Some Observations

By Anamitra Dasgupta

The Persian Zoroastrian (Parsis) as we know them, are in fact "special Indians". They are rendered "special" because of their achievements and their society and teachings that employ humanist and moral precepts, which have a spiritual source and core. This is diametrically different from other religious, nationalist and moral laws that underline and strongly recommend an unbreakable “revealed” and acquisitive reality that divides the world into believers and non-believers; into pure and impure; into holy or unholy. The last mentioned adjectives have no spiritual import or spiritually edifying definition; these adjectives are in fact lower moral precepts used by man to rule over man; furthermore Man’s rule is the one based in fear and ego; in the “right to have”, rather than in the “need to give”. Zoroastrianism, as a spiritual reality, is formless and draws on eternal spiritual, and thereby, non-binding guidelines. Every spiritual precept that is non-binding is by nature compassionate, humanist and rooted in eternity. In contradiction, every earthly philosophy begins and ends in the “right” to congregate as “one” and convert others into a set, and accepted way of thinking; which has nothing that is deep or even spiritual about it. In short, Zoroastrianism is about Life manifested as Divine Diversity; while other revealed religions are about God as the ultimate arbitrator of authority – with God’s Prophet deciding upon all ingress or access to God.

Zoroastrian humanism is the same as the Hindu recognition of diversity. Both Zoroastrianism and Hinduism possess the same point of origin, i.e., both these religions are Vedic; and while these may have developed separately through their own geographical and political histories, the inner, core spiritual belief and its manifestation have remained the same. This has placed Zoroastrianism as a natural ally of Hinduism; the best Vedic Hindu is as good as the best Mazdayashni. And the best Mazdayashni identifies immediately with Hindu values without ever being compelled to subscribe to the Hindu pantheon. This is the natural convergence that answers as to why Zoroastrianism found an effortless and instinctive safe haven in India during and after the murderous Islamic Invasion and Colonisation of the Persian Empire. While the weakness of the Sassanian Kings or the internal politics of the last years of the Sassanian Empire is a contributing factor to the end of the Sassanian empire; the core cause was that a harsh and sinister philosophy, born in the Arab deserts, intolerant; the representative of a blood thirsty God and His warrior Prophet, recognised in Zoroastrian Persia an antithesis of everything that the desert God stood for; and saw in the existence of Zoroastrian Persia, as an affront to Allah, which had to be avenged at all costs. You know the events that followed.

This is why, and in my humble opinion, that while Zoroastrianism can be spoken of without taking recourse to history, the birth of the Parsi community and its existence so far, is a deep and historical reality that finds echo in an awesome and hoary antiquity – elements of which we must take into account when we speak of the noble Parsi community and their contributions in India. These historical elements include the Hakamanishya-Parsa as well as the Sassanian Fars; and unknown, pre-historical times before all of these.  

Who are the Parsis? The Parsis are survivors unlike any other in known human history; they have survived against all odds, and in the tiniest, but yet, most thriving numbers. What has helped them to survive is their spiritual belief that provides inner and non-binding humanist guidelines; and supported by an external religion the provided a deep sense of security that has always been based – not in the threat of violence and ghettoisation – but in the ability assimilate in peace and accept events – not as the whims of a jealous God – but as the unknown but perfect way of eternity. To a Zoroastrian-Parsi, eternity is the manifestation of God’s Love. To other revealed religions, eternity depends on Man’s Sin. As Hindus, we recognise the immense difference between the two precepts; for one embraces the formless reality of creation, while the other relegates all life to a judged mundane mediocrity. 

Because of this unique spiritual Zarathushti tradition, the reality which has solidified through the centuries as “the Parsi way”, and often spoken of as “Parsi-ism” has a noble origin and truly Aryan mandate – the right to survive and be humanist – combined with a noble progression – which has always been the selfless need to give back to India in deeds of nationalism, fealty and passionate loyalty seldom seen otherwise in history; and – marked through every precept that may be recognised in the original promise of Good Words, Good Thoughts and Good Deeds, as expressed in a handful of sugar in a bowl of milk. Thus have the Parsis and Parsi-ism sweetened the realities of India – their once adopted nation, and now, their very own proud land, in which they are more than equal stake holders.

Yet – the community today faces a crisis. Its is a deep and disturbing crisis that is a result of a past filled with achievements – a present that seems to be relatively lacking in the forward motion that was once the hallmark of the community – and the fear of a future, that seems to haunt everyone, because it is a future that is built of the terror of extinction. What we in fact see is fear of irrelevance; the fear of ridicule; and the fear of dwindling numbers which, for any social group, implies the loss of identity as well as assets. Parsi numbers have always been humble – a drop in the vast Indian ocean; and yet, as if to compensate for the lack in numbers, the community is in possession of a surfeit of wealth. This wealth, made even more precious by the fact that is was begotten by legitimate and relatively spotless means – makes it double more attractive to rapacious onlookers, who hover like vultures, in spite of the fact that the community is certainly not approaching death – not as yet. This is a deeply disturbing situation; and the resultant insecurity is manifested as a breakdown in the community’s collective morality and its time honoured sense of probity – when, fearing that they are on a sinking ship, it is every man for himself, gathering, by whatever means, all the wealth that he can, so as to be able to seek survival, again, in a very hostile environment. The migration of Parsis to foreign shores is also a part of this manifestation – where there is a need to find means to again start afresh in kinder and more ordered societies of western countries. Added to this is the need now to live off the security created by Parsi philanthropists of the past – and the reaction, amongst other manifestations, is to lead a so-called trouble free life – free, that is, from offspring too. To be fair this choice is often forced on Parsi couples – for infertility is never a moral choice; it is a physical reality. This needs gradual, informed and educated remedy.   

