If a nation needs a strategic objective, it is this: Bharat should set a goal to retrieve Manasarovar as cultural capital of Bharat.

Dhanyavaadah. Kalyanaraman

Saradapeeth, historic pilgrimage centre in PoK, in shambles :

World News > Muzaffarabad (PoK), Nov 26 : The centuries-old Sharadapeeth temple, a major pilgrimage centre for Kashmiri Pandits situated in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), is in a bad shape and needs immediate face-lift.

"The temple is not in a good condition because of continued tension on the Line of Control (LoC) and requires an immediate face-lift. Now since the tension has eased considerably, we plan to carry out the necessary works," Mufti Mansoor, Minister for Archaeology in the 'Azad Kashmir' government, told PTI here.

The Mufti, who is a legislator from the Sharadapeeth area, also said that his government was ready to facilitate the movement of Kashmiri Pandit pilgrims "once the Srinagar- Muzaffarabad bus service begins and they are allowed to come in".

He said the local government was ready to carry out renovation of the centuries-old temple.

The Kashmiri Pandits in India have been urging the Union Home Ministry as well as the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi to allow them to visit the shrine every year.

The Pandits have been pleading for quite some time that the pilgrimage be allowed in line with that of the Sikhs to Pakistan and the Pakistan-based Hindus to Indian shrines. PTI

http://www.123bharath.com/news/index.php?a...llnews&id=39343

<i>New Articles - Nov 2004</i>

Secularism as a Tool of Adharm -by Satya Sarma

The Kanchi Conundrum Ramesh Rao

The Reign Of Ramaraya And The Battle Of Talikota
Hauma Hamiddha

<span style='color:red'>Secularism as a Tool of Adharm</span>

by Satya Sarma

The basis of Bharat was the eternal dharm. I use the past tense deliberately, because in the short space of the last ten days, ironically on the day we Bharatiyas celebrate dharm’s victory over adharm, we awoke to the fact that this is no longer the case. How we got to this point, and how the path of secularism took us there is the story I want to tell here.

Let us begin then with the arrest of Kanchi Sri Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati Swamigal: an arrest the police conducted without any definitive basis in fact being provided, beyond contradictory and vague rumors disseminated in the press.

Follow that up with the dispatch of police officers to the Kanchi Mutt, to the schools it runs and to the NGOs it funds, as well as the daily harassing and interrogations of its employees.

Next, examine the delays and hurdles erected by the state in its legal deliberations - a judicial hearing ruled upon in the absence of defense counsel, a simple bail hearing unresolved for over a week, the refusal to provide any consideration for the health of the Acharya or the observance of his matt’s traditions.

When it came to an old sanyasin who has concerned himself in this life with the welfare of our society and its dharm, the secular humanists could see no humanitarian grounds to spare this guru physical pain or. When it came to the observances of a 2,500-year old Bhaaratiya tradition, they could find no reason for religious impartiality.

Swamigal could rot in a cell for all they cared, be beaten and tortured by interrogators, if that’s what it took. And if the Shiv puja could not be properly carried out, if the rituals that connect the bhakths to Bhagavan are disrupted, then why should proponents of religious freedom be concerned? If a sanyasin’s dharm must forcibly be forbidden him – so what? Do not, the libertarians cautioned, be prejudiced in favor of a defenseless old man’s liberty.

None of the human rights activists who keep their eyes peeled for even the faintest transgression against the practice of faith can spot religious persecution in India today. Such is their secularism.

“The law is the law”, they shrug their shoulders to say. What law? Our secular laws are treacherous: full of loopholes for those who harm society, but stern to punish those who work for its benefit. Professional thieves, habitual murderers, rabble-rousing rowdies, thugs and goondas – secularism allows all these to write its laws, even laws that confer them immunity. Now, when a fragile old man who has given up all possessions and all allegiances except to the path of truth is imprisoned arbitrarily, these very looters will point out to us that it is all very legal.

Look at who has custody of this law today: this secular law that prosecutes our Swamigal, who is ours because he has dedicated every breath of his life to our well-being. This selfless samaj-sevak who literally gave sight to so many thousands is accused by people who refuse to open their eyes – who deliberately blind themselves, even to the extent of wearing dark sunglasses indoors.

How do such willfully ignorant men gain custody of secular institutions? There are those in our society – or indeed any society - who by nature are debauched. They revel in misery both their own and that of others. Their predatory greed is whetted by those who seek to rule us. Malicious people feed their putrid minds with hatred. Then that fattened hatred is wielded like a cudgel.

There are those in our society or in any other who lack control over their emotions. When their anger is inflamed, they hit out in a blind rage, like children in a tantrum, breaking everything before them. Secular leaders take advantage of that blindness. They make sure this mad anger is kept alive, so that they, being shrewder, can stay in charge of the secular institutions.

Indeed, the institutions of secularism are built on a graveyard of political murders and mass riots and secular justice gropes around there blindfolded, innocently unaware of the slaughterhouse she lives in.

Who is a Balasubramaniam or an Uttamarajan to judge a jagatguru? What are their bona-fides? How clear are their minds, how clean their hearts? What good have they done in the world to show their credentials to sit in judgment of our Swamigal? They are the talking puppets of a blindfolded woman with empty scales.

And then there are the so-called journalists who are supposed to be the secular guardians of truth. In reality, they are sensationalists and rumor-mongers, who treat Sankaracharya and Veerappan as equally novel curiosities. They can barely tell the difference between them. Today, in their craving for scandal, they cannot seem to remember the deeds and words our Acharya has left behind. They cannot remember the hospitals, or the temples, or his efforts to make peace between warring factions.

Who should you rely upon? Ask yourself!

Let me tell you what I think of this secularism that strangles dharm and tolerates adharm. I say this secularism and the constitution it is based on is the death-knell of Bharat. I say tear up this constitution. I repudiate its secular basis, because this secularism takes no cognizance of the eternal dharm.

All I know – all I care to know is my dharm, my birthright bequeathed to me through the accumulated wisdom of my ancestors, and kept alive by our jagatgurus. What are the antecedents of this secularism that I should give it even a moment’s notice? Secularism was brought here by some foreign invaders, who stole from my Bharat everything that they could carry. Now those invaders are gone. Why should I put up with the refuse they have left behind on my soil? Why should I let the law take its course, when it is taking a course that demolishes the path of sat? Why should I accept the decision of a court that has no authority except in that truth-demolishing bulldozer called secularism? Why should I respect a raaj that has forgotten – worse, lost sight of – even the concept of dharm?

While secularism blindfolds Justice, our dharm urges us to open our eyes. Our dharm asks us to cleanse our own thoughts and our minds, to repel corruption of any kind. Why then should we respect these secular institutions, which are built on corruption, held up by the corrupt – in fact, corrupt through and through?

Our gurus, from Vivekananda to Shirdi ke Sai Baba have taught us all how to make our minds peaceful, how to fulfill our obligations and how to live in society in harmony with sat. The path they have shown us through the example of their existence is open to everyone, regardless of creed or status. It stops at mandirs and dargahs and gurudwaaras, runs through villages and cities. What has secularism done - this secularism that wallows in the filth of corruption?

There is a lesson in our history that many have not learnt. In Bharat, there are still Duryodhanas who clamor for adharm, Dushaashanas who drag the virtuous by their hair to ridicule and insult. There are still Shakunis – foreign-born ones – who smilingly indulge them, there are still turbaned Dhirthrashtras who stare vacantly on. Even today, there are Pandavas who hang their heads in shame, powerless against a corrupted raaj. And then there are Dronas and Kripas, who know better, but stay silent because they remain confused about where their obligations lie. And there is even a Bhishma, who watches in anguish, but fails to lift a finger. To these I say: if you watch silently now while the virtuous are humiliated, you have made your bed of arrows today. Neither society nor history will forgive you.

