02-06-2009, 05:54 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->To
Swami Dayananda Saraswati ji
Convener
Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha
Sub: Some issues pertaining to Hindu Dharma and the Spiritual Fair at Chennai on 6 February 2009
Ref: Newspaper reports
6 February 2009
Pu. Swami ji
Namaste.
As you are aware, I have for several years been deeply concerned about the multiple threats to Hindu Dharma and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, which are in my view, interlinked. I have, in my own humble way, tried to inform public opinion about the nature and gravity of these threats, through every forum available to me.
It grieves me to say that in this task your perceptions and activities have diverged from what should have been a common goal and endeavour. As your current profile and actions can only compound confusion and further injure a seriously wounded Hindu civilisation that is fighting a crucial battle for survival in its own homeland, I am breaking decorum to bring my anxieties to your kind attention.
For this, I seek your forgiveness, as I am also making this letter public, both to reach a wider community of believers, as also to avoid the tragic failures of previous attempts to convey concerns over issues of critical concern to Hindu Dharma and its survival as a living, vibrant, and eternal non-monotheistic civilisation, and not a tailored-to-monotheistic-satisfaction contraption to which it is currently sought to be diminished.
Your tenure as Convener, Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, has witnessed the most grievous assaults upon the Hindu Dharma in India, and far from providing leadership and solace to this injured community in the manner best exemplified by Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh some centuries ago, you have assumed the most peculiar attitudes and adopted the most unacceptable associations in public life.
From the time of Rishi Yajnavalkya, Hindu tradition has upheld the right to dissent even against the respected teachers, and this principal of ensuring that the spiritual preceptors do not depart from Dharma is most avidly endorsed and upheld by the Jaina Sampradaya to which I belong. I therefore take the liberty to boldly assert my unhappiness about certain issues.
The media has carried a photograph of a Spiritual Fair (whatever that means) to showcase the Service work of 40-odd Hindu organisations, and dancer Padma Subrahmanyam addressed the media along with Swami Mitrananda. The reports say Swami Dayananda Saraswati of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha and "noted thinker" S. Gurumurthy will address the inauguration; the fair has been organised by the Chennai chapter of the Delhi-based Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony (GFCH).
Many things are amiss here, and before I address issues specific to the Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony, I must make a few basic points:-
r  The Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha (HDAS) was set up in 2002 as an apex body to represent the collective voice of Traditional Hindu Sampradayas, Mathams, Akharas, Peethas, etc. Your national and international status derives from being Convener of this august body of Hindu Dharma.
r  Far from representing and defending the collective consciousness of the nation-wide Hindu Samaj, the HDAS under your leadership has failed even to understand the challenges Hindu society has faced in the recent past.
r  The most singular failure is the inability to properly condemn, let alone fight, the ugly conspiracy that led to the arrest of Kanchi Shankaracharya Swami Jayendra Saraswati ji and the Bal Perivaar on cooked up murder charges.
r  Most unconscionable, however, is your persistent association on public platforms with the chartered accountant S. Gurumurthy and dancer Padma Subrahmanyam, who worked overtime to malign the Acharyas in Tamil society when this atrocity took place.
r  Shri Gurumurthy wrote a series of articles in a secular newspaper readily accessible to him to impute guilt upon the Acharyas, and even travelled to Delhi at the invitation of the BJP Think Tank (shame on Mr. Balbir Punj, MP) to tell aggrieved Hindus to 'kindly shut up because the Brahmin Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was going to prove the charges, just you wait.' Well, we have waited patiently for nearly five years, and the charges seem as pie-in-the-sky now as they seemed to us then.
r  Shri Gurumurthy even publicly announced that the Acharyas should abdicate their posts! On whose authority he said this, nobody knows, but when the Convener of the Acharya Sabha persistently hobnobs with such characters, questions must be asked about his own attitude towards Hindu Dharma and its revered Acharyas. Since private attempts to solicit answers and induce course corrections have met with rude contempt, it is time to go public.
r  Whatever her calibre as a dancer, Ms. Padma Subrahmanyam has no status on matters of Hindu Dharma. Yet it is said that you, as Convener, HDAS, sent her to represent Hindu Dharma in some bogus inter-faith dialogue with the Vatican in 2006! The veracity or otherwise of this information has been denied to us, despite persistent attempts, and is missing on the HDAS website.
