MESSAGES GALORE ... 55
Tuesday 31 October 2023
YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW [EDITED]
YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW [EDITED]
When people pray, they commune with the one and only God who resides in the human heart. But when they rationalise thereafter, it is then that they create divisions, distinctions and differences that lead to sectarian rivalry, hatred and violence.
The human heart is organically the same for all but conditioning of the human mind differs from place to place, time to time, culture to culture. If religion were left to individuals to be pursued as personal endeavour, much of the evil centring it would have not been. It is institutionalising of religion that has caused all the mischief and created seemingly unbridgeable barriers between man and man.
Yet, we have to work through these divisions, for the gregarious nature of the human species necessitates the formation of groups and human society inevitably throws up cultural collections as religious sects which become the mainstay of religion, develop multifarious excellence of art and architecture centring religion but which dilute the standard of spiritual perception through their programmes of scriptural indoctrination and regimentation of the flock along lines of structural suitability and organisational interests.
Sages and saints, though, transcend these societal impositions and the doctrinaire cult to strike the core of their human consciousness and arrive at the universal religion of love and knowledge. But their followers subsisting at lower planes of consciousness pollute their thought in due course of time by the rationalisation process and by routinising the spiritual culture to hold the flock. This has been the lot of all great spiritual movements which began on the high note of inspiration of a seer but which inevitably petered out into a socio-political movement of sorts with spirituality remaining a fringe element. Thus, with the existence of so many world religions humankind remains hopelessly divided along lines of warring ideologies centring a God whose children we all supposedly are. And this God is the God of love and mercy that knows no bounds by scriptural admission barring those of exclusive Abrahamic faiths whose God divides humanity between the heaven-bound faithful and the hell-bound infidel! And thus has history borne testimony to religious carnage that have wiped off populations, destroyed civilisations and rendered human life unbearable for centuries at a time. But their day is done and all past superstition must give way before the deluge of scientific knowledge and the universal symphony of the Vedanta orchestrated by Ramakrishna-Vivekananda.
Change, however, will not be easy, for scientific advancement and technological progress cannot arbitrarily quicken organic evolution of the human species. Superstitions deeply ingrained in the mind of man take millenia to drain out and no amount of rationalisation may help evolve men to see reason. Or, if even they be convinced by the force of reason to behold their superstitious folly, they are powerless against past habit to shake off enmasse the dead weight of their ignorance. Such is the plight of man caught in the dualistic trap of religious superstition ever fuelled by nefarious elements to perpetuate the sorrowful state of things for their own ends.
Progress must then necessarily be slow in order to ease out age-old superstitions of bondage to an extra-cosmic Being governing the fate of man. It will take ages for all of humanity to come to the understanding that their fates lie in their own hands and not in any outside agency however potent. But the effort must be on to rationalise education along Vedantic lines so that children may grow up free of fear and superstition and with the notion of their inherent freedom of soul that they may be better equipped to battle against the inequities of life. However, this very endeavour to sanitise the academic process will meet with the stiffest resistance from all that is dubious in tradition and will have to be carried out with circumspection and care. And all this will be a painfully slow process much to the disappointment of those hyper-energetic activists who would grant you the millenium in a trice.
So, onward with the work of slow transformation of society along lines laid down by the Rishis of India ages ago when they trumpeted the spiritual oneness of sentience, nay, of all phenomena, and declared in the forest retreats and in the hills and dales that man is divine, that divinity is his birthright, that he is born of bliss and not of sin, that his earthly folly is his hallucination fraught with ignorance and not his fall from Paradise, that he is the ever-free Atman (Self), pure and effulgent and beyond all sin, that he is the maker of his own God and no God save he himself and his karma has any power over him.
This is a tall order to achieve and needs the lifeblood of thousands of spiritual heroes who will sacrifice their all to bring about the regeneration of humanity. A spiritual renaissance it will be for mankind considering that such an awakening had come about in grand old India millenia ago when the Sanatan Dharma (Eternal Religion) had been discovered on the banks of the Saraswati and the Ganga and in the high hills of the Himalayas and whose catholic principles had been lived out in the plains of the Ganga and the Sindhu (Indus) before the ravages of time sent India careering into the dark abyss of self-oblivion, a state compounded worse by machinations of foreign powers attempting to subvert the Indian spiritual culture through enforced conversion and crafty ideological indoctrination.
But let none conclude that thereby India had lost her spiritual moorings. Life on the outside had been touched by the foreign aggressors. Millions had been converted to the Abrahamic religions Islam and Christianity by force or by circumstance. But the philosophical undercurrent of the Indian race had remained untouched for the vast majority of the population. This was because the Indian religion, that is, the religion of the Vedas, is fundamentally free of institutions and its intangible element being too subtle for comprehension by aggressors abounding in grossness was beyond the ruinous range of their arsenal. Thus, destruction and desecration of stone temples and images could scarce sully the Indian ideal of the free spirit of man where enshrined lies the indestructible Self in its own majesty.
Each soul is the sanctum sanctorum of the Most High, each form the temple of the Divine. And, to teach these in times of great spiritual peril for the Indian race, a succession of sages and saints, prophets and incarnations trod the holy land, the Punyabhumi Bharatvarsha, resurrecting the Eternal Religion and breathing fresh life into it. Thus has spiritual life been through its ebb and tide in India, without it ever giving way to wholesale materialism as in other lands, although, its flow has been inconsistent following the dynamics of time, now a river narrowing up in the summer heat, now a river in spate deluging all with its monsoon current. But through it all India has held on fast to religion as the very basis of her national life and the vicissitudes of time could scarce make a dent in the fabric of her spiritual being. And where it at all did so, the outcome of the clash of spiritual forces was that the ancient religion of the Hindus sucked up the new movements of the Spirit, absorbed them and assimilated them, and in its wake freshened them with the touch of the eternal Self that animates the soul of the religion of the Vedas.
India has been saved by the Rishis of yore and her peoples have lived the spiritual life down the ages prior to alien invasion in peace and harmony although there were a thousand different sects operating within the ambit of the Mother Religion. Unity in diversity has been the call of India ever with her catholic spirit accepting, perhaps in ignorance of their scriptural texts, all religions as true, be they bred in India or elsewhere. The call of the Spirit has been honoured in India like nowhere else. Here alone we hear the Upanishads declare in trumpet voice, "Hear ye, O peoples of the world who art the children of immortality. Even ye hear that reside in higher spheres. I have known the Great Being whose colour is of the radiant sun and who resides beyond the realm of darkness. Thou too shalt have to know Him if ye shalt conquer death. There is no other way."
Time it is that this message of the Shvetashwatar Upanishad addressing humanity as children of immortality is disseminated across the wide world, that this uplifting hopeful principle of the Vedanta will raise the consciousness of man by whatsoever measure and help usher in a golden age of peace and light, amity and goodwill in the remote future when man will have learnt to live with brother man in love and not in hate, respecting each other's difference of perspective in the envisioning of the same integral truth. Now no hour of rest. Upon our labour of love lies the fulfilment of the future age, the birth of a peaceful posterity. Shall we fail our children? No, certainly not.
