Tuesday, 28 January 2025
রাম নাম সত্য হয়
রাম নাম সত্য হয়
♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤
ছোটবেলা থেকে সব ধর্ম সমান সত্য, এই মিথ্যা শিক্ষা দিয়ে হিন্দু সন্তানদের ক্লীব করে রেখেছেন ও তাদের স্বধর্মের প্রতি বিশেষ আনুগত্যের পথে বাধাস্বরূপ হয়ে দাঁড়িয়েছেন বিশিষ্ট জনেরা ও বিশিষ্ট সঙ্ঘেরা | সব ধর্মই যখন সমান সত্য তখন হিন্দু ধর্ম থাকলেই বা কি আর গেলেই বা কি ? ইসলাম ও খ্রীষ্টধর্ম তো রইল | তাহলেই হল | গরুর মাংস খেলেই বা কি আর না খেলেই বা কি ? হিন্দু ধর্ম ত্যাগ করে ইসলাম গ্রহণ করে নিকাহ্ করলেই বা কি ? প্রেমই ধর্ম, তাই না ? ইসলামের তাড়নে দেশ ত্রিখণ্ডিত হলেই বা কি ? ও তো ভৌগলিক ব্যবধানমাত্র, থোরী সাংস্কৃতিক বিভাজন ? ইসলাম আর খ্রীষ্টধর্মের প্রসারে ভারত সনাতন ধর্মমুক্ত হলেই বা কি ? ওই দুটো ধর্মও তো সনাতন ধর্মের ঈশ্বরের কথাই অন্য ভাষায় বলে | তাই নয় কি ? সর্বধর্ম সমন্বয় সাধন করতে গিয়ে যদি সনাতন ধর্ম ব্যবহারিকভাবে লোপ পায়, তাতেই বা কি ? থাকবে তো তাও সনাতন ধর্ম প্রকৃতির বুকে মানবমনের অন্তরালে অবিনশ্বর | তাই নয় কি ? অতএব, হিন্দু তার ক্লীবত্বে, ভোগেচ্ছায়, কাপুরুষতায় নিশ্চিন্ত | কিসের দরকার হিন্দুত্বের ? কিসের প্রয়োজন ধর্মরক্ষার্থে ধর্মযুদ্ধের ? চলো ভাই বাজনা বাজাই সর্বধর্ম সমন্বয়ের | সাথে ঢোল পেটাবো সনাতনের অন্ত্যেষ্টক্রিয়ার | রাম নাম সত্য হয় |
রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)
আলোকচিত্র : কে মানে এঁকে ?
Monday, 27 January 2025
DHARMA THAT IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
DHARMA THAT IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
The Sanatan Dharma is spiritual science. Hence it must be constantly scrutinised scientifically and updated in its phenomenal portions, its affirmation of the Absolute having been validated countless number of times through the transcendental experience of sages. Nonetheless, like a scientific theory is tested and retested, so must the averments of the Sanatan Dharma be put to spiritual scrutiny by following the prescribed paths and their validation or otherwise duly arrived at before accepting or rejecting the stated principles. Mere denunciation on biased basis is not the scientific way nor is blind faith of much value. Rationality must for sure be the ground for judgement but it must be inclusive reason that is not disconnected from spiritual experience, and not dry play of gross ideas and words. Sincerity in exploration is the key.
Written by Sugata Bose
MESSAGES GALORE ... 96
MESSAGES GALORE ... 96
1. If a religion is cloaked fascism, shall we denounce it? Or shall we venerate it as a valid path to God however violent it may be?
2. Is the harmony of antithetical religions ever possible or is it a puerile proposition of the wise unlearned?
3.
ব্রহ্ম যেথা,
সেথা সব কই ?
আর, সব যেথা,
সেথা ব্রহ্ম কই ?
4.
একে ছিলেম ভাল |
এই দুইয়ে করেছে গোল ||
5. সৌজন্য সভ্যতার ভূষণ | কিন্তু ভূষণের পৃষ্ঠে সত্যবস্তু চাই | নইলে কিসের সভ্যতা?
6. 
Scriptural study often makes a person heartless as over-rationalisation breeds its toxic progeny. But that must not be, for it is the heart that is at the heart of spirituality and renders it fertile. Reasoning that is abstruse is for intellectual pleasure alone if not appended with loving service of sentience. The combination of head and heart in the right proportion is conducive to human welfare and never the one divorced from the other.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo: Raja Rammohun Roy, the pathfinder of the modern age in India, a seminal being of many parts, social and religious reformer, author, founder of the Bengali prose, Vedanta scholar, champion of the free press, founder of the Brahmo Samaj, successful campaigner for the abolition of Sati, multilingual intellectual, philanthropist, educationist, Hindu legal expert, poet, lyricist, composer, literally a polymath, a polyglot, a genius of staggeringly diverse talent but above all a wondrous synthesis of head and heart.
7. 
Why can't the Ramakrishna Mission give out a clarion call to Hindus not to convert to Islam and Christianity? Would that take away their apolitical status? Is defending the Hindus then to be deemed politics? Both Sri Ramakrishna and Swami were dead against conversion. Why can't the Mission be so? Why can't they be vocal about it? That would do the Hindus a world of good. Why this apathy on the part of the Mission, this utter indifference?
8. গীতায় ভগবান অধর্মনাশের জন্য যুদ্ধ করতে বলেছেন | অথচ কোনো গীতা ব্যাখ্যাতাকে যুদ্ধের আহ্বান দিতে দেখি না |
9. One does not meet God postmortem. One realises God, that is, the Atman, here and now.
10. Religions differ in their narratives and claims which is why they are suspect. Faith cannot be absolved of scientific scrutiny.
11. Who has seen God beyond himself? The self may enlarge but cannot be exceeded, for it is the Self in the final analysis.
12. Promote science and you promote both light and power. The nation can march ahead only on the shoulders of Vedānt and Vijnān. Original research needed, not supplementary work to western attainment. Deep thinking along challenging creative lines the call of the hour, not a conformist attitude that uncritically bows down to authority stemming from tradition. The scientific spirit must be kindled in the country, not superstition that stifles creativity. Human genius must not be laid waste thus by thrusting garbage on it in the form of irrational data galore that curb the spirit of critical inquiry.
13. Post the internet revolution there has been a proliferation of online ignorance masquerading as knowledge of Indian history.
14. If writers have to censor their literary self-expression, it no more remains literature. Better produce counter-literature than ban books. Let the right to express remain unfettered, free.
15. Does the universe/body know that it exists? I know it. But who am I? Consciousness projecting the trinity of space-time-causality?
16. Emperor Akbar was an Islamic apostate but none dared to charge him so and condemn him to death under the Sharia.
17. Dawah is dangerous. It is an invitation to join Islam and it is an elaborate system of seducing non-Muslims into the Islamic fold.
18. Cut the cause. The effect will cease.
19. After millions of meandering in the world of worship man gravitates to his soul and finds his own transcendental consciousness to be God. Duality dispelled, he abides in his own Absolute Self as the singular Existence-Consciousness Reality. 🕉
20. 
ভারতের মূল চরিত্র---সনাতন ধর্ম, সংস্কৃতি, সভ্যতা | স্বামীজীর 'স্বদেশ মন্ত্রে' তারই প্রতিফলন | ভারতবর্ষের প্রত্যেকটি রাজনৈতিক দল এর সত্যতা যাচাই করুক, এর যাথার্থ অনুভব করুন |
21. Slaves command, masters request.
22. A God who frightens people into submission by injecting hellfear is a tyrant and no God.
23. দিনে দিনে রামগরুড়ের ছানা বৃদ্ধি পাচ্ছে | ঘরে বাইরে রসহীনতা | রসাতলে যাচ্ছে সূক্ষ্মবোধ |
24. There is no justice on earth. Neither will it be there in the hereafter. Justice will be rendered by means of karmic consequences.
25. No religion is above criticism and all must be subjected to rational scrutiny. Man has made God and it is not the other way round.