r  Inter-faith dialogue, particularly negotiations that yield documents that can be said to be binding, are NOT part of your mandate as Convener of the Acharya Sabha. They are even more reprehensible when they are conducted in secret - without full-fledged discussion by all traditional mathams, peethams, Acharyas and concerned citizens within India regarding their objectives and purpose, especially if they are at all desirable, and if documents should be signed without nation-wide circulation and debate within India.
r  The Vatican meeting came to my notice in the course of a study about forced conversions in India. I was shocked to discover that not only does it accept the possibility of conversions to monotheistic faiths - a shocking divergence from the very purpose of the Acharya Sabha - but it accepts equal guilt and responsibility for sins committed by monotheistic faiths upon non-monotheistic traditions.
r  All private attempts to elicit clarifications about the circumstances and compelling reasons for thus subjugating Hindu Dharma to the Vatican have since failed, and I do hope that now you will throw some light on this subject.
r  My opposition to the Hindu-Jewish Summitry you have indulged in recently is well-known. I have also been angered by the excessive profile you permitted to non-Indian citizens - specifically American Jews and American citizens of Indian origin - on matters pertaining to Hindu Dharma.
r  Please do not try to tell me that Hindus are an international community like the Jews, Christians and Muslims. They are not. The fact that a large number of Hindus abandoned their matrubhoomi after independence - for better money alone (though some few geniuses only went for the work facilities then available abroad) - does not make us an international community.
r  As an Acharya who is well-versed in the Scriptures, moreover, you would be aware that according to the Hindu tradition, the Jambidwipa of Bharat is the only place in the world where Karmas can be expiated, and the karmic trajectory is the cornerstone of Hindu dharma. Certainly one can be a Hindu bhakta anywhere, but karmas can be worked out in Bharat Desh alone.
r  I personally believe that India has a moral responsibility and duty towards Hindu brothers sent to various colonies as indentured labour, and now settled there. In this regard I have spoken up for the Malaysian Hindus being harassed by the Islamic nation they reside in, and like many others I have noticed the deafening silence of the Acharya Sabha regarding their plight.
r  You have been equally silent about the aggression faced by Bangladeshi Hindus, who even now are suffering grievously, and have at this very moment approached me for help in their cause.
r  This solicitude cannot extend to the Hindus of America and Britain - because they did not leave the country under duress of any kind, but only out of personal greed and a deliberate dissociation from the problems of the country of their birth.
r  Worse, instigated no doubt by the governments of the countries they now belong to, they are trying to meddle in the polity, economy, and native religion of the abandoned motherland - to serve the geo-strategic interests of their new country.
r  By providing a platform to such persons, and by surreptitiously tailoring its own activities in support of their cause, the Acharya Sabha is doing a tremendous disservice to both Hindu Dharma and Bharat Desh.
r  Specific to the Jewish Summits, I will briefly say that the document signed in Delhi was prepared beforehand and had more American than Indian inputs, and the academic committee proposed had non-scholars from the Hindu side, including foreigners.
r  But the follow-up meeting in Jerusalem was really scandalous - we need to know who authorized the Acharya Sabha to tacitly agree that idol-worship is an abomination and that Hindus are not really idol-worshippers (whatever that means). Your assault upon the glorious tradition of murti-puja and all rituals and prayers associated with it, which give strength and vigour to our civilisation, calls for a personal explanation.
r  If Hindus are unacceptable to Jews because they worship the Divine in the nirguna and saguna aspects, then the Jews can go climb a tree. Certainly no Hindu Acharya can degrade or eliminate the saguna aspect of our tradition. By doing this, you have betrayed the whole Hindu civilisation across all Sampradayas, and you owe us an apology.
r  I shudder to think what concessions you are about to make to Islam in the course of your inter-faith jamborees - perhaps you are going to seek amnesty for all jihadis in Indian jails.
r  As for the Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony, it describes itself as an umbrella organisation of "Eastern religions." The purpose of its exhibition is supposedly to "develop a dialogue between various cultures and faiths. According to the GFCH, all faiths are valid and all civilisations are needed to keep the earth colourful."
r  The choice of the term "Eastern religions" instead of Hindu or Indian sampradayas and panthas gives the game away. This is nothing but cheap Western Christian gibberish to position Christianity as an 'Eastern" faith and use that argument to impose it upon India.
r  Even if we accept the Jordan River and its whereabouts as part of the East, it still does not make Christianity (or Judaism or Islam) an Indian faith - hence there is no legitimacy to annihilate the Hindu Dharma in its own bhoomi. Yet Acharya Sabha under your leadership seems willing to facilitate such Western Christian colonial designs upon India.