So, friends, let us combine the forces of good, as Vivekananda was wont to saying, and combat the prevailing darkness of the world that the light of the coming age may shine through the future inhabitants of this storm-tossed planet and render them whole, that fratricidal battles may be a distant nightmare never to haunt humanity for ages to come and that civilisation may for once get a chance to speak for itself.
Jai Ma! Jai Ramakrishna! Jai Swamiji! Victory to humanity! 🕉
Written by Sugata Bose
Sunday 29 October 2023
ভাববার বিষয় ... ১
ভাববার বিষয় ... ১
--------------------
আমরা বড় হালকা জাতি, গুণগত উৎকর্ষ বুঝি না, তার ধারও ধারী না | যাকে চিনি তাকেই আরো চিনব, জানব, অভিজ্ঞতার বিস্তার করব না | তাই নেতাজী, স্বামীজী, ঠাকুর অথবা মায়ের ওপর লিখলে দেখি 'লাইক'এর ঢল নেমে আসে কিন্তু অন্য কোনো বিষয়ে লিখলে তেমন সাড়া পাই না |
ছবির দাস আমরা, এমনই লঘুচিত্ত | লেখায় ছবি যুক্ত করলে লেখা ছেড়ে ছবি দেখেই সঙ্গে সঙ্গে 'লাইক' ও গতানুগতিক মন্তব্য, 'জয় মা', 'জয় ঠাকুর', 'জয়তু স্বামীজী', 'জয় হিন্দ' ইত্যাদি |
আমরা তো মোটামুটি শিক্ষিতজন | তাহলে আমাদের সংস্কৃতির, ব্যবহারের এ হাল কেন ? ভাববার বিষয় |
রচয়িতা: সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
আমি কি গাইতে জানি গান ?
আমি কি গাইতে জানি গান ?
------------------------------
গান তার হবে যার কানে সুর আছে | ৩৬৫ দিন গলা সাধলে কন্ঠ তৈরি হবে ঠিকই কিন্তু কানের অভাবে সংগীত কস্মিনকালেও ত্রিসীমানার মধ্যে আসবে না | এ এক সূক্ষ্ম বোধ যা সৌন্দর্যবোধেরই রূপান্তর সুরের মাধ্যমে, যা স্থূলসাধনার অতীত |
হিন্দুস্তানী শাস্ত্রীয় সংগীত মেরে ধরে হয় না | সূক্ষ্ম শিল্পবোধ চাই | চাই নিরন্তর বিস্তারের স্বকীয় ক্ষমতা, সৃজনশীলতা | এ বস্তু শেখানো যায় না, শেখাও যায় না | এ গুণটি নিয়ে জন্মাতে হয় | এরই নাম প্রতিভা যার অভাবে মধ্যমার্গের শিল্পীতে আজ সংগীতজগত ভরে গেছে |
এই প্রবন্ধের শীর্ষকটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ, মননযোগ্য | যাঁরা উত্তর ভারতীয় উচ্চাঙ্গ সংগীত চর্চা করেন তাঁদের ভেবে দেখা উচিত তাঁদের এই বিদ্যা আয়ত্ত করে পরিবেশন করার যোগ্যতা কতটা | নিছক তানকর্তব করলেই তো সংগীত হল না | তানকারী তো রাগদারী নয় | রাগদারী ভিন্ন বস্তু | রাগরূপ ক্রমশঃ প্রকাশ করতে হলে তার অন্তর্নিহিত ভাবটি হৃদয়ঙ্গম করা চাই যা শুধু বুদ্ধির বিষয় নয়, বোধের বিষয় | সেই রূপটি সুরনির্ঝরে প্রবাহিত করাই যথার্থ সংগীতকলা | এ তো তারস্বরে চিৎকার করার ব্যাপার নয়, বেসুরো পরিবেশনেরও ব্যাপার নয় | এ স্নিগ্ধ সুষমার, সুরসমন্বয়ের সূক্ষ্ম উপস্থাপনের বিষয় যা শিল্পীর অন্তরের সম্পদ, স্থূল সুরসাধনার ফলস্বরূপ নয় | তাই 'উচ্চাঙ্গ সংগীত' নাম যা সাধারণের ঊর্ধ্বে অবস্থিত, সামান্য মানুষের ক্রীড়াপুত্তলিকা নয় |
রচয়িতা: সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
আলোকচিত্র: খাঁ সাহিব অব্দুল করীম খাঁ
SURFACE-THINKERS, WAKE UP!
SURFACE-THINKERS, WAKE UP!
Hinduism has survived the ravages of invasive Islam not merely because of the strength of its philosophy and the vast spread of our motherland but because our forefathers were prolific in procreation which kept up the numbers despite enforced conversion to Islam by the millions and indiscriminate killing of the kafir which drastically reduced Hindu population in Aryavarta, the estimate being between 80 and 100 million Hindu heads rolling. So, let those who apologise naively that nothing can destroy the Sanatan Dharma which has withstood centuries of alien oppression be cognisant of this fact and of the other, that of Hindu influence having over a millenium progressively diminished across Asia and Europe with countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and the like having been conquered and converted to Islam with the motherland itself suffering horrible mutilation in the Partition of '47. Now Hindus are with every passing decade losing percentage points in numbers while Muslim population in inverse mode keeps increasing. The gap has been narrowing throughout history and the trend will continue till dangerous limits are reached once again. Democracy itself in its truest essence will be wiped out then and the flame of Sanatan civilisation extinguished in this its birthplace and last surviving bastion. Can this fate be averted by callousness, by a casual dismissal of this growing probability?
