by Lord Krishna: Lord Vishnu in his 8th incarnation as Krishna destroyed the demon

May you all attain full inner illumination! May the supreme light of lights enlighten your understanding! May you all attain the inexhaustible spiritual wealth of the Self! May you all prosper gloriously on the material as well as spiritual planes!


Narkasura, who was causing great unhappiness amongst the people of the world. Narkasura was believed to be a demon of filth, covered in dirt. He used to kidnap beautiful young women and force them to live with him. Eventually, their cries for rescue were heard by Vishnu, who came in the form of Krishna. First, Krishna had to fight with a five-headed monster who guarded the demon’s home. Narkasura hoped that his death might bring joy to others. Krishna granted his request and the women were freed. For Hindus, this story is a reminder that good can still come out of evil.

Krishna and The Mountain: In the village of Gokula, many years ago, the people prayed to the God Indra. They believed that Indra sent the rains, which made their crops, grow. But Krishna came along and persuaded the people to worship the moun-tain Govardhan, because the mountain and the land around it were fertile. This did not please Indra. He sent thunder and torrential rain down on the village. The people cried to Krishna to help. Krishna saved the villagers by lifting the top of the mountain with his finger. The offering of food to God on this day of Diwali is a reminder to Hin-dus of the importance of food and it is a time for being thankful to God for the bounty of nature.

Sikh Festival Diwali In Sikh perspective, Diwali is celebrated as the return of the sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind Ji from the captivity of the city, Gwalior. To commemorate his undying love for Sikhism, the towns people lit the way to, Harmandhir Sahib (referred to as the Golden Temple), in his honour.

Jain Festival Diwali Among the Jain festivals, Diwali is one of the most important one. For on this occasion we celebrate the Nirvana of Lord Mahavira who established the dharma as we follow it. Lord Mahavira was born as Vardhamana on Chaitra Shukla 13th in the Nata clan at Khattiya-kundapura, near Vaishali. He obtained Kevala Gyana on Vishakha Shukla 10 at the Jambhraka village on the banks of Rijukula river at the age of 42.

Regional Significance of Diwali The origin of Diwali festival is not known, but it has gathered a number of legends around it over the centu-ries. In the northern and the western regions of India, its origin is attributed to the return of Lord Ram to his king-

dom after defeating the demon king Ravana. The joyous people of Ayodhya, his capital, celebrated his arrival. In the eastern states, Diwali is associated with the story of Narakasura who had menaced his people with tyranny.

In the regions of Maharashtra and Mysore, Diwali is linked with the legendary king Bali who was immensely popular with his subjects for his generosity. However, king Bali had become arrogant and conceited, and pro-voked the wrath of godly people. His generosity was put to test by Lord Vishnu who appeared in the disguise of a dwarf, and asked him for a piece of land equal to three steps. When Bali granted his wish, Lord Vishnu took the form of a super giant person, and with his two steps

covered Bali’s entire kingdom. With his third step he pushed Bali to the underland. Since then, his people celebrated his arrival on this day, locally called Bali Padyami.

In the north, most communi-ties observe the custom of lighting lamps. However, in the south, the custom of lighting baked earthen lamps is not so much part of this festival as it is of the Karthikai celebrations a fortnight later. The lights signify a wel-come to prosperity in the form of Lakshmi, and the fireworks are supposed to scare away evil spirits.

In Punjab, UP, Rajasthan and Haryana, the day following Diwali is known as tikka or Bhaiyya Dooj, when sisters make a paste with saffron and rice and place an auspi-cious mark on their brother’s forehead as a symbolic gesture to ward off all harms.

Likewise, on the second day of the month of Kartik, the people of Maharashtra exchange gifts. In Maharashtra, it is the thirteenth day of Ashwin, the trayodasi, that is observed as a festival commemorating a young prince whom Yama, the God of Death, had claimed four days after his marriage. Filled, however, with compassion for the luckless youth, the legend goes, Yama promised that those who observed the day would be spared untimely death-and so the lamps that are lit to mark the festival are placed facing south, unlike on other festive days, because south is the direction mythologically assigned to Yama.

In Bengal, it is the time to worship Goddess Kali , yet another form of Durga, the divine embodiment of su-preme energy. Kali is the Goddess who takes away dark-ness. She cuts down all impurities, consumes all iniqui-ties, purifies Her devotees with the sincerity of her love.

Happy Diwali


LET’S ALL BE HINDU FUNDAMENTALISTS By Maria Wirth [Dehradun, India]

Religious fundamentalists are on the rise and that is bad for our societies. Most people will agree with this ob-servation. Yet few examine whom religious fundamen-talists are. Obviously, such persons would want to stick to the fundamentals of their religion. They want to live a life that is advocated in their holy books and would please their God. If religious fundamentalists pose a problem, does it mean that the fundamentals of re-ligions are bad for our societies? Let’s look at the three biggest religions:

Concerning Chris-tianity, fundamen-talists believe that God has revealed himself in the Bible and sent his only begotten son to earth to save all mankind. They believe in the first com-mandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. Therefore, all humanity has to believe in the God of the Bible and his only son, Jesus Christ. Those who do not do so, will end up in hell. “Go out into the world”, is a central tenet of the Christian faith and fundamentalists consider it as their duty to convert as many ‘heathens’ as possible to Christianity by whatever means.

Concerning Islam, fundamentalists believe that Islam is the only true religion and Allah the only true God who wants the whole world to submit to Him. Those who do not become Muslims will go to hell. It is a central tenet and keeps recurring in the Quran. Fundamentalists see it as their duty to make all of humanity accept Islam and often take literally commandments in the Quran like “Strike terror in the hearts of unbelievers.”

Concerning Hinduism, fundamentalists believe that Brahman (other names are allowed and in use) is the one true God. However, Brahman is not a personal God who saves those who believe in Him and damns all others. Rather, Brahman is the most subtle conscious essence that permeates everything and everyone, never mind, which religion he follows or whether he is an

atheist. “Atman is Brahman” or “one’s own Self is God”, the Vedas pro-claim.

Now, all religions claim that there is only one High-est, one ‘true God’ in English or one ‘Allah’ in Arabic or

one ‘Brahman’ in Sanskrit. And of course there is only one Highest God - the almighty, all knowing presence that is responsible for the existence of the universe. How can it be otherwise? Hindus, however, often don’t understand that Christians as well as Muslims are really convinced that their one true God, respectively Allah, saves only the brothers and sisters of their own faith and sends all others as heathen or infidels into hell. This conviction is indeed difficult to understand for humans with a normal reasoning capacity. Yet if one grows up hearing repeatedly that only one’s own faith is true and other people are bad because they don’t accept this, it may actually make sense. It happened to me as a child - it made sense that only we Christians go to heaven, because we have been chosen by God...

So we have a situation in the world where Christian-ity and Islam, each one over a billion strong, rival with

“In Hinduism, Brahman is not a male entity who watches over us from somewhere.

It is inside everyone... conscious, living and loving.”

“If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth... Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known.” — Mahatma Gandhi


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each other: “Our God alone is true! If you don’t believe it, you go to hell.” And the other group counters, “No. Our God alone is true! And if you don’t believe it you go to hell.” One could laugh it off if it were not so seri-ous. Fundamentalists stick to this belief – and unfor-tunately, the official clergy of both religions uphold it, as well. It is naturally a cause for great friction in the world.

Hinduism (or Sanatana Dharma, as it used to be called) does not take part in this one-upmanship. It is ancient. It was there long before Christianity or Islam appeared on the scene. In Hinduism, Brahman is not a male en-tity who watches over us from somewhere. It is inside everyone, conscious, living and loving. It will always give another chance until everyone realizes his true being and merges in Brahman, which may take many lives. The Hindu scriptures proclaim, “Humanity is one family”. “Brahman permeates the smallest as well as the biggest.” “Thou art That.” “Brahman is not what your mind thinks but That by which the mind is capable to think.” “See God in everyone.” “Respect nature.” And they lead us in prayer: “May we be protected together, may we be nourished together, may we work together with great vigour, may our study be enlightening, may no obstacle arise between us.” “Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides.” “May everyone be happy”, and so on.

Many Hindus, too, don’t know these fundamentals of their religion and believe it is all about rituals, worship-ping their favourite aspect of God to get their wishes fulfilled and celebrating festivals. They don’t realize that Hinduism is the only religion that is all-inclusive. It does not set one group of people against all the others. It is also not opposed to science and does not only allow using one’s intelligence, but also encourages one to do so.

Maybe that is the reason why in the west, Hinduism is sometimes even missing when the world religions are listed. For Westerners, a religion is apparently not a religion if it is not based on unverifiable dogmas, espe-cially dogmas that set it apart from other religions and which are so harmful for humanity to live harmoniously together. Is it not about time for us in the 21th century to scrap such unverifiable, harmful fundamentals that set up one group of people against another group?

The best option is to follow the Hindu fundamentals. So let’s be Hindu fundamentalists who see God in everyone, also in animals and in nature. Our world would benefit.


HINDU WOMEN AS SPIRITUAL LEADERS

Hindus have been blessed with a continuous, unbroken chain of women Saints, Yoginis, Nuns, Priestesses, Ascet-ics and Seers who to this day, roam all over the world to preach the eternal message of our Dharma.

Meera, Akka Mahadevi, Lalleshvari, Andal and other saintly women of medieval India are considered some of the fore-most Hindu Sages. Their writings are treated as scriptures, and chanted with great regard.

Meerabai (16th century) was a Rajput Princess of Mewar who decided in her childhood that her husband was Lord Krishna. She was married to a Rajput prince, but forsak-ing all formal ties, she traveled between various religious centers associated with Lord Krishna. Her Hindi bhajans (devotional songs) in praise of Rama and Krishna are very popular even today. Meerabai’s soul merged with that of Lord Krishna in Dwaraka when she was 67 years old. An-dal-Goda’s songs are recited daily in Shri Vaishnava Hindu liturgy in temples as well as in homes, in India as well as outside India. Her icon is frequently placed in temples alongside that of Lord Vishnu and Devi Lakshmi .[6]

Lalleshvari (14th century CE) is considered the great-est saint poet of Kashmir. Her devotional verses highlight the divinity within our own self and exhorts us to love the Shiva who dwells in our heart. Lalleshvari walked out of a traumatic marriage and roamed the Kashmir valley singing her mystical songs, demonstrating Yogic feats while lost in the bliss of Bhagavan Shiva. Her spellbinding songs are recited even today.

Akka Mahadevi (12th century) lived and preached in Karnataka. Though married, she severed her worldly bonds in order to become one with Shiva. She roamed the coun-tryside of that region singing of Lord Shiva, and ultimately is said to have merged with him. Akka joined the Virashaiva community after her meeting with Saint Basavacharya and wrote 350 exquisite spiritual compositions. Akka and Lalleshvari defied the social norms by eschewing garments for they had surrendered their entire being to their deity and had no use for social norms. A late twentieth century woman ascetic named Mate Mahadevi drew her own inspi-ration from the ideal set by Akka Mahadevi.

