COMMENTS GALORE ... 81

COMMENTS GALORE ... 81

Sugata Bose @Supriti Datta : Oh, I thought you meant Deen-e-Islam.

Sugata Bose @Supriti Datta : 'Sifting'? You mean society is selectively picking up what is beneficial to it while discarding what is deems regressive? Or, is it that you mean 'shifting', that is, society is shifting stance, moving away from traditional trappings and opening itself up to democratic human rights, liberty, equality et al which are the hallmarks of modernity and progressiveness?

Sugata Bose @Supriti Datta : True enough. The present progressiveness is very often a convenient cover for age-old exploitation of the masses, apologies for the sustenance of medieval regressive practices and a blind pursuit of ideological utopia whose career course is unknown, uncharted as its path of future progression is. Society like a river meanders along, often draining its resources in the desert sand of infertility, having lost its moorings in time-honoured traditions which despite accretion deserving weeding yet carry the seeds of perpetual renewal along wholesome lines as opposed to present-day wokism which threatens to uproot society and plant it in the vacuousness of social absurdities.

Sugata Bose @Ujjal Kumar Ghosh : This book will be the beacon in your life that is now being tossed on the tempestuous ocean of limitless fanatical faith-based ignorance. Swamiji is at his conversational best here as he sweeps through the gamut of ideas and issues that face man in his temporal and transcendental struggle for life and light. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Parivrajika Shantihridaya : আর মন কিসের মধ্যে ?

Sugata Bose @Mitali Brahma : সাহসিকতার দ্বারা | স্বামীজীর বই পড়ুন প্রত্যহ | বীরাঙ্গনা হোন |

Sugata Bose @Chandan Bhattacharjee : One has to be valorous. Cowardice and compromise are killing the very spirit of the movement that was initiated to galvanise the country and the world unto indomitable life-giving action. The spirit has long ebbed and the movement is now a shadow of the past, largely owing to the spineless nature of the ordinary citizen from amongst whose collection called society are drawn the members of the monastic and the lay devotees. It is upto individuals like us to shed hypocrisy and cowardice, pompous unlived preaching and tall talk, and to galvanise ourselves unto bold words and bolder deeds that are the dire necessity of this ventilating hour when society is precipitating into its nadir. And the first thing we ought to learn is to appreciate each other's work, to cheer each other en route to driving to the destination divine. 🕉

Sugata Bose @Monalisa Paul : Don't even grieve for the Buddha, for the Buddha is not a person but a realisation, said the Buddha on his death-bed to his beloved and grieving disciple, Ānanda. 

Grieve that you are still grieving, and then grieve not. 

The Geeta says, 'Ashochyan anvashochastvam prajnā vādamscha bhāshasey/ Gatāsungshcha na agatāsungshcha nānushochanti panditā.' ('You are lamenting for those who you ought not to lament for and yet you utter words of wisdom. But the wise ones do not grieve for the dead or for the living.') This is Krishna's admonition of Arjuna in his mood of abject surrender to fear masquerading as love for his kinsmen in the field of war.

Everything is ephemeral, in a continuous flux, in the ever-changing cycle of momentary existence with no permanent basis in an enduring essence called the Atman/Brahman. So say the Buddhists. The Advaitists, on the other hand, hold that to the impermanent appearance of phenomena there is a permanent unchanging basis in the Atman/Brahman. 

Both schools of realisation and thought (the Buddhist and the Advaitist), however, uphold the impermanence of this world of name and form, and both agree on the point that one should not grieve for phenomenal things. Hence.

Sugata Bose @Imtiaz Mahmood : Why do Muslms shave off their moustache while donning the beard?

Sugata Bose @Imtiaz Mahmood : Sad fate that befalls the civilised at the hands of barbarians. Golden Egypt became regressive Arabic post Islamisation. 

Sugata Bose @Imtiaz Mahmood : Even worse are the apologies on behalf of Islam. They must defend the cult using Greek philosophy or convoluted logic, twisting text and sectionally quoting, and using all sorts of deception and deflection, Al Taqqiah at every step.