When Draupadi was humiliated with only Bhagavan for refuge, only a terrible war could restore dharm. What the consequence will be of today’s paap, I cannot tell. But fight we must to our dying breath, to restore dharm.

<span style='color:red'>Gandhi’s Uses</span>
 
I remember for the first and only time wearing a “Gandhi cap”. That was in 1961 when my father was posted as an Assistant Engineer in Sirsi, a small town in Karnataka. My parents were still young, they had five small children, and Sirsi was a “mofussil” town with little of the pleasures and provenance of urban 1960s India. My elder brother and I were enrolled in one of the local schools, and in celebration of Gandhi Jayanti we were all asked to wear the “Gandhi cap” to the day’s events. We were proud and a little self-conscious wearers of the cap, and the only thing that I recall in some detail of the day is getting separated from my elder brother: he was eight and I was five. But we both made it home safe, and soon we were sent away to grandparents in Mandya (my elder brother and elder sister) and Bangalore (myself) because my parents were overwhelmed minding us all in the small town. We left our Gandhi caps behind in Sirsi.

On arrival in Bangalore at my paternal grandparents’ house, I noticed that the only photograph displayed on the walls, other than that of Hindu <i>murtis</i> and gurus was that of Gandhiji – in the famous “striding with a walking-cane/Dandi march” pose. I was told that it belonged to one of my uncles. Not much talked revolved around Gandhiji at my grandparents’ house, if I recall correctly. Lower middle class in stature, my grandparents headed a household that still included two or three of my unmarried uncles, a couple of unmarried young aunts, and where everyone was busy minding the house, going to college, or struggling with their first jobs. Talk in the evenings and over weekends was mostly about domestic issues. But the photograph of Gandhiji was a statement of the household, and it is still etched in my memory.

Gandhiji of course was in all our school history books. He was the “Father of the nation”, we were told, and on a pedestal we all put him. We read about his eating goat meat and ruing the act, his sailing to England, the South African episodes, about nonviolence and “Satyagraha”, the march to Dandi, Round Table conferences, the Quit India movement, and his assassination. Later, in high school I recall reading an expurgated version of “My Experiments with Truth” that was given to all students studying at the National College in Bangalore, whose then principal Dr. Narasimhaiah was a Gandhian, and which college my elder brother attended.

Now I have an 8 ½ by 11 inch copy of an artist’s rendering of Gandhiji’s smiling visage sitting atop a book-shelf in my office. And I often wonder when I walk into my office what it is about Gandhiji that has mesmerized us all, and how we have all used him selectively for our own purposes. This introspection became even more urgent when I read that the CPI-M mouthpiece is soon going to publish a series of articles to frame the RSS for Gandhiji’s murder, and the renewed debate about the role of people like Savarkar in the assassination.

Left ideologues also assert that for Savarkar and the Sanghis the “purpose and goal of freedom was to establish Hindu rashtra”. For Gandhi, Nehru, and for the Left, they say, the “goal was to establish a modern, plural, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, democratic India”. That this is a gloss and a simplistic assertion is not lost on many Indians who prefer to ignore the ramblings of the opportunistic ideologues.

While the charge against Ghodse, Savarkar, and the RSS continues, I am really not troubled by the fact that Ghodse was indeed an RSS swayamsevak for a while, or that he continued to be in touch with the RSS at the time he assassinated Gandhiji, or even that he received encouragement from Savarkar. I am also not troubled by the fact that former RSS leaders or present day leaders have quarrels with Gandhiji. Who did not have quarrels with him? We forget the fact that Gandhiji was a politician first and whatever else later. It was not just the RSS that quarreled with him but so did Jinnah, Annie Besant, Aurobindo, Ambedkar, and a host of others. Annie Besant told Durga Das that she thought Gandhiji was leading the country to anarchy. Gandhiji’s personal peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies drove quite a few people up the wall. He was considered by many to be a “difficult person,” and why not with his insistence that those around him and the people of India follow him in his peculiarly “ascetic” ways?

Christian missionaries heaped abuse on him, and the Communists did everything possible to undermine him. That these two political chameleons now seek to paint the RSS red with the blood of Gandhiji therefore is neither surprising nor out of character. Muslims did not really consider him their leader, and that the Mahatma comes in handy to them now to beat the RSS with is no different from others’ use of him. I recall that in the U.S. a well-known Indian Muslim organization refused to use the term “Mahatma” to refer to Gandhi because, of course, Mohammed is the last prophet, and there are no great souls after him.

The Congress Party that rode to power on Gandhiji’s coat-tails (or dhoti ends) does nothing more now than pay lip service to some of the most important ideals the Mahatma tried to propagate – simple living, honesty and openness, and non-violence. The Congress is as much a party of goons, opportunists, criminals, and ignoramuses as any other political party in India. The only difference is that the Congress Party wishes to claim Gandhiji for itself and to use his good name to continue in power by demonizing the BJP and the Sangh Parivar as the Mahatma’s murderers.

Ghodse has been turned into an epitome of evil, and Gandhiji put on a pedestal. Thus, we have little opportunity to study the two as human beings. Ghodse was both an assassin and a good man: he was as much an ascetic and a lover of the Bhagavad Gita as was Gandhiji. Gandhiji was both a fascinating moral leader and a flawed politician. And Gandhiji is now etched in our memories as an extraordinary man in no small measure because he was assassinated and did not die a frustrated and bitter old man neglected by the country and Congress leaders.

Because he was assassinated we now ignore the frailties and the follies of the Mahatma. Prof. Bharat Gupt of Delhi University argues that Gandhiji’s was an Indian medieval mindset which sought personal salvation akin to the followers of the Bhakti tradition. He sought to organize society for reasons of Bhakti rather than for social reform and control that previous Indian reformers had fought for and espoused. That is why people like Ambedkar did not much care for Gandhiji’s social movement. His was a contrast from the classical Hindu vision of balance between the four stages of the individual life – <i>brahmacharya, grihastya, vanaprastha, and sannyasa (chaturashrama)</i>, and the four concerns of Hindus – <i>dharma, artha, kama and moksha (purushaarthas)</i>.  His was a mind that was fairly ignorant of the ancient systems of Indian knowledge and arts, and hence his restrictive definition and view of the Hindu self. Gupt argues that Gandhiji’s transition from the medieval to the modern without the understanding of the ancient led to his incomplete view of Indian history, culture, and mores.
 
Gandhiji defined <i>satya</i> (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence) as positivistic and absolutist respectively. In his autobiography, <i>“My Experiments with Truth”</i> factual and ethical truth is equated with ultimate truth. But in the practice of ahimsa, a mystical force of non-violence is presumed to be experienced as ultimate truth that can bring about the change of heart in the opponent.  In other words, his practice of truth or transparently right conduct acquires the mystical power of saving the self and the others.  This is the medieval <i>Vaishnava</i> practice where surrender through right conduct “saves” the devotee.  But as a political doctrine this approach does not always deliver the change of heart in the opponent, let alone oneself. Thus Gandhiji’s disappointing engagement not only with Muslims, Christians, the British, and the secular-millenarian Communists but also to a large extent with Hindu Indians too. Unless we understand clearly why Gandhiji evoked mixed responses, we will simply continue to deify him by building his statues and naming roads after him, and by ignoring him in our daily routines.

