All Religions Are Not the Same 9798885751414

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Published by Garuda Prakashan Private Limited Gurugram, Bharat www.garudabooks.com First published in India 2023 Copyright © 2023 Sanjay Dixit All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Garuda Prakashan or the author. The content of this book is the sole expression and opinion of its author, and not of the publisher. The publisher in no manner is liable for any opinion or views expressed by the author. While best efforts have been made in preparing this book, the publisher makes no representations or warranties of any kind and assumes no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the content and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of use for a particular purpose. The publisher believes that the content of this book does not violate any existing copyright/intellectual property of others in any manner whatsoever. However, in case any source has not been duly attributed, the publisher may be notified in writing for necessary action. ISBN: 979-8-88575-141-4 Cover Design: Odd Monk

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He who knows That as both in one, the Transcendental Knowledge and the Worldly Knowledge, by the Worldly Knowledge crosses beyond death and by the Transcendental Knowledge enjoys Immortality. —Ishavasya Upanishad, verse 11

Contents Foreword Preface PART I The Comparison 1. Different Frameworks 2. Different Ways of Interpretations 3. Different Attitudes to the Scientific Method 4. Different Time Concepts 5. Different Logic Concepts 6. Different Epistemology (Science of Proof) 7. Different Cosmology 8. Different Eschatology (Death Concepts) PART II The Sanātana Umbrella 9. The Layers—Vāk, Kośa, Chakras and Manifestations of Brahman 10. The Nine Darshanas 11. The Nirguṇa (formless) and Saguṇa (with form) 12. Hindutva vs Hinduism Debate 13. Understanding Hindu Symbolism PART III The Abrahamic Principles and Origins

14. Zoroastrians, Mandaeans and Nabataeans 15. Akhenatens, Mitanni and Hittites 16. The Tanakh and Judaism 17. The Bible and Christianity 18. The Qur’an and Islam PART IV

Intra-Abrahamic Conflict 19. Christians vs Jews 20. Christianity vs. Islam 21. Islam vs. Jews PART V Conflict of Abrahamics vs. Others 22. The Christian Conquests 23. The Islamic Conquests PART VI

Jihad as Total Conquest Ideology 24. Jihad, the Permanent War 25. The Peaceful Sufi Does Not Exist Epilogue About the Author

Foreword Dixit is becoming one of the most important intellectual and media S anjay voices in India today. Not only are his own views engaging, he has also created a special forum for highlighting such dharmic views with a variety of speakers and topics, with his forum, Jaipur Dialogues. As an author, Sanjay has written decisively on the challenges to India, Hinduism and Santana Dharma. His books present a new perspective that serve to remove existing distortions that continue to be sustained by media and academia that are trying to subordinate India’s great civilisation to hostile outside religious, cultural and political forces. What is most notable about Dixit’s current book All Religions are not the Same is the systematic, rational, experiential and concise manner in which he explains the many notable differences between religions. This extends to how different religions look at the human being, society, knowledge, the nature of the universe and the true goal of life. His book is not the product of emotion or political posturing, but arises from well thought out clarity and discernment. He is not promoting any platitudes, bowing down to any faith, or ignoring major distinctions between religions so as not to offend anyone. He reveals the fundamental differences between religions on the inner and the outer, the individual and the collective, at human and cosmic levels, much like a scientific discourse. He presents Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma in its own right, not according to a monotheistic terminology using inappropriate Abrahamic concepts. He shows how Sanatana Dharma forms a complete system of universal knowledge, not requiring the approval of contrary religions for it to be socially, scientifically or spiritually valid. His historical and theoretical view of Abrahamic religions explains their inherent separativeness, and irrational claim to the ultimate truth, which implies a negation of all other approaches to the sacred as being unsacred and unworthy. Dixit delineates the beliefs that have caused Christianity and Islam to seek to conquer non-believers, and to fight with each other, which continue to the present day. It is inherent in their exclusivist theology and eschatology. Their belief in their monotheistic religious supremacy also requires a turning against their own origins in the Judaic tradition, in order to legitimise their claim

