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Academic Negationism

Vijayanagar Negationism

In several articles and speeches since at least 2004 (“Trapped in the ruins”, The Guardian, 20 March 2004), and especially in the commotion provoked by Girish Karnad’s speech in Mumbai (autumn 2012), William Dalrymple has condemned Nobel prize winner V.S. Naipaul for writing that the Vijayanagar empire was a Hindu bastion besieged by Muslim states. The famous writer has taken the ruins of vast Vijayanagar as illustration of how Hinduism is a “wounded civilization”, viz. wounded by Islam. Dalrymple’s counter-arguments against this conflictual view of Indian history consist in bits of Islamic influence in the Vijayanagar kings’ court life, such as Hindu courtiers wearing Muslim dress, Hindu armies adopting techniques borrowed from the Muslims, styles of palace architecture and the Persian nomenclature of political functions; and conversely, elements of Hinduism in Muslims courts and households, e.g. the Muslim festival of Muharram looking like the Kumbha Mela of the Hindus.

Secularism and Vijayanagar

William DalrympleAs is all too common in Nehruvian-secularist discourse, Dalrymple’s analysis of the role of Islam in India stands out by its superficiality. Whenever a Hindu temple or a Muslim festival is found to employ personnel belonging to the opposite religion, secular journalists go gaga and report on this victory of syncretism over religious orthodoxy. Secular historians including Dalrymple do likewise about religious cross-pollination in the past.

It is true that Hindus are eager to integrate foreign elements from their surroundings, from the English language and American consumerism today. So Hindu courts adopted styles and terminology from their Muslim counterparts. They even enlisted Muslim mercenaries in their armies, so “secular” were they. We could say that Hindus are multicultural at heart, or open-minded. But that quality didn’t get rewarded, except with a betrayal by their Muslim regiments during the battle of Talikota (1565): they defected to the enemy, in which they recognized fellow-Muslims.

When the chips were down, Hindu open-mindedness and syncretism were powerless against their heartfelt belief in Islamic solidarity. In September 2012, Dalrymple went to Hyderabad to praise the city and its erstwhile Muslim dynasty as a centre of Hindu-Muslim syncretism; but fact is that after Partition, the ruler of Hyderabad opted for Pakistan, against multicultural India. When the chips are down, secular superficiality is no match for hard-headed orthodoxy.

Muslims too sometimes adopted Hindu elements. However, it would be unhistorical to assume a symmetry with what the Hindus did. Hindus really adopted foreign elements, but most Muslims largely just retained Hindu elements which had always been part of their culture and which lingered on after conversion. Thus, the Pakistanis held it against the Bengalis in their artificial Muslim state (1947-71) that their language was very Sanskritic, not using the Arabic script, and that their womenfolk “still” wore saris and no veils. The Bengali Muslims did this not because they had “adopted” elements from Hinduism, but because they had retained many elements from the Hindu culture of their forefathers. “Pakistan” means the “land of the pure”, i.e. those who have overcome the taints of Paganism, the very syncretism which Dalrymple celebrates. Maybe it is in the fitness of things that a historian should sing paeans to this religious syncretism for, as far as Islam is concerned, it is a thing of the past.

A second difference between Hindus and Muslims practicing syncretism is that in the case of Muslims, this practice was in spite of their religion, due to a hasty (and therefore incomplete) conversion under duress and a lack of sufficient policing by proper Islamic authorities. If, as claimed by Dalrymple, a Sultan of Bijapur venerated both goddess Saraswati and prophet Mohammed, it only proves that he hadn’t interiorized Mohammed’s strictures against idolatry yet. In more recent times, though, this condition has largely been remedied. Secular journalists now have to search hard for cases of Muslims caught doing Hindu things, for such Muslims become rare. Modern methods of education and social control have wiped out most traces of Hinduism. Thus, since their independence, the Bengali Muslims have made great strides in de-hinduizing themselves, as by widely adopting proper Islamic dress codes. The Tabligh (“propaganda”) movement as well as informal efforts by clerics everywhere have gone a long way to “islamize the Muslims”, i.e. to destroy all remnants of Hinduism still lingering among them.

Hindu iconoclasm?

Another unhistorical item in the secular view of Islam in India is the total absence of an Islamic prehistory outside India. Yet, all Muslims know about this history to some extent and base their laws and actions upon it. In particular, they know about Mohammed’s career in Arabia and seek to replicate it, from wearing “the beard of the Prophet” to emulating his campaigns against Paganism.

Dalrymple, like all Nehruvians, makes much of the work of the American Marxist historian Richard Eaton. This man is famous for saying that the Muslims have indeed destroyed many Hindu temples (thousands, according to his very incomplete list, though grouped as the oft-quoted “eighty”), but that they based themselves for this conduct on Hindu precedent. Indeed, he has found a handful of cases of Hindu conquerors “looting” temples belonging to the defeated kings, typically abducting the main idol to install it in their own capital. This implies a very superficial equating between stealing an idol (but leaving the worship of the god concerned intact, and even continuing it in another temple) and destroying temples as a  way of humiliating and ultimately destroying their religion itself. But we already said that secularists are superficial. However, he forgets to tell his readers that he has found no case at all of a Muslim temple-destroyer citing these alleged Hindu precedents. If they try to justify their conduct, it is by citing Mohammed’s Arab precedents. The most famous case is the Kaaba in Mecca, where the Prophet and his nephew Ali destroyed 360 idols with their own hands. What the Muslims did to Vijayanagar was only an imitation of what the Prophet had done so many times in Arabia, only on a much larger scale.

From historians like Eaton and Dalrymple, we expect a more international view of history than what they offer in their account of Islamic destructions in India. They try to confine their explanations to one country, whereas Islam is globalist par excellence. By contrast, Naipaul does reckon with international cultural processes, in particular the impact of Islam among the converted peoples, not only in South but also in West and Southeast Asia. He observes that they have been estranged from themselves, alienated from their roots, and therefore suffering from a neurosis.

So, Naipaul is right and Dalrymple wrong in their respective assessments of the role of Islam in India. Yet, in one respect, Naipaul is indeed mistaken. In his books Among the Believers and Beyond Belief, he analyses the impact of Islam among the non-Arab converts, but assumes that for Arabs, Islam is more natural. True, the Arabs did not have to adopt a foreign language for religious purposes, they did not have to sacrifice their own national traditions in name-giving; but otherwise they too had to adopt a religion that wasn’t theirs. The Arabs were Pagans who worshipped many gods and tolerated many religions (Jews, Zoroastrians, various Christian Churches) in their midst. Mohammed made it his life’s work to destroy their multicultural society and replace it with a homogeneous Islamic one. Not exactly the syncretism which Dalrymple waxes so eloquent about.

Colonial “Orientalism”?

Vs NaipaulDid Muslims “contribute” to Indian culture, as Dalrymple claims? Here too, we should distinguish between what Islam enjoins and what people who happen to be Muslims do. Thus, he says that Muslims contributed to Indian music. I am quite illiterate on art history, but I’ll take his word for it. However, if they did, they did it is spite of Islam, and not because of it. Mohammed closed his ears not to hear the music, and orthodox rulers like Aurangzeb and Ayatollah Khomeini issued measures against it. Likewise, the Moghul school of painting shows that human beings are inexorably fond of visual art, but does not disprove that Islam frowns on it.

Also, while some tourists fall for the Taj Mahal, which Naipaul so dislikes, the Indo-Saracenic architecture extant does not nullify the destruction of many more beautiful buildings which could have attracted far more tourists. In what sense is it a “contribution” anyway? Rather than filling a void, it is at best a replacement of existing Hindu architecture with new Muslim architecture. Similarly, if no Muslim music (or rather, music by Muslims) had entered India, then native Hindu music would have flourished more, and who is Dalrymple to say that Hindu music is inferior?

Another discursive strategy of the secularists, applied here by Dalrymple, is to blame the colonial view of history. Naipaul is said to be inspired by colonial Orientalists and to merely repeat their findings. This plays on the strong anti-Westernism among Indians. But it is factually incorrect: Naipaul cites earlier sources (e.g. Dalrymple omits Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveler who only described witnessed Sultanate cruelty to the Hindus with his own eyes) as well as the findings of contemporaneous archaeologists. Moreover, even the colonial historians only repeat what older native sources tell them. The destruction of Vijayanagar is a historical fact and an event that took place with no colonizers around. Unless you mean the Muslim rulers.

Negationism

In the West, we are familiar with the phenomenon of Holocaust negationism. While most people firmly disbelieve the negationists, some will at least appreciate their character: they are making a lot of financial, social and professional sacrifices for their beliefs. The ostracism they suffer is fierce. Even those who are skeptical of their position agree that negationists at least have the courage of their conviction.

In India, and increasingly also in the West and in international institutions, we are faced with a similar phenomenon, viz. Jihad negationism. This is the denial of aggression and atrocities motivated by Islam. Among the differences, we note those in social position of the deniers and those in the contents of the denial. Jihad deniers are not marginals who have sacrificed a career to their convictions, on the contrary; they serve their careers greatly by uttering the politically palatable “truth”. In India, any zero can become a celebrity overnight by publishing a condemnation of the “communalists” and taking a stand for Jihad denial and history distortion. The universities are full of them, while people who stand by genuine history are kept out. Like Jawaharlal Nehru, most of these negationists hold forth on the higher humbug (as historian Paul Johnson observed) and declare themselves “secular”.

Whereas the Holocaust lasted only four years and took place in war circumstances and largely in secret (historians are still troubled over the absence of an order by Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust, a fact which gives a handle to the deniers), Jihad started during the life of Mohammed and continues till today, entirely openly, proudly testified by the perpetrators themselves. From the biography and the biographical collections of the Prophet (Sira, Ahadith) through medieval chronicles and travel diaries down to the farewell letters or videos left by hundreds of suicide terrorists today, there are literally thousands of sources by Muslims attesting that Islam made them do it. But whereas I take Muslims seriously and believe them at their word when they explain their motivation, some people overrule this manifold testimony and decide that the Muslims concerned meant something else.

The most favoured explanation is that British colonialism and now American imperialism inflicted poverty on them and this made them do it, though they clothed it in Islamic discourse. You see, the billionaire Osama bin Laden, whose family has a long-standing friendship with the Bush family, was so poor that he saw no option but to hijack some airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Center. What else was he to do? And Mohammed, way back in the 7th century, already the ruler of Medina and much of the Arabian peninsula, just had to have his critics murdered or, as soon as he could afford it, formally executed. He had to take hostages and permit his men to rape them; nay, he just had to force the Jewish woman Rayhana into concubinage after murdering her relatives. If you don’t like what he did, blame Britain and America. Their colonialism and imperialism made him do it! Under the colonial dispensation which didn’t exist yet, he Muslim troops who were paid by the Vijayanagar emperor had no other option but to betray their employer and side with his opponents who, just by coincidence, happened to be Muslim as well. And if you don’t believe this, the secularists will come up with another story.

Conclusion

India is experiencing a regime of history denial. In this sense, the West is more and more becoming like India. There are some old professors of Islam or religion (and I know a few) who hold the historical view, viz. that Mohammed (if he existed at all)  and that it always was a political religion which spread by destroying other religions. But among the younger professors, it is hard to find any who are so forthright. There is a demand for reassurance about Islam, and universities only recruit personnel who provide that. Indeed, many teach false history in good faith, thinking that untruth about the past in this case is defensible because it fosters better interreligious relations in the present. Some even believe their own stories, just like the layman who is meant to lap them up. Such is also my impression of William Dalrymple.

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Academic Negationism

A Debate with an ‘Eminent’ Historian

Recently an e-mail exchange took place between my friend K. Venkat and the retired “eminent historian” Prof. Harbans Mukhia. Venkat himself gave a fitting reply to the august scholar’s opinions, which is circulating on the net (I received a copy on 9 Dec. 2012). Herewith I want to formulate my own comment.

Prof. Mukhia replied to a critical query about Islamic history in India: “If you derive all your knowledge of medieval Indian history from ‘historians’ like Sita Ram Goel and Koenraad Elst and so forth, this is the shoddy history you will land up with. Sita Ram Goel was a publisher and seller of RSS books and his knowledge of history was confined to what he had learnt in the RSS shakhas. And the Belgian Elst is an honorary member of the VHP and knows no Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, any Indian language, much less Persian, so essential for getting to know medieval Indian history. And since Persian is not taught in the shakhas, Goel had no inkling of it either.”

Let us first set the language allegation straight before addressing the historical and political issues. Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003) had Hindi as mother tongue, a language in which he published several historical novels that were praised precisely for their pure and imaginative language. He went to an Urdu-medium school where Persian was part of the curriculum. He graduated from Delhi University where he studied History through the medium of English, a language in which he published many books. After his studies he lived in Bengal for a decade and became fluent in Bengali. He also read the Mahabharata and other Hindu classics in the original Sanskrit. As for myself, since Harbans Mukhia is unimpressed by real-life experience, let me just point to the testimony of my diplomas: I studied Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, apart from Chinese and a number of European languages. After health problems starting in 2000, I haven’t been to India much, so my colloquial Hindi has become distinctly rusty; but I can still consult writings in that language. I also learned a smattering of classical Tamil a few years ago as well as biblical Hebrew and modern Arabic in my student days, now all but forgotten but I still know the grammar and some religious terminology. In all more than enough to do history.

Sita Ram Goel was a lifelong critic of the RSS, but unlike Mukhia, he knew what he was talking about. Already as a student, he remarked that only mediocre fellow-students were going to shakhas whereas the brighter ones were concentrating on other pursuits or were seduced by Communism. Anyone who has read some of his work (but that is where the problem for Mukhia arises) has seen for himself that its message is quite different from the RSS line.

Mukhia continues: “In the shakhas, they do tell you that Aurangzeb demolished temples and erected mosques in lieu of them (which he did at Mathura and Varanasi), but they never tell you that he was also giving monetary and land grants to other Hindu temples, including some in Varanasi itself, the original document for which is on display at the Bharat Kala Bhavan on BHU campus. Historians KK Datta and Jnana Prakash have also published numerous documents of Aurangzeb giving such grants to temples, maths and other Hindu institutions, and many more remain unpublished. Naturally ‘historians’ like Goel and Elst wouldn’t know of them, nor would care to know.”

It is not only in the shakhas that they tell you this. Aurangzeb himself gave orders for a general destruction of temples and literally demolished thousands of them. Many other Muslim rulers acted likewise. No amount of special pleading by the eminent historians can change Islam’s record in this regard. It is possible that earlier, Aurangzeb gave some grants to Hindu institutions, as had been the Moghul dynasty’s policy since Akbar. We should of course not take Mukhia’s word for it (the eminent historians have a well-established reputation for mendaciousness), and “numerous” is certainly an exaggeration, but it remains possible. This only shows the inertia of changing a policy, as well as Aurangzeb’s increase in devotion to Islam, from a compromise-prone successor of Akbar to a zealous activist for Islam, which does not tolerate idolatry.

One issue where the much-maligned RSS is clearly wrong in its assessment of Aurangzeb, is its condemnation of him as a fanatic person. The said grants to temples, if true, may further prove a point that I have had to make repeatedly: it is not true that Aurangzeb was a cruel character, he was not more so than his less notorious predecessors. If he was cruel and fatatic, it was because he started taking the core doctrine of Islam to his heart. He was a pious person, more than is good for a ruler, so he became increasingly averse to the religious compromise on which his great-grandfather Akbar had built the Moghul empire. So at some point in his advancing years, not his personal predilection but his growing commitment to Islam took over. That is when he ordered all Pagan temples destroyed: when the Moghul empire became truly Islamic at last. But the RSS is fearful to say this, so it tells itself and its listeners that Islam is okay but that Aurangzeb “misunderstood” his religion due to his cruel and fanatic personality.

