The Man who came to destroy Hinduism – 1


On Jan 15, 1823, Jean-Antoine Dubois, a French-Catholic missionary, who spent time in Pondicherry, Madras Presidency and Mysore left India for Paris, never to return again. During his time in India, he dressed like a native and preached the Gospel, but after 30 years in India, he was convinced that it was next to impossible to convert Indians.
But seven years later, on May 27th, 1830, a Scottish missionary arrived in Calcutta and his goal was to “prepare a mine which should one day explode beneath the very citadel of Hinduism.” This 24 year thought that the methods of other missionaries, like directly appealing Hindus to renounce their faith, would do nothing but anger the natives. Instead he claimed to have found a unique way to destroy Hinduism in a peaceful manner.
To understand how Alexander Duff came up with his recipe, we need to understand the India of 1830s.

  1. The language of the Government was Persian and there were a few educational institutions which taught Arabic and Sanskrit. The learned people spoke these Oriental languages and not English.
  2. Duff arrived at a time when there was a controversy in British India over the language to be used for Indian higher education. On the one side there were the British Orientalists who wanted to use Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic and on the other side there were the Anglicists who had scorn for Oriental languages and Indian culture and wanted to enforce English
  3. The missionary activities were not very successful. The missionary technique consisted of standing in the street corner and preaching which fetched an occasional convert or two, but nothing of great significance. Even in South India, where there were more converts, the converts came from the out castes; the Hindu masses remained unaffected.

Duff would take all these three ingredients to come up with a winning formula, which was eventually endorsed by the Lord himself – I mean Lord Macaulay. Looking back, the formula was simple.

  1. Provide English education for the masses
  2. Make Bible studies an integral part of this education
  3. Be non-apologetic about teaching Christianity.

Thus he would teach Western history, philosophy, and natural sciences and as per the plan Hindus seeing irrationality in their religion would discard their faith voluntarily. But this was tricky business. It was possible that a Hindu who had left Hinduism due to Western education could become agnostic. But Duff would fill that spiritual vacuum with the Christian view of life.
Duff was very clear about what Christian education meant: it was not secular education with some Biblical studies thrown in. For him Christianity contained all knowledge and his goal was to teach with Christianity revelation at the center.
When Duff first proposed this method, veteran missionaries did not find it appealing. Still he went ahead without any government support. Bengalis did not mind an English school, but had reservations about an English school where Bible was an important subject. This reservation made it difficult for Duff to get started; he could not even find a building to start his classes.
One Indian who helped get Duff was Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Mohan Roy who worked with Lord William Bentinck in suppressing sati and who believed that the pure faith of the vedas were corrupted by various cults had founded Brahma Samaj to teach the worship of one God. Ram Mohan Roy provided Duff with a hall as well as his first students. When parents learned that Bible was being taught there, they were reluctant to send their kids, but Ram Mohan Roy helped there as well. On the first day of school, Ram Mohan Roy, who had three more years to live, calmed the students who refused to read the Bible and appeared daily for the Bible class.
Though Duff was a proponent of higher studies in English, he did not hate Bengali. He did not want students to be alien to their culture and hence Bengali studies were an important part of the curriculum. After one year, Duff conducted a public exam  – in front of parents and the media – and students demonstrated their knowledge in language, science and Bible. This was a huge success and it convinced both Indians and the British. Soon the number of students started increasing.
Not everyone in Calcutta was his fan. One of the newspapers published an article suggesting that all students who attended Duff’s school be outcasted. This warning had an effect and the attendance dropped briefly, but later picked up.
Soon Duff encountered students —- not from his school, but from the Hindu college — who were enamored by Western thought and had a low opinion of Hinduism. These were the kind of people Duff wanted to seed Christian religion into and he invited them to his home to attend lectures on “God and His Revealing.” Hindus reacted strongly against Duff and asked the Government to stop this. Lord William Bentinck asked Duff to slow down and this crisis too passed.
But soon Duff got his converts — Krishna Mohan Banerjee, Mohesh Chunder Ghosh, Gopinath Nandi and Anando Chand Mazumdar  — and as he had expected they came from the higher castes. Some of them were Brahmins who ate beef to show their defiance against Hinduism and whose moral vacuum was happily filled by Duff.
By this time the Orientalist-Anglicist fight had reached critical mass. The East India Company needed a supply of qualified clerks and there were educational institutions like the Mohammedan college in Calcutta and Sanskrit college in Benares which provided the employees. The company even started a new Sanskrit college in Calcutta and Oriental colleges in Delhi and Agra. A large sum of money was spent in publishing books in the Oriental languages and translating European works into these languages. For the amount of money spent on education, there was not enough demand for these books.
In the language fight, the Government, missionaries and Orientalists wanted to use the Oriental languages, while Duff sided along with the Anglicists. If Indians were to learn Western culture and Christian theology, he said, it was not possible to do it in Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian or the vernacular Bengali. This decision on which language to choose for Duff was very critical and in a later speech given in Scotland, he said that it concerned the ultimate evangelization of India.
His arguments against Sanskrit were that (a) it was not perfect for Western education (b) ordinary people did not speak Sanskrit and (c) Western literature was not translated to Sanskrit. Since Sanskrit was tied to Hinduism, even if one were to teach Western literature in Sanskrit, the association formed in the mind of people would of an idolatrous and superstitious religion whereas English, would bring fresh ideas without the burden of association.
(Read Part 2)