to be the original and ultimate Divine Truth, compared to which everything else must be removed. Such destructive behaviour reflects their theology and cannot come to an end as long as it exists at their belief-based roots. This fact raises a warning for the future of humanity as an indication of continuing conflicts, perhaps new devastating World Wars, such as the War on Terrorism and the ongoing conflicts in Israel suggest, as well as the unending Pakistani assault on India. Dixit’s book makes clear that we must understand the existential contradictions and dangers in conversion-based monotheism. Unless challenged and removed, no number of treaties or platitudes of peace with those who hold such supremist beliefs will bring lasting peace in the world. The additional complication is that the political left today, which often claims to be atheistic or pluralistic, has formed an alliance with exclusive and aggressive religious movements, mainly out of political expediency. The left is now protecting these beliefs from proper scrutiny and inhibiting their need to change, even labelling them as progressive. Sanjay Dixit in his new book exposes the fallacies of the sameness of all religions with a discerning critique of exclusive monotheism, from a Vedic and dharmic perspective. If deeply studied, it can bring about major changes in the media and academia, and the arising of a true dharmic voice that can address its monotheistic opponents in a detailed debate, not in the apologetics of everything needing to be the same. Exclusive Monotheism, Hinduism and India This so-called sameness of religions has long been a religious and political dogma in India, mainly for Hindus as the religious majority, yet not for religious minorities, particularly those following non-India based religions. In spite of the emphasis on it as necessary for peace and tolerance, this equation of all religions has not brought communal peace or an end to conversion efforts targeting Hindus. It has only succeeded in suppressing any Hindu critique challenging the organised forces against it. Just think this over carefully: why should Hinduism/ Sanatana Dharma embrace the very missionary forces that have long tried to destroy it and welcome them with a recognition of unity, even though their actions against Hindus and anti-India views have not fundamentally changed? Their message is not that all religions are one in Sanatana Dharma, the Hindu view of the universality of truth, but rather only in an exclusive monotheism, which deem themselves the final standard of truth and correctness in the religious realm,

from which Hinduism by its different nature is excluded. This attempt to homogenise religion has placed conversion- based faiths beyond question, and turned any efforts to challenge them as an intolerance against minorities in India, though such groups may be majorities elsewhere in the world, with adequate support and funding. It has inhibited debates on what truth is, at social and spiritual levels. This blind equation of sameness in religion has stifled any critical discussions of science and religion, civilisation and religion, as well as religion and yogic spirituality. Dharmic traditions, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain, have encouraged open debate on all topics and view true spirituality as an inner science and way of higher knowledge, not merely a faith that cannot be questioned. Their goal is an inner realisation and cosmic vision, not merely conquering the outer world for a belief or to gain some heaven beyond. This dharmic spiritual science is a science of consciousness at both the psychological and cosmological levels, which are interrelated, and addresses all aspects, views and aspirations of human life. Many of the issues Sanjay raises have been previously examined by other thinkers, such as Sitaram Goel and Ram Swarup. Sri Aurobindo presented a clear critique of western civilisation, the good and the bad, as did Swami Vivekananda, who did not spare the western religions either. Yet Sanjay’s approach is systematic, updated, clear and easy to understand, making it particularly relevant and accessible today. This sameness of religion is more than a religious issue. Political expedience, particularly leftist Nehruvian and Communist influences, have tried to suppress this Hindu voice and Dharmic mind even from India’s own textbooks and national identity, to sustain minority vote banks for their political power. It is the unity of consciousness at a universal level we need, which removes religious exclusivism, not a blind acceptance of what has been called religion, particularly the supremacy of exclusive monotheism in spite of its history of wars and the destruction of ancient and indigenous cultures, not only at a religious level but at a social and political level as well, which still continues. This sameness of religious idea is used to encourage Hindus to honour the very inimical religions that are still trying to convert them; as sharing the same view of truth and ethics that are at the basis of Sanatana Dharma, which they actually deny in their core world views. The Sameness of Religion in the India Context

