MY MOTHERLAND ... 39
Hypocritical goodness is not spirituality. Falsity is not piety. Virtue demands the maintenance of truth at all costs except when combating a treacherous enemy who rampantly resorts to lies.
Appearance is not reality and deception must be tackled with counter measures that foil it. Such engagement with untruth necessitates the principles of realpolitik and mere simplistic adherence to truth as Mahatma Gandhi chose to do at pertinent times would be deemed adharma. This is where goodness often loses out to evil when it chooses to hold on to truth come what may and the adversary gets the upper hand to deal the death blow.
When Prithviraj Chauhan defeated Muhammad Ghori in the First Battle of Terrain in 1191, he graciously granted his enemy life and allowed him, laden with goodwill gifts, safe passage back home. This was deemed politically prudent and culturally befitting for gracious India. And how did the enemy reciprocate such friendliness? The following year Ghori returned with a vaster army better prepared to deal Chauhan the death blow in the Second Battle of Terrain, captured and killed the Indian king, and gradually established mastery over the whole of Northern India to let his representative Qutub-ud-din Aibak found the Slave Dynasty. Thus was India enslaved owing to her inability to harden her heart to the ruthless enemy who would chain her for good. Centuries of cultural repression followed, centuries of political enslavement. Dharma? Where was dharma in this weakness that masqueraded as generosity? Where was Krishna Neeti, Chanakya Neeti that called for ruthless elimination of the enemy that was poised to destroy us?
The Rajputs often made this chivalrous gesture to the enemy and allowed them freedom after defeating them in battle. This was part of the kshatriya culture, the common code of conduct in war. But the barbarous tribes that invaded India from her north-west did not follow any such moral code beyond what their religion commanded them to do, which was to hunt down the infidel wherever he be and to put him to the sword in case he resisted conversion, and for this great act of grace upon the idolatrous infidel, heaven would be there for the warrior of the desert Lord after death, waiting with open arms and offering great pleasure.
Hindus are confused about their spiritual ideals and their identity thereof. Personal idealism is one but its collective application quite another. The latter, a derivative of the former, may be radically different from the former, depending on circumstance. This is called Rajneeti or statecraft which many a gullible Hindu king or leader has historically failed to understand. The result has been Hindu annihilation over centuries, enslavement and the eventual dismemberment of our motherland.
Valour alone does not win the day when the forces arrayed against one in this world of deceptive dreams and dubious designs are manipulating one's downfall through every possible deceit. To understand the enemy one has to understand life itself and the character of the universe forged in a curious admixture of truth and untruth.
Simplistic idealism as characterises the gullible Hindu only leads to suicide. Love for the enemy is a false principle to work on in political life. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and ruthless elimination of the enemy, within the bounds of real dharma and not arbitrary assumptions of it as suit one's temperament, the art of statecraft that preserves such freedom. Hence, the entire edifice of Gandhian philosophy in its puerile application flounders and fails to achieve its objective even as the principles themselves are exposed as being philosophically flawed.
The Hindu has historically been confused about his spiritual duties when faced with a political crisis. This has been on account of the vastness and complexity of the Sanatan Dharma whose abstruse principles are not only difficult to comprehend but their correct application difficult to determine for they so often run apparently contrary to each other, enjoining adherents to act along divergent directions in response to an emerging situation. This is the Hindu's persisting predicament for he is eternally battling diverging ideas to gain a footing in his dharma, his understanding of his particular duties in a given situation and his required responses thereof.
In ordinary life we see the Hindu child being brought up on a diet of weakening, paralysing ideas of passive piety, supposed largeness of the spirit, the all-embracing ideas of spiritual acceptance, forgiveness and truthfulness, the falsity of calling every religion as true that calls his own one invariably as false, though, and the selective doctrine of non-violence towards the enemy who is violently poised to deliver the death blow, though. This has generated a population of self-deluded quasi-idealists who care not to look upon the real truth as obtains in life straight in the eye and prefer to live in the fool's paradise of delusive dreams tending to destruction. And this dangerous training of an entire people in principles opposed to the fundamental tenets of the Sanatan Dharma, as interpreted by its greatest commentator ever, Sri Krishna, and corroborated over millenia by seminal sages and saints who have upheld the kshatriya dharma, and culminating in that brightest sage of all, the Swami Vivekananda, who exhorted the nation to fight off the colonial aggressors with force, violent and non-violent both, has been the legacy left us by the Mahatma of our times which has so poisoned our system that we forever dwell in the delusions of non-violence and passive resistance to calamitous consequences for our motherland. And this we must reverse.
