<b>Myth of Aryan Invasion Update</b>
Written by Dr. David Frawley

2005 Edition Preface

The Myth of the Aryan Invasion was first written in 1994 in order to summarize important new information on the ancient history of India that refutes commonly held views on the subject inherited from the nineteenth century. It was a condensation of longer material from books of mine like Gods, Sages and Kings, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization (with N.S. Rajaram) and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (with Georg Feuerstein and Subhash Kak). The 2001 update reflected my recent book Rigveda and the History of India that pushed the Vedic horizon further into the South India.

Its time to start recording every event related to War against Maoist in India.

We should list GOI failures and inability to help state Govt.
At the end we will know GOI objectives. As we always suspected UPA is encouraging Maoist by doing nothing or turning its face otherside or sabotaging state govt efforts. Prime reason, UPA had used maoist during election and finishing opposition.

<b>With all good wishes to Gill and his team. </b>

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Gill crafts ultimate battle plan in Chhattisgarh: Hit Maoists hard, hit them sure  </b>
Pramod Kr Singh | New Delhi 
Supercop KPS Gill, now the security adviser to Chhattisgarh Government, has outlined his plan of action to stamp out Maoists from the State. Gill, credited with winning the war on terrorism in Punjab, has already submitted his blueprint to the Home Ministry bosses.

<b>The Gill doctrine is:</b> Gather intelligence about the strength and capabilities of the Maoist groups active in Chhattisgarh, identify their hideouts, train and modernise the State Police, then hit them hard in a sudden and well-coordinated attack.

Gill also wants helicopters for aerial reconnaissance and forces paradropped in Maoist strongholds.

The thrust of the Gill doctrine is to launch a swift offensive giving little time to Maoist guerrillas to regroup and retaliate.
 
The supercop has also requested the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to provide 32 battalions of Central Para-Military Forces to launch an all-out attack on Maoist outfits.

<b>However, MHA mandarins are believed to have conveyed it to him and the State Government that providing so many battalions was not possible. Gill scaled down the demand to 18 battalions.  <!--emo&:thumbdown--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Again, the MHA officials expressed their inability. They said they could spare only six more battalions at this juncture as there are already seven battalions of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deployed in the State.</b>  <!--emo&:thumbdown--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<b>According to sources in the Government, the Prime Minister's Office has put a spanner into Gill's plan as it first wants the State Government to raise its own special force.  <!--emo&:thumbdown--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' /><!--endemo-->
 
Further, the PMO does not agree with Gill's suggestion of commando-type operations to flush out the Maoists.</b> <!--emo&:thumbdown--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbsdownsmileyanim.gif' /><!--endemo-->

The PMO spanner apart, the State Government has outlined its own policy to deal with the Maoists. The State Government has identified places in forests in the Bastar region where Maoists are known to have strong bases. Because, the Gill action-plan stresses the need to identify places where the Maoists can be engaged in a calculated way.

Initially, the supercop wanted the anti-Maoist campaign to begin before the Monsoon. However, the State Government officials were of the opinion that it would be better to conduct the operation during the rains as the militants come out of their dens during the season, making them easy targets.

However, the MHA disagreed. Its officials said that thick foliage during the Monsoon made boobytraps and landmines laid by the militants near impossible to detect, which would mean heavy casualty for the security forces.

As of now, according to State and MHA officials, the anti-Maoist operation will begin after the Monsoon.
 
<b>The MHA is believed to have promised to rush Central forces to Chhattisgarh as tackling Maoists in the State is on top of its agenda.</b>

Chhattisgarh is one of the worst Maoist-affected States in the country. Maoists are active in eight out of the State's 16 districts, Bastar, Dantewada, Kanker, Surguja, Jashpur, Koriya, Rajnandgaon, and Kawardha.
 
An anti-Maoist movement, euphemistically called Salva Zudoom (peace initiative) is currently going on in the state to rope in villagers against Maoist violence.

As many as 250 villages of the Bastar region have been mobilised under this movement, which commenced in mid-June 2005. Apart from holding relatively large meetings, releasing anti-Maoist posters and pamphlets and maintaining vigils at the local level, the villagers have killed three Maoists.