The idea that all religions are the same has occurred in India since the Indian Independence Movement, where it was used to hopefully unite the different and conflicting religions of the country, particularly Islam and Christianity with Hinduism, in challenging British colonial rule. One must remember that over centuries of Islamic and British rule, Hinduism was looked down upon as an inferior religion; so to say that all religions are the same could appear to be raising the appreciation of Hinduism to the level of their monotheistic opponents. But it also served to make monotheism into the standard that Hindus should emulate, however contrary to their own traditions and history. That all religions are the same was equated with Sarva Dharma Samabhava, an ancient Indian idea that all dharmas, or laws of the universal life and cosmic intelligence, are one. This view of religious sameness wrongly equated all religions as Dharmas in Indian thought, notably Islam and Christianity, which do not accept the prime dharmic teachings of the law of karma and the seeking of Self-realization or Moksha which are the basis of dharmic traditions. Their idea of One God is made into the prime factor of the unity of religion, when it is not a principle of unity but singularity—that the One God is superior to all other Gods, and his theology the standard of religious truth and all else should be rejected. Sameness of Religions in the World Today No other religion in the world today has embraced this idea that all religions are the same, nor have any given up their particular claim to the ultimate truth. There are interfaith gatherings, attempts to show a background harmony of religions, and promoting freedom of religion at a political level, which may include atheism, downplaying of religious differences, as if a choice of religion was like a choice of clothing or cuisine. A few churches or temples have been created where different religions are honoured, but these are rare and outside mainstream monotheistic groups. Catholics, even the Pope, have apologised for how they treated Native peoples in the colonial era, but have not offered to give the indigenous peoples their land or temples back, or expressed any honouring at a level of equality, the Native spiritual traditions they once equated with superstition or devil worship. The fact clearly remains, different religions today retain their competing views and practices, and efforts to gain supremacy over the others. Religious conversion continues with a multi-billion dollar conversion industry throughout the world, often hiding under the guise of freedom of religion and social upliftment. Conversion-based religions remain distinct in terms of their institutions, teachings, beliefs, charities and politics, still claiming that they

represent the true word of God and that others are false, incomplete or misrepresentations. They may have toned down their rhetoric to avoid scrutiny, but their core beliefs remain largely intact. We will not find any Hindu deity or guru honoured in churches or mosques, however often Hindus put Jesus in their puja rooms or read Sufi literature. Meanwhile, disagreements still continue within the same religion as Catholic and Protestant or Shia vs. Sunni, which have been going on for centuries. Monotheistic Idea of Religion and Colonialism The current global idea of ‘religion’ is a product of the Colonial Era. The colonial idea of religion placed monotheism at the summit, and sought to discredit all non-monotheistic traditions, including the great, vast and profound dharmic traditions of Asia—Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain. This Eurocentric view of religion invented demeaning terms for nonChristian religions like polytheism, henotheism, animism, folk religions and mythology, or simply reduced non-monotheistic religions to cults and superstitions, bringing in the old monotheistic denigration of earlier pagan traditions as heathens, idolaters, kafirs or even devil worshipers. In short, the model of religion promoted by western civilisation as the highest and most authentic has been monotheism, and all other philosophies or theologies deemed inferior and irredeemable by nature. It encouraged, if not forced, other religions to remake themselves in a monotheistic image to gain monotheistic favours in order to survive. Such a colonial-based unity or sameness of religions also aims to promote monotheistic beliefs over all others. Exclusive monotheism, of course, seeking to convert and conquer the world for God, justified colonial armies and the genocide of the peoples and of cultures that they ruled. Historically, monotheism has included along with a belief in a One God who opposes all other Gods, also the idea of One Church, One King or One Emperor with a God given right to rule over all others. Such self-promoting monotheism has never been a unity of all religions but the triumph of one religion over all, often by whatever means necessary, as it is God’s will for his religion alone to dominate. This exclusive monotheistic idea of religion is predatory in nature and therefore engaged in a perpetual battle with all other groups. Sadly today, we see Hindu, Sikh and Zoroastrian groups trying now to say that we are also monotheists and accept that God is one in order to gain the favour and avoid the wrath of dominant monotheistic groups, never questioning the implications of their theology, which is not unitary but exclusivist.