r   The very stated objective of the Spiritual Fair is flawed. To accept the falsehood that Hinduism (why use this colonial term?) is just a ritualistic and spiritual religion, and then prove (to whom?) that Hindus also serve society, is extremely disrespectful of Hindu faith and society. The Hindu tradition of service is deeply entrenched and recorded in detail by all foreign travellers in ancient times, and in fact suffered only because of the disgraceful manner in which the British Raj ruined the princely states.
r  Indeed, you may like to ponder if the hype over globalisation in recent years was not just a ruse to further 'secularise' Hindu society and disempower the traditional Bania Communities which remained the main funding avenues of all the dharmic activities that have continued in India since independence. That is the only reason why the creepy Mukesh Ambani wanted to monopolise the retail trade and throw out all the traditional shopkeepers and vegetable vendors. He has been rightly cut to size.
r  The GFCH talks about planning similar fairs for Buddhist, Jain, Muslim and Christian organisations. I am astonished that the Bauddha, Jaina and Sikh sampradayas were not represented at this fair.
r  I am even more astonished to see Hindu faith traditions equated with monotheistic Islam and Christianity, both of which have a murderous history in India and unashamedly continue their physical and political assaults upon this country, with the full backing of the foreign powers that support conversions as a foreign policy objective.Â
r  The vacuous claim that all faiths are valid and needed to keep the earth colourful is actually a shameful act of disempowering Hindus who speak up and combat the cancer of conversions. If Acharya Sabha is joining the conversion club, this fact should at least be made known to the Hindu believers. If you are converting yourself into an all-religion club, then call yourself that, and move away from the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha.
Many more things agitate me, but this has already become a fairly substantial letter. I do hope that you will take this to the various sampradayas, mathams and peethas that comprise the Acharya Sabha and take the opinion of the revered Acharyas upon the issues raised, so that a wider debate is opened within the Hindu society about how best to face the myriad challenges to faith and country.
I apologize for any offence caused inadvertently, but the challenges to the nation are too grim to permit silence at this stage.
Warm regards and Namaskar
Sandhya Jain
Editor, www.vijayvaani.com
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Swami Dayananda Saraswati ji
Convener
Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha
Sub: Some issues pertaining to Hindu Dharma and the Spiritual Fair at Chennai on 6 February 2009
Ref: Newspaper reports
6 February 2009
Pu. Swami ji
Namaste.
As you are aware, I have for several years been deeply concerned about the multiple threats to Hindu Dharma and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, which are in my view, interlinked. I have, in my own humble way, tried to inform public opinion about the nature and gravity of these threats, through every forum available to me.
It grieves me to say that in this task your perceptions and activities have diverged from what should have been a common goal and endeavour. As your current profile and actions can only compound confusion and further injure a seriously wounded Hindu civilisation that is fighting a crucial battle for survival in its own homeland, I am breaking decorum to bring my anxieties to your kind attention.
For this, I seek your forgiveness, as I am also making this letter public, both to reach a wider community of believers, as also to avoid the tragic failures of previous attempts to convey concerns over issues of critical concern to Hindu Dharma and its survival as a living, vibrant, and eternal non-monotheistic civilisation, and not a tailored-to-monotheistic-satisfaction contraption to which it is currently sought to be diminished.
Your tenure as Convener, Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, has witnessed the most grievous assaults upon the Hindu Dharma in India, and far from providing leadership and solace to this injured community in the manner best exemplified by Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh some centuries ago, you have assumed the most peculiar attitudes and adopted the most unacceptable associations in public life.
From the time of Rishi Yajnavalkya, Hindu tradition has upheld the right to dissent even against the respected teachers, and this principal of ensuring that the spiritual preceptors do not depart from Dharma is most avidly endorsed and upheld by the Jaina Sampradaya to which I belong. I therefore take the liberty to boldly assert my unhappiness about certain issues.
The media has carried a photograph of a Spiritual Fair (whatever that means) to showcase the Service work of 40-odd Hindu organisations, and dancer Padma Subrahmanyam addressed the media along with Swami Mitrananda. The reports say Swami Dayananda Saraswati of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha and "noted thinker" S. Gurumurthy will address the inauguration; the fair has been organised by the Chennai chapter of the Delhi-based Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony (GFCH).