Written by Sugata Bose
Saturday 28 October 2023
রোমন্থন ... ৩
রোমন্থন ... ৩
কত যুগ পরে এক মানব দেহলাভ! কত সুযোগ ঠাকুরকে পাওয়ার! হেলায় না হারায় যেন | ভোরের আকাশ যে আশ্বাস বহন করে, হৃদয়াকাশে তারই প্রতিধ্বনি, তারই চৈতন্যাভাস | এই জন্মেই পেতে হবে তাঁকে, পরজন্মে কি হবে জানি না |
ঠাকুর ম্যাদাটে ভাব পছন্দ করতেন না, ঢিমে তেতালা লয়ে তাঁর আলুনি লাগত | বলতেন, "কদিন উঠে পরে লাগো দেখি |" কিন্তু মাতালের কি নেশা কাটে? বিকারের রোগী, প্রলাপবাক্যকেই ব্রহ্মবাক্য মনে করে, ভোগকে অমরত্বের পথ |
ছোটবেলায় সোনার কাঠি, রূপোর কাঠির গল্প শুনেছি মায়ের কাছে | অস্পষ্ট মনে আছে | কেমন করে রাজকন্যা ঘুমিয়ে আছে আর সোনার কাঠির স্পর্শে রাজপুত্র তার ঘুম ভাঙাবে | আমাদেরও সেইরূপ | রাজপুত্র এবার স্বামীজী | মাদ্রাজে মোহনিদ্রা ভঙ্গ করলেন দেশের | বললেন, "My India, arise!" ("ভারত আমার, ওঠো!") সহসা কম্পিত হল সহস্র বছর শায়িত ভারতকায়, জাগরণের প্রথম শিহরণ খেলে গেল ওই বিরাট ভূপতিত দেহে | ভারতাত্মার জাগরণের প্রথম লক্ষণ দৃষ্ট হল |
ঠাকুর বললেন, "এবার আসাই নরেনের জন্য |" যুগসন্ধিক্ষণে ভগবান আসেন পতিত নরকুলকে ধ্বংসের হাত হতে রক্ষা করতে | আনেন তাঁর বার্তাবহ বাউলের দল যার মুখ্য মুখপত্র এবার স্বামীজী, সমাধির গভীর হতে যাঁকে অমৃতস্পর্শে বুত্থিত করে আনলেন প্রভু সিমুলিয়ার দত্তবংশে সভ্যতার রক্ষাকল্পে | দক্ষিণেশ্বরে, কাশীপুরে ঘরে দোর দিয়ে নিভৃতে শেখাতেন মুক্তি মহামন্ত্র | কে জানে এই অদ্ভূত পুরুষকে যাঁর এত রূপ? নরেনের বুঝতে অসুবিধা হয়নি | ওই প্রেমস্পর্শে জাগরিত হয়েছে তাঁর মহাপ্রাণ | ওই অমোঘ শক্তির কাছে নতি স্বীকার করেছেন তিনি | তাঁরই বার্তাবহরূপে দেশ হতে দেশান্তরে উল্কার ন্যায় ছুটে বেড়িয়েছেন মানুষকে আশ্বাসবাণী শোনাবার জন্য | 'হে মানব, তুমি অমৃতের পুত্র | তুমি পাপী নও | তুমি দেবত্বের অধিকারি, সাক্ষাৎ শিব |'
ঠাকুরের দেহাবসান হয়েছে | ১৬ অগস্ট, ১৮৮৬ | শ্রীশ্রীমায়ের স্থায়ী কোনো বাসস্থান নেই | ছেলেরা বরাহনগরে ভূতুরে বাড়ীতে ঘোর তপস্যারত | সকলেই মুক্তির পিয়াসী | নরেনও তাই | কিন্তু তাঁর ওপর ভার অনেক, মাথায় প্রবল চাপ | ঘরে মা ভাই বোনেরা ক্ষুধার্ত, পৈত্রিক ভিটা হতে বিতাড়িত | এদিকে রামকৃষ্ণসূর্য আপাত অস্তমিত | কী দোটানা! ক্ষুদ্র স্বার্থ, কর্তব্য একদিকে, অপরদিকে ঠাকুরের বিশ্ববাণীরক্ষা | স্থির করে ফেললেন কর্তব্য | যজ্ঞের যূপকাষ্ঠে বলি দেবেন নিজপরিবার বিশ্বপরিবারকে রক্ষার করার জন্য | নিয়ে ফেললেন সন্ন্যাস |
পরিব্রাজনরত স্বামীজী | ব্রহ্মজ্ঞানী স্বামীজী | নগরে নগরে, গ্রামে গ্রামে, পথে ঘাটে, অরণ্যে পর্বতে, গভীর সমুদ্রে, লোকালয়ে, লোকান্তরে ধ্যানগম্ভীর যতিরাজ | প্রশান্ত ব্রহ্মর্ষি তবু যেন কি নিয়ে সদা ভারাক্রান্ত | একজন জিজ্ঞাসা করে বসলেন, "স্বামীজী, আপনি তো প্রাপ্তপুরুষ | কি নিয়ে দিনরাত এত ভাবেন? যেন কি এক দুশ্চিন্তা!" স্বামীজী স্মিত হেসে বললেন, "দেখ, আমার গুরুদেব এই দেশের ভার আমার কাঁধে তুলে দিয়ে গেছেন | আমি ভেবে পাই না কি ভাবে এই গুরুভার বহন করব, কি ভাবে এই দেশটাকে জাগাব | এই চিন্তায় দিনরাত ডুবে থাকি |" শ্রোতা বুঝলেন কিনা জানিনা, অন্তরালে বিধাতা অবশ্যই বুঝলেন, কাজ হয়েছে, "তুই করবি না কি রে, তোর হাড় করবে | ... এখন এই দেখিয়ে দিলেন মা তোকে সব | এখন মায়ের কাজ কর | চাবি আমার কাছে রইল | কাজ ফুরোলে খুলে দেব দোর সমাধির |"
নরেন্দ্রনাথ দত্ত স্বামী বিবেকানন্দে রূপান্তরিত হলেন |
রচয়িতা: সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
COMMENTS GALORE ... 38
COMMENTS GALORE ... 38
Sugata Bose @Riya Bhattacharya : Grand sarcasm. Drives the point home through reverese infliction.
Sugata Bose @Saroj Upadhayay : At least give some prominence to names by beginning them with the traditional capital letter. For instance, Bharat and Megasthenes would have done both proud.
Sugata Bose @Arundhoti Shome : Accuracy is important as well in the absence of which we are languishing as a nation. For instance, the spelling of the written word ought to be correct, I dare say. Likewise, the grammar, the rational sense and the punctuation. To justify carelessness in the name of INTENTION and emotion (bold-lettered word being deliberately used here to highlight earlier inaccuracy) is puerile and becomes an immature polity's easy escape into perpetuating the selfsame errors.
Of course there is much in a name and justifiably so. 'The rose by any other name would smell as sweet'---so goes the age-old adage. But its meaning is oft distorted to suit convenience.
A nation of hundreds of milions of inaccurate people can scarce make it progress as fast as it deserves to. If this idea could not be hammered in, I pity the future of our polity, declining as it is in cultural terms on account of demographic change and democratic opportunities now available to the multitude to indulge in declining cultural output that is here being thus justified.
We are an ancient civilisation of high excellence in all aspects of our national life and we have never been so casual, so careless and so very neglectful in execution of art, literature and common correspondence. A generation back we were far more meticulous in our actions. Now no more so. And it is portentous of a terrible decline in national culture in the decades ahead whose solemn signals we are already witnessing across the political spectrum of rising ignorance and roguery.
Concentration is the key to success, individual and collective. Where casual lapses are justified, there arises the serious question as to whether the mean concentration of the polity is fast declining or not.
A great man is to be judged by his least deeds of day-to-day insignificance and a great nation likewise. Hence, accuracy or the lack of it holds the key to our prospective national greatness or otherwise.
I rest my case here hoping better sense will prevail in some of my perceptive readers. I cannot compromise with easy casualness and the unwillingness to learn and rectify. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : You'll do very well. Your mind is stiller than most. Always maintain calm despite provocation. The breath controlled, the vital force (pranshakti) is controlled which is the way to concentration, purity and power.
Sugata Bose @Måñjür Khäñ : Not a subject worth research. It takes a couple of months' reading of Islamic scriptures to get to the bottom of the whole game plan beyond which it is a sheer waste of time that may be otherwise more fruitfully spent. Unfortunately, too many years have been wasted thus in trying to find substance in a theology which never came about on account of its simply not being there. The Sanatan Dharma is a more worthwhile subject for enduring research much like the physical sciences are. Islam has become contentious on account of widespread and proliferating terror activities across the world in its name and fuelled by its scriptural doctrines. Hence, it would be meet if you, on the contrary, on account of being supposedly an adherent of this stringent faith, would deem it wiser to study Swami Vivekananda and liberalise yourself to standards of modernity instead of lying in the backwaters of archaic assumptions and superstitious suppositions contradisposed to spiritual enlightenment that they are after all.