Interfaith discussions rarely allow criticism of monotheism at a doctrinal level, or questioning of monotheistic efforts at conversion, and whitewash the dark history of monotheism in the world as a thing of the past that should be forgiven and forgotten. All religions being the same under the banner of a monotheistic supremacy is the same old intolerance in a condescending manner, perhaps more dangerous as it denies history and legitimises monotheistic rule. The colonial concept of religion and its glorification of monotheism is not about the unity of religion but the triumph of only one type of religion. Exclusive monotheistic beliefs by theory and practice have long excluded other religions and their different views of the human being, the universe and our place with it, even rejecting their honouring of the world of nature as sacred. This means that religious terms like God are not universal or unifying, though they are widely used by Hindus for their view of spiritual truth, better called Brahman. Dharmic and Native traditions have their own terms for the eternal and the infinite or the ultimate truth which are quite different. The Buddha mind cannot simply be equated with God in the monotheistic sense, nor can the Hindu term Paramatman or the Supreme Self, which have no direct corresponding terms in monotheistic beliefs. This standardisation of monotheistic terms in spiritual discourse only promotes the domination of the monotheistic view of religion. Sadly, a hostile theological language and terminology has been used to present Hinduism and dharmic traditions, as if these accepted the ideas of God, faith, salvation, sin, virtue, good and evil that do not express the meaning of its dharmas which are universal and beyond the commandments of any deity. Exclusive monotheism has rejected the Goddess. Mary in Christianity is not the Goddess or the Mother of the Universe like Ma Durga, but only the Mother of Jesus whose power rests upon him. Exclusive monotheism has opposed mysticism and suppressed science. It lacks the terminology of Yoga and Vedanta for higher states of consciousness beyond any religious beliefs because it has not understood or experienced these. It is not promoting a higher Self-awareness but an outer domination of physical reality and worldly politics, a materialistic view of life. Monotheism and Abrahamic Traditions As Sanjay Dixit has noted, one can include all Abrahamic religions together in terms of common monotheistic concepts and beliefs. This idea of exclusive monotheism is the basis of Abrahamic traditions, but it only became aggressive in their conversion and conquest efforts with the onset of Christianity and Islam.

The Jewish idea of monotheism was more introverted and used to protect the social and religious boundaries of their own communities, not conversion-based but culture-based. This helped it preserve its ancient teachings, but also made it a target for monotheistic intolerance from the very groups that arose from its influence. The Jewish tradition has also been more diverse and malleable in terms of its laws and concepts. Intellectual Fallacies that All Religions are the Same Saying all religions are the same is filled with logical and experiential fallacies. It is like saying all people are the same. Certainly, in some ways all people are the same, having the same biological structure and organs, similar fears and desires. Yet, that all people are the same does not mean that there is nothing different about them or that social uniformity is justified. Culturally, it is like saying that all art is the same. One can recognise a unity of artistic expression. But the fact is, art is quite diverse and its diversity is what makes for great art, not mass production or continued repetition. Uniformity in art is the end of art. The same is true of the uniformity of religions. Yogic spirituality is an inner state of perception and realisation, not a fixed outer form or identity. It holds that teachings must be communicated relevant to differences of time, place and person and cannot be made into any fixed dogma. One can also say all religions are different or unique, just as all people are different and unique. Sameness and uniformity obviously have their dangers, whether among people or religions. The universality of nature does not mean that all the forms of nature from the Earth, mountains and planet to the clouds, sun, moon and stars must be the same. The Fallacy of Faith Current interfaith emphasises the honouring of all faiths. However, as the Gita states, faith can be sattvic, rajasic and tamasic; that is the result of true knowledge, disturbed passions or blind ignorance. Faiths are often irrational and more a part of wishful thinking than any real means of inner knowing. Does all religions being the same it mean that it makes no difference in terms of practices or teachings, whether one goes to a church, a mosque, a temple, or even a tribal ceremony? Clearly, the beliefs and practices of different religions are not the same. Going to a mosque or a church is not the same as going to a Buddhist temple or to a Hindu puja. Even their diets, customs, marriage practices, etc. are very different. The thinkers, leaders and policies honoured in one religion may not be honoured in another.

The ignorant and prejudiced charge of idolatry often placed against nonmonotheistic approaches is another sign of the intolerance involved. It has resulted in the destruction of great works of art, devotion and spirituality, and also the devastation of many indigenous cultures. This is a kind of barbarism, and is nothing of a higher civilisation. Hinduism and its artistic abundance has often been the main target. Can such exclusive monotheism be reformed or integrated into a higher view of universal consciousness? This cannot be done as long as its political power, social, academic and media dominance is not removed. It is great to see this new book by Sanjay Dixit challenging the distortions caused by this idea of the sameness of religion. It is our own Self-knowledge, looking beyond the prejudices of the ego-mind that we need to develop in order to discover lasting peace and enlightenment. This is an inner yogic vision that embraces diversity in a transcendent unity, not an exclusive monotheism that needs to conquer the world to justify itself. What we need today are new Rishis and Yogis teaching us a way of meditation and Self-realisation, recognising and working with our individual differences, aptitudes and aspirations, not more holy wars for the One God. It is not sameness of religion we need, but a discerning consciousness embracing the Self-aware universe. Sanjay Dixit has provided us with a discussion of the prime factors involved so we can move forward on that higher path. —Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri)