Sugata Bose @Avinash Garg : But you will need a lot of pluck to pull this one out. Can you generate that much floral love in your heart to do the job? That will be weeding, sorry, gardening indeed.

Sugata Bose @Imtiaz Mahmood : 

Love is in the air

Eating phuchkā with great care.

Sitting on the chair

And in secret making bare

The mouth in vanity fair

For a piece of 'love' to share.

If in spite of covered hair

And face and figure, thou dare

To rise in rebellious stare,

Thou truly art the rare

In this lovers' phuchka fare.

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AL TAQQIAH IN THE TERM 'ISLAMOPHOBIA'

 AL TAQQIAH IN THE TERM 'ISLAMOPHOBIA'

'Phobia' means the irrational fear of something. But given its track record, fundamental principles and history since inception, fear of Islam is very rational. Hence, the coinage of the term 'Islamophobia' and its wide currency is merely to shut down criticism of Islam as a political ideology which in effect helps proliferate the faith among the gullible masses of the world who are ignorant of the theological principles of Islam and their application in the life of the believer. 

Any ideology should be open to rational scrutiny, discussion, discourse and debate, and so must Islam like all else be subjected to open scrutiny. Such scrutiny and criticism are part and parcel of democratic civilised life and must not be met with violence by easily offended believers. Freedom of speech and expression must be upheld irrespective of its temporary costs where violence results from frenzied mobs. Such violence must instead be dealt with heavily by the law enforcement agencies and duly adjudicated by the courts of law, keeping free expression unfettered. Else, rogues will have their field day everytime and keep shutting down the right to critique and criticise regressive principles which retard human evolution in its wake. The term 'Islamophobia' must be seen in its due light and not as a convenient shield for saving the faith from rightful criticism.

Written by Sugata Bose

THEY FALTER, THEY FUMBLE, THEY FALL BUT THEY FAIL NOT TO RISE AND RUN AGAIN

THEY FALTER, THEY FUMBLE, THEY FALL BUT THEY FAIL NOT TO RISE AND RUN AGAIN

Children falter but learn to run eventually. So also masses of faltering humanity. Why condemn? Love and grease the path free of the unseemly obstacles that lie hindering the forward progression. The tide of civilisation must ride its run through the thick and thin of the terrain. Work at reducing the burden, making the path smoother for the pilgrims who traverse through the dark night of ignorance to the dewy dawn of the awakening sun. Errors are in course, not sin as Abrahamic scripturally suggested. Learn to see the true face of things through the forbearing eye of wisdom and love fused. These are temporary phases in the onward march of the Grande Armee. They are not to be deemed terminal movements. The middle phase we are in and the middle phase refines and shifts but does not thereby become the climactic phase of collective evolution. The end is far off for the general mass of humanity, the perfected individual merely running ahead of course to bring in the news of the sunlit summit as yet unscaled by the vast populace. 

Love, patience, forbearance and sympathy coupled with the light of knowledge will ensure the survival of our civilisation. It is in the interest of humanity that the Sanatan Dharma should survive. For that to happen, Hindus need to survive, for they are the carriers of the golden tradition of yhe Upanishads that in a thousand streams now flow from its Himalayan habitat onto the fertile plains where living humanity farms the fields and reaps the harvest of life.

Written by Sugata Bose

THE SINE WAVE OF SPIRITUALITY ... 1

 

THE SINE WAVE OF SPIRITUALITY ... 1

The stalwarts of the Ramakrishna Mission are largely gone. But what remains is powder enough to produce future stalwarts through the coming decades despite the clearly evident decline in cultural standards throughout the world which has evidently affected the Ramakrishna Mission as well. 

Society throws up monks and in a descent of cultural standards it is but natural that the quality of individuals in every sphere of human endeavour must decline. Monastics also arise from the said society and necessarily bear the signature of its current state. However, the ideals of the Ramakrishna Mission are exalted and if they are scrupulously adhered to instead of making convenient compromises with the copper coin, the Mission could lead society towards a higher order of existence instead of itself declining to a standard that may not be termed strictly spiritual. 