Similarly, Gandhian economics rests on sharing with the <i>bhaktas</i> the material wealth and regarding the owner as the trustee.  It also rests on the principal that frugality is essential to keep the mind free for higher activity.  The same is true of his attitude to sex. All these of course are/were neither new nor strange in ascetic and spiritual practices. But to bring them into the public sphere and to insist that all Indians follow him was both the weakness and the arrogance of Gandhiji. Individual transformation is what is emphasized in Indian/Hindu spiritual practice. The organization of society for pragmatic ends needed and needs a different approach. The utopian society that Gandhiji wanted to construct thus is not dissimilar to any other millenarian ideal, and thus fraught with the same dangers.

Gandhiji, strangely enough, was not averse to pragmatism. He wrote a lot, he traveled enough, and he put himself in the limelight often so that the world would not ignore him. Even in the modest India collection at our university there are shelves overflowing with Gandhiana. While the Catholic Church will not anoint him a saint anytime soon, he is already sainted by the world which frowns upon any criticism of him, and which then promptly ignores him.

<span style='color:red'>The World of Myth</span>

The “clash of civilizations” is mostly about the adumbration of religious ideas and the practice of religion. This clash is acted out by Muslim fundamentalists who cut the throats of hapless journalists, engineers, and other Christians, born-again or not, lost in the alleys of Karachi or Karbala or Kirkuk. Fellow Christian religionists then drop 3,000 pound bombs from 30,000 feet up in retaliation. Meanwhile both seek to poke the eyes of Hindus, who demand from the two some promise of a “Sarva dharma samabhava” (All religions are equal) which by all accounts is a concept dead on arrival at the Vatican or in Mecca. Roman, Greek, Mesopotamian and other pagan cultures are “dead and buried”, and the tribal cultures and religions of Africa, Australia, and South America have been decimated. What is left for the predatory religions are one another and the pesky Hindus who keep pushing wrongly, I believe, the idea of “Sarva dharma samabhava”.

In a recent conference that I attended, one of the speakers told the Hindu-American audience that if they are confronted with the question – “So, what is your Bible?” – to tell the questioner that Hindus don’t have a single book but a library. This “sound bite” made us all happy but we were still left the queasy feeling that the reality on the ground was much harsher and more invidious.

One way it is invidious can be discerned from how “religions”, “myths” and “philosophies” are taught in American schools and colleges. I am told that only two American universities offer a Ph.D. in Indian philosophy. It seems as if the learned scholars of Indic and Hindu traditions in the West have taken to heart the assertion by the maverick Nirad Chaudhuri. In his bombastic, know it all style, the diminutive Bengali with a Napoleon complex proclaimed that, “There is no such thing as thinking properly so called among the Hindus, for it is a faculty of the mind developed only in Greece, and exercised only by the heirs of the Greeks” (The Continent of Circe: An Essay on the Peoples of India, paperback, p. 163). Chaudhuri also mimicked the Christian missionaries and the Muslim fundamentalists when he compared the books of the Semitic religions with the Vedas: “Their (Vedas) prestige is not accounted for either by their contents or by the use that has been made of them. The Judaic, Christian, and Islamic books are revealed scriptures of the type made familiar by these historic religions, but the Vedas are, if I might extend the word used for the religion of the Hindus for their basic texts as well, ‘natural’ scriptures. They are not the word of any God or gods, but mostly words addressed to gods”.

Because the Hindus are marked as neither having a religion nor expounding any philosophy, then much of what is contained in their scriptures is proclaimed “myth”. Mythologies can be interesting, profound, symbolic, and entertaining. I don’t have any problems with mythologies. However, when a distinction is made between mythology and religion, and mythology and philosophy, then we see the continuation of the divide between peoples of the “book”, and peoples “without books” as well as those who have too many books.

The problem struck home when I discovered that a “world mythology” course taught in our university to bright 13-15 year olds in a “summer academy” included “Greek, Roman, Hindu, Chinese, Buddhist, and Native American mythology” but not any Semitic mythology. The course instructors were my good friends and colleagues, who seemed to have bought into the distinction without a protest. They taught the Ramayana and the <i>Mahabharata</i> as mythology in the course and deleted Christian, Muslim, and Jewish stories. The World Mythology textbooks they used include the Ramayana as myth but did not include any stories from the Bible or Koran. Separate translations of the <i>Mahabharata</i> were prescribed to the teenagers as part of the readings for the class. I protested. The <i>Mahabharata</i> was removed as a separate text, but the confusion continued about what is myth and what is religion. What I have noted is the extreme reluctance to include specific and explicit mention of Christianity in the course.

One can very easily speculate the reasons why the administrators of the program advised instructors what not to include, but it is distressing to see how easily teachers are seduced to teach such intellectually dishonest courses. Whatever the reasons for their decisions, such practices go on to perpetuate the false divide between Semitic/monotheistic religions and the “other” world religions.  Unfortunately, we know that throughout the world the two aggressive monotheistic religions are considered “great religions”, while other religions/religious traditions are relegated to “myth” and “false religions” status.  To perpetuate that “myth”, whether benignly or otherwise, in a university or school setting, is extremely dangerous.

Many of the “World Mythology” textbooks do not include Muslim and Christian stories. Reviewers on the Amazon web site, for example, include comments like these: “The title is something of a misnomer. This is a fine collection of ancient myths found throughout world history. However, it is intellectually dishonest because the author fails to recognize some of the most powerful myths in human history -- namely those found in the Bible and Koran”. You will not find the names of Adam and Eve, or Jesus or Mary, or Mohammed or Allah in these textbooks, whereas Rama, Krishna, Indra, Buddha all make multiple appearances, including pictures of Benares!

I told my colleagues that the <i>Mahabharata</i> is considered by many as the “Fifth Veda”, not just because it includes the <i>Bhagavad Gita</i> but because Vyasa himself is considered an incarnation of the Gods and Ganesha is his amanuensis.  The Ramayana of course is a story about Rama and Sita, and all over India they are worshipped as Gods and not merely as “folk heroes” (as Indian Marxists claim), I reminded them.

I also pointed out that there is a group of scholars, led by S. N. Balagangadhara of the University of Ghent, who have been arguing that “religion” in the Western sense is scientifically false, and that Hinduism is not a religion in the Western/Semitic sense.  Balagangadhara’s study of the encounter between the early Christians and the Roman pagans and between the modern Europeans and the Indian pagans, leads him to formulate the following problem: (a) Christianity recognizes itself as a religion; (b) The terms under which Christianity recognizes itself as a religion are also the terms under which Islam and Judaism recognize themselves as religion; © Christianity singled out both the Roman and the Indian traditions as rival religions; (d) Judaism and Islam also singled out these same traditions as their religious rivals; (e) Both the Roman and the Indian traditions did not recognize themselves in the descriptions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism gave of them: they did not conceive of themselves as rivals to these three.

Without accepting the fact that their religions are “scientifically false”, some Western teachers of “myth”, however, continue to make the distinction between religion and myth, privileging the former over the latter. A little more nuanced in their understanding of world cultures and other religions, some teachers argue that when teaching about myth to young students one has to be careful about their sensitive nature. Thus, Christian mythology is not included for it might distress students to find out that what they believe is “true” includes “stories/fiction”. These teachers define mythology as “a set of stories, beliefs, and traditions of a people, accrued over time”. “We don’t evaluate them as good or bad stories”, they proclaim.

