Anti-Hindu Rant on the SAICE Forum – Sridharan

Sridharan: Prophet cum Historian Benimadhav Mohanty Speaks, or shall we say more appropriately, Beni Speaks Nonsense Again!

The following is a forward sent to the SAICE forum by Benimadhav Mohanty, an SAICE product! (The quality of academic production in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Centre of Education, Pondicherry, certainly seems to have hit the rock bottom.  It is perhaps time to infuse some foreign funding to raise the standards!) What Benimadhav has forwarded on 8 June, 2014 is an atrocious rant on Hinduism by another ex-student to his brother in Australia. Benimadhav finds this “interesting” to read and forwards it to the rest of the SAICE alumni as if they are eagerly waiting to lap up this hate speech on Hindus. Now Benimadhav cannot simply shrug away his responsibility by saying that he has not written it, because it is he who has found it worthy of attention and brought it to the notice of the other members of the SAICE forum. As for the author of the piece itself, he should either be behind bars or sent to a madhouse. But I will nevertheless respond intellectually to this foam spewing hatred of the Hindus. As I don’t know the name of this frustrated ex-student, let me call him Anti-Hindu for the sake of convenience.

Anti-Hindu: [Cause of Rape Incidents in India:] Why! It’s the result of all the ritualistic, meaningless Devi worship of centuries! The hollow, false boast of the Hindu nation that claims to worship The Divine Shakti while making a living hell on earth for its women folk! Which is why Shakti, or Force has abandoned this country, as has Wealth – Lakshmi, and as has failed us also any true, real Learning & Knowledge – Saraswati!  But in the West, where they make no such claims, and have no such concepts even – the Divine Shakti indeed blesses them – with everything! Because the West without the farcical hypocrisy of our sanctimonious Indian moral self-righteousness, does engage with Energy, Vitality, Life! It does respect its women in a very real sense – for it is our country – India which IS the global capital of rape and chronic women abuse!

Sridharan: I understand the distress of the writer at the recent spate of rape incidents in India. But if he has found the worship of the Divine Shakti to be the cause of these incidents, then he has thrown the baby with the bathwater; he has also thrown out the Divine Mother of Sri Aurobindo  Ashram along with it. If the writer is a former student, having grown up in the Ashram when the Mother was physically present, he should at least know that the Mother, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, represents the Divine Shakti, and the highest place is given to her from the spiritual point of view. So if the writer jettisons the Divine Shakti, he is abandoning at the same time all the spiritual values that are associated with the working of the Divine Force. Of course, he is frustrated at the horrendous incidents, but frustration should not cloud his brain in such a complete manner.

Secondly, India is going through an identity crisis and consequently through a period of lawlessness and crime. Corruption, as we have seen in the past few years, has reached unimaginable heights. Is this happening because we have spiritual values or because we don’t have them? Or is it because we want to show to the world that we have them when we actually don’t have them, and neither are we interested in genuinely pursuing them? I suppose it is the latter that is implied by the writer – that we Indians have become hypocrites, that we actually have become downright materialists while we still pretend to be a haughty spiritual race. To this, I would partly agree. But this does not mean that spiritual values (including the reliance on the Divine Shakti) are the cause of crime and lawlessness in India. It is actually the lack of them that is the direct cause, for if these core values were there, such incidents would not occur at all. The proof is that the writer himself admits that things were not so bad back in the 50s or 60s.

Anti-Hindu: Things weren’t so bad back in the 50s or 60s, although the seed of the rot was active and spreading like wildfire thanks in great measure to the incalculably damaging moral impact of 'Hindi movies', which glorified woman abuse (dismissed as inane 'eve teasing'), thru ingeniously substituting the act of wooing/dating a woman in terms of 'eve teasing', and the heroine actually RESPONDING positively to such! Not only were the movie directors all male, but the govt. censor board was easily bought, and WORSE – the women actors – the 'stars' NEVER rejected this depiction , which through decades, got portrayed more and more shamelessly to a hypocrite nation of sexually frustrated perverse 'men'! [more rant on the same subject which I need not reproduce here]

Sridharan: The writer seems to be inherently against Hindi movies due to some bad childhood experiences. It is not because of the “damaging moral impact of Hindi movies” that rape has increased in India! If that were the case, Hollywood movies, which contain ten times more sex and violence, should have had a far worse effect on Westerners, not to mention the Internet where the fastest growing industry nowadays is pornography. Indian films in fact desperately attempt to imitate the West in this matter. The educated youth of India constantly idolise the West and ape its manners and fashions. Has this ex-student gone around India and seen for himself this so-called avant-garde society in pubs and discotheques? If he has, then he would not complain about Indians being Hindus, he would rather complain about Indians not being governed by Hindu values!