The MHA was willing to provide as much force as Chhattisgarh Government demands but it should also raise a Special Task Force (STF) on its own to counter the Maoist charge, a senior MHA official said.

The Chhattisgarh Government has also adopted an Intelligence-gathering model, which was presented by the BSF during the recently held meeting to tackle the Maoist problem. State Chief Secretary told the Home Secretary the State was doing everything to further augment its Intelligence setup.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Let me list recent achievement of UPA and appointed PM of India in J&K

0) Ready to let go Siachien.
1) Hindus are still butchered by terrorist
2) Called Army to become civil, when he will make his own cabinet civil?
3) Terrorist refused to join Spineless Man mohan for chai-panni /roundtable
4) Coward Mudmohan suddenly rushed back to Delhi.
5) Setup committee to let go J&K from India.
6) Raising reservation statement from J&K with his soiled pants.

India's bad karma, we get such a useless as PM and politicans.

This time the crocodile won't wait
Londonistan by Melanie Phillips Buy this book

Reviewed by Spengler

In retrospect, it seems oafish of Neville Chamberlain, Britain's prime minister in 1938, to have betrayed Czechoslovakia to Nazi rule in return for the empty promise of peace. Yet an overwhelming English majority looked with horror on the prospect of confrontation with Germany and a new world war, until Adolf Hitler forced England's hand by invading Poland. "The appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last," said Winston Churchill. Today's crocodiles may not be so patient.

Opposing voices in 1938 rang lonely and shrill, and just as shrill today sounds Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips in her portrayal of an emasculated Britain ashamed of its own national identity and anxious to appease the "clerical fascism" of the jihadis. That will change, perhaps even before the print is quite dry on her new book. She warns that the West faces a religious war with Islam. I concur, and recommend Londonistan as indispensable background.

Britain, Phillips warns, is reaping what it has sown. A large minority of British Muslims are disaffected at best and seditious at worst. Phillips cites a 2004 Home Office survey finding that 26% of British Muslims felt no loyalty to Britain, 13% supported terrorism, and about 1% (up to 20,000 individuals) were "actively engaged" in terrorism or support for terrorism.

Another poll found that 32% of British Muslims agreed that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end". In the event of a violent collision between the West and Iran, for example, civil conflict might arise in Britain on a scale resembling that in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

Phillips accuses British security services with complicity in the gestation of a terrorist apparatus in London. Her documentation of overt terrorist activity centered in London is exhaustive, and raises the question of why the open scandal was tolerated. Saudi, Algerian and Egyptian requests for extradition of suspected terrorists were refused, and Arab diplomats vented their frustration over British recalcitrance in public.

A cynically narrow concept of national interest guided this policy, she argues, charging that MI6 (Military Intelligence Section 6, now officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service) believed "that if the Islamists were being left undisturbed to conduct their activities on the assumption that they would not then attack Britain".

But that can explain only part of the story, and Phillips searches for deeper causes of Britain's cowardice. "Denial" is a recurrent theme. She cites an unnamed "foreign intelligence source" as follows:

During the 1990s, many attempts were made to enlighten the British about what was happening. But they refused to see this problem as having a religious character. If this was a religious problem, it became a religious confrontation - and the specter of a religious war was too horrendous. A religious war is different from any other war because you are dealing with absolute beliefs and the room for compromise is very limited. Religious wars are very protracted and bloody, and often end up with a very high toll of lives.

That is not denial, though, but revulsion. The British establishment may have recoiled in horror from the prospect of religious war precisely because it has sufficient institutional memory to know just what such wars entail. Religious war, however, is precisely what it will have, on the worst possible terms, and with an extensive fifth column in place.

Successful manipulation of religious conflict is a lost art. Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Jules Mazarin kept the Thirty Years' War aflame in Germany by subsidizing new entrants into the fray, notably Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus (King Gustavus II), deploying French forces when proxies were not available.

