Post 4/4
4. About something else I noticed in
indiafacts.co.in/are-indian-tribals-hindus-part-6/
Talageri repeats the christo-western de-heathenisation routine - other modern Hindus have sadly done so too, having been exposed to the same western "scholarship" on the subject and having imbibed it, as can happen to those with no first-person knowledge of/interacton with the Gods - by declaring local Hindoo manifestations of pan-Hindoo Vedic Gods to be merely a later superimposition of Vedic identities onto local Indians' "tribal" Gods. Utterly false. The Olympic Gods like Zeus and Athena etc who were manifest at sites in various cities and villages inside and even outside Greece are not suddenly local GrecoRoman/Mediterranean "tribal" Gods who merely had Zeus and Athena superimposed, they were from origin always Zeus and Athena and Apollo etc, and the locals knew that. (Not to be confused with later conflation of certain Celtic Gods with Olympic Gods by late Romans, which was a heathen tendency to try to identify one's own Gods in the actually-distinct Gods of others.)
The same is true about regional manifestations of pan-Taoist Gods in China and Taiwan. In every village and city, many prominent Taoist Gods would manifest and Taoist temples would be built at those sacred sites. These local manifestations had both the God's pan-Taoist name and the local manifestation's particular name, same as with Greek and Hindu Gods. But then, only heathens would know this.** That many local Tamil Hindoo village Gods and Goddesses are the same pan-Hindoo Vedic Gods is long known to Tamil Hindoo villagers. Even to this day, the Gods manifest in person regularly among their bhaktas, as part of their leela, as part of their living example embodying the ideals of the Hindoo Dharma, and no less to delight their Hindoo bhaktas.
[INSERTED -
** Repeat: In all such heathenisms, there are of course region-specific Gods too, like river, tree, grove, mountain or village-specific Hindoo Gods too etc. These are distinct Gods, and are thus not conflated by the heathens with those Gods known to manifest throughout the heathen nation. There are locally-manifesting pan-Hindoo Gods like Ayyappa, widely-manifesting pan-Hindoo Gods like the well-known ones, and locally-manifest local Hindoo Gods - still of Hindoo cosmology onlee - like many water or tree Gods or those who are chieftain of/preside over a specific region etc, or inhabit a specific region like Kannagi who is a Goddess known to Malayali and Tamil Hindoos and other parts of southern India.
One sees all these categories of Gods - pan-ranging/pan-manifesting, regionally-manifesting but still cosmic, or location-specific and locally known - in Shinto, Taoism and Hellenismos too. And these are all still regarded as single religions with pantheons that include all 3 categories of Gods.]
It's sad actually. Was happily following Talageri's series of articles on why Vanavasis are hyper-Hindoos (A: because the Vedic Gods ARE their ancestral Gods.)
I misconstrued his arguing from the western perspective of separate definitions - about "tribals" and "their religion" - as merely Talageri's clever way of proving, even from said western perspective, that the Vanavasi Hindoos were Vaidika Hindoos (heathens) as much as all other Hindoos. (From the Hindoo POV - including the Vanavasi Hindoo POV - the question does not even arise, as they've long known the Vedic Gods in person, as these manifest all over the sacred homeland/ancient regions of the Hindoo species, since all Hindoos are of them. The way the Taoist Gods are known the length and breadth of the regions historically inhabited by Chinese people.)
But turns out that that was not Talageri's intent or method after all. In this final article the realisation's set in that he actually views the matter from the outside.
The irony is that what is recorded in the Silappadikaaram about the Tamil Hindoo hunter community and its Vedic worship of their very Vedic Goddess (Durga), is actually true about the worship of Durga by Vanavasi Hindoos all over Bharatam: it is the same Durga of the Vedam, bearing all the marks seen in the Vedanta and indicating Hindoo cosmology onlee.
Pity that, at the end of the day, every modern Hindu nationalist writer - no matter how well-meaning - sells off the Hindoos and Hindoo heathenism. And it is always people who have never seen the Gods - that much is very clear - who do it. The others would know not to.
(And the number which advocate that Charvakans/Lokayata is "also Hindu, also Hinduism" - who are way too eager to keep bringing up that extinct anti-heathen movement, which only reconstructionists and de-heathenised refer to - seems to be indicative of modern tendencies, the direction of where all this is heading and the interests of the writers themselves.)