The professor has some advice for my friend: “If you really want to study history look at the works of professional historians — Tara Chand, RP Tripathi, Mohd. Habib, ABM Habibullah, Satish Chandra, Irfan Habib, RM Eaton, Cynthia Talbot and many other stalwarts who gave their life time to studying medieval history from the original Persian sources, not from third rate and motivated translations like History of India as Told by its Own Historians. Motivated? Sir Henry Elliott, who compiled this 8-volume series, wrote in his Preface: The series is being compiled ‘to let the bombastic babus of India know how terrible Indians’ life was until the British came to their rescue’!! So, Sir Elliott translated only those passages from the Persian language chronicles of medieval India which spoke of Muslims’ atrocities on the Hindus!! He will tell you that Aurangzeb demolished temples, but not that he also patronised them!!! Much like the RSS does now and chaps like Goel and Elst follow in their footsteps.”

See, the eminent historians are as good at the use of exclamation marks as your average Hindutva internet warrior. And yes, Elliott was guilty of espousing the same theory which the eminent historians have been spreading, viz. that the British took India from the Moghuls, omitting the successful Hindu effort to liberate most of India from Muslim occupation and then succumbing to the British. But that doesn’t make his translations wrong. He selected those parts which would be most telling for the atrocities undergone by the Hindus under Muslim rule so that they would appreciate British rule by contrast – and then translated these faithfully. He reminded his Hindu readers that their “own historians” (meaning India-based Muslim chroniclers) had reported these Islamic atrocities. Anyway, I would like to see the secular improvement, e.g. how do you translate the frequently-used Arabic verb q-t-l, Persian kushtan, both meaning “kill”. There aren’t too many nuances to that, are there?

Elliott’s translations were correct, but yes, they were selective. Secularists would have preferred to plough through an 88-volume rather than an 8-volume translation. But they are at liberty to go through all the untranslated parts and try to find a refutation there of what was described so explicitly in the translated parts. The Muslim chroniclers were in no mind to undo all the destruction they had evoked, so in the less dramatic parts of their work, they explored more leisurely subjects but refrained from trying their hand at what the secularists would like to read there, viz. any refutation of the grim picture they had first painted, and which Elliott and others have ably translated.

For lack of facts, Prof. Mukhia likes to throw names around instead. But a real historian remains unimpressed by this show of name-dropping. The fact that Prof. Mukhia has many like-minded colleagues in academe while his opponents have to remain on the outside is not the result of better competence among his friends, but of a deliberate policy in university nominations. Any young historian who lets on too early that he has pro-Hindu convictions, will see his entry into academe barred. Word will spread around that this man is “dangerous to India’s secular fabric” and he will be excluded. There have been some old historians who entered the profession before their cards were on the table and who only became forthright critics of Islam at the end of their careers, the likes of Prof. Harsh Narain and Prof. K.S. Lal, both since long deceased. Today among university historians, the school that sets the record on Islam straight is simply non-existent.

Fortunately, the political equation that makes the present secular-Islamic bias possible, is bound to come to an end one day. The elderly Prof. Mukhia won’t live to see that revolution anymore, but it is sure to happen. The truth which the eminent historians have long suppressed, will shine in the open. On that day, I wouldn’t like  to be called Harbans Mukhia.

The professor concludes: “I know this would have no effect on you. But just by chance if you can pick up enough courage to study history on your own and not parrot the history taught in the shakhas. Best wishes, Harbans Mukhia”

It seems Harbans Mukhia mistook his correspondent for some fanatic Hindutvavadi, the kind who remains impervious to facts. Not that I know many such cases, for even the most extreme ones I’ve met remain true to a central fact that really occurred, viz. Islamic atrocities against Hindus. Some of them have personally lived through the Islamic carnage at the time of Partition or during the Bangladesh liberation war, massacres which completely dwarfed all Indian religious riots put together (including the largest of them all, the killing of three thousand Sikhs by Congress secularists in 1984). But this correspondent is a successful cyberprofessional in Silicon Valley, who has made a more sophisticated study of just what it was that Islam wrought in India.

The greatest insult which the eminent historians could fling at Sita Ram Goel or myself is that we are “parroting history taught in the shakhas”. First off, I don’t even know what history they teach there. I have visited a few shakhas and can’t remember any history being taught there. I speculate it is streamlined to fit the Hindu and nationalist narrative, or at least that Mukhia wants to convey that impression. So be it, but historians have other sources for their history-writing and are not parrots of a party or movement. The main exception are the Indian secularists, whose conclusions are invariably those desired and taught by the Nehruvian rulers.

A second mail by the professor starts out by ridiculing the RSS concept of history: “First, the RSS rant started in the 1960s with the figure of 300 temples destroyed by the Muslim rulers; then in the 70s another 0 was added. Yet another got added in the 80s. But by the 90s the Sangh Parivar ran out of 0s, so they adopted another arithmetical formula of multiplying by 2 and the figure now stood at a respectable 60,000.”

 This claim may be true or not, but I am not privy to RSS historiography. As a matter of fact, 60,000 may just happen to be a good number, for the documented cases of temple destruction (and they already run into the thousands) are necessarily only a fraction of the more everyday cases, which must have been even more numerous. But we as historians can only deal with documented cases, especially since these are difficult enough. Indeed, of the ca. 2,000 cases listed by Sita Ram Goel, and more than 20 years after having been out in the open, not one has been refuted by Prof. Mukhia and his school.

So, like most secularists, he goes hiding behind an American self-described Marxist, Prof. Richard Eaton: “RM Eaton, who would necessarily be suspect in your eyes because he is a an American historian, examined the number of temples destroyed in the whole expanse of medieval India from 1200 to 1760 and came to the figure of 80. He has located the exact source of information or each demolition and put all the information in a tabular form. His brilliant article is called ‘Temple Desecration in Medieval India’. By the way, Eaton is aware of the figure of 60,000 handed out to credulous people like Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst and yourself.”

In several respects, Eaton’s count is incomplete. Muslims destroyed Hindu temples before 1200 and after 1760 too, witness the near-absence of the once-numerous Hindu temples in Pakistan, witness the regular occurrence of temple destruction in Bangla Desh. It is also seriously false that for this period, Eaton’s count is complete. How could it be? Off-hand, Venkat could name a few cases from his own Tamil village, which was only briefly touched by the Islamic invasions but nonetheless already lost several temples, and they don’t figure in Eaton’s list. Archeologists regularly find remains of destroyed temples, often underneath mosques, which do not and cannot figure in Eaton’s list. Finally, one item on Eaton’s list doesn’t mean one temple destroyed. The thousand temples destroyed in Varanasi during Mohammed Ghori’s advances ca. 1194 form only one item on his list. What Mukhia calls “eighty” is in fact thousands of temple demolitions. So in spite of his Islam-friendly intentions, Eaton has only proven what Hindus have been saying all along: Islam has destroyed thousands of temples.

I had in fact answered Eaton’s list and explanation when they were published: “Vandalism sanctified by scripture”, Outlook India, 31 Aug. 2001 ( http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?213030). Needless to say, my arguments have never been refuted by anyone. Secular historians are so sure about controlling the information flow through education and the media that they don’t bother to interfere when their falsehoods are exposed. In the article, I also mention Eaton’s sidekick Yoginder Sikand, then a furious Hindu-hater and secularist journalist. But in the meantime, he has recanted and exposed the whole self-serving buffoonery that does by the name secularism: “Why I Gave Up On ‘Social Activism’”, Countercurrents.org, 19 April, 2012: (http://www.countercurrents.org/sikand190412.htm).

Prof. Mukhia goes on: “Incidentally, Hindu temples were also demolished by Hindu rulers long before Muslims came to India. King Harsha of Kashmir had appointed an officer, devopatananayaka (officerin-charge of uprooting of gods) as reported by Kalhana’s Rajatarangini and mosques were also destroyed by the Hindu rulers in medieval India. Details of it can be found in my book, The Mughals of India. Incidentally, I have never been funded by any US agency, University or institution and all my education has been in India, and all schooling in Hindi medium. This is just to guard you against the stupidity of levying charges such as you have done against the most outstanding Indian historian of our time, Romila Thapar.”

As for Harsha, chronicler Kalhana says: “Prompted by the Turks in his employ, he behaved like a Turk.” It is simply not true that his case exemplifies a Hindu type of iconoclasm. On the contrary, he merely shows the influence of Islamic iconoclasm. Half-literate secularists keep on repeating this story a decade after it has been refuted in my paper “Harsha of Kashmir, a Hindu iconoclast?”, ch.4 of my book Ayodhya: the Case against the Temple (Delhi 2002; http://www.scribd.com/doc/10022510/Ayodhya-3-Books-by-Koenraad-Elst).

It should be granted to Prof. Harbans Mukhia, as to his colleague Prof. Irfan Habib, that they have faithfully followed the old Nehruvian line of distrusting the “foreign hand”, particularly the Americans. This is very unlike their colleague Prof. Romila Thapar, who has been lavishly sponsored in Washington DC. And among their generation, this was still exceptional. Indian secularists were admired from afar, followed by the leading American scholars of India, like Prof. Paul Brass or Prof. Robert Frykenberg, but keeping their distance because of the reigning anti-Americanism. Now however, Indian academics of the right persuasion are openly courted and hosted by American colleagues.

 Returning to the subject-matter, the professor asks: “But the question is more complex: how is it that Aurangzeb, an orthodox Muslim on RSS account, waited for 21 years after coming to the throne to reimpose the jazia? You remember the date of its abolition by Akbar but not one of its reimposition which is 1679. How did he keep his religious zeal in check for 21 long years when he was the undisputed sovereign of India? And why was he giving grants to temples while he was keen on demolishing it? The questions is WHY?”

“The answer is that huge and complex empires are not governed by religious zeal of its rulers but by an enormously complex interaction of political, administrative, cultural, social and religious considerations. Remember Rajiv Gandhi passing a Bill in Parliament after the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court and getting the doors to the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid disputed site opened almost simultaneously? Was he being a zealous Muslim or a zealous Hindu or just a clever political manipulator?”

Strictly speaking, not the Government but the Court opened the locks of the Ayodhya building. But it stands to reason that the two played together, and that the Court executed the policy desired by the Government. At any rate, yes, Rajiv Gandhi was a clever manipulator, zealous only in furthering his personal power and wealth. He intended to solve the communal situation bloodlessly by handing the Hindus full control of Ayodhya (including the right to rebuild a temple instead of the Babri Masjid) and giving the Muslims other goodies, such as a Sharia-inspired change in the law  on Muslim divorce or the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. This not-so-principled but very practical policy, typical of the “Congress culture”, would have succeeded but for the intervention of the eminent historians and like-minded intellectuals: they raised the stakes on Ayodhya and the Babri Masjid (“the bulwark of India’s secular polity”, etc.) so much that the Government could no longer pursue its pragmatic give-and-take plan. The result was endless religious riots, the surreptitious demolition, and more riots culminating in the Muslim bomb attacks on Mumbai of 12 March 1993, which pioneered a new Muslim tactic repeated in many other bomb attacks including those on the US of 11 September 2001. The eminent historians have blod on their hands.

It is also true that the Moghul empire was based on a religious compromise, that Aurangzeb’s conversion to a more principled Islamic policy jeopardized this compromise, and thereby endangered the empire itself. At the end of his life, amid Hindu rebellions, Aurangzeb understood this well enough. But he was too much of a pious Muslim to turn the clock back.

“As for Sita Ram Goel — he used to rant regularly in the Indian Express about the little that RSS had taught him of history: Islam teaches you intolerance, every Muslim ruler was inspired by Islam to destroy Hindu temples and Hindu society etc. etc. and how Marxist historians cannot face up to the truth of all his rants. You obviously read all this avidly. You obviously did not read ‘Reflections of the Past’ in the same paper dated 30.4.1989 by a non-descript historian called Harbans Mukhia. Since that date, Sita Ram Goel did not write a thing at least in the Indian Express. Please check it out; it should be available on the IE website. If not, you will find it in the same non-descript historian’s book Issues in Indian History, Politics and Society, pp. 31-34. Please forgive me for advertising my own writings; I avoided reference to myself in my earlier response, but since you were out to challenge us secular historians, I felt compelled to reverse my earlier decision. In any case you wouldn’t have heard of many historians anyway; the RSS never lets you know that they exist.”

Well, I didn’t know about this episode. 1989 is the year when I first met Sita Ram Goel, at the end of the year. Arun Shourie was then the editor of Indian Express, and in that capacity, he published a number of articles that went against the secularist opinion. In his books on religion and communalism, he made use of insight he had learned from Goel. It is very much news to me, and does indeed sound highly unlikely, that Shourie would have censored Goel. And it sounds completely ridiculous to assume that Goel laid his pen aside because of what an eminent historian wrote. For the next 14 years, Goel keept on writing forcefully against all anti-Hindu forces including those represented by Mukhia.

As a parting-shot, the eminent historian informs us a bit more about his locus standi regarding translations: “By the way, the translations of the medieval Indian Persian texts are quite often atrocious. I happen to know because my doctorate at Delhi University back in 1969 was an evaluation of these texts. It is called Historians and Historiography During the Reign of Akbar.”

As already said, “killing” is something that happened frequently when Muslims encountered Hindus, and the Muslim chroniclers thus had to describe this process quite often. Harbans Mukhia has not convinced us that under the hands of the translators, “killing” only got mentioned as a mistranslation of, say, “tolerating”. Maybe the more abstruse elements in the narrative were subject to mistranslation, but the relation between Hindus and Muslims was pretty straightforward and hard to mistake for friendship.

The august professor bids us goodbye: “Voila, this is my last intervention in this so-called debate. I have better things to do than rectifying the RSS version of history. Best wishes, Harbans Mukhia”. Amen to that.

 

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Academic Negationism

A Nazi Out-of-India Theory?

[box_light]While we were working on the argumentation against the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), an improper and utterly false argument against the presumed association of the rivaling Out-of-India Theory (OIT) with Nazi Germany was being prepared in high places. This becomes clear from a refutation of the latter in a paper published by the International Journal of Hindu Studies (no.16 = 2012, p.189-252), and written by the German scholar Reinhold Grünendahl (Göttingen): “History in the making: on Sheldon Pollock’s ‘NS Indology’ and Vishwa Adluri’s ‘Pride and prejudice’”.[/box_light]

The homeland debate

Ultimately, a question of ancient history, such as the location of the homeland of the Indo-European language family inside or outside of India, will not be decided by its real or putative association with political tendencies in the modern age. Thus, when Hindus are writing for the umpteenth time that the AIT stems from colonialism and racism, they may be wrong or they may be right, but at any rate they are wasting their breath. Historians know that even a theory generate History plays out in a time when other concerns were at stake than in the present  by the wrong motives may prove to be right, and even a point of view stemming from noble political positions may be wrong. We all would like to domesticate history into political usefulness for today, but have to acknowledge that it doesn’t work that way.