The corruption we see and mourn is not of Parsi nature or Zoroastrian origin – but is in fact the same symptom of any nation or empire – coming apart due to internal uncertainties and the perception of an increasing external threat. And the greatest threat, it seems, is not even external, but internal – for, while the holders of modern and contemporary opinions amongst the Parsis would like to take the Mazdayashni Faith to the world, the tradition bound majority harks back and quotes as the only legitimate precedent – the same Parsi-ism that once ensured greatness, security and success in all its endeavours. Indeed, in the eyes of tradition, all attempts to embrace changing social and genetic realities are perceived as traitorous and treasonous acts not only against the community and the religion, but against the age old sacrament made to the Jadi-Raja – to never convert Hindus or others; to always follow and adapt to Indian ways, and always maintain a separation in religious ritual. So, there now exists a schism between the Conservative Majority and the Centre-Left Minority; unbridgeable in fact, apparently – and deeply bitter, interspersed with personal attacks and acts of violence that seem shocking, given the continuous precedent of gentleness and reasonableness that has been the hallmark of Parsi deportment and interaction. Matters are made even more delicate by that self appointed arbiter of Parsi Society – the increasingly anachronistic and morally inept Parsi Panchayat, which, too, was once great. Sadly, the Parsis themselves have elected its unworthy representatives over themselves; and now, these representatives, in an attempt to aggrandize themselves, raise the bogey to prepare for a so-called bleak future, and have now begun gnawing away at the community’s own material resources. Moreover, having embarked upon this terrible and reactionary process of moral wrongdoing, they compound their misdeeds by using their noble and timeless religious precepts as if in justification for their crimes. To both the conservatives and the progressive Parsis, this is increasingly a matter of the deepest mortification and shame – and has left many good Parsis completely confused and disillusioned.

The need of the hour is for all members of the community to come together and, as a first, to agree amongst themselves to disagree. Compromise is a democratic process based not in agreement, but in the right and ability to disagree. The community must elect morally far sighted representatives that understand the ancient precepts of Zoroastrianism as in the Gathas; there is more that is spiritually edifying in simply looking within one’s own inner light, than in dividing community members on their diligence with the Khordeh-Avesta, the Sudreh and Kusti. The argument should not only be about the Daena Vangehui being spread to all corners in the world; but it should be about arousing the young and old from their present, contented slumber, and again walk the path to achievement. Worry not for the Daena Vangehui – for this noble way is affirmed in all creatures through their deeds and actions in every moment of living reality and in their natural surrender to God; there cannot be any other way, for all ways are unified in God’s eyes; and in All is One God; gather knowledge through action; for in knowledge lies all that is righteous. “Aevo-pantao yo Asha-he; vispe Anyayesham apantam”.   

In summation – The Parsis cannot stop their forward movement, and rest on part glories. Past glory and its indulgence makes a virile race weak; saps its strength. Past glory, bandied about, turns into an excuse for sterility in deeds and in action; turns into an excuse for moral laziness. It is the need for future glory that preserves racial and social vitality. Yet, future glory is a nebulous term – the right usage would be the terms “present completion and contentment”. When the native Indian population had lost its way, burdened by the trauma of repeated invasions and incredible poverty, it was the Parsis who pulled the nation up and exemplified the nature of modern India with deeds of unbelievable loyalty, valour, principle, excellence and an ability that all reflected the ancient Warrior-Saint-Kings like Maharaja Bharat, Daraya-Vahu, Kourush and Ashoka. The Parsis, by example, reiterated to India its own ancient Kshatriya Dharam. It is time for the Parsis to again reiterate to themselves their greater mandate; and rise again, proud, fulfilled, eternal and – Human.

The Above are Excerpts From –

“A Hindu View on Zoroastrianism”

by Anamitra Dasgupta

© Anamitra Dasgupta

May 2012   

It Is All Coming Out Now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbkUkEWbN9g&feature=feedf

Something fascinating.

SONIA GANDHI IS THE MODERN ROBERT CLIVE

By Dr. Subhraminiyam Swamy

The bottom line observed in Sonia’s mindset is that she can disregard Indian laws with impunity. If cornered or if she becomes vulnerable to prosecution, she can always run back to Italy. In Peru, President Fujimori who all along claimed to be “born Peruvian”, when faced with a corruption charge fled to Japan with his loot and reclaimed his Japanese citizenship. That is Sonia’s bottom line fall-back option too.

In 1977, when the Janata Party defeated the Congress at the polls, and formed the government, it widely known and published that Sonia with her two children abandoned Indira Gandhi, and ran to the Italian Embassy in New Delhi and hid there. Rajiv Gandhi was a government servant then[as an Indian Airlines pilot], but he too tagged along and hid in that foreign embassy ! Such was her baneful influence on him. Rajiv did snap out Sonia’s influence after 1989, but alas he was assassinated before he could rectify the situation.