The future for heathenism - what some call "paganism" aka "polytheistic idolatry" - in India and hence among NRIs whose recent homeland is India looks very bleak. And not because of christianism or islam. But because of de-heathenisation.
I don't see heathenism in India surviving for anywhere near as long as the more optimistic have estimated. Wonder when "intellectuals" will turn to this urgent topic. Though I rather suspect they will never even notice it, the problem having already overtaken their own minds.
Southern Hindoos - being hyperheathens still - may do okay for a little while longer (remain heathens for longer/not de-heathenise immediately or as swiftly). But they are likely to eventually get dragged down into the muck by fellow Indians from the rest of the country, who like to speak on southern Hindoos' heathenism too and redefine it for them, the way Talageri has done ("Ayyappa is a 'tribal' god of Kerala" etc), as only Indians who don't know what they're talking about would do. (I mean, what would Talageri know about Ayyappa or even Murugan, who at least was historically known in other parts of India too.)
Older Tamil Hindoo settlements outside India (in Singapore etc) and their spiritual kindred in SE Asia will survive for longer still possibly (SE Asia by and large practices Hindoo heathenism introduced by Tamil Hindoos; actually the same is true of the Hindoo heathenism seen all the way to China along the same southern path). Ironically, there was a time - perhaps longer ago than I imagined so far - when other parts of India were as heathen as Tamil Hindoos are yet. The rate of de-heathenisation - and the inability for heathenism to compute to modern Indians - as seen in other parts of India is breathtakingly fast. I occasionally still come across instances of heathen Hindoos in more northern parts of India - Hindoos bearing Hindoo markings posing with a Hanuman moorti who's been garlanded and bathed in manjal by them. Perhaps they are Vanavasis - who are loyal to their Gods=heathenism for longer - and not urban people. Whereas in TN, even relatively large proportions of urban people are still extremely heathen.
All the "Hindu" intellectualism seen on the internet tends to be of the de-heathenised and de-heathenising Malhotra, Elst, Talageri etc etc kind, who produce de-heathenised "apologetics" which is no benefit to Hindoos and only repeatedly discounts and subverts living heathenism. The only heathen voices I find - you know, the polytheistic idolatrous kind with hyper-heathen POVs - tend to be exclusively from the southern parts of India, or otherwise Vanavasis like the ones who recently stuck up for their Durga Amman over the christo controversy created about Mahishasura Mardini at some christoislamicommunist university.
Of course, TN and the other southern states also produce English-speaking de-heathenised "intellectuals" flooding the internet and defining Hindoos' heathenism away into a new-ageism, or a conglomeration with unheathens or an atheism. But when I think of it, I haven't seen other parts of India producing visible heathens anymore who are active in English on the internet. Scratch the surface and they all turn out to be non-heathen, new-ageist, or of the Karyakarta kind (the best of the lot, btw) who argued that a Rama temple at Ayodhya was necessary for its symbolic value. [Say what you will, that last ain't heathen reasoning. Though it may be what passes for "Hindu nationalism" today.]
I'm not sure I ever read even one heathen from more northern parts vocalising -in English- on the internet. Sita Ram Goel - despite his reference to Krishna and Durga as his ishtadevams (but at least they were still Gods to him, not historical humans or otherwise deified etc) - doesn't count. He is of a generation from quite long ago, and he was an exception even then, which merely underlines the rule. Plus neither he nor Swarup ever wrote much/enough about a specific heathenism or Hindoo heathenism particularly - maybe because of their choice of target audience being English-speaking or otherwise 'progressive' types whom Goel and Swarup wanted to de-programme. The two usually merely wrote what happened to Hindus (and consequently Hinduism) under christoislam, communism and secularism.