The Shaiva Siddhanta tradition has been blessed with sev-eral women saints such as Kaaraikkaal Ammaiyaar, Thilaka-vathiyaar, Mangaiyarkkarachiyaar, Paravaiyaar, Changiliyaar, Chembiyan Madheeviyaar, Auvaiyaar etc. Some of them led a saintly life dedicating their lives to spiritual pursuits.

The others lead family lives while at the same time teach-ing about Shaivism in Tamil speaking areas.[ Likewise, the Sant tradition of Maharashtra has several feminine voices from Muktabai (13th century CE) the sister of Sant Jnanesh-vara, to Bahina Bai. Janabai (1298-1350) also wrote of aban-doning social norms and offering themselves to the service of God. The hagiographies of many of these women Sants occur in Mahipati’s Bhaktavijaya. Most women saints of this tradition were in fact housewives. Similar examples may be obtained from many other Hindu spiritual traditions such as Gaudiya Vedanta of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

In more recent times, Shree Shree Ma Anandamoyi (1896-1982), born in what is now Bangladesh[8], was a Hindu mystic whose own husband became her devotee, and who was held in great reverence even by Mahatma Gan-dhi. She traveled far and wide, preaching compassion and spirituality, and was instrumental in the setting up of many hospitals and other charitable institutions.

In our times, Mata Amritanandamayi and Mata Nirmala Devi as Hindu women Gurus are well known in the inter-national spiritual circuit as teachers of Divine Love and of Yoga respectively.

Ammachi, as Mata Amritanandamayi is lovingly called by followers, was born in a humble Hindu harijan family of Kerala. From her childhood she was lost in the Divine Love for God. Today, she travels all over the world preaching love for God and compassion for human beings. She is well known for embracing all visitors who come to see her, with patience and compassion and with an eternal beatific smile that leaves a profound spiritual effect on them. Ammachi visits Toronto on a regular basis.

Mata Nirmala Devi, born to a Christian priest, converted to Hinduism and discovered a simpler form of Yoga that she teaches her devotees spread all over the world. Many other Hindu women Gurus preach in the West including Ma Yoga Shakti, Shri Ma, Anandi Ma and so on.

Foreign women Saints who adopted Hindu spirituality also made a significant contribution to our Dharma and society. For instance, Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble) born in 1867 in Northern Ireland, met Swami Vivekananda in London in 1895 and became his disciple. She came to India in 1898. In India she engaged herself in running a school for girls and young women. After Swamiji’s death she involved her-self actively in the Indian Freedom Movement. She wrote several books that present different aspects of Hinduism

and Buddhism in a very lucid manner for the lay reader-ship. She died in 1911.

Spiritual Women in Buddhism, Jainism & Sikhism Women have played an important role in other sacred traditions that have organic links to Hindu Dharma. For instance, one out of the twenty-four Tirthankaras (founding spiritual teachers) of the Jains was a woman. The heroine of a Tamil Jain didactic epic is a Jain nun named Neelakeshi. Guru Amar Das, the 3rd Sikh Guru, entrusted two of the 26 regions marked out for his missionary activity to women spiritual leaders. Princess Bhrikuti, the daughter of Nepalese Licchivi King Amshu Varma (7th century CE) married the Tibetan King Tsrong-tsong Gompo and persuaded him to convert to Buddhism. She is also credited with the con-struction of several prominent places of Tibetan Buddhism such as Potala and Jokhang, as well as Buddhist shrines in Bhutan. Thus, she played a pivotal role in leading Tibetans to Buddhism and is therefore worshipped as a manifesta-tion of the Tibetan deity Tara.

Often, when male saints have died, their widowed wives or women disciples have assumed the spiritual leadership of their followers. As an example we may cite ‘The Mother’, who was the spiritual companion or the first disciple of Shri Aurobindo, one of the most influential Hindu Sages of our times. She had visions about him even before she met him and became Self-realized/God-realized following the Integral Yoga he was developing/teaching. Originally from France, she followed him to India, where she spent the rest of her life providing spiritual leadership to Shri Aurobindo’s disciples.

Another example is that of Sharada Devi (b. 1853), the wife of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a Hindu Saint who lived in the 19th century. After Ramakrishna Paramahamsa passed away in 1886, she continued to guide her husband’s followers till her own death in 1920. As a result the two are worshipped together by followers of this Hindu saint, even today.

In our own times, Bhagwati Devi Sharma (d. 1994) provided spiritual leadership to the Gayatri Parivar, after its founder Guru Shri Ram Sharma Acharya passed away.

It would be a fair statement to make that of all the orga-nized global religions in the world today, women perhaps have the most visible and prominent presence in Hindu Dharma. Feminine spirituality is not something that needs to be grafted onto Hindu Dharma. It has always been a part of the core of our faith.

Source: www.iVarta.com


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HINDU WOMEN AS SPIRITUAL LEADERS

Hindus have been blessed with a continuous, unbroken chain of women Saints, Yoginis, Nuns, Priestesses, Ascet-ics and Seers who to this day, roam all over the world to preach the eternal message of our Dharma.

Meera, Akka Mahadevi, Lalleshvari, Andal and other saintly women of medieval India are considered some of the fore-most Hindu Sages. Their writings are treated as scriptures, and chanted with great regard.

Meerabai (16th century) was a Rajput Princess of Mewar who decided in her childhood that her husband was Lord Krishna. She was married to a Rajput prince, but forsak-ing all formal ties, she traveled between various religious centers associated with Lord Krishna. Her Hindi bhajans (devotional songs) in praise of Rama and Krishna are very popular even today. Meerabai’s soul merged with that of Lord Krishna in Dwaraka when she was 67 years old. An-dal-Goda’s songs are recited daily in Shri Vaishnava Hindu liturgy in temples as well as in homes, in India as well as outside India. Her icon is frequently placed in temples alongside that of Lord Vishnu and Devi Lakshmi .[6]

Lalleshvari (14th century CE) is considered the great-est saint poet of Kashmir. Her devotional verses highlight the divinity within our own self and exhorts us to love the Shiva who dwells in our heart. Lalleshvari walked out of a traumatic marriage and roamed the Kashmir valley singing her mystical songs, demonstrating Yogic feats while lost in the bliss of Bhagavan Shiva. Her spellbinding songs are recited even today.

Akka Mahadevi (12th century) lived and preached in Karnataka. Though married, she severed her worldly bonds in order to become one with Shiva. She roamed the coun-tryside of that region singing of Lord Shiva, and ultimately is said to have merged with him. Akka joined the Virashaiva community after her meeting with Saint Basavacharya and wrote 350 exquisite spiritual compositions. Akka and Lalleshvari defied the social norms by eschewing garments for they had surrendered their entire being to their deity and had no use for social norms. A late twentieth century woman ascetic named Mate Mahadevi drew her own inspi-ration from the ideal set by Akka Mahadevi.

The Shaiva Siddhanta tradition has been blessed with sev-eral women saints such as Kaaraikkaal Ammaiyaar, Thilaka-vathiyaar, Mangaiyarkkarachiyaar, Paravaiyaar, Changiliyaar, Chembiyan Madheeviyaar, Auvaiyaar etc. Some of them led a saintly life dedicating their lives to spiritual pursuits.

The others lead family lives while at the same time teach-ing about Shaivism in Tamil speaking areas.[ Likewise, the Sant tradition of Maharashtra has several feminine voices from Muktabai (13th century CE) the sister of Sant Jnanesh-vara, to Bahina Bai. Janabai (1298-1350) also wrote of aban-doning social norms and offering themselves to the service of God. The hagiographies of many of these women Sants occur in Mahipati’s Bhaktavijaya. Most women saints of this tradition were in fact housewives. Similar examples may be obtained from many other Hindu spiritual traditions such as Gaudiya Vedanta of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

In more recent times, Shree Shree Ma Anandamoyi (1896-1982), born in what is now Bangladesh[8], was a Hindu mystic whose own husband became her devotee, and who was held in great reverence even by Mahatma Gan-dhi. She traveled far and wide, preaching compassion and spirituality, and was instrumental in the setting up of many hospitals and other charitable institutions.

In our times, Mata Amritanandamayi and Mata Nirmala Devi as Hindu women Gurus are well known in the inter-national spiritual circuit as teachers of Divine Love and of Yoga respectively.

Ammachi, as Mata Amritanandamayi is lovingly called by followers, was born in a humble Hindu harijan family of Kerala. From her childhood she was lost in the Divine Love for God. Today, she travels all over the world preaching love for God and compassion for human beings. She is well known for embracing all visitors who come to see her, with patience and compassion and with an eternal beatific smile that leaves a profound spiritual effect on them. Ammachi visits Toronto on a regular basis.

Mata Nirmala Devi, born to a Christian priest, converted to Hinduism and discovered a simpler form of Yoga that she teaches her devotees spread all over the world. Many other Hindu women Gurus preach in the West including Ma Yoga Shakti, Shri Ma, Anandi Ma and so on.

Foreign women Saints who adopted Hindu spirituality also made a significant contribution to our Dharma and society. For instance, Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble) born in 1867 in Northern Ireland, met Swami Vivekananda in London in 1895 and became his disciple. She came to India in 1898. In India she engaged herself in running a school for girls and young women. After Swamiji’s death she involved her-self actively in the Indian Freedom Movement. She wrote several books that present different aspects of Hinduism

and Buddhism in a very lucid manner for the lay reader-ship. She died in 1911.

Spiritual Women in Buddhism, Jainism & Sikhism Women have played an important role in other sacred traditions that have organic links to Hindu Dharma. For instance, one out of the twenty-four Tirthankaras (founding spiritual teachers) of the Jains was a woman. The heroine of a Tamil Jain didactic epic is a Jain nun named Neelakeshi. Guru Amar Das, the 3rd Sikh Guru, entrusted two of the 26 regions marked out for his missionary activity to women spiritual leaders. Princess Bhrikuti, the daughter of Nepalese Licchivi King Amshu Varma (7th century CE) married the Tibetan King Tsrong-tsong Gompo and persuaded him to convert to Buddhism. She is also credited with the con-struction of several prominent places of Tibetan Buddhism such as Potala and Jokhang, as well as Buddhist shrines in Bhutan. Thus, she played a pivotal role in leading Tibetans to Buddhism and is therefore worshipped as a manifesta-tion of the Tibetan deity Tara.

Often, when male saints have died, their widowed wives or women disciples have assumed the spiritual leadership of their followers. As an example we may cite ‘The Mother’, who was the spiritual companion or the first disciple of Shri Aurobindo, one of the most influential Hindu Sages of our times. She had visions about him even before she met him and became Self-realized/God-realized following the Integral Yoga he was developing/teaching. Originally from France, she followed him to India, where she spent the rest of her life providing spiritual leadership to Shri Aurobindo’s disciples.

Another example is that of Sharada Devi (b. 1853), the wife of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a Hindu Saint who lived in the 19th century. After Ramakrishna Paramahamsa passed away in 1886, she continued to guide her husband’s followers till her own death in 1920. As a result the two are worshipped together by followers of this Hindu saint, even today.

In our own times, Bhagwati Devi Sharma (d. 1994) provided spiritual leadership to the Gayatri Parivar, after its founder Guru Shri Ram Sharma Acharya passed away.