Those close to Rajiv knew that he was planning set things right about Sonia after the 1991 elections. He held her to blame for all the financial scandals that led to his defeat at the 1989 polls. She knew of it too because he had told her on his trip to Soviet Union in February 1991. Ever wonder why Sonia’s closest advisers are those whom Rajiv literally hated? Ambika Soni is one such name. Ever wonder why she has asked the President of India to set aside on a mercy petition the Supreme Court judgment directing that Rajiv Gandhi’s LTTE killers be hanged, when she was not similiarly moved for Satwant Singh who killed Indira Gandhi or even recently for Dhanajoy Chattopadhyaya ? The explanation for this special consideration for the LTTE perhaps lies in what Rajiv had told her about their future. May be therefore Sonia feels obliged to the LTTE for the assassination. More on this later.

Those who have no love for India will not hesitate to plunder her treasures. Mohammed Ghori, Nadir Shah, and the British scum in the East India Company such as Robert Clive, made no secret of it. But Sonia Gandhi has been more discreet, but as greedy, in her looting of Indian treasures. When Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were Prime Ministers, not a day passed when the PM’s security did not go to the New Delhi, or Chennai international airport to send crates and crates of Indian antiques and other treasures, unchecked by customs, to Rome. Air India and Alitalia were the chosen carriers. For organizing all this, Mr. Arjun Singh first as CM, later as Union Minister in charge of Culture, was her hatchet man.

Indian temple sculpture of gods and goddesses, antiques, pichwai paintings, shatoosh shawls, coins, and you name it, were transported to Italy to be first displayed in two shops [see Annexure-16] owned by her sister, Anuskha alias Alessandra Maino Vinci. These shops located in blue-collar areas of Rivolta[shop name: Etnica] and Orbassano [shop name: Ganpati] did little business because which blue collar Italian wants to buy Indian antiques ? The shops were there to make false bills, and thereafter these treasures were taken to London for auction by Sotheby’s and Christies.

Some of this ill-gotten money from auction went into the bank accounts of Rahul Gandhi in the National Westminister Bank and Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, London branches, but most of it found it’s way into the Gandhi family account in the Bank of America in Cayman Islands. Rahul’s expenses and tuition fees for the one year he was at Harvard, was paid from that Cayman Island account [see Annexures-17].

What kind of people are these Gandhi-Mainos that bite the very hand of Bharat Mata that fed them and gave them a good life? How can the nation trust or tolerate such greedy thieves of national treasures?

Since I failed to persuade the Vajpayee government to defend India’s treasures from plunder by the Mainos, I approached the Delhi High Court in a PIL. The first Bench of the court issued notice to the Government, but since the Indian government dragged it’s feet, the Court directed the CBI to seek Interpol’s and Italian government’s help. The Italian government justifiably asked for a Letter Rogatory for which a FIR is a pre-requisite. But the Interpol did oblige and submitted two voluminous reports on the shops which the Court directed the CBI to hand over to me. But CBI has so far refused, and has claimed privilege!

This question will be argued out at the next hearing of my PIL.

The CBI has also been caught lying in court by telling the judges that Alessandra Maino is a name of a man, and Via Bellini 14, Orbassano is a name of a village[not the street address of the Maino’s residence]. Although the CBI counsel had to apologise later to the court stating he had made a mistake, he has been promoted to Additional Solicitor General by the new government! Why was he appointed as the CBI’s counsel by the Vajpayee government in the first place? The Vajpayee-Sonia mutual assistance pact is thus in full view in this episode.

But the most sinister aspect of Sonia Gandhi’s links is her connection with terrorists. I am still working on it, but she has had long connection with the Habash group of Palestinians [PFLP], and has funded Palestinian families that lost their kith and kin in a suicide bombing or hijacking episode. This fact, Rajiv Gandhi himself told me and was confirmed to me [the funding aspect] by Yassir Arafat when I met him in Tunis on October 17, 1990 at the request of Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv and I were good friends from 1978, but became very close friends after V.P. Singh had betrayed him in 1987. We met practically every day, mostly in the early hours from 1AM to 4AM, discussed, chatted and gossiped on every topic. It was at my suggestion that Rajiv made Chandrashekhar the PM. And contrary to public impression, he was not mainly responsible for fall of Chandrashekar government[of which I was a Minister].

Besides the Palestinian extremists, the Maino family have had extensive business dealings with Saddam Hussein [see Annexure-18], and surprisingly since 1984 with the LTTE [“the Tamil Tigers”]. Sonia’s mother Paola Predebon Maino, and businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi are the main contacts with the Tigers. The mother used the LTTE for money laundering and Quattrocchi for selling weapons to earn commissions. Sonia’s conduit to the LTTE has been and is through Arjun Singh who uses Bangalore as the nodal point for contact.

There is a string of circumstantial evidence pointing to the prima facie possibility that the Maino family may have contracted with the LTTE to kill Rajiv Gandhi. The family may have assured the LTTE that nothing would happen to them because they would ensure it is blamed on the Sikhs or the evidence so much fudged that no court would convict them[ the LTTE intercepted transcripts show this expectation of the LTTE]. But D.R. Karthikeyan of the CBI who led the SIT investigation got the support of Narasimha Rao, cracked the case, and succeeded in getting the LTTE convicted in the trial court, which conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1999.

Although on the involvement of some members of the Congress Party in the assassination, DRK soft peddled it ignoring a number of leads perhaps because he did not want political controversy to put road blocks on his investigation as a whole.

The Justice J. S. Verma Commission, which was set up as the last official act of the Chandrashekhar government before demitting office on June 21, 1991, did find that the Congress leaders had disrupted the security arrangements for the Sriperumbudur meeting. The Commission wanted further probe into it but the Rao government rejected that demand. In the meantime under Sonia’s pressure, the Jain Commission was set up by the Rao government, which tried to muddy the waters and thus exonerate the LTTE. But the trial court judgment convicting the LTTE came earlier than the Commission could conclude, and that sinister effort therefore too failed.