All the same, the AIT school do occasionally try to blacken the Hindu nationalist movement’s new found enthusiasm for the OIT with a wrong political association, viz. by fitting it into their well-established narrative that somehow this is a “fascist” movement. Thus, in a newspaper column, Robert Zydenbos (“An obscurantist argument”, Indian Express, 12-12-1993) tried to associate Navaratna Rajaram’s arguments for the OIT with Adolf Hitler’s National-Socialism. More crassly, Yoginder Sikand (“Exploding the Aryan myth”, Observer of Business and Politics, 30-10-1993) likewise tried to link the OIT with Nazi Germany, playing on their common concern for (but diametrically opposite interpretation of) the term Arya.

Of course, nobody who follows the debate, closely or even from afar, can be taken in by this. Very obviously, the Nazis themselves never believed in the OIT but were more ardent than most in espousing the AIT. Practically all Westerners at the time, and many Indians as well (including the Hindu nationalist leader of Congress, Balagangadhara Tilak, and the ideologue of the Hindutva movement, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar), took the AIT for granted. The Nazis had an extra reason for putting their faith in it, viz. that the AIT served as the perfect illustration to the Nazi worldview. The Aryan immigrants had demonstrated their superiority, they had sought to protect it by instituting a colour-based (to the Nazis: race-based) caste system, and they had lost part of their European quality by succumbing to race-mixing nonetheless. So, if anyone should be likened to Hitler, it is the AIT advocates themselves, including Zydenbos and Sikand. The OIT school rarely misses a chance to highlight this political identification of the AIT: with British imperialism as well as with European racism epitomized by the Nazis.

We may assume that Zydenbos was a newcomer to this debate, that he objected to the OIT in good faith and that he hadn’t informed himself of the Nazi view on the homeland question. But two decades down the line, the AIT belief has definitely lost its innocence. And already back then, a specialist like Columbia professor Sheldon Pollock published a paper titled: “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and power beyond the Raj” (in Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds.: Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, UPenn Press 1993, p.76-133), which includes a chapter titled “Ex Oriente Nox: Indology in the Total State” (p.86-96). He and his acolytes have since kept on elaborating this thesis, viz. that Germany invested much in Indology and used it in its project of self-definition as “Aryans” contrasting with the “Semites”. A recent example of this polemic is Vishwa Adluri’s paper in Pollock’s defence, “Pride and prejudice: Orientalism and German Indology” (International Journal of Hindu Studies, 15 (=2011), p.253-294).

While we, both in the OIT and AIT camp, were concentrating on the scientific evidence pertaining to the homeland and to the direction of the Indo-European expansion, someone somewhere was working on a large-scale and truly daring attempt to finally link the OIT to the National-Socialist regime. Nonetheless, a Hindu industrialist recently donated Pollock a fabulous sum of money for his work on Sanskrit literature, trusting him more with this heritage than other Indologists including the native scholars, both traditional and university-trained, who are far better at home in Sanskrit and financially far cheaper than an American academic. So, this highly reputed Sanskrit specialist sharpened his long-standing hatred of the Hindu nationalist movement into a paper alleging that Indology in general and the OIT in particular was much beloved of the Nazi establishment.

Edward Said

In this paper, Pollock at first seeks to supplement Edward Said’s unjustly famous thesis Orientalism (1978) with the German chapter which Said purposely left out. If truthful, such a chapter would have refuted Said’s whole theory, viz. that “Orientalism” was nothing but the intellectual chapter of the political-economic colonial entreprise. The mainstay of “Orientalist” scholarship was Central Europe, then thoroughly German-speaking at least at the intellectual level. Prussia only had colonies at a late date and far from the lands that interested the Orientalists, while the other countries involved, including the Austro-Hungarian empire, had no colonies at all. In the colonial countries too, many Orientalists were by no means part of the colonial entreprise (pace Said’s conspiracy theory), but in the German-speaking world, there was not even a colonial entreprise to integrate the Orientalist endeavour in; yet Orientalism flourished there like nowhere else. Moreover, Orientalism took wing when the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Oriental neighbor, the Ottoman Empire, was by no means a colony but a threat and an equal trading-partner.

Indeed, even in its better-developed “British” part, Said’s theory was deeply flawed from the beginning, and the numerous errors of detail as well as the general error of his theory  have ably been pointed out by Robert Irwin (For Lust of Knowing: the Orientalists and Their Enemies, Allan Lane, London 2006) and Ibn Warraq (Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, Prometheus, Amherst NY, 2007). A comprehensive work on German-language Oriental scholarship has been produced by Suzanne Marchand (German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. Religion, Race and Scholarship, German Historical Institute, Washington DC, and Cambridge University Press, 2009). With the benefit of hindsight, we can now pass judgment on Said’s influential publication which has seriously damaged the fair name of the academic discipline called “Orientalism”.

Academics who still rely on Said’s thesis, actually rely on a profoundly mistaken and highly politicized piece of scholarship. His thesis is a thin attempt at justification for anti-Westernism. Much as this is in vogue among Hindus, they are only making fools of themselves by espousing Said’s conspiracy theory. For everyone, it is  academically weak and factually full of mistakes, but for Muslims at least, they would be supporting their own man. They would be cheering for a Dhimmi, someone upholding Islamic causes, in that as well as in other books. In supporting Said, Pollock is true to his own camp, i.e. the anti-Hindu coalition. But for Hindus, there is nothing in it, they are cheering for someone serving a declared enemy.

What Nazi rule really meant for Orientalism

Grünendahl cites  many examples where Pollock and his defender Adluri manipulate quotations to make past authors witnesses for their accusations. I vaguely knew that Pollock was wrong in associating the OIT with National-Socialism, but not that he was so spectacularly wrong. His thesis is first of all that India was a central concern for the Nazis. This is put forward most emphatically (but only with bluff) by Pollock and, on his authority, generally taken for granted. Adluri elaborates that Germany was very worried about building its “identity” as contrasting with the Semitic heritage and the Semitic people in their midst, and used India for that purpose.

But Grünendahl shows from old and neutral sources that the Indology departments received no special attention, that they were small compared to Ancient Near-Eastern Studies, Sinology etc., and that the Nazi period showed no special interest in Orientalism in general or Indology in particular. If anything, they suffered in their orientation on India from the reigning emphasis on “Indo-Germanic studies”.

Marchand notes that the number of German Oriental scholars as a whole fell from 360 in 1931 to 180 in 1940. [2009:488] What connection she cites between Indology and the Nazis [2009:499] is wholly based on Pollock, who estimates that one-third of the (only!) ca. twenty-five Indology professors in the Third Reich were active in the National-Socialist party or in the SS. This is the only time she cites him in her 526-page book. (She also naïvely gives credence to other anti-Hindu scholars such as Reza Pirbhai, p.311.) According to her: “Worst of all among the Indologist collaborators was Walter Wüst, the Vedic specialist at the University of Munich who became the director of the SS Ahnenerbe.” [p.499] But Wüst is not known to have championed the OIT, on the contrary. The Nazi regime’s favourite historian H.K.F. Günther believed the homeland lay in Southeastern Europe. This was the reigning opinion in Europe, challenged only by some Nazis who insisted on Germany or Scandinavia as the homeland. All of them agreed that the Indo-European language family had only reached India through an Aryan invasion.

Let us add that Marchand agrees to include among the Nazi Indologists Paul Thieme, the revered teacher of Michael Witzel; and he was, like his more militant pupil, a believer in the AIT. According to Marchand, one of the Nazi concerns in Oriental scholarship was “the refutation of the Jewish origins of monotheism” (p.489) namely in Mazdeism. The picture of religion in National-Socialism was complex and diverse, but belief in the superiority of monotheism was unchallenged. Like racism, it was then part of the general consensus.

She also notes that: “Among the Islamicists, there were also numerous collaborators (…)  things looked rather promising for this bunch  in the period 1936-39” when the Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels and Baldur von Schirach toured the Middle East, and the Islamologists were used to liaise with Muslim leaders like the Jerusalem Mufti, so that they “successfully disseminated Nazi ideas throughout the Middle East”. [2009:490] Wouldn’t that be a good topic for Orientalist scholars: Islamic-Nazi similarities as the reason for Nazi-Muslim friendships?

The Nazi concern for “Aryans” speaking “Indo-Germanic” (innocently so named after its two extremes: Indo-Aryan in Bengal and Germanic in Iceland) or Indo-European, now and originally conceived as a language family but then also conceived as a racial unit, couldn’t seriously be bothered with India.  Their main concern was with the North, so Grünendahl argues:

“The fundamental flaw of Pollock’s narrative is that it hinges entirely on the exact reverse of the ‘Nordic’ notion. This reversal, which provides the basis for the ‘founding myth’ of the entire discourse machinery he set in motion, is enshrined in the grotesque proposition that ‘the Germans… continued, however subliminally, to hold the nineteenth-century conviction that the origin of European civilization was to be found in India  (or at least that India constituted a genetically related sibling)’ (1993:77) Even to the Romantic period [end of 18th, early 19th century, when this notion was upheld by Johann Herder], this assertion only holds with considerable qualifications (…) To make it the basis for theorizing any aspect of the NS period is rendered absurd by the above-mentioned texts alone”. [p.199]

Hitler on the Hindus

Reference is to texts revealing Hitler’s position on the Hindus. In 1920 already, he laid his cards on the table, and would never waver from this position, not in Mein Kampf, which disparages Hindus as also German neo-Pagans, not in his speeches nor in his wartime table talks. There he had evolved to mocking religion in general and his native Catholicism specifically, though he appreciated its organization and mass psychology and its anti-caste way of recruiting its priests from the people rather than from a separate priestly caste (yes, Hitler was also a comrade-at-arms of Pollock in their common anti-Brahminism). He only knew of the Hindus through the lens of the AIT:

“While Hitler does refer to ‘the Hindus’, he does so not with the intent to employ them as distant relatives in the ‘creation of Indo-German as counter-identity’ (Pollock 1993:83), but merely as an illustration of ‘racial decline’ (Rassensenkung) due to the destruction of ‘national purity’ (nationale Reinheit.)” (p.218, with reference to Adolf Hitler 1980 (1920): “Warum sind wir Antisemiten?” in Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds: Hitlers sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, p.184-204: specifically p.195-196)

So, Hitler’s rare utterance on the Hindus was a racial interpretation of the AIT. These are his own words (1980/1920:195): “Wir wissen, dass die Hindu in Indien ein Volk sind, gemischt aus den hochstehenden arischen Einwanderern und der dunkelschwarzen Urbevölkerung, und dass dieses Volk heute die folgen trägt; denn es ist auch das Sklavenvolk einer Rasse, die uns in vielen Punkten nahezu als zweite Judenheit erscheinen darf.” (“We know  that the Hindus in India are a people mixed from the lofty Aryan immigrants and the dark-black aboriginal population, and that this people is bearing the consequences today; for it is also the slave people of a race that almost seems like a second Jewry.”)

For Grünendahl, this is merely an example of how the primary sources of German history contradict the free-for-all that amateur historians make of it, in this case the manipulated narrative by Sheldon Pollock. He sounds like defending Germany’s true history against American (and then, by imitation, Indian) distortions. Probably he doesn’t realize that this distortion, about the presumed Nazi love for the OIT, constitutes Pollock’s ultimate motive. We don’t want to pretend to read inside a man’s skull, so we will not speak out on his intimate motives. But the objective finality of his thesis is at any rate to blacken the OIT by associating it with National-Socialism. Reality, however, is just the opposite: more even than other Europeans, the Nazis espoused and upheld the AIT. Hitler-Pollock, same struggle!

 

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Analysis

Colour Prejudice in India : A History

[box_light]In India the preference for lighter skin is well known. In Bollywood lighter actresses such as Katrina Kaif find that the right skin tone outweighs talent and ignorance of Hindi. Skin lightening products do roaring trade. But what lies at the root of all this? Many people assume it is because over three thousand years ago India was invaded by lighter skinned Indo-European speakers known as Aryans. But this idea was actually manufactured by German Indologist Max Muller in order to justify British rule.

As Marx said if Indian history was merely that of a series of invasions, then the question was not if foreigners would rule India, merely which set of invaders imposing their rule. Muller later retracted his thesis saying that by ‘Aryan’ he meant language and not race. But by then the damage had been done and to this day the idea remains regretfully mainstream and is rarely challenged unlike the Hamitic Invasion Theory of Africa which dates to around the same period but has now been dropped for the racist idea it was.[/box_light]

When ‘Brother-in-Law’ means Rape

If we cannot blame the aforementioned non-existent ‘Aryans’ then could it be due to two centuries of British colonialism? Certainly this favoured lighter skin and there was even a mixed race of Anglo-Indians deliberately created as a buffer between the Raj and the masses. But anyone familiar with Indic languages knows that the preference for lighter skin just seems too deep. For example in Punjabi the phrase “kali mu vaaliya” (one with black face) has extremely derogatory connotations. No, we must look at other clues in this search.

Released in 1975 Sholay remains among the greatest films of Hindi cinema. One cinema in Mumbai ran the movie for 286 weeks straight (more than five years). Dubbed a ‘curry western’ Sholay achieved a still-standing record of 60 golden jubilees (50 consecutive weeks) across India and may well have been the highest grossing film ever produced by Bollywood. Now it is the famous scene of Russian roulette we are concerned with here. Leading a band of dacoits, Gabbar Singh (played by Amjad Khan) puts a pistol to the head of three of his men who are sent back empty handed from the village of Ramgarh.

Putting the gun to the head of his first subject Gabbar pulls the trigger only to find the chamber empty. He utters the now immortal words “bach gaya saala” in his menacing voice.

This is usually translated into English as “the bastard survived”.

But in Hindi and Punjabi the word ‘saala’ does not mean ‘bastard’. It means ‘brother-in-law’. So how to explain this? Using the exact translation would not make sense. But in the cultural and linguistic context it makes perfect sense.

The term ‘saala’ can be one of family endearment.But in this and many other contexts is means something very specific, namely ‘I slept with your sister’. This also implies ‘you can now take her back’.

In his 1992 book Negationism in Indian History, Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst mentions this:

“It is because of Hanifite law that many Muslim rulers in India considered themselves exempted from the duty to continue the genocide on the Hindus (self-exemption for which they were persistently reprimanded by their mullahs)….. The Moghul dynasty (from 1526 onwards) in effect limited its ambition to enjoying the zimma system, similar to the treatment of Jews and Christians in the Ottoman empire. Muslim violence would thenceforth be limited to some slave-taking, crushing the numerous rebellions, destruction of temples and killing or humiliation of Brahmins, and occasional acts of terror by small bands of raiders. A left-over from this period is the North-Indian custom of celebrating weddings at midnight: this was a safety measure against the Islamic sport of bride-catching.”

Jaago, meaning “wake up” a marriage folk dance in the Punjab, taking place at night where girls dance through the village streets carrying a pot (gaggar) decorated with lightened candles and singing jaagu songs.

It is the last sentence that should interest us because it explains why ‘saala’ is such an abusive term. In fact it is merely the tip of a massive politically incorrect and rarely explored iceberg.

The Blackness of Servitude in India

In his 1994 book The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India,  KS Lal has detailed how right from the invasion of Muhammad bin Qassim in the seventh century Hindus were subject to enslavement as an integral part of Islamic conquest, rule and forcible conversion. Females were especially targeted to fill the harems of sultans and their nobles. As mentioned by Dr. Elst, this is the origin of Hindu marriages being celebrated at night. It also led to jauhar, the mass self-immolation by which Rajput women preserved their honour rather than be capture. This was done by lighting  a huge fire in a pit into which women and children then jumped in order to avoid rape and enslavement.