Vandalism of Tamil-Brahmi sites

Recently on the ancient trade path from Madurai to Kerala, archaeologists discovered pottery with Tamil-Brahmi inscription.

Epigraphists have deciphered the three Tamil-Brahmi letters on the ring-stand as “vayra,” which means diamond. The deep-set cist-burial, which has two compartments made of granite slabs, was found to have skeletal remains. A pair of stirrups lay next to the ring-stand. The symbol that followed the three Tamil-Brahmi letters showed an etched gem and bead, with a thread coming out of the bead. According to Mr. Mahadevan, the script could be dated to the first century A.D. [The Hindu : Front Page : Tamil-Brahmi script found in village]

Finding this inscription has been rather lucky because quarrying and vandalism has been destroying Tamil-Brahmi sites.

Tiruvadavur is now the most disturbed Tamil-Brahmi site in the State, with a huge quarry situated right at the foot of the hill. Quarrying has progressed so deep that the site looks like an open-cast mine. All round the quarry, for several kilometres, granite blocks as big as a truck or a car, are stacked on either side of the village roads. There is a surreal scene too: a nearby hill has been sliced in half, as if it were a cake. An official of the State Archaeology Department admitted that quarrying was under way within the prohibited/regulated area, that is, within 300 m of the protected limits of the monument.[History vandalised]

So why is Tamil-Brahmi so important?

Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are important not only in the history of Tamil Nadu and the rest of South India but for the whole country. They have many unique distinctions. They are the oldest writings in any Dravidian language. They are also the oldest Jaina inscriptions in India. I believe that the Mankulam Tamil-Brahmi inscription of [Pandyan king] Nedunchezhiyan is older than the Karavela inscription at Udayagiri in Orissa.
Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are the only record of the old Tamil, the one prior to Sangam poetry. Many Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are important landmarks in our history. For example, the inscriptions of Nedunchezhiyan at Mankulam, the Irumporai inscriptions at Pugalur near Karur and the Jambai inscription of Adhiyaman Neduman Anji link the Sangam age with the Tamil-Brahmi age. It is the Jambai inscription that prove that the “Satyaputo” mentioned by Asoka was none other than the Adhiyaman dynasty, which ruled from Tagadur, modern Dharmapuri.[‘Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are the only record of old Tamil’]

Experiments in brahmacharya

The post on Europe’s Sabarimala generated an interesting discussion on brahmacharya and what it takes for men to withstand temptation. On this topic Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Amrit Kaur in 1947

My meaning of brahmacharya is this:One who never has any lustful intention, who by constant attendance upon God has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited. Such a person should be incapable of lying, incapable of intending or doing harm to a single man or woman in the whole world, is free from anger and malice and detached in the sense of the Bhagavadgita. Such a person is a full brahmachari. Brahmachari literally means a person who is making daily and steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other. [Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online

In the same letter, Gandhiji mentioned that he has lain naked with women. He thought of brahmacharya as a strong purifying force and to convince himself that he had the strength to withstand temptation he did these experiments while going around India trying to calm pre-partition riots of early 1947[2].
Marco Polo who visited India in the 14th century writes about meeting yogis who distinguished themselves by their abstinence. They went naked, ate nothing green since they believed that plants also had souls and lived a harsh life.  When a member of the sect died, the successor had to pass a test. Various maidens touched the yogi, “here and there.” If the yogi remained unaffected, he was considered pure and allowed to the serve the idols. But if he failed, he was driven away for the monks did not want to do anything with a man of self-indulgence[3].
References:

  1. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
  2. Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth by Richard L. Johnson, Gandhi
  3. Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen

Hostile Reactions

In 2004, the Dover, Pennysylvania, school board decided to teach students an alternative to evolution called Intelligent Design.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District]

Promptly a law suit was filed and an opening witness at the trial was Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist and leading proponent of evolution. During the trial he had to face not just the lawyers, but the public as well. Lot of people expressed hostile reactions — via letters, via e-mails, via phone. He was told he would spend eternity in hell. He was told he was not respecting God. He was asked how he could be a Christian and believe Darwin — all from folks who read the book of Genesis literally[1].