If heathenism has stopped producing vocalists in other parts of India, that would explain A Lot. But it would also mean it was time for Hindoo heathens to tell Talageri etc to Shut Up about Ayyappa and the Hindoo heathenism of people in parts of India that the likes of him don't know. After all, in dismissing Vaidika Gods worshipped by Vanavasis as being "not originally Vedic", Talageri is no more favourable to Vanavasis' traditional views on Durga etc than aliens have been. Talageri etc are not representing such Hindoos; his descriptions/mere speculations about TN and Kerala certainly don't represent the local views of Ayyappa and Murugan. [Murugan is considered by Tamil Hindoos from the remotest TN village to be the same Kumara of Kalidasa, whereas people like Talageri tend to dismiss Murugan as being a local "tribal" Tamil God who merely had Kartikeya superimposed on him.*** Uh, remote Tamil Hindoo villagers still *see* Murugan, right? He still teaches them about himself and who he is (Hindoo=Vedic cosmology onlee), because he is deeply attached to Tamil Hindoos because they are deeply attached to him. There's a reason why Tamil Hindoo villagers know full well that Murugan is the same as the Vedic God called Kartikeya/Kumara - the very names seen in Tamizh language folk songs - and why such Tamil Hindoo villagers consider themselves Hindoos=of the Vedic religion and not of any suddenly-invented, backprojected "dravidian" (or Buddhist etc) religion. Parallel arguments for Ayyappa.] Again, while Talageri etc will never know this, he and like-minded only have the Right To Shut Up about it. Other Indians need to stop talking about things they don't know and too far removed from their ken/ability to compute. And in that vein: stop selling the history of TN/Kerala - and all of southern India in general - to Buddhism and Jainism. I mean, even today, the northern parts of India - well, the vocalists certainly - are more Bauddhified (even swearing by the invented multiple Buddhas etc) than the southern states.
ADDED:
*** Talageri and the like seem to imagine that southern regions where Murugan=Subrahmanya is so conspicuously prominent must for this reason be unique/a special case (hence Talageri and the like 'tribalising' a pan-Hindoo God). Except that it is not the south that has changed, but rather that it has remained constant: Murugan worship has remained alive and fully so in southern parts, noticeably in Tamil regions (and ancient Tamil Hindoo literature already knows that Murugan is Kartikeya, so there is no question of who Murugan is: he IS the Vedic God Kumara). It is the more *northern* parts of India that have ceased to maintain their once equally-intimate familiarity with Murugan=Guha. Talageri wouldn't be drawing his conclusions about how 'Murugan must be a Tamil "tribal" God' if Kartikeya worship had remained constant in northern regions of Bharatam too instead of dwindling there due to whatever reasons.
4. About something else I noticed in
indiafacts.co.in/are-indian-tribals-hindus-part-6/
Talageri repeats the christo-western de-heathenisation routine - other modern Hindus have sadly done so too, having been exposed to the same western "scholarship" on the subject and having imbibed it, as can happen to those with no first-person knowledge of/interacton with the Gods - by declaring local Hindoo manifestations of pan-Hindoo Vedic Gods to be merely a later superimposition of Vedic identities onto local Indians' "tribal" Gods. Utterly false. The Olympic Gods like Zeus and Athena etc who were manifest at sites in various cities and villages inside and even outside Greece are not suddenly local GrecoRoman/Mediterranean "tribal" Gods who merely had Zeus and Athena superimposed, they were from origin always Zeus and Athena and Apollo etc, and the locals knew that. (Not to be confused with later conflation of certain Celtic Gods with Olympic Gods by late Romans, which was a heathen tendency to try to identify one's own Gods in the actually-distinct Gods of others.)
The same is true about regional manifestations of pan-Taoist Gods in China and Taiwan. In every village and city, many prominent Taoist Gods would manifest and Taoist temples would be built at those sacred sites. These local manifestations had both the God's pan-Taoist name and the local manifestation's particular name, same as with Greek and Hindu Gods. But then, only heathens would know this.** That many local Tamil Hindoo village Gods and Goddesses are the same pan-Hindoo Vedic Gods is long known to Tamil Hindoo villagers. Even to this day, the Gods manifest in person regularly among their bhaktas, as part of their leela, as part of their living example embodying the ideals of the Hindoo Dharma, and no less to delight their Hindoo bhaktas.
[INSERTED -
** Repeat: In all such heathenisms, there are of course region-specific Gods too, like river, tree, grove, mountain or village-specific Hindoo Gods too etc. These are distinct Gods, and are thus not conflated by the heathens with those Gods known to manifest throughout the heathen nation. There are locally-manifesting pan-Hindoo Gods like Ayyappa, widely-manifesting pan-Hindoo Gods like the well-known ones, and locally-manifest local Hindoo Gods - still of Hindoo cosmology onlee - like many water or tree Gods or those who are chieftain of/preside over a specific region etc, or inhabit a specific region like Kannagi who is a Goddess known to Malayali and Tamil Hindoos and other parts of southern India.