It is a tall order to attempt but it shall surely come to pass. Generations of degradation bring a people to death's door till it fights off the virus and rejuvenates itself. So must we raise ourselves from this debilitation by rejecting silly soft sentimentality of poetry, music and dance and their conjoined expression in nerve-sickening cinema and advertisement, with commercial corruption aimed at profit and pleasure their ultimate end, and all perversion of the human spirit that makes matter the sovereign Lord of life. This we must do, and this we will by banishing all effeminacy that affects us, all toxicity that has penetrated our nerves, camouflaged as cultural compositions, be they poetic, musical, artistic or intellectual. What we need is virility, the call of the blazing fire within that burns all the dross of matter and renders man whole without a trace of weakness that stunts the glory that is manhood. It is, indeed, a tall order for a nation gone wrong, a nation that is composed of masses of weaklings dancing to the tune of sensory delights till death seizes the nation untimely.
History has been harsh to us over millenia and, yet, we refuse to learn. Such is the paralysed state of our collective existence that a reaffirmation of the kshatriya dharma of purity, valour, self-dignity and strength -- not the Tagorean or the Gandhian version of it but that of Maharana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Rani Lakshmibai and Guru Gobind Singh -- is the call of the hour and the antidote to all our sterile dreams. For a nation cannot rise in weakness or in supposed strength by poets and philosophers but a nation rises only when millions are ready to live and die for it unhesitatingly at a moment's notice.
Millions of sheep do not make a nation great but a few lions and their leonine lineage can in course of time alter its destiny. It is, therefore, meet that we revert to our ancient tradition of the kshatriya culture and rebuild our motherland along her pristine principles of purity and power, service and sacrifice, and the ability to shed our own blood and that of the enemy in the defence of the dharma, our culture and our heritage, and the sanctity of the sovereign being of our lives, our motherland.
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj who met Mughal deception with equal deception, did guerrilla warfare to combat the enemy's vast army and used every tool of realpolitik within bounds of the valorous kshatriya culture to confound the enemy. Thus was he successful in creating the nucleus of the powerful Maratha kingdom that soon sounded the death-knell of the Mughal empire.
Hypocritical goodness is not spirituality. Falsity is not piety. Virtue demands the maintenance of truth at all costs except when combating a treacherous enemy who rampantly resorts to lies.
Appearance is not reality and deception must be tackled with counter measures that foil it. Such engagement with untruth necessitates the principles of realpolitik and mere simplistic adherence to truth as Mahatma Gandhi chose to do at pertinent times would be deemed adharma. This is where goodness often loses out to evil when it chooses to hold on to truth come what may and the adversary gets the upper hand to deal the death blow.
When Prithviraj Chauhan defeated Muhammad Ghori in the First Battle of Terrain in 1191, he graciously granted his enemy life and allowed him, laden with goodwill gifts, safe passage back home. This was deemed politically prudent and culturally befitting for gracious India. And how did the enemy reciprocate such friendliness? The following year Ghori returned with a vaster army better prepared to deal Chauhan the death blow in the Second Battle of Terrain, captured and killed the Indian king, and gradually established mastery over the whole of Northern India to let his representative Qutub-ud-din Aibak found the Slave Dynasty. Thus was India enslaved owing to her inability to harden her heart to the ruthless enemy who would chain her for good. Centuries of cultural repression followed, centuries of political enslavement. Dharma? Where was dharma in this weakness that masqueraded as generosity? Where was Krishna Neeti, Chanakya Neeti that called for ruthless elimination of the enemy that was poised to destroy us?
The Rajputs often made this chivalrous gesture to the enemy and allowed them freedom after defeating them in battle. This was part of the kshatriya culture, the common code of conduct in war. But the barbarous tribes that invaded India from her north-west did not follow any such moral code beyond what their religion commanded them to do, which was to hunt down the infidel wherever he be and to put him to the sword in case he resisted conversion, and for this great act of grace upon the idolatrous infidel, heaven would be there for the warrior of the desert Lord after death, waiting with open arms and offering great pleasure.
Hindus are confused about their spiritual ideals and their identity thereof. Personal idealism is one but its collective application quite another. The latter, a derivative of the former, may be radically different from the former, depending on circumstance. This is called Rajneeti or statecraft which many a gullible Hindu king or leader has historically failed to understand. The result has been Hindu annihilation over centuries, enslavement and the eventual dismemberment of our motherland.