The carnage claimed the lives of more than half of the German speakers and left France the dominant power in continental Europe until 1870. On a smaller scale, Britain played such divide-and-conquer games throughout its imperial history, most obviously by transplanting Scottish Protestants to Northern Ireland. Some in India read malice aforethought into the 1947 partition of the sub-continent. Britain no longer has malefactors with the iron stomach and broad culture of a T E Lawrence or a Sir Richard Burton to undertake such projects.

Phillips soft-pedals the imperial sins for which today's problems are part payment. As Phillips observes, the legacy of Britain's imperial past in the form of Northern Ireland distracted the security services' attention from the Islamist threat:

Instead of studying the Middle East as a cause for concern, they were staring across the Irish Sea at Northern Ireland, where a terrorist insurrection against the UK had been in progress since the 1970s. The mindset, on both sides of the Atlantic, was that terrorism was tied to discrete grievances against individual states. And with the end of the Cold War, the notion of a global threat rooted in ideology was assumed to be dead and buried.

But the Northern Ireland disaster was more than a distraction. Britain has a glorious past, and its role in defining individual rights and representative democracy is central to the success of the West. But real crimes can be laid at Britain's doorstep, including the mistreatment of the Irish over centuries. That does not excuse the thuggishness of the Irish Republicans, but it does help explain the moral palsy that afflicts today's British establishment.

Former US president Jimmy Carter's ability to see the better side of his country's worst enemies comes to mind. In this month's issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Mark Bowden reports that Carter forbade the Delta Force commandos to use deadly forces against the kidnappers of American hostages in Tehran in the ill-fated 1980 rescue attempt.

In his ignorance and provincialism, Carter could not see any conflict in terms other than the black-white confrontation during the US South in the 1960s. Palestinians, Iranians, or other self-defined victims of Western imperialism are the blacks of Selma in the diminutive mind of the former president. But the civil-rights movement in the United States brooks no comparison to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a Christian-led movement appealing to the conscience of other Christians under the law of the land, and succeeded with minimal loss of life.

Black and white Baptists made their peace in the US South a generation ago. Protestants and Catholics yet might make peace in Northern Ireland. But that is an entirely different matter, says Phillips: "True, the IRA [Irish Republican Army] were Catholics and their adversaries were Protestants. But their cause was not Catholicism. It was a united Ireland. They did not want to impose the authority of the pope upon Britain ... There is simply no comparison to the agenda of the Islamists who want to defeat the West in the name of Islam."

The institution that should understand this best, namely the Church of England, seems most eager to liquidate itself. Notes Phillips: "In America, the churches have been in the forefront of the defense of Western values. Some of the strongest support for Israel comes from evangelical Christians. In Britain, by contrast, the Church of England has been in the forefront of the retreat from the Judeo-Christian heritage."

The Archbishop of York, the black Ugandan Dr John Sentamu, praises the British Empire and the culture it spread around the world, whereas the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, apologizes for taking "cultural captives" through the export of English hymns and liturgy. Sadly, the "cultural captives", mainly black African converts, are all that is left of the C of E. Its evangelical wing, represented by former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey - a vocal critic of Islam in the past two years - cannot compete with dissenting churches, and the High Anglican side barely breathes.

It is a bit late in time for a national church. The Roman Catholic Church can make a case that Benedict XVI has the right to head a universal church by virtue of his apostolic succession from St Peter, and thus can forgive sins in Jesus' own stead. But why should Queen Elizabeth II, much less the overtly Islamophile Prince Charles, enjoy this privilege? Perhaps the moment is ripe for the remnants of English Catholicism to join the Roman Church, and for British Protestants to find their way to more robust dissenting denominations.

In any case, Western liberalism, including the sexual habits of English curates, does not appeal to Muslims. On the contrary, Phillips says:

British Muslims are overwhelmingly horrified and disgusted by the louche and dissolute behavior of a Britain that has torn up the notion of respectability. They observe the alcoholism, drug abuse and pornography, the breakdown of family life and the encouragement of promiscuity, and find themselves there in opposition to their host society's guiding values. What they are recoiling from, of course, is the breakdown of Western values. After a visit to the United States in 1948, Sayed Qutb wrote: "Humanity today is living in a large brothel!"