Apologetics notwithstanding, it is the duty of a spiritual order to be the beacon to the faltering societal ship in a rough sea of raging billows. How far the Mission is willing to compromise with the commercial age is to be seen before one may pass a definitive judgement on its future prospects. As of now there is a lull in its spiritual presence despite a plethora of insipid programmes periodically videocast online. Great renunciates who would invoke shraddhā in prospective devotees are almost not there. Lectures delivered by monks are generally insipid and uninspiring as one can clearly feel that these are unlived words, unrealised principles merely being churned out of the rational mind and not from the depths of the illumined Spirit. However, all this seems a passing phase and I am hopeful that with the passage of time and with the tasting of the bitter fruits of business, spiritual sanity will return to the Order the way it ought to be to claim for itself the name of the peerless Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar, now hopefully still housed in the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, the Belur Math. A new generation of monks, young, idealistic and energetic must raise the banner of the Mission once more and render it seminally creative again. And they are coming! Long live the Mission!

Written by Sugata Bose

MESSAGES GALORE ... 96

MESSAGES GALORE ... 96

1. Superstition must be shunned before spirituality dawns.

2. Creative people always maintain independence of thought. Else, personality wanes, creativity suffers.

3. So, where do we stand today regarding Netaji's disappearance? What is the inferential stand of genuine disinterested researchers?

4. We need a certain streamlining of the Sanatan Dharma along the line of fusion of the ancient Vedanta and modern science. Once that is done, future generations will be spared the roguery of charlatans and will be empowered to judiciously follow thd pristine principles of the Dharma. That for sure will strengthen the citadels of our civilisation and culture and help usher in brighter days.

5. 

কাশীপুর উদ্যানবাটিতে কর্কটক্লীষ্ট ঠাকুরের নরেনকে চাপরাশ প্রদান |

6. মানুষের অবস্থা অন্তঃসত্ত্বা নারীর গর্ভে প্রসবোন্মুখ জীবের ন্যায় | From conception to delivery is the progreesion of evolving man. Upon delivery begins free life, the rambling of the liberated soul through endless stretches of space and time, and of the frozen consciousness beyond.

7. চৈতন্যের চাপে চলে অংশচৈতন্য জীব অমাবস্যা হতে পূর্ণিমার তরে |

8. Be concentrated and creative. Learn to be creative and absolutely focussed. Concentrate with devastating power. Do not spray about your mental rays.

9. It disgusts me to see people converting to Islam when the faith has no philosophy whatsoever and is pronouncedly regressive.

10. Speaking the truth is a habit that is cultivated early in a person. If not, it never is. 

11. Character indeed is a rare thing to come by. Perfect truthfulness seems to be the sine qua non for character-formation.

12. In an open philosophical debate with a learned and realised Vedantist Muslim and Christian polemicists will be blown away.

13. Love is what cures the maladies of life. And there is no limit to this love. It can cascade through all.

14. The sun sees me often but the moon hides behind clouds.

15. আত্মচৈতন্য স্থীত | আপাত মনের আপাত আন্দোলনে দেশকালের আপাত বিক্ষেপ নিমিত্তাকার ধারণ করেছে | তাই জীববুদ্ধি | তাই জগতপ্রপঞ্চচের প্রতীতি |

16. Persecution complex results from insufficient rational training.

17. বসন্তকালের বৃষ্টি আসন্ন |

18. গৃহিণীদের স্বামীজীর বই পড়া উচিত |

19. পুরুষকে অত্যাচার করার মধ্যে কোন স্ত্রী-স্বাধীনতা ?

20. সংসারে ঝড়ের এঁটো পাতা হয়ে থাকা সহজ নয় |

21. দু'হাত ছাড়া তালি বাজে না | এ কথা প্রায়ই বলা হয় এটা বোঝানোর জন্য যে দুজন মানুষের সমভাবে যোগগান না থাকলে কোনো অপ্রীতিকর পরিস্থিতি সংসারে উপস্থিত হয় না | কিন্তু একজন মানুষের দুই হাতেও তো তালি দিব্যি বাজে ও সংসার তালিবান শাসনে পরিণত হতে পারে | তাহলে ?