It would be a fair statement to make that of all the orga-nized global religions in the world today, women perhaps have the most visible and prominent presence in Hindu Dharma. Feminine spirituality is not something that needs to be grafted onto Hindu Dharma. It has always been a part of the core of our faith.

Source: www.iVarta.com


BAIJNATH MAHADEV: THE ONLY HINDU TEMPLE BUILT BY AN ENGLISH COUPLE

IN INDIA By Sangram K. Parhi

The British ruled India for hundreds of years, and built many churches and cathedrals. But in the 1880s, a Shiva temple in Agar Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, was rebuilt by Lt. Col. Martin — the only temple ever made by an Eng-lishman in India.

Col. Martin was in the Afghan wars. He used to regularly write to his wife, informing her of con-ditions there. It was a long war, and gradu-ally the colonel’s letters stopped. Mrs. Martin, who then lived in the canton-ment of Agar Malwa, was beside herself with grief, fearing the worst.

She would spend time riding for hours to calm herself. One day she rode her horse, past the temple of Baijnath Ma-hadev. It was in a decrepit state. It was the time of arti, and the sound of conches and the chanting of mantras compelled her to stop. She went inside to see the wor-ship of Lord Shiva taking place. The priests saw the grief on her face and asked her what was wrong. Mrs. Martin narrated her sad story. The Brahmins told her that Lord Shiva listens to sincere prayers of all devotees and saves them from difficult situations. She was advised by one of the priests to start chanting the mantra: “Om Namah Shivaya” for 11 days.

The Englishwoman prayed to Lord Shiva for the colonel’s safe return, promising she would rebuild the temple if he came home safe from the war. On the 10th day, a messenger arrived from Afghanistan with a letter from

her husband. It read, “I was regularly sending you let-ters from the battlefield but then suddenly the Pathans surrounded us. I thought there was no way of escape. Suddenly I saw an Indian yogi with long hair, wearing

a tiger skin carrying a trident. He had an awe-inspiring person-ality and he started wielding his weapon against the Afghans who ran away from the field in fright. With his grace, what was certain death turned into a victory. Then the great yogi told me that I should not worry and that he had come to rescue me because he was very pleased with my wife’s prayers.”

Tears of joy and gratitude welled up in

Mrs. Martin’s eyes as she read the letter. Her heart was overwhelmed. She fell at the feet of Lord Shiva’s image and sobbed. After a few weeks Lt. Col. Martin returned and his wife told him her story. The couple became devotees of Lord Shiva. In 1883, they donated Rs 15,000 to renovate the temple. This information is engraved on a slab kept in the Baijnath Mahadev Temple.

The Martins sailed for England with the firm resolution that they would make a Shiva temple at their home and pray to him till the end of life. And they did.

Source: From www.wordpress.com posted on February 20, 2012. It was originally published in The New In-dian Express, Chennai, Jan. 8, 2012

“Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.” — Mahatma Gandhi


WHY ARRANGED HINDU MARRIAGES SUCCEED By Ajit Adhopia

I have a very large number of Hindu friends who are first-generation Canadians from urban centres of India. In addition to religion and place of origin, we have other things in common. Most of us got married in the ‘60s, and our marriages were arranged by our parents. Unlike our fathers and grandfathers, we had briefly met with our would-be life partner before giving our consent. Each of us is still happily married, with one or two exceptions, to our original spouse.

For most Canadians, including our own children, it would be unthinkable, or even repulsive, to marry a total stranger or even someone you met only briefly. On the other hand, Hindu Canadians often wonder why one out of every three marriages in Canada fails, despite the fact that a commitment to marry materializes only after a long period of dating, courting, pre-marital sex and sometimes common-law living.

Hindus also believe that when two people of compatible background - religious, social, economic and educational - make a lifelong commitment to each other, love can be cultivated and nurtured. From the moment a child is born, the fountain of love in the parent’s heart begins to spring. This can also be said about an adopted or a foster child. Thus, love between two strange adults living together and willing to accommodate each other is not impossible.

Based On Divine Will A Hindu is brought up with the profound notion that marriage is a union of two souls destined by divine will on the basis of their deeds (Karmas) in their previous lives. Therefore, they consider it their sacred duty to preserve it. When their marriage becomes turbulent, they try very hard to save it.

Celibacy Helps Too Pre-marital celibacy is still the norm among traditional Hindus, and not an impossible-to-achieve ideal. In most cases, a newly wed couple has no exposure to any pre-

marital sexual experience or to an intense emotional intimacy. Thus, without a basis for comparison, they tend to accept each other as they are, and not as what they should be.

Parents’ Intervention In addition, the parents of both spouses usually play a crucial role both before and after their marriage. In middle class, traditional families, not many youths in In-dia would say to their parents, “It is my life, my marriage, it is none of your business.”

In Hindu families following traditional values, a marriage is not the union between two individuals but between two families. This bond not only gives a psychological boost to the newly wed couple but it is also a reliable source of support during any marital crisis. Both families have a strong sense of commitment to make the marriage of their loved ones work. In a marital crisis, parents from both sides would intervene to save their children’s mar-riage before they rush into a separation or divorce.

Social Stigma Of Divorce And Hindus traditionally treat divorce as a social stigma. If a couple is divorced, the parents and relatives of each spouse feel humiliated. A Hindu couple’s divorce would make it difficult for their unmarried brothers and sisters, as well as their own children, to find a suitable life part-ner. The family with a divorced member becomes tainted and is treated as having a serious ‘genetic disease’.

This puts a tremendous pressure on both partners of the troubled marriage to find solutions rather than rush for a divorce, in order to avert social humiliation and disgrace.

Although the rate of divorce among the Hindus of my generation I know is low, the rate of marital failures is higher among the second generation, who have shunned traditional family values and adopted North American individualism and lifestyle. The parental role in their lives has diminished. They often tell their parents, “This is my life. My marriage is none of your business. So, butt out.”


KALI AS THE YUGA SHAKTI: THE POWER TO CREATE A NEW WORLD AGE

By Shambhavi Chopra

As the great power of time, Kali’s Shakti creates the dif-ferent Yugas or world ages that humanity passes through during the long cycles of cosmic evolution. Kali is the Goddess of eternity watching over all our temporal changes and facilitat-ing those changes which promote our inner growth. More specifically, Kali is the Yuga Shakti or the power of time that takes humanity from one world age to another world age. She works to sustain the spiritual energy of the planet through both the ages of light and darkness.

The Dark Goddess is not simply a Hindu Goddess but the universal form of the Mother, who is the real ruler of the world. The awaken-ing to the Goddess that is occurring today at a global level is, yogically speaking, an awakening to the energy of Kali. The Mother Goddess as the dark, mysterious and transcendent Devi holds the key to the real power and presence of the universe in all her manifestations. Kali is once more entering into humanity and into the sphere of the Earth to work her magic and her awe.

The Devi brings about all planetary transformations, arousing the planetary Shakti and stimulating not only individual awareness but the greater planetary con-sciousness. The current natural and human catastrophes that are happening throughout the world today are an indication of this transformative power of Kali push-ing humanity to change, to break through our divisive beliefs and end our destructive behavior that has now come to threaten all life on the planet. Until we make the decisive inner change and give up our destructive attitudes and actions, we face the universal wrath of Kali at a global level, with the danger of global catastrophes

gradually increasing over time, until we are faced with the choice of either radically changing how we live or perishing as a species. To meet the challenge of Ma Kali, we must turn within and let go of our efforts to control

the outer world, seek-ing to understand ourselves first.

Today our civiliza-tion does not honor the Devatas, the cosmic forces of the Gods and God-desses that embody the sacred powers of nature on which we depend for our well-being. Intellec-tuals and academics reduce the living Deities, by whose grace we function, to aberrations of psychology, politics or anthropology,

mere reflections of ordinary human behavior that bears nothing sacred about it. Religions, in the name of God, practice politics and seek to dominate the world with their beliefs, rather than spreading a message of love, unity, the grace of the Mother, and Self-realization.

Meanwhile, even those who try to practice Tantra have generally reduced it to little more than black magic, us-ing the spirit world to promote material gains for them-selves and their paid clientele. The essence of the Yoga tradition seems to have been waylaid for commercial exploitation and personal self-aggrandizement on all fronts.

There is little real Dharma, or natural and universal principles, even among those trying to save the planet. We have many disgruntled ‘angry’ activists seeking to lay the blame for the world problems on someone else, shouting and cursing others, rather than becoming truly peace-loving helpers who aim to unite us for the greater benefit of all.


Sarvam santih santir eva santih May All Things Be Peaceful, the Peace of Peace!

We continue to divide up humanity in the name of religion and politics, fighting among ourselves, while overall we continue to devastate the planet, plundering her resources and making toxic her lands, water and air.

To bring our planet into a new and spiritual era, a new world age of higher consciousness, we must first gain the Shakti or the capacity to do so. We must have the power, the competence, the sincerity and the grace of the higher forces. We cannot on our own take us be-yond our human, social and psychological problems, because our behavior and mindset exists within their field. For this we must once more humbly seek the grace of the Mother, particularly as Kali, the Mother as the ruler of all time and transformation.

We need a new Shakti to bring this necessary global change about, a new descent of the spiritual power of the Mother Goddess. For this to occur, we must first bring the Shakti into ourselves, into our own minds and hearts, and learn to live according to its shocks, rhythms and transformative vibrations, letting it purify and re-make our own psychological nature first.

The power of the Divine feminine is once more needed to facilitate a new birth of higher consciousness in the world, not simply at an individual but at a planetary level. We must recognize the Goddess in all of her forms, of which her transformative manifestation of Ma Kali is perhaps the most central. A feminine grace, gentleness and kindness is necessary to soothe the pain and anger that is burning us from within, stoked by the greed, ambition and ignorance of generations.

We must move beyond the vagaries of human passions and needs, opening up our hearts to the living Shakti force of Kali. Ma Kali yearns for her full expression to be felt and experienced in order to make our lives into something meaningful for the soul. We can sense her mystical force rising powerfully once again in this un-settled transitional era. She is searching passionately for sadhakas to carry forth her benign wishes.

For the truly new to come into being, the old must first pass away. This is the work of Kali’s Shakti or time-force. But it is not simply an external factor of the destruc-tion of evil people by the good. Today, we largely live in a grey zone, where the purity of heart is practically non-existent. Meanwhile, no soul in essence is evil; all can be raised up if we reach them at the right time and

circumstances. We must drive out all weakness, blame, pettiness and narrowness inside ourselves.

The negative or Asuric force does momentarily prevail, but often the darkness is greatest before the dawn, and the negativity must manifest outwardly before it can be totally swept away. There is no undivine force or power that Ma Kali cannot match, consume and dissolve into her higher peace.

The Devata or higher divine force needs to be honoured in our times of strife and chaos. We must look beyond our human and historical fixations to the cosmic pow-ers. The inevitable ecological disturbances that are be-ginning to occur are meant to drive us into the shelter of these benevolent and powerful cosmic forms, to make us recognize our dependency on the greater universe and its divine essences. The Devata’s presence will once again manifest with a surge of benign energies to bring about a peaceful existence for humanity and for the Earth.