26. Boundless are you, boundless your soul, blest and free, abiding in luminous Self-consciousness. Indeed, it is strange that the infinite being that you are, you so consider yourself limited to this little self, this body bit with a little mind appended. The drop knows not that it is the ocean itself. The wave dreams of its separate existence, forgetting its oceanic self. The fragment holds itself apart from the vast whose part it is. In truth it is an indivisible whole, one unified pure consciousness, integrated existence, one unbroken state of being, blissful, free. The sky you are, not a dust particle floating, the tranquil sea you are, not its surface turbulence, the Spirit you are, not its ever-changing degeneration in body and mind. You were never born nor shall you ever die. You are the eternal witness to births and deaths of bodies floating up and down the current of time. You are the very God you so ardently worship. You are the alpha and omega of existence. There is no limit to you. 🕉
27. জীবের আন্তর্সত্তাই শিব |
28. What is detachment? Detachment is floating on the ocean of life.
29. Atman is greater than God, so to say, as God is manifestation and Atman is the Real, God is relative and Atman is the Absolute.
30. God realises the Atman while Atman projects God.
31. The Vedanta is the last word on religion, not Islam or Christianity. The Vedanta alone speaks of the Atman/Brahman. Hence.
32. It is cowardice to control others. It is courage to let all abide in freedom. Faith fanatics are cowards.
33. If a faith feels it must dominate the world, its days are numbered.
34. There is no closure to the Avatār line unlike the terminal Islamic claim on the prophetic line.
35. There is nothing called Islamism or radical Islam. It is simply Islam.
36. The religiocultural invasion of our country led eventually to Partition. And yet the invasion continues. Will Bharat survive?
37. There is no Hell. Give up all fear of Hellfire. Live free of fear happily. Shubha Sarasvati Puja! 🕉
38.
পাঁচ বছরের খুকি,
মারছে দেখো উঁকি |
হামা শেষে দৌড়ে বেড়ায়
নিয়ে মস্ত ঝুঁকি ||
39. Monotheists are monotheists, always behind. MAN is well and clear ahead of God.
40. The greatest person ever born on earth by a distance is Sri Ramakrishna.
41. Islam defends itself using Greek philosophy, itself being based on faith and not philosophy. What a predicament!
42. We, Hindus, have the highest conception of God in the Atman/Brahman which the Abrahamic faiths do not have. Hence, the Sanatan Dharma is superior to the others. 🕉
43. Monotheism as a spiritual way is way lower than the non-dualism of the Vedanta. This One God idea is inferior.
44. The Indian identity is essentially Hindu. 🕉
45. If you want to serve the cause of the Hindus, read Sitaram Goel and Ram Swarup (Voice of India Publications).
46. The descent of God is not from the heavens but from the depths of consciousness.
47. চৈতন্যলোক হতে অবতরণ, কোনো স্বর্গ হতে নয় |
48. রাজনৈতিক তোষণনীতির ফলে পশ্চিমবঙ্গের যে উত্তরোত্তর ইসলামীকরণ হচ্ছে তার বাংলাদেশসদৃশ বিষধর পরিণতি অবশ্যম্ভাবী |
49. If God has no progeny but only creatures, He will naturally be devoid of love for them however merciful He may be made to appear.
50. Parents are continuous gods, the progenitor line the divine chain. Hence, ancestor worship.
51. You cannot be moral, far less spiritual if you believe in the doctrine that unbelievers are to be killed. Such killing is undivine.
52. A religion expanding through war and violence is no religion. It is just an expansionist political ideology masquerading as religion.
53. Bhakti is self-unification. It is integration of the elements of the scattered self. In simpler terms it is total loving concentration on the Divine.
54. Today Bharatvarsha is largely a Hindu nation. Tomorrow will she be largely an Islamic nation? Demographic change threatens her so.
55. The love of life is the kiss of death.
56. Is fanaticism all that is there to this faith? Whither philosophy, truth, realisation of the Self? Yet must it be labelled faith?
57. Your very existence is Brahman. You in essence are That. You in non-essence are It's modification, body, mind et al.
58. God does not create, He manifests. He is not the Creator but the Manifester. God becomes phenomena through Self-modification.
59. The Vedanta must be properly preached in the West in bold manly terms and not with a double dose of effeminacy.
60. How strange that Islam should proliferate from Deoband which is the land of the Hindu gods and goddesses by its very name!
61. The birth of Islam is the most significant political event in history. Its effect is still in full force 1400 years since inception.
62. প্রকৃত শিক্ষক শিক্ষার্থীর তমোগুণ পান করেন, সেই অর্থে নীলকন্ঠ |
63. এত গীতা পাঠ করেও কর্মের ফলাকাঙ্ক্ষার প্রতি এত প্রবল আকর্ষণ ?
64. শিক্ষার মান যেভাবে নামছে, আগামী প্রজন্ম এই সভ্যতা রক্ষা করতে পারবে তো ?
65. ধর্ম, অর্থ, কাম, মোক্ষ---এই চতুর্বর্গ উদ্দেশ্য সিদ্ধি সমন্বয় রক্ষা করে করা শ্রেয় | এখন কিন্তু লোভের বশবর্তী হয়ে শুধু অর্থের প্রতি ধাবমান মানুষ | এতে সংস্কৃতির সর্ব স্তরে বিপর্যয় ঘনিয়ে আসছে |
66. To limit one's needs is to be in even proportion independent. And independence is bliss, said Swamiji.
67. Nothing exists beyond Me. But who am I? The father of God. God and the universe are twins born of Me and they die in Me each moment.
68. India produced Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and yet Indians continue to neglect their teachings. Hence, India suffers. 🕉
69. Apocalyptic faiths are a danger to the world for they are in some sense death cults intent upon the destruction of the world.
70. Brahman wears the burkhā of name and form. 🕉
71. Brahman is the highest, the deepest, the one Reality in a world of delusive dreams extending from grossest matter to subtlest God.
72. The 'I' deludes as the 'i'.
73. The purpose of education is God-realisation, in the Vedantic sense, though.
74. God's grace is eternal and endless. Hence there is nothing called the final revelation. His revelations like He Himself are endless.
75. Brahman is the greatest, Brahman is the greatest, Brahman is the greatest. 🕉 Brahman!
76. গাম্ভীর্য চাই | বড় হালকা জাতিতে রূপান্তরীত হয়েছি আমরা | রাশভারী ভাবের বড়ই অভাব | সবই যেন অবিদ্যাশ্রিত, অগভীর |
77. Does a dead man have a sense of prestige? So is the man dead to the senses.
78. They are in the montessori of religion. Guess who? Operation Desert Storm.
79. Why follow one man's injunctions forever unquestioningly? There is nothing more regressive than it.
80. If a religion remains doctrinally static, it is bound to stagnate and die. Upon continuous evolution depends the life of a faith.
81. ভগবৎ প্রেম, অর্থাৎ, আত্মপ্রেম |
82. Heaven post-mortem with infinite pleasure awaiting? What a low religious ideal! Nothing spiritual about it.
83. Who saved Christ? He saved himself. So also must you save yourselves. None else can save you.
84. Self-reliance is spirituality.
85. জীবনে যত অপমান, বৈরাগ্য তত সুদৃঢ় |
86. যুগমন্ত্র 'কামিনীকাঞ্চন ত্যাগ |' এই মহামন্ত্রের পালনেই ইষ্টসিদ্ধি, জগতকল্যাণ, ব্রাহ্মিস্থিতি |
87. গঙ্গা পবিত্র করে মানুষকে আর মানুষ পবিত্র করে গঙ্গাকে | সত্ত্ব, রজো, তমো---এই ত্রিগুণের ক্রিয়ায় জগত চলেছে ব্রহ্মাভিমুখে |
88. যাকে অপমান করো, ভুলে যাও সেও তুমি অন্যরূপে |
89. শরীরটাতো নই | তার আর মায়া কিসের ? ভগবান সমাজ রক্ষা করবেন অন্যকরে | দায়মুক্ত পার্থিব স্তরে আমি |
90. সনাতন ধর্ম তো ব্রহ্মবিজ্ঞান | তার নাশ নেই | নাশ আছে সনাতনীর বর্বরহস্তে | তখন কে হবে ধারকবাহক সনাতন ধর্মের ?
