[Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu beliefs list
umesh sharma
jaipurschool at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 11 15:39:56 PDT 2007
There is no point in beating about the bush again and again. I have got a headache as well trying to explain my point of view.
Good discussion though.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote: Umesh:
You may live in your own dream world, and may try to diffuse the issues by bringing new qualifiers words like "call himself Hindu" "practice" , "Hindu who proudly says he is a Hindu and does not believe in God".
etc.
But the reality is, one who is born a Hindu, he dies a Hindu, whether he is an atheist or not, whether he calls himself a Hindu or not. A Hindu does not have to practice Hindusim. With your new qualifiers as "practice', "proudly", "non-communist" etc, I think, half of the Hindus will not be Hindus at all.
However if you insists on your question, to evade answering my other questions, I know of one who did not believe in God but he was not only called one of the greatest Hindus but also worshiped by the Hindus as an Hindu Avatar. He was Buddha.
If you donot know about the different schools of thought in Hindusim, I cannot help. Remember, you raised the issues first blaming the West about their opinion about the Hindus. I donot want to pursue eny further on this issue.
Good Day.
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu beliefs list
Rajen-da,
You are evading my question. You have seen life and met umteen number of Hindus - if there were some who did not believe in God an still called themselves Hindus - it should not be too difficult to give a few names.
You say "we" know there are two schools of thought who do not believe in God -- I have no idea of what you are talking about. I know many atheists (including C-da) who were born in Hindu families but say they do not practice it. Most Indian communists would also fall in that category. I do not know of a single Hindu who proudly says he is a Hindu and does not believe in God.
Umesh.
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote: Umesh:
(1) It is not a question of if I know any Hindus who are atheists. The question is if a Hindu does not believe in God, is he still a Hindu. The answer is YES.
Without going into too much depth, we know that out of the six Hindu schools of thought, at least two do not believe in God.
(2) Regarding your reference to Christian website, they will write what the Hindu books write. That does not change the situation. Do you think ALL Hindus believe in reincarnation because some Christian website tell that that is what Hindus believe? You are yet to come up with at least one thing which all Hindus believe.
(Let me help you, you may say ALL Hindus believe in the Vedas or the Gita. And I would say, you are wrong again.)
The bottom line is the Hindus donot have a common harmonius culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
Please defend this statement.
(3) Regarding Krishna being originally a Dravidian local cult god, you may find this reference in books by Radhakrishnan, not to say of others.
Good Day!
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 1:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu beliefs list
http://contenderministries.org/hinduism/hindubeliefs.php
This Christian website also agrees that Hindus believe in these three things I talked about. If you want some book to be shown as a reference that should not be a problem either - but are we talking about Hinduism practiced by 800 million people or some cult which has a couple of hundred followers in some remote area.
Umesh
umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com> wrote: Rajen-da,
Tell me the name of a couple of Hindus who are atheists? We will take up your other objections later.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 11:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu beliefs list
Rajen-da,
You try to put me in a spot but I think the answer is not tht elusive-lets see:
1. ALL Hindus believe in God
WRONG-Some Hindus are Atheists (Nastika)
2. All Hindus believe in reincarnation - rebirth
WRONG again. Why do you think ALL Hindus beleive that?
3. All Hindus believe that it is possible to attain Moksha/Nirvana through meditation/Yoga , prayer etc -- that is meet God in one own's lifetime..
Let me add some more points - which actually are more central to my comments.
WRONG again. You are trying to generalize may be your own belief to ALL Hindus.
4. All Hindus that caste system has been part of Hindu society for long - that means they believe in some system which has a religious head (Brahmin)-who has a job to assist others in their prayers --so that means that person should have some qualification. That qualification should be common to ALL jobs who hold that job across India/Hindu society
Why do you think ALL Hindus belief these whatever you are saying.?
5. ALL Hindus believe that there was a city called Indraprastha (current Indian capital Delhi) and that Mahabharat war was fought near it -at Kurukshetra - and its participants were then real persons.
Why do you think ALL Hindus believe all these. Have you tested with any other Hindus?
If one does not believe in the above (atleast the first three) that person cannot be
called a Hindu. In social science -exceptions do not change the rule - it is a mater of a significant number of the group acting or believing in a certain way. So even if 5% of the Hindus (read the so-called westernised educated ones) do not believe in any of the above - their views can be disregarded.