Preface All Religions Are Not the Same Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal. —Thomas Sowell

‘A ll Religions Are The Same’ is the most prevalent myth among those who advocate the secular idea of separation between religion and State. However, that was the unique experience of the Europeans and they were quite astonished to find that in India, the two not only co-existed in great harmony, but also that the Indian concept of development was inconceivable without spiritual development. How should we evaluate religions? One way is to measure their outcomes on societies and civilisations. Another is to evaluate them on certain principles. A third is to go to the even more fundamental question of what should be called a religion. Another working method can be to differentiate between ‘belief systems’ and ‘inquiry systems’. This work, as is my usual practice, is addressed to the lay reader and not to the scholar. The scholar is well equipped to go into the realm of the esoteric and seek his own Truth if that is what he truly pursues. Unfortunately, a great many scholars that I have come across seek not knowledge, but tools to exalt their vanity. That is the main reason for the disclaimer that I am not addressing this book to the scholar. I was enthused to write this book due to the encouragement I received from readers, when I first wrote a series of six articles on this very subject. The articles were appreciated by the lay reader and the scholar alike, and I thought it would a good idea to put all of it together in the form of a book. The question ‘Who Am I’ is a basic one, yet is very profound. Different civilisations tried to approach this question in different ways. Most early civilisations tried to find this solution in empirical inquiries from Nature. Many mixed it with their imagination, and yet others looked inwards and found

reflections of Nature within, and then created great literature based on their experiences. These civilisations or societies treated Nature as their benefactor and tried to live in harmony with it, using inductive logic. Later arose other thoughts that used axioms and deductive logic, and treated Nature as a product of those axioms. Today’s religions can be roughly construed as those following their axioms (called religions), and those following Nature (called Dharmas, or crudely labelled Paganisms). Thus, the truism that all religions are a search for God becomes very inadequate. It is here that a rough and ready distinction between ‘belief systems’ and ‘inquiry systems’ becomes useful. The principal belief systems are the Abrahamic belief systems and revolve around given truths, with a sense of superiority in their beliefs. All of them have Prophets and a Book, and are therefore, also called the Prophetic religions or ‘Religions of the Book’. All of them claim exclusive ownership of ‘Truth’, and at least two of them do not tolerate the existence of any other belief. The principal inquiry systems still left are Sanātana Dharma or Hinduism, and Buddhism, along with a few others, all of which have sprung up from India or Indian roots. ‘Belief systems’ assign beliefs first and then deduce the rest of the theology, whereas ‘inquiry systems’ make a journey towards a belief, making it much more open ended and inclusive. This book tries to first define the frameworks, and then uses certain principles like the Scientific method, Time concepts, Logic concepts, Cosmology, Epistemology and Eschatology and finds out that the two basic frameworks differ from each other in every respect. Secondly, the book looks at the nuances of these different faiths in their basic philosophies/theologies, and how they developed over thousands of years; and tries to grapple with the inadequacies of the western point of view in the way it looks at Nature-based religions, of which Hinduism is the prime example. Towards the end, the book traces the outcomes of the belief systems, and how they interacted with similar faiths, and dissimilar faiths. I must add that one of the important beliefs in the last two centuries has been communism, which is also a ‘belief system’ in the classical mould. Thus the events unfolding as on date can be used to understand the outcomes of the ‘belief systems’, as the present global order is led by belief systems. It is not as if we did not have wars before the advent of the belief systems, but the war was more in the nature of competition or even sport among the ruling classes. The lay public was rarely involved in this sport. The two world wars and the present climate of devastating wars in Ukraine and Israel, are compounded by the subterranean operation of

these ‘belief systems’. This book seeks to understand these phenomena. I have to thank many persons who have made this work possible. I must thank Sankrant Sanu who not only encouraged me to expand my writings into a book form, but also painstakingly went through the first draft of the book. I have to also thank Dr. David Frawley, aka Pandit Vamadeva Shastri, who is one of the foremost western scholars on Hinduism, with an insight coming from the deep studies of the Vedas and Upanishads. He has very kindly agreed to write the Foreword for this book just as he has done for my two earlier books of the Krishna Trilogy. I must also thank Prof. Subhash Kak, who was very kind to let me excerpt some of his writings in this book, and for also providing some deep insights into the nature of various religions and their evolution. I have to also thank Dr. CK Raju, whose studies on Time concepts have considerably influenced the tone and tenor of this book. I must also thank Esther Dhanraj for providing me deeper insights into the Christian religion. I dedicate this work to Bhagawan Shri Krishna, whose Bhagavad Gitā has been an abiding source of inspiration and energy. —Sanjay Dixit