22. একদিকে ধূপকাঠিতে অগ্নিসংযোগে ধর্মাচারণের ক্রিয়াবিলাস আর অপরদিকে মুখাগ্নিসংযোগে সংসারকে দহন---চমৎকার চলেছে গৃহস্থাশ্রম ! এই না হলে ধর্মবোধ ?

23. It takes 'super divine' powers in me to restrain the projection and harbouring thereof of negative emotions towards those who seemingly habitually neglect me.

24. জীবনসায়াহ্নে ঠাকুর-স্বামীজীর আদর্শের অবমাননা দেখে যারপরনাই পীড়িত বোধ করি | এখন নিজদুঃখমোচনে নিজদুঃখবহন করা ছাড়া উপায় দেখি না | অবশ্য, উপায় এক আছে---ঠাকুর-স্বামীজীর প্রদর্শিত পথে আদর্শপালনে আত্মবলিদান | মৃত্যু যখন সুনিশ্চিত, তখন মহান ব্রতাবলম্বনে জীবন উৎসর্গ করার চেয়ে মহৎ আর কি আছে ?

25. Women cannot absolve themselves from due criticism just like men cannot do so. Both are culpable for persecuting each other.

26. Swamiji wanted us to be manly in every movement of life. Art, literature, music, diction, gait, behaviour---culture in its comprehensive wholeness, in its diverse manifestations must all exhibit a measure of manhood that strengthens the soul, lifts it upward and weans it away from the debasing features of sensuous life, careering it toward the divine destination, Self-realisation. 🕉

27. I write to myself in this body and in kindred souls.

28. Does secular democracy mean that five times a day non-Muslims must be forced to hear over the loudspeaker that the Islamic God is the greatest? That is a strange way of establishing equal rights for all?

29. Does secular democracy mean that five times a day non-Muslims must be forced to hear over the loudspeaker that the Islamic God is the greatest? That is a strange way of establishing equal rights for all? Does equality of man not presuppose the idea of equality of principle and the supreme principle for all? Then why this inequality of Godhead, this superiority of the Islamic God over the Gods and Goddesses of all other religions in the land of democratic equality of citizens? Is it not a violation of the core concept of democracy, a blatant contradiction in terms, a power-positing of a certain theological principle over all else? Can it be truly justified in philosophical terms whose lower derivative merely is all legal allowance?

30. We should learn to appreciate each other for work well done, out of good feeling and sympathy and not by way of patronisation. It requires a big heart to do so. Mutual appreciation where due kindles greater individual and national output.

31. কী চেয়েছিলেন স্বামীজী আর কী হল !

32. Words are words but they are life and light.

33. Seal the bond once and for all, never to break, never to change. Speak with passion and power, intensity and inspiration, love and longing, dream and desire, aspiration and anticipation. Thus is the Divine is realised.

34. We need a massive Hindu revival. For this the Upanishads must be our guide. Swamiji's works are our modern Upanishads.

35. 'Moderate Islam' means 'Makki Islam' whereas 'Radical Islam' means 'Madinah Islam'. Read the Qur'an for clarification.

36. What radical Islamic organisations are doing in Europe, let them try their luck in China and find out the consequence.

37. The left and the right meet at their extreme ends. Such is the structure of political space.

38. 'Left, left, left-right- left. Backward march.'

39. Fear is the first thing you should cast off. Then come to fighting for the cause of the Dharma.

40. ভয় পেয়ো না | 'লজ্জা, ঘৃণা, ভয়---এ তিন থাকতে নয় |' ঠাকুরের এই বাণীটি অক্ষরে অক্ষরে পালন করব আমরা---এই সঙ্কল্প নেবো, সিদ্ধ হব এই মন্ত্রার্থ অনুভবে | যে রামকৃষ্ণভক্ত, তার আবার ভয় কি ?

41. Cowardice is sin, cowardice misery. Cowardice kills before the appointed hour arrives.

42. Those who are brave---the Lord takes care of them.

43. The more you fear, the more fear will grip you. This fear comes from the idea that you are body which you are not. So, shed it.

44. This clinging to the photograph of Thakur is directly opposed to his fundamental teaching---bodilessness, that is, the Spirit.