Sugata Bose @Arundhoti Shome : Wishful thinking maketh not reality in the complex world of men.
Sugata Bose @Joydeep Ghosh : Yes, indeed. The Ex-Muslim Movement bears testimony to that.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : How foolish of you to ask me to look within in regard to my surname that courtesy colonisation has suffered its unfortunate aberration! There are practical problems that have made me continue with this anglicised version of the ancient root name 'Vasu'. That, however, does not detract one from making one's pertinent observation regarding mispronunciation of names.
Sugata Bose @Digvijay Prabhakar : Ah! There you are. Swamiji has been my staple diet for four decades.
Sugata Bose @Arundhoti Shome : Without gaining it first? Where's the character, the spiritual realisation that are prerequisites for the aforesaid task of dissemination of the message? Is spreading spirituality child's play?
Sugata Bose @Ravindra Patel : Indeed it is. Demographic transition thus will carry the world to the dark ages. Infiltration of European society, courtesy massive immigration, is going to destroy the enlightened social structure of Europe in the coming decades. India will turn Islamic in many segments and pockets soon with secessionist tendencies gaining ground. The democratic system will be laid waste as theocracy replaces it consequent on Islamisation of the general polity. Dark days ahead unless reconversion of the perverted ones back to the Sanatan Dharma can be progressively effected.
Sugata Bose @Bhagirath Guha : Muslims are scripturally bound to resist reformation. Education will not prevail expect for creating sizeable numbers of apostates who in turn can carry on the process of weaning away more and more of the believers from adherence to the faith into the clear light of reason and spiritual enlightenment that is universal and all-inclusive as opposed to the divisive principle of the momin and the kafir. Remember that the biggest bigots and the most committed terrorists are highly educated which make them all the more dangerous. Education cannot prevail over indoctrination from birth reinforced by daily ritualistic affirmation of archaic absolutist articles of faith which have no basis in reasonableness or the universality of highest spirituality.
Sugata Bose @Sanjeev Sharma : Which, though, is an impossibility, given the absolutist nature of the concerned scripture whose slightest reform would invalidate the faith, inviolable as is the supposed word of 'The God'. This rigidity will not let it undergo reformation and consequent progression of the 'believers' unto liberalism and modernity where divisive mentality will have given way to universal values of catholicity and acceptance.
Sugata Bose @Sanjeev Sharma : But they do read it who are among the believers the most faithful. And they most loyally follow it without altering injunction and freshly interpreting it, such allowance being truly not there if one is to be honest about adhering to the faith.
Sugata Bose @Sanchita Sanyal : History testifies otherwise. It seems you are unaware of world history where demographic transition has wiped out other religious groups, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Lebanon but being only four such instances of contemporary history. Perhaps, staying in these places for several years would help open your eyes. The seven historical exoduses of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley, the innumerable genocides of Hindus in 1300 years of Islamic occupation in the subcontinent, the Great Calcutta Killing, the Noakhali genocide, the Partition horrors, all these will put things into proper perspective. The sleeping may be awakened but the wakeful one putting up the pretence of sleep is immune to such external stimuli. Hence, greater reading and a modicum of experience alone is the panacea for such deliberate ignorance about the real nature of things. For good measure read Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, Koenraad Elst and the like (Voice of India Publications) for better access to history's heresies and the horrors the Hindus have historically faced on account of being infidels at the hands of the believers of the 'only true faith'.
Sugata Bose @Awadhesh Kumar Singh : Terror, terror, terror we hear of which nations want to tackle. But what about tackling the cause right at its source which produces it?
Sugata Bose @Rabindra Mukhopadhyay : Yes, the potential of a nation is for sure evident in its sporting achievements. But geopolitics has driven this country into being victimised by three successive world powers, namely, Britain, USSR and USA. But the undying spirit of this pulverised race, erstwhile Gandhara of ancient India, has not been totally extinguished by even its last oppressor, the Taliban regime. If these sterling performances at the highest stage of cricket are any indication, the Afghans have a bright future in the decades ahead provided they are allowed to prosper by the hegemonic world powers and by the throttling Islamic rule they are forced to endure.
Coming back to cricket it was a masterstroke of Late Jagmohan Dalmiya that brought Afghanistan within the fold of his campaign for the globalisation of cricket which move has certainly paid rich dividend in the case of the said country.
Kudos to Afghanistan and best wishes for its remaining fixtures in this World Cup which has no less been lit up by these minnows of world cricket than by stalwarts such as India, South Africa and New Zealand.
Sugata Bose @jihadwatchRS (Robert Spencer) : Indoctrinated from birth they are incapable of escaping the stranglehold of the faith which is merciless towards infidels. This coupled with geopolitical infringement has compounded the problem worse, although no apologia may justify the dastardly October 7 violation of Israel by Hamas.
Sugata Bose @Udayan Mukhopadhyay : Right. But nobody seems to muster the courage to do so, superficial and compromised that men are.
Sugata Bose @Jean S. Sahaï : But the horns are both outside and inside, and it is this inside from where the horns shoot out in their aggressive intent and aspired end.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : Do not be presumptuous and given to puerile play of unfounded observation. Without understanding the essence of an essay and commenting indiscriminately you have exhibited exactly the same superficiality of intellect that is plaguing the polity these days. Read the post properly to see where you have gone wrong and in accordance rectify stance. Your comment smacks of prejudgement and an unfortunate lack of discernment that is so commonplace these days.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : 'Men may construe things after their fashion.' Alas, this is the pitiable present scenario where pedestrian intellect sits in judgement over preeminence, hint not being self-reflective in any way! Hope you have the discernment to read into posts better, that is, if at all you ever read before puerile commenting. Also, your observations raise serious questions about the intellectual and cultural condition of the polity, they being the symptom and not the disease which is deeper and needs urgent treatment. Hope you do not represent the larger community as such and there is hope for our country and its future cultural rise from the nadir it has precipitated into.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : 'Men may construe things after their fashion.' Alas, this is the pitiable present scenario where pedestrian intellect sits in judgement over preeminence, hint not being self-reflective in any way! Hope you have the discernment to read into posts better, that is, if at all you ever read before puerile commenting. Also, your observations raise serious questions about the intellectual and cultural condition of the polity, they being the symptom and not the disease which is deeper and needs urgent treatment. Hope you do not represent the larger community as such and there is hope for our country and its future cultural rise from the nadir it has precipitated into. Good luck, good friend. People like you spur me onto action even more and that for sure is your contribution to the cultural uplift of the nation, albeit along the line of perverse positioning that in reverse reaction sets the game right.
Sugata Bose @Arjun Chincholi : Is it so? Pew Research is one of the most respected and reliable organisations dedicated to data collection and analysis.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : Carry on, friend. Men like you honour my posts by continuing to comment on them. I am grateful to you for your participation thus and hope for your future exertions as well, albeit along more rational and pertinent lines.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : Thanks for the judgement and the rectification mode suggested (affidavit of surname from Bose to Basu) which I will not implement though for reasons of practicality.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava, this is for you. Read, reflect and realise before sitting in judgement over my intellectual faculties and prejudiced views which by way of aspersion you have in the comment stream of an earlier post cast on me. Also, care to comment now on the supposed superficiality of my literary output which has been another of your careless observations.