91. আত্মা অমৃতকুম্ভ | সেই আত্মস্নান ত্রিগুণের সঙ্গমস্থলে করে মুক্ত হব সর্ববন্ধন হতে | তখন সাম্যে অবস্থান |
92. তোমার দুঃখে আমার দুঃখ, এই তো চৈতন্য |
93. এক অখণ্ড বোধ বিভাজিত ব্রহ্মাণ্ডরূপে |
94. যার কেউ নেই, তার মা আছেন |
95. সাম্যবাদ আর সাম্যবোধের মধ্যে অন্তর আছে |
96. এ শরীর থাকবে না | কাল বুদ্বুদ বাষ্পে মিলিয়ে যাবে | পড়ে থাকবে অখণ্ড জলরাশি |
97. গহন চেতনে আত্ম অন্বেষণ | দেখা মিলবে |
98. প্রকাশ সীমিত কিন্তু অখণ্ড | নামরূপে ভাঙতে পারছে না ব্রহ্মচৈতন্য |
99. আমার আদর্শ গড়ে গড়ে এগিয়ে চলেছি আমার আদর্শলোকে | সেখানে দেখা হবে আমারই সাথে ঘনচৈতন্যে |
100. সন্ন্যাসী আত্মশ্রাদ্ধকৃত সর্বত্যাগী, জগদ্গুরু, আলোকবর্তিকাস্বরূপ এই তমসাচ্ছন্ন ভূলোকে |
101. We all thirst. But where is water? In the wellspring of the heart, the source of solace, of love, of support for all.
102. 'Miracles' do not prove God. They prove human credulity and the common capacity of being insufficiently rational.
103. It is the quality of thought that makes us what we are, the density diving deep into the subliminal consciousness and transforming it till it is rendered divine. Then all the phases of the mind sing in unison the 'song celestial'.
104. Is it not best to go to hell to serve the suffering ones there if indeed 'Paapi devo bhava' and if indeed there be a hell where people postmortem suffer the burns? Perhaps, along with developing altruistic attributes we should take some sophisticated training in firefighting as well to serve the cause better. A just God indeed!
105. Man, Thou art Thy own Saviour. No God has ever been greater than Thee. Thou art God and greater.
106. The movement of the self towards the Self is the progression of evolution. From darkness to light indeed.
107. Dualistic man has created the dualistic God. There is no God beyond human conception. Man is the father of God.
108. Atheists are right in their rejection of the dualistic God but they err in their material conception of reality. The Spirit they fail to apprehend. They are halfway to truth.
109. Words fail to convey the message. The life touches the soul.
110. The power of the lived word is simply immense. The word alone is impotent. It is life that inspires life.
111. বাংলাদেশে হিন্দুনিগ্রহ বিষয়ক কোনো প্রশ্নোত্তর হল না কিন্তু | যখন হিন্দুই থাকবে না বাংলাদেশে, তখন ধ্যান করবে কে? যা চলছে বাংলাদেশে, তাতে রামকৃষ্ণ মিশনেরও তো কোণঠাসা অবস্থা | নবী দিবস পালন করে পার পাওয়া যাবে তো ?
112. কাপুরুষ কি কখনও ধার্মিক হতে পারে ? অরাজনৈতিকতার অছিলায় নির্যাতীত হিন্দুদের পাশে না দাঁড়ানো কি আধ্যাত্মিকতার যথাযথ পরিচয় বলে পরিগণিত হবে ঠাকুর-স্বামীজীর দরবারে ? হিন্দু ধর্মীয় প্রতিষ্ঠান 'নবী দিবস' পালন করে সর্ব ধর্মের যাথার্থ প্রমাণে তৎপর | পক্ষান্তরে কি পাচ্ছেন তাঁরা ? রামকৃষ্ণ-ভজনা মসজিদে মসজিদে ? একপাক্ষিক উদারতা উদারতা নয়, কাপুরুষতা, ত্রাসে আত্মসমর্পণ | এর ইতি হওয়াই হবে স্বধর্মপালন | 🕉 হিন্দু !
113. It is best to stand alone independent of support. Society supports at any rate. One must serve to discharge one's obligations to society. But mentally one must be free.
114. It is virtue to be valorous.
115. রামমোহন, বিবেকানন্দ | তিন নম্বর এখনও কেউ আসেননি | প্রতীক্ষায় আছি |
116. Education is the panacea for the problems of the world.
117. Valour must be the better part of virtue.
118. এই ভাবটি রাখা চাই যে আজ হিন্দু সমাজকে কি দিলাম |
119. অদ্বৈত বেদান্তের অদ্বয় অনুভূতিই ধর্মের শেষ কথা |
120. রামমোহন, বিবেকানন্দ | তৃতীয় সর্বব্যাপী বিস্তৃত ব্যক্তিত্ব এই স্তরের কে এসেছেন ? এসেছেন কেউ ?
121. রামমোহন, বিবেকানন্দ | তৃতীয় সর্বব্যাপী বিস্তৃত যুগান্তকারী ব্যক্তিত্ব এই স্তরের কে এসেছেন ? এসেছেন কেউ ?
122. It is vital for Hindus to study the Islamic trilogy of the Qur'an, the Hadees and the Sira for their civilisational defence. 🕉
123. It is an ideological war and it must be won ideologically. The Sanatan Dharma must be studied, understood and lived in its pure form.
124.
Hail, vanishing one!
When will you be won?
Ever on the run,
Chasing earthly fun,
When will you be free?
Do care to tell me.
125. লাভের ইচ্ছা লোভ থেকে |
Sunday, 26 January 2025
LETTER FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON
LETTER FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON
Dear Abir,
You are the carrier of the family's tradition. For untold generations from remotest antiquity where history dares not peep into nor imagination conceive of, this light that is now in your keeping has been genetically handed down to you, a light that must shine bright for your own evolution, for the glory of the family line and for the welfare of humanity.
Happy Republic Day!
Yours affectionately,
Baba
Dated: 26 January, 2025
Saturday, 25 January 2025
THE DIVINE DEMOCRACY OF HINDUISM
THE DIVINE DEMOCRACY OF HINDUISM
The multifarious religious culture of the Hindus is the necessary evolutionary growth of the Hindu civilisation. It is this phased democracy that keeps it vibrant and strong despite its apparent and not quite real divergence from its pristine philosophical fountainhead.in the Vedanta. The stratified structure of this spiritual civilisation allows every Hindu to catch a glimpse of the Divine from his own vantage point. It is this relativity of spiritual perception that makes for the most rapid radial advancement of the individual towards the centre of his spherical consciousness where in the Absolute Self he perennially abides whose degeneration had thus far been the relativity of phenomenal experience. Hinduism thus stands true in its vast variety centred in its core truth of the Sachchidānanda, an exploration of spiritual truth along diverse channels leading to the same divine destination. And Hinduism has its solid philosophical basis in the Vedas with their illustrative narrative in the Purânas to serve as its rationale. Which Abrahamic faith can claim likewise? And yet they in their stupendous vanity born of their abounding ignorance of the philosophical profundity of Hinduism denounce the same and constantly try to seduce Hindus into their narrow folds. Wondrous are the meandering modes of Maya! 🕉 Hindu!
Written by Sugata Bose
Thursday, 23 January 2025
STUDY SWAMIJI
STUDY SWAMIJI
Read Swami Vivekananda's Complete Works daily. It will strengthen you and make you fit for serving humanity truly. This is the need of the hour, this the nation-builder, the world-saver right now. Flood the world with Vivekananda's words, undiluted, unedited, as they had flowed out of the hero's heart. This is the panacea for the world's maladies, this the doctrine of the day.
Vivekananda was ushered into the world by the Master, the Lord Himself, to reshape humanity, redirect its lost course en route to its divine destination. These are not puerile priestly proclamations from the pulpit that are directed to increasing the flock of a particular religious denomination but are words pregnant with potent ideas that will save humanity at this critical juncture when the threat of mass annihilation looms large on many fronts.
Vivekananda is the junction of the ancient, the medieval and the modern, their transcendent-immanent synthesis. Hence, he is of significance today as he was yesterday and as he will be in the foreseeable future, the messiah of man in the widest sense, in the deepest sense and in the loftiest sense, the ideal made real, the harmony of seeming opposites, the synthesis in a world of hopeless contradictions.