Revulsion and contempt color Muslim attitudes toward the British leftists who most desire to appease them. That is not a recipe for co-existence but for escalation, as last year's subway bombings should have made clear. But the issue now is not terrorism but rather outright war.

The British authorities may have turned a blind eye to terrorism directed against others, and may even have dragged their feet at confronting the terrorist threat at home that erupted in the July 7, 2005, subway bombings. Terrorism is dreadful but, like many nasty things, one can develop a tolerance for it. Now it is not merely terrorism that the West confronts but a strategic debacle of intolerable proportions in the form of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In that sense Melanie Phillips' book comes too late, for it reports a set of circumstances shortly to be overthrown by events. She is writing about 1938, and we are entering 1939, when the West will have to respond to an external challenge in a way that it never could to an internal threat. Britain will have the religious war it sought to dodge.

Londonistan by Melanie Phillips. Encounter Books: New York 2006. ISBN: 1594031444. Price: US$25.95, 213 pages.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HE23Aa01.html

<P><FONT color=#000000>Transcript of a conversation between, the Prime Minister (PM) and his National Security Advisor (NSA)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Prime Minister, you believe in the nuclear deterrent? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM - Oh, yes</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Why? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Pardon? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Why? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Because it deters. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Whom? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Pardon? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: - Whom? Whom does it deter? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Our neighbours from attacking us. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Why?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: - Pardon? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Why? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: They know if they launched an attack, I'd press the button. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: - You would?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Well, wouldn't I? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Well, would you? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: At the last resort, yes, I certainly would. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Well, I think I certainly would. Yes. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: And what is the last resort?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: If our neighbour tries to annex Kashmir.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: You only have 12 hours to decide, so you're saying the last resort is the first response? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Am I? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: You don't need to worry. Why should the enemy try to annex Kashmir ? They can't even control NWFP. No, if they try anything, it will be <B style="COLOR: black; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff66">salami</B> <B style="COLOR: black; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a0ffff">tactics</B>. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff66">PM: Salami</FONT> <B style="COLOR: black; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a0ffff">tactics</B>?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Slice by slice. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: One small piece at a time. So will you press the button if they cross the LOC ? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: It all depends.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: On what?  Scenario one. Riots in PoK town bordering China, homes in flames. chinese fire brigade cross the border for help. Would you press the button...? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: mmmm.....</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: The pakistani rangers come with them. The button...? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: mmmm......</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Then some pakistani troops, more chinese troops just for riot control, they say. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: mmmm......</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: And then the rangers are replaced by regular army. Button...? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: mmmm.......</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Then the Chinese troops don't go. They are invited to stay to support civilian administration. The civilian administration closes cross border BUS and Train service.  Now you press the button? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: I need time to think about it. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: You have 12 hours. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM - Have I? You're inventing this. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: - You are Prime Minister today. The phone might ring now from Western Command. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA:  The Pakistani army accidentally on purpose cross the frontier with Chinese Troops behind them on their border. - Is that the last resort? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: - No. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Right, Suppose the Pakistani troops invade into villages and occuppy positions like in Kargil Suppose their tanks and troops have taken vantage points ? - Is that the last resort?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: - No. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: Why not? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM:  We'd only fight a nuclear war to defend ourselves. That would be committing suicide! </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: So what is the last resort? Connaught Place ? Sansad Marg ? The Constitution Club? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: Maybe the nuclear deterrent makes no sense. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: - Yes, it does. If the Pakistanis or Chinese have the bomb, so must India . And keep Iran just in case. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM - What are you proposing? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: You wouldn't really press the button. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>PM: - I might if I had no choice. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>NSA: They'll never put you in a situation where you have no choice. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>They'll stick to salami tactics.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>That folks was an adaptation of a conversation from the British Comedy Yes Prime Minister set in the Indo-Pak context.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>Musharaff will continue to charm you from across the border and the Separatists will always be ready for talks but with riders thus putting you in a situation where you have a choice, </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>While the militants will continue to bleed J&K slice by slice as they did in Jammu by taking innocent Hindu Lives with no fear of reprisal.</FONT></P>
<P>This explains the sheer despration from the Kashmiri Pandits expressed in this anguished piece from Lalit Koul titled “What will it take Mr. Prime Minister“ </P>
<P>http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/may/09guest1.htm</P>
<P><FONT color=#000000>It is the same Salami Tactics that the Iranian President is now attempting with the USA with his 18 page letter to Bush which btw has succeeded in charming the Western Media.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#ff0000>Offstumped Bottomline: </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#ff0000>India's approach to Terrorism in its Neighbourhood is neutered by the lack of strategic options. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#ff0000>Holy Cow we never got to learn how to work Salami to our advantage</FONT></P>

