The first time my friend Maria Cherian confronted me with the "Hinduism is so violent" statement, I was aghast. First, because most 'Hindus' are innocent of proselytizing and thus have no idea on how to propagate or defend their beliefs. Second, that she was told so by a pamphlet distributed by her local church in Thiruvalla, Kerala. The very idea that 'other' people should be discussing my religion to the extent of being vehemently opposed to it and calling it violent horrified the complacent Indian in me. Third, that this timid watered down version that I practised like scores of others around me, this which glorified Ahimsa and Vegetarianism, making it a new age Mantra, that this should be branded thus. Fourth, it brought out in me a perplexed reaction of a majority never having given a thought on how the minority think and survive.
So here Maria was saying Gita propagates violence. So said the church pamphlet.
I had not read the Bhagavad Gita nor had she!
I had of course read most of the Bible and so had she!!
Which meant that we both knew what Christ had said but had had no idea whatsoever of what Krishna divulged to Arjuna on the battlefield.
War. cousins. battlefield. death.
Its violent, c'mon!
and your God actually says it is okay.
He is not my God.
Don't lie.
He is NOT.
Okay, most Hindus' God.
Not really.
You are evading the issue.
Of course, I was. I had spent two and a half decades of my existence celebrating every Hindu festival from every region without ever thinking of Krishna as a 'God'.
like you know - somebody up there loves you kind of God.
somebody is watching you kind of God.
an angry God, a judging God. a G-D god.
Krishna was hmmm like a flirt, you know.
the kind of man I would want to kidnap me (like he does Rukmini) or dance with me in the moonlight while my husband is away (like he does with Radha) or have as a friend, counselor, knight (like he helps Draupadi).
definitely someone I would want to take home- to bed.
or ride my chariot.
This new avatar as a violence inducing hate figure?
BUT there it is: it is true what Maria says, he did goad, coax, convince a reluctant Arjuna to fight. like how! decimate the whole Kaurava clan. Dangerous for a God, no?
Compared to compassionate Christ, Krishna comes out looking like a - war horse.
even to me Krishna lover, Krishna named and Krishna born.
Indians talked non-violence to the British and the latter were receptive, maybe if India was a Spanish colony our history might have been different too?
Like Guatemala.
Maybe if our warriors had not abandoned their warrior-hood, we might have never become a colony in the first place?
Fighting is not for everyone. Some enjoy it, for some it comes plenty natural. Me for instance.
I pick a fight like a guy picks a girl.
always on the lookout.
natural born fighter.
So being born a fighter Arjuna, being trained as one, you bloody coward NOW you are shying away?
Traitor.
and who are you fighting?
what are your aims?
intention is King.
thats how it goes....
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥४-७॥
yada yada hi dharmasya
glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya
tadatmanam srjamy aham
("Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion—at that time I descend Myself.")
परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥४-८॥
paritranaya sadhunam
vinasaya ca duskritam
dharma-samsthapanarthaya
sambhavami yuge yuge
("To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.")
Except for that one shloka of the Gita from B R Chopra's extremely popular even in Afghanistan TV Serial - Mahabharata
which every Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai knows by heart what else did I actually know about my own gods, beliefs, traditions?
Plus Ahimsa is a Jain concept co-opted zealously by the Buddhist, I could not even claim that. Shit
It does sound silly. "I descend to re-establish RELIGION", what if we go like: Very kind of you Sir but Do You Mind, Please Stay where you are, we can manage Thank You Very Much! Thats the crux people. Dharma is translated even by the most Hindutva of websites as Religion. While all the time it is Righteousness and Duty and Universal Truth and Justice and Commitment to one's core Principles all together in a huge heady mix which leaves everyone confused.
What is my Dharma?
How in heavens would I know?
so I asked Google and this is what I found from AskDivineMother:
"Dharma is simple when it is spontaneous.
When someone simply moves with his or her creative flow, it is very natural, it is very uncompromising, it is simple. However, yes, there are specific actions to perform. There are specific duties that must be shouldered. The creativity that comes out of Love must be honored and it will be honored for the family relationships, the community relationships and the work relationship. Dharma becomes more than just your job. Though there is success and joy in the job, if there isn’t success and joy in the home, then Dharma isn’t being lived."
So an activist's response is as relevant then as that of a devotee. For one to feel better than the other is the problem.
Each according to her own nature, each according to her own time!
It is when one group thinks that they know better, that they are better that the competition heats up. sometimes leading to burnings and such.
Fortunately most Indians, who also happen to be 'Hindus' do not take their religion too seriously. It is so much a part of our lives, it permeates each core, pore and more without hindering our interactions with the 'others'. For the most part it is possible because of the very nature of what it is: undefinable, relaxed, flexible and very very non-confrontational. Or extremely strong and perseverant and subterfuge-ical. I mean if you keep on hearing Tat Tvam Asi morning noon and nite you will at some point start believing that THOU ART THAT. and this. and everything else too besides.
However you want to look at it. Either way it has survived and how. How? Yes, that's the question. Parallel worlds, parallel processing brains. Organic time and Yugas and eras that repeat and go on even after kingdom come. Armageddon is another beginning and Jahannum has an exit door. To another life and another time.