Such hostility exists not just between scientists and people who want to enforce their religious beliefs on others, but also between proponents of the Aryan migration/trickle down theory and non-believers. Anyone who opposes the external origins of Aryans can pick one of these labels: “Hindu fundamentalist”, “revisionist” or “fascist”. Any supporter of the external origins of Aryans is either a “colonialist-missionary” or one who harbors “racist-hegemonial” prejudices.[2] Edwin Bryant’s The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate has a great collection of polemical reactions from both sides.

This is one of those debates where even tenured professors do what Jamal did to watch his favorite actor. Also this kind of language is common in Indian History mailing lists where proponents of various theories display juvenile behavior to much amusement. If you think, quite naively, that to demolish a theory you just to counter the interpretation of data, you are wrong. Not in this field. So when a recent paper on Indus script was published, it was countered with the statement (among other things) that the authors of the paper are Dravidian nationalists.

Before 2004, the Rao et al. paper would not have gathered any attention. (Of course the Indus system is a language script! Why are you discussing it?) But that year, Steve Farmer managed to persuade two others — one of whom, Michael Witzel, is a well-respected authority in the field — to add their names to his thesis that it is not a language. The resulting manuscript was absurdly and unprofessionally bombastic in its language, while containing essentially nothing convincing. Regardless of the work of Rao et al, their hypothesis would have died a natural death — but Rao et al do have Farmer et al to thank for enabling them to publish their work, with its obvious conclusions, in a prestigious journal like Science. Farmer et al are so rattled that they promptly post an incoherent, shrill, content-free, ad hominem rant on Farmer’s website. Sproat even shows up on my previous post, leaving a chain of comments that reveal that he has neither understood, nor cares to understand, the argument. [More Indus thoughts and links]

As Kenneth Miller writes in his book,  finally bad science will fail. Intelligent Design was thrown out by the courts since the advocates could not present any peer-reviewed articles or evidence for intelligent design or proof of scientific research or testing. The Aryan Invasion Theory was discredited and discarded and now the Illiterate Harappan hypothesis is being questioned. No amount of polemics can stop that.
Now compare that to a response by Iravatham Mahadevan

References:

  1. Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul by Kenneth Miller
  2. A Survey of Hinduism by Klaus K. Klostermaier
  3. The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate by Edwin Bryant

Indian History Carnival – 10

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

  1. “So when you tie the next rakhi on a boy’s wrist or somebody ties one on yours, remember Alexander, the lovely Roxanne and Porus with his elephants…”, writes Maddy.

  2. In 2003, Kamalesh Dwivedi, CIO of Network Solutions translated Meghadutam since he missed his wife. Venetia Ansell writes a review and observes, “And it is perhaps appropriate that Mr Dwivedi is one of a growing group of NRI success stories – leaving aside his Sanskrit he went from IIT to Harvard to a successful career in the US – who are now returning to interests such as Sanskrit.”

  3. “In the secular annals of Indian history, the chapter on Vijaynagar is hurriedly dismissed. Simply because it is an outstanding testimony of a vigorously renewed Hindu spirit, which perhaps had a parallel only in the age of the Guptas.” writes Sandeep in a post about Madhava Vidyaranya

  4. Criticizing India’s inexplicable reluctance to capture Captain Jack Sparrow and his friends off the Somali coast, Nitin points out that in the 1880s, the Indian government was responsible for protecting the region.

  5. Even though Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India, she never visited the jewel in the crown. The Prince of Wales visited India, but never reached the South. His son, George V reached Travancore in 1911. Murali Ramavarma has a post about it.

  6. Laxmi Panda joined Bose’s Indian National Army when she was 14. Later in her life she had to work as a domestic help to make ends meet. In a post about her, Sumir writes, “One can not deny the place of eminence given to those people who had remained with non-violent Gandhian course of struggle for independence. However, it is wrong to deny the place to those struggles which had been undertaken with the same spirit with which satyagrahis had exerted”

  7. Fëanor writes about Nairs, the military class of Malabar.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Nov 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

Dinosaurs, Humans and Idiots

The Los Angeles Times reports on Sarah Palin’s fundamentalist beliefs.

Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,” recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

The idea of a “young Earth” — that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on — is a popular strain of creationism.[Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy – Los Angeles Times]

This Christian practice of taking the Bible literally had serious impact on Indian history as well. Since the world was created on 23rd October 4004 BCE, somehow the Indian scriptures had to be dated to work with that. Max Müller, the German Orientalist who believed that Christianity was a true historical event and 4000 years back was an early period in the history of the world conveniently put the date of Aryan arrival to India at around 1500 BCE.