But these practices raise some questions in the American context:

• Are students in these classes only Christian?
• Are they all of such strong faith and belief that including stories from Christian mythology will shock and discomfort them?
• Are there Muslim and Hindu students in the classes?
• Why are Muslim and Jewish mythologies not taught as part of the course if the concern is only about Christian students? Is it because of the fear what the Jewish-American League or the Council on American-Islamic Relations will do if they find out?
• Is sensitivity to students’ concern more important than academic honesty and academic integrity?
• If students are sensitive about such matters, would instructors then go the extent of not teaching Darwinism and scientific cosmology to Christian students?
• If there is a Hindu student in class, how are the instructors going to explain why his/her religion can be taught as mythology and not his/her classmates’ religion?
• Hinduism is not “dead” like Roman and Greek and Pagan “religions”.  There are one billion Hindus in the world, and they have survived despite the best efforts of proselytizers and marauders to convert them or to erase their religious/spiritual/cultural identities.  The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are part of the daily spiritual life of Hindus all over the world.
• Most importantly, will the deliberate decision to exclude Christian, Muslim, and Jewish mythologies make these teachers willing collaborators in a belief system that categorizes religions as “true” and “false”.  India is still a battleground and a marketplace for buying and trading souls, as most of the rest of the world is.  How will the deliberate exclusion of Semitic faiths from World Mythology courses affect students who then may continue to believe that indeed there is merit to the unverifiable claims of aggressive monotheistic traditions?

<b>Multiculturalism, Population Explosion, and Political Correctness</b>

The recent release of the 2001 census figures in India identifying the growth and population of different religious groups has created a furor. Self-proclaimed secularists have exclaimed with horror that the Indian census takers have had the gall of estimating the growth of different religious groups, ignoring the fact that such census exercises estimating the growth of various religious groups have been part and parcel of census taking in India since 1871. Some others have chimed in that it is not the rise in numbers of Muslims that Indians should be worried about but illiteracy, poor education and lack of economic opportunities, which they say are the main cause of higher birth rates. Yet others have proclaimed that it is the season for Muslim bashing, and the census figures will be used to demonize Muslims in India.

Muslim vote banks have been a boon to those politicians whose proclamations of faith in secularism are merely ploys to get elected and to stay on in power. The UPA government, a hastily assembled group of self-serving secularists, was therefore quick to punish the Census Commissioner J.K. Banthia for not consulting the Union Home Ministry before releasing the data on religious demography. Clueless politicians, including the power behind the Prime Minister’s throne, have made public noises about “statistical errors” knowing not what they are talking about, but knowing fully well that a pliant and pusillanimous media will broadcast their silly perorations.

The Indian sub-continent is home to almost thirty-five percent of the world’s Muslims (Islamipopulation.Com website shows world Muslim population at 1.48 billion, and the combined Muslim population of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as 435 million). Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority Islamic Republics, though the latter claims to be officially a secular nation. Muslim population is growing in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and it should not be too far off when the subcontinent is majority Muslim.

So, it should not be just the RSS’ concern that Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Sinhalese in the subcontinent may soon meet the fate of the Christians in Lebanon and parts of the Balkans. That Muslim population growth is not just “natural” but has increased because of both overt and covert support from Muslim fundamentalist leaders and secular vote bank manipulators should be extreme cause for worry to all those interested in the welfare of India. Sure, there is merit to the claim that illiteracy and backwardness lead to increased population growth. But we should wonder why the <i>madrasas</i> in India and elsewhere in the subcontinent continue to propagate nothing more than Koranic learning making sure the faithful continue to be backward and poor.

The growth in Muslim population in India is countered by a decline in minority population in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In 1941, Hindus and Sikhs jointly constituted 19 percent of present-day Pakistan, but constituted only one percent of the population by 2001. In 1941, Hindus were 29 percent of present-day Bangladesh, but were only 10 percent in 1991, and must be even less now.

For those who “tut tut” about all this talk of demographic warfare, and for those who want to keep their heads buried in the sand, it is important to note that Muslim population growth in most parts of the world is correlated with increased disenchantment with the local governments, increased violence, increased subjugation of women, and increased illiteracy and poverty. The news reports from European countries and North America where there is an influx of Muslims are rather dire and makes for some unflattering reading of the behavior of those who proclaim that their religion stands for “peace”.

Some Muslim leaders, not happy in the new lands they have migrated to, want to bring the worst of Muslim practice into their new homes. Thus Muslim leaders have advocated Sharia law in Canada. Ontario has authorized the use of Sharia law in civil arbitrations, if both parties consent. Property, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance matters will come under the purview of Sharia, and the arbitrators can be Muslim priests, lawyers, or community activists. The advocates of Sharia say that their decisions will not stand if it comes into conflict with Canadian civil law. However, many Muslim moderates and women point out that that because there is no third-party oversight, and no duty to report decisions, no outsider will ever know if indeed the decisions run counter to Canadian law. Proponents of Sharia also say that their decisions can be appealed to the regular courts, but community pressures are sure to blunt the enthusiasm of those subjected to Sharia maltreatment and make them recalcitrant of going public. After all, what is more frightening than being accused of being a bad Muslim or an apostate?

Many of the advocates of Sharia are from fundamentalist Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran. These promoters of Sharia in Canada, it is reported, have created the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which has already chosen arbitrators who have undergone training in Sharia and Canadian civil law. The driving force behind the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice is a lawyer and scholar named Syed Mumtaz Ali, a Pakistani Canadian who is quoted as saying that “to be a good Muslim” all Muslims must use these Sharia courts. Interestingly, Ali got his education in Hyderabad, India, and then immigrated to Pakistan on his way to Canada.

Recently we have had other controversies: in Hamtramck, Michigan the City Council approved the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast on loudspeakers five times a day in Arabic. This has outraged many of the city’s non-Muslim residents. The calls to worship last about two minutes and are aired five times a day. Some citizens of the town have said that they are offended by words that profess Muhammad as the messenger of God and that Muhammad denies Jesus as the son of God. What the residents of Hamtramck are just now realizing is what Indians have experienced for centuries, and where religious conflict can be triggered by a procession of Hindus going past a mosque or by a muezzin’s call at the time of evening <i>aarti</i> at a local Hindu temple.

Liberals and politically correct multiculturalists see no problem in the growth of Muslim populations worldwide, nor do they see any problem in the jostling for cultural space in areas where new Muslim immigrants are settling down. It is part of a global dynamic that will sort itself out, if only we are patient, they say. But we forget that those of us who have moved elsewhere have done so to prosper from the system in place in the societies we have moved to. Sure, we immigrants need to create our own cultural spaces, grow from enclaves to communities, and become part of the citizenry of the new states we have moved to. But that does not mean we should be able to undermine the basic features of the society we have moved into: we cannot try and convert a secular state into a religious state, nor should we try to collapse the wall between religion and state as constructed, for example, here in the United States. Using democratic means to undermine constitutional democracies should send jitters down our spine. However, the support by liberals to such dangerous enterprises as the promotion of Sharia law in Canada, and the blasting of calls to prayer five times a day, is what makes someone like V. S. Naipaul exclaim in frustration that multiculturalism is “absurd”.