PART I The Comparison

Chapter I Different Frameworks fundamental difference between the Sanātana and the Abrahamic world T he view is that of different frameworks in which these systems operate. The Sanātana system in its essence is an experiential framework that creates a knowledge system, whereas the Abrahamic systems belong to a belief framework. In deference to commonplace usage, itself born out of a Western epistemology, we refer to both as religions, even though Sanātana Dharma does not lend itself to the self- righteous supremacist definition of religion borne out of a claim of God’s exclusivist intervention into the affairs of humankind. In fact and practice, Dharma is the very antithesis of religion—one is an open flowing river, the other is a pond bound from all sides. Another important difference in framework is that the entire corpus of the Sanātana system or Hinduism, which Swami Chinmayananda called a library, is a description framework, whereas the limited One Book and its associated corpus of Abrahamic religions is a prescription framework. At another level, the Sanātana is an open architecture framework operating with the underpinning of knowledge, whereas the Abrahamic religions operate in a closed architecture framework underpinned by belief. Thus, these may also be differentiated as ‘belief systems’ and ‘inquiry systems’. This makes the Sanātana systems open and inclusive, whereas the Abrahamic systems are closed and exclusivist. This also makes Sanātana systems open to attacks from the exclusivist supremacist religions. When these frameworks are differentiated further, the Sanātana system leads to a more complex explanation of our experiences as outer and inner realities arising from the interplay of the mind and visible matter, and consciousness with matter. Prof. Subhash Kak, in his paper on ‘Hinduism for the Perplexed’ sums it up as 18 principles: From One to Many 1. Reality is One Universe of Being.

2. The experience of reality is triplicate as in the invocation of bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ of the Gāyatrī Mantra: earth, atmosphere, the sun body, life forces, Consciousness This is described in a different sequence in the conception of sat, cit, ānanda existence, consciousness, bliss (described here as abstractions) foundation, awareness, transformation Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti (saguṇa

,

‘with qualities’) Vishnu represents the physical and the moral law, Shiva the Universal Consciousness, and Shakti the transformative power and diverse embodiments that include the physical, the natural, and the power by which the mind is illumined. Vishnu and Shiva are complementary, paralleling the complementariness of Shiva and Shakti, for they are only different aspects of Being. The elements of the triplicate order in here (ot prot— intertwined) in each other and, therefore, no one of them is primary. 3. The manifested Universe is governed by laws. Hinduism is fully accepting of reason and questioning in the understanding of reality. 4. Transformation is a characteristic of Being. The universe goes through cycles of creation and destruction, and according to Purānic accounts, the last cycle began several billion years ago. Both Shiva and Shakti (Goddess) are also conceived of as Time (Mahākāla and Mahākālī). The experience of consciousness can only occur in a framing that must include a beginning and an end. 5. Physical and biological forms evolve. Individual also experiences change. The mystery of change opens doorways to understanding. 6. The mind goes through transformative stages.