Valour alone does not win the day when the forces arrayed against one in this world of deceptive dreams and dubious designs are manipulating one's downfall through every possible deceit. To understand the enemy one has to understand life itself and the character of the universe forged in a curious admixture of truth and untruth.
Simplistic idealism as characterises the gullible Hindu only leads to suicide. Love for the enemy is a false principle to work on in political life. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and ruthless elimination of the enemy, within the bounds of real dharma and not arbitrary assumptions of it as suit one's temperament, the art of statecraft that preserves such freedom. Hence, the entire edifice of Gandhian philosophy in its puerile application flounders and fails to achieve its objective even as the principles themselves are exposed as being philosophically flawed.
The Hindu has historically been confused about his spiritual duties when faced with a political crisis. This has been on account of the vastness and complexity of the Sanatan Dharma whose abstruse principles are not only difficult to comprehend but their correct application difficult to determine for they so often run apparently contrary to each other, enjoining adherents to act along divergent directions in response to an emerging situation. This is the Hindu's persisting predicament for he is eternally battling diverging ideas to gain a footing in his dharma, his understanding of his particular duties in a given situation and his required responses thereof.
In ordinary life we see the Hindu child being brought up on a diet of weakening, paralysing ideas of passive piety, supposed largeness of the spirit, the all-embracing ideas of spiritual acceptance, forgiveness and truthfulness, the falsity of calling every religion as true that calls his own one invariably as false, though, and the selective doctrine of non-violence towards the enemy who is violently poised to deliver the death blow, though. This has generated a population of self-deluded quasi-idealists who care not to look upon the real truth as obtains in life straight in the eye and prefer to live in the fool's paradise of delusive dreams tending to destruction. And this dangerous training of an entire people in principles opposed to the fundamental tenets of the Sanatan Dharma, as interpreted by its greatest commentator ever, Sri Krishna, and corroborated over millenia by seminal sages and saints who have upheld the kshatriya dharma, and culminating in that brightest sage of all, the Swami Vivekananda, who exhorted the nation to fight off the colonial aggressors with force, violent and non-violent both, has been the legacy left us by the Mahatma of our times which has so poisoned our system that we forever dwell in the delusions of non-violence and passive resistance to calamitous consequences for our motherland. And this we must reverse.
It is a tall order to attempt but it shall surely come to pass. Generations of degradation bring a people to death's door till it fights off the virus and rejuvenates itself. So must we raise ourselves from this debilitation by rejecting silly soft sentimentality of poetry, music and dance and their conjoined expression in nerve-sickening cinema and advertisement, with commercial corruption aimed at profit and pleasure their ultimate end, and all perversion of the human spirit that makes matter the sovereign Lord of life. This we must do, and this we will by banishing all effeminacy that affects us, all toxicity that has penetrated our nerves, camouflaged as cultural compositions, be they poetic, musical, artistic or intellectual. What we need is virility, the call of the blazing fire within that burns all the dross of matter and renders man whole without a trace of weakness that stunts the glory that is manhood. It is, indeed, a tall order for a nation gone wrong, a nation that is composed of masses of weaklings dancing to the tune of sensory delights till death seizes the nation untimely.
History has been harsh to us over millenia and, yet, we refuse to learn. Such is the paralysed state of our collective existence that a reaffirmation of the kshatriya dharma of purity, valour, self-dignity and strength -- not the Tagorean or the Gandhian version of it but that of Maharana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Rani Lakshmibai and Guru Gobind Singh -- is the call of the hour and the antidote to all our sterile dreams. For a nation cannot rise in weakness or in supposed strength by poets and philosophers but a nation rises only when millions are ready to live and die for it unhesitatingly at a moment's notice.
Millions of sheep do not make a nation great but a few lions and their leonine lineage can in course of time alter its destiny. It is, therefore, meet that we revert to our ancient tradition of the kshatriya culture and rebuild our motherland along her pristine principles of purity and power, service and sacrifice, and the ability to shed our own blood and that of the enemy in the defence of the dharma, our culture and our heritage, and the sanctity of the sovereign being of our lives, our motherland.
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj who met Mughal deception with equal deception, did guerrilla warfare to combat the enemy's vast army and used every tool of realpolitik within bounds of the valorous kshatriya culture to confound the enemy. Thus was he successful in creating the nucleus of the powerful Maratha kingdom that soon sounded the death-knell of the Mughal empire.
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