In more recent years similar desperate action was taken by Sikhs avoiding humiliation through rape and forcible conversion and marriage when Pakistan was formed. For example in the village Thoha Khalsa of Rawalpindi District in 1947 only three women survived because there was not enough water in the well to drown them as they sought to evade capture by Muslim marauders intent on exterminating the unbelievers in their midst.

What Pakistan perpetrated on its Hindu and Sikh inhabitants from its very inception was merely a replay of centuries of Islamic colonialism, genocide, demographic upheaval and cultural dislocation. It was something that was to burst with full fury in 1971 as East Pakistan fought to break free as the independent state of Bangladesh. The Pakistani military and ruling caste was from the west composed of mainly Punjabis and Pathans such as Ayub Khan who saw their darker-skinned Bengali eastern brethren as mere Hindu converts to Islam, while they were descendants of great conquerors such as the Mughals.

Indeed the Islamic conquests were constantly wracked by internal racial strife. Afghans, Arabs, Turks and Iranians occupied the higher echelons of government. Hindu converts and African slaves were considered as inferior. Lal:

“D.B. Davis in his Slavery and Human Progress attempts to estimate the number of blacks that would have been sold as slaves and imported into India. According to him “the importation of black slaves into Islamic lands from Spain to India constituted a continuous large-scale migration that in total numbers may well have surpassed, over a period of twelve centuries, the African diaspora to the New World”.

The absence of a large population of black survivors can be explained by their high mortality rate; by assimilation with other peoples; and by the fact that many male slaves had been castrated. Even so in central part of India and on the western coast, there are communities of blacks who are descendants of African slaves. On some Western Coast Islands also there live descendants of black slaves. The Jinjeera Island, so called because of mispronunciation by Marathas of Jazeera meaning island, or Zanzeera meaning land of Zanj or Blacks, is their main abode. It is also called Habsan or the land of Africans or Habshis. In the seventeenth century these islanders, called Sidis of Jinjeera, served as admirals of the Mughals and were at constant war with the Marathas.”

 

The writer continues:

“However, in contrast to the foreign imported slaves, whose market price was rendered high by cost of transportation and deaths in transit, the price of Hindu slaves, sold abroad remained low. For example, Hindu Kush (Hindu-killer) mountain is so named because thousands of enslaved Hindus died in crossing it. But their numbers were so large that the price of survivors remained low in foreign markets.”

( http://voiceofdharma.org/books/mssmi/ch10.htm )

The Mughals continued this export of  Hindu slaves to Iran and Central Asia. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited Mughal India during the reign of Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century. He made this observation on the ruling class:

“They were called Moguls, that is, white of complexion . . . the natives being all brown or olive colour.”

The physician François Bernier also noted the skin colour of the ruling elite:

“…to be considered a Mogol, it is enough is a foreigner have a white face and profess Mahometanism.”

The Mughals were in fact Chagatai Turks. But it was the Iranians who dominated the Muslim regime oppressing India’s toiling Hindu masses. The Iranians looked down upon the Mughals and Indians as barbarians and were helped in their superior status by a preference for lighter skin colour. Indeed Bernier said that as successive generations of Iranian immigrants became darker, they lost the respect accorded to newcomers and all fair-skinned Muslim immigrants as part of the ruling class. Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci said that Iranians constantly referred to Indians as “slaves” or “blacks”. Afghans, though part of the ruling class, were portrayed as crude and vulgar.

Racial and ethnic strife had existed from the very advent of Islam, between slaves and free, even between northern and southern Arabs. But the Arabs had always formed a hereditary ruling caste over the vanquished from the time of the Ummayads. Any Muslims who had Iranian, Berber, Aramaen or other undesirable blood was classified as Mawl? and excluded from the dominant racial caste. Strict social barriers were maintained between the Arab ruling racial caste and the non-Arab oppressed masses. Embracing Islam was no escape from this badge of inferiority. While Arabs could take wives from the indigenous people, the converse was not true. The non-Arabs resented their treatment as racially inferior.

For example, Mawálí soldiers were led by Arabs generals only on foot with their weaponry being limited to a baton. As a reward for defeating the Ummayad army outside Mosul was to have the Arabs massacre the 7000 mawálíinhabitants of Kufa. From the late seventh century, black slaves from East Africa were used in the marshland of Mesopotamia to cultivate cotton and sugar on plantations. Housed in very harsh conditions of camps of up to five thousand captives, they rebelled in 694 which was crushed. These were known as the Zanj. The Zanj rebellion resulted in extremely racist attitudes towards blacks, as expressed in Arabic literature, by poets of Ethiopian descent, known as the “black crows of the Arabs”, such as Suhaym (d. 660), Nusayb ibn Rabah (d. 726), and Abu Dulama (d. c.776), pointing to clear evidence that black slaves had the lowest position in Muslim society. Racism was in fact as central to Arab slavery as it was in the western system which developed later. Arabs saw their own olive pigmentation as preferable to lighter Greeks and Iranians as well as darker people of the Horn of Africa. Early Arabic poetry describes the many nuances of human coloration. In fact the name of the seventh century poet, Suhaym, literally means “little black man”, and he penned verses such as the following:

“Though I am a slave my soul is nobly free Though I am black of colour my character is white.”

Nusayb ibn Rabah responded to a racist attack on him by an Arab poet, because he was black:

“Blackness does not diminish me, as long as I Have this tongue and this stout heart.

Some are raised by means of their lineage; the Verses of my poems are my lineage!

How much better a keen-minded, clear-spoken Black than a mute white!”

By the fourteenth century, the Arabic word “abd” as used to mean black slave, while “mamluk” meant a white slave. Black Africa remained a major source of slaves for the Islamic world until well into the twentieth century. Blacks came to be seen as natural slaves when compared to other races. It was this prejudice against darker skin which was imported into India and has been entrenched their over the centuries. But the other legacy of Islamic slavery and racism was even worse.

Hindu Kush means Hindu Slaughter

The numbers of Hindus enslaved and exported from India by various Islamic invaders and imperialists was staggering, to such an extent that it gave the name to the mountains in Afghanistan as so many died en route. In Iran these Indian slaves were forced to work in the mines while slaves were also imported from Africa in huge numbers. In 1849 and 1850, Lady Mary Eleanor Sheil wrote from the British embassy that black slaves known as Nubees or Habshees were highly esteemed and well treated. However racial prejudice appears to have increased after slavery ended, as reported by Joseph Harris in 1967 in several cities. An Afro-Iranian community near Bandar Abbas complained of racism by other Iranians.

As well as colour prejudice towards darker skin in India and Iran, Islamic slavery had other negative influences which are only just being uncovered. In his 1979 book Roma: The Gypsy World, Dr. SS Shashi challenged the belief that Europe’s Gypsies had their origins in any of India’s “untouchable” castes. Instead he traced the Roma to various castes including Rajputs, Banjara, Jat, Ahir, Dhangar, Dom and Sansi. Iranians still refer to Gypsy groups of Indian descent as Luri. Arabs call them Zott while in Syria they are referred to as Nawar. Nineteenth century Dutch historian MJ Goeje wrote that the Arabs brought tens of thousands of Indian peasants from the Indus region as slaves to be settled in Iraq. These Zotts became powerful enough to challenge the Abbasid Khalifate and hence Baghdad sent its forces against them in 820. The Zotts were defeated in 834, and the entire population deported to Syria. South African born scholar and anti-apartheid activist Ronald Segal mentions this slave revolt by the Zotts or Djatts, which he said were Indian slaves deported from the Lower Indus to the swamps of Lower Mesopotamia, to breed water buffalo while living in extremely impoverished conditions, which led to their rebellion. He says that their defeat led to them being deported to various parts of the Abbasid caliphate. This may explain why Gypsy groups of obvious Indian descent remain in the region, continuing to be disclaimed by the Arabs, Iranians and Turks as being part of their respective communities. They  are known as the Domari.

Professor Ian Hancock from the University of Texas , scholar of Hungarian Roma and British Romanichal descent,  concludes that the Roma are therefore most likely the descendants of high-caste Hindu Rajputs and not the Doms. Romani vocabulary points to a one time settled rather than nomadic population. In India there are nomadic groups such as the Banjara which claim descent from Rajputs, and left their homeland of Rajputana after the defeat by Mahmud of Ghazni in the eleventh century. At the Second World Romani Congress in April 1978, Ranjit Naik stated that Rajputs had fled these invasions into Central Asia. Then in 1998, B Shyamala Devi Rathore submitted a paper at the Romani Studies conference at Greenwich University, in which she mentioned Banjara historians that wrote about Rajputs leaving their homeland of Rajasthan due to the Ghaznavid raids, and spreading out in all directions.

Hindu Rajput warriors were captured in warfare by the Ghaznavid Turks who invaded India during the eleventh century. From the Ghaznavids, the Seljuk Turks also took them as slaves. This Indian population then found themselves brought to Europe in the thirteenth century as slaves and also in military battalions by the invading Ottoman Turks. These were to become the Roma or Gypsies. Hancock in his 2002 book We are the Romani People:

“The first Romanies that the Europeans met were very different from any of the local populations – far more distinct than we are today. They were mostly dark-skinned, and wore unfamiliar clothing and spoke a language nobody recognised. They were neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim and seemed to have no country of their own. And most of all, they were extremely reluctant to let outsiders – the gadže – get too close.”

As the Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire and advanced into Europe, Roma were reduced to slave status. They were also enslaved by the landlords in Christian populations of the Balkans, especially Wallachia and Transylvania. Female Roma were subject to horrendous sexual exploitation right up until the abolition of Gypsy slavery after the creation of the modern state of Romania in 1864. It is unknown how this slavery began. Some may have already been slaves of the Ottoman Turks, or even the Tatars who had invaded Europe earlier. By the early 1300s, Roma in the Balkans were being included as property given as payment, even to monasteries. As non-indigenous people, as non-Muslims, and as slaves, Roma were at the bottom of the social scale in the Balkans, especially in that all conquered non-Muslims could be treated as property.

By the sixteenth century, the word for Gypsy in Romanian, tigan, had come to mean slave specifically of Roma origin. For this oppressed minority dislocated from their Indian homeland through distance and the centuries elapsed when their Hindu ancestors had been enslaved by the armies of Islam there was to be no happy ending. Half of the European Roma population died in the Holocaust in what is known in the Romani language as Porrajmos, a powerful world which translates as devouring or rape.

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Legendary Battles

The Huns : Barbarians Tamed by the Warriors of Dharma

[box_light]Myth says that when told of the power of the mighty Persian empire of antiquity, their ability to cover the very sun with their hail of arrows the Spartans would retort mockingly – ‘so much the better – at least we will fight in the shade’  The reality of war in the ancient world was of course quite different.[/box_light]

A thunderous hail of arrow and projectiles darken the sky. Waves of fast moving horse mounted warriors in compact bands of up to 4000 release their arrows before wheeling away to allow the next band to attack. In such a manner an unrelenting hail of projectiles would be hurled at the enemy. Modern historians have estimated that a mounted warrior of the early Common Era from Central Asia would be able to shoot at a speed reaching 40 kph. That speed combined with the range of the recurved composite bow when dealt with in massed attacks were an unmatched weapon until the introduction of the machine guns in the First World War. This was the Huns (also known as the Hunas )

Armed with this force the Huns swept across Asia bursting into the splendour of the Roman Empire destroy all before them. The hardy tribes of the Eastern Europe and the Balkans and around the Black Sea fell under a deluge of violence and havoc that the world has seldom seen. The mighty legions of Rome found their strongest armour and formations unable to withstand the legions of the Huns. The name of their leader, Attila has become a byword for terror and destruction which was scarcely held off in the depth of Western Europe at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields.

However many centuries later the Huns had defeated and taken prisoner Feroz, the Persian Emperor and made them a subject peoples.Onwards the waves of destruction marched into South Asia only to meet with the might of the Gupta Empire in the noontide of their power. The vast dominions of the Guptas had been conquered by a succession of warrior emperors and was now led by Skanda Gupta. Marshalling his forces he marched to meet the as yet undefeated Huns under their leader Khingila and in a ferocious conflict near the borders of modern India

The warriors of Skanda Gupta braved the waves of arrows and barbaric onslaughts of the Huns to engage them in a deadly hand to hand combat. The military skill of Skanda Gupta enabled him to marshal his reserves and thwart each probing attack of the Huns and cut their supply lines to eventually inflict an unprecedented defeat –. The slaughter was so great that only a few wandering bands of the Huns returned to their cantons with a rumour of the wrath and terror of the Gupta Emperor.The Bhitari pillar inscription speaks of the great victory over the Huns and the court bards went on to say:

‘By whose two arms the earth was shaken when he joined in close conflict with the Huns’

Thus a great catastrophe was averted and whilst much of Europe was laid to waste India breathed a sigh of relief.The subsequent breakup of the Empire of the Gutpas after the death of Skanda Gupta however gave a new fillip to the Huns.

Their war leader Toramana united the Hunnic tribes and seeing the divisions amongst the kings of South Asia launched his mobile warriors into a renewed attack. This time the merciless hordes managed to break through the borders and establish a foothold. The land of Punjab was laid waste and left to the tender mercies of the Huns. The ancient university and seat of learning at Taxishila near modern Sialkot in Pakistan was utterly destroyed.  

Toramana launched further expeditions into the hinterland of India casing great devastation and horror. His and much of the Huns gradual absorption and acceptance of Indic and Vedic concepts did little to lessen the cruel and barbaric basis of Hunnic society

His son Mihirkula outdid his father in every concept. An early adept of Buddhism he later turned against the institution of the monks and despite becoming a votary of Vedic deity Shiva launched into a tirade of destruction against the Buddhist monasteries and the monks.

His overall cruel and despotic nature caused waves of revulsion across the land. The Yaudheyes raised a banner of rebellion in Punjab and from the land of Malwa the warrior king Yashodarman together with the last Gupta king Narasimnagupta in 528 CE gave battle to their ruthless enemies. Led by repeated charges by Yashodorman the Huns gave way and found their banners trampled into the ground by the Hindu kings the proud warriors who had carried death and destruction across the face of the known world were beaten into submission. Mihirkula was dragged in chains before the Hindu monarch and in an unbelievable act of chivalry was released unharmed to return to his dominions beaten and humiliated.  Temples were raised in honour of the Vedic Gods and of the sublime Lord Buddha to celebrate the victories over the Huns and their violations of the eternal laws of Dharma

Mihirkula returned chastised to his dominions and the Hunnic Empire collapsed into oblivion. The wheels of Dharma turned on as from the beginning of time – the Huns passed on into the annals of history but the people did not. The various cantons and mandalas of the Hunas merged into a revitalised Hindu society to stand at the forefront of Hindu society in the centuries to come together with the clans of the Rajput’s, Gujars, Jats, Nayars and others in a new spirit of honour and  chivalry that has seldom been seen in the world,

 

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Fountainhead of Yoga

The Vedic Yoga and Yoga as a Whole

[box_light]In classical Indian thought, Yoga in the general sense refers to a particular way of spiritual practice and as such has been taken up by most of the spiritual traditions in India, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain . In this regard, Yoga suggests to us characteristic practices of asana, mantra, pranayama and meditation.[/box_light]

Yoga in this broader sense as spiritual practice has five basic types.