This is why the outer reality is conceived differently by people with different awareness. It is not professed belief but action that reveals the nature of the mind. Inner Reality 7. The outer and the inner are mirrored (yat pinde tat brahmande— what is outside you is within you). This makes attainment of knowledge possible. This is illustrated dramatically in the 108 names of the God or the Goddess, and the 108 prayer beads of the japa- mālā. The Rishis were aware that the sun and the moon are about 108 times their respective diameter from the earth (also the diameter of the sun is about 108 times the diameter of the earth), therefore the circuit of 108 names (or beads) is to make a symbolic journey from the body to the inner lamp of consciousness (like the journey from earth to the sun). 8. The mind and the Ātman (Consciousness) are not identical. The mind is the instrument on top of the processes going inside the brain, whereas Consciousness is the light that illuminates these processes. Another name for Consciousness is Shiva (Īśvara or Maheśvara in the Bhagavad Gitā) or Prakāśa or Light. 9. The mind is finite, whereas the Ātman is infinite and transcendent. The mind is governed by natural law, whereas Consciousness is free. This means that cognitions and reasoning about them are associated with paradox. The individual is bound by the chain of action and reaction, which is the karmic chain, until one connects to Consciousness directly, which sets one free. This freedom not only becomes the source of the creative impulse in the individual, but this freedom, paradoxically, channels a higher will. 10. It is through observation that physical reality is actualised. This is in consonance with interpretations of scientific theory. Note also that all our knowledge exists in Consciousness. 11. Knowledge is of two kinds. The first is linguistic or lower, where one speaks of the relationships between abstractions or physical embodiments, and the second is intuitive or higher, which guides our navigation through logical categories and guides us to generalisations and insights. (Author’s note—there is also a third kind of knowledge that corresponds to transcendental or parā vidyā.)

Bookish knowledge is limiting in its scope; it cannot address the deepest questions. Hindu art attempts to bridge these two languages in a symbolic form. 12. Ignorance arises from choosing to remain bound to biological nature. In our basic nature, we are no different from other animals. Our biological nature is a powerful impulse for us to remain rooted in ignorance. The path to knowledge and mastery requires effort and churning. Ways to Obtain Knowledge 13. Knowledge is obtained by finding the meeting point of the inner Light and its interface with the mind. This is the union of Shiva and Shakti, and it is received as grace. The cultivation of compassion and truth facilitates it. 14. The Goddess—seen through the lens of transformative processes—is the guide in the inner journey. The journey of mastery of transformation is the path of action that leads to knowledge. 15. The exploration of the architecture of the mind through different methods or sādhanās, constitutes different kinds of yoga. Ethical preparation and practices of concentration help take off the layers of covering that separate the mind from the light of consciousness. 16. One’s innate temperament together with training and learning determine the nature of one’s striving. The Ātman has the potential that leads to a variety of temperaments whose seed is present in each person. In other words, all people can obtain freedom from bondage. 17. Worship is sacred theatre to facilitate the concentration of the mind (dhyāna). Worship may be done through devotion (bhakti), and it may be done anywhere, in group, or in privacy. Dance, art, science, inquiry, or service are worship. It can be the search for the heart of beauty. The light is present everywhere. The temple is a symbolic representation of the Cosmos, and ritual is a celebration of the movement of time. Silence is also a form of ritual. 18. The spiritual life in Hinduism is to find harmony in existence including in

one’s own self. As an ecological view of the health and well-being of the individual and of society, it stresses compassion and kindness to not only each other but also to animals, and on being ethically and morally upright. Hinduism is about celebration and positivity. *** This can go on to neatly explain the amazing diversities in Hindu practices, ranging from belief like worship of saguṇa (with form) Ishwara to nirguṇa, nirākāra, nirvikalpa, niriha (without qualities, formless, non-dual, without identity) Brahman. It also reinforces the infinite power of the One Brahman that has the power to differentiate itself into many—with form or without form. Unlike the Abrahamic view that limits the power of its One God, Brahman can take form, dissolve into the unity, and permeate everything and everyone. Thus, both Nirguṇa Brahman and Saguṇa Brahman are available to the seeker according to his own capacity, with Nirguṇa Brahman being the highest aspiration. The Abrahamic view is much more gross, and tied into knots. It is a belief that the Creator is apart from the creation, that the created cannot unite with the Creator, and this Creator is without form, but possesses attributes. The Creator creates for fun. The created works for the cause of examination by the Creator, there is no other cause. From the Indian perspective, the Abrahamic God is Nirākāra (formless), but not Nirguṇa (without attributes). This creates a fundamental contradiction in the Abrahamic systems. Much of the violence that is associated with the Abrahamic practices comes from the attributes of anger and intolerance of their God(s) towards non-believers.

