SOCIETY & RELIGION.

SOCIETY & RELIGION by JAYANT GADKARI

This book deals with the relation between society and religion in an ancient Indian context. The author does not pretend to be a scholar but simple and learned person interested to analyse the roots of the ancient Indian religion as given in the Sanskrit literature available including most ancient Rigveda. He did mention about the pre Vedic Harappan face of ancient India, but did not go further in detail. The paucity of reliable evidence to pre-date Veda to Harappa spelled out in a lucid way. He accepts the suggestion that there were no invasion of Aryan Vedic against Harappan but mentions that there should have been a lot of intermingling between the two people both peaceful and violent. The borrowing or absorbing of many Harappan traits in Rigveda may attest that these portions of Vedas are composed only after a complete obliteration of the Harappan memory. But at the same time innumerable Suktas are in praise of Indra, Agni, Varuna, Maruts, Aswin and other Deva warriors battling the dasyus, Asuras, Rakshasas etc who some hymns portray as of the same group but not accepting the supremacy of the vedic gods. The above named as well as the other gods not only opposed the later groups in a violent manner but most of them were slaughtered literally including their wives many of them pregnant and children. Many hymns mention that the Asuras, Rakshasas, Dasyus were leaders of people having vast settlements, wealth and power. There are some hymns that extol the devas for destruction of 99 urban settlements.

It may be that after the slow obliteration of Harappan settlements and civilization for reason not so far firmly ascertained, the vast groups of people inhabiting those area might have migrated to near and far places and scattered themselves but were trying to keep alive their traditions. A large section of these group of people might have completely got joined the new comers and were in the process of establishing the Vedic line up. There might have been other Harappan groups who settled separately and trying to keep their identity separate and later got in antagonist situation in relation to the former. This explanation does not seem to be convincing at all. The Harappans appear to be superior to Vedic and one cannot accept a complete de-literation of its memories. This brings a new element to the study that was taken up by Rajesh Kochar in his book Vedic People. Rajesh Kochar maintains that most of the Rig Veda or its older portions were composed by migrating people while they were still outside of India i.e Iran & Afghanistan.

Coming back to Jayant Gadkari one can appreciate his line of thought only on the basis that all literary works in one way or other do reflect the actual situation then prevailing or its immediate past. It is not exactly of Marxist in approach but of a rational mind accepting all developments from simple to complex. From such an approach one might come to similar conclusions as the author so far as the Vedic literary sources are considered.

Gadkari amassed a wealth of situations from Rig, Yajus, Adharva Vedas and Brahmanas to explain the development of society i.e. the ancient Indian. The Rig Vedic society was pastoral and mobile not exactly settled in one place. This society during the course of years developed into settled societies at convenient places; then went over to settled agriculture. Leaving aside the pastoral habits and concepts they developed societies formed in definite geographical areas evolving themselves into states and conglomerations.

In this writer’s view the author would have looked into the rig Vedic source more critically and brought out the evidences to the fact that the rig Vedic society itself was multifaceted and more heterogeneous to its seeming uniformity of worship.

Jayant Gadkari would have taken note of the motivated interpretations indulged by the Hindutva ideologues who make out the rig Vedic hymns to be profound thought of wisdom, science and technology. The idea of modern day electricity is being imposed on the vidyuti i.e. the natural phenomena of lighting. If those saints had that vision and idea of electricity, why they never put their ideas into practical technologies? And today the discovery of generating electricity and storing it was made by people who never looked into the ancient Indian Vedic literature for it. Even after the practical of use of electricity for deeds it was Hindutva who started to make such fantastic claims about it.

The concept of Agni hiding in water is interpreted by Hindutva walas to the claim that electricity is being generated from water falls or dams i.e. hydro electricity. They simply hide the fact that electricity is generated by technically designed generators fitted to turbines, they in turn are run by the force of water passing thru their blades system. There is no electricity in water at all.

Many mantras are interpreted to convey spiritual thoughts as understood by modern philosophy when the same mantras are capable of different interpretations. Also no one can confidently fix the time of such mantras having introduced in an ancient text.

TO THINK OTHERWISE:

The Hindutva wadies wanted their history to be taken back to about 8,000 years i.e. 6,000 yrs BCE. Accordingly the four or is it only the one Rigveda that was composed for about 3,500 or 3,000 years before the advent of Indus Valley Civilization. But even the rudiments to social and economic developments that culminated in the Indus can be recounted from step by step from discoveries at Swat Valley in Afghanistan. These people left a lot of archeological evidence during their journey from Swat to the current finding about expansive Harappan society. Even after Harappa and Mohanjodaro slid down in the history the tradition continued to span towards South, East & West and then disappeared completely without leaving any memory of its existence.