Ma Kali is the ultimate power behind all genuine spiri-tual and yogic movements and their unfoldment through the great process of time. Mahadevi Kali is the Yuga Shakti, heralding the new movement of Yoga awakening this Shakti power. Her role has already been manifested earlier in this era by great seers and teachers like Ra-makrishna, Yogananda, Aurobindo, Anandamayi Ma and many others, who mainly worked through the power of the Mother Goddess.

Yet there remains an urgent need for new avatars and forms of Kali’s energy, a new resurgence of her worship and a greater descent of her grace. Kali holds the key to our future as a species and our destiny at a soul level. Ma Kali carries the power to uplift humanity, but to find that we must discover her as the Universal Mother rest-ing in the flame of the spiritual heart within us.

We need to accept Kali’s purifying fire in order to raise us into the higher light in which alone our personal and global problems can be solved. Those who can endure and carry Kali’s fire can bring a new light to the world. They will discover a vision of the future that is in har-mony with the eternal truth and universal harmony.

Source: From Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess: Lightning Dance of the Supreme Shakti, posted on www.vedanet.com June 13th, 2012. It is being repub-lisher here with the author’s consent.


MY LIKES AND DISLIKES ABOUT HINDUISM By Neil Ramchand

Hindu practices, customs and traditions are the pillars and the foundation of Hinduism. Born in a very strict Hindu family I am blessed to be ex-posed to these pillars of what make Hinduism so unique. With every religion there are likes and dislikes on opinions and views of how one perceive their religion to be. With Hin-duism there is no difference. Since Hinduism is more of a way of life, I embrace the fact that one can set rules based on the practices, customs and traditions and at the same time make choices on how to stay within the boundaries of their Dharma.

My religion is so vast that anyone with minimal knowl-edge of the scriptures can attain some sort of inner gratification by practicing certain basics. I can read the Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana or the Shiv Purana, all of which teach how to be a better person. I have the choice of praying at a temple or home and praying in the morning, noon or night. The choice to focus on a particular form of god and with them being so many, any will lead me to my destination. By choosing a pre-scribed lifestyle to incorporate the practices, customs and traditions of my Dharma it becomes a part and parcel of me and for these reasons I adore my Dharma.

I like to be part of all the practices, traditions and cus-toms of my dharma. My daily morning prayer that I was brought up to practice every day gives me the boost to start my day. In our home we have rules that have al-ways been practiced since I can remember. My brother

and I will never ever go in the kitchen for breakfast unless we have showered and offer our morning puja.

I enjoy going to temple and participating in Puja, Archana, Abhishek & Arti. Going to the temple connects me with people of my religion, it also gives me a sense of belonging, reminding me who I am and where I am going. I am exposed to many practices and traditions by just attending temple that helps me to widen my spiritual knowledge.

While visiting my place of wor-ship I embrace the custom of taking off my shoes and dressing

appropriately. Shoes are considered to very dirty and most are made of animal skin, since our dharma pro-motes cleanliness is next to godliness I am very proud of this custom. In fact this custom is practiced in Hindus home as well. Personally dressing appropriately stimu-lates my frame of mind and allows me to focus on what I set out to do. My ultimate goal of attending temple is to try to interact and connect with that supreme divin-ity. Dressing inappropriately to perform puja and offer-ing prayers will certainly have a distracted affect on my focus and besides I am proud of my traditional clothing.

For many Hindus, vegetarianism in more than a way of life, it is a tradition. I am very proud to be a vegetarian and not just because it’s linked to Hinduism but for the health reasons as well. Our body is considered to be a temple, and if my body is a temple then what I put into it must be pure and have the vital nutrients to keep me


healthy. Our home is also considered a temple so why keep it unclean? These two basic rules are the key for practicing vegetarianism and I love that our Dharma promotes this tradition/ way of life.

The customs and traditions of my Dharma have been in practice from inception, however with the passing of generations it seems as though some of our customs have been modified or new once have come along and is evolving to accommodate today’s society.

I dislike the modern practice of dumping of our deities into the river, specifically Lord Ganesha. After devotes have sincerely worshipped the lord with love and affec-tion, he is dumped into the river. I have attended these occasions a few times and although I am yet to con-firm this ritual is in our scriptures I feel uncomfortable with this practice. In my opinion it’s contrary to what my Dharma promotes. After giving such reverence one should be embraced rather than be discarded.

Another customs/ traditions that I dislike is the worship-ping of young girls during Navaratri. Although I do, as this is usually what prevails during the nine night of Navaratri, I would rather concentrate on that “Mother “ in the same form I have been contemplating her all year round. The form of her di Author: vine imagine as a murti. The practice of worshipping young girls may have some significances, but personally I think it has become more of a show and overshadows the true meaning of Navaratri.

In conclusion, by practicing the traditions, customs of my Dharma the way they were instilled in me has become my way of life. I cannot imagine another way of living a balanced life. I cherish the old traditions and customs my Dharma is associated with and will always contribute to preserving them.

Editor’s Note: This article was Neil’s prize winning entry in the Hindu Youth Essay Competition-2012, or-ganized by the Canadian Hindu Link. Neil was born and raised in Brampton; his parents are of Guyanese descent. He attended Brampton Centennial Second-ary School. He is now working towards his Bachelor of Commerce Degree. Neil is presently involved with the Mississauga Ram Mandir Youth Committee working to make a difference in his Community. He is also a registered member of the World Financial Group for gaining experiences in the financial field as his career goal is to become a Chartered Account.


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Modern western examination of the Vedas, and the an-cient history of India, has been colored by the search for an original European identity, the so-called Aryans. This has led to Indian history and tradition being subordinated to a proposed Indo-European people and culture placed in Europe or nearby Central Asia. The result of this view is a need to place the Vedic culture of India outside of India and to interpret Vedic texts apart from the Indic tradition almost as an article of faith. Even though exist-ing archaeological and genetic evidence is contrary to any Aryan invasion/migration into India, there is a great reluctance to give up this theory, not because of what is found relative to ancient India but to maintain some original Aryan identity in proximity to Europe.

Search For European Identity Starting with the Renaissance, Europeans began looking for their pre-Christian roots in Greek and Roman culture. This continued as a major trend in western thought into the nineteenth century when the Greeks became regard-ed as the very founders of true civilization, with western and world civilization almost equated in the minds of most scholars. The Greeks were hailed as the inventors of science, democracy, logic, medicine, history and all that became the hallmarks of western civilization and its powers and insights.

This adulation of the Greeks opened the door for a greater search for the roots of all European peoples, discriminating them from the Semitic peoples of the Near East and North Africa. This became what we could call the search for the ‘original Europeans’, with the Greeks becoming just one branch of a greater ancient European culture. European scholars sought the roots of the Euro-pean peoples and civilization as an entity in itself. They rejected the existing Judeo-Christian idea of European civilization as simply a product of Near Eastern civiliza-tion and sought some origin for it in Europe or Central Asia.

This search for the original Europeans arose as part of nineteenth century ideas of the superior white or Euro-pean race, as opposed to weaker and inferior African, American and Asiatic types, whom the Europeans had recently colonized, were ruling and were seeking to con-

vert. The search for the original Europeans became allied to the new European nationalism that arose along with the formation of new nation states in Europe. It became particularly strong in German thought, and even virulent, in its Nazi forms.

The search for the original Europeans needed a founda-tion on which to structure itself. This was found in recog-nition of the connections between European languages, the postulating of an Indo-European family of languages, linking together the main languages of Europe.

Not only were the classical languages of Europe of Greek and Latin related, but so were the Germanic, Slavic and Celtic tongues among many others, the languages of the great majority of modern and ancient Europeans. It was not only languages that were related in vocabulary and grammar, but also cultural and religious ideas as reflect-ed in their myths and practices. Undefined Aryans and their home

This linguistic-cultural connection led to the idea of a proto-European homeland, some original European people as an ethnic or cultural type whose migration over time resulted in the creation of different European groups, cultures and nations. The idea of the original Eu-ropeans as a specific linguistic, cultural and ethnic type arose, the so-called ‘Aryans’, originally formulated as white Europeans speaking a pure European tongue with a unique seed culture that could later blossom as the great civilizations of Europe. Through this idea, Europe discovered an identity of its own that was ancient and based upon language, mythology and ethnicity. This was a very compelling idea for the colonial mind. A mytholo-gy of the original Europeans, their homeland and culture was created and elaborated over time.

Reflecting the European nationalism of the times, the different countries of Europe and their scholars argued about the details of the original Europeans, vying for the location of its original homeland, and their contributions to it. The Germans saw them as proto-Germans, the Rus-sians as proto-Russians, others as proto-Celts and so on. These proto-Europeans or Aryans were often defined ethnically as blond, blue-eyed and white. The Nazis regarded them as the master race and sought to maintain

THE EUROPEANIZATION OF THE VEDAS AND ITS DISTORTIONS

By Vamdev Shashtri (Formerly David Frawley)


the purity of their blood. Others scholars viewed them more culturally or linguistically than as an ethnic group.

However, this search for the original Europeans began with one major problem. The languages of Europe were not only connected with each other but to many other languages of West and South Asia, including the lan-guages of India and Iran, which meant to languages of non-Europeans who had civilizations of their own along with their own history and sophistication.

In fact, the oldest, largest and most sophisticated litera-ture of the ancient Indo-European languages was found in the Vedic literature of India, which the Europeans had only recently encountered. It was the discovery of Sanskrit that had allowed European scholars to connect European languages together in the first place. This Vedic Sanskrit was a quite profound and detailed language po-etically and grammatically. Vedic texts also reflected the same deities and mythologies as the European but with greater complexity and variability. Indeed some European scholars had proposed that the Vedic people were the original Aryans and that Sanskrit was the mother of all languages.

The problem was that Indian civilization was very far removed from that of Europe. India has its own civiliza-tion that was more spiritual, mystical and little connected to the West and its historical development. And problem-atically for the nineteenth century European mind, the Indians were dark-skinned, among the very people the Europeans had recently conquered and colonized and re-garded as inferior. It was certainly not something easy for the European mind of the time to accept that the proto-Europeans connected to India or were possibly even an offshoot of India and its older civilization.

Europeanization of the Vedas and Sanskrit This led to a process, done perhaps as much uncon-sciously as consciously, of what I would call ‘the Europe-anization of the Vedas’. Its main goal was to uphold the European roots of the Indo-European languages and cul-tures by making the original Vedic and Iranian peoples as offshoots of the proto-Europeans and migrants from their location in Europe or Central Asia. Instead of seeing India and Europe connections as part of a greater heritage, with India having an important role, India’s contribution was removed and taken outside the region.

This intellectual trend occurred in two ways. First Eu-ropean scholars postulated that the Vedas originated in Europe or Central Asia and were brought into India at

a late ancient period (c. 1500 – 1000 BCE) by invad-ing European people, the so-called Aryans, who were fair skinned, if not blond and blue-eyed, aided by their superior technology of horses, chariot and iron and overthrowing the indigenous people of the region. The original Vedic people were regarded as more European than Indian with their influence only later absorbed by the existing population.