Read Vivekananda, study him deep till he permeates your being, till every nerve current resonates to his ideas and you see yourself transformed in the light of the Divine that shines from within, shedding lustre on aught of earth. At this transitional stage of evolution when modernity is being slow-born of the womb of medievalism, let Vivekananda be the midwife for the delivery of the human babe, the new civilisation that is awaiting its first breath on earth. 🕉
Written by Sugata Bose
COMMENTS GALORE ... 80
COMMENTS GALORE ... 80
Sugata Bose @Mahesh Mj : Can personality be ascribed to the Divine Will? And can personality be the source of the Cosmic-Supracosmic Will? Also, where does the Will begin to make its manifest mark and by what is the modus operandi? One more thing. Where does the Impersonal assume Personality, that is, where lies the critical transition zone/line where the Impersonal assumes Personality? Can enumeration be done on the Divine by human mathematical divisions? 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Arpita Sadhu [Wedding day, 24 January, 2025] : May Thakur-Ma-Swamiji bless you two as you embark on your marital life as equal participants in the onward movement towards the Divine! 🕉
Sugata Bose @Dhyan Maneesha : Why not? Rammohun Roy was the most modern of them all and to my mind the pioneer of modernity in India, the forerunner of Vivekananda and the father of the so-called Bengal Renaissance which then awakened the rest of India. Read his biography written by Sophia Dobson Collett and study his varied activities for the rejuvenation of inertial India so as to form your considered opinion about this seminal being, one of the premier personalities of why alone India but that of the wide world, sweeping the gamut of history.
Sugata Bose @Mohit Ranjan Das : You are rather brash, something not acceptable in civilised society. Please restrain your arrogance in communication.
Sugata Bose @YouTube [Clear Cut Talks] : J. Sai Deepak ought to speak things straight and not so much in roundabout terms. That would make him more comprehensible to the commoner which is the need of the hour. Communication in simple and direct terms is necessary. Moreover, he should name the parties he speaks of rather than resorting to pronouns or indirect references. A certain boldness of diction is necessary rather than clever manipulation of words to send the message. The latter effort while safer for his professional life is certainly less effective in awakening public consciousness about the pertinent issues of the day that beset the Hindu's life and civilisational prospects.
Sugata Bose @Prakash Gupta : Inevitable as demographic change is rapidly happening. The Islamic ideology has to be ideologically defeated and politicians who help the proliferation of Islam in India brought to book. For this consistent and continuous campaigning must be undertaken to awaken Hindus en masse to the peril that stares them in the face. You are doing your job and so am I doing mine, and so must we through our activism and exemplary life led quicken others to do the same so that a critical mass of activism is reached whereby the looming civilisational threat may be faced head on and our body politic saved from the horrors of Islamisation. Godspeed to you in that direction and godspeed to myself! 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Ujjal Kumar Ghosh : Not quite. Gandhi’s Khilafat Movement predated the formation of the Republic of Turkey whereupon Ataturk started his reform programmes as President of the new nation. But the essence of your message is quite correct in that Ataturk was progressive in his political programmes regarding Islam as opposed to Gandhi’s viciously regressive policies of Muslim appeasement. The former liberated Turkey from medieval Islamic shackles while the latter thrust chains of bondage on a freer nation which have permanently held it in captive bonds with a civilisational peril looming large in its horizon that ever draws nearer by the day. Ataturk was the liberator of Turkey from Islam whereas Gandhi was the broker of bondage to it. The two stand poles apart and it is strange that Gandhi is so often spoken of as the messiah of man while Ataturk remains a forgotten character although in such contemporary relevance really. Ataturk through his application of law and its due enforcement succeeded in harnessing the fanatical Islamic forces of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire then in full operation within Turkey while Gandhi through his debilitating non-violence and pretentious universal love succeeded in inadvertently bolstering the barbaric Islamic forces in India as experienced in the Moplah massacre of Hindus and in the pre and post Partition genocides of Hindus at the hands of Muslims. Ataturk is being undone by Erdogan in Turkey and Gandhi is being propped up by the Hindutva leaders hypocritically in India. Alas, it is the slow and steady victory of Islam either way much like the gravitational slide of a body down a slight slope till it acquires critical velocity to precipitate headlong into the abyss! 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Disciple : Be brave, bold, upright and firm, fearless to the marrow, intrepid warrior of the Spirit, a peerless person on phenomenal pilgrimage. Unfettered, free, abide in bliss, for bliss is thy nature that has broken bonds with Nature's fetters and forged links of divine love. This love purified, raised and deified is premā bhakti that leads to God-realisation. Arise, awake, and stop not ever, even after the goal is reached, for it is an endless journey should you wish it to be so. And should you wish it to stop, the wheel of karma will exhaust its fuel and then run on for a while to consume past momentum before it perennially comes to rest in its last refuge the stable, immobile self-conscious Brahman. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Sanjeev Shrivastava : You are simply too much. Wherefrom issues so much mirth in you that sets the audience alight unless of course men are by nature shorn of this simple sense of humour? Carry on, doctor, for the medication you administer is patently potent for the Antonios of the day with their longfaced pretences and affected superciliousness. But those that are intelligent will revel in the double-edged data that you deliver in your inimitable style replete with gutkā spicing of sarcasm and scorn. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Shivananda Aum : For you to thoroughly go through, for a well-read person will not make such a presumptuous remark as you have made. For the past five decades Ramakrishna and Vivekananda have been my constant companions so much so that they have helped evolve me to the level where I can get beyond being a stupid apologist as you are who dares not address the questions raised, residing in far off, God knows where, perhaps Russia, and cannot even apprehend the civilisational danger faced by Hindus in the Indian subcontinent from the proselytising Abrahamic faiths, namely, Islam and Christianity. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Provided below is the online link of 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' for your thorough study, for evidently you have either not read them well enough or have failed to comprehend their massive import which includes Swamiji's warnings about the dangers faced by the Hindus in the coming days, a fate, alas, it seems the Ramakrishna Mission is oblivious of or is utterly apathetic to, despite their sad exodus from Pakistan in 1948 and utter humiliation in Bangladesh time and again where they are somehow surviving the Islamic threat. And yet they do not voice a word on behalf of the persecuted Hindus in terms leonine that would befit their being worthy successors of 'the Lion of the Vedanta', their fearless founder, that foremost among men, the intrepid Hindu, Vivekananda. 🕉 Hindu!
https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/complete_works.htm
Sugata Bose @Sanjeev Shrivastava : These are affiliates to the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, hence their apologists beyond reasonable measure who cannot counter the points raised in the post but must sidetrack the issue by calling names etc. Such have ever been the faithful who have hastened the downfall of a spiritual movement by removing rational scrutiny of the observances and practices of a erstwhile spiritual order, their altered attitudes and amended stances to suit temporal conveniences that would be utterly abhorrent to their founding fathers. God bless such apologists galore who are the bane of every spiritual order en route to degeneration, decay and demise in pristine principled terms! 🕉
Sugata Bose @Sanjeev Shrivastava : You should compile your comments and compose them in the form of a book. It will be a book of such rollicking humour that even the pages will laugh which though will need a tough bind to keep them from hilariously falling off the mother's arms. Indeed, your humour is beyond bounds literally.
Sugata Bose @Jayanti Rakshit: Bodies come and bodies go. You were never born nor will you ever die. You are the eternal, the boundless being abiding in Self-consciousness, luminous, free. 🕉
Sugata Bose @YouTube [Clear Cut Talks] : J Sai Deepak must speak in simpler terms for him to be understood by one and all. He is too indirect and verbally sophisticated for essy understooinng. He fails in mass communication thus. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya : And we all are dharmabound to fight for it (the preservation of India whose survival is at stake in light of increasing Islamisation).
Sugata Bose @Ujjal Kumar Ghosh : Your erudition amazes me. Thanks a lot for bringing out these precious gems to the light of day. 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Prasenjit Dass : Oh my God! This is an unbearable loss. Prasenjit, take care, brother, and live in her loving memory, making each day of your life now a song offering unto the divine departed. My heartfelt condolence at this hour of inconsolable grief. May her loving memory and living presence as yet impel you into the forging further of a perennial bond which no physical separation can sunder! 🕉 Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! Hari 🕉 Tat Sat!