We are still stuck there even when genetic studies show evidence to the contrary.

Indian History Carnival – 9

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

  1. In Indian History – Myth, Reality, Propaganda, Dikgaj looks at all the hot button issues in Indian historiography.

  2. Nitin writes about Rajendra Chola’s eleventh century naval expedition across the Bay of Bengal and the conquest of Southeast Asian kingdoms. He also writes about the role played by the Five Hundred Swamis of Aihole.

  3. Search Kashmir has a brief history of the gardens of Kashmir.

  4. After reading The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt, Maddy has a detailed post about Ramanujan – The Hindoo Calculator.

  5. How did Din Mohammed from Patna end up being the Shampoo Sheikh? Fëanor
    narrates a fascinating tale.

  6. Between 1940 and 1960 about 27 countries gained independence. Does this diminish Mahatma Gandhi’s role in securing India’s freedom.? Semantic Overload has an analysis.

  7. Sumir writes his opinion about The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India by R. V. Russell. He has posted some pictures as well.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Oct 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

Indian History Carnival – 8

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

  1. Namit Arora travels to Dholavira, a 5000 year old metropolis of the Indus Valley Civilization and is impressed by their water management system.

  2. Nitin at The Acorn has been reading Arthashastra and he has four posts on friend, gold and territory, sovereignty, power and happiness, internal security and declaring war

  3. It was fate and Rudyard Kipling that brought Mark Twain to India. In a well researched post Maddy writes about Mark Twain’s India trip in 1895.

  4. Chandrahas at The Middle Stage has a review of Vinay Lal’s The Other Indians which “meticulously charts the progress of Indian life in America from trickle to flood, stammer to swagger.”

  5. In 1931 Gandhiji was asked if he would agree to be the Prime Minister of the future government of India and he replied he would not. Instead, Vishal writes, Gandhiji carefully selected disciples from all over India who would provide leadership even when the Father of the Nation was gone.

  6. The Salt Tax which Gandhiji opposed was not a British invention, but something which existed in India since the Mauryan time. The British just multiplied it by a humongous number. Fëanor has a history of Salt Tax.

  7. As Western scholars set the rules for historical research — a very different one from that practised in their own research centers — we need to evaluate what can be done. This was the theme of the post Our Voice in Our History at varnam. This was published in Pragati as well as in Mail Today.

  8. What is historical thinking? R S Krishna explains.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Sep 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

Indian History Carnival – 7

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

  1. A recent paper from the Rockerfeller University dated an eclipse mentioned in Odyssey to April 16, 1178 B.C.E. A two part post (1,2) at varnam looks at similar dating of Mahābhārata

  2. Fëanor, in Silk Road Stories, writes about various Indian artifacts that went north.

  3. Vinayak writes about the Fables of Kashmiri Beauty as told by the 17th century French traveler,Francois Bernier.
  4. Guru has a post about M N Srinivas’ Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India. One question the book answers is: How did Hinduism spread all over India without proselytization.?

  5. As the city gets ready to celebrate Chennai day, to commemorate the day in 1639 when the British East India Company transacted the piece of land where Fort St. George stands, Lakshmi says, “what we decide as history is probably nothing compared to the cultural heritage of this city and its various settlements and hamlets put
    together.”

  6. FabbiGabby has pictures of India from a century ago.

  7. Indian Constitution gives us the freedom of speech, but with some constraints. Using two reports from TIME magazine’s archives, Nitin shows why Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the first amendment.

  8. One of Gandhiji’s worldly posession was the Ingersoll ‘Turnip’ pocket watch. Maddy writes about the watch and the role it played in his life.

  9. Kedar writes that Gandhiji’s non-violent struggle succeeded not because it was noble, but because it was a smart move for the time.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Aug 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

Hampi's North Pole

The Hindu, recently had a feature on Hampi.

From the DVD we know that the city was planned as a microcosm of the Universe, suggesting an equivalence between divinity and kingship. John Malville explores this idea in depth. The principles of Vastu appear to have been used to create a totality, with interlocking relationships between constructed and natural features. Several examples, with detailed measurements, support this argument.

For instance, the Royal Centre is divided into public and private spaces by a north-south axis that passes from the king’s Audience Hall in the east to a palace structure in the west.

Other structures such as the Virabhadra temple atop Matanga Hill are set in a precise alignment with this axis, and if the night sky is viewed from the ceremonial gateway one can see that the north pole of the rotating heavens lies immediately above the tower of the temple. This conjunction between the pole and the axis of the city indicates an astonishing degree of architectural and astronomical sophistication long before the telescope was invented.[New light on Hampi]

If the north pole is right above the tower of the temple, shouldn’t the temple be located at the north pole?