Nowadays, Sonia is quite unabashed in having political alliance with those who like MDMK, PMK, and DMK praise Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. No Indian widow would ever do that. Such circumstances are many, and raise a doubt. My investigations into Sonia’s involvement in Rajiv’s assassination is therefore necessary. I am also author of a best seller titled Assassination Of Rajiv Gandhi—Unasked Questions and Unanswered Queries[published by Konark in 2000] in which I have given some indications of this possible conspiracy.

Is it not significant that the political career graph of Sonia Gandhi advances concomitantly with a series of assassinations and apparently accidental deaths?

How did Sanjay’s plane on June 23, 1980 nosedive to a crash and yet the plane fuselage failed to explode upon impact? There was no fuel ! How was that possible since flight register shows full tank before take-off ? Why was there no inquiry conducted ?

Is it not a fact that Indira Gandhi died because of loss of blood from the wounds and not directly due to a bullet impacting her head or heart ? Then is it not strange that Sonia had insisted that the bleeding Indira be driven to Lohia Hospital-- in the opposite direction to AIIMS which had a contingency protocol set up for precisely such an event ? And after reaching Lohia Hospital, did not Sonia change her mind and demand that they all drive to AIIMS thus losing 24 valuable minutes ?

The same kind of mystery surrounds the sudden deaths of Sonia’s other political roadblocks such as Rajesh Pilot, Jitendra Prasad, and Madhavrao Scindia. Such untimely deaths happened in the dark ages in Italy. Should we allow it to happen in India like dumb cattle going to slaughter?

The Meandering Road: On Romila Thapar's Winning the Kluge Prize

The Meandering Road: On Romila Thapar's Winning the Kluge Prize: "by Dr. Gautam Sen Romila Thapar has been awarded the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity for ostensibly creati..."

Building a Tiger Moth

This is part 1 of a video on building a flying model of the famous Dehavilland Tiger Moth

On Romila Thapar's Winning the Kluge Prize

by Dr. Gautam Sen

Romila Thapar has been awarded the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity for ostensibly creating “a new and more pluralistic view of Indian civilization, which had seemed more unitary and unchanging, by scrutinizing its evolution over two millennia and searching out its historical consciousness”. Thapar’s US Congressional acclamation seeks to validate a blatantly provocative view of India’s past, espoused mainly by its Stalinist fifth column, assorted Islamist Jihadis and militant Christian evangelists. The US Congressional committee resoundingly reaffirms the bitter American animus harboured against Hindu India that has been the ceaseless feature of US foreign policy towards it since independence. It was this vicious hatred and a half-baked strategic calculus that prompted US support for Pakistan’s genocide in East Pakistan in 1971. And it is the same perspective that has now been determinedly adopted by contemporary American Christian evangelists.

Most committed Hindus find Romila Thapar’s interpretation of ancient Indian history grossly disingenuous and thoroughly objectionable. Indeed a large number of Hindus regard her as a deeply mendacious enemy of Hindus. It poses the question whether such a prize would have been awarded to an historian of the Jewish, Christian or Islamic faiths if the pedagogue was practically regarded as an enemy by a significant number of the faithful of these communities. I think not, logical profundity and all artifices about intellectual freedom notwithstanding. The Kluge Prize selection committee might have imposed a simple test on Thapar by requiring her to present examples of two positive statements that she has composed on the Hindu past in her entire career. Instead what the decision of the Kluge committee suggests is racial arrogance, contempt for Hindu sensibilities and the malign influence of a powerful Bostonian non-Hindu Indian, infamous for campaigns belittling Hindu suffering by outright lies.

It is only in India that a historian without adequate command of Sanskrit can claim expertise on its ancient past right across its entire length and breadth. Social status is all that counts in feudal India, a feature on display in virtually every aspect of its social life and all that is required to silence disbelief. In a pathetic attempt to apply deep thought to Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasions of India, Romila Thapar piles one speculation upon another, fabricating motives and thought processes with abandon. She writes as if she had been a contemporary of the conqueror, priests and participants in major historical events over several centuries. She turns notions of scepticism in judging historical evidence on their head. Her personal authority becomes the only referent for increasingly wild assertions! There is no scholar of ancient Europe or any other part of the world that would dare advance ludicrous claims to expertise without command of the relevant languages and usually over a modest geographical expanse. The likes of Fernand Braudel and Chris Wickham are very rare indeed and Romila Thapar might wish to consult their historical oeuvre in penance for a multitude of sins.

A central purpose of her banal lifetime agenda has been to legitimise the destruction of Somnath by Mahmud of Ghazni. According to Romila Thapar, he was motivated purely by greed, a secular impulse that supposedly erases any iconoclastic religious rationale. One startling claim she also appears to make is familiarity with supposedly extant corroborative Persian and Turkish sources on his lack of religious conviction, presumably the pre-Kemalist script in which even few contemporary Turks claim to read, though it is Sanskrit she really needed to bone up on. Much the same can be said of her sturdy defence of Aurangzeb’s iconoclasm, asserting secular political motives for the destruction of the Kashi Viswanath temple (and countless others) and the erection of a mosque in its place. Her JNU colleagues indulge in even more bizarre fantasies, such as imperial sanction against the temple for the abduction of some local princess though the evidence adduced is miraculously fictitious. This is the stuff of undergraduate student union debates and all that she and her execrable Stalinist JNU colleagues are able to conjure in old age.