The movie version of the book Da Vinic Code by Dan Brown is being released this week. As you know over 60 million copies of the book hae been sold. The core of the story is that Jesus was married and had descendents. A storm is raging in the West about secular ethos attacking the Church and shaking the faithful. Unlike the Muslims who rioted about the cartoons, things have been quiet. In India the UPA govt chose the safe path of declaring the film an "A" certificate.
I think the real coverup is not the Jesus descendent's story but his years in India and the influneces on his teachings.

From Pioneer, 19 May 2006

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>History, heresy, conspiracy</b>

Ashok Malik 

In 1804, two centuries before Dan Brown found his way to bestseller lists, the mystic and poet William Blake scripted his literary tour de force, Jerusalem. To this day, Blake's epic anthem moves, inspires and reduces to tears those who read, repeat or chant it. Its opening stanzas are among the most memorable in the English language:

<b>And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?</b>



And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills?

A deep, philosophical man, Blake was making multiple allusions. At one level, he was disturbed by the creeping Industrial Age and the changes smoke-filled chimneys were inflicting upon his pristine English countryside ("... these dark Satanic mills").

<b>Yet the principal character being addressed was Christ. Had the "feet" of the "Lamb of God" walked "upon England's mountains green"? Blake, like many contemporaries, cherished the belief that Jesus had visited England, embracing one of competing legends prevalent at the time.</b>
One tradition held that Christ had come to England in his early youth -when he was "training" for his calling -and had been taught by ancient druids. Another view was that he had somehow escaped the Crucifixion.

Such sentiments and such stories are not unique to William Blake and England. In the late 19th century <b>a Russian writer, Nicolas Notovitch, wrote a book apparently based on old Buddhist texts, arguing Jesus had spent part of the period between age 14 and 30 - when he was away from home - in India, as an apprentice under not Celtic druids but Buddhist monks. Others have added to the theory, pointing to evidence that insists Jesus the boy visited Puri and Varanasi.</b>

The most famous India-centric Jesus story has him surviving the Crucifixion and moving to Kashmir, where the Takht-e-Sulaiman - Seat of Solomon, now the Shankaracharya Hill - is said to derive its name from his presence.

A tomb in Srinagar's Rozabad has long been held to be the final resting place of a religious figure, one Yuz Asaf; was he Jesus? Another grave in Murree - in Pakistani Punjab - is supposed to be that of Mary, the mother of Christ. Murree, the idea goes, is a corruption of her name. <b>The choice of Kashmir as a refuge is itself explained by the tradition that it was settled by the Kush (Kassite) people, one of the "lost tribes" of Israel.</b>

How much of all this is true? Perhaps very little; obviously, Christ couldn't have been both in England and India at the same time! Yet as the silly controversy over The Da Vinci Code thankfully ends, it would be sensible to accept that alternative histories of Christ have been around for centuries.

Beyond fascinating trivia and conspiracy theories, there is a larger point. Dan Brown's book is, of course, fiction - but what if it weren't? Would protests by church groups then have been justified? Is religion - and this is not true of merely Christianity - to be sequestered from history, never have its historicity put to scrutiny? Does that in any way take away from the importance of faith or of The Faith?

These are important issues to ponder because India is a profoundly religious country with an extremely shallow intellectual approach to the study of religion. "Religious studies" is not merely a course on rites and rituals and how they came about. It involves philosophy, archaeology, history, sociology, perhaps even anthropology. In the narrow and antiseptic confines of "secularism" - as India's state-directed intelligentsia defines it - this is often not appreciated. This does not become enlightened societies.