The supporters of multiculturalism and the votaries of a new global system, where the borders of nations are open and the shapes of societies are fluid, include the United Nations. For example, the UNDP Human Development Report 2004 entitled “Cultural liberty in today’s diverse world,” attempts to define the parameters of a healthy democracy (see Swapan Dasgupta, Rediff on the Net, July 26, 2004). Dasgupta points out that, “At the core of the HDR is something called ‘politics of recognition’ which involves ‘recognition of the distinctive perspectives of ethnic, racial and sexual minorities, as well as of gender difference.’ Contesting traditional notions of nationhood, it calls upon societies to ‘embrace multiple identities’ and multiple citizenship norms. Advocating a strange commodity called ‘consociational democracies,’ the report prescribes electoral reforms, flexible federalism, multiple legal systems, linguistic diversity, affirmative action and active measures to fight cultural domination”. The natural consequence of such arguments is that the Indian state should allow Muslims to go fight in Chechnya, that Hindu-Americans in America can owe allegiance first to India and only then to the United States, or that Christians in India are ruled by the Vatican on matters of birth control and procreation. This would also mean that Muslim in the U.S. can divorce through “<i>talaq</i>”, and that a uniform civil code in India is not necessary.

Advocates of this new “consociational democracy” are merely partisan advocates in the sense that they neither have the interest in nor the power to change societies where change is indeed needed: for example in the theocratic and authoritarian states of the Middle East, or the fundamentalist Islamic nations in the “Organization of the Islamic Conference”. The advice from the pontificators at the United Nations is for societies that are already democratic and open: like the American and European democracies, and countries like India. Thus, whether they intend to or not, their advocacy of such consociational societies would lead to the undermining of open societies and in strengthening fundamentalist and authoritarian ones. It is the same mindset in India that seeks to suppress debate about the increased growth in Muslim population and the declining trends in other groups. It is the same mindset that blames the violence in the Middle East on Israel and the United States and which ignores the throat-slitting horrors perpetrated by citizens of fundamentalist societies.

Ramesh Rao
September 21, 2004

Dear Admins,

Many Europeans are challenging me to a debate on the origins of the Rgveda.

They claim that it was the Europeans who came up with this book.
They say that this is self evident from certain passages in the book.

I would like to invite them to come here and debate with us, so that the erudite scholars here can clarify their claims.

I am requesting your permission to start this thread.
If you feel this thread is not in keeping with the guidelines of the forum, feel free to delete it.

Thank You.

<b><span style='color:red'>The Kanchi Conundrum</b></span>

Life is indeed stranger than fiction. One accusation of a murder has made the supreme seer of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham a villain, while those who have lead men to murder in the thousands are proclaimed heroes -- to paraphrase Beilby Porteus, the eighteenth century evangelist and abolitionist.

The arrest of the Kanchi seer has become a reason for celebration and triumphalism for the Brahmin haters of Tamil Nadu, led by a writer of tawdry dramas, whose men tried to disrobe the actress who became Chief Minister, and who in turn arrested at midnight the writer of those tawdry dramas when she became Chief Minister. While the VHP, the RSS and the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha are dumbfounded by this event and have made sundry calls for bandhs, gheraos, and protests, the internet is abuzz with talk of “Hinduism is under attack”. Conspiracy theories abound, and I get back channel information from someone who heard from someone else about the Kanchi seer being this and that, or that it is a Marxist-Christian-Muslim plot to defeat Hinduism in India.

It is indeed strange that the Acharya was arrested as he was, without his ability to consult with a lawyer, and while he was in Hyderabad performing a pooja. He would have fled to Nepal, the demagogic Chennai public prosecutor asserts, and proclaims the Seer an “undeserved criminal”. Even as we are struck by the shrillness of the public prosecutor’s indictment, we wonder why Jayalalithaa is silent about this whole drama. Isn’t she still the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu? Does she fear that if she doesn’t incarcerate Jayendra Saraswati, his life itself might be endangered? Does she fear that there is an organized attempt to dismiss her government using this case as an excuse? The vernacular press reported that Karunanidhi had threatened to fast in Kanchipuram if Jayendra Saraswati was not arrested. Earlier, Nakkeeran, a magazine with DMK leanings also published the purported evidential letters from Sankararaman. How did Karunanidhi get access to so much police data? Does he stand to gain the most from the murder of Sankararaman and by implicating Jayendra Saraswati?


It is amazing that all kinds of politicians – at the local and at the national level -- and well-connected bureaucrats, businessmen, and others get away with murder indeed, and never see the inside of a police station let alone a prison and here we have the Kanchi seer arrested and lodged in Vellore Central Prison, without any proof that he was the one who either ordered the murder or countenanced it. Yes, indeed these are strange times. What was the need to arrest him, and worse yet put him in prison, when he could simply have been served orders to appear in court?

There is surely something most foul in this episode, and at present we are all left to our own devices for figuring out the motives, men, and women in this drama. But one thing I am sure about: this is as much about politics as it is about crime. For why else would the DMK and its “I have something to hide behind my dark glasses” leader be so keen on the arrest of the Swamiji, and why are sundry Dalits being interviewed and quoted in this instance? The murdered man was not a Dalit. The Kanchi seer has not abused Dalits. In fact, one of the great ironies is that the Swamiji was seriously involved in projects to ameliorate the condition of the Dalits. So, why is it that we are hearing such invective aimed against the pontiff, including one by a Dalit woman who is reported as calling for the destruction of the Kanchi hermitage and temple? The ugly mix of caste, religion, and politics is indeed a dangerous portent to the denouement of what may be a simple case of a pontiff who succumbed to the seduction of money and power, if indeed that was the case, or it is a deliberate and pungent mix to distract the people from the real crimes committed or orchestrated by different people.

We should try and unravel this case ourselves for we are sure to be distracted and detracted by forces which for long in India have made it a fine art of dissembling to the people and hoodwinking them. So, in that spirit, let us try and figure this case out.

For the last seven years Sankararaman, the man murdered, it is said, was managing the accounts of the Vaishanavite Varadaraja Perumal Temple, not those of the Sankara Matham (What is it with Indian newspapers spelling “matha” or “matham” as “mutt” and “math”, by the way?). So, he couldn’t have been privy to any details of financial irregularities on the part of Swami Jayendra Saraswati, supposing that any such irregularity existed. By all reports, since 1987, Sankararaman had an estranged relationship with the Kanchi seer. If that was the case, how was it that he knew what was happening in the Sankara Matham? He even had trouble visiting the Sankara matham, we are told, and therefore very unlikely to have known the details of the accounts of that temple. What could he have therefore exposed that threatened the Kanchi seer?

A few years ago, Sankararaman filed a writ in the court challenging Jayendra Saraswati’s proposed visit to China. Sankararaman objected that a sannyasi cannot cross the seas. If the Swamiji wanted, he can travel by road to China, he mindlessly argued. Jayendra Saraswati cancelled the planned visit to China. If Sundararaman could file a petition on such matters, why wouldn’t he have filed a writ if he had noticed financial irregularities?
Even if he had some knowledge or information about the misuse of funds, the Sankara matham being a private trust, was not accountable to the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department. What gives the DMK leader Karunanidhi, by the way, to urge that “the government and the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department must explore avenues to save the Mutt and come up with a way to ensure that it does not disintegrate” when he and his lumpen supporters were beating up Hindu priests who attended the bail hearing for the Swamiji? Karunanidhi also urged that the government take over the Kanchi hermitage. Is this not clear indication that the DMK is involved in this matter in ways that show their premeditation in harming the Sankaracharya? We do know that the DMK leader and the Swamiji had crossed swords before. The DMK is anti-Hindu, and has publicly avowed so.