There is hysterical that denial that any Muslim ruler was ever loyal to his faith and followed the Prophet’s iconoclastic example. By asserting robbery as the principal motive in every significant instance of temples being destroyed they end up in the unenviable position of having to explain why there was so much discussion about division of the spoils of conquest in the numerous wars of Jihad waged by the Prophet himself? The delicious paradox of this assertion, which dear Romila has not evidently thought through, is that Islam, if they are correct in their imputation of robbery as the routine motive for its imperial expansion, is merely about robbery and the recourse to the Almighty Allah a ruse! She is proposing, in effect, that Muslims going to war everywhere were only out to rob and pillage not because they were engaged in Jihad against infidels. But why this extraordinary insight should have reassured the victims of robbery, murder and mayhem is a matter she obviously cannot comprehend. Quite clearly, common sense is at a premium since it would have dictated that religious motivation and desire for loot have always co-existed in most imperial expansions.

Romila Thapar’s infamous patronage of the discredited Aryan invasion theory always had an Islamist rationale as well. By maintaining, on the basis of grotesque colonial historical misrepresentation, and its subsequent validation by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, that contemporary Hindu upper castes were invaders she sought to grievously injure the legitimacy of India’s entire Hindu past. What she was effectively arguing was that racist invaders had subjugated indigenous Indians in the past and casteist Hinduism was their ideology. By inference, later Islamic invasions were no more remarkable since they were merely successors to a well-established pattern of invasions. Of course, for India’s venal Stalinists Islam represented liberation since it was monotheistic and preached equality. That it guaranteed sexual slavery for women and death (enslavement after every conquest) to those who resisted conversion to Islam was a quirk in the prescription Islamic equality that escaped tortured Stalinist logic. Even now contemporary India heaves with the distorted logic of this colonial historical intervention, which is being used to justify social pogroms against alleged upper caste oppressors no matter how deprived many of them may be and by communities that wield significant economic and political power in India now. Truly, such deep-rooted malice underpinned the eventual extermination of European Jewry. The fact that the Aryan invasion theory lies in tatters has only prompted the devious reworking of its original formulation by her. The blatant Islamist and Christist demonization of alleged upper caste oppression has now been artfully re-phrased by transmuting invasion into immigration, a parallel to the historic libel against Jews of poisoning wells, to renew the charge of illegitimacy against upper caste villains.

She breezily speaks of truth in historical writing, imagining that all her critics are fools who cannot conceivably be aware of a well-worn professional discussion on the contestable nature of historical truth and partisanship in historical scholarship. Some of them are also familiar with the work of historians of greater professional distinction than Romila Thapar and infinitely superior intellectual integrity, who have written rather differently on ancient and medieval India. In her case, what stands out resoundingly, again and again, is a determination to vindicate every aspect of Muslim rule over Hindus and celebrate their most egregious crimes or ignore them altogether with breathtaking impudence? In this context, it is not ancient India in which she proclaims expertise, but any period requiring the usual Stalinist hatchet job of dis-information. And it is for this highly politicised defence of Islamic rule over India that a Christian America, steadfast friendship of Islamic Jihad against it, is rewarding a sworn enemy of the Hindu people. Mahmud, Timur, Aurangzeb, Nadir Shah and the Abdali killers ought to feel refreshed with the taste of the blood of hundreds of thousands of Hindu men, women and children even as they find an honourable place at Allah’s table.

Such is the audacity of Thapar and these second-rate Stalinists that profound ontological and epistemological differences with historians of the stature of R. C. Majumdar and Sir Jadunath Sarkar are evaded by merely accusing them of communal Hindu methodology. The eight volume History of India, as told by its own historians, compiled by Eliot and Dowson, is also damned by imputing partisan motives though their contents are not uniformly damaging to Islam, yet highlight enough evidence of despoliation to prompt their blanket denouncement by India’s fifth column.  And she herself also makes a disgracefully cavalier accusation against the distinguished K. M. Munshi of an attempt to revive the Hindu Aryan (sic!) past for his endeavours to restore Somnath.  Yet, these fifth columnists never detect such base motives in the reams of diabolical contemporary Islamic and Christian hate literature used incessantly to insult Hindu sensibilities in their own homeland. This is a tradition that dismisses those who disagree with them as communal, the pronouncement of an auto da Fe to paralyse them.

Her alleged expertise on ancient India is a badge deployed for typically cynical Leftist aims of aggrandisement, marked by opportunistic alliances and complicity in genocide that has usually ended in historical oblivion. But much blood will first be spilt and on a scale that would make any bloodletting specifically sponsored by Hindus, with all the enormous caveats that signification ought to imply, a few mere commas in the respective histories of genocide wilfully engaged in by Islam and Christianity. What most Indian historians seem to lack, in addition to appropriate training in methodology and relevant linguistic skills, is any notion of comparative history. It seems that Hindu India’s encounter with Islam is outside history and all the evidence, written and archaeological, subject to the imprimatur of a bunch of malicious Stalinists before they can be regarded as valid. Comparable evidence of examples of the expansion of Islam elsewhere has not suffered the same dismal fate. But the two cannot be compared since they reveal a pattern that will refute all the deceitful contortions that Indian history has suffered for too long at the hands of Stalinists, deriving additional succour, for their own mundane political reasons, from India’s foreign enemies. Tellingly, the predators and assassins that Romila Thapar has laboured to vindicate throughout a dismal career are also the heroes of Pakistan for being iconoclasts that kept Hindus in their place.

