Swami Vivekananda on why Hindus don’t say “My god is true and yours is not”

Swamiji starts by telling the history of the Middle East and the evolution of religion there. In the world of tribes, each tribe had its own god. If the tribes were allied with each other, they would have a common name like Baal or Moloch. When one tribe conquered another, their king would take over and claim that their god was superior as well. For the Babylonians, Baal-Merodach was superior. For Jews, Moloch-Yahveh was supreme over other Molochs. The supremacy of the gods was decided by humans through battle.

In India too, this issue was there. Here is where we differed because:

the great good fortune of this country and of the world was that there came out in the midst of the din and confusion a voice which declared एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति — “That which exists is One; sages call It by various names.” It is not that Shiva is superior to Vishnu, not that Vishnu is everything and Shiva is nothing, but it is the same one whom you call either Shiva, or Vishnu, or by a hundred other names. The names are different, but it is the same one. The whole history of India you may read in these few words. The whole history has been a repetition in massive language, with tremendous power, of that one central doctrine. It was repeated in the land till it had entered into the blood of the nation, till it began to tingle with every drop of blood that flowed in its veins, till it became one with the life, part and parcel of the material of which it was composed; and thus the land was transmuted into the most wonderful land of toleration, giving the right to welcome the various religions as well as all sects into the old mother-country.
(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

Due to this concept of oneness is everyone and everything, apparently contradictory ideas can live in harmony. This is the one lesson that India has to offer to the world. This is a concept that missionaries will never understand. They will never understand what Ishta is. The intolerance that they exhibit and the religious persecution around the world are because they don’t have the concept of unity in everything. Swamiji says:

If you go to other countries and ask Mohammedans or people of other religions to build a temple for you, see how they will help. They will instead try to break down your temple and you too if they can. The one great lesson, therefore, that the world wants most, that the world has yet to learn from India, is the idea not only of toleration, but of sympathy.
(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

We have examples of Kings building temples for Mohammedans and Christians and offering refuge to Jews and Zoroastrians. The differences in our way of worship did not matter.

It is impossible that all difference can cease; it must exist; without variation life must cease. It is this clash, the differentiation of thought that makes for light, for motion, for everything. Differentiation, infinitely contradictory, must remain, but it is not necessary that we should hate each other therefore; it is not necessary therefore that we should fight each other.
(Lectures from Colombo to Almora – 1897)

Ishta – Swami Vivekananda on why Hindu sects don’t quarrel

Wherever I go in the world, I see Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on the roadside with pamphlets in various languages. I have seen this both in United States and Europe. Every year the church sends crores of rupees to India to convert Hindus and Love Jihadis target Hindu girls. To Hindus, who are used to multiple sects living together, multiple darshanas accepted as scripture and being followers of various gurus with radically different styles, this intolerance is an alien concept. Swami Vivekananda, using the concept of Ishta, explains why various sects never quarreled in India.

In a speech given in Jaffna, following his address at the Parliament of Nations, Swamiji noted

“The Shaivite does not say that every Vaishnavite is going to be damned, nor the Vaishnavite that every Shaivite will be damned. The Shaivite says, this is my path, and you have yours; at the end we must come together. They all know that in India. This is the theory of Ishta. It has been recognised in the most ancient times that there are various forms of worshipping God. It is also recognised that different natures require different methods.”

According to Hindu tradition, based on various proportions of sattva, rajas and tamas, we all have different nature. Based on that nature, there are different method of worship and hence what works for you may not work for me. Most of us understand this innately, without understanding the yogic aspects behind this. Swamiji warns that the idea that there is only one way for everyone is “injurious, meaningless, and entirely to be avoided.”

Woe unto the world when everyone is of the same religious opinion and takes to the same path. Then all religions and all thought will be destroyed. Variety is the very soul of life. When it dies out entirely, creation will die.

Swamiji then introduces the Sanskrit word “Ishta”. He calls it my way. Now my way is good for me, but probably not for you. Similarly your way is good for you, but not for me. Missionaries hate this. For them, your way is the highway to hell and my way is the only way. Hence the Hindus have to be converted either by force, by incentives or through educational institutions. They talk of love, but the goal is the destruction of our way of live, because it is different.

You see extreme versions of this even now. A missionary was killed in Andaman on an adventure to convert the natives. They are found in crossfire in war zones. They have served as spies. They show up in hostile countries with the Bible speaking of love. Mother Theresa fooled an entire generation with her story of compassion. Swamiji counters:

Their love does not count for much. How can they preach of love who cannot bean another man to follow a different path from their own? If that is love, what is hatred? We have no quarrel with any religion in the world, whether it teaches men to worship Christ, Buddha, or Mohammed, or any other prophet. “Welcome, my brother,” the Hindu says, “I am going to help you; but you must allow me to follow my way too. That is my Ishta. Your way is very good, no doubt; but it may be dangerous for me. My own experience tells me what food is good for me, and no army of doctors can tell me that.

In India, we have the freedom to worship the formless or a thousand forms., go to temples or perform pujas, do kriya or yoga. But “the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward, towards the brutes.”

Reference

Lectures from Colombo to Almora

Review: Uri: The Surgical Strike

One of the best scenes in the movie Uri: The Surgical Strike is at the Prime Minister’s meeting to decide how India should react following a Pakistani terrorist attack at Uri killing 19 soldiers. While everyone throws out ideas, Ajit Doval, played by Paresh Rawal, suggests surgical strikes. Then he gives a speech on how this is a new India. — an India that does not remain silent in a moment of crisis and takes the fight to the enemy. He also reminds people not to worry about what US or UN would say and cites the example of what Israel did after Munich.

