06-01-2007, 10:22 PM
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Hindu Narrative
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06-02-2007, 01:20 AM
Op-ed in Pioneer, 2 June 2007 <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Resistance to change Udayan Namboodiri The Guruvayoor and Sabarimala issues throw up some uncomfortable questions Watching Rahul Eshwar on TV last week holding forth on the virtues of "consensus" over legislation in settling whirlwind disputes over rights of temple entry, many people secretly congratulated India's temple orthodoxy for giving the Hindu-baiting media a taste of its own medicine. Instead of sending one of their septuagenarian or octogenarian know-alls on everything religious, they had picked somebody who not only knows a thing or two about temples, but, most importantly, is hot. Where an older man would have been regarded as just another ayatollah caught in a time warp, <b>Rahul, a Malayalam MTV star, who also anchors a show on spiritualism in one of God's own country's numerous cable channels, quite floored audiences with his unaffected - yet charming - aggression. Let's not forget, he was defending a point of view that in ordinary times drives the chatteratti crazy. But, because he is all of 25, has shoulder-length hair and dishy enough to make those spinster anchors blush in the middle of their self-righteous proclamations, people had to hear him.</b> He laughed, joked and almost teased the audiences. But young Eshwar succeeded in driving home some plain truths, which were: <b>The permanence about Hinduism's strange quirks, as preserved in a few Kerala temples, is as non-negotiable as Husain's rights to depict Sita as a nymphomaniac. The liberal intellectual mafia that dominates India's mainstream media should be occasionally prepared to take a body count itself.</b> <b>The Kerala Communists can, for now, forget about using the temple route to realising their design of breaking out of the incumbency trap that seems to put them out of power every five years.</b> Outside the circle of self-serving Leftists, there are not many takers in Kerala for the line that Guruvayoor, Sabarimala, and by extension Hinduism, need a Rammohan Roy at this stage - most Hindus believe in their tantris and the Christians themselves have no problems with it. So, when on May 31, the Yogakshema Sabha, the apex body of tantris or high priests of the Guruvayoor temple, decided to maintain the status quo on denying "non-Hindus" entry, the issue, at least at the national level, was rendered quite the diminutive to the <b>sting operation on Sonia Gandhi's favourite lawyer </b>and the Gurjar uprising in Rajasthan. In Kerala itself, the Communist circus, which is now at its height - what with a party secretary and a Chief Minister being dropped from the party's highest decision making body - got better ratings. <b>Yet, the whole episode leaves one uncomfortable. </b>Why this resistance to change? Discrimination is discrimination and raising a defence for it by claiming the overarching supremacy of traditions over the Law of the land, does carry with it a scent of <b>Brahmanical tyranny.</b> The signboard outside the Guruvayoor temple asking "non-Hindus" to stay out does seem offensive to many. It raises quite a few messy questions. First of all, if other places of worship - say Kalighat or Vaishno Devi or Tirumala or Sabarimala - leave the decision of entering the sanctum sanctorum to the wisdom of the worshipper, why do the authorities of Guruvayoor need to exert themselves? Ravi Krishna could be identified easily. Ditto for Yesudas, the singer. But what about the thousands of other Catholic, Marthoma or Moplah devotees of Lord Krishna who slipped through undetected? <b>This undermines the very identity of Kerala as a unique state where people of all religions celebrate Onam, the annual visit of the mythical Mahabali who was (admittedly) unfairly killed by Vishnu in his avatar as Vamana.</b> Perhaps it is time for the tantris of Guruvayoor to relearn the wider meaning of the term "Hindu". <b>By blackballing Yesudas from entry, are they not unwittingly accepting the secularists' definition of who is a Hindu?</b> Some months back a major stink was raised when the Jains were clubbed along with Hindus in Madhya Pradesh. Scant respect was given to the fundamental unity of Indic faiths. <b>Left-liberal writers often take vulgar pleasure in keeping tribes out of the Hindu family on the specious ground that their gods are unidentifiable with the Hindu pantheon - a downright lie.</b> At any rate, if the Law upholds Krishna's right to call himself a Hindu, serious questions can be raised over the tantris' right to arrogate to themselves the choice of whether or not to accept it. <b>There is a point of view that the prefix "Hindu" applies to anybody who lives in India and feels at one with its ancient ethos. Now, secularists dismiss the thought because it is propounded by the RSS. But it cannot be denied that such a line, if upheld, does wonders for national unity especially at times of Chinese aggression as Jawaharlal Nehru found out in 1962 - he atoned by inviting the RSS to participate in the following January's Republic Day parade.</b> So, if we give the Kerala RSS chief, AR Mohanan, a word in, we hear him not only condemning the Punyaham but calling for a reform of temple practices "in tune with the times". Now, since it is RSS cadre and not some pompous Namboodiri priests who routinely lay down their lives fighting Pakistani agents backed by the CPI(M) so that the culture of Kerala, the integrity of India and with it the future of Hinduism are preserved, is it unjustified to give Mohanan a hearing on the issue? One hopes that that the collective Malayali angst over the media hype raised over women's entry in Sabarimala followed now by the Guruvayoor conundrum, is nothing but confused knee-jerkism. <b>The Malayali Hindu has had enough of Communist hypocrites define "pluralism" to them, and, therefore, the meddling acts of Devavsom Board Minister K Sudhakaran are deemed more odious than the tantris' acts of self-importance. This feeling is, to a large extent, warranted by the goings on in Mallapuram and Marad. But by handing over to some temple priests the supra right of defining who is a Hindu, the Malayali may be making a dangerous mistake.</b> Change, as a famous wit remarked, is a friendly monster. The faster you befriend it, the less it bites off your body. The unity of Kerala's Hindu society should not be held hostage by the Namboodiris' resistance to change. In the 1930s, the reporter of the Malabar Gazette, commented on Kerala's Brahmin community's slow moveover to modern education: "Guaranteed his broad acres and the cream of Kerala's womanhood, the Tirimeni (an honorofic for Namboodiris) feels no urge to leave his old world of privileges." Since then circumstances may have forced the community to embrace the new order, but, somehow, a minuscule lot clings on to the illusion that change can be regulated with mere rituals. This is the central message young Rahul Eshwar is asked by his seniors to sweet pill. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
06-24-2007, 01:46 AM
11-28-2007, 07:12 AM
04-12-2009, 12:36 PM
Intellectual Terrorism By Mrs. Radha Rajan - Editor Vigil Online
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...0571762844 |
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