Romila Thapar belongs to the cynical tribe of Indian Stalinists who thrive by self-righteousness, which in the Indian context bears a familial resemblance to the racial supremacy that Europeans once openly declared and now quietly assert. Basically, it is divide-and-rule by mobilising every division and fissure amongst the non-whites to their advantage and the use of sophisticated media brainwashing techniques that simultaneously affirm equality while ensuring racial hierarchy. The noble campaign against tradition and ignorance melds effortlessly with the depravity of the masters of the universe, eagerly delivering incendiary tonnage on Afghan wedding parties and Iraqi schoolchildren. But the clamorous natives are forever at the door, resentful, gross and uninitiated in the mores of cosmopolitan sophistication. And their imperfect command of the English language is a weapon used against them, to criminalize their ignorance and question their humanity.

But nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of progress, the logical summit of which the great theorists Mark Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno noted was ascended in the gas chambers of the same civilisation that produced Goethe and Beethoven.

The sordid outcome of the Kluge prize for Romila Thapar is an attempted validation of the intellectual genocide against Hinduism. And the Indian Stalinist anti-colonial rant evaporates the moment their aircraft approach of the American shoreline. As a fully paid up member of India’s deracinated upper crust, Romila Thapar’s loftily declined the native Padma Bhusan, but a million dollar prize, effectively the same kind of state award she found unacceptable, from the racist sponsors of mass murder is apparently another matter. The real high-minded tradition examining the Hindu past represented by the noble efforts many like Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan was not on the Kluge radar. It will satisfy the evangelical constituency that wishes to extirpate Hinduism and the Islamic Jihadists who assert historical legitimacy to their claims to imperial dominion over India and regularly pursue it by murderous ventures that emulate Nazi pogroms against Jews and Slavs. It is Romila Thapar who is their intellectual mentor and Kluge has emphatically joined the same genocide chorus. The con-joining of the name of Peter Brown for the Kluge prize on the same occasion is a cause for mourning since this great scholar has done so much to advance our understanding of the ancient world, with insight that testifies to profound scholarship and elegance that is enviable.

Dr. Gautam Sen

12^th December 2008.

(Taught for more than two decades and at the London School of Economics and now writes on international political economy)

Who was Zarathusthra?

Who was Zarathusthra?

This is a question for which there are no answers; at least, none in terms that the mind or the brain may understand.

For those that seek to know of the nature of this great Master and Seer, there can only be insights that reveal themselves at appropriate times, in appropriate moments of that entity’s or seeker’s spiritual path and growth.

But, indeed, who was Zarathusthra?

Can he be defined as a Spiritual Leader? Or, can he be defined as a Prophet? The act of definition carried within it an inherent danger. For, what is defined, or, what can be defined, by nature, then, is finite; definition is limitation. Therefore, what is infinite in It’s State of Being can never be defined; infinity is limitless. It can be as large or as small, everywhere and nowhere; everything and nothing all at the same point of existence; at the tiniest moment of existential time.

I believe, therefore, that terms such as ‘Ethical’ or ‘Philosophical Leadership’ to describe the Great Son of the World are inadequate; these seem as mere logical designations used to describe a particular circumstance; or what the perceiving entity understands as a fact. This, then, is an act of limitation; is merely a transient opinion that can eventually be rendered meaningless as higher knowledge seeps into the seekers consciousness. Terms such as ‘Prophet’ and ‘Prophet-hood’ face the same danger of being caused to have no meaning through any attempt at definition. This is a serious setback in the path of logic. And yet, a Rational Mind is more subtle than a mind that is merely logical; rationality helps in understanding the path that was previously walked with logic; true rationality, therefore, begins where logic ends.

Zarathusthra can never be defined; we may merely create yardsticks in our mind to understand certain aspects of the truth about Him. But we may never truly know Him and his Ministration in our rational, lower, logical consciousness that understands only what has been defined within limits and boundaries.  

So, who was Zarathusthra?

The nature of His Being is a Point to ponder upon; to contemplate upon his Spirit to know who He is, is a continuous process through lifetimes of meditation and seeking. The answer is simple; the answer, when arrived at, will open another gateway of seeking and realisations; for Zarathusthra is Soul; to know Soul is to know God; that is beyond language, beyond definitions, beyond any expression. The knowledge of God is Eternity Itself – to know Zarathusthra, then, would be not to know a Man, but to know God.

Ushta-no Zato Athrava, yo Spitamo Zarathustro

“Fortunate are we, that the Teacher was Born – Spitamo Zarathusthra”

What is Good? What is Evil? Can anyone ever define what good is, without knowing the face of evil? Or, can evil be defined without the measuring rod the good?

I say that this can be done; but, it cannot be done with logic as an end to this understanding. This is therefore, where Faith steps in. And in the path of knowing the nature of Great Zarathusthra, this is the point where the seeker begins his journey to Him.

What is Faith?

Faith is the primordial instinct in man; the reflection of Soul within. Incarnate as human, all higher instincts of the spirit are blocked by the minds that we carry; the mind that unfolds and forms for us this physical world in which we are guests but for a short eternity. The physical world is a place of shapes, forms, distances, and of the most enduring reality of its perpetuation – the law of time. To understand these as the realities of physical existence, and convert these as actions that give rise to events, we are given a brain to control all our physical exertions and efforts; and contained within the brain resides mind, whose function is to understand these. In the physical world, therefore, the mind is the ruler; it defines the beginning of existence as we understand it from our awakening physical consciousness as commenced by our birth; and hang on to it for dear life till it is time to part company by a process we have named ‘death’; for, to us, the mind is Life itself – it is existence. There can be no other possibilities of life in our limited mental states as dictated by our lower processes of thought.