Anyway, from what we can surmise, prima facie there is no compelling motive for the murder. Let us look further at the evidence so far presented by the police and the public prosecutor:

1. The public prosecutor and the chief investigating police officer claim that phone calls were made from the cell phone of the Swamiji to the accused murderers. As a friend pointed out, if indeed the Swamiji was the mastermind behind the murder, would he be stupid enough to talk directly to hit men from his cell phone? The Swamiji’s lawyer pointed out that the seer does not carry the cell phone himself. Why is this “evidence” being released several weeks after the murder? It would be interesting to know what kind of change, configuration and security procedures the cell phone company call transaction system has. Is it foolproof at the levels of on-line transaction and backup? If not, this is no evidence at all, my friend points out.

2. One million rupees was withdrawn the day after the murder, the prosecutor revealed, and parts of that supposedly recovered from some of the criminals. According to sources, the temple withdraws anywhere between 200,000 to 2,500,000 rupees every day. Often parts of that amount are deposited back. This is due to two reasons: one, the temple runs many projects – including three major charitable hospitals in Chennai alone (Child’s Trust Hospital, Hindu Mission Hospital, and Tamil Nadu Hospital) -- and two, it also receives large donations.

If the temple authorities indeed paid the “hired murderers”, obviously they would not leave an easy trail leading back to the temple. They would have paid the goons through some clever scheme, or they would have paid from the as yet undeposited donations to the temple. Why would they withdraw money from the bank to pay the hatchet men? As someone who has worked in an Indian bank, I can say that no bank records the serial numbers of currency notes disbursed unless there is a police or Central Bureau of Investigation request to do so.

In the case of Shri Jayendra Saraswati, nobody could have predicted that he was going to plot the death of a low profile temple accountant, and therefore lay a trap in Kanchipuram to snare the seer. So, the onus is on the police to prove that the money supposedly recovered from the criminals was disbursed by the bank to the temple. But, it doesn't stop there. The money was supposedly recovered from the murderers several weeks after the murder of Sankararaman. How do we know that it did not pass several legitimate hands after leaving the temple (assuming it did) before it went to the murderers? The voluble public prosecutor has to prove it didn’t. If he can, then it means that there was a plot to entrap the Swamiji. The plot would then indeed get thicker. What was the prima facie case that led the prosecutor and sleuths to lay a trap for the Swamiji?

3. A letter from Sankararaman to the Swamiji threatening he would expose the misdeeds of the Swamiji to the public/police is now claimed to be in the hands of the police. According to the police, the Swamiji handed this letter over to the murderers and asked them to trace the sender and his address. The police claim that they recovered this letter from one of the murderers. Nothing sounds sillier or amateurish than this. If indeed that is what happened, this plot should enter the hall of fame of “dumb criminals” as a classic. Why should the pontiff hand over the letter to the murderers? How could the murderers trace the anonymous sender? If the pontiff did not have a clue about the sender, how would the professional hit men from a different city (Chennai) have a clue? Were they handwriting experts that went round the small town asking people to give their samples of handwriting? If indeed the Swamiji knew who sent the letter, where was the necessity to hand over the letter? Kanchipuram is neither Baghdad nor Fallujah, nor the borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Swamiji obviously knew where Sankararaman worked and lived. If the motive indeed was murder, all that the Swamiji or his henchmen had to do was order Sankararaman murdered. Why at all hand over the letter?

If we don’t smell a rat here, we the gullible public will be to blame if this event leads to the undermining of Hindu temples and institutions, and Hindu leadership in India. Obviously, someone has been planting evidence. As I write this, I just saw a report that says Karunanidhi declared that the Tamil Nadu government should take over the Kanchi hermitage. This is sure to outrage Hindus. This is the first salvo in a battle of wits, but there is, I believe, a reason to suspect that this ploy is a smokescreen for something else. The Swamiji is being offered as a sacrificial lamb by somebody else. Who could that be? Hmmm, we wonder why Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is keeping silent in this matter. Actually, according to reports, her “Jaya TV” has been equally harsh in condemning the Swamiji as the DMK-owned “Sun TV”.

Sankararaman is said to have petitioned the Hindu Religious Endowment Board about some irregularities. There are reports that the officials of the temple where he worked were also unhappy because he was honest and strict. So, the reports that he sent, if at all they contained any incriminating evidence, pertained to the temple that he was intimately familiar with. It could not have pertained to the Sankara matham. So, someone felt threatened by the reports he sent, and Sankararaman had to be got rid of. We all know that the Dravidianist politicians of Tamil Nadu always lease the temple properties at virtually no rent to commercial businesses, slaughter-houses, etc. Did Sankararaman touch a raw nerve when he started recovering rents? Or, did he uncover something even grave and paid with his life?


Who would want the Swamiji implicated and why? The answer can be found only when the real complaints filed by Sankararaman are known -- if at all he really filed any. There is no confirmation that he did. Remember that all the anonymous complaints were supposed to have been written by one Kanapadigal. How did the police establish it was Sankararaman? After all, his family had no clue that he had petitioned any authority. If somebody had an urgent need to implicate the Swamiji, some hermitage official most probably obliged them with a few phone calls.

May be it is time for us to implore Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes to come back from the grave and help us resolve this.

<i>Ramesh Rao
November 13, 2004</i>

I was looking up the history of Kanchi math, as according to history, Sri Adi Shankaracharya established only four maths in Sringeri, Dwarka, Badrinath and Puri. I came across a site http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/alt_hindu_msg.html which says that Kanchi Math was a relatively recent math which started as a branch of Sringeri Math, and it appears convincing. Any thoughts?

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In article <31a8jt$21j@ucunix.san.uc.edu> sadananda@anvil.nrl.navy.mil (K. 
Sadananda) writes:
> In article <311hto$ni@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, editor.csm.uc.edu (digest 
editor)
> wrote:
>
> > * Former President Inaugurates Celebrations
> >      Kanchipuram, July 24 (PTI) The former President, Mr R
> > Venkataraman, today inaugurated the year long 60th centenary
> > celebrations of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, the head of the 2,500
> > year old Kanchi mutt, amidst religious fervour.
> >      Sri Jayendra Saraswathi is the 69th pontiff of the mutt,
> > which was established here by Adi Sankara, who was the first
> > 'peedapathi' (head of the mutt) from 482 to 477 bc.

> SIR
> May I bring to your attention that by all accounts Adi Sankara time was
> some where around 8th to 9th century AD.  And of the four Matts that he
> established Kanchi is not one of them.  Either the Mutt is less than
> 1100 years old or if it is 482 B.C. as is claimed in the news then it
> must not have been established by Adi Sankaracharya.  Please check the
> dates and the real history of the kanchi matt. Is there any one in the
> network that has better information about the Kanchi peetam?  Sadananda


Both this post and a previous one by Bon Giovanni have raised questions of 
historicity of Adi Sankaracharya and the Kanchi math. This is not a new 
question. It is generally accepted as tradition that Adi Sankaracharya, 
the famous Advaita philosopher, founded four maths (monasteries) at 
Sringeri, Puri, Dwaraka and Badrinath; that he ascended the famous 
sarvagna-pitha in Kashmir, and finally passed away near Kedarnath. None of 
the four recognized mathas claims jurisdiction over the other three. However, 
the Kanchi math claims that Sankaracharya established a fifth math in 
Kanchi, with jurisdiction over the recognized four mathas; that 
Sankaracharya ascended a sarvagna-pitha not in Kashmir, but at Kanchi, and 
that he passed away not in Kedarnath, but at Kanchi. These and other such 
claims have been widely publicized by the followers of the Kanchi math 
with the direct participation of and encouragement from the heads of the 
Kanchi math, including the recently departed centenarian Sri 
Chandrasekharendra Saraswati (C.S., for short) and his successor Sri 
Jayendra Saraswati (J.S.).