I am sorry, It looks like in your tall standard, most of the 800 millions are not Hindus at all. Ask some Hindu netters to give their views on these and see.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that Indians could have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
I don't want to argue or comment on anybody's belief. But don't you think the above is correct ie Hindus (forget Indians) don't have a collective vision? Is not that the problem with present India? The Hindus (forget the Indians) donot have a common harmonius culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. If you don't want to acknowledge that, then please cite at least just (3) THREE things which in your opinion ALL Hindus believe. I think you would have a hard time to answer that and find even this small section of netters to agree with your view. In fact for the last two hundred years that is what all scholars, Indian and non Indian, (including Vivekananda, Tegore, Ram Mohon Roy, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and others) have been trying to
answer that question without much success. So before we blame the West, let us at least try to understand where we are. Let us hear from you.
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Ram Sarangapani ; barua25
Cc: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Ram-da and Rajen-da,
The point is not whether Jesus or Krishna or Rajen or Umesh or Ram existed - it is that they are believed to be so - just liked USA is believed to be the only Super Power in the world. Someone in remote India may have NO inkling what is Roman empire or that any such country ever existed -- but that person should or would bow down to the fact that so many educated Indians believe it does. Why cannot someone in the West understand that most Indians (read Hindus 800 million of them) believe Krishna and Ram lived on earth - just Westerners (even athiests ) believe that Abraham lived on earth to the age of 800 years (as per Bible) and that Jesus was born of Virgin Mary.
Belief of a group can be put on wikipedia etc - why do westerners oppose even that ? Why belittle it as some minor literary text characters aka Ian Fleming's (I refer to Ram or Krishna here) -- which has no consequence to spiritual or religious beliefs of Hindus.
The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge that Indians cuold have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. Isn't it much easier to paint a picture where every Indian was following his or her own thing --someone worshipping in the east another in the west. One day one person celebrating , next day another celebrating something --so the whole city or region never saw eye to eye ----so NO culture!!
I was surprised to learn that Krishna is the most revered person in way down India's south Guruvayoor temple --same as in Manipur (far east ) just as in far west at Dwarka and up above in Badrinath, Gangotri etc. But some westerners would assert that Hindus are a bunch of individualists - who believe different things - have no religion except caste system (the only unifying social force or common thought).
SCIENCE:
So when a nation/civilization has no common social system except caste system (as per above logic) then how can it have intellectuals sitting together to do scientific work and promoting and rejecting hypothesis and building consensus.
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <assamrs at gmail.com> wrote: Barua,
Just couldn't resist not butting in.
Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus :)here is a site about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta (Math) and Kautilya(Politics & Governance).
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html
(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured up in India:)
--Ram
On 8/10/07, barua25 <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote: When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not about our religious heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and when?
Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the Zero and when? It is difficult.
I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna etc. I consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed from some original tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a local god in the Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal god. This much history tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that , not who believes what?
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu ; assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Rajen-da,
Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not agree that most Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that he lived in India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia page of Krishna - and they asked for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I believe wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have "sameness" - even here there is bias.
Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many Indians believe that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC report on that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research evidence -- for Indian news on Indian culture even an obscure reference (with no weblink) in any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay by its editors -- incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the page. Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats free for all.
whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com > wrote: Umesh:
What you are saying is right.
The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim that the basic foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science, is mainly based on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper credit to the Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I would say, the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point. Indians basically donot have any record of what they did. If you want to counter the present Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will SOLID facts and figures and not with rhetoric.
If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised in US was surprised to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly believed me though.
And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize that every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman civilization are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) -- Indian and Chinese ones are lesser ones.
Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western univs just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion shows.
However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars of non Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the world's foremost/only reliable experts on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows and whys of other civilization. Most believe (I believe) that those in non-western world/developing world are too naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to understand and appreciate the distinction between good and bad; and right and wrong.
I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others' views than these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting what they have always held as true).
I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality -speaking against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my arguments).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just checked --someone has deleted the page itself.
Wiki seems to be about might is right -
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
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Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
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Ed.M. - International Education Policy
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Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
---------------------------------
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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