Sugata Bose @Ujjal Kumar Ghosh : What a supplement! Breathtaking! My goodness, wherefrom do you get such superb ideas that are then couched in such devastatingly robust language? Salutations! 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Prasenjit Dass : What a beautiful piece, befitting of heartfelt pulsations of a never-ending love!
Sugata Bose @Ranjan Mitra : What do you think? Am I? Does my cover photograph and profile photograph look like I am that? Does my profile detail staring in the face make me appear to be so?
Sugata Bose @Ranjan Mitra : No, not at all. The photograph is of this body of mine. So, you are being misled by your own misconception and your own inability to discern between shapes, contours, forms, lines and whatever else. And you are in effect falsely accusing me of falsification of identity when you say, "YES IT DOES MIS LESD THE PICTURE IS FOR SURE IS OF TMC MP sUGATAI BOSE!". This is abhorrent, most unwelcome from a gentleman that you otherwise are. 🕉
There's your former TMC MP. Now can you discern? Or, are you still confused? See the glaring difference between the two photographs and do not henceforth harbour such superficial, flawed notions about the photo-identity of others and in consequence unthinkingly pass on them ill-considered judgement. Alas, such carelessness has become the characteristic of the commoner! 🕉
Sugata Bose @Debaprasad Bhattacharya But 'Jayatu Swamiji Maharaj' comment while ignoring Swamiji's message which you posted? I was irked by that and wrote in response this rejoinder. And this is common 'devotion'. You call it devotion? Not I. This is low idolatry, not even exalted worship of the idol, the ideal et al. 🕉
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A1rKgoCgo/?mibextid=oFDknk
P.S. Nobody is contesting the validity of idol-worship or the worship of God with form as a means to realising the Divine who does manifest in unnumbered forms as per the worship offered Him or Her by the devotee. The contentious point is about shallowness, this indolence, the sheer laxity of attitude, the refusal to read the content of a serious post as one from Swamiji's Complete Works while shallowly commenting on the appended photo in the typical manner, oft-repeated and by such repetition rendered sterile and stale. I have in consequence decided to write posts henceforth without adorning them with such photographs anymore to prevent such silly commenting. 🕉
Sugata Bose @Mahua Banerjee : You have to consider the import of the post yourself. Rammohan and Vivekananda were multifaceted geniuses operating both in the spiritual and social spheres in all their respective comprehensiveness. Has there been a third in this line of versatile sociospiritual greatness that is simply overwhelming in its scope and scale? Now you yourself start thinking and adequately answering without messing up response with insufficient rigour. 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Bilwadal Tapadar : Vidyasagar belonged strictly to the social sphere and his activities did not include the spiritual. Hence he cannot be placed alongside Rammohun and Vivekananda.
Sugata Bose @Bilwadal Tapadar : Posts carry their implicit meaning. Rammohan and Vivekananda both were religious reformers as well which Vidyasagar was not. Hence, your misapprehension of import of post is entirely your personal matter. Moreover, the post carries my own estimation of greatness even otherwise, and I do not consider Vidyasagar to be of the epic stature of Rammohun and Vivekananda, inestimable though his social, literary and educational contributions may have been which we are forever indebted to. Sri Ramakrishna famously said about Vidyasagar, "Vidyasagar lacked in introspective vision. Had he had it, his external activities would have diminished by far." Vidyasagar was not a spiritually illumined person which, if not Rammohun, Swami Vivekananda certainly was. Vidyasagar was a great reformer but his reforms were not founded in the Spirit of man. They were on the social plane. The trio thus cannot come together quite. Rammohan and Vivekananda simply stand peerless in the realm of great personalities, and of the two my unhesitant vote will be for Swamiji. 🕉 Hindu!
Sugata Bose @Sulekha Basu : Well punned as usual. A translingual treatment but a linguistic treat nonetheless. Emoji pun from my side as well, all in good humour.
Sugata Bose @Disciple : My blessings fall in the desert sand to be sucked up to sterility. Alas, minds never meet because of mundane stuff! So busy remain the children the world that they miss the very elixir of life.
Sugata Bose @Gargi Sengupta : না, কারোরই অত্যাচার করার অধিকার নেই কারোর ওপর | তবে এ ক্ষেত্রে স্ত্রীজাতির পুরুষ মানুষের ওপর গৃহমধ্যে অত্যাচারের কথা বলা হয়েছে | এবং বহু বহু ক্ষেত্রে তা ঘটে থাকে কিন্তু বিশেষ আলোচিত হয় না | তাই এ প্রসঙ্গের অবতারণা | পুরুষকর্তৃক নারী নির্যাতন তো বহুল আলোচিত, সমালোচিত, নিন্দিত, দণ্ডনীয় অপরাধ | কিন্তু গৃহে স্ত্রী দ্বারা দুর্ব্যবহারের দুঃসহ নির্যাতন সম্বন্ধে সমাজ মৌন | তাই প্রসঙ্গোত্থাপন |
P.S. 'Women, slaves to their own irritable, jealous tempers, are apt to blame their husbands, and assert their own "freedom", as they think, not knowing that thereby they only prove that they are slaves. So it is with husbands who eternally find fault with their wives.
Chastity is the first virtue in man or woman, and the man who, however he may have strayed away, cannot be brought to the right path by a gentle and loving and chaste wife is indeed very rare. The world is not yet as bad as that. We hear much about brutal husbands all over the world and about the impurity of men, but is it not true that there are quite as many brutal and impure women as men? If all women were as good and pure as their own constant assertions would lead one to believe, I am perfectly satisfied that there would not be one impure man in the world. What brutality is there which purity and chastity cannot conquer? A good, chaste wife, who thinks of every other man except her own husband as her child and has the attitude of a mother towards all men, will grow so great in the power of her purity that there cannot be a single man, however brutal, who will not breathe an atmosphere of holiness in her presence. Similarly, every husband must look upon all women, except his own wife, in the light of his own mother or daughter or sister. That man, again, who wants to be a teacher of religion must look upon every woman as his mother, and always behave towards her as such.'
https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_1/karma-yoga/what_is_duty.htm
Thursday, 16 January 2025
THE DEGENERACY OF THE TIMES AND ITS SOLUTIONS ... 1
THE DEGENERACY OF THE TIMES AND ITS SOLUTIONS ... 1
Superficiality has come to afflict us as commercialisation popularises culture. The downward trend is degenerate. Depth and dignity are both missing. Frothy talk, infertile discussions, a supercilious attitude regarding Hindutva by both proponents and opponents of it, shallow knowledge of scripture, of history, of anything per se, and yet an assumption of knowledge, of scholarship, a posturing of omniscience, so to say, while misquoting facts and figures, erroneous interpretation of data, subservience to relevant authority while indiscriminately ridiculing opposition---these have come to characterise public discourse. The whole idea seems to be how to cash in on every opportunity as capitalism of a degenerate kind gains ground.
Written by Sugata Bose
Wednesday, 15 January 2025
ARISE, AWAKE, JUST LIKE SWAMIJI WANTED OVERALL AND NOT SELECTIVELY SO
ARISE, AWAKE, JUST LIKE SWAMIJI WANTED OVERALL AND NOT SELECTIVELY SO
Ramakrishna Mission monks, devotees and disciples, wake up! Be bold and fight in defence of the Dharma. Swamiji wanted it. Wage the war of ideas that will defeat the nefarious forces trying to thwart humanity of the freedom of religion by thrusting their medieval world view on all else.
You have been driven away from both West and East Pakistan and sought refuge in partitioned India. What fraternal feelings did you find there among your persecutors that you are now oblivious of your past and in foolishness attempt to extend a harmonious hand to a fundamentally inharmonious inhuman creed? Would you do the same to fascism, Nazism, communism, anarchism and the like and call them valid paths to spiritual enlightenment? Like the Mahātmā befriended the adversary while neglecting Hindu defence and eminently failed in his pious attempt, are you on a similar path that is impossible of achievement? Where is your voice of protest, where your guidance when Hindus suffer the fanatic's sword, Hindu women suffer the rapist's lust, Hindus are looted of wealth and health by the practitioners of a creed that divinely sanctions it? It is time to rectify stance lest the fire reaches further home, for Bangladesh is not far off from it.