In Tamil, we have a saying "Do not question the origins of rivers 
(nadimoolam) and rishis (rishimoolam)." Still, in terms of answering some 
basic questions regarding dates in Indian history, one has to perforce 
look at these. C.S. had a commanding personality. He impressed people of 
such wide interests as Mahatma Gandhi, Arthur Koestler, Paul Brunton, 
Milton Singer etc. Some of his more ardent followers have gone to the 
extent of deifying him as "Nadamadum deivam" - the deity who walks. People 
compose and sing songs in his praise, and dancers stage dance-dramas on his 
life - all of which are widely advertised and reviewed in the south Indian 
press. However, while some people might respect the recently departed 
acharya of Kanchi as a rishi or as a deity, there is no reason why a frank 
discussion cannot be held regarding the origins of the Kanchi math, and 
C.S.'s involvement in propagating a thoroughly revised history of that 
math - so thoroughly revised as to be almost wholly falsified. I would 
like to clarify at the outset that no disrespect is meant to the Kanchi 
math or its heads, but while talking of some aspects of history, one has 
to call a spade a spade.

Seven years ago, on August 22, 1987, Sri Jayendra Saraswati disappeared 
from the Kanchi math. R. Venkatraman, an ardent devotee of the Kanchi math 
was President of India at that time. A frantic search was held, with the 
police of all four southern states, the CID and other agencies involved. 
What made the disappearance more shocking to the orthodox followers of the 
Kanchi math was that it was the period of chaturmasya, when a sannyasi was 
not supposed to travel from his camping station. Sri Jayendra Saraswati 
was finally traced to Talakaveri, the source of the Kaveri near Coorg in 
Karnataka. Whatever else it accomplished, this episode created major stories
in the Indian media. Tthe Kanchi math came under the spotlight once again,
and it obtained wide publicity in the national media. I quote a few excerpts
(without permission) from the Sept. 13, 1987 issue of The Illustrated Weekly
of India, from a feature written by well-known journalist, K. P. Sunil. [1]

Under a box titled "Disputed Lineage," K. P. Sunil writes, (My comments 
are in parantheses):

"On August 25, as speculation about the whereabouts of Jayendra 
Saraswati mounted, the Sankaracharya of Dwaraka, Swaroopananda Saraswati, 
camping at Pune for the Chaturmasya Vrata, while demanding a high level 
probe into the mystery, asserted: "Sri Jayendra Saraswati cannot be 
regarded as a Sankaracharya at all, because the Kanchi math is not one of 
the four peethas constituted by Adi Sankaracharya. It is only a shakha 
(branch) of the Sringeri peetham."
"Several years earlier, Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who headed the 
central commission on Hindu religious and charitable endowments, had 
announced that `there is no such thing as the Kanchi Kamakoti peetham.'
..................
"Yet the Kanchi math has emerged as one of the most powerful 
religious institutions in the country.
"Full credit for this should go to Chandrasekharendra Saraswati 
himself, who lifted a math disintegrating in Kumbhakonam and 
re-established it in Kanchipuram, according it a position of pre-eminence.
....................
"Legend has it that Sankara, at the age of 32, after having toured 
most parts of India and after having established the four maths ........
"The turn of the present century saw a math claiming a lineage of 
over 67 pontiffs in Kumbhakonam in Tanjore district."
..............
"It was only in the 20th century works, all compiled after 
Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, the present Paramacharya ascended the 
peetha, that the history of the Kanchipuram math has been rewritten. 
Accordingly, it was established (by whom, may I ask?) that Adi 
Sankaracharya had spent the last days of his life in Kanchipuram where he 
attained samadhi, and not in the Himalayas as is generally believed. A 
mandapam named after the father of the school of advaita philosophy, seen 
in the Kamakshi temple premises, is cited as his samadhi. (The said 
mandapam has been constructed very recently. It was originally called 
`Sankaracharya samadhi', but when it was pointed out there could not be a 
samadhi inside a Devi temple, the mandapam was renamed `Sankaracharya 
sannidhi' - sanctum, not a tomb.)
"The twentieth century chronicles explain that before his demise, 
Sankaracharya established a fifth math at Kanchi which he intended to be a 
controlling centre of all the other maths. Sri Sureswaracharya, Sankara's 
prime disciple was placed in charge of it. Interestingly, the Sringeri 
math also claims Sureswaracharya as their first pontiff. (As an aside, the 
tale of Sureswaracharya being in charge of the Kanchi math is pure 
fiction. If Sankaracharya did not establish the Kanchi math at all, 
where was the need to appoint a successor there?!! It is the Kanchi math 
that "claims" Sureswara. The Sringeri math does not "claim" so. In fact, a 
very old structure that is reputed to be Sureswara's samadhi is still 
preserved outside the Sarada temple at Sringeri.)
"According to the Kanchi chronicles, the math in Kanchipuram had 
to be shifted in the 18th century AD, in the face of opposition from local 
kings and hence the shift to Kumbhakonam. (One does not know of any 
Hindu-hating king near Kanchipuram from the 18th century.)
"Historians, however, hold that the Kumbhakonam math was in verity 
a branch of the Sringeri math established in 1821 AD by the famous monarch 
of Tanjore, Serfoji. (Mr. Sunil has a fact wrong here. The monarch of 
Tanjore in 1821 was not Serfoji, but Pratap Singh Tuljaji. The 
date 1821 is correct - it is the date of the oldest inscription found in 
the Kumbhakonam math building.) Later, when a war broke out between the 
kings of Tanjore and Mysore, the Kumbhakonam math proclaimed independence 
from Sringeri and established itself as the Kamakoti peetham." (There is 
no war documented between the Maratha rulers of Tanjore and the Wodeyars 
of Mysore after 1821. By this time, both were more or less puppets of the 
British. That the Kumbhakonam math proclaimed independence from Sringeri 
however, is a fact. One does not have to explain it as a consequence of an 
imaginary war that the maths had no connection with.)

Mr. Sunil captures the major facts regarding the Kanchi math correctly 
though. Briefly,

1. A branch of the Sringeri math was established in Kumbhakonam, the 
building for which was constructed in 1821 AD, with the help of the 
Tanjore king. The seal of this math is in Kannada language, and refers to 
it as a "Sarada math." Since Sarada is worshipped only at Sringeri, and 
the Goddess at Kanchipuram is Kamakshi, not Sarada, it is seen at once 
that the Kumbhakonam math did not originally come from Kanchipuram.

2. The Kumbhakonam math soon proclaimed independence from Sringeri. In 
fact, this math went one step further. In addition to denying the 
historical truth of its origin as a branch of the Sringeri math, the story 
propagated was that it was originally established by Adi Sankaracharya 
himself at Kanchipuram, with control over the recognized four maths. 
Worse, a wholly fictitious story that Adi Sankaracharya ascended a 
sarvagna-pitha at Kanchi and attained samadhi at Kanchi is propagated as 
"tradition." The real problem though was that in the course of this 
campaign, someone with more enthusiasm than scholarship, "fixed" the date 
of Adi Sankaracharya as 477 B.C. and wrote up a continuous list of gurus 
of the math from 477 B.C. to the present! This guru parampara is filled 
with names of sannyasis taken at random, with no thought to chronology.