The experience of Faith is the first sign of the transience of mind. Faith manifests when the lower mind, as encompassed by our brain, faced with the vastness of inner spaces, concludes aimlessly its endeavour of understanding its real, spiritual inner surroundings; and, in this, the mind does not give up its attempts very easily. In this connection, in passing, then, let me comment that this is why it is so difficult for the neophyte to meditate. For meditation implies the bypassing of the mind to find the window to the spirit; and the mind is not programmed to have any consideration whatsoever bypass it; especially to find the spirit, which is, of course, beyond comprehension and logical assimilation by the mind. So an attempt to understand spirit or even enter the spiritual realms will only arouse serious opposition from the mind in the manner of images, conflicting thoughts, difficulties in being able to concentrate and many other such symptoms.

  

But, however vast the mind may seem and whatever its apparent power, the mind, in reality, is but finite. And nowhere is this limitation more in evidence than in the face of simple, timeless Faith – something that dwells beyond the reach of the mind and its workings. The lower mind with all the baggage derived through a lifetime of physical living processes terminates with the corporeal death of the entity; but actions born out of Faith of the same individual during its physical lifetime endure forever as the continuous cycle of self sustaining events within the world, as well as without. This simple truth manifests in the outer world in what the Hindus know as the “Law of Karma”. Outer life is an expression of the mind and of choices that it constantly makes. But inner life constitutes of choices made of Faith; so, whilst physical events of all natures pass into History – into the books of the dead, Faith passes not. It remains, alive, a bright, burning flame, eternal, comforting; a spark that lights a million candles and a billion hearts; brighter than a trillion suns – Faith, the image of God deep within every facet of Creation. In our path in search of perfection, we find Faith without fail, and find it not in the form of a goal, but experience is as a process. The Hindus’ call it Dharma; and we all recognize it as Asha.

Ashem Vohu Vahishtem Asti; Ushta Asti.

Ushta ahmai; hyat asha-i Vahishtai Ashem.

“The path of Asha is the Highest Good; It is the Illumination of Life.

The Bliss of Illumination is gained when Life is lived for the Sake of Righteousness alone”

Asha is the Highest Good. In Sanskrit, Asha is the word for “Hope”. It is pertinent to note that Hope springs for Faith. The well-spring of Asha is Vohu Mana. What is Vohu Mana?

Vohu Mana

Both in Avesta as well as in Sanskrit, the word Mana denotes “Mind”. Vohu in Vedic Avesta and Vazarka in later Avesta imply the same meaning as Virat or Brihat in Sanskrit, which means “vast” or “great”. My Persian readers will appreciate that the word Bozorg, in modern Persian and the older Pehlavi is the expression for “Big” or “Great”, or “Elder”. This is derived from the same word as Vazarka.

Vohu Mana, then, is the “Highest Mind”. One of the greatest kings of this world was the great Vedic Persian Emperor Daraya-Vohumana – “Dara of Great Mind”. The later sons of Hakamanish knew him as “Darayavoush”. We know him as Darius the First, the Great, as his name has been passed to us in its Greek form.             

The Highest Mind does not reside in the brain; but is the essence of the Spirit itself deep within every living entity, whatever its incarnate nature may be; or whatever its incarnate unique path of experience of life may take form as. A darvesh living on the edges of the Koh-e-Demavand, a sadhu in the Himalayas, a new born child opening its eyes at wonderment at the sight of a new world and a murderer awaiting the executioner’s axe share in common the Vohu Mana. The difference here is that both the darvesh and the sadhu have found Vohu Mana; whilst the murderer is yet to find it – and find it he shall, in some lifetime, in some incarnation – for, the destiny of every Being is to be another Buddha; another Zarathusthra. The newborn child, meanwhile, that cannot even express itself, embodies in reality all the innocence of knowledge; and is in essence, therefore, the purest physical manifestation of the Vohu Mana. It does not matter what the child will grow up to be.        

The Highest Mind – Vohu Mana expresses itself in three, basic, simple, actions in the incarnate human being; these translate as “Good Thoughts”, Good Words” and “Good Deeds”. This awareness is of crucial importance to the seeker; Great Zarathusthra, in His meditations upon God, considered this as his first magnificent realisation. This comprehension then formed the basis of all His future knowledge and realisations; and in turn, is the founding principle of His Faith, expresses as:-

Humata; Hukhta; Hvarshta

“Good Thoughts; Good Words; Good Deeds”

Herein dawns the awareness upon the seeker of the eternal and supremely empowering cycle of the inner self that the Great son of Pourushaspa has expressed so well:-

Humatem Mano; Huktem Vacho; Hvarshtem Shyothanem

“Think what is Good.” with a Mind that Thinks the Highest Good; “Speak what is Noble” so express It in Words of the Greatest Import; therefore, “Do what is Right” and embark upon Action that is Absolutely Appropriate

So, everything translates, in the ultimate reckoning, as Action. Vohu Mana is Action; It is the source of all Action – past, present and future; It is, indeed, the fountainhead of Creation.