From this view it was a natural step to claim that the ancestor of the Vedic language, Sanskrit, was also origi-nally more European than Indian that came to be In-dianized only after the Aryans carried it into India and were absorbed with the native peoples. They called this hypothesized ancestor language Proto Indo-European and claimed that Sanskrit was a later branch of it. There has since been an effort to reconstruct this Proto-Indo-European or PIE tongue, primarily on linguistic grounds.

Second, European scholars rejected the traditional Indian scholarship of the Vedas, though it was very ancient and detailed. They reinterpreted the Vedas in light of European languages, mythologies and cultural concerns, removing them almost entirely from their Indian context. This resulted in a new western scholarship of the Vedas in which Sanskrit and Vedas were made subordinate to Indo-European studies. It not only rejected tradition Indi-an scholarship of the Vedas, or took from it selectively, it also rejected any modern Hindu scholarship of the Vedas and its contemporary teachers like Swami Dayananda of the Arya Samaj or Sri Aurobindo, the great yogi.

The Vedas were Europeanized both in terms of location and scholarship. They were taken out of India in terms of their place of origin and also in terms of the ideas used to understand them. They were carefully Europeanized. European scholars placed the Vedas outside of both India and Indic thought as if they were a product or offshoot of the same proto-Europeans they speculated about. The European identity of the Aryans was preserved, the sophistication of Vedic literature and its impact on India notwithstanding.

Such European scholars approach the Vedas primarily through their training in European culture, with a knowl-edge of Greek and Latin, comparative European mythol-ogy, modern linguistics and other western intellectual tools. They seldom study, and have little respect for, Hindu methods of approaching the Vedas on a spiritual level through ritual, mantra, meditation and yoga. As mentioned already, they ignore both the ancient and modern Hindu literature on the Vedas, or at best give it

CON’T ON PAGE 22


a very selective and secondary place. As a result, what they see in the Vedas is very different than the Vedic tradition in India, much more European and less Indian. Over time they have come to rely on the translations and interpretations of the Vedas by European scholars as au-thoritative and have stopped studying Sanskrit or looking at the Vedic texts directly. Their knowledge of the origi-nal language, Sanskrit, is often faulty and mainly consists of linguistic deconstructionism, a comparative study of roots and words, not a cohesive literary interpretation of the text and its teachings.

The important thing to note from this is that the European estimation of the Vedas, even to the present day, is just an offshoot of their greater concern for discovering the original Europeans. The Vedas are not looked at in a pri-mary way or in their own terms. Western scholars look at the Vedas in light of European thought and culture, which is their real concern. The Vedas are treated more as intruders in their European world, not as presenting any primary culture of their own. Such scholars have taken the Vedas both out of India and out of any traditional or modern Hindu or Indic scholarship or spirituality, though this is quite extensive. For them the Vedas and the Vedic people are non-Indian and represent a tradition that is not indigenous or even not primary to the country, but is more akin to the ancient European.

Non-Vedic Origin Of Indian Civilization At the same time, these scholars must postulate some indigenous non-Aryan peoples of India to ascribe India’s civilization to, which clearly goes back long before the Greeks or any other European peoples and their cultures, and has been archaeologically documented as quite ex-tensive and sophisticated already in the urban Harappan era of the third millennium BCE. Should they ascribe In-dia’s ancient civilization to the Vedic people, their whole concept of the original Europeans and their homeland would be suspect.

It is because of this fixation on the search for the original Europeans that western scholars are so adverse to any efforts to bring the Vedic people and culture into India, particularly to equating the Vedic culture with the ancient people of India through the Indus Valley or Harappan culture, which many Indian and some western scholars have suggested makes more sense. The outside-India basis for the Vedas has become almost an article of faith of modern European thought so that the roots of Euro-pean culture and Indo-European languages can remain in Europe or in proximity to it, not in India.

It is their focus on the original Europeans that prevents western scholars from really understanding the Vedas or correcting their view of Vedic history. In this regard, let us look at what has happened to the Aryan theory since it was first postulated relative to finds in India. Note that I am presently this material only briefly as it is already covered in previous books and articles (Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization, Rajaram and Frawley; In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Feurstein, Kak and Frawley; the Oldest Civilization in South Asia, B.B.Lal, etc.), and will be the subject of some upcoming books and articles as well.

Today the genetic and archaeological evidence does not show any invasion or migration of Aryans or European like people in ancient times that could have brought the Vedic language or culture into India. A closer examina-tion of Vedic texts show that the Vedas reflect the geog-raphy of India when the Sarasvati river dominated the west of the country, a river that dried up around 2000 BCE or long before the proposed Aryan invasion of 1500 BCE. Harappan sites are mainly centered on the Sarasvati River that flowed east of the Indus. Common symbols in them include the swastika symbol, Vedic fire altars, Brahma bulls, figures in yoga postures and many other Vedic and Hindu symbols. Meanwhile efforts to prove any evidence of invasion/migration in Vedic texts have also failed, with the texts emphasizing a culture with deep roots in the land of North India, particularly the Sarasvati River.

Yet western scholars still insist on the non-India origin for the Vedas and place them in Central Asia or even Europe. They now bring them in by way of linguistic changes, not through the old idea of large migrations or invasions that have been discredited. They propose a change of language and culture change with the people remaining largely the same, a migration more of language than people. In other words, though the hard data they proposed for the invasion/migration has not been found, they are still holding to their theory as if it did not require any real evidence to prove itself. The reason they can-not let go of this need to keep the Vedas out of India is arguably because of their cultural bias for the original Europeans.

Should the Vedic culture be placed in India or made the basis of the Harappan civilization, the great urban civili-zation of India that flourished on the Sarasvati river from 3100 – 1900 BCE, then the whole edifice of European scholarship about the original Europeans would have to be totally recast. The roots of ancient European culture


would have to move towards India.

As scholars challenge the Europeanization of the Vedas, they are bound to meet with a stiff cultural resistance, even from western scholars who have never studied the Vedas. These scholars will naturally ally with other Euro-pean scholars, with whom their share a common mind-set. Their views require that they control the location and interpretation of Vedic culture, not for an understanding of Indian civilization but for maintaining their ideas of the original Europeans. It is not an issue of Indian history that drives them but of European history.

These ‘European’ scholars, which include a category of Europeanized Indians, are mainly interested in European culture and languages. They look at India and its San-skritic and Vedic traditions in the distance, according to European interpretations through comparative mythology, linguistics, psychology or political and economic (caste and class) theories. They are suspicious of scholars who actually are rooted in the Vedic and Indic tradition and see things in a different light than they do. They don’t bother to connect the Vedic tradition east and south into India and Asia, though there is much evidence in these directions as well, but continually draw them only into the north and west.

It is this battle between those who claim a non-Indian and an Indian origin for the Vedas that we see today. Yet the Europeanization of the Vedas is at least being ques-tioned now. In fact the whole concept of the Aryans is being questioned as well (as Aryan in Sanskrit is a term of respect, not one of ethnicity).

Once we take the Vedas back into the Indian context, in which alone we can really understand them, we will gain a new and more spiritual view not only of India but also of all humanity. But it will require that scholars have to recognize that ancient European culture may have a connection to India.

This issue is likely to take decades to resolve. It will be a long drawn out struggle that is likely to be resolved only when a new generation takes up the challenge. The reason, to summarize, is that the issue is fundamental not only to the ancient history of India but to that of Europe and much of the rest of the world. It is a clash not only at the level of historical information but of civilizational views as to what history really means.

Source: Posted on www.vedanet.com by admin on June 14th, 2012.

Many names adorn classical Tamil literature. Tiruvalluvar, and Kapilar are among them. We know very little about these gifted poets as individuals, but there is an interesting legend pertaining to them that has become part of Tamil literary history,

A pious Tamil Brahmin once went on a distant pilgrimage, abandoning his little son whose name was Bhagavan. When Bhagavan grew up to become a young man, he went in quest of his lost father. In the course of his journey he halted in the small town of Melur. There he stayed in a boarding house.

The proprietor of the boarding house had adopted a girl of a lowly caste. One evening, while Bhagavan was busy preparing his own meal, the girl happened to come in his vicinity. This was a contamination of the young man’s Brahminical purity, and he therefore flung a stone at the intruding youngster. The stone hit the poor girl’s forehead, leaving a scar.

Bhagavan left Melur in disgust. After years of fruitless quest for his long lost father he happened to return there. By now the little girl of lowly origin had grown into a beautiful dam-sel. Bhagavan, not realizing who she was, was captivated by her charms, fell in love with here, and decided to take her as his wife. Bhagavan was happy that at last he had found love, and he hoped to have a peaceful life. A joyous wedding was arranged.

On the fifth day of the rituals, when Bhagavan parted her hair, he recognized the scar that had been left by the stone he had flung at his bride years ago. He called her Adiyal (the first woman). In shame or self pity, he left the scene and ran away. But Adiyal went after him, and would not let him leave her. Bhagavan agreed to take her, but remembering the treatment meted out to him by his father, he insisted he would do so only if she promised to abandon all their offspring. Adiyal had no choice.

As the mother gave up her various infants in succession, each of them is said to have consoled her with a verse whose essence is that we are all protected by the Providence. Indeed these are among the great poets of the Tamil speaking world.

Source: This article is taken from the INDHER magazine issue, and republished here with the consent of editor V.V. Raman

Geeta Jayanti is the anniversary of the day, when the Divine Song (Bhagavad Geeta) was sung. On this day Shri Krishna spoke to Arjuna, on the battlefield in Kuruk-shetra.The Bhagvad Geeta was transcribed into words by Veda Vyasji.

I have read:

The one who takes a dip in the Ganges is liberated. The one who lives according to the Gita can liber-ate others.”

Those who teach this supreme mystery of the Geeta to all who love me perform the greatest act of love; they will come to me without a doubt. No one can render me more devoted service; no one on earth can be more dear to me.

The Gita consists of 700 shlokas (verses) divided into 18 chapters.

The teachings of the Gita do not apply only to inner and outer conflicts in the battlefield, but to the combat zone (of good and evil) that lives within us.

One is not required to be a Hindu, highly spiritual or extremely intelligent to understand and follow Lord Krishna’s teachings.

Lord Krishna does not advocate only one path in the Bhagvad Geeta. In fact throughout the Divine Scripture, Krishna explains how one can attain liberation depend-ing upon the inclination of different temperaments of man. One may unite with God through devotion (Bhakti), through wisdom (Gyaan), and through action (Karma) -

Mahatma Gandhi said, “When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad-Gita...I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies and my life has been full of external tragedies. If they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teachings of Bhagavad-Gita.”

Ideally one should recite the whole scripture on Geeta Jayanti, but if it is not possible because of the fast paced times that we live in.

Editor’s note: This article is being republished here from the author’s website www.dalsabzi.com with her consent.

GEETA JAYANTI By Shakun Narain Kimatrai


Modern science recognizes an evolution of form in the Pranayama is a very deep but often misunderstood aspect of Yoga. From ordinary breathing practices to yogic mastery of the vital force and promoting the higher energy of consciousness, it is all pranayama at various levels. In the following article, we will explore the deeper aspects of Prana and Pranayama, including how to achieve a unitary prana beyond the fluctua-tions of the ordinary breath, senses and mind.