Return to The Da Vinci Code. The charge against the book and the film is that it contradicts the "received history" of Christianity. As the deputy secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India put it, "It (The Da Vinci Code) must begin and end with a bold and lingering disclaimer stating that it's a work of fiction and does not reflect historical views and facts."

Compelling questions flow from this. What are "historical views"? Whose historical views? Who wrote Christianity's history - or for that matter Islam's or Hinduism's? If Christ survived the Crucifixion and was, as many believe, not the Son of God but a great mortal, does that detract from his life, his teachings, the wonder of the religious movement he founded?

The more devout Christians are not alone in treating history as heresy. An honest appraisal of the Prophet and his life and times, one that treats him as human, is not going to go unchallenged either. It never has.

<b>One of the most famous cases of blasphemy in India was that of Sarmad Shaheed (Sarmad the Martyr), an Armenian Jew who converted to Islam, was drawn to mysticism and befriended Dara Shikoh. Asked to recite the kalmah - "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet", Sarmad stopped at, "There is no God." Aurangzeb executed him.</b>

Of the major faiths, only Judaism and Hinduism approach history with a relative open-mindedness. <b>For the Jews, religion and history are a continuum. </b>Abraham and David are ancestors of Christ and near-divinity, but they are also historical characters, as real, as flesh and blood as David Ben-Gurion and Ariel Sharon. The Old Testament is a people's old history.

<b>Hindus face a unique problem: The history in their faith is challenged not by believers but by their "progressive" critics. As an example, consider the average Hindu's attitude to the Puranas. Yes, there is apocryphal legend and exaggeration; nevertheless, there is a determined acceptance that below this is a kernel of history. </b>

Ram and Krishna are gods to be worshipped but - with the breathtaking capacity to reconcile dualism - Hindus simultaneously accept them as human, with human wants, human desires, and even human frailties.

<b>Indeed, born of a singular self-assurance, Hinduism would welcome a scientific or rigorous scholarly investigation into its past, almost as much as organised Islam would repel it.</b> As for Christianity, as the Dan Brown episode reveals, <b>the danger is from the new Pharisees - those who think they "own" Jesus and have an exclusive, perhaps jealous copyright on his biography.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I wonder if Arjun Singh ever goes to hospital and says "<i>I insist a Dalit doctor treat me</i>" or Paswan goes "<i>Muslim pilots on my chopper onlee please</i>"?
Or they want best Indians irrespective of caste/religion treating or flying them around?

<i>Phatte mar rahi hai Bhutto</i>. Pakis are only capable of <i>Chuha</i> attacks- like they do on unarmed villagers in J&K, in the dark and from behind. For all their bravado, none of the Mullah Generals have the balls to do anything themselves.

Ancient Indian history is very much intertwined with religion, mysticism, mythology and spirituality. It is difficult separating them from each other. Thus, what tends to happen, the contributions made by the ancient Indians tend to be dismissed as religious - Hindu.

For example, many don't want to believe in the Indian historical events, such as the Mahabharata. There is perhaps good reason, as the Mahabharata does mention a sophisticated urban society, underwater kingdoms, human cloning, weapons that yeild the power of modern day nuclear weapons and flying vehicles. Although this is recorded as Indian history, few are prepared to accept it in it's entirety.

While most rationalists just consider it a fiction, some make a compromise, and accept it as a fictionalized historical event.

We are quite selective when it comes to accepting parts of Indian history. For instance, we might accept that Indians manufactured steel, but will stop short of accepting Indians manufactured aeroplanes. We might accept that the Indians devised the theory of atoms, but will stop short of accepting that they had contributed quantum theory and relativity. We might accept that the Indians did have scientific thought, but will stop short of accepting that they were technological.

For some, even the notion that Indians manufactured steel, devised the thoery of atoms, and had scientiftic thought is dubious.

So what we know of ancient Indian history becomes a matter of belief; a subjective matter. This dearth of objectivity is why ancient Indian history is not treated seriously by academics.

What do you believe?

i do not know many facts about the history of the Marathis - so i am starting this thread.