Sugata Bose @Alok Vaishnava : You are incorrigible and beyond reasonable reform. Your vanity prompts you to believe that I have any need to impress you in any manner. If after a century of familial association with the holy ones of the Ramakrishna Mission this is your spiritual state, I can only bid you godspeed unto the divine end. You had challenged me on my supposed intellectual superficiality and I have manfully responded. If you lack the manhood to admit your earlier errors of judgement, you bear the soul responsibility for it. As it stands, I understand that you belong to the breed of people who cast aspersions on writers without exhibiting due diligence into reading what they have written which, however, is symptomatic of the age. It was folly on my part to have accorded you so much regard despite you being a failed reader of dubious intentions and to have copiously corresponded with you thus, a lapse which I shall forthwith overcome and allow you to wail in the desert of my apathy. Return to Ramakrishna and rectify stance. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Subhasish Papan Ghosh : Certainly not. But I do not indulge in irrirating people with lowly remarks. There are civil ways of conversation which was sadly missing in your initial salvo.
Sugata Bose @Subhasish Papan Ghosh : How can you insult somebody as a petty digital creator? Ill doth it become thee, my esteemed friend of surely better potential discretion than thou hast exhibited thus far hither.
Sugata Bose @Sharmistha Chatterjee : I do not know. Will have to read Gandhi extensively to get to the bottom of it which may not be a worthwhile expenditure of time in this invaluable life of immense opportunities to realise Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna to me stands head and shoulders above who we commonly call God in the Abrahamic sense.
Sugata Bose @Rohini Jalan : Such constancy as you manifest is rare on earth and is verily the hallmark of greatness.
Sugata Bose @Koenraad Elst : Yes, Hindustan is a Persian word but instead of some Hindus addressing India so often as Hindustan, they should refer to it as Hindusthan where 'sthan' surely is a Sanskrit word. That's all. As regards the best possible usage in conversation, we already have Bharatvarsha at any rate.
P.S. The intention of the post was not to 'falsely suggest' that 'Hindustan' is a Sanskrit word which by supposition is an aberration of the word 'Hindusthan' where the latter part 'sthan' is of Sanskrit origin for sure, nonetheless. There has been for lack of elaboration in a one-liner post this legitimate misapprehension on the part of the respondent. I hope to have clarified my position now for a better understanding.
Friday 27 October 2023
AN ERROR IN JUDGEMENT AFTER ALL
AN ERROR IN JUDGEMENT AFTER ALL
Man is less than what his admirers imagine him to be and more than what his detractors deem him to be. His is a middling status that keeps changing as he evolves with experience and adaptation. His is a story in progress whose final chapter has not yet been written. Each life reveals a phase of this evolving progression and estimation of his status keeps changing. It is a horizon phenomenon where the boundary keeps shifting and man reveals unto himself his deepening reality. In this cyclical progression of life in coloured bands of varying frequencies man advances towards the goal where spectral changes are no more and he stands free of all modifying modes in his singular Self. He is now beyond all estimation even as devotees flock around him to deify him and now cut him down to a divine size of imaginary attributes while his critics now altering stance heap harshness on him from their disjoint defences. Thus he forever eludes proper understanding, 'men choosing to interpret things after their fashion' and never admitting a dispassionate view of his being in all its sweep and stealth. Even the historian constructs a caricature after his own style or school of thinking, the philosopher comprehending him in a manner that suits his particular perspective on life and reality. Man, phenomenal man, pilgrim of this revisited earth, experiencer of the sweet and bitter fruits of life again and again, traveller in this terrain of light and shade, remains partially known in slices and strata and never quite comprehended in totality. Admirers adore, enemies revile, the indifferent ignore as shifting man like shifting sand changes shape and form to elude the estimation of all.
This world is full of strife on account of differing loyalties to prophets and divine incarnations but all such are based on this refracted vision of truth. It were better to suspend judgement about others after all and ourselves evolve towards the goal that is freedom.
Written by Sugata Bose
COLLECTIVE AMNESIA
COLLECTIVE AMNESIA
9/11, 7/7, 26/11 and now October 7, days that will be remembered by the world for their terror horror. Will the world forget August 16, 1946, the dastardly day of the Great Calcutta Killing that precipitated Partition? That was the October 7 of the Hindus. Has any memorial been ever raised to mourn the murdered and the mutilated that day? Has any shrine been built to mourn the dismemberment of the ancient motherland subsequently on August 14, 1947? Has any memorial been raised to honour the desecration, destruction, devastation and dispossession of 80--100 million Hindus over 1300 years of invasion, conquest and colonisation whose horrific harvest we are still reaping to the gradual grinding of our Sanatan civilisation?
Written by Sugata Bose
Thursday 26 October 2023
PRESERVE THE JEWS TO HELP PRESERVE HUMANITY IN THE TURBULENT TIMES AHEAD
PRESERVE THE JEWS TO HELP PRESERVE HUMANITY IN THE TURBULENT TIMES AHEAD
How much human potential was lost to the world by the mass extermination of Jews in the Holocaust! The brightest race was blighted for good. And yet the Jews have risen like the Phoenix from the ashes of the gas chambers to discover the laws of Nature like none other, continuing to win Nobel Prize after Nobel Prize with a minuscule population winning 25% of this the highest of awards.
They have suffered millenia of persecution at the hands of all barring the Hindus who gave them honourable refuge, a fact attested by the Jewish state post 1948. But persecution of the Jews continues, fuelled by geopolitics to which they have become affiliated circumstantially and by alliance, by dastardly scriptural sanction of their regional adversaries and by the animosity that arises out of inferiority complex and demographic dominance of races that feel threatened by rising Jewish power.
The October 7 massacre of the Jews in their homeland is the latest episode in the long line of historical persecution that the Jewish people have suffered worldwide and its consequences are now being resolved in the war-zone of the Middle East. Whether escalation will lead to a wider regional conflict which may carry the seeds of a potential Third World War with catastrophic consequences or whether untold human suffering will be regionally restricted bearing deep grudges down the decades to come is uncertain but certain it is that the Jews as a race will continue to live a life of perpetual tension, a feature that has now become embedded in their deep system and have galvanised them from helpless sheep to sovereign lions. Not that their valour was ever in doubt but that circumstance has ever played viciously with their fate.
Now that they are free as a nation, Israel must carve out a new path for both its citizens, 'the chosen people of the Jewish God', and for the world at large. Humanity is beset with umpteen problems some of which are existence-threatening to which solutions must be forthwith found. Else, humanity will go down the cosmic drain. Here Jewish ingenuity must find a way out for preservation of the world, its ecology, et al.
The Jewish people have given us the best brains with Einstein, Marx, Freud, Trotsky, Lisa Meitner and a plethora of academicians---economists, scientists, sociologists, linguists, litterateurs and the like---, which flourishing current must be allowed to flow uninterrupted if humanity is to survive the ravages of the times. Hence, rising anti-Semiticism must be combated and the Jews preserved everywhere as the priceless assets of humanity.