45. Christopher Hitchens was such a great man. Simply nonpareil. What diction! What delivery! What devastating wit and rapier-sharp intelligence! What waltzing through the written word of the world and what a verbal and literary outpouring thereof! We shall never see the like of him again.

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WAYS TO OVERCOME THE ISLAMISATION OF BHARATVARSHA ... 2

WAYS TO OVERCOME THE ISLAMISATION OF BHARATVARSHA ... 2

Our country is getting rapidly Islamised. Rogue politicians are paving the way for the advancement of Islam in India. Their lust for power is rapidly creating conditions for the destruction of the Sanatan civilisation. Once Muslim-majority obtains in India, her state will be what it was for centuries during Islamic rule, what has always been the state of Sharia-ruled Islamic states. For Islam is opposed to democracy, far more secularism, and is the rule of the Divine Dictator with a single holy book its avowed Constitutional basis. The Constitution of India will survive so long as Hindus are in the majority. Once the demographic balance tilts the other way, it will be amended beyond recognition, even perhaps annulled and replaced by one following the blueprint of the so-called Madinah Constitution. 

Indian civilisation has predominantly been Hindu or its variant in being Buddhist, Jain and Sikh in the tide of times. The Abrahamic faiths have forced their way in through conquest or eased their way in through the gullibility of Hindu kings who scarce suspected the toxic turn such allowance of entry would in course of time take. Centuries of raids, invasion, conquest and proselytism have supplanted much of Hindu culture with Islamic and Christian culture but have not succeeded in completely eliminating the Sanatan civilisation. This is because the erstwhile India or the Indian subcontinent is a vast landmass which was peopled with a huge population who could not be easily suppressed and converted, geographical and political conditions being such. But vast sections of the territory and the inhabitants were Islamised which eventually bore its toxic fruit in Partition. 

The Hindu-Muslim problem was sought to be solved by partitioning the country and assigning the Muslims a separate homeland for them to pursue their 'deen'. While Pakistan got her pound of flesh, the problem continued to fester in India with successive governments pandering to the vanities of India's residual Muslim population to gain electoral advantage over their political adversaries, a trend that has now turned so toxic that with the demographic balance shifting, it augurs not well for the sociopolitical stability of the country in the coming decades. Hindu India culturally and secular India politically are in danger of being run over by the radically different culture of Islam unless, of course, this ideological and in consequence the demographic war is won by the Hindus. 🕉 

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan

IS IDOL THE IDEAL THEN?

IS IDOL THE IDEAL THEN?

The principle counts, not so much the personality. The latter illustrates the former and, hence, catches the public imagination. Gross we are and the grosser part comprehend. Thus, principle is lost in personality and the universal degenerates into the individual. Photographs appending posts invariably do this. The message is lost in the form, the substance lost in the image. And this is idolatry indeed.

Written by Sugata Bose

WAYS TO OVERCOME THE ISLAMISATION OF BHARATVARSHA ... 1

WAYS TO OVERCOME THE ISLAMISATION OF BHARATVARSHA ... 1

The growing threat to India today is progressive Islamisation. This has been happening since 636 CE when the first Islamic raids in the Indian subcontinent began and it reached its toxic peak in Partition in 1947. It was then thought that the partition of India would be the solution to the Hindu-Muslim problem. A transfer of population would solve the otherwise seemingly intractable problem. Ambedkar was in favour of a gradual complete transfer of population, perhaps over the next decade or so, as partial transference would keep the seeds of dissension alive and freshly brew problems in the future. But owing to the sudden partition of India in 1947 such a complete transfer of population was not possible and large masses of people belonging to both the religious communities stayed back in their homelands, namely, India and Pakistan. The issue of the residual minority populations was sought to be solved by the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950 but predictably it was not solved, rather the problem with passing years became worse till we are now facing close to a similar situation in India today, Pakistan and Bangladesh having already settled the issue with the annihilation of Sanātan culture and Sanātanis in their typically Islamic way of kafir-treatment. Now India remains the last frontier for Ghazwa-e-Hind. 

To be continued...

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo: top--Jawaharlal Nehru; bottom--Liaquat Ali Khan