1)      Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Knowledge, using meditation for Self-realization

2)      Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of Devotion, seeking union with God as the Divine Father or Divine Mother

3)      Karma Yoga, the Yoga of Service, emphasizing ritual worship of the Divine and service to living beings

4)      Raja Yoga, the Royal Yoga of higher techniques and methods, mainly of mantra and meditation.

5)      Hatha Yoga, the Yoga of Effort or of lower techniques and methods, mainly asana and pranayama.

All schools of Indian spiritual thought, orthodox and unorthodox, employ one or more of these approaches of Yoga, which they may define in different ways or use relative to different philosophical backgrounds. Many groups employ an integral approach using aspects of all five of these.

Yogic methods can be found in all branches of Indian spiritual and religious literature, whether the Vedas, Epics, Puranas, Agamas and Tantras, as well as in many special Yogic texts or Yoga Shastras. The integrative approach of Yoga pervades the culture of India as well, including its literature, drama, music, dance, science, medicine, and even grammar. It is this broader approach to the meaning of Yoga that we find in Vedic teachings going back to the Rigveda, not simply Yoga as asana as in modern parlance.

However, besides this general meaning and not to be confused with it, Yoga in a specific sense refers to one of the six classical schools of Vedic thought, those philosophies that accept the authority of the Vedas. This is the Yoga school or Yoga Darshana, which is also called ‘Samkhya-Yoga’ owing to its connection with the Samkhya school of Vedic thought, with which it is intimately associated. Unfortunately many people, particularly in the West, confuse Yoga as a general term with Yoga as one of the six Vedic schools, which breeds many distortions. They tend to see Yoga Darshana, particularly the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as the basis of all Yoga, when it is more accurately the main text of one important branch of Yoga, but not the entire field of Yoga. There are Shaivite, Vaishnava and other Yogas as well, which have their own primary Yoga texts and teachings.

Yoga and the Vedas: Vedic Mantra Yoga

It is difficult to think of the Vedas without thinking about Yoga, as the Vedas promote spiritual knowledge born of meditation, the way to achieve which is the practice of Yoga. Yoga is a term that is first found in the Vedas, where the root for Yoga, ‘yuj’, meaning to unite, yoke or harness is common, not only relative to horses and chariots, but also relative to the mind and senses. Even the yoking of the Vedic chariot (ratha) is symbolic of deeper Yoga practices of controlling the mind.

Sometimes people today fail to see the yogic nature of the Rigveda because we are approaching Yoga with a recent modern idea of Yoga as mainly asana or physical postures. Asanas do not have a major role either in the Vedas or in classical yogic texts, including the Yoga Sutras, which only devotes two of two hundred sutras to them.

The Vedas do address with Yoga in an obvious but different way. The Vedas as mantras begin with Mantra Yoga. This is not uncharacteristic of Yoga as a whole as even the Yoga Sutras emphasizes Pranava or the Divine Word as a prime principle of Yoga practice, implying importance to Mantra Yoga The Vedas are themselves mantras and reciting them is itself a path of Mantra Yoga.[i] Even later Mantra Yoga continues to use Vedic mantras like Gayatri as well as resting upon the Sanskrit language, the origin of which is in the Vedas.

Yet mantra has an application in action, which is ritual or karma. Vedic Mantra Yoga has its corresponding Karma Yoga. The Vedas outline the original rituals behind the practice of Karma Yoga, which in India today still extensively employs Vedic fire offerings. Mantra is meant to teach Dharma or the laws of life. As such, the Vedas encourage sacrifice, giving and helping others that is the basis of Seva or service, another important aspect of Karma Yoga.

Ritual can be defined as a way of sacred action in which we use name and form to approach the nameless and the formless. The implements, substances and materials used in the ritual are not employed for their literal or practical value, though there are correlations. The Vedic fire offerings are not done to produce heat or cook food but to carry messages to the higher worlds. The consecrated Vedic fire is not simply a fire. The substances offered into it are not used merely as fuel for the fire. They indicate movements and offers of the heart. Ritual is way of bringing the sacred or Brahman into action. When that ritual action is turned within, it becomes Yoga.

Yet this Vedic ritual is not only outward but also inward. The inner sacrifice involves the offering of speech, prana and mind to the deity within the heart. Yoga can be traced to this inner sacrifice (antaryaga) that includes mantra, pranayama and meditation, a point already noted.

Just as the Vedas imply Yoga, so does Yoga imply the Vedas. The science of Yoga arose in a Vedic context and employs a Vedic terminology like the Purusha and the use of OM, the great Vedic mantra. Most of the great Yoga teachers who have come to the West have been steeped in Vedic teachings as well. Many have been Swamis in Vedantic orders.

The term Yoga arises in the Rigveda itself and is first explained in more obvious terms in s early Upanishads like the Svetashvatara and Katha, which are said to be Yoga Shastras or Yoga texts. Many great Vedic Rishis were regarded as great Yogis including Vasishta, the most famous among them. Hiranyagarbha, the reputed founder of the Yoga tradition, is a Rigvedic deity often connected to Savitar, the Vedic Sun god, with Vasishta as his main disciple

Some modern scholars – generally not trained in the inner meaning of the Vedas – have tried to separate Yoga from the Vedas because Yoga as a specific term is not common in the Rigveda. They fail to note that many other synonyms of Yoga practice do occur in the Rigveda, including karma, yajna, mantra, tapas, svadhyaya, and dhyana.[ii] The Vedic rishi or seer is also a Yogi who has higher powers of consciousness, can commune with the deities, and becomes a deity as well.

The Vedic Yoga and Other Yoga Texts and Teachings

Yoga is a common topic in all Hindu teachings whether the Tantras, Puranas, Mahabharata or Vedas. The Mahabharata, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, has long sections on Yoga. The Upanishads teach the main principles of Vedantic philosophy and Samkhya that the Yoga system uses. The Upanishads deal with the themes of Yoga as Om, mantra, meditation, control of the mind, knowledge of the Purusha, and so on that are of value in Yoga. Many Upanishadic sages like Yajnavalkya (who represents the solar line of Vedic thought) were regarded as great yogis as well. In addition there is a whole set of Yoga Upanishads that arose at a later period.

The Vedic Yoga is arguably the origin and seed of the other Yogas. The Rigveda with its thousand hymns is one of the longest Yogic texts and reflects the teaching of the greatest number of rishis and Yogis. Many yogic and Vedantic teachings, starting with the Upanishads, look back to Vedic teachings or paraphrase them. Others recast Vedic teachings but in a new language. Yet for others Vedic principles are there, like Agni and Soma, which are common in Tantras that do not explain specifically their Vedic connections.

The Mahabharata, the great epic in which the Bhagavad Gita, occurs has many explanations of Vedic teachings in its Moksha Dharma section, which like the Gita deals with the highest Self-realization. The Gita is filled with allusions to the Vedic Yoga, but largely recast in a later language around the figure of Lord Krishna. Krishna says that he taught the original Yoga to Vivasvan, who in turn taught it to Manu. This specifically identifies Krishna’s Yoga with the Vedic Yoga. Among the seers, Krishna says he is Ushanas, who is the foremost among the Bhrigus.

Shaivite Yoga goes back to Shiva, along with Rudra and the Maruts in the Vedic language. Rudra is said to be the personification of the Vedic sacrifice, as in the famous Rudram chant of the Krishna Yajur Veda. Shaivite Yoga was earlier called the Pashupati Yoga in the Mahabharata, from Shiva as Pashupati or the lord of the wild animals.

Vedic Yoga and the Yoga Sutras

Yamas and Niyamas

Among the most obvious connections of the Vedic Yoga with classical Yoga can be found in the Yamas and Niyamas, the yogic principles and life-style practices that constitute the first two of the eight limbs of Yoga, and the three aspects of Kriya Yoga. The Vedas are first of all an attempt to embody and teach dharma. Classical Yoga, as a Vedic tradition, rests upon the dharmic foundation of the Yamas and Niyamas, the Yogic principles of right living.

The Yamas and Niyamas of Yoga are nothing new but a summation or essence of Vedic Dharmic principles found throughout older Vedic texts.[iii]The Yamas and Niyamas reflect the Vedic idea that one must have a dharmic foundation in daily life in order to truly approach the spiritual path.

Kriya Yoga of the Yoga Sutras consists of the three principles of Tapas, Svadhyaya and Ishvara Pranidhana, which form the foundation of the Niyamas. Tapas is perhaps the key principle of Vedic practice, relating specifically to Agni, the basis of the Vedic Yoga and is often identified with the Yajna or the Vedic sacrifice. The Rigveda states that it is through Tapas that the universe is created.[iv] Agni gives us the power of tapas, self-discipline, aspiration, will-power, and inner heat. Agni is connected with Tapo Loka or the realm of Tapas, in Puranic thought. Tapas is the first word of the second section of the Yoga Sutras.

Svadhyaya commonly means study of the Vedas in Vedic texts, including the Upanishads.[v] It does not simply refer to Self-study in a general sense but to the study of those specific Vedic teachings that were part of one’s family background or given by one’s guru. Its fruit in the Yoga Sutras is the vision of the Ishta Devata,[vi] or chosen form of the Divine that one worshipped in traditional India. These were the prime Hindu Gods and Goddesses of Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Surya, Ganesha, and the many complimentary forms of the Goddess or Divine Mother.

Yet perhaps the most obvious connection between Patanjali Yoga with the Vedic Yoga is the emphasis on Ishvara Pranidhana. Ishvara pranidhana involves surrender to the Divine as the supreme inner power, which is reflected in the Vedic Bhakti or Namas Yoga that involves surrender to the deity in the form of the Vedic Ishta Devatas. Ishvara, or the Lord, is a synonym for Indra, the ruler of the Vedic Gods. Ishvara-pranidhana is primarily Indra-pranidhana in Vedic terms.

Relative to Ishvara Pranidhana, Patanjali emphasizes the importance of Pranava, the primary Pranava which is OM.[vii] As the Vedas are the development of Pranava, he is thereby referring to not just the chanting of OM but the study of the entire Vedas. This makes sense as Patanjali was also a famous Sanskrit grammarian. Sanskrit grammar is also said to develop from Pranava or Om. It is one of the Vedangas or limbs of the Vedas.

The Yamas are common dharmic principles in Vedic texts. Ahimsa or non-violence is a key principle of Yajna or sacrifice, and is commonly extolled in the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata. Sacrifice or Yajna does not mean harming other creatures. It means offering everything to God. Even the rare animal sacrifices that were performed in Vedic times, like Native American ritual killing of the buffalo, were mainly for people who depended upon animals for food.

Satya or truthfulness is one of the main principles of Vedic thought. In the Rigveda, the Vedic Gods are called satya, particularly Indra. The triune principle of Satyam Rtam Brihat, the truth, the right and the vast is a prime Vedic principle.

Brahmacharya is a key Vedic principle meaning dwelling in Brahman, not simply celibacy but the internal consecration of all one’s energies. It is widely extolled in Vedic texts. Saucha is an important Vedic principle of cleanliness, particularly various forms of ritual bathing that were done on a daily basis. The text Yogi Yajnavalkya goes into great detail into various forms of Snana or bathing as a Yogic practice including the Mantra Snana or using mantra to bathe the mind.

Pranayama and the Other Limbs of Yoga

The dominant deities of the Vedas are those of the Pranic sphere like Indra, Vayu and Vata, Rudra, the Ashwins and the Maruts. Indra as the Supreme Deity of the Vedas is first of all the cosmic and supreme Prana. He is the lord of the air and atmosphere. While we find specific pranayama practices taught in Vedic texts, we do see many hints about them, as well as a frequent extoling of the power of Prana and Vayu. The five Pranas are discussed in detail in the Yajur Veda.[viii]

The Vedas also deal with meditation and particularly with Samadhi. The Rigveda itself speaks of various states of bliss, spiritual intoxication or the flow of Soma. These are not simply drug-based inebriations but a poetic rendition of the Vedic experience of Samadhi that was the goal of all the teachings embodied in the Soma hymns.[ix]

Tantric Yoga and Hatha Yoga

Traditional Tantric Yoga consists of using ritual, mantra, pranayama and meditation, much like the Vedic approach, including recognizing Agni and Soma or the cosmic fire and nectar powers. Agni relates to the Kundalini Shakti and the three lower chakras that are the seat of Agni in Tantric thought. Soma relates to the nectar of immortality or the Moon in the crown chakra and the three higher chakras in general. In this way, Tantric Yoga develops from the Agni-Soma Yoga of the Rigveda, but recasts Agni as the Goddess and Soma as Shiva as its dominant symbolism. The inner Vedic Yoga of Agni and Soma could easily be called Vedic Tantra and supplemented with all the practices of later Tantric Yoga, which may reflect older secret Vedic practices as well. Tantric Yoga rests upon the mysticism of the Sanskrit alphabet whose roots are in the Vedas. It includes the use of many mantras, including a number of Vedic chants like the Gayatri Mantra.

The main different between the Vedic and Tantric Yoga is that the Vedic Yoga rests upon a symbolism of light whereas the Tantric reflects a more anthropomorphic symbolism of male and female energies. This gives Tantra an iconic presentation, whereas the Vedic is naturalistic. But even here there is considerable overlap.

It is actually easy to see the Vedic basis of traditional Hatha Yoga, because Hatha Yoga is first of all a Yoga of the Sun and the Moon, which are Agni and Soma. Hatha Yoga looks at the Sun and the Moon through the solar and lunar nadis or the Ida and the Pingala. It looks at Agni as Kundalini and the digestive fire, and Soma as the crown Chakra.

Primary Practices of the Vedic Yoga

The Vedic Yoga like classical Yoga is a complex and many-sided discipline designed to address the needs of all the different levels and temperaments of human beings. The Vedic Yoga addresses all of life and works with all of nature, like a symphony using many instruments, with many movements, scales, tones and harmonics. Though it has its practical methodology and precise application, the Vedic Yoga cannot be reduced to any simple pattern, formula or method. One could compare it to a great banyan tree, with roots in both the air and on the ground, and many trunks and branches, on which many creatures can live and find nourishment. Its very complexity is daunting as it reflects the teachings of numerous seers over many centuries. Yet we can still access it today, if we learn how to reorient our vision and awareness in the right way.

Vedic deities represent various yogic approaches, principles and values but in a symbolic or hidden form. This is one reason why later Yogas, philosophies and Vedic sciences could find their inspiration in looking at Vedic mantras in different ways. Yet it also caused some later thinkers to hold that the Vedic teaching lacked depth and spirituality and was only ritualistic in nature. To enter into the Vedic Yoga requires an inward turning of the mind and heart, a turning away from our current civilizational boundaries, and an ability to embrace the language and mentality of an earlier humanity.

However, beyond its seemingly immense intricacy and labyrinthine maze of forces, the Vedic Yoga follows a coherent and structured process that unfolds in each human being in a similar way. Though we are all different at one level, at another level, we are all part of the same species, the same life, and the same consciousness, following the same rhythm of action and expression. In our inmost souls, we are all part of the onrush of an imperious Divine Will to reach the Supreme, which power has its own law and follows its own seasons. Once we understand the basic principles of the Vedic Yoga, we can begin to discern how its apparently discrete elements fit together into an integral and organic whole. That is why in the end, whatever Vedic deity is followed, one merges the deity into light, bliss, oneness and transcendence.