Written by Sugata Bose
NO OFFENCE INTENDED, PLEASE
NO OFFENCE INTENDED, PLEASE
Imagine yourself fathering a child every year (no offence intended) while you receive an annual increment of salary to the tune of INR 1,000. Surely yours must be a family of rising fortunes? What do you say? Now relate it to India's burgeoning population and increase in nominal GDP as opposed to decrease in her GDP per capita. So, are we a rising economic power in the people's sense? Has the message been driven home?
Written by Sugata Bose
Wednesday 25 October 2023
রোমন্থন ... ২
রোমন্থন ... ২
বিশ্বজুড়ে আজ এত হিংসা | রুদ্রের এই নারকীয় লীলায় মহাপ্রাজ্ঞ স্বামীজীই এক দৈবের প্রচ্ছন্ন মহেচ্ছার ইঙ্গিত পাবেন, মার্ক্সবাদী প্রত্যক্ষ করবেন ইতিহাসের অমোঘ ক্রমবিকাশ | কিন্তু এই মৃত্যুলীলায় যে সাধারণের প্রাণ যায় | কত যুগ ধরে নরপশুর এই বিবর্তন চলেছে, কত শত কোটি নিঃসহায় মানুষ যজ্ঞের যূপকাষ্ঠে বলি হয়েছে | কত সভ্যতা বিনষ্ট হয়েছে বর্বরের ভীষণ প্রহারে | তবুও চলেছে নিরন্তর সাধনা নরহননের | ষড়রিপূর প্রকোপে আজও মানুষ বিভ্রান্ত, বিমূঢ়, বিষবৎ প্রতিক্রিয়ায় বদ্ধ | এর হাত থেকে কি নিস্তার নেই?
এই প্রশ্ন ভারতের আদি যুগে মানবমনে উত্থিত হয়েছিল যার ফলশ্রুতি বেদ, উপনিষদ যার চূড়ান্ত ঘোষণা | ব্রহ্মবোধসম্পন্ন ঋষি মানুষের অন্তর্নিহিত দেবত্বের যে তত্ত্ব তুলে ধরলেন বিশ্বসমক্ষে ভাবীকালের প্রজন্মের দিশারীরূপে, তা পঞ্চসহস্র বর্ষ অতিক্রান্ত হওয়া সত্ত্বেও মানুষ বুঝল না | বুঝবে কি, শোনেই নি সে বাণী | কে আর প্রচার করল স্বামীজী ব্যতীত বিশ্বের দরবারে দেবত্বের সেই অমৃতবাণী ? কারই বা শক্তি ছিল বা আজও আছে নির্মোহ চিত্তে অকপটভাবে সেই বিশ্ববাণী বিশ্ববাসীকে শোনায় ? সবই তো দেহে আবদ্ধ | অশরীরী তত্ত্ব বোঝে বা কে, বোঝাবার শক্তি বা কার আছে ? স্বয়ং শিবাবতার স্বামীজী যুগসূচনার মাহেন্দ্রক্ষণে যে বোধ মানবমনের গভীরে বীজাকারে প্রোথিত করে গেলেন, তার বৃক্ষাকারে বর্ধিত, পল্লবিত হতে তো সময় লাগবেই | কিন্তু এদিকে যে সভ্যতার ভয়ানক সংকট, মানবসমাজ ধ্বংসের মুখোমুখি !
ভবব্যাধি আজ এমন জায়গায় পৌঁছিয়েছে যে মনুষ্যকুল এর মারণহস্ত হতে নিস্তার পাবে কিনা তার ঠিক নেই | এই তো যুগপ্রয়োজন, যুগাবতারের পুনরাবির্ভাবের সমাগতপ্রায় পুণ্যলগ্ন | আসবেন কি তিনি আমাদের মাঝে আজ পরিত্রাতারূপে ?
'নূতন তব জন্ম লাগি কাতর যত প্রাণী,
করো ত্রাণ মহাপ্রাণ, আনো অমৃতবাণী ||' --- রবীন্দ্রনাথ
রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
A WASTE OF TIME?
A WASTE OF TIME?
Reading the irrational and deflected responses to my posts or plain exhibition of passive piety to many such, I wonder whether writing anything at all on Facebook is a waste of time or not. People adhere to irrational cultural codes, traditional trappings wherefrom they view the world in a refracted way that can scarce lead them to see or confront truth. Swamiji had lamented that it would take humanity thousands of years to throw up an adequate number of rational men who could confront truth face to face and perchance peep into its inner recesses. Spirituality is a lot of faith bound in unreason and verboseness that needs stripping to its bare essentials so that the essence which is transcendental Truth may be evident. But that is not the case as worldliness goes by the name of education, culture, civilisation and religion. Democracy and the advancement of science have laid open the doors of the common man with all his intellectual shortcomings to a plethora of data and misinformation that lie undigested in his untrained mind. Worse still is the fact that people pertain more to fiction than fact, an inertial system that continues to afflict the slow-learning nervous organism that man is. It will take millenia before humanity enters the millenium of enlightenment en masse, so to say, when ideas will be examined on the basis of reasonable merit and not as per convenience of faith. The blind eye does not see but imagines an altered description of truth along blind alleyways that bar progress. The human brain may be limited in its access to Truth, perhaps, utterly handicapped in apprehending it in totality, being its very product and, hence, ordered to partial understanding of it. But the brain is what we have in appreciating and apprehending whatever we can and it may not be bettered by dogmatic assertions of unreasonable faith. I am not discounting in any way the higher intuitive understanding stemming from the enlightenment of the entire nervous system by the truly spiritual path of yoga which though incorporates the brain and fulfils its findings and never contradicts it.
Written by Sugata Bose
রোমন্থন ... ১
রোমন্থন ... ১
বায়ু যত স্থির হবে, মন তত আধ্যাত্মিক পথে হবে অগ্রসর | ভগবানলাভ তখনই হয় যখন মন পরিপূর্ণ শান্তস্বভাবপ্রাপ্ত হয় | সাধুদের স্বভাব শান্ত, বায়ু অচঞ্চল | তাঁদের সংস্পর্শে সাম্যস্পন্দনের দ্বারা সমভাব সঞ্চারিত হয় | তাই সাধুসঙ্গে স্বর্গলাভের প্রবাদবাক্য কথিত আছে | তাই ঠাকুর বলছেন, "উপায় সাধুসঙ্গ |" তমোগুণকে রজোগুণের দ্বারা ও রজোগুণকে সত্ত্বগুণের দ্বারা সংযত করাই আধ্যাত্মিক পথে অগ্রসর হওয়ার প্রক্রিয়া | মনকে শান্ত করতে হবে, চিত্তকে বাসনামুক্ত, শুদ্ধ, স্থির | প্রশান্তচিত্তে ব্রহ্মবুদ্ধির জাগরণ, অপরোক্ষানুভূতির উপস্থিতি | বায়ু যত স্থির, তত আত্মস্বরূপবোধ | তাই ঠাকুর কর্ম কমাতে বলেছেন, অর্থাৎ, বাসনাপ্রেরিত বিপথগামী কর্ম | নিত্যকর্ম, কর্তব্যকর্মাদি সেবাবুদ্ধিতে অনাসক্তরূপে করতে বলেছেন | এতে চিত্তবিক্ষেপ ন্যূনতম হবে | এ ছাড়া বলেছেন নির্জনে সাধনের কথা, মনে, বনে, কোণে | লক্ষ্য এক---মনকে স্থির করা, স্বামীজীর ভাষায়, ব্রহ্মাবগাহি করা | বায়ুচঞ্চল, তো অশান্তি; বায়ুস্থির, তো শান্তি | প্রবৃত্তিমার্গে প্রথমটি, নিবৃত্তিমার্গে দ্বিতীয়টি |
রচয়িতা: সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
Tuesday 24 October 2023
THE WHITE MASTER'S NOD
THE WHITE MASTER'S NOD
I cannot quite comprehend why we bother so much about how the West looks upon us, how Western universities and academia in the West judge us. Why can't we build our own universities like we once did with Nalanda, Vikramashila and Takshashila universities drawing the best minds from across the world to study here? This hankering for Western approval is a colonial hangover that is best gone past now that we are 73 years old as a republic. Self-respect should deem it that we learn to write our own history albeit along scientific lines but without this slavish dependence on the white master's nod of approval. Vande Mataram!