One sees all these categories of Gods - pan-ranging/pan-manifesting, regionally-manifesting but still cosmic, or location-specific and locally known - in Shinto, Taoism and Hellenismos too. And these are all still regarded as single religions with pantheons that include all 3 categories of Gods.]
It's sad actually. Was happily following Talageri's series of articles on why Vanavasis are hyper-Hindoos (A: because the Vedic Gods ARE their ancestral Gods.)
I misconstrued his arguing from the western perspective of separate definitions - about "tribals" and "their religion" - as merely Talageri's clever way of proving, even from said western perspective, that the Vanavasi Hindoos were Vaidika Hindoos (heathens) as much as all other Hindoos. (From the Hindoo POV - including the Vanavasi Hindoo POV - the question does not even arise, as they've long known the Vedic Gods in person, as these manifest all over the sacred homeland/ancient regions of the Hindoo species, since all Hindoos are of them. The way the Taoist Gods are known the length and breadth of the regions historically inhabited by Chinese people.)
But turns out that that was not Talageri's intent or method after all. In this final article the realisation's set in that he actually views the matter from the outside.
The irony is that what is recorded in the Silappadikaaram about the Tamil Hindoo hunter community and its Vedic worship of their very Vedic Goddess (Durga), is actually true about the worship of Durga by Vanavasi Hindoos all over Bharatam: it is the same Durga of the Vedam, bearing all the marks seen in the Vedanta and indicating Hindoo cosmology onlee.
Pity that, at the end of the day, every modern Hindu nationalist writer - no matter how well-meaning - sells off the Hindoos and Hindoo heathenism. And it is always people who have never seen the Gods - that much is very clear - who do it. The others would know not to.
(And the number which advocate that Charvakans/Lokayata is "also Hindu, also Hinduism" - who are way too eager to keep bringing up that extinct anti-heathen movement, which only reconstructionists and de-heathenised refer to - seems to be indicative of modern tendencies, the direction of where all this is heading and the interests of the writers themselves.)
The future for heathenism - what some call "paganism" aka "polytheistic idolatry" - in India and hence among NRIs whose recent homeland is India looks very bleak. And not because of christianism or islam. But because of de-heathenisation.
I don't see heathenism in India surviving for anywhere near as long as the more optimistic have estimated. Wonder when "intellectuals" will turn to this urgent topic. Though I rather suspect they will never even notice it, the problem having already overtaken their own minds.
Southern Hindoos - being hyperheathens still - may do okay for a little while longer (remain heathens for longer/not de-heathenise immediately or as swiftly). But they are likely to eventually get dragged down into the muck by fellow Indians from the rest of the country, who like to speak on southern Hindoos' heathenism too and redefine it for them, the way Talageri has done ("Ayyappa is a 'tribal' god of Kerala" etc), as only Indians who don't know what they're talking about would do. (I mean, what would Talageri know about Ayyappa or even Murugan, who at least was historically known in other parts of India too.)
Older Tamil Hindoo settlements outside India (in Singapore etc) and their spiritual kindred in SE Asia will survive for longer still possibly (SE Asia by and large practices Hindoo heathenism introduced by Tamil Hindoos; actually the same is true of the Hindoo heathenism seen all the way to China along the same southern path). Ironically, there was a time - perhaps longer ago than I imagined so far - when other parts of India were as heathen as Tamil Hindoos are yet. The rate of de-heathenisation - and the inability for heathenism to compute to modern Indians - as seen in other parts of India is breathtakingly fast. I occasionally still come across instances of heathen Hindoos in more northern parts of India - Hindoos bearing Hindoo markings posing with a Hanuman moorti who's been garlanded and bathed in manjal by them. Perhaps they are Vanavasis - who are loyal to their Gods=heathenism for longer - and not urban people. Whereas in TN, even relatively large proportions of urban people are still extremely heathen.