Vedic Deity or Devata Yoga

The Vedic is a ‘Deity Yoga’ or Devata Yoga, just as is common in Hindu, Buddhist and Native traditions, including Tantric and Puranic approaches. The Vedic Yoga requires that we awaken the deities within our own minds and hearts and learn to work with them in all the forces of the universe. The Rigveda in particular is the Vedic book of the deities or Devatas, revealing their names, natures and functions. It is through these Divine powers that the Vedic Yoga and Vedic Dharma proceeds.

Mere practice of Vedic mantras or techniques is not enough to constitute a true Vedic Yoga. It is the Vedic deities that are the agents and the instruments of the Vedic Yoga, not we ourselves, our ordinary minds or human personalities. To understand the Vedas, we must understand the meaning the Vedic deities and come to a living experience of their manifold powers.

Each Vedic deity represents an important approach to inner knowledge, energy and delight. It is both a reflection of the Supreme Godhead and a way to its realization. We can experience these Vedic deities like Indra and Agni as vividly as any other Divine form or manifestation. Ultimately, the Vedic Yoga requires that we understand the deities or cosmic powers behind all that we do. This begins with the biological forces behind our body, breath, and senses and extends to the spiritual principles behind the cosmos

Agni, Awakening the Soul’s Search for Divinity through its Many Lives

The first step not only of the Vedic Yoga, but also of most inner development, consists of awakening the soul or the deeper consciousness of immortality within us. Yoga in the inner sense is a process for the soul or our eternal being to unfold. Yoga is not for the profit or entertainment of our transient personality caught in the illusions of this present birth. Yoga’s purpose is to develop the greater potentials of our inner being, of which our outer personality and self-image is but a veil or an impediment. One must first be willing look beyond the ego self, its urges, demands and expectations to even approach Yoga in the classical sense of the term.

In yogic thought, what could be called the soul or inner being is the individual Self, our internal or core consciousness that persists throughout the karmic cycle of birth and death, the Jivatman of Vedantic thought. The soul has many bodies, many lives and many personalities. Yet behind these outer formations, the soul has an inherent sense and sure awareness of its own immortality, its Divine purpose, and its Divine goal. For Yoga to be an authentic spiritual practice, it must be done by the soul. Yoga done by the ego or by the mind is a Yoga done only in the shadows, in the darkness of ignorance, not in the light of higher awareness. Our practice of Yoga should be a practice of the heart beyond any social, commercial, personal or cultural concerns. Yet this Yoga of the heart is not a Yoga of the physical, emotional or psychological heart. It is a Yoga of our immortal essence as an eternal soul, whose true labor in its many lives is Yoga, the search to realize its divine and cosmic potential.

Awakening the soul of Yoga requires bringing our inner fire or soul flame forward as the guide and master of our being. It means awakening to our inner guru and linking up with the inner tradition of truth. This usually requires the light of the outer guru, teaching and tradition, in one form or another, to help us. Lighting our inner fire and keeping it burning through our daily lives and throughout all our states of consciousness as waking, dream and deep sleep is the foundation of all deep Yoga and meditation. This ‘Yoga of the Inner Fire’ or Agni Yoga consists of the cultivation of higher awareness through mantra, inquiry and meditation.

For this there is a wonderful Vedic verse that Sri Aurobindo emphasized:

The mantras love him who remains awake. The harmonies come to him who remains awake. To him who remains awake the Soma says, I am yours and have my home in your close friendship.

The fire remains awake, him the mantras love. The fire remains awake, to him the harmonies come. The fire remains awake, to him the Soma says, I am yours and have my home in your friendship.

Rigveda V.44.14-15

At first, this Agni or sense of God-consciousness is but a spark, a flicker or a small flame hidden deep in the subconscious mind, a mere latent potential. The Vedic Yoga rests upon a surrender to that fire, a cultivation of that fire until it can guide us back to the universal light that is its origin and goal. Yoga consists of various offerings of body, speech, senses, mind and heart into that inner fire. The fire in turn grows with each offering, granting us greater illumination, understanding and well-being.

Eventually that small spark becomes a mighty flame that consumes all impurity – and then expands into a great spiritual Sun within us, full of truth and light, with unlimited powers of illumination. The power of Agni, its tapas-shakti, purifies, heats, ripens, transforms and delivers us from the darkness to the light. We cultivate that fire through right intention, consecration, mantra, inquiry and meditation. This inner fire develops through a higher power of the will, attention, concern, higher values, and a deeper search and inquiry in life.

Through this power, our own spiritual striving, all the other Divine powers have a place to manifest within us, and do so in various ways to different degrees.

Developing Indra, the Master Force of Self-realization

Once the flame of the soul is awakened and has come forth to guide our development, manifesting the Gods or Divine powers, we must soon contact and set in motion the master force, the Divine consciousness in order to achieve the ultimate goal.

The Vedic God Indra represents the cosmic consciousness that descends into the human being as the lightning flash of direct perception that reveals the highest truth. This descent of grace from above links up with the ascending power of our soul fire from below. Indra is the God-consciousness within us that carries the cosmic and supracosmic Divine in seed form. As ascending and descending forces, Agni and Indra complement one another and comprehend the yogic quest.

This Indra consciousness enters through the fontanel and takes its seat in our heart along with Agni. Indra manifests through the perceptive power of the higher or great Prana (Maha Prana), the master life-force behind the universe that is ever seeking greater self-expression, self-mastery and self-realization, ever marching forward to the goal of realizing the entire universe within the mind. These two great powers of Indra and Agni, enlightened Prana from above and awakened will-power from within, overcome all obstacles and manifest all the other Gods or truth principles.

The cultivation of the master force consists of pranayama, discriminating insight, and deep meditation. It involves a revolution at the core of our consciousness itself. This means an inner battle between the powers of light and darkness, a movement from the darkness to the light, in which we can no longer accept anything limited or superficial into our being. Indra is the spiritual warrior who causes us to see the supreme.

Though the Indra force begins to manifest at an early phase of the Vedic Yoga, it is only when the Yoga is complete that his full power can be known. Otherwise that Indra energy must face various obstacles and opposition, the various enemies that he must defeat and conquer along the way.

Developing Surya, the Enlightened Mind

There are many Vedic Sun Gods, called Adityas, which mean ‘powers of unbounded energy and forces of primal intelligence’. The Adityas represent the different powers and principles of the illumined mind and heart. Following a solar symbolism, they are usually said to be seven or twelve in number. The Adityas reflect the principles of Dharma and modes of conduct. Each indicates a teaching that is necessary for our higher realization.

Most important of the Adityas are the pair Varuna and Mitra, who much like Soma and Agni – which they are often identified with – represent the overall cosmic duality. Varuna and Mitra are great Lords of Dharma and instill in us Dharmic values, allowing us to lead a Dharmic life.

In terms of sadhana, Varuna, which means the vastness, represents the discrimination between truth and falsehood, the recognition of karma and the necessity for purification. There is something stern about our meeting with Varuna, who effaces the ego into the higher truth. Yet Varuna protects the Soma principle or cosmic waters, which his grace releases once we have purified ourselves.

Along with Varuna is Mitra, who is the deity of compassion and love, opposite to and complementary to Varuna’s stern judgment. Mitra, which means friend, is the Divine Friend who leads us like a friend and causes us to seek friendship and harmony with all. Mitra connects us to Agni as the principle of light and the inner guide.

Besides these Mitra and Varuna as the third Aditya is Aryaman, the one who holds the power of nobility and refinement (Arya). Aryaman represents law and force in action, the ability to help, mediate and harmonize. Mitra, Varuna and Aryaman govern the three higher luminous heavens (rochanas) beyond the ordinary three realms of earth, Atmosphere and Heaven.

The fourth Aditya is Bhaga, who holds the power of bliss and delight. He is much like a masculine counterpart of the Goddess Lakshmi, granting not only worldly wealth but spiritual abundance and the richness of devotion. Along with Mitra, Varuna and Aryaman, Bhaga forms the four kings or great rulers of Dharma. Bhaga is connected to Savitar, the transformative aspect of solar energy, which represents the ascending Divine will in creation.

Our Agni, the flame of our inner mind as it develops unfolds the truth principles or dharmic powers represented by the Solar Godheads. They show a progressive development and expansion of the light of truth from the flame to the Sun. They complement the master force and insight of Indra, with various powers of knowledge and illumination. The Yoga of the higher mind (Buddhi) includes meditation on the Adityas and awakening their powers within us. Indra is also present behind the Sun Adityas as their ruling force.

Developing Soma: The Ecstasy of Samadhi

Yoga is a methodology of achieving the state of Samadhi, the level of bliss or Ananda, in which the mind is absorbed in God or in the Self that is its origin. Soma is the Vedic deity of Samadhi, in which all the Vedic deities merge. Soma is lauded as the king of the Gods. All Vedic deities drink the Soma, are energized by the Soma, and are themselves manifestations of the Soma power of bliss. This Soma or bliss is the creator of all but also the goal of all.

Agni is enkindled to prepare the Soma. Indra reaches its fullness of power by the Soma or ecstatic essence of delight that he is the main drinker of.  It is his drinking of the Soma that energizes Indra and affords him his master power. The Sun as an enlightenment force exists to take us to the higher bliss of Soma. Soma is the food, milk and lifeblood of all the Vedic deities. It is the unfoldment of the inner Soma that makes one into a rishi or a seer and gives great creative powers. The Vedic Yoga reaches its culmination in the free flowing of Soma that is the highest Samadhi. In Samadhi one learns to drink the immortal Soma that is the consciousness of immortality.

Other Vedic Deities

The many other Vedic deities that we find lauded in the hymns serve mainly supplementary roles, generally relative to the sphere of the main deity that they relate to as Earth, Atmosphere or Heaven, which are the spheres of Agni, Indra and Surya (Aditya).

There are many forms of Surya or the solar force of light and dharma of the world of heaven. We have mentioned several. There is a group of deities the Adityas. There is also Ushas as the Goddess of the Dawn. The solar deities reflect the principles of Dharma or illumined intelligence.

There are many deities of the atmosphere that connect to Indra. These include Rudra and Brihaspati. In addition, there are group deities the Maruts, Rudras and Ashvins. These atmospheric deities reflect Prana and energy.

Agni and Soma do not have so many associated deities but there are some and they have many hymns of their own. With Agni is most commonly the group of deities the Vasus. With Soma are various watery deities and Goddesses.

The Yoga of Light

The Vedic deities are primarily in their natural symbolism forms of light, with four forms being most prominent: Agni or Fire, Soma or Moon (reflected light), Indra or lightning, and Surya or the Sun (illumination). Yet these aspects of light function not only in the outer world but also in the inner world. In the psyche, Agni or Fire is will, Soma or Moon is the reflective aspect of mind and emotion, Indra or lightning is the energetic aspect of the mind as the power of perception, Surya or the Sun is the illuming power of the mind as awareness. There are four related light centers in the subtle body:

Surya – Sun Spiritual Heart Awareness
Soma – Moon Crown chakra Reflection
Indra – Lightning Third Eye Perception
Agni – Fire Root Speech

Through understanding these four energy centers, we can see how the subtle body and its chakra system was well known to the Vedic seers and integral to the Vedic mantras. The Vedic Devatas or Godheads of light reflect the deepest energies of our own consciousness and their integral unfoldment.

[i] Pranava in Yoga Sutras

[ii] However it is true that classical Yoga came from the late Vedic period and does not always reflect its Vedic roots. Yoga also was employed to some degree by non-Vedic schools like Buddhism and Jainism, but these also employed other Vedic factors like using the mantra Om, Vedic like fire rituals and other Vedic deities and mantras.

[iii] This simple observation seems to be lost on scholars who would like to see Jain or Buddhist influences in the Yamas and Niyamas, rather than common Dharmic values for Dharmic traditions. The Yamas and Niyamas are Vedic principles like tapas and svadhyaya, or related to them like Saucha and Santosha. They do not require any extra Vedic origin.

[iv] Rigveda X.

[v] Note Taittiriya

[vi] Yoga Sutras

[vii] Yoga Sutras Pranava

[viii] Five pranas Yajur Veda

[ix] Note author’s Soma in Yoga and Ayurveda

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Analysis

A Heroic Death that Changed the Course of Indian History


After the death of the great king Shivaji in 1680 the nascent Maratha kingdom faced a great challenge. The Moghul Emperor Aurungzeb had been confounded and defeated by the repeated battles with the Marathas and the high spirit of Shivaji. With the forces of fanaticism released throughout South Asia and to sustain himself the aged emperor leaned ever heavier on the clerics and upon religious exclusivism. The king of the Marathas with his slaying of the Afghan war leader, Afzal Khan, the daring attack on Shaista Khan and the escape from the very depths of the Mughal Empire in Delhi were the stuff of legend in the lifetime of Shivaji himself. The deaths of the great Rajput Chiefs, Jai Singh and Jaswant Singh around the same time seemed to open the floodgates of repression and extremism even further. Orders were issued to demolish the Hindu temples and impose the hated poll tax on non-Muslims – the jaziya.

As the empire groaned in its agony resistance began to multiply and grow leading to further repressions. The Bundelas in central India began fighting; the Jats of the Mathura region and the Rajput clans of the Rathores and Sisodiyas in Rajasthan even leading to a son of Aurangzeb named Akbar  to join the Rajput’s. In fury the enraged Emperor led the main imperial army to crush his son and his erstwhile rebellion.

Further south the Mughals believed that the Marathas would be unable to repeat their exploits under the son of Shivaji, Shambaji thinking that the sustenance of this new Hindu kingdom rested on one able man alone. Like so many other rebellions in that period, he thought the Maratha movement too must have received its death blow with the passing of its able leader, and by the fact that Shivaji had been succeeded by his brave but incapable son, Sambhaji. Sambhaji had courage, which he indeed demonstrated on various occasions, but also indulged in excesses leading his father on occasion forced to consider a severe punishment for his own son. Sambhaji in his rage left and joined the Moghuls! This was an intensely painful time in Shivaji’s life. Sambhaji left the Moghuls and begged for forgiveness when he witnessed first-hand the atrocities against Hindus.

Shambaji offered refuge to Akbar and in 1682 the lost son of Aurangzeb escorted by the Rajput’s arrived in safety in Maharashtra. Close behind the Emperor entered the Maratha Kingdom in the same year. Few would have guessed that he would never return to the north spending the last 27 years of his life in a futile and eventually failed war with the Hindus.

The war was engaged and raged from this period onwards in a steady ebb and flow in the hills of western India with neither side able to emerge over the other. The steady courage of Shambaji was only matched by his impetuous and rash nature. Only his minister Kavi Kalash was able to exercise any control over the headstrong king. An equal measure of the rage of shamabji was directed towards any perceived rivals or dissenters in his kingdom and he dealt with the same with extreme severity and with all the rage for which he was justly famous.

Blood flowed over the mountains and the land was ruined but the people fought on. The full force of the empire was now borne down on the barren hills and the prime generals and troops of the Mughals now all entered into the fray. For seven years more that war continued with its monotonous tale of attack and counter attack – of determined sieges and equally determined sieges. Of forts falling to the Mughals only to be retaken months later and for the cycle of destruction to continue.

In 1689 however the situation changed. The Maratha king was at Sangameshwar unaware of the nearness of his enemies and with a scant force around him. After a sudden raid under Muqarrab Khan a Mughal force reached the place and after a bitter fight succeeded in capturing Shamabaji and Kavi Kalash.