Have you forgotten Swamiji? Have you buried his ideals by selectively quoting him and his apolitical stance regarding the future of the Mission? Do you not find references galore that ought to fire you up in defence of the persecuted Hindus and their Dharma? Is it being political to be human, to be in defence strong, to spread awareness about the demographic danger that lies ahead? Would you by your cowardly capitulation allow the Islamic takeover first of some provinces such as West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and the like where fanatical forces of alien origin are building up, and then the collapse of Hindu India as a whole? Can you forget Partition so easily? A 24.6% Muslim population forced Partition while 75.4% of the rest of the population submitted to the unleashed mass murder on them. Refer to the Great Calcutta Killing of 1946 followed by the three month long Noakhali genocide of the Hindus along with similar atrocities in the rest of East Bengal that forced even Gandhiji to surrender to Jinnah-Suhrawardy-Mujib's demand for Partition.
Do not edit Swamiji's Complete Works but release his unedited original words. That will do Hindus a world of good. Do not be sheeplike nor make vast herds of devotees by feeding them the perilous pill of untruth, that of all religions leading to Truth. Exhort your devotees to study Swamiji like I do, myself having been self-driven for the past five decades to reading him and slowly assimilating his true message, for I had to wade through the 'harmonic' waters of untruth all the while till realisation truly dawned as to the plight of the Hindus in the subcontinent. Sri Ramakrishna did not merely say, 'যত মত তত পথ' [As many faiths, so many paths] but he also said, 'আধুনিক ধর্ম সব আসবে যাবে, এক সনাতন ধর্ম থাকবে |' [The religions of recent currency will come and go. Only the Sanātan Dharma will remain.] To continually preach that all religions are valid paths to the Absolute Truth of Brahman, just because Sri Ramakrishna had said so, makes a mockery of truth itself and misleads a billion plus Hindus into relapsing into a false sense of truth and a false of security which is proving perilous by the day. The general absence of teeth in monks, devotees and disciples that I see daily barring exceptions like me and likeminded souls who have the courage of conviction and the guts to fight, is a great civilisational danger for all Hindus. Therefore, I as a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda, exhort all the devotees and disciples of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission to rise up in defence of the Dharma instead of engaging in passive piety and parroting the untrue harmonic words lent out to them.
🕉 Hindu!
Written by Sugata Bose
COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, VIVEKANANDA ET AL
COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, VIVEKANANDA ET AL
The communists are politically the most intelligent which is why they are the most feared. Coupled with their socialist philosophy, scientific temper and overt and covert revolutionary activities, they are the nemesis of all capitalist regimes. They have suffered a temporary reverse following the collapse of the Berlin Wall but the dying embers of socialist revolution are still burning and will continue to do so so long as economic exploitation of the masses lasts which it will, for greed, the foundational vice that fuels capitalism for all practical purposes, cannot be done away with, it being organic in man.
Vivekananda also considered himself a socialist, not because he considered it to be a perfect system but because half a loaf was, to his mind, better than no bread at all. He has been hailed as India's earliest socialist by some, and they have a point, but it seems far-fetched to imagine that he would have subscribed to the tenets of Marxism as such, being spiritually disposed in his inclinations and bearings, and being deep-sighted enough with his seer's vision not to have sighted the shortcomings of a pre-eminently materialistic philosophy, that is, were he aware of it, about which we do not have definitive information.
Marx and Vivekananda were seminal personalities in different hemispheres of human thinking but converged on their common concern for man along diametrically opposite lines. The core concern for both was human liberation but each, culturally bound differently, evolved by birth, circumstance and experience differently, chose to approach the human problem along radically different lines, Marx formulating a materialistic philosophy and revolutionary practical programme for transformation of the human condition and Vivekananda, seeing through the vanity of all things phenomenal, approaching the whole problem spiritually with character-building in masses of people his foundational standpoint. Vivekananda the sage worked at roots as well to alter the mode of human thinking in the subliminal consciousness of man. This is quite a tall claim that may only be intellectually apprehended by deep thinkers but cannot be rationally proved as such as of now owing to unavailability of scientific evidence in that subtle psychological sphere.
This world of human affairs is a slowly evolving one over millions of years, evolution being organic as also experiential and educational. But the seeds of the animal in man are strong and will not yield. Thus, system after system has for ages been evolved but the exploitative nature of 'the selfish gene' in man has not mutated as yet to a more humane form. It lives on still wearing fresher garbs of civilisation but beneath the epidermal cover animality reigns.
Marx interpreted the evolving history of humanity along materialistic lines. Vivekananda did so along spiritual lines. Marx talked of the sequential Hegelian dialectic triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, suited to his theories of dialectical and historical materialism, as the evolving mechanism of human society. Vivekananda spoke of the progressive manifestation of Brahman along the sinusoidal wave mode or the cyclical pattern of alternate increasing and decreasing manifestation of consciousness to explain the movement of man in the collective sense. Both believed in dialectics---of variant sorts though---, resolution of forces and the progressive unshackling of man, Marx through violent revolution leading to total transformation of the socioeconomic order and Vivekananda through root and branch character-reform of man as the foundational means of liberation of the hypnotised soul, suppressed humanity and subjugated slaves, never in the bargain denying the role of material change brought about by science, force and politics. Vivekananda was, thus, far more comprehensive in his devices, more universal in choosing instruments of change and infinitely inclusive which Marx, focussed on materialism as he was, was antipathetic to. Marx understood, even appreciated the historical role of religion and never pooh-poohed it as he is commonly misconstrued as having done, but knowing Euro-Christian religious traditions as a retarding force in the cause of liberation of the masses from capitalistic exploitation, dubbed it as 'opium' for the masses. But Vivekananda, keenly aware of the imperfections of the mind in perpetual flux and subject to the myriad forces of Maya (Nature in all its comprehensiveness), refrained from providing absolute solutions for humanity in terrestrial chains, whereas Marx was the last classical philosophical system-builder who idealised solutions to the concrete problems of historical evolution, in the bargain falling into the pitfall of himself being a Marxian utopian which in realistic terms led to the massive failure of the political and socioeconomic system built after his philosophy in communist countries post revolution. Here Marx fell short of Vivekananda's vision but carried out concrete programmes of massive social change nonetheless.
The theoretical formulations of Marx are fine, although they are along deterministic lines whose veracity is being legitimately questioned today following the discoveries of quantum physics which is entirely probabilistic. Nonetheless, in the macroscopic world of human affairs Marxian theory, modified and applied as per altered circumstance and situation, would still hold considerable ground. The problem, though, is in application. The refinements of theory and their elaborate explanations notwithstanding, their application has to be in the crude world of rough human material replete with a preponderance of animal propensities governing human affairs. Here the leader and the led must both be human enough to appreciate the higher principles of socioeconomic justice, equality and morality to be able to give due shape to the aspirations of socialism culminating in communism. But such is not the human material available and herein violent beginnings of revolution lead sequentially to violent dicatatorship of the Party, the Central Committee, the Politburo and lastly, the General Secretary, as in the case of Stalin, Mao, Ceausescu, Pol Pot and the like. Dictatorship of the proletariat is then lost in a bloodbath unleashed by the few in power and it is imperialism activated under a new garb with philosophical justification making matters worse. This has been the history of the socialist states of the twentieth century.
Application ever is the problem, theoretical formulations, high-flown and profound, notwithstanding. If theory is violent, violent application follows with devastating effect as in the case of Marxism which in actual historical terms became a cover for neo-imperialism as was witnessed in the Soviet Union and in China. On the contrary, if theory engenders isolation from the mainstream of life in any way, even by remote reference as in the case of Vivekananda literature exhorting Ramakrishna followers to be strictly apolitical, such a stance, purely justified from the perspective of the then existing complex historical situation, in latter years becomes cover for escapism from the bitter realities of life which foils the very purpose of the advent of the Avatar.