Anti-Hindu: You have NO IDEA, how many people can’t tolerate me because I say all these things! The vast majority of our women (of all ages) – amongst the most priceless, respect worthy, beautiful, tender, amazing and compassionate individuals in the world – live sadly in a state of constant anxiety and worry and fear – never knowing when their own brothers, uncles, fathers, teachers, principals, womens' shelters managers, judges, autorickshaw drivers, plumbers, policemen, army/navy soldiers – will rape, beat, humiliate, or kill them! – on any day, in any moment, in any situation whatsoever, for, even if they are our mothers, sisters, friends, girl friends, wives, colleagues – it is of no consequence , because we have been taught systematically, that WOMEN are primarily – MEAT! but in our WORDS (not our behaviour mind you), we must worship them as DEVI! Hats off to this Hindu culture of the world's best in hypocrites who are incapable of self respect! There you are! Explained! I’m ashamed of being originally Hindu! ashamed of being Indian – from this perspective, which blanks out all other perspectives!

Sridharan:  The writer’s silly and exaggerated views will not be tolerated because they don’t have any logic, they simply well out of frustration than any intelligent analysis. He is primarily against hypocrisy, which is fine, but how can that be cured by vilifying Hinduism? It is like decrying moral and spiritual values because we are unable to abide by them. Hypocrisy itself is a saving factor because otherwise crime would come out shamelessly in the open and declare and justify itself by the laws of the jungle! Would the writer approve of that?

What the writer actually insinuates is that if Hindus did not pretend spirituality when they actually desire sensuality, and if they satisfy their natural instincts as in the West (where there is no pretence), then things would be much better off. So forget about spirituality and have plenty of sex and change partners every six months, so that there is no scope for rape which thrives only in sex-starved hypocrites such as the Hindus!

Point taken! But then be ready to lose your soul! So what, the writer would reply, at least it would prevent rape! Good pragmatic logic! But then there would have been no need for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to come and teach the Integral Yoga and the divinisation of life, leave alone the thousands of Yogis and Rishis born in India who took the difficult and upward path, untrodden by the common man.

How do you explain then the present mess in India? That is not very difficult to explain once you are sufficiently familiar with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings. I would hazard the following explanation: What we presently see in India is the clash of materialistic forces with spiritual forces. India has woken up at last and is coming to terms with Life, which it had rejected for many centuries. Vitality and Mayavad hardly go together, hence the incompatibility and confusion. The first instinct is to forget about other worldly spirituality because it has ceased to pay any returns, and go for material fulfilment at all cost. Go for it the whole hog and the best way to do it is to copy the West. This leads to a severe imbalance individually and collectively, because hidden in the subliminal of the Indian, the age old values operate even he wants to reject them. Individually, this disequilibrium can turn him into a pervert or a crackpot. Collectively, this leads to gross inequalities in the struggle for wealth and pleasure, which often gets translated into crime.

This is not a justification to go back to the glorious past. For advance we must, both technologically and spiritually. But meanwhile, apparently opposite movements and forces are as if locked in a deadly mortal combat such as: spiritual mastery vs sexual revolution, individual gain vs social contribution, modern ideas vs ancient truth, and finally Hinduism vs Western civilisation. These knots have been unravelled by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and they have shown humanity a vast multi-layered scheme of evolution where each one can find his own place. Thus with the help of their teachings and invisible aid, we can not only aspire to practise the high ideals of Integral Yoga but, when we are not ready for it as is most often the case, live a life of dignity with the right priorities in place. This should make us not only worthy followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but also self-confident Hindus who need not be ashamed of Hinduism!