The Vedic culture and civilization which is claimed to be older than Indus by not less than 3,000-3,500 years did not build any lasting archeological evidence of its existence. The minimum requirements are evidences of horses, chariots, weapons made of iron. Even if one takes the claim that Harappan knew about horses and chariots the evidence is filmy and belonged to a period when Harappan life has declined or even out of history. But according to Hindutva the horses were indigenous and were in abundance in number as testified in Rig Vedic Suktas that were much older than Harappan.

The Hindutva enthusiasts have to explain the chronology of Vedic literature that were composed or created (or found by rishies). When did Rigveda composed, the Yajus, Saman, Adharva, Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishads, Srauta Grihya Sutras, Smrities, Itihasas and Puranas? How they will fit all those pre Buddhist and post Buddhist into the vast time frame. If they try to push back all those so called Vedic literature to pre Indus phase, they will be confronted with a lot of literary evidences that cannot be pushed to so ancient a period. They will have to admit that all those portions were interpolations done much later. It also means that the Hindutva ancestors were so unscrupulous that they committed frauds and lies. That will be too much for the Hindutva brigade. What literatures were produced during about 1,500-2,000 years, Indus and Harappan phase?

All scientific thoughts and discoveries were made by rig Vedic & other vedic but no more such discoveries, or developments based on those earlier discoveries, even any follow up actions were initiated up to the period of Mauryan to Guptas. These two land marks in history cannot be hidden or stretched too far in past. Still the barren years will be found for greater stretch of the historic times. It was all stagnation both in thoughts and action when the warring kingdoms were subdued by one or other of the invading armies from the west.

The author of the novel “Return of the Aryan” Bhagwan S. Gidwani in his magnum opus; claimed that Aryan were the original people of Indus/Punjab region. They spread themselves to the west to Africa, Europe and as far as England in the pre Harappan years and supposed to have helped in developing culture & civilization in those lands. But Europeans have no memory of any such visitation of massive Aryan hordes to their lands.

The African (North) and Mediterranean lands sprouted grand civilizations and monuments for posterity. The Aryans who are said to have helped in creating those civilizations left their own lands completely barren. While those civilizations constructed monumental temples and mausoleums; the Harappans did not construct any such edifices but towns and dwellings etc. Even if Harappan is attributed to Vedic Aryans the absence of any parallel in North Africa & Mediterranean is telling testimony against such assumptions. Even after their coming back to the lands of their origin no comparable structure were built for another 1,000 to 1,500 years. The architecture that came into existence just prior to Mauryan era and also during that era are no match to Harappan much less to comment on Egyptian & Mediterranean ones. Hindutva groups claim to themselves an unbroken tradition since about 6.000 BCE onwards. How they are going to sustain that claim? The puranic narrations of the history cannot reach to 6,000 BCE unless they make it out that puranic kings ruled for not tens but hundreds of years and there are no traces of original Aryans going abroad in such hordes to influence the life and people of those lands and or their establishing the Harappan phase between 3,000 to 1,700 BCE i.e. the period accepted by all including Hindutva claimants for Harappan phase.

By,K.N.Krishnan.

Review from the speaking tree.

In a recent feature article speaking tree in TOI the writer makes out that the Mantras have no apparent or rational meaning. He in fact maintained that the Mantras have no meaning at all. They are to be chanted in a proper & sound manner. Such chanting will bring desired results to the chanter. There is no need to try and find the meanings of words composing the Mantras. HOW TRUE? Consider the way in which the Vedic literature is used and misused by even people who consciously does not encourage later Hindutva rightist ideas. When they say that Vedas contain wisdom they quote from Upanishads and not from the 4 Vedas. And many only quote from Smrities and puranas. When they talk about philosophy they never mean of Sankhya, Mimamsa, Nyaya, Vaisheshika or Buddhist & Jain but only of Advaita of Sankara and or Visishtadvaita of Ramanuja. It can be proved to the hilt that Advaita is a mask and an apology for not having any critical altitude to life and society.
Another speaking tree track was about Karma that is the deciding factor & force in life. It is not god or Eswara that rewards and or punishes beings in this life but one's Karma. The writer conveniently hides or forgets to explain the need for a concept of God or the truth and meaning of Advaita philosophy. May be a deliberate omission. Karma & Eswara are contradictory. So also are Karma & Advaita, Advaita & Eswara. All these contradictions obscured by pompous quotations from Gîtâ and later day writings of self proclaimed Hindu gurus.

By,K.N.Krishnan