In many classical San-skrit texts, the term Yoga is used primarily for Pranic practices, while the term Jnana or knowledge is used for meditation. This is reflected in the teachings of the great modern sage Ra- mana Maharshi, who uses these terms in this manner. Many Yoga Shastras and Yoga Upanishads explain Prana and related factors of Pranayama, chakras and nadis in great detail. Some-times the term Hatha Yoga is used for this Pranic Yoga and Raja Yoga for the Yoga of meditation. So Yoga and Pranayama are closely related and sometimes equated.

Yoga is not just control of the mind but also control of the Prana, which go together. Mind and Prana are often said to be like the two wings of a bird, with the mind as the power of knowledge and the Prana as the power of action. Both always move and act in accord with each other. Yet Prana has deeper meanings as well.

Prana: Levels Of Meaning Prana is a word, much like the term Yoga, which has a broad range of indications and several different but interrelated levels of application. You may be surprised to find that Prana can mean much more than what you may have already thought it to be. These different meanings are not contradictory but complimentary. They help us bridge the gap between our ordinary breath and the highest energy of universal conscious-ness.

Prana in the higher sense is the spirit, the awareness that inhabits the body and mind, but transcends them. This higher Prana is much more than the physical

breath. It is the great Prana, Mahan Prana, which is synonymous with the energy of consciousness, Chit-Shakti. This is the non-elemental, unmanifest Prana of the immortal life. It is inherent in Eternal Being or Sat and is above all biological functioning.

Pranic based Yoga practices aim to access this supreme Prana, though it is a process that can only occur by degrees, starting at a physical level. We should always remember that im-

mortal prana is our ulti-mate goal of Pranayama practice. This is the Prana Purusha of the Upanishads, the

Supreme Self, whose nature is the high-est life energy beyond birth and death.

Prana can also indicate the cosmic creative force, the Ishvara, or Cosmic Lord, such as we find mentioned in the Yoga Sutras. Ishvara is the energy that creates, sustains and dissolves the universe. Our own individual soul or Jivatman can also be referred to by Prana, being the essence of our individual Prana. Jiva or the soul means Prana or life. This Prana of the soul is what allows us to take various births and to ultimately tran-scend the process of birth and death.

Prana and Breath Prana is a cosmic force and pervades all of life and nature. Prana is not simply oxygen, which is but a car-rier of prana at a physical level, but the very energy of life, and the basis of all other energies in the universe, including those that appear inanimate to us, like the force of gravity.

Yet it is the Prana that works within our own embodied existence that is the main concern for us. Most of us are first acquainted with Prana by its association with the breath. Often Prana is translated as breath or means breath. The breath is the main action of Prana in the body, and through the breath we can gain mastery over Prana at various levels, including accessing its higher forms.

Yet Prana is not merely the ordinary breath, it is the energy behind the breath. Pranayama practice is not

PRACTICE PRANAYAMA TO ACCESS HIGHER ENERGIES By Vamdev Shastri

(Formerly Dr. David Frawley)


simply breath work but moving to a deeper level of en-ergy and awareness, accessing Prana at a level through, behind and beyond the breath.

Prana is also often regarded as the ‘vital force’ or ‘life energy’, which is sustained by the breath but pervades all bodily and mental activities. The vital force sustains speech, mind, the senses and our internal organs. Prana is the basis of Vata dosha in Ayurvedic medicine, the biological air humor, the most important of the three biological humors, which rules over all activities, func-tions and movements in the body, and is closely aligned with the nervous system.

The five senses are closely related to prana. The cogni-tive senses serve to take in various pranic influences, particularly the eyes and the ears, which take in the Prana of light and sound. But also the tongue, skin and nose. The skin brings in both Prana and oxygen and conveys it through the sense of touch. The tongue takes in the Prana from the food. The nose takes in the Prana of fragrance, including subtler Pranas from the air than mere oxygen.

The motor organs work to discharge various pranic im-pulses as in speaking, moving, eating, elimination and reproduction, which are all pranic activities connected to our vital urges.

The mind has its own pranic connections, beginning with its connection to the senses, with our various as-sociations and relationships, which form our own pranic network. Emotion itself is pranic energy within the mind, with its patterns of attraction and repulsion.

Yogic thought divides our nature into five sheaths, fields or enclosures (koshas). The first is that made of food (Annamaya Kosha), which consists of the gross body made up of the bodily tissues and organs. The second is that made of Prana or Pranamaya kosha, related to the five Pranas and the five motor organs. It governs move-ment, vital urges and the breath. Often the term Prana is used for the functions of the Pranamaya kosha.

However, the Pranamaya kosha is just the field of the outer or manifest Pranas, particularly those that inter-face with and energize the physical body. It is not syn-onymous with Prana as a whole. Prana operates in the deeper Koshas of mind (Manomaya Kosha), intelligence (Vijnanamaya Kosha) and bliss (Anandamaya Kosha). In fact, Prana in the deeper sense is often related to Ananda or bliss, which is the main power of creation and the main motivating force behind all aspects of life. CON’T ON PAGE 27

Pranayama The manifest pranas are an expression of rajo-guna, the quality of agitation and turbulence. To reach sattva guna or a deeper peace and balance, we must calm ourselves and internalize the prana, which implies to calm and unify the energy of the breath. That is why Yogic Pranayama, like Asana, follows after the Yamas and Niyamas, the principles of sattvic living and rests upon them.

Pranayama is often regarded as control of the breath or mastery of the breath. When it is a question of control of the breath, the issue arises as to “who is controlling the breath?” If we use the mind or the ego to control the breath, it is not Yoga but a physical exercise. In Yo-gic Pranayama it is the your consciousness that should be developed as the real master of the breath.

Pranayama often emphasizes holding the breath. The question here arises as to “what we are holding in the breath?” Some people may be holding negative emo-tions, fears, desires, or even ego energy in the breath. It is important to allow the breath to naturally deepen, so that there is a natural holding by the power of the inner Prana and awareness, not simply an ego effort. One should energize the breath with devotion, aspira-tion and a seeking for higher knowledge. Above all, one should not think any harmful thoughts about anyone while doing pranayama.

The goal of yogic pranayama is not simply to exercise the lungs and make us breathe better, though these are a natural part of it. The goal is to develop a ‘unitary prana’ in which the fluctuations and disturbances of the breath cease and one can access the inner energy of consciousness beyond the breath. This unitary Prana or breathless state is called ‘kevala kumbhaka’ in yogic thought. It is often practised along with yoni mudra, closing all the sensory openings in order to access the inner light. It is the fruit of extensive Pranayama prac-tices or mastery of the Prana.

Prana and Kundalini Kundalini can be defined as the higher energy of the unitary prana. To access it, we must first balance the breath between the Ida and the Pingala or the left and right nostrils, the lunar and the solar currents. This im-plies taking our minds to a state of unitary attention and unitary awareness beyond the mind’s dualistic fluctua-tions of attraction and repulsion, like and dislike, love and hate.

CON’T ON PAGE 26


It is only the unitary prana that can enter into the Su-shumna or the central channel and opens the chakras, unfolding their powers. As long as we are caught in the dualistic prana, the Kundalini lays asleep and dormant at the base of the spine, and the chakras are closed, working only at outer level to sustain our outer exis-tence, not affording steady access to higher states of consciousness.

One can activate this unitary prana directly through the unitary awareness if one has the ability to create a strong focused meditation, but that is relatively rare. Only a few Yogis along the Yoga of knowledge are likely to have this power.

Nadi Shodhana: Alternate Nostril Breathing All yogic pranayamas can aid in the development of the higher unitary prana, but for this purpose the main method emphasized is usually ‘alternate nostril breath-ing’ or nadi shodhana. This serves to balance the dualis-tic outer prana so that we can access the higher unitary prana.

The Pingala nadi that flows through the right nostril has a solar, heating, fiery and Pitta nature. It is stimulating and promotes movement, expression, action and diges-tion. The Ida nadi that flows through the left nostril has a lunar, cooling, watery and Kapha nature. It is calming and promotes rest, introversion, relaxation and sleep.

During the day our breath fluctuates between one nostril and another. Generally Pitta constitution people, those of fiery nature, will find the right nostril to be more open than the left. Those of Kapha or watery constitution will find the left nostril to be more open than the right. Vata dosha or airy types will experience greater fluctuations.

The practice of alternate nostril breathing, done with concentration and part of a sattvic life style, helps bal-ance the breath and develop the unitary prana behind it.

After the practice of alternate nostril breathing, if done correctly, one can for a time enter in the flow of the unitary prana, in which inhalation and exhalation come to an end, or become very subtle. This is generally experienced as a flow of energy in the region of the Third Eye, a kind of light, pressure and vibration ema-nating from that location but expanding to pervade the entire body. One can learn to work with and direct this unitary prana through the various nadis and chakras or out of the body altogether.

Hamsa So’ham Nadi Shodhana This is a simple method of combining mantra with alter-nate nostril breathing.

In Sanskrit symbology, the breath is governed by s and h sounds. This is common to many languages, but per-haps nowhere stressed so much as in Sanskrit. Espe-cially the sounds Soham and Hamsa are used relative to the breath. In this special method, one can use both Soham and Hamsa relative to alternate nostril breath-ing.

In this regard, one should note that the Sa sound has a lunar energy while the Ha sound has a solar energy ac-cording to the ancient science of mantra. Similarly, the mantra So’ham also has more a lunar or Soma energy, while Hamsa has a solar energy. Inhalation in general has a more lunar energy and exhalation has a more solar energy as well.

In this procedure, one uses the mantra for inhalation through the left or lunar nostril, followed by the mantra Ham for exhalation through the right or solar nostril. Then one uses the mantra Ham for inhalation through the right nostril, followed by the mantra Sa for exhala-tion through the left nostril. This process of So’ham Hamsa makes one round of alternate nostril breathing.

During this practice, one should let the breath natu-rally deepen. There need be no overt effort to hold the breath but if this occurs naturally it can be allowed.

After one has done this practice for fifteen minutes or more, one should let go of the breath and enter into yoni mudra, or simply just sit quietly with the eyes closed, allowing the background unitary prana to come forth.

The more one practices this alternate nostril breathing, the greater the access to the unitary prana, which will gain in strength even behind the ordinary breath. Begin with at least fifteen minutes morning and evening.

But remember to keep a peaceful prana in all that you do. Then all your pranayama practices will work in the best possible manner. The higher Prana is a power of peace, not a power of self-assertion! This unitary prana is best accessed through a deeper peace and surrender of our personal will to the Divine will, and an align-ment with our highest Self.

Source:This article first was published in Tathaastu Magazine and Yoga Aktuel. It is reproduced here from the author’s blog posted on the www.vedanet.com


GOD - PEOPLE’S AND MINE By Krishan Gopal (New Delhi)

People believe there is a God. I also say that God is. People say that God does everything. I say God does nothing at all. People say that not a leaf moves without His will. I say he has no will at all. People believe God is omnipresent, yet He has to be sought, found, felt, real-ized etc. etc. I also say God is omnipresent, and as such, He is spread everywhere in each and every pour and particle of every and any thing and as such, the question of seeking, finding, feeling and realizing Him etc. does not arise. He is present here there and everywhere, in every nook and corner of the universe.