Written by Sugata Bose
COMMENTS GALORE ... 37
COMMENTS GALORE ... 37
Sugata Bose @Ashis Kumar Basu : It is a statement of fact that I have made which only parties with vested interests will seek to use for polarisation of polity. That is not my intent though, it being solely to stress on this oft-neglected element of our Dharma by its critics of ideological slant and dubious motives. The universality of the Sanatan Dharma is its defining feature which must be brought out in its true spirit and devoid of the common compromise surface thinkers make of it in terms of indulging in a rough assemblage of mismatched theologies with hardly any intersection of ideas barring those that are ascribed to them by these floating philosophers of little learning and lesser realisation of the fundamentals of the Sanatan Dharma and of those of its less than legitimate offspring. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Anemc Tamilnadu : First decide whether liar or innocent. Indecisiveness ill becomes a gentleman. And passing judgement on others on the basis of insufficient data is an attribute worse befitting of a gentleman.
Sugata Bose @Henry D'Almeida : Fair enough. But why have Christians down the ages persecuted the Jews simply on this assumption of faith for which there is no credible historical evidence? Is that faith-based fairness too? Come to the content of the post instead of spraying about extraneous observations.
Sugata Bose @Arijit Chatterjee : You, my friend, are totally off the mark. Come to the content of the post instead of unduly deflecting discussion that is symptomatic of the superficial or the maliciously motivated, an aspersion which you cast on me but which throws your intent rather under suspicion. In these times of rising anti-Semiticism the post is most pertinent, especially when viewed in historical perspective to which your observation evidently claims innocence.
Sugata Bose @Saurav Dey : There is no credible historical proof of the existence of Christ. But devotion is another thing altogether. Sri Ramakrishna kept Mother Kali's photograph in his room as well. Are we then to assume that Mother Kali was historically born at some point in place and time? You see, reality spiritual and reality historical are two different things. The post pertains to the historicity of Christ or otherwise and its connection to the massacre of Jews as Christ-killer for centuries throughout Christendom. Was such genocide of Jews justified on the basis of belief that had no bearing to historical occurrence? How do you respond to that? People are spraying about extraneous observations typical of the deflected and in some cases the maliciously motivated. Such intellectual dishonesty hardly befits a polity that is supposedly on the rise as we are consistently being told. Ruminate on this aspect of our individual and collective behaviour as well even as you brood on the misfortune the Jews as a race have suffered down the ages on account of a myth perhaps or at best an unproven happening, historically speaking which at any rate must be the touchstone for judging the past and not blind belief that is the graveyard of reason and the trapping of tradition that binds man to fanatical behaviour for which brother man in all his innocence suffers.
Sugata Bose @Hamza Hussainy Syed : Are you privy to such confidential organisational correspondence or are you prone to hazarding off-hand guesses habitually? Instead of addressing the core content of the post you have typically attempted to deflect discussion as befits the prejudiced person. Would it were that you had exhibited greater intellectual honesty in place of indulging in wild imaginings!
Sugata Bose @Subhadip Bhattacharya : Sorry to observe that Swamiji had entertained lifelong doubt about the historicity of Christ post his deep dream on board the ship while returning to India from his first sojourn in the West. It was off the coast of the island of Crete that Swamiji has this dream-vision of a Theraputae monk of the old order of the Essenes who intimated him about the myth of the personality of Christ and had pointed to a spot where the archeological evidence could be excavated to prove his point. Read Sister Nivedita's 'The Master As I Saw Him' before jumping to conclusion.
Sugata Bose @Swami Bhavatmananda : How do you explain the vision of Mother Kali and Lord Shiva by Sri Ramakrishna? Were they historical personalities too? Reality has multiple dimensions and one such is the spiritual dimension. Vision may relate to the spiritual element which may yet be without a corresponding historical element. Moses for sure did not exist. Neither has any concrete evidence been found for the historicity of Christ although claimants are galore for pseudo-historical proofs that supposedly prove the human existence of Christ. Faith knows no reason and rules by emotion and numbers. Here truth is sacrificed at the altar of unreason with demographic dominance dictating terms. Swamiji after his powerful dream vison off the shore of Crete was ever after sceptical about the historical existence of Christ although like most of the people of the times it had never occurred to him that he could have been a mythical personality transmitted through tradition. Whether Christ had actually existed or not has never been with certitude ascertained and thus we have to maintain due scepticism about it. The moot point of the post is this which has been typically, and sadly so, neglected by all and sundry---did the Jews deserve to be historically killed for being Christ-crucifiers when the very existence of Christ is so very much in doubt? Alas, deflection seems to be the dominant theme in democratic India of so-called rising fortunes where 'men may interpret things after their fashion'! Maharaj, pranam. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Md Mahmudul Hasan : The historicity of Ram does not have any bearing on the building of the Ram temple. It is the reconstruction of heritage, the already existent Ram Temple that had been demolished by Islamic invasive aggression, obviously fuelled by hatred of the kafir with direct scriptural sanction. Not one such temple but thousands were destroyed by the Muslim rulers over 1300 years of occupation of which 2200 have been cited by Sita Ram Goel in his book 'Hindu Temples--What Happened to Them Vol 1 and Vol 2'. These were heritage sites enshrining the Sanatan civilisation which was disrupted, desecrated and decelerated by barbarian alien adharmic culture whose restoration first took place in Somnath in independent India and now is taking place at Ayodhya. That you have brought up this issue in relation to a post that concerns rising anti-Semiticism is symptomatic of the mindset that yet persists in the minds of millions upon millions of anti-Semitic people, the vanguard of the only true faith which can save all infidels from the Fire.
Sugata Bose @Henry D'Almeida : That is called whataboutery.
Sugata Bose @Rudranshu Singh : Perhaps so. I keep my scepticism about all such metahistorical personalities till we get conclusive proofs of their historical existence.
Sugata Bose @Vinayak Barwade : This bit of information is to be taken in not with just a pinch of salt but with the whole of salt water available in the oceans of the wide world.