Evolution is democratising society. From primitive communism mankind has proceeded to the declaration of the universal rights of man to thereon its gradual application. Impediments have been many in the implementation part of it, for privilege scarce gives up its right to lordly existence. The tussle between the feudal rights of the few and the general rights of the many has been a long and protracted one leading gradually to the shift of power to the masses. Democracy came in America in 1776 followed by that in revolutionary France before imperialism usurped power in the form of Napoleon. Europe ushered in the nation state and the progressive march of democracy has since been on.
But while society has democratised from its erstwhile feudal set-up, capitalism with its scientific blood-sucking machinery has gained ground and that too with systemic support. Lenin said, "The state is an organ of class rule." His pronouncement has in capitalist democracies been proved correct as governments have allied themselves with crony capitalists to reduce masses of people to unnecessary poverty even as the rich have in the bargain hoarded disproportionate amounts of ill-begotten wealth. Society has typically been stratified into two antagonistic classes, the exploiting class and the exploited class. This is in accordance with Marxist theory and this has fuelled trade union movements and other labour movements throughout the world. Welfare economics has attempted to tackle this issue by providing strong social security networks but exploitation still stirs up socialist movements of various degrees across the world. Socialism, thus, has not died but lives on awaiting its opportunity to strike when the iron has blown red-hot.
The French Revolution initiated this process of mass mobilisation against authority and changed Europe for good. Marx and Engels further added fuel to revolution by providing elaborate rationalisation of its workings, by placing it on a scientific pedestal of sorts, by creating a whirlpool of thoughts which is still attracting adherents across the world. Wherever exploitation of capital abounds, there seeds of socialism are sown.
The waves of people's revolution hitting the shores of the Atlantic reached the shores of India as well and Vivekananda like other youths was drawn into its ambit. A born rebel that he was, and born and bred in revolutionary times in India, the young Narendranath's mind was a cauldron, a seething mass of conflicting thoughts seeking resolution. Innately spiritual and gifted with a Hindu mind of the highest order, he could not be satisfied with shallow solutions to the world problem, this perplexing puzzle of human existence. He sought solutions through extensive reading of Western philosophy, Sanskrit texts, science, music, literature, art and what not? But he could not plumb the problem to its source-depths, could not fathom its root-realms at the bed of the ocean of consciousness. And here comes Ramakrishna into his life.
The Avatar of Dakshineshwar was as if biding by time, awaiting the arrival of his great disciple. From his earliest vision of 'the realm of the seven sages' whence he beckoned a venerable one to alight on earth with the transcendental light, to his vision of a golden beam emanating from Kashi and traversing all the way till it reached its destination at North Kolkata, Ramakrishna had been in patient and often impatient expectation of uniting with his beloved Naren, the future Vivekananda. For it was for his (Narendranath's) sake that he (Ramakrishna) had this time descended on earth, to fashion the instrument of the Mother who would reshape the world.
The interaction between the preceptor and the protégé was deep, not visible to the world always. It happened on the gross plane and the subtle plane equally, making its markings non-sequential to the earthly eye but shaping the protégé into a powerhouse of spirituality, nonetheless, whose fruits were visible clear on the earthly plane, although its higher causal components remained obscure to common conception. Ramakrishna moulded the Narendranath clay into volcanic Vivekananda. Entering the protégé's psychophysical form in the vesper hour of his life, the Master and the Man became in ultimate union the potent form for transformation of human society till it became 'one with God'.
The problem of all theory is its translation into practice. While Ramakrishna provided the ideal, the personal example and the energy with which his protégé was to carry out his mission in real life, Vivekananda had nonetheless to plumb the depths of the human problem to discover the means of solving it by bridging theory and practice. To this end he wandered, a mendicant monk across the face of India, to see her real face, the teeming millions suffering the agony of hunger, ignorance, exploitation and death silently as the burden of their karma. The lion-heart of Vivekananda could not take it and he had to find a way out to rescue his countrymen from this affliction anyhow. His socialistic mind made him rebel against this terrible bondage of his brethren to British colonialism and the bloodsucking system of capitalism that was eating into the vitals of the nation. Pulled by antithetical ideologies, that of socialism and welfare capitalism, as the way to recovery of the motherland to manhood and strength, Vivekananda was a soul torn between golden dreams and thwarted deeds as he waged his lone war against the forces of the dark in a country benighted by the lapses of a millennium.
The Master passed away on 16 August, 1886. Narendranath was the lone warrior now in charge of his brother disciples entrusted to his care by his divine preceptor and in charge of the brewing spiritual movement that had been initiated by his Master but left to him to give it substance and shape in the real world of men. It was a herculean task that faced him---the liberation of India and the world from the chains of material superstition. But it had to be accomplished in every phase of national life, in every aspect of the evolving civilisation of mankind. The causes of degeneration had to be discovered, the cure for them prescribed, the medicine made and the healing touch given to regenerate the Sanatan Dharma and enliven the mass of mankind to its divine drumbeat.
The following years of 'wanderjahre' were not only years of experience but of intense brooding on the causes of Sanatan Bharatvarsha's downfall and the discovery of the means of her recovery. As Swamiji travelled an intinerant monk across the face of India he was weighed down by the grave responsibility of raising India from the bottomless pit into which she had precipitated, a task entrusted him by his divine Guru, the peerless Paramahamsa who had withdrawn from the world leaving his blossoming disciple with this Herculean task. An observer asked him one day, "Swamiji, I find you rather anxious, grievously worried about something all the time. What is it that worries you?" And Swamiji replied on being quizzed further, "Oh, I cannot rest with this one thought of shouldering the responsibility of raising India from her present degradation, a task entrusted to me by my Guru. I do not know where lies the cause of her downfall nor can I understand how to remedy it, neither do I feel I am equipped as a poor sanyasi to do so. This great suffering of my countrymen on one side and my Master's commandment on the other which I know not how to carry out make me so terribly anxious."
Given the sociopolitical conditions then in India and viewing the trends in world politics Vivekananda did study socialistic ideas but found them short of the comprehensive ideal of world regeneration that his Master had imbued in him and he found it an impossible utopian ideal to pursue, that of socialistic ultimate restructuring of human society to alleviate humanity of all the evils it was heir to, for seated as he was now in the stability of the Self, he could clearly see how unstable human society merged in Maya was and how it was impossible to formulate a rigid system that could solve its problems once and for all, buffeted as society was by the undulating waves of Maya. Later political developments of the twentieth century have proved Vivekananda remarkably right as Marxism unleashed unprecedented violence across the face of the globe in the name of engineering socioeconomic and sociopolitical changes on the basis of rigid theory thought out by a few individuals, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and the like. The scientific basis of Marxism has as well been proved inaccurate as advance in the physical sciences has required modifications to the classical theory of Marxism which in the founder's absence post his demise has not been possible, for not too often does genius appear to modify material that is inherently resistive to reformation on account of primary principle of absolutist rigidity. That science evolves is because it is impersonal and fluid as opposed to rigid systems of personalised authority like the Abrahamic religions and Marxism which may be referred to as well as a godless religion.
Thus, contrasting currents of thought beset the nameless monk traversing the face of eternal India, now plummeted to the depths of degradation post a thousand year slavery to aggressive alien forces with little sympathy for whatever they discovered here as Sanātan. And this fallen race, the descendants of the mighty Aryans of which he was by self-admission the proudest member, was to be raised. On one side was Euro-colonial exploitation, enslavement of the entire race, and on the other was Islamic occupation of over a millennium, now displaced but threatening to reassert itself should political conditions change to their favour. The Hindus were in the sorriest state of civilisation and had to be rescued. Exploitation---colonial, cultural and economic---had to be minimised, if not eliminated totally, for that in the relative order of things could never be possible, Vivekananda knew. It was given unto him by his Master to establish the Yugadharma (the righteous order of the Age) for which he had been ushered into this world from his highest abode of spiritual consciousness what his preceptor had called the Saptarshiloka (the realm of the seven sages).