Action

All that we create in the course of a lifetime or through various lifetimes begin enclosed in our incarnate human forms as thoughts and dreams within our mind. Greats ships that travel the oceans or ride the currents of the air; chariots of metal that traverse the world; machines that make enormous buildings; machines that make war – the well-spring of all that is the human imagination that dreams; plans; makes up things; then, commands the arms and legs to dig into our Mother Earth, to find the soil that we eventually fashion into the shapes that we first dreamt of – first imagined. Whether we work with brick or mortar, forge metals or create ethers; or create with the instruments of the mind – the path of every living being, then, is the path of Action. In whatever we do, we set in motion events; even if we do nothing, we have to bear the consequences of doing nothing – for even doing ‘nothing’ constitutes of action of “Doing Nothing”. Every action, whether “something” or “nothing” has its reaction within and without. If truth be told, we are always “doing something”. Action is Universal. The universe would not perpetuate itself without action. Everything must move – whether in body, or in spirit and in ether.  

Action forms the basis of living; time perpetuates itself through action; actions can never cease because of the unending nature of time. The path that Zarathusthra chose to follow was the path of action; the religion thus created through the ages by devotees walking along the same path is “The Religion of Zarathusthra” – the Religion of Action – Daena Vangehui.

Ahmai Ushta, Ushta y’ahmai; kah’mai cit

“Happiness (be) to Him, through (who’s actions) Happiness (is caused) to Others”

If, in action, dwells the source of every event of every nature, all of which we define through good or evil, then, it must follow that good actions give rise to only the good; whilst actions that are bad, culminate only in what is evil. This precept, whilst true, is but merely once facet, a mere attribute of the truth; to lay emphasis upon this, the Great One did not hesitate to give form to His realisation that the passage of the Universe through time takes on the forms of Creation and Destruction – this is the basic Law of the Universe – of the Eternal Universe that is within every Living Being, and the Finite Physical Universe that surrounds our physical selves.

Creation and Destruction are but the two faces of the same coin: Creation is the Force of Life; Destruction is the Force of Non-Life. Each is a precisely opposite mirror image of the other; and, though diametrically opposed by their very natures, both must work together – through the action of one, to perpetuate the other. United they begin, from the Bosom of Ahura Mazda; but in opposition are they, in their Creative and Destructive expressions.

At-ca hyat ta hem Mainyu jasaetem pourvim; dazde gaemca ajyaitim-ca

“And when these two Spirits came together, they in the Beginning created Life and Non-Life”

And where do these two Spirits find the ultimate Conscious Creative Expression? Nowhere, but through the actions of Man! Therefore, in the actions that we discharge to give rise to Cause and Effect, we must always strive to make these appropriate; and what is appropriate, is always Good. Good is what worships life. Evil is to not know what good is; evil is ignorance.

Good Action is the Ultimate Expression of Vohu Mana. This is then the cycle of Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds – Humata, Hukhta Hvarshta – Manashni; Gavashni, Kunashni. To walk along this path, then, is the path of Asha:-

Aevo pantao yo Asha-he; vispe anyaesham apantam

“There is but One Path – the Path of Asha; all other paths are false”

The path of realising Vohu Mana is the practice of only what is good; so, from Vohu Mana then, is born the Kshatra – The Right Action. The practice of Vohu Mana, then, is ­Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta – Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds. This knowledge is Zarathusthra’s greatest gift to you; for He is a Giver of Priceless Gifts.  

You

The path of Asha is the path of action; it is universal. Asha that envelopes Creation is the primordial expression of Vohu Mana; it never ceases. Whatever may be your religion, whoever may be your prophet and whichever your guiding principle, when you walk the path of good deeds through good thoughts and words, you tread upon the way of righteousness and live the life of Asha. You, as soul, born as an incarnate physical being, is a particle born out of the source of Asha; you exist because you, yourself, are an element of God’s Good Thought; your creation is a primordial Good Act; within you is the Good Word of God’s Blessing. Altogether, you are a particle of Light born out of God; you are Soul. There is no evil within you; there is no sin. You “are” forevermore; and you shall be, without exception, without end. You are the source of every good, the author of every beauty; you are the origin of your own destiny; in your actions rests the seed of every cause – and in whatever the effect and of whatever the experience in living that cause, it is, without fail, another step back to the fountainhead of love – the bosom of Ahura Mazda. Take heart then, for, through many immortal creations, you have lived through trillions of forms to reach a state of consciousness embodied in your human form. Blessed are you, for, now, you have risen out of the realm of instinct and entered the kingdom of thought; you have been granted your innate right to seek; you hold the key to Vohu Mana. The end of the journey is near; for, whatever be your station in life and whatever be your path, you stand at the last cosmic door that you must open, so to find your way back to the Creator, Who experiences It’s Creation through you; and you, a particle of the Great Light, that lives through unending Creations, to know that you are It – a formed particle of God.

This is what you are. This is what Zarathusthra knew Himself to be; this, then, is what you share with Zarathusthra.

You are one with God; and when you find Yourself, you too shall know what you are as did the Great Son of Dugdava. And when you do, whenever that may be, you too shall be a Being such as Him that pass the world but once, to give you the simple truth of Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds.

This is not an answer then, to who Zarathusthra was. This is merely the beginning of what you choose what Zarathusthra is. Know yourself to know Him. And then, there will be no need for words; for once God is gained, there is no need for expression. It is Bliss.

You are Bliss.

“…Payuscha ahmi, dataca trataca ahmi; znataca mainyuscha ahmi spentotemo; baeshazya nama ahmi, baeshazyotema nama ahmi; Athrava nama ahmi, athravatem nama ahmi; Ahura nama ahmi, Mazdao nama Ahmi…”

Anamitra Dasgupta