I'll set the ball rolling with some choice quotes from the wikipedia page on marathis (parts of which, coloured red, got me very interested). Please add more things you know of.



"The Marāthās" is a collective term referring to an Indo Aryan group of Hindu, Marathi-speaking castes of warriors and peasants hailing mostly from the present-day state of Maharashtra, who created a substantial empire, covering a major part of India, in the late 17th and 18th centuries AD.

The "Marathas" were known by that name since their native tongue was almost invariably Marathi; however, not all those whose native tongue is Marathi are Marathas. The term "Maratha" refers only to those marathi-speaking people who also belong to certain specific Hindu castes: for one available listing, refer to Maratha Clan System. Thus, the terms "Marathi people" and "Maratha people" are not interchangeable and should not be confused for each other.

However the word (Marathi) itself indicates that these people were charioters ( ma_ratha).Needless to mention that marathas were well known for their cavalry since antiquity..


The Marathas are believed to be of mixed origins. Historians, researchers and scholars are divided over the origins of Marathas. Some put their origins as Scythians, while some put their origins as Aryans. Still, others point out that their origins are mixed and the clan is mostly a mixed stock of Scythians and Indo-Aryans. However, it is believed that there are a few minority Marathas who are of stocks as varied as Dravidians, Caucasians and Hunnics.

Some of the Maratha clans are descendants of the local dynasties. There is a kunbi or kurmi kshatriyas group apart from 96 royal clans of marathas. Linguistically, they belong to exclusively Indo-Aryan linguistic group.


So in nutshell, Marathas is a wide social group. It is a social cluster which compromises 96 royal clans which sprang out of 5 tribes of Rigveda, certain sections of Kunbis and in a broader sense for certain period of history almost all marathi-speaking population. Perhaps this great flexibilty in the social structure of Marathas to accommodate vast groups explains their strength as a nation.

According to some sources, every maratha must belong to one of 96 different clans (the "96 Kuli Marathas"). The list of 96 Maratha clans is different as per different historians. An authoritative listing was apparently first attempted in 1888 and a list finalised in 1956 by the Government of India. One of several available listings of the various maratha clans are available at Maratha Clan System.


from here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Clan_System


Every maratha belongs to one of the 96 specific clans. These 96 clans are believed to have originate from five main royal clans which were based on the Panch-Janya or five tribes of the Rig-vedic period. This branching means, for instance, that out of 96 clans, at least 18 clans are septs of the same Yadu clan. This is similar to the branching of the Gotra system from the original seven Saptarshi Gotras to the hundred or more Gotras that exist today.

Marathas are descendents of all 56 Royal houses of India. According to Arya (Hindu) religion, In India or Bharat there are 56 sub-nations. At the time of the civil war of Mahabharata all the Indian nations were badly affected.The Maratha Clan System closely linked with Mahabharat heroes.


Origin of Clan system

Apart from Marathas, a well defined clan system is found among Rajputs,Scots,Germanic Tribes and Iranians.These all groups belong to Indo-European speaking population.The cognate of clan is Kul or cul, cognate of shatriya is shah(Iranian),Shah-nav(Maratha),satrap(european).There exists a lot of similarity between names and social customs of these clans during ancient time e.g.Royal symbol of each clan, worship of Fig tree,code of valour and art of fortification.<b>It seems that before compilation of Rigveda,these clans scattered in different directions from their homeland.</b>Generally these all clans have got a long history of chivalry and have enriched their respective countries.It is a matter of research for the sociologists that these clans if even change their religion ,did not change their clan system.


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in the wiki webpage, notice how most of the 96 clans have an "original seat/kingdom" somewhere north of maharashtra. so why did they make this southward exodus?? did the marathis really get the clan system from the scythians/sakas. do marathis have scythian blood?? the other people in india who also have a clan system are the rajputs - who also carry saka blood. just who are the people who are not marathi despite their native tongue being marathi?? are marathi's exclusively ksatriyas since they get their name from ma_rathi ?? the paragraph in blue is all crap - scythians ARE aryans in any case. As as aside, which are the 56 nations of bharat??