Many things are amiss here, and before I address issues specific to the Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony, I must make a few basic points:-
r  The Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha (HDAS) was set up in 2002 as an apex body to represent the collective voice of Traditional Hindu Sampradayas, Mathams, Akharas, Peethas, etc. Your national and international status derives from being Convener of this august body of Hindu Dharma.
r  Far from representing and defending the collective consciousness of the nation-wide Hindu Samaj, the HDAS under your leadership has failed even to understand the challenges Hindu society has faced in the recent past.
r  The most singular failure is the inability to properly condemn, let alone fight, the ugly conspiracy that led to the arrest of Kanchi Shankaracharya Swami Jayendra Saraswati ji and the Bal Perivaar on cooked up murder charges.
r  Most unconscionable, however, is your persistent association on public platforms with the chartered accountant S. Gurumurthy and dancer Padma Subrahmanyam, who worked overtime to malign the Acharyas in Tamil society when this atrocity took place.
r  Shri Gurumurthy wrote a series of articles in a secular newspaper readily accessible to him to impute guilt upon the Acharyas, and even travelled to Delhi at the invitation of the BJP Think Tank (shame on Mr. Balbir Punj, MP) to tell aggrieved Hindus to 'kindly shut up because the Brahmin Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was going to prove the charges, just you wait.' Well, we have waited patiently for nearly five years, and the charges seem as pie-in-the-sky now as they seemed to us then.
r  Shri Gurumurthy even publicly announced that the Acharyas should abdicate their posts! On whose authority he said this, nobody knows, but when the Convener of the Acharya Sabha persistently hobnobs with such characters, questions must be asked about his own attitude towards Hindu Dharma and its revered Acharyas. Since private attempts to solicit answers and induce course corrections have met with rude contempt, it is time to go public.
r  Whatever her calibre as a dancer, Ms. Padma Subrahmanyam has no status on matters of Hindu Dharma. Yet it is said that you, as Convener, HDAS, sent her to represent Hindu Dharma in some bogus inter-faith dialogue with the Vatican in 2006! The veracity or otherwise of this information has been denied to us, despite persistent attempts, and is missing on the HDAS website.
r  Inter-faith dialogue, particularly negotiations that yield documents that can be said to be binding, are NOT part of your mandate as Convener of the Acharya Sabha. They are even more reprehensible when they are conducted in secret - without full-fledged discussion by all traditional mathams, peethams, Acharyas and concerned citizens within India regarding their objectives and purpose, especially if they are at all desirable, and if documents should be signed without nation-wide circulation and debate within India.
r  The Vatican meeting came to my notice in the course of a study about forced conversions in India. I was shocked to discover that not only does it accept the possibility of conversions to monotheistic faiths - a shocking divergence from the very purpose of the Acharya Sabha - but it accepts equal guilt and responsibility for sins committed by monotheistic faiths upon non-monotheistic traditions.
r  All private attempts to elicit clarifications about the circumstances and compelling reasons for thus subjugating Hindu Dharma to the Vatican have since failed, and I do hope that now you will throw some light on this subject.
r  My opposition to the Hindu-Jewish Summitry you have indulged in recently is well-known. I have also been angered by the excessive profile you permitted to non-Indian citizens - specifically American Jews and American citizens of Indian origin - on matters pertaining to Hindu Dharma.
r  Please do not try to tell me that Hindus are an international community like the Jews, Christians and Muslims. They are not. The fact that a large number of Hindus abandoned their matrubhoomi after independence - for better money alone (though some few geniuses only went for the work facilities then available abroad) - does not make us an international community.
r  As an Acharya who is well-versed in the Scriptures, moreover, you would be aware that according to the Hindu tradition, the Jambidwipa of Bharat is the only place in the world where Karmas can be expiated, and the karmic trajectory is the cornerstone of Hindu dharma. Certainly one can be a Hindu bhakta anywhere, but karmas can be worked out in Bharat Desh alone.
r  I personally believe that India has a moral responsibility and duty towards Hindu brothers sent to various colonies as indentured labour, and now settled there. In this regard I have spoken up for the Malaysian Hindus being harassed by the Islamic nation they reside in, and like many others I have noticed the deafening silence of the Acharya Sabha regarding their plight.
r  You have been equally silent about the aggression faced by Bangladeshi Hindus, who even now are suffering grievously, and have at this very moment approached me for help in their cause.
r  This solicitude cannot extend to the Hindus of America and Britain - because they did not leave the country under duress of any kind, but only out of personal greed and a deliberate dissociation from the problems of the country of their birth.