For a people who believed that every action has an equal and not necessarily opposite reaction, much before Newton ate his fallen Apple, every invasion, disaster and catastrophe only strengthened their philosophy. It only helped create more avenues to disseminate, to counter-resist, to absorb, to do everything BUT retaliate. Once you retaliate, going by certain laws of thermodynamics- You kill but you also get killed.
So a Mahabharata, a Ramayana, a Bhagvatam are equally and more so the poonji of bards, of ministrels, of folk artistes, of painters and sculptors, of musicians and dancers, of courtesans and kings, of housewives and children. The history, the story, the cultural anthropological treasure is everybody's to keep. Yes, the Brahmans wrote their treatises and commentaries in heady heavy Samskrutam that no one but them understood, the Rishis and Munis and Sadhus were tucked away in the Himalayas but who cared? For the mango people there was Harikatha, Burrakatha, Bhagvathulu, Yakshagaana, Abhang.....Ramleela....Nagara Sankeertana ..these heros and heroines, gods and goddesses were accessible, living entities, as real as the Muggu on the floor, as real as the Tulsi at the back door, as real as the lemons strewn about on rough roads to ward off Evil eye. Black magic and Tantra. Vedic ritual and Shastra. An alchemy of annihilation and simultaneous birthing. Stories that creeped into the gene pool of the land. Making anyone party to these stories, witness and participants in these stories; Hindus.
After all Hindus were a people of a certain geographical land mass who excelled in suction.
Any entity that went in, never came out.
So when some 'foreign' entity called the Lord's Salvation Army says it wants to burn the Gita because this book is the root cause of violence amongst the Hindus, the root cause of hate crimes against the Christians, I am not worried like my friend Maria is.
This Maria is from Guatemala, a Mayan goddess who feels deeply for the loss of her ancient and spectacular roots.
Maria who loves books and wonders why others burn them.
Only five, FIVE of the ancient Mayan texts have remained she laments.
They burned them all.
The Spanish.
They still speak it you know, lovingly, despite the burning and all.
Where is Quechua I ask!
I want me some indigenous tongue.
Seek these five and make them your own.
Never again will they be lost to your people.
A culture died because its books were burned?
Should the culture of a civilization be deposited in its books?
Are we not guilty of creating a caste system then of the well reads and the what reads versus no-reads. the illiterate.
and what is literacy anyhow?
in which language.
whose story?
yours, mine, theirs or OURS?
The act itself is violent. there is an aggressor, there is a victim. no sane known reason except some major misunderstandings.
How would the Krishna of the Gita react?
What advice would he give Arjuna, when faced with war, violence and Adharma.
To burn a few Bibles in revenge.
To take political, legal, civic action.
To have a dialogue, to talk, to communicate
or to
simply ignore.
or act according to one's Swadharma, one's Caste.
now That is a dirty word these days
but what that poor cowherd really means is follow your instincts. your Soul's journey. your inner Voice.
whatever the fuck you want to call it.
But ACT you must.
not REACT mind you.
by grieving, by getting agitated, by showing steam we are not taking any positive, affirmative, ACT-IVE steps.
a waste of our precious energies.
Gita is all about conserving and using our energies APPROPRIATELY.
if it is on the battlefield, so be it.
Thathaasthu.
(not the film)
Gandhi would have wanted to fast at the venue of the bonfire, half naked and hungry till the time a few bhajans were sung in defence of both Jesus and Krishna and then gotten himself shot.
A human, even if a saint, can be shot. Not ideas. Ideas are air, they take wings on wind, they fly, they travel and trek to far away magical lands and they come back with strange fragrances, never lost, never dead. Ideas need Fire. Ignition. Power. The straw to burn with. To make a bonfire to keep the chill away. To provide warmth and succour. Without fire and air any idea will fail.
It needs a brain to think in and lo! it procreates like a rabbit in heat.
Burning a few books that are irrelevant, dated. Burning a few Gitas which might have actually incited hatred. Burning anything is cleansing. Holi, Lodhi, Homa. A FIRE-y religion this. We love the fire. We want to burn everyone in it. From Graham Staines to Prahlada. From Rani Padmini to the sacred oblations of Ghee, Darbha and Samit.
this is our element of choice.
If by burning someone is happy, so be it.
Thathaasthu!
In fact the Lord's Salvation Army, Hyderabad is doing a great favour by choosing Jan 2nd 2011 as a date of this bonfire. It will provide some much needed spiritual heat to its unconcerned citizens. At least this way a few might be prompted to read the Gita, excerpts if not the whole book. Lost as they are in concrete currently.
This burning books and witches kind of works okay for spiritualists mostly.
You may burn the Gita in the bonfire but the eighteen chapters and its gist are not lost to anybody.
These values are embodied in the many people who live the book.
the Book does not control you, you see?
You are in charge of the Book!
A walking talking living Gita.
Go burn many more. No effect on me, nada.
You burn a witch at the stakes, same response.
The body perishes. Soul departs from this field of play to another.
Like a Halloween party, takes the scare some place else, with a different mask.
Burning of temporary entities is what brings out the insecurity in us. a cause for real worry. Human mind being flawed, what it once conceives cannot be re-conceived in the same manner again. or there would be no siblings, only twins!
Fiction.
All those great novelists.
So no one will be able to read Jane Eyre ever?
That is when we should worry.
A Gita, A God can take care of its existence by virtue of its eternal principles.
its everlasting nature.
its scope and breadth.
What does the Gita actually teach:
...it helps us understand ourself, our untapped potential.
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