3. The Kumbhakonam math shifted to Kanchipuram in accordance with its new 
story. In 1839 AD, the head of the Kumbhakonam math applied for permission 
to the English Collector to perform the kumbhabhishekam of the Kamakshi 
temple in Kanchipuram. In 1842 AD, he was appointed sole trustee of the 
Kamakshi temple by the English East India Company Government. This is well 
documented because the original priests of the Kamakshi temple, who were
thereby deprived of their rights, complained to whomever they could possibly
complain to. Numerous petitions, counter petitions, letters, and other such
documents are available from this period that allow us to piece together this
account. [2] Thus the Kanchi math as an institution dates from 1842 AD. The
headquarters continued to be at Kumbhakonam but the sannyasi head would
periodically visit Kanchipuram to assert his rights over the Kamakshi temple.
This math originally had a limited following in the Tanjore and Kanchipuram
areas, but soon embarked on a massive propaganda campaign that ensured it
prominence.

4. This propaganda campaign to disseminate disinformation received a major 
fillip from the activites of C.S. As Mr. Sunil puts it, it is only in the 
20th century, after C.S. took over as the head of the disintegrating math 
at Kumbhakonam, that the accounts have been totally rewritten. Part of this 
propaganda campaign includes a guru parampara that dates back to 477 BC. 
One can go into great details to show that this guru parampara is false. 
Suffice it to say however, that it is full of holes and is correct only in 
the details given for the post-1820 period. Thus J.S. who is said to be 
the 69th in direct succession from Adi Sankaracharya himself is actually 
only the 6th or the 7th head  of the Kumbhakonam/Kanchi math. C.S. and  
J.S. have been extremely fortunate in favourably impressing people like 
Dr. T. M. P. Mahadevan, the famous philosopher, and Sri S. Ramakrishnan, 
the executive secretary of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, not to speak of 
influential journalists like Arun Shourie and Ram Nath Goenka, and
politicians like President R. Venkatraman. As an example, in recent years,
there has not been a single issue of the Bhavan's Journal without some
feature or the other on either C.S. or J.S. For example, when the Berlin wall
fell, the well-known guru, Sri Chinmoy, sent a piece of the rubble to the
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan as a souvenir. Sri Ramakrishnan immediately saw a
photo opportunity, took the rock to Kanchipuram, and featured a picture of
J.S. holding the rock on the cover of the Bhavan's Journal. Thus, Sri Chinmoy
sends a souvenir to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and J.S. of Kanchi Kamakoti
Peetham gets photo credit! Sri Ramakrishnan apparently has no qualms in
converting a prestigious magazine like the Bhavan's Journal into yet another
propaganda pamphlet of the Kanchi math.

If I sound like I am fulminating unjustifiably against the propaganda that 
the Kanchi math engages in, I assure readers here that I am in fact 
perfectly justified. I can cite innumerable instances where the most 
blatant lies have been made without any compunction. All with an eye at 
enhancing the apparent prestige of the Kanchi math. What the Kanchi math 
doen't realize however, is that such stories only weaken its own 
credibility and the respect which people may have for its acharyas. Thus a 
simple PTI news item about the 60th birthday celebrations of J.S. 
necessarily has to state something about the "2500 year history" of the 
math. If the news item had been silent about it, I would not have felt the 
need to write this article debunking their myths. The following excerpt 
from the same article in the Illustrated Weekly should show readers the 
exact means which the Kanchi math propaganda adopts.

"The Vyasachaliya Sankara Vijayam, written by Maha Devendra 
Saraswati, the 53rd acharya of the Kumbhakonam math in the 15th century, 
makes no mention of the Kanchi math in his work. However, in a Tamil 
translation of the work by Acharya Krishna Sastri, it is mentioned that 
the then King of Nepal had accepted the acharya of Kanchi, located in 
Kumbhakonam, as his Rajguru and was making a payment to the math every 
year as guru dakshina.
"Researchers, who doubted the claim, referred the matter to the 
royal family of Nepal. the reply dated May 13. 1940 read `...Nepal has 
never recognized the head of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham as their guru. 
Nor do we annually contribute any portion of our income as alleged by 
Pandit Acharya Krishna Sastri.'"

Mr. Sunil who quotes this bit of history, seems to have overlooked one 
minor point though. If the Kumbhakonam math was only established as a 
branch math in 1821 AD, as he says in his article, the question of its 
existence in the 15th century does not arise. Much less a name of its head 
and a number to be attached to that name. Such "Pandits" as Acharya 
Krishna Sastri who do not hesitate to blatantly lie, have been routinely 
pressed into service by the Kanchi math for conducting its propaganda. 
After all, who in south India would have thought of verifying his story 
from such a distant place as Nepal? The technique of the Kanchi math has 
been to lie left and right, with such thoroughness, that invariably some 
part of its preposterous claims are accepted as truth by people. Exactly 
the same phenomenon has occured with Mr. Sunil. He does not question the
veracity of the claim that the Vyasachaliya Sankara Vijayam was written
by one "Maha Devendra Saraswati, the 53rd acharya of the Kumbhakonam
math in the 15th century." Nor does he particularly elaborate on the
strangeness of the fact that this fictitious author of this real book only
mentions the four traditionally accepted maths, and makes no mention of
"his own" math.

To sum up, the claims of the Kanchi math have been unprecedented in the 
history of Hinduism. We have never had an organized structure comparable 
to the Roman Catholic Church. In the event, a math in the remote south 
claiming to be the central math of the Advaita sampradaya makes no sense. 
Firstly, such centralized religious jurisdiction is alien to the spirit 
and history of our culture. Secondly, even if Adi Sankaracharya did 
establish a central math with jurisdiction over the recognized four, was 
he so ignorant of India's geography that he bypassed all holy cities with 
more central locations (Prayag/Kashi/Ujjain?) and chose instead Kanchi in 
the extreme south? Thus, the idea of a central math is clearly pure myth. 
The reality is that the Kanchi math is a relatively recent institution 
with tall claims. That it has a large following is an undeniable fact. 
Every saffron-robed person invariably attracts some following. Couple that 
with the tremendous charisma that C.S. had, and a famous temple like the 
Kamakshi temple in Kanchipuram - one has a ready-made formula for success 
in attracting a following. The sad part is that the sannyasis involved 
take advantage of the general reverence that people show them, for their 
own ulterior motives.

In India, among south Indian Brahmin circles especially, when this topic 
comes up for discussion, most people usually say something like, "The 
Kanchi math is also doing so much for the cause of dharma. Why rake up 
this issue?" My answer is that firstly it is the Kanchi math which forces 
one to rake up the issue by ceaselessly continuing its propaganda of 
disinformation. Secondly, and more importantly, an institution like the 
Kanchi math which supposedly is doing so much for dharma, should not 
forget the most basic dharma of all - satyam vada. People are free to choose 
their gurus, but when the guru sets such a perniciously wrong example, by 
not sticking to the truth, dharma itself is compromised.

S. Vidyasankar


1. The Illustrated Weekly of India, "The Weekly Cover Story" - K. P. 
Sunil, September 13, 1987.


2 a. The Truth about the Kumbhakonam Math, - Sri R. Krishnaswamy 
Aiyar and Sri K. R. Venkatraman, Sri Ramakrishna Press, Madurai, 
1977.

  b. Kanchi Kamakoti Math - a Myth - Sri Varanasi Raj Gopal Sarma, 
Ganga Tunga Prakashan, Varanasi, 1987.
     LC Call No.: BL1243.76.C62 K367 1987
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After 57 years of independence Indian had produced 1000s of new doctors and health facilities all over India. India is able to eradicate lot of disease and gain knowledge in cheap cure.
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