r  Worse, instigated no doubt by the governments of the countries they now belong to, they are trying to meddle in the polity, economy, and native religion of the abandoned motherland - to serve the geo-strategic interests of their new country.
r  By providing a platform to such persons, and by surreptitiously tailoring its own activities in support of their cause, the Acharya Sabha is doing a tremendous disservice to both Hindu Dharma and Bharat Desh.
r  Specific to the Jewish Summits, I will briefly say that the document signed in Delhi was prepared beforehand and had more American than Indian inputs, and the academic committee proposed had non-scholars from the Hindu side, including foreigners.
r  But the follow-up meeting in Jerusalem was really scandalous - we need to know who authorized the Acharya Sabha to tacitly agree that idol-worship is an abomination and that Hindus are not really idol-worshippers (whatever that means). Your assault upon the glorious tradition of murti-puja and all rituals and prayers associated with it, which give strength and vigour to our civilisation, calls for a personal explanation.
r  If Hindus are unacceptable to Jews because they worship the Divine in the nirguna and saguna aspects, then the Jews can go climb a tree. Certainly no Hindu Acharya can degrade or eliminate the saguna aspect of our tradition. By doing this, you have betrayed the whole Hindu civilisation across all Sampradayas, and you owe us an apology.
r  I shudder to think what concessions you are about to make to Islam in the course of your inter-faith jamborees - perhaps you are going to seek amnesty for all jihadis in Indian jails.
r  As for the Global Foundation for Civilisational Harmony, it describes itself as an umbrella organisation of "Eastern religions." The purpose of its exhibition is supposedly to "develop a dialogue between various cultures and faiths. According to the GFCH, all faiths are valid and all civilisations are needed to keep the earth colourful."
r  The choice of the term "Eastern religions" instead of Hindu or Indian sampradayas and panthas gives the game away. This is nothing but cheap Western Christian gibberish to position Christianity as an 'Eastern" faith and use that argument to impose it upon India.
r  Even if we accept the Jordan River and its whereabouts as part of the East, it still does not make Christianity (or Judaism or Islam) an Indian faith - hence there is no legitimacy to annihilate the Hindu Dharma in its own bhoomi. Yet Acharya Sabha under your leadership seems willing to facilitate such Western Christian colonial designs upon India.
r   The very stated objective of the Spiritual Fair is flawed. To accept the falsehood that Hinduism (why use this colonial term?) is just a ritualistic and spiritual religion, and then prove (to whom?) that Hindus also serve society, is extremely disrespectful of Hindu faith and society. The Hindu tradition of service is deeply entrenched and recorded in detail by all foreign travellers in ancient times, and in fact suffered only because of the disgraceful manner in which the British Raj ruined the princely states.
r  Indeed, you may like to ponder if the hype over globalisation in recent years was not just a ruse to further 'secularise' Hindu society and disempower the traditional Bania Communities which remained the main funding avenues of all the dharmic activities that have continued in India since independence. That is the only reason why the creepy Mukesh Ambani wanted to monopolise the retail trade and throw out all the traditional shopkeepers and vegetable vendors. He has been rightly cut to size.
r  The GFCH talks about planning similar fairs for Buddhist, Jain, Muslim and Christian organisations. I am astonished that the Bauddha, Jaina and Sikh sampradayas were not represented at this fair.
r  I am even more astonished to see Hindu faith traditions equated with monotheistic Islam and Christianity, both of which have a murderous history in India and unashamedly continue their physical and political assaults upon this country, with the full backing of the foreign powers that support conversions as a foreign policy objective.Â
r  The vacuous claim that all faiths are valid and needed to keep the earth colourful is actually a shameful act of disempowering Hindus who speak up and combat the cancer of conversions. If Acharya Sabha is joining the conversion club, this fact should at least be made known to the Hindu believers. If you are converting yourself into an all-religion club, then call yourself that, and move away from the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha.
Many more things agitate me, but this has already become a fairly substantial letter. I do hope that you will take this to the various sampradayas, mathams and peethas that comprise the Acharya Sabha and take the opinion of the revered Acharyas upon the issues raised, so that a wider debate is opened within the Hindu society about how best to face the myriad challenges to faith and country.
I apologize for any offence caused inadvertently, but the challenges to the nation are too grim to permit silence at this stage.
Warm regards and Namaskar
Sandhya Jain
Editor, www.vijayvaani.com
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->