Sugata Bose @Riyed Hasan Shawon : Probably there is no word in English that can adequately encompass the gamut of meaning that the Sanskrit word 'dharma' signifies. But a rough translation of its scope would be, I guess, 'the rationalistic-intuitive progressively purifying path to spiritual enlightenment in perception of the Absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss'.
Sugata Bose @Sumantra Mukherjee : But the point is whether there ever existed historically a person called Jesus has not been proved with any degree of certitude. Hence, to kill Jews for being Christ-killer is highly unreasonable. This is the moot point which nobody seems to have addressed in this post which is a pointer to the shallow intellectual culture that is commonplace these days of proliferating mass journalism, courtesy online platforms such as Facebook, X etc.
Sugata Bose @Holenarasipura Nagendra : Truth we must reasonably accept, not falsehood based on myths and cultural dissemination. Any theory or narrative must face the test of rational rigour before it may be accepted. A passive acquiescence to accepting narratives based on mass opinion is highly undesirable and cannot be condoned. Credible evidence must be furnished, the test of scrutiny passed and plausibility based on intellectual honesty must establish what may be reasonably accepted and what ought to be duly rejected. This is the method of historical research which must be the basis of establishing the historicity of a character that is like Christ shrouded in seemingly impenetrable mystery.
Sugata Bose @Arijit Sarkar : These do not however prove the historicity of Ram. Geography is not anthropology. The geological explanation of Ram Setu also should merit the shedding of scientific light on it. Like the Ice Lingam of Shiva at Amarnath is for sure a physical configuration based on the laws of Nature and not some metaphysical occurrence every year. The very recurrence of it year in and year out and now with increasing greenhouse effect the slow shrinking of its size proves the scientific basis for it as opposed to the religious basis thrust on it through faith. You see, the history of humanity is the slow awakening of the scientific mind through the maze of myths and fauth-based assertions. That sages like Swami Vivekananda have experienced the spiritual validity of the Himalayas in general and of shrines like the Amarnath in particular seem to testify to the possibility of the intersection of different dimensions of reality in a single apparent outer frame of matter. For instance, that Sri Ramakrishna saw Mother Kali in the basalt idol of the Jagadashwari deity of the Divine Mother (popularly called Bhavatarini) does not mean that the stone image materialised in the Dakshineshwar Temple of itself and that it was not made by a sculptor's hands. Here discernment is necessary as to how realities of different planes merge in the multidimensional mind and nervous system of man who is after all the beholder and arbiter of his terrestrial experience. These are matters of deep pondering and are best solved along lines of rationality, always taking care to heed that even reason has its empirical limits in comprehending Truth. But irrational assertions of faith cannot be accepted by the rationally trained mind on grounds of allegiance to faith or local culture or simply acquiescence to inertial transmission of traditional trappings. I do not mean to discount outright the existence of our epic characters but am indeed for unbiased research into their historicity which must be truly evidence-based and plausibility-based in the absence of absolutely conclusive evidence, never forgetting that much of our ancient texts have been lost to history through the ravages of time, destruction at Islamic invasive hands (refer to the destruction of the libraries of Nalanda, Vikramashila and Takshashila) and the inability of the conquered Hindu race to preserve their historical tradition with any degree of success against the savage ravaging of our heritage sites by Islamic hordes. Nalanda University itself burned for three months, courtesy Bhaktiyar Khilji, which led to the loss of 900,000 ancient manuscripts that carried the historical imprint of several centuries. Who knows what all data of ancient India was lost therein? Now we must conduct scientific tests of the most advanced kind to determine our ancient history with greater certitude and not merely pass judgement this way of that about the historicity of mythical characters, however holy and sacrosanct they may be in the minds of the believers. That is the way of historical research which must however be conducted without adherence to ideological and party lines. Free and fair research must establish truth in so far as it is possible considering the lapse of ages, obliteration of essential evidence and the pressure of politicisation of even academia. But as I said, truth must be ascertained as far as possible with the aid of advanced technology. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Gourav Dey : There are ample incontrovertible proofs of the existence of both Buddha and Mahavir. Contesting such evidence thereafter may be your personal prerogative if you are so inclined but it shall not be able to bear the weight of attested historical documents, texts, inscriptions, monuments, coins and the like.
Sugata Bose @Shankar Ghosal : Painting, he (Saurav Dey) meant. The said painting was of Jesus pulling Peter from the waters of the sea by the hand.
Sugata Bose @Saroj Pattnayak : Prove it to yourself who art in William Cowper's words and in altered person, monarch of all you survey. The original words were as follows:
'I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O solitude! Where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.'
Sugata Bose @JIS Group : At least get the spelling of the name of the great man correct. It is BISHAN and not BISHEN. The Punjabi word BISHAN is the aberration of the Sanskrit word BHISHAN. In his name the second letter 'H' has been left out.
Sugata Bose @Jnanojjwal Saha : What a beautifully articulated response, almost perfect in verbal presentation barring the undue hyper-spacing at the punctuated end where the full-stop has been estranged from the rest of the statement by an undue additional gap, a commonplace error that has marred the beauty somewhat of what has otherwise been a perfectly worded depth-observation!
Sugata Bose @Gourav Dey : I said 'much of'. You are being unduly selective.
Sugata Bose @Gourav Dey : The word 'tradition' does not in this post relate to philosophical traditions which are intuitive-rational in character but to archaic practices being foisted on people in the modern age or catching them unawares through cultural dissemination which retards social evolution and whose regressive nature sends humanity careering backwards to the dark ages.
Sugata Bose @Sukanta Mukherjee : These are artistic representations, symbolism, you see, to express higher spiritual ideas. At any rate, how do numbers matter when ideas represented in bi-armed natural man or deca-armed Devi Durga, uni-headed natural man or deca-headed demon king Ravan, are symbolism aimed at apprehension of subtle ideas not easily accessible to the common man of unrefined intellectual faculties? Besides this is Indian art and sculpture at its best, literature which has permeated the consciousness of the masses and purified them, so long as it does not produce any lasting superstition that impedes progress.
Sugata Bose @U. R. Nandakumar : A bit of both. Now bite it if you can. [In response to U.R. Nandakumar's earlier comment: 'Are you original or myth?']
Sugata Bose @Indranil Ghosh : Same could be the fate of India of increasing Islamisation owing to dangerous demographic change. Who knows India's destiny? The portents are ominous.
Sugata Bose @Subhendu Roy Choudhury : Translations of Swamiji are often weak. Swamiji's original language in both English and Bengali was very virile as opposed to these weak translations.
Sugata Bose @Kalyani Chakravorty : অন্তিম চরণ কারণ আত্মজ্ঞানেই যথার্থ স্বাবলম্বন |
Sugata Bose @Jnanojjwal Saha : But the comment was beautiful in content and construction. This I have stated as well as you must have noticed. It is a most perfect composition of words and corresponding ideas.
Sugata Bose @SB Gupta : Read the post again and find out whether Subhas Chandra Bose and Rash Behari Bose have at all been compared with each other as you have stated or implied.
Sugata Bose @Henry D'Almeida : No, no, not like that. I like to respond to your most pertinent observations. You are original, studious, sincere and well-meaning in your observations. Carry on please uninhibited with your singular responses that inevitably enliven proceedings in the comment stream of a post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)