The fundamental difference between Marx and Vivekananda is this. Marx was a materialist and could not but explain the workings of human evolution except through materialistic science, thereby submitting his thesis that the surface workings of the human mind had no deeper basis, that thoughts were but the manufacture of the brain and were not in any way influenced, shaped, far less sourced by some deeper, invisible, inner workings of a depth-consciousness about which Marx seemed unaware and, hence, denied it. Marx was thus surface-bound in the ocean of consciousness and saw this three-dimensional reality as a two-dimensional one. The film of superficial consciousness was all that he deemed real and the rest was non-existent for him, his stance being entirely matter-based as were the physical sciences in his time. Vivekananda, on the other hand, plumbed the depths of consciousness right to its very basis, the Brahman, and came up with a comprehensive philosophy of human existence which included the physical surface-reality as truth but did not shut shop there. His Vedantic interpretation of relative and absolute reality was profoundly integrated in a sweeping philosophical universalism which was beyond the elaborate scientific treatise of Marx. The philosophical approaches of the two savants, therefore, were not just different but dimensionally apart.
Written by Sugata Bose
Monday, 13 January 2025
ISLAM AND INDIA ... 2
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ISLAM AND INDIA ... 2
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So-called Hindu liberals are highly biased against Hindutva on account of their extreme ignorance about Islam. Their pompous talks on humanity are at once superficial as they are one-sided. Let them first stand clean of self-interest and practise honesty before they lecture us who have studied the tenets of Islam, its gory history since inception, its present perfidies being perpetrated across the world and its clearly spelt out political objectives to be implemented without fail in the future which shall spell the doom of Hindus and Hinduism. These liberals are shallow students of life, slaves to self-interest and intelligent fools who use their intellectual faculties to damning their own civilisation and helping sharpen the instruments of aggression of the enemies of humanity who are themselves victims of the toxic theology they believe in and practise and proliferate.
Written by Sugata Bose
Sunday, 12 January 2025
ISLAM AND INDIA ... 1
ISLAM AND INDIA ... 1
Islamic aggression cannot be met by Hindu meekness. If they convert us, we ought to do likewise. Our civilisational fate hangs in the balance. Since 636 CE this Islamic attack on Hindu India has been relentless. The result has been near 1400 years of slavery in parts of India to the invading and conquering Muslims. Genocide amounting to the loss of between 80 and 100 million Hindu lives, endless enslavement and sale of our women in the markets of Arabia, mass molestation and murder, loot and destruction of heritage sites, libraries and temples, mass conversion and subversion of culture, emasculation of young boys---all these and so much more, eventually ending in the bloody mutilation of the motherland in 1947---the saga goes on and on, aimed at the conversion of the whole of Hindustan from Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-lslam, the ultimate aim of Political Islam as enunciated in the prophecy of Ghazwa-e-Hind. Will Durant calls the Islamic occupation of India the bloodiest tale in history. Here are his words to that effect:
[WILL DURANT ON INDIA
In his 'Story of Civilisation' Will Durant wrote, 'The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precarious thing whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.'
More than twenty years after his death a quote from Will Durant read, 'A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.'
Source: Internet and Wikipedia]
Swami Vivekananda rued the decline of Hindu population to Islamic invasion thus:
[THE VEDANTA
(Delivered at Lahore on 12th November, 1897)
https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_3/lectures_from_colombo_to_almora/the_vedanta.htm
When the Mohammedans first came into India, what a great number of Hindus were here; but mark, how today they have dwindled down! Every day they will become less and less till they wholly disappear. Let them disappear, but with them will disappear the marvellous ideas, of which, with all their defects and all their misrepresentations, they still stand as representatives. And with them will disappear this marvellous Advaita, the crest-jewel of all spiritual thought. Therefore, arise, awake, with your hands stretched out to protect the spirituality of the world. And first of all, work it out for your own country.]
Swamiji was in April, 1899 interviewed by the Prabuddha Bharat regarding the Hindu-Muslim issue where he pronounced his views thus:
[ON THE BOUNDS OF HINDUISM
(Prabuddha Bharata, April, 1899)
https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_5/interviews/on_the_bounds_of_hinduism.htm
Having been directed by the Editor, writes our representative, to interview Swami Vivekananda on the question of converts to Hinduism, I found an opportunity one evening on the roof of a Ganga houseboat. It was after nightfall, and we had stopped at the embankment of the Ramakrishna Math, and there the Swami came down to speak with me.
Time and place were alike delightful. Overhead the stars, and around — the rolling Ganga; and on one side stood the dimly lighted building, with its background of palms and lofty shade-trees.
"I want to see you, Swami", I began, "on this matter of receiving back into Hinduism those who have been perverted from it. Is it your opinion that they should be received?"
"Certainly," said the Swami, "they can and ought to be taken."
He sat gravely for a moment, thinking, and then resumed. "Besides," he said, "we shall otherwise decrease in numbers. When the Mohammedans first came, we are said — I think on the authority of Ferishta, the oldest Mohammedan historian — to have been six hundred millions of Hindus. Now we are about two hundred millions. And then every man going out of the Hindu pale is not only a man less, but an enemy the more.
"Again, the vast majority of Hindu perverts to Islam and Christianity are perverts by the sword, or the descendants of these. It would be obviously unfair to subject these to disabilities of any kind. As to the case of born aliens, did you say? Why, born aliens have been converted in the past by crowds, and the process is still going on.
"In my own opinion, this statement not only applies to aboriginal tribes, to outlying nations, and to almost all our conquerors before the Mohammedan conquest, but also in the Purânas. I hold that they have been aliens thus adopted.
"Ceremonies of expiation are no doubt suitable in the case of willing converts, returning to their Mother-Church, as it were; but on those who were alienated by conquest — as in Kashmir and Nepal — or on strangers wishing to join us, no penance should be imposed."
"But of what caste would these people be, Swamiji?" I ventured to ask. "They must have some, or they can never be assimilated into the great body of Hindus. Where shall we look for their rightful place?"
"Returning converts", said the Swami quietly, "will gain their own castes, of course. And new people will make theirs. You will remember," he added, "that this has already been done in the case of Vaishnavism. Converts from different castes and aliens were all able to combine under that flag and form a caste by themselves — and a very respectable one too. From Râmânuja down to Chaitanya of Bengal, all great Vaishnava Teachers have done the same."
"And where should these new people expect to marry?" I asked.
"Amongst themselves, as they do now", said the Swami quietly.
"Then as to names," I enquired, "I suppose aliens and perverts who have adopted non-Hindu names should be named newly. Would you give them caste-names, or what?"
"Certainly," said the Swami, thoughtfully, "there is a great deal in a name!" and on this question he would say no more.
But my next enquiry drew blood. "Would you leave these new-comers, Swamiji, to choose their own form of religious belief out of many-visaged Hinduism, or would you chalk out a religion for them?"
"Can you ask that?" he said. "They will choose for themselves. For unless a man chooses for himself, the very spirit of Hinduism is destroyed. The essence of our Faith consists simply in this freedom of the Ishta."
I thought the utterance a weighty one, for the man before me has spent more years than any one else living I fancy, in studying the common bases of Hinduism in a scientific and sympathetic spirit — and the freedom of the Ishta is obviously a principle big enough to accommodate the world.
But the talk passed to other matters, and then with a cordial good night this great teacher of religion lifted his lantern and went back into the monastery, while I by the pathless paths of the Ganga, in and out amongst her crafts of many sizes, made the best of my way back to my Calcutta home.]
In his Lectures from Colombo to Almora Swamiji likewise highlights the invasive ravages of Islam and Hindu resistance. His words are here as follows:
[THE FUTURE OF INDIA
https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_3/lectures_from_colombo_to_almora/the_future_of_india.htm
...Your forefathers underwent everything boldly, even death itself, but preserved their religion. Temple alter temple was broken down by the foreign conqueror, but no sooner had the wave passed than the spire of the temple rose up again. Some of these old temples of Southern India and those like Somnâth of Gujarat will teach you volumes of wisdom, will give you a keener insight into the history of the race than any amount of books. Mark how these temples bear the marks of a hundred attacks and a hundred regenerations, continually destroyed and continually springing up out of the ruins, rejuvenated and strong as ever! That is the national mind, that is the national life-current. Follow it and it leads to glory. Give it up and you die; death will be the only result, annihilation the only effect, the moment you step beyond that life-current...]
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