The next chapter is best described in the words of the : Masir I Alambiri, the official history of Aurangzeb’s reign:

Shamba was brought before the court. The Emperor out of his devotion to Islam ordered that from four miles before the camp Shambha should be made an object of ridicule …..so that the Muslims might be encouraged and the Hindus discouraged by the sight. The night in the morning after which he was brought to the Court …in the joyous expectation of seeing the spectacle, and the day was like the day of Eid because all men, old and young went out to see such a scene of joy and happiness.

The Emperor ordered that man to be removed to the prisons and in that moment Aurangzeb descended from the throne and kneeling down on the carpet of prayer bowed his head to the ground in thanksgiving and raised his hands in prayer to Allah….and drops of marvel(lit tears) fell from his far reaching eyes As the destruction of this wicked infidel in consideration of the harshness and disgrace that he had inflicted by slaying and imprisoning Muslims and plundering Muslims — and by the decision of the Doctors of the Law all were in favour of killing Shamba and thus he was killed with Kavi Kalash.

After two days the Emperor ordered Ruhullah Khan to ask Shamba where he had kept his treasure . In these circumstances that haughty man opened his mouth in defiant and vain words about the Emperor (Aurangzeb) – So the Emperor ordered him to be blinded by driving nails into his two eyes -So it was done. But that proud man from his high spirit gave up taking food from that day onwards and continued to shout defiance to The emperor and the tenents of Islam.

Maratha sources report:

When they were brought face to face with Aurangzeb, the latter offered to let Sambhaji live if he surrendered all the Maratha forts, turned over all his hidden treasures and disclosed the names of all the Mughal officers who had helped him. Sambhaji refused, and instead sang the praises of Mahadev (Lord Shiva). Aurangzeb ordered him and Kavi Kalash to be tortured to death. Sambhaji and Kavi Kalash were brutally tortured for over a fortnight. The torture involved plucking out their eyes and tongue and pulling out their nails. The later part involved removing their skin. On March 11, 1689, Sambhaji was finally killed, reportedly by tearing him apart from the front and back with ‘Wagh Nakhe’ (‘Tiger claws’, a kind of weapon), and was beheaded with an axe. This grievous death was given to him at Vadhu on the banks of the Bhima river, near Pune.

From the Persian history (Fatuhat I Alamgiri) :

“At last the case was reported to the Emperor and by his order Shambaji was taken to the place of execution and his limbs were hacked of one after the other- his severed head was publicly exposed across the Empire and taken to Delhi and hung on the gate of that city”

All accounts refer to days of horrific torture and agony which were borne with astonishing firmness and stoicism by Shambaji and his Brahmin minister Kavi Kalash. Even the purported offers of clemency on the public display of submission and/or an escape from the horror by conversion to Islam had little effect on the unfortunate Maratha king. After being blinded and his tongue cut from his mouth he surprisingly with great difficulty was still able to communicate and to continue to offer defiance to his oppressors.The memory of his inspirational father must have been close to Shambaji in the last days – given just sufficient time to rest between the tortures and removal of limbs after nearly two weeks of horrendous and unthinkable pain the broken and limbless king was executed – His head was cut off and placed in public display around the cities and towns of Maharashtra as a warning. But it did not have the desired effect.

The news of the execution of the son of the much revered and loved king Shivaji send a wave of horror and revulsion throughout the land. His brother Rajaram took the crown and retreated to the great fortress of Jinji to endure a 10 year long siege by the Mughals. The excesses of Shamabji were forgotten – news of the method of his death and more importantly the accounts of the dead king spread like wildfire amongst the Marathas. For his adherence to the Hindu Dharma the people named him ‘Dharamveer’ the warrior of Dharma

In the moment of his apparent triumph Aurangzeb was beset by an even greater tide of enemies. The Marathas under their war bands and leaders took to fight all over the western and southern parts of India from coast to coast. Their soldiers everywhere continually harried and fought the Mughals in an even greater tidal wave of resistance. The harried and worn emperor continued to fight in the face of ever increasing odds. The peoples of the north of India began to rise in rebellions and struggles eventually leading to the destruction of the Mughals. For 27 long years Aurangzeb continued with his fight against the Marathas only to die in despair in 1707.

The son of Shivaji had redeemed the pledge of his father of Hindu Padshahi – His heroic death led to the eventual victory over the forces The Maratha Hindu empire rose on the ruins of the Mughals and a hundred years after the execution of Shambaji a defeated and blinded Mughal Padshah, Shah Alam fell at the feet and mercy of the Maratha warrior and kingmaker Mahadji Sindhia.

The dreams and inspirations of the great Hindu Monarch Shivaji echo through history as a lesson against the forces of fanaticism and prejudice.

 

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Fountainhead of Yoga

The Vedic Basis of Classical Yoga

[box_dark]Many people today look to Patanjali, the compiler of the famous Yoga Sutras, as the father or founder of the greater system of Yoga. However, while Patanjali’s work is very important and worthy of profound examination, any extensive study of the ancient literature on Yoga reveals that the Yoga tradition is much older than Patanjali – and that its main practices already existed long before his time. Patanjali was a compiler, not an originator of Yoga teachings.[/box_dark]

The traditional founder of Yoga Darshana or the ‘Yoga system of philosophy’ – which the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali represents – is usually said to be Hiranyagarbha. It is nowhere in classical Yoga literature said to be Patanjali.  The Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 349.65), the great ancient text in which the Bhagavad Gita of Sri Krishna occurs and which is sometimes called the ‘fifth Veda’, states: “Kapila, the teacher of Samkhya, is said to be the supreme Rishi. Hiranyagarbha is the original knower of Yoga. There is no one else more ancient.”

Elsewhere in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 342.95-96), Krishna states, identifying himself with Hiranyagarbha: “As my form, carrying the knowledge, eternal and dwelling in the Sun, the teachers of Samkhya, who have discerned what is important, call me Kapila. As the brilliant Hiranyagarbha, who is lauded in the verses of the Vedas, ever worshipped by Yoga, so I am also remembered in the world.” Note that Krishna identifies yogic Hiranyagarbha with the deity of the same name in the Vedas.

Other yogic texts like the Brihadyogi Yajnavalkya Smriti XII.5 similarly portray Hiranyagarbha as the original teacher of Yoga, just as they do Kapila as the original teacher of the Samkhya system. So do commentaries on the Yoga Sutras. For example, Vijnana Bhikshu, the great Samkhya teacher in his Yogavartika commentary on the first sutra of the Yoga Sutras, also explains Hiranyagarbha as the Adiguru or primal guru of Yoga, quoting the Yogi Yajnavalkya.[i] While the depth, clarity and brevity of Patanjali’s compilation is noteworthy, it is the mark of a later summation, not a new beginning.

The vast literature of the Vedas, Mahabharata and Puranas speak of numerous great yogis but does not mention Patanjali, who was of a later period.[ii]  Even the Yoga literature that is later in time than Patanjali, like that of Kashmir Shaivism, Siddha Yoga or Hatha Yoga, does not make Patanjali central to its teachings, though they my mention him, but rather emphasize the deity Shiva as Adinath or their original guru.

The earlier Yoga literature before Patanjali can perhaps be better called the Hiranyagarbha Yoga Darshana as it is said to begin with Hiranyagarbha. In fact, most of the Yoga taught in Vedas, Upanishads, Gita, Mahabharata and Puranas – which is the main ancient literature of Yoga – appears to be part of this Hiranyagarbha tradition. Such ancient Pre-Patanjali texts speak of a Yoga Shastra or the ‘authoritative teachings on Yoga’ and of a Yoga Darshana or ‘Yoga philosophy’, but by that they mean the older tradition traced to Hiranyagarbha.

Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras is only referred to as a compiler, not as an inventor of the Yoga teachings. He himself states, “Thus is the teaching of Yoga” (Yoga Sutras I.1). This is quite unlike Krishna, the avatar of Yoga, who states, “I taught the original Yoga to Vivasvan” (Bhagavad Gita IV.1).

Patanjali is sometimes regarded as a devotee of Vishnu/Narayana, whose main human avatar is Krishna. This suggests that Patanjali himself was a devotee of Krishna. Traditional Sanskrit chants to Patanjali laud him as an incarnation of Lord Sesha, the serpent on which Lord Vishnu/Narayana resides. This Sesha attribution links Patanjali and his darshana to Krishna/Vishnu. Yet others view Patanjali as a Shaivite Yoga, for his emphasis on Ishvara and Om, which are more commonly associated with Shiva than any other deity formulation.

However, it is the Bhagavad Gita is the primary text lauded as a Yoga Shastra or ‘definitive Yoga teaching’ in the ancient literature. This connection can be carried to the Mahabharata as a whole, in which the Gita occurs. Bhishma in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 300.57) also speaks of a Yoga teaching “established in many Yoga Shastras.” The Anu Gita section of the Mahabharata (Ashvamedha Parva 19.15) has an interesting section that begins, “Thus I will declare, the supreme and unequalled Yoga Shastra.”

Several Upanishads like the Katha, Kena and Svestasvatara are said to be Yoga Shastras, besides numerous Yoga Upanishads that also do not emphasize Patanjali and have Yoga taught by a variety of teachers, including famous Vedic figures like Yajnavalkya and Shandilya. The Puranas, which are large encyclopedic works of traditional knowledge going back to medieval and ancient periods, contain many sections on Yoga but do not give importance to Patanjali. When such texts teach Yoga, they often do so with quotes from the older Vedas, as we mentioned with the Svetasvatara Upanishad in the previous chapter.

This means that the Patanjali Yoga Darshana is a later subset of the earlier Hiranyagarbha Yoga Darshana. It is not a new or original teaching meant to stand on its own. Such Sutra literature like the Yoga Sutras or Brahma Sutras were regarded as short axioms that required interpretation in the light of the existing more detailed traditions, mainly through authoritative commentaries. The topics addressed in the Yoga Sutras from yamas and niyamas to dhyana and samadhi are already taught extensively in the older literature. In the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 316.7), the sage Yajnavalkya speaks of an “eightfold Yoga taught in the Vedas.” The Shandilya Upanishad (1) refers to an eightfold or ashtanga Yoga but does not mention Patanjali.

While no Hiranyagarbha Yoga Sutras text has survived, quite a few of teachings of the Hiranyagarbha have remained. In fact, the literature on the Hiranyagarbha Yoga tradition may be as large as that of the Patanjali Yoga tradition, which itself represents a branch of it. This means that we cannot speak of a Patanjali Yoga tradition or of a Patanjali Yoga literature as apart from an older set of Yoga teachings rooted in the Hiranyagarbha tradition.

The Patanjali Yoga teaching occurs in the context of a broader Yoga Darshana that includes other streams. This Yoga Darshana existed long before Patanjali and was taught in many ways. It is the Yoga Darshana originally attributed to Hiranyagarbha and related Vedic teachers.

Yet even this Yoga Darshana that is connected to the Samkhya system, and could also be called the ‘Samkhya-Yoga darshana’, is not the only line of Yoga. The Mahabharata and other ancient texts speak of the Vaishnava Yoga that relates to Krishna and the Shaivite or Pashupata Yoga that goes back to Shiva himself. Indeed the main Yoga traditions in India are largely Shaivite and only use the Yoga Sutras in a peripheral manner. This includes the traditions of Hatha Yoga and Siddha Yoga, which are more rooted in the Shaivite Yoga than in the Yoga Sutras. While we should certainly honor this Samkhya-Yoga tradition, we should remember the greater diversity of yogic paths.

[box_dark]Parallel With the Samkhya Tradition[/box_dark]

A similar situation, in which the main Sutra text of a Vedic philosophy is later in time than its original teachings, also occurs relative to Samkhya. The main sutra text on Samkhya philosophy is the Samkhya Karika of Ishvara Krishna. Ishvara Krishna (who is not the Krishna of the Gita) is a figure of the early centuries AD who debated with Buddhist teachers near the time of Vasubandhu, the main teacher of Yogachara Buddhism. Ishvara Krishna is a much later teacher than the original founder of the Samkhya system, the sage Kapila, who is regarded as legendary even at the time of the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. Ishvara Krishna is more recent than Patanjali, though Patanjali Yoga rests upon the Samkhya philosophy.

There are many Samkhya teachings in the Vedic and Puranic literature older than the Samkhya Karika. The Samkhya Karika has its prominence as a late and clear compilation of an older tradition, not the original presentation. This means that there is no need to regard the main text on a Vedic darshana as the original teaching, or its compiler as the founder of the tradition.

[box_dark]Hiranyagarbha and Vedic Mantra Yoga[/box_dark]

Who then was Hiranyagarbha, a human figure or a deity? The name Hiranyagarbha, which means “the gold embryo”, first occurs prominently as a Vedic deity, generally a form of the Sun God, which has many names involving Hiranya or gold.[iii] There is a special Sukta or hymn to Hiranyagarbha in the Rig Veda X.121, which is commonly chanted by Hindus today in their daily rituals, in which Hiranyagarbha refers to the Supreme Being or Ishvara.

The Mahabharata speaks of Hiranyagarbha as he who is lauded in the Vedic verses and taught in the Yoga Shastra (Shanti Parva 339.69). As a form of the Sun God, Hiranyagarbha can be related to other Sun Gods (Adityas) like Savitri, to whom the famous Gayatri mantra used in many Yoga traditions is addressed, and is important in many early Yoga teachings including Vedic mantras and the Svestasvatara Upanishad. Therefore, the Hiranyagarbha Yoga tradition appears to be a Vedic tradition strongly rooted in the use of Vedic mantras. We could accurately call it the Hiranyagarbha Vedic Yoga tradition. It would place the origins of Yoga in the mantras or Mantra Yoga of the Vedas. As mantra is central to all Yoga traditions, this may not be surprising. Indeed if we b begin Yoga with mantra and sacred sound, rather than the current fixation on asana, we can easily understand the Vedic basis of Yoga.

Krishna states in the Bhagavad Gita (IV.1-3) that he taught the original Yoga to Visvasvan, another name of the Sun God, again suggesting Hiranyagarbha. Vivasvan was said to have taught this Yoga to Manu, the original man or first king, making it into the prime Yoga path for all humanity. Here, however, Krishna gains prominence over Vivasvan/Hiranyagarbha as the original teacher of Yoga.

The Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 340.50) additionally identifies Hiranyagarbha, as other texts do, with Brahma or Prajapati, the creator among the Hindu trinity, who among other things represents the Vedas and is the source of all higher knowledge. Most of the Vedic sciences are said to have been first taught by Lord Brahma, who represents the cosmic mind. The Mahabharata also identifies Hiranyagarbha with the Buddhi or Mahat, the higher or cosmic mind (Mahabharata 302.18).

Hiranyagarbha appears more as a deity than a human figure, though it is possible that a teacher of that name once existed. The chief disciple of Hiranyagarbha in the ancient texts is said to be the Rishi Vasishta, the foremost of the Vedic seers (seer of the seventh book of the Rig Veda), who passed on the Yoga teachings to Narada (Mahabharata Shanti Parva 308.45).  Vasishta teaches the Yoga Darshana in the Mahabharata (Shanti Parva 306.26): “The Yoga Darshana has so been declared by me according to the truth.” Vasishta also passes on his knowledge to his son, Parashara, in whose line was born Veda Vyasa, who compiled the Vedas and wrote the Mahabharata.