People believe that through belief, trust, faith, devotion, dedication, prayer, worship, austerities, charities askesis etc., God can be seen, felt, and realized. I say God can never ever be seen, felt, or realized as He is too subtle to be feelable, thinkable, seeable, realizable or even imaginable. What the so-called Seers or realisers of God see or realize is the construction or projection of their individual minds. With whatever thought or idea they get possessed and obsessed, that very thought or idea takes the shape and form of God, and they mistakenly believe and think they have seen, felt or realized God.

People say that God is omnipotent and can do anything. I also believe God is omnipotent to the extent of being so potent that nothing in the universe, not even the most potent thing in the world can perturb, disturb or upset Him. He is absolutely unconcerned towards anything or any happening in the universe; unconcerned to the extent of being impotent. What He cares about is happening, as He remains unaffected by any or every happening, how ever big or serious. Therefore, He does absolutely nothing, and does not, and need not interfere with any happening, and lets the laws of Nature operate unhindered. God is, therefore, omnipotent and impotent both simultaneously. An elephant cares

not whether a mosquito is stinging or trying to suck his blood. God is unconcerned to react. He is very potent indeed insofar as lion tigers, leopards, rhinos, bulls, buf-faloes, camels, goats and sheep etc. but for mosquitoes, fleas and flies etc. He is as good as impotent; potent yet impotent. Thunderbolts may lash and crack, volcanoes may erupt and spit fire and brimstone, nuclear bombs may explode and play havoc in the universe, the whole world may be ablaze, yet all these things do not affect God even as much as does a mosquito an elephant. God does not react to all these most powerful things as these are not even as good as the bite of a mosquito to an elephant. He remains un-moved, unperturbed, un-disturbed, un-upset and unconcerned to all these things which are not worthy of being called pinpricks even. Therefore, this is an omnipotent impotent God.

People say God is omniscient. I say He is inscient, rather even insentient. Sentiency arises in life, which is the by-product of God and Matter. Both God and Matter in themselves, and by themselves, are insen-tient. From sentiency develops science which goes on

developing into intelligence. Sentiency, science, and

intelligence develop in life because of God and get expression through Matter, i.e. through the medium

of Matter. God, be-ing insentient and also

inscient, is incapable of expressing itself in any way or

manner whatsoever, and remains absolutely un-manifest. It is through

Matter only that life gives expression to itself. Matter becomes manifest and

un-manifest alternately. Life gets expres-sion through Matter when it is in its manifest

form. God, thus, is omnipresent but not om-niscient at all. He is inscient to the extent of being insentient. Insofar as His omnipotence is concerned, He is impotently omnipotent. Be-ing omnipresent, He is present everywhere, in every thing, including a dead body also. God

is just like a catalyst, uninvolved, unaffected, un-concerned and unmanifest yet very much there.


PAGE 28

KURUKSHETRA Here, Krishna sang the Divine Song: “The Bhagvad Gita”

By Mrs. Shakun Narain Kimatrai

I had gone to Chandigarh (Punjab) for a wedding. As we drove from Delhi to Chandigarh, we passed by a sign, which led to Kurukshetra. I was thrilled! I had wished to visit this place for a very long time! But I suppose, I was not destined to do so earlier. I believe in ‘Bulaava’ which means that one cannot visit Spiritual places, until the Deity calls one. You could say that, that is true of any kind of travel. You may be right…and then you may be wrong!

My experience: An Indian friend who came all the way from Australia with us, refused to budge from the place where we had tea. He just would not enter the pilgrim-age places! I asked him for a good reason. He had none! Anyway, on my way back from Chandigarh to Delhi and Bombay, I set foot in Kurukshetra, the Birthplace of the Holy Gita and the land where the great War of Mahab-harata was fought!

The Vaman Puraan tells us that Lord Brahma created Man and the Universe in Kurukshetra, where a huge water body called the Brahma Sarovar lies.

It is believed that a dip in these holy waters, on the days of an Eclipse

and Amaavasya (Moonless night) will absolve one of sins commit-ted. Legend says

that the San-nihit Saro-var (1 km

away from Brahma Sarovar) was filled with holy water that flowed from Brahma’s navel. I visited the Bheeshma Kund Baan Ganga.

I felt blessed when I stood on the grounds of Jyotisar, the birthplace of the Bhagvad Gita, the spot where the Lord of Lords sang His Divine Song. The guide explained to me, that that spot is the center point from where the two mighty armies stood, ready to fight. This was the crowning glory of my Spiritual Travel. Krishna is my Ishta Devta.

I have visited Mathura, the jail in which He was born. I have walked the gardens of Vrindaavan, where everyone fell under the spell of His magic flute. I have walked the road to Barsaana, where RadhaRani spent her childhood! I have been in Dwarka, where Krishna reigned as King. I have set foot on the place where Krishna renounced His body (This place is near Somnath Temple called Prayaas Kshetra, if I remember right)

And now I was in Kurukshetra! Wow! Could not believe my luck! I gazed upon the image of Lord Krishna and Arjuna immortalized in marble. I stood under the ban-yan tree believed to be an off-shoot of the original one. I decided to spend a few moments there, and I stepped on to a small water body. I just went down one step, and I slipped…I slipped again and I lay on my side, on the step under barely 6 ins of water, fully drenched! People rushed towards me. I was not at all hurt! I was just laugh-ing at the will of the Lord! It was like Krishna was telling me: “Do you think I am going to let you go from here,

unaffected?” Touched I was! And blessed!

Later, I visited the Sri Krishna Mu-seum. It was quite nice, really with objects that celebrate the theme

of Lord Krishna! One of the highlights in Kurukshetra is the Panorama Project. It is a cylindrical structure. It has a 34ft high

depiction of the Mahabharata battle-field. The battle comes alive with special acoustic effects.

Oh! It was beautiful! What? The Experience of having stepped back

into time. And forward, also! Now every time I read the Gita, I see Him a little clearer!


DEVICHAND, THE FIRST HINDU IMMIGRANT IN CANADA

By Ajit Adhopia

Among the earliest group of immigrants from India was a Hindu Brahmin called Devichand. He was an enterprising and educated man, and claimed to be a friend of the Ma-haraja of Nabha, a princely state in Punjab. After living in Victoria for some time, he moved to Vancouver. In 1905, he established an employment agency and brought small groups of immigrants from India to work in unskilled and manual jobs in British Columbia. Their number gradually increased to 432 by 1906 although not all of them were brought in by Devichand. Although small in number, they were highly visible on account of their skin colour and unique attire. Still, nobody took much notice of them except Thomas McGuigan, the Vancouver City Clerk who was irked by their presence. He started writing angry let-ters to the Federal Superintendent of immigration. Ini-tially, his protest was ignored by the senior officials of the immigration department, but he started drawing media attention, and the Canadian government gave in to the pressure. A Royal Commission, headed by MacKenzie King, then deputy Minister of Labour, was appointed to investigate the sudden influx of immigrants from India. It is hard to believe that such a small number of immigrants would become a national issue, especially when they had arrived in Canada legally. Since India was a part of the British Empire, its people were considered British citizens and had the legal right to come to Canada just as much as the Australians and New Zealanders. But this legal fact was irrelevant to Canadians who wanted to keep Canada a White Man’s country.

Devichand, A Scapegoat The Royal Commission’s report concluded that the migra-tion of Hindus to Canada was not spontaneous; it was a well organized scheme. It outlined three main reasons for the sudden influx of immigrants from India during the period 1904 to 1906:

1. To promote their business, the commission agents for some shipping companies were prompting people in India and other British colonies to migrate to Canada.

2. Pamphlets were being distributed in the rural areas of Punjab and Bengal urging people to take advantage of the economic opportunities in the U.S.A. and Canada, particularly in British Columbia.

3. Devichand and some other individuals were making

money by luring people to immigrate to Canada for a better life. They were entering into verbal agreements to find them employment and facilitating their settlement.

Since none of these activities were illegal, although they were called “unpatriotic to the Empire” by Mackenzie King, nothing could be done at the political level to stop Hindus from entering Canada. However, something had to be done to satisfy the people like McGuigan, and a scapegoat had to be found. Devichand’s presence in Van-couver proved useful to some crafty civil servant. When some immigrants refused to pay Devichand for his ser-vices after their arrival in Canada, he threatened to have them deported, and used other pressure tactics to re-cover his fees. Devichand was arrested and charged with ‘obtaining money under false pretences’. It is reported that Devichand was so rich that to secure his release, he had paid for his bail in sovereign gold coins. His case was heard on July 18th, 1906, and attracted a lot of media at-tention. It was alleged that his operation was quite exten-sive as he had brought 52 workers to Canada in one ship alone. He was acquitted and reported to have boasted that he wanted to replace Chinese and Japanese workers with his own countrymen. The Daily Province stated that Devichand had said:

“In the coming struggle, the Hindus will win hands down. My countrymen are skilled, and on this account it pays the employers to give them the higher wages than those earned by the other Asians. The local saw millers have assured me that they can give employment to 2000 of my countrymen. They are needed in lumber camps and sawmills. I am negotiating with parties in India with a view to drawing attention to the grand opportunity which awaits the sober and industrious Hindus in Canada.”

Devichand’s ‘crusade’ came to a halt when he returned to India in July, 1907, a year after his trial, with his wife and child. Although he had said that he was going home for domestic reasons, it is quite possible that he may have been subjected to constant harassment and threats. Inci-dentally, his wife was the first and the only Indian woman in Canada at that time as Indian workers were not allowed to bring their families to Canada

Source: The Hindus of Canada by Ajit Adhopia, pub-lished in 1993


INDIAN DIASPORA HANDBOOK: MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

By Dr. Greesh C. Sharma

Psychologist Greesh Sharma, esteemed clinicians, specialist in Indian Diaspora psychodynamics, and a social activist has taken the task of confronting and educat-ing the community about mental health, addiction prevalence, do-mestic crisis, parent-child conflicts, relationship difficulties as well as the stresses of living in alien cultures, working and raising fam-ily. Indian Diaspora Handbook: Mental Health challenges and Solutions offer self help tools and promotes a proactive approach.

Indian Diaspora Handbook is written in a refreshingly straightfor-ward manner but with abundance of compassion and passion. Dr Sharma has highlighted with effec-tive brevity that denial, avoidance, apathy, passivity, rationalizations and disregard for the importance of feelings are dam-aging to success, and healthy adjustment at work, in school, in home and social settings. Success is more than accomplishing the tasks as it requires adequate competence in managing interpersonal relationships and effective, meaningful verbal interactions.

Indian Diaspora Handbook offers precise information as to the Indians’ relationship and family dynamics, pulls and pushes involving multiple roles and in the end failing to negotiate to peace and mutually satisfac-tory expectations. Dr. Sharma clearly points out that the

Indian Diaspora is in transitions and as a result undergoing thru critical times in terms of individual and family mental health. Seeking consultation on issues of men-tal health is not something to be afraid,

as it takes place in the context of nonjudgmental, unconditionally accepting, fully confidential with a clinician who understands and respects client’s culture and values.