At the same time, on the Pakistani side, there is no fear of retribution. One character ridicules India, saying they will ban movie actors and singers for a while. Then everything will be back to normal. During the days of the Accidental Prime Minister, the national sport was competitive dossier exchange — a dereliction of generational duty. It appeared as if we had run out of cheeks to show the enemy to hit.

The Prime Minister and Mr. Doval put an end to it. The rest of the movie is a detailed retelling of how a team of Indian army soldiers cross into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and send the Islamic terrorists to party with the 72 virgins. (Incidentally, I noticed that a line on this was present in the trailer, but was removed from the movie in a kind of Nehruvian move). The technical prowess of India is on display – on how ISRO and DRDO ably supported the soldiers. You bear witness to how people who don’t want to see India going tukde, tukde, do whatever sacrifice it takes to make this a Mission: Possible.

Surgical Strikes would have made Navjot Sidhu sad, but this is the India that we all want to see; to move away from the outlandishly cautious to a bold and courageous one; to be the nation where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; to be the nation which has the political courage to order a surgical strike.

This movie is of a new genre, – a contemporary war procedural, with a no-nonsense retelling of actual events. The director had a bold unwillingness to entertain any material unreleated to the core narrative. But it is just not a cold kill-the-enemy movie. The human grief is given equal footing and the emotional intensity is high when the young child of the murdered soldier comes to pay homage to her father and shouts that the sacrificing life is the ultimate dharma. It is hard not to be shaken by that scene and you long for justice. Now, this not the first time in our country’s history that many such children had to go through such trauma. But this is probably the first time that a political leadership had the courage to bring the culprits to justice.

The technical aspects of the movie are absolutely world class. The music and the appropriate silences, intensify the tension. The final sequence is purely edge-of-the-seat stuff that is thrilling and nailbiting. The movie would have fallen flat if not for the brilliant performance of Vicky Kaushal who is intense throughout the movie. It is also rare to see such perfection from a first time director and kudos to Aditya Dhar for making this movie. If you asked me, “How was the josh, after watching the movie?”, I would say “Very high sir!”

The only hope is that an India, stretched by such boldness, will never go back to its old dimensions.

Briefly Noted: The Black Widow by Daniel Silva

The Black Widow by Daniel Silva
In the opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, SS colonel Hans Landa or the “Jew Hunter”, reaches the home of a French dairy farmer looking for a Jewish family. The next few minutes are a typical Tarantino scene, where you know the end is not going to be good. For leaving his family alone, the farmer betrays the Jewish family hiding in his basement.
From the Dreyfus Affair (recently retold in An Officer and a Spy) to World War II and beyond, Jews were never safe in France. Even now France is seeing a rise in antisemitism and an increase in aliyah. Daniel Silva’s The Black Widow starts with a bomb explosion in the Marais district of Paris, known for its large Jewish population. When the French find out that ISIS (“ISIS gave purpose to lost souls and promised an afterlife of eternal copulation“) is responsible for the attack, they request the help of Gabriel Allon, who is going to be Israel’s next intelligence chief. The only data point they know is that a man known as Saladin is responsible for this attack. They neither know his real name nor his nationality. To find out the real identity of Saladin, they need someone who can infiltrate ISIS.
Among all the books of Daniel Silva, this is probably the best. While rest of them are thrillers, this one grips you because of two things. One, he deals with a real problem and how the world is reacting to that. While the book was written prior to the Paris attacks, it resembles real events that happened recently.He ridicules President Obama, who called ISIS, al-Qaeda’s jayvee team and also people who call ISIS as un-Islamic.
Here is a paragraph from Greame Wood’s article in The Atlantic

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.[What ISIS Really Wants]

Second, the book does not have much sub plots and hence the main plot grips you. Silva’s book ends with an attack on the American soil by ISIS sleeper cells and that is a real fear.

The Prime Minister and Cheraman Perumal

The Prime Minister of India tweets

Cheraman Perumal went to Arabia and embraced Islam after meeting the Holy Prophet at Mecca.

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 3, 2016

Wish he had read the following before tweeting

Religious Art, Perception and Practice in Islam

Last week a French satirical magazine was firebombed for printing a ‘Sharia’ edition. Before that, there was the YouTube video controversy and before that there were the Swedish cartoons. There are numerous such cases where there was violence because the image of Prophet Mohammed was depicted. So film makers like Moustapha Akkad, who made the The Message (1976) on the life of Prophet Mohammed, worked around the issue by not showing him at all. At the beginning of the film, they displayed the statement, “”The makers of this film honour the Islamic tradition which holds that the impersonation of the Prophet offends against the spirituality of his message. Therefore, the person of Mohammad will not be shown.”

In his review of Aisha’s Cushion by Jamal J Elias, David Shariatmadari writes

Anyone who has a more than superficial knowledge of Muslim cultures will be aware of what can seem like a contradictory approach to the issue. There are strong theological precepts against the creation of likenesses of living things, and above all of religious figures, especially Muhammad. And yet lush vegetation in mosaic form garlands the façade of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, devotional pictures of members of the prophet’s family are common among Shias, and merchants in the Tehran bazaar sell pendants with Muhammad’s portrait on them. Animals prance across carpets, and manuscripts and miniature paintings bustle with human activity. So what’s going on – does Islam prohibit such images or not? How come the bazaaris can carry on plying their trade, while Danish newspapers get picketed?[Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception and Practice in Islam by Jamal J Elias – review]

The review page even has a Turkish miniature from the 16th century showing Muhammad and Abu Bakr. The reviewer does not have a good opinion of the book and so need to search for another one to get more clarity on this issue.