Vasishta is the prime early human teacher of other Vedic disciplines as well like Advaita Vedanta (the tradition of Jnana Yoga or the Yoga of Knowledge), and carrying on the Yoga teachings of the deities Shiva and Vishnu as well as that of Hiranyagarbha. There are several important Yoga texts in the Vasistha line including the Vasishta Samhita and Yoga Vasishta, the latter of which is often regarded as the greatest work on both Yoga and Vedanta. While these texts are much later than the Vedic Vasishta, they do show a continuity of tradition, as well as its diversity.

The original Yoga darshana tradition appears not as the Patanjali tradition but the Hiranyagarbha tradition. It teachings are found not only in the Yoga Sutras but in the Mahabharata, including the Bhagavad Gita, Moksha Dharma Parva and Anu Gita, which each contain extensive teachings on Yoga. These in turn connect to the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Tantras, which address Yoga in many forms like mantra, ritual (Karma Yoga), knowledge (Jnana Yoga), devotion (Bhakti Yoga), and so on.  The Hiranyagarbha Yoga tradition appears to be the main Vedic Yoga tradition. The Patanjali Yoga tradition arises as an offshoot of it or a later expression of it.

Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta – the three main Vedic philosophical systems – are presented as interrelated aspects of the same tradition in the Mahabharata. Ayurveda and Vedic astrology are set forth important aspects of its outer application. If we want to go back to the traditional roots of Yoga and restore the original teachings of Yoga, we should examine the Hiranyagarbha Yoga Darshana. In addition, we should look to its Vedic connections and associations with all Yoga paths and branches. This will take us back to the original Vedic Yoga that encompasses all the Vedic deities

[box_light]Misinterpretations of the Yoga Sutras[/box_light]

Much of modern Yoga rests upon a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the Yoga Sutras. The first problem is that many people try to look at the Yoga Sutras as an original text that stands in itself, when it is a later compilation that requires knowledge of its background in order to make sense of it. This causes people to separate Yoga from the earlier traditions that form the context of Patanjali’s teachings, which is why the Hiranyagarbha tradition is so little known in the world of Yoga today.

The second problem is that the Yoga Sutras, consisting of short enigmatic aphorisms, can be easily slanted in different directions according to the inclinations of the interpreter, particularly if they do not give credence to the classical commentaries and connections to earlier teachings. This causes people to invent or imagine meanings in the Sutras that may actually not be there in the original.

Third, the Yoga Sutra tradition has been made into something sectarian, for example, opposing Yoga and Samkhya as competing Vedic philosophical systems to Vedanta. This causes people to separate Yoga from related Vedic spiritual traditions that also employ Yoga practices.[iv] This complication is not something of the modern age only, but occurs in debates between Indian philosophical systems going back to the Middle Ages, a time in which precise logical analysis was often emphasized over broader synthesis.

The original Hiranyagarbha Yoga teachings, such as we find it in the Mahabharata, however, is presented there as in harmony with Samkhya and Vedanta. The synthesis of these three systems is in fact as old as Krishna, if not older.

Such an older integral Yoga is the same general type of Yoga-Vedanta taught by many of the great modern Yoga gurus of India like Vivekananda, Yogananda, Aurobindo, Shivananda and his many disciples, as well as many others – the very teachers who first brought Yoga to the West in the last century. They teach the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads together as part of the same broader tradition. The differences between Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta are regarded by them as minor variations within the same greater tradition.

So, how can we best approach the Yoga Sutras in order to understand their real intent? It is arguably best to do so in the context of the older and broader Yoga Darshana. There is one greater Yoga Darshana that exists like a thread through all the texts and traditions of Yoga. There is no Patanjali Yoga Darshana as an entity in itself apart from the older Hiranyagarbha Yoga Darshana, nor is the Hiranyagarbha tradition rigidly delineated from other Yoga teachings.[v]***

If we want to understand the meaning of the technical terms in the Yoga Sutras, we should do so with recourse to the older literature, not by inventing our own meanings, or by trying to make these terms unique to the Yoga Sutras. Whether it is the yamas and niyamas (particularly tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana), the different types of samadhi, or the different aspects of Yoga practice – such terms often alluded to briefly in the Sutras can be found explained clearly and in detail in the older and broader literature.

In addition, we should look at the Yoga Sutras in light of Vedanta, not only the Bhagavad Gita but also the Upanishads, which the Yoga Sutras as a Vedic philosophy accept as authoritative While Patanjali emphasizes the Purusha rather than Brahman (the Absolute), we must remember that the Hiranyagarbha tradition gives Brahman its place and that Brahman and Purusha are often synonyms.  We can also look to Vedanta for a greater description of Ishvara or God, which Patanjali only alludes to, but which Vedantic texts examine in great detail. This includes both the traditions non-dualistic (Advaita) and dualistic (Dvaita) traditions of Vedanta, which have their important Yoga teachings.

We should discriminate between the greater tradition of Yoga, which includes all branches and types of Yoga, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, placing the latter in the context of the former. We should look at Yoga not only through the Yoga Sutras but use the Sutras to lead us into the greater tradition of Yoga. This includes the ancient Yoga literature before Patanjali and the later Yoga literature after him, the various lines of Vaishnava, Shaivite, Shakta and Vedantic Yogas, regardless of their philosophical differences.

Besides looking at Patanjali in a new light, we should work to restore the teachings of the Hiranyagarbha Yoga Darshana. These can be compiled from the Mahabharata, Upanishads, and other ancient Vedic teachings. Through the Hiranyagarbha tradition, we can gradually reclaim the older Vedic Yoga that was regarded as its basis. In this way, we can restore the spiritual heritage of the Himalayan rishis and yogis in all of its grandeur. This is an important task for the next generation of Yoga aspirants, if they want to go back to the origins of Yoga, particularly as a spiritual practice.


[i] Vijnana Bhikshu, Yoga Sutras

[ii] There is not a single reference to Patanjali that I have found in this literature, though I have not examined all the Puranas.

[iii] Hiranyapani most notably

[iv] Non-dualistic or Advaita Vedanta, for example, teaches Jnana Yoga or the Yoga of Knowledge, while dualistic or Dvaita Vedanta emphasizes Bhakti Yoga or the Yoga of Devotion.

[v] For example, the Mahabharata also gives prominence to the Shaivite Yoga tradition called the Pashupata line, which is also very ancient.

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Historical Figures

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838 – 1894)

 

Through his writings, this man breathed a new passion and life into an entire civilisation, particularly his native region of Bengal, which became kindled with religious, nationalistic and artistic fervour after being infused with the powerful visions contained in his writings.

Born on 27 June 1838 in the Kantalpara district of Bengal, the first striking event we have of his life was that he mastered the alphabet as a child in a single sitting. This was an image and prophecy for the rest of his life.

Apart from the breathtaking legacy of his literary works – his life was quite “normal” and not in any way out of the ordinary. He was a man who never clamoured for place or power, but did his work in silence for the love of his work, even as nature does. And just because he had no aim but to give out the best that was in him to his people, he was able to create a language, a literature, a freedom struggle, and steer the course of history.

Bankim was 19 years of age when India’s First War of independence (known in the west as the “Sepoy Mutiny”) was waged. The following year (1858) India had lost the war. Bankim was finishing his studies at the time, and in that same year graduated from the University of Calcutta. The British authorities immediately appointed him to the post of Deputy Magistrate.

Young Bankim had suffered a shock in seeing the failure of India’s War of Independence. He could not rest until he knew why the great movement for liberation ended up being crushed in the manner in which it was, and that too with the help of many Indian’s themselves (most notably the Sikhs). In his effort to discover the causes of that failure he set his sharp intellect to the task of analysing the great problems that India was facing. Influenced and inspired by three great figures of that epoch, Raja Rammohan Roy, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi (the Hindu queen who led her soldiers against the British during the war) – he soon recognised the existence of a number of startling facts.

Foremost among these was that the people of India were fast becoming denationalised by English manners and customs, English fashions, and English whiskies and wines – not to mention the Christian missionaries (who had made Bengal their storm centre). The British government used their educational system to further this agenda (after abolishing and outlawing the traditional Indian education systems). Chatterji’s soul winced when he perceived that the Indian who spoke good English was more honoured by his own people than the man who spoke and wrote their own tongue exquisitely. Wherever he looked, he saw educated Indians jumping frantically on the bandwagon of British culture.

From the moment he had first learned to think for himself, Bankim realised that there was a titanic struggle ahead to reverse the trend and bring physical and cultural freedom to the sacred motherland. He felt that he had his own divinely ordained effort to make in this veritable battle – which he played silently and humbly. If India was to be uplifted, her children must once again create literature and language dynamic and inspiring to enlighten and inspire the entire people of India.

Soon, the profound effect of Chatterji’s novels and essays, with their compelling beauty, subtle humour and inspiring themes could be seen, firstly in Bengal and then spilling over into greater India. Indians who were nurtured on Shakespeare, Milton and Shelley began to read the works of Kalidas, Bhavabhuti, Chandidas and Vidyapula. They turned eagerly to the Puranas, Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Whereas before, elite Indians took pride in their knowledge of the Magna Carta strugle, the times of Oliver Cromwell and the tragedy of Charles the First, they began to relish the ballads of Rajasthan and Maharashtra. A new feeling was born. Millions began to hold their heads high once again and talk in terms of “our language”, “our literature”, “our history”, “our country”.

His Literary History

Bankim began his literary career with a desire to write in English, and wrote a novel called Rammohan’s Wife.” He at once realised his mistake with the realisation that the his work was much more natural and powerful in his own mother tongue.

The major novels he wrote were: Chandrashekhar, Kishna Kanta’s Will, Debi Chaudhurani, Sitaram, Indira, Kamal Kanta and Anandamath.

The last of these, Anandamath deserves special mention here. It wasn’t necessarily the best of Bankim Chandra’s works, though still great in its own right. Yet because of its astonishing political consequences, with no other of his works is Bankim so closely identified.

The Anandamath story is set in 18th century India, when a group of warrior sannyasis mounted a guerilla war against Muslim rule (based on a true historical attempt by sannyasis to do precisely this). It was a riveting story line with amazing characters and meaningful dialogues. Yet more importantly, hundreds of thousands of Indians (primarily Hindus) took the story as a metaphor for their own present day situation, understanding it as a call to arms to drive the new tyrants (the British) away from the sacred soil. Indeed, the main revolutionary group in Bengal chose its name as that of the sannyasin group from Anandamath. The most important and widely known section of this book was the poem “Vande Mataram” which means “Hail to the Mother(land)”. The song became the battle cry for India’s freedom struggle. It was set to become India’s National Anthem, but was rejected because a section of Muslims considered the song as idolatrous due to its metaphor comparing India to the tiger-borne Goddess Durga “with instruments of punishment in each of her ten hands”. To placate the Muslims (and Jawahalal Nehru) the constituent assembly rejected it as the National Anthem. Incidentally, Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet whose “Jana Gana” eventually became India’s National Anthem had stated on several occasions that he desired very much that Bankim Chandra’s “Vande Mataram” should become the National Anthem of free India. For example, in 1928, he said in an interview with Mulk Raj Ananda “I share his ideas of inheriting the past – if made relevant for the present! Bankim Chandra is our master in this respect. In our school here, students sing “Bande Mataram” every morning…..I hope it becomes the national anthem of free India!”

Bankim Chandra’s Anandamath demonstrated the most powerful example in modern history of how art can affect real life to a tremendous extent – especially in an artistically orientated civilisation like that of the Hindus.

Towards the end of his life, Bankim Chandra turned his attention to write about spirituality – the very essence of Hindu civilisation. A Life of Krishna and a book on the Essence of Religion, a rendering of the Bhagavad Gita and a commentary on the Vedas were his aims to give to his fellow countrymen. The first two he managed to complete, and the rendering of the Bhagavad Gita was three parts finished, but the commentary on the Vedas, which should have been a priceless possession, never got into the stage of execution. Death, in whose shadow he had so long dwelt, with his ailing health, took the pen from his hand before he could accomplish this feat. Yet his contributions to literature are enough to immortalise his memory.

Vande Mataram!

Vande Mataram is the national song of India. The song was composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

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Historical Figures

Swami Vivekananda (1863 – 1902)

[box_light]Swami Vivekananda is one of the most famous Hindu saints of the modern age. He is considered by many as a heralder of a new era for Hinduism, being the first person in the modern age to travel to the West and give the message of Vedanta to an international audience. Yoga practitioners in the west recently celebrated the centenary of his first journey to the west as the birth of the international practice of yoga.[/box_light]

Early Life

Vivekananda was born in Calcutta, named Narendra. He was imbued with virtues at a young age, and was a melodious singer, alert student and powerful athlete. His spiritual longing led him to search far and wide for ideas about God, from all religions and teachers. But his scientific nature would not let him believe. Doubts flooded his mind. Yet these doubts far from being a bad thing, actually propelled him on his journey. On the advice of his schoolteacher, Narendra visited Ramakrishna Paramhansa. Narendra was taken aback by the reply he got to his questions about God: “not only have I seen God, but I can show you God if you like.” Narendra was uncertain, but Ramakrishna knew he would be back. “My son I’ve waited my whole life for you,” Ramakrishna cried with emotion. Narendra subsequently made Ramakrishna his Guru, and he both studied the masses of ancient Hindu knowledge both from a scholarly and experiential perspective. Later he attained the name of Swami Vivekananda.

Social Revolutionary

Swamiji traveled extensively around India and was shocked by what he saw. He saw the beauty of the ancient spirituality of the land still intact, but unimaginable poverty, poor health, social ills that rent his heart. He tried to mobilise the affluent classes to come to the aid of their fellow countrymen. He was shocked observing the massive and ruthless conversion campaigns of the Christian missionaries who were flooding India with government support. He warned that India may become a land with barely a memory of its past and true culture, much like Africa of today (which is today dominated by Christianity and Islam, and forgetful and ignorant about any insights and achievements of their ancestors). Many people were impressed with Swami Vivekananda and slowly his following grew. He also set up the Ramakrishna Vedantic Mission.

Travels to the West

Swami Vivekananda journeyed to the West, speaking at the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. He was allocated only 5 minutes, but held the audience in rapture for much longer, drawing large applause. He travelled to many places. For the first time, people realised that there is something unique and different about the culture and religion of the sub-continent of India, that provided a spirituality beyond the cold confines of organised and authoritarian creeds that they were accustomed to. He developed a following, some of whom would provide a mighty service to India’s upliftment, including Margaret Nobles, who later became Sister Nivedita. Swami Vivekananda was also met with bitter hostility and resistance at the hands of some. Stories of slander and scandals would appear in newspapers regularly, to try and stunt his influence. Swamiji later narrated that the more resistance he encountered, the more determined he became.

Restoring India’s Battered Confidence

Understandably, due to being in the midst of the second great colonialisation many thinkers and activists in India had lost faith in their heritage and were on the way to have their minds and hearts totally yearning after an imitation of England and Europe. Swamiji’s life had a deep impact on the Indian elite. A later Prime Minister of India later declared “We were at that time depressed at the state of our country, but Swami Vivekananda returned to us a lost dignity. We realised that while at present we do not have the wealth or power of Britain, we still had the real article, something that they did not have.”

His vision

It was Swamiji’s hope that India would create a new social order and a new civilisation by combining her best spiritual traditions with the latest advancements in science and technology. She would be rich both materially and spiritually. He knew affluence was not enough to make humanity satisfied, and that it was humanity’s place to manifest the will and light of the divine in the world. He wanted India to set an example in this, and be a harbinger in a new age, where the world would be both materially and technologically healthy, but spiritually and culturally advanced also.

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