Dr. Greesh Sharma’s Indian Diaspora handbook is truly a remarkable primer which consists of case examples, Indian cultural strengths and weaknesses, infor-mation on diagnosis, treatment and self help. It’s the first books of its kind that is congruent to Indians’ mental health issues and challenges

involving alcoholism.

Available from: http://www.Amazon.com, 2013, Paperback 202 Pages, $19.00, ISBN-13:978-0988651609

Author: Dr. Greesh Sharma was born and educated in Aligarh (UP). He completed his medical psychology at the Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences in Bangalore. He immigrated to the US, and has been practicing clinical psychology since 1970. He may me contacted at 215-295-3099

A BOOK REVIEW

“Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, ‘Thy will be done.’ We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.” — Swami Vivekananda

“A spirtually illumined soul lives in the world, yet is never contaminated by it.” — Swami Bhaskarananda


CON’T FROM PAGE 25HIMALAYAS: ABODE OF GODS THE GOD-SOULED MOUNTAINS OF INDIA

By Subhamoy Das

The Himalayas in Hindu tradition are much more than a majestic mountain range that extends in a 2,410-km curve across South Asia. Hindus revere it not just for being a home to rare sanative herbs, nor even as a haven for exciting winter sports. To the Hindus this great grandfather-like figure has always been an abode of gods. So they referred to the Himalayas as devatma or God-souled.

A Diety by Itself! Giri-raj or the “King of Mountains”, as the Himalayas is often called, is also a deity by itself in the Hindu pan-theon. Hindus view the Himalayas as supremely sacred, as a corollary to seeing god in every atom of the uni-verse. The mighty altitude of the Himalayas is a constant remembrance to the loftiness of the human soul, its vastness, a prototype for the universality of human con-sciousness. Even Mount Olympus in Greek mythology would pale in front of the reverence shown to the Hima-layas in the Hindu mythology. Neither is Mount Fuji as significant to the Japanese as the Himalayas to Hindus.

Pilgrim’s Paradise Apart from being a natural heritage, the Himalayas is a spiritual heritage for the Hindus. From the Himala-yas originated so many life-giving perennial rivers that have sustained such a rich civilization. The most visited places of pilgrimage in India are located in the Hima-layas. Prominent among them are the Nath troika of Amarnath, Kedarnath and Badrinath as well as Gangotri and Yamunotri - the glacial origins of the holy rivers of

Ganga and Yamuna. There are also three seminal Sikh pilgrimage spots in the Uttarakhand Himalayas.

Heaven of Spiritual Practices The western Himalayas teems with esteemed pilgrim-ages so much so that the entire Kumayun range can be called tapobhumi or land of spiritual practices. Where else apart from Kailash and Manas-sarovar in the Hima-layas could an all-abnegating Shiva roam with his bull? Where else apart from Hemkunt Sahib in the Himala-yas could Guru Govind Singh have come in his former sagely incarnate for spiritual penance?

Favorite of Gurus & Saints From times immemorial, the Himalayas have given out speechless invitations to sages, anchorites, yogis, art-ists, philosophers et al. Shankaracharya (788-820), who propounded the Mayavad doctrine, referred to the holy river as the goddess of divine essence, and established one of the four cardinal hermitages in the Garhwal Himalayas. Scientist J C Bose (1858-1937), also ventured into the Himalayas, as expounded in his sagely philo-sophical essay Bhagirathir Utsha Sandhane, to explore how the Ganges flows down from the “matted locks of Shiva”. All sages and prophets have found the Himalayas best for spiritual pursuits. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) founded his Mayavati Ashram 50 km from Almo-ra. The Mughul emperor Jehangir (1567-1627) said about Kashmir, the westernmost extent of the Himalayas: “If there is a paradise on earth, it’s here”.

Source: About.com Guide


CASTE AS SOCIAL CAPITAL - BUSINESS LINE By S. Gurumurthy

Decades ago, an elderly gentleman speaking at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi, asked, “What is it that keeps the country down”? A young man responded: “Undoubtedly caste. It has kept society backward”. The speaker replied, “may be”. He paused for a moment and said “may not be”.

The young man angrily asked him to explain his “may-not-be” theory. The speaker calmly mentioned just one fact that shocked the audience. He said, “before British rule, over two-thirds — yes, two-thirds — of Indian kings belonged to what is today known as the Other Backward Castes (OBCs)” — meaning that the OBCs, who constitute two-fifths of the popula-tion, lost their power, wealth and status to colonists.

The young man changed forever after the meeting. The speaker was Dharampal, a Gandhian, who, like his pre-ceptor, was in ceaseless pursuit of truth, however un-popular it was. His assertion was backed by decades of painstaking study in India, England and Germany. But his lonely voice was lost in the stentorian chorus dismissing caste as an evil.

In the absence of rigorous, home-grown intellectual work, the contemporary Indian leadership, too, conve-niently approved, and treceived western scholarship on India. But decades after he spoke, is Dharampal proving right after all!

Weberians and Marxists Studies have shown that two great thought leaders of the West, Karl Marx and Max Weber, neither of whom ever visited India, have and still continue to exert dominant influence on Indian thinking on sociology and economic development. Take Weber first. Modern West is rooted in Weber’s concept of methodological individualism that sees society as a collection of individuals, rather than individuals as components of the society.

This thought founded the concept of social engineer-ing, which consisted of efforts by government or private

groups to influence popular attitudes and social behav-iour on a large scale. Just as the modern state rested on individualism, rational choice and efficient market theo-ries of modern economics were premised on method-ological individualism.

While communism believed in social engineering through revolution and state, capitalism trusted the efficient market hypothesis based on methodological individual-

ism to achieve the very end. Scholars like Karl Popper said there was “no such thing as society”. Traditional society was seen as an impediment to individualism that produced entrepre-

neurs who disturbed static societies and turned them dy-namic. Weber also believed that Catholic-Hindu-Buddhist cultures discouraged individualism and hence lacked entrepreneurial spirit, whereas Protestantism encouraged both. He added that belief in karma, rebirth and caste-base made Hindu-Buddhist culture inappropriate for modern capitalism.

Likewise, Marx, in his writings in 1853, considered India as semi-barbaric not so much on economic logic, but on what he considered as a frozen and immobile local soci-ety, for whose backwardness he cited the custom of wor-ship of monkeys and cows! Marx lauded the British for bringing about social revolution in India by destroying the socio-economic bases of the changeless Indian society, even though he mercifully conceded that the destruction was painful. With the demise of the Soviet Union, Marx-ian prescriptions have lost their vitality, just as the global economic meltdown in 2008 had led to the questioning of the premises on which the modern economic theories are founded in the guild of economists in the West itself.

Proved Wrong But even earlier, the theories of both Marx and Weber were heavily questioned by studies into world economic history by Paul Bairoch in early 1980s and later by Angus Maddison (2001-2010). Both independently reached the same conclusion that till almost mid-18th century India

“...much more of the backwardness of the third world, China and India has to be explained by colonial exploitation”


and China were the world’s leading economic engines. In 1750, while India (24.5 per cent) and China (34 per cent) produced more than two-thirds of the global GDP, the combined share of the US and the UK was just two per cent.

But by 1900, the combined share of China (6.8 per cent) and India (1.8 per cent) had crashed to 8.6 per cent, while that of the US and the UK reached 42 per cent. Angus Maddison postulated that “much more of the backwardness of the third world, China and India has to be explained by colonial exploitation” and “much less of Europe’s advantage can be due to scientific precocity, centuries of slow accumulation,organisational and finan-cial superiority.”

That may be dismissed as history. But Weber has also been proved wrong by the contemporary rise of India and China. While he had concluded that Hindu-Buddhist cultures were unfriendly to entrepreneurs, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Executive Report 2002 of the London Business School placed India ahead of the US and the entire West. The Total Entrepreneurial Activity [TEA] Index measured by the study for India was 17.9, with China (12.3) coming second. Others, including the US (10.5), Canada (8), the UK (5.4), Germany (5.2) and France (3.2) were found way behind.

Only after this study, was Indian economic growth seen by the world as entrepreneur-led. Weber’s conclusion that Hindu-Buddhist culture does not generate entrepre-neurial spirit has been proven to have no rationale.

Caste And Entrepreneurship But is entrepreneurial activity in India dominated by for-ward castes? No. According to Economic Census of India (2005) which covered 42 million non-farming enterprises employing 99 million people, the OBCs owned 43.5 per cent of all enterprises, as against their share of 41 per cent in total population; Scheduled Castes (SCs) owned 9.8 per cent of all enterprises, against their population of 16.4 per cent; Scheduled Tribes (STs) owned 3.7 per cent against their population of 7.7 per cent.

It is true that the SC/ST entrepreneurs are proportionately less. Yet, entrepreneurship among them is higher than that among African-Americans in the US, who, despite all the bounties given by the US government, have a self-employment ratio of 5.1 per cent, against their population of 13 per cent.

But considering that only 2.6 per cent of SC-owned units and 3.6 per cent of those belonging to STs have institu-

tional finance, if more of it could be directed to them, en-trepreneurship among them can improve vastly. Surpris-ingly, whether it is SC, ST or non-SC/ST entrepreneurs, more than 92 per cent of them are self-financed.

Studies show that competition within communities set off huge entrepreneurial movement within — as one OBC or SC or ST person sets up a business, it encourages and even compels others within their communities to copy him. This is the effect of relation-based lifestyle and ex-plains the growth of community-driven industrial clusters in India.

According to UNIDO, there are 350 small-scale indus-trial clusters and over 2,000 rural artisan clusters, which contribute to 60 per cent of manufactured goods and 40 per cent of manufacturing employment. According to the Ministry of Small Industries, there are 2,042 clusters, of which 819 are unregistered. Most of them are communi-ty-driven and evolved on their own, with even education playing little role.

Take Tirupur, one of such clusters dominated by the Gounder community, which now exports close to $ 3 billion of knitwear.

A study by Boston Consulting scholars has shown more than two-thirds of the exporters to have studied not even till Std 12, with less than a tenth of them being graduates. Another example is the diamond business in India, which is entirely driven by the Palanpuri Jain and Patel com-munities. Nine out of ten diamonds in the world are cut today in Gujarat. Of the 35 leading diamond exporters of Surat, only two had completed higher secondary educa-tion and others even less.

Caste now seems to be emerging as social capital, as a vehicle for economic development. Social capital is the product of relations, distinct from contracts, creates kinship among people. Caste constitutes natural kinship. The idea of social capital entered the global economic development discourse in the early 1990s, thanks to Francis Fukuyama who expounded relation-based socio-economy.

Caste in politics has indeed done a lot of damage. But caste in economics seems to hold high potential for In-dia’s growth. Will the policy makers move away from the current paradigm on caste and look at India from within – particularly after the IMF, World Bank and G-20 nations have noted that there is no single economic model for the world, and each country has to work out its own?

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com


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