All the "Hindu" intellectualism seen on the internet tends to be of the de-heathenised and de-heathenising Malhotra, Elst, Talageri etc etc kind, who produce de-heathenised "apologetics" which is no benefit to Hindoos and only repeatedly discounts and subverts living heathenism. The only heathen voices I find - you know, the polytheistic idolatrous kind with hyper-heathen POVs - tend to be exclusively from the southern parts of India, or otherwise Vanavasis like the ones who recently stuck up for their Durga Amman over the christo controversy created about Mahishasura Mardini at some christoislamicommunist university.
Of course, TN and the other southern states also produce English-speaking de-heathenised "intellectuals" flooding the internet and defining Hindoos' heathenism away into a new-ageism, or a conglomeration with unheathens or an atheism. But when I think of it, I haven't seen other parts of India producing visible heathens anymore who are active in English on the internet. Scratch the surface and they all turn out to be non-heathen, new-ageist, or of the Karyakarta kind (the best of the lot, btw) who argued that a Rama temple at Ayodhya was necessary for its symbolic value. [Say what you will, that last ain't heathen reasoning. Though it may be what passes for "Hindu nationalism" today.]
I'm not sure I ever read even one heathen from more northern parts vocalising -in English- on the internet. Sita Ram Goel - despite his reference to Krishna and Durga as his ishtadevams (but at least they were still Gods to him, not historical humans or otherwise deified etc) - doesn't count. He is of a generation from quite long ago, and he was an exception even then, which merely underlines the rule. Plus neither he nor Swarup ever wrote much/enough about a specific heathenism or Hindoo heathenism particularly - maybe because of their choice of target audience being English-speaking or otherwise 'progressive' types whom Goel and Swarup wanted to de-programme. The two usually merely wrote what happened to Hindus (and consequently Hinduism) under christoislam, communism and secularism.
If heathenism has stopped producing vocalists in other parts of India, that would explain A Lot. But it would also mean it was time for Hindoo heathens to tell Talageri etc to Shut Up about Ayyappa and the Hindoo heathenism of people in parts of India that the likes of him don't know. After all, in dismissing Vaidika Gods worshipped by Vanavasis as being "not originally Vedic", Talageri is no more favourable to Vanavasis' traditional views on Durga etc than aliens have been. Talageri etc are not representing such Hindoos; his descriptions/mere speculations about TN and Kerala certainly don't represent the local views of Ayyappa and Murugan. [Murugan is considered by Tamil Hindoos from the remotest TN village to be the same Kumara of Kalidasa, whereas people like Talageri tend to dismiss Murugan as being a local "tribal" Tamil God who merely had Kartikeya superimposed on him.*** Uh, remote Tamil Hindoo villagers still *see* Murugan, right? He still teaches them about himself and who he is (Hindoo=Vedic cosmology onlee), because he is deeply attached to Tamil Hindoos because they are deeply attached to him. There's a reason why Tamil Hindoo villagers know full well that Murugan is the same as the Vedic God called Kartikeya/Kumara - the very names seen in Tamizh language folk songs - and why such Tamil Hindoo villagers consider themselves Hindoos=of the Vedic religion and not of any suddenly-invented, backprojected "dravidian" (or Buddhist etc) religion. Parallel arguments for Ayyappa.] Again, while Talageri etc will never know this, he and like-minded only have the Right To Shut Up about it. Other Indians need to stop talking about things they don't know and too far removed from their ken/ability to compute. And in that vein: stop selling the history of TN/Kerala - and all of southern India in general - to Buddhism and Jainism. I mean, even today, the northern parts of India - well, the vocalists certainly - are more Bauddhified (even swearing by the invented multiple Buddhas etc) than the southern states.
ADDED:
*** Talageri and the like seem to imagine that southern regions where Murugan=Subrahmanya is so conspicuously prominent must for this reason be unique/a special case (hence Talageri and the like 'tribalising' a pan-Hindoo God). Except that it is not the south that has changed, but rather that it has remained constant: Murugan worship has remained alive and fully so in southern parts, noticeably in Tamil regions (and ancient Tamil Hindoo literature already knows that Murugan is Kartikeya, so there is no question of who Murugan is: he IS the Vedic God Kumara). It is the more *northern* parts of India that have ceased to maintain their once equally-intimate familiarity with Murugan=Guha. Talageri wouldn't be drawing his conclusions about how 'Murugan must be a Tamil "tribal" God' if Kartikeya worship had remained constant in northern regions of Bharatam too instead of dwindling there due to whatever reasons.