Chapter 2 Different Ways of Interpretations is dogmatic, T he Abrahamic way of interpreting their scriptures and doctrines and entails complex theologies. It is to be read and interpreted literally, mediated by the high clergy or maulanas. This simplicity of doctrines and direct nature of scriptural commands does not make them easy to follow, but is instead looped around into complex interpretations. Application of individual minds is not required. Reward and punishment is based on belief. The object of life is to get rewards in the afterlife. As explained in the chapter on Time concepts, the Abrahamic mind is psychologically conditioned to this life as the only life. This makes it easy to regiment and frighten. The power of the clergy and the maulana comes in useful here. Salvation is not necessarily based on your good morals and good actions, because morality means not the universal morality, but the scriptural morality. That is the reason large scale massacres evoke no moral indignation among the large populations from which the perpetrators hail. Since Abrahamic scriptures preach violence against non-believers, such violence becomes a highly moral act. In the Indian idiom, it would be called actions based entirely on ‘shabda pramāṇa’ and as sanctioned by the central authorities, such as the church, and the institution of the mufti. Under the Sanātana umbrella, things are rarely so literal. If we take the highly evolved Sanātana Dharma, and as provided in Vedic Nirukta, every mantra/shloka can have three meanings—ādhibhautika, ādhidaivika, and ādhyātmika (literal, divine, and spiritual). This matches the triple aspects of Sanātana Dharma as described in Chapter I. The example of a murti (usually but wrongly labelled ‘idol’ in English; it is a Sanskrit non-translatable) is illustrative. The ādhibhautika mind sees a stone, sometimes sculpted, depicting a deity. The materialistic (āsuric) mind can find it ugly, beautiful or grotesque, depending on one’s perspective. The ādhidaivic mind sees a divine deity in the murti, complete with the capacity to perform miracles, grant boons or blessings, and which can also grant one’s wishes if one

does the right transaction. The ādhyātmic mind, on the other hand, sees transcendent qualities and aspects in the murti, uses it as an anchor to meditate on those aspects represented by the metaphor of that deity, and tries to locate them within the self. Devatās themselves are a metaphor for the points of consciousness in our mind. So all ādhidaivika interpretations are, therefore, metaphorical per se. The three levels also correspond to what is termed as sthula (gross), sukshma (subtle) and kāraṇa/parā (transcendental). Sanātana Dharma has this three-dimensional view of every aspect of philosophy. It may sometimes add a fourth dimension too, but is almost never two dimensional unless at the lowest physical level. As I pointed out earlier, the Abrahamics study theology, or God theory, whereas Sanātana seeks knowledge, and the study is called philosophy—in its original meaning— the love of knowledge. As we will see later in this work, someone as influential as AlGhazali made fun of philosophy in his ‘Tahaffut-e-Falasafa’. Let’s illustrate this with a few examples. Krishna’s story is a fundamental aspect of Sanātana Dharma. He is considered a Purnavatara, possessing all the 16 vidyas and 64 kalas, whereas Rama possesses 12 and 48 respectively. The fine arts aspect is missing in the common Rama story. The Krishna story is full of divine stories and miracles— whether it is the slaying of many asuras during his childhood, or the lifting of the Govardhana hill, or his dances with the Gopis, or the rescuing of Draupadi, or Gajendra Moksha, and myriad such stories. One can look at this story from all the three aspects. I have written two books in the Krishna trilogy—Krishna Gopeshvara and Krishna Yogeshvara— to present the ādhibhautik aspect of this godhead. One can intellectualise the lore of Krishna, which is mostly looking at him from the ādhidaivik perspective, into a pure, rationally-explained story. However, that is hardly Krishna the Liberator. To understand the full import of what Krishna is, one has to go through the Bhagavad Gitā and the Uddhava Gītā in Srimad Bhāgavatam (11th sarga, 13th to 29th chapters). Every Krishna Leela can be understood from the spiritual perspective when you take Krishna as the Universal Consciousness, the Gopis as the play of the Self of many people, the asuras as the unguided material intellect, and Radha as the Shakti, or the dynamic part of that Universal Consciousness. We know that the Brahman or Universal Consciousness is capable of unlimited manifestations, unlike the Abrahamic God(s)—the Krishna story in its

ādhyātmic interpretation provides a full play of this capacity of Brahman. That Krishna was also a historical personality who was fully enlightened makes the story even more interesting. The pure āsuri buddhi, however, will only see debauchery and deceit in his persona. The Shiva Purāṇa is equally interesting. Shiva is the benefic aspect of Brahman, who is also a destroyer. You can treat him as a rustic tribal, or as a deity that practises equality to a fault in the matter of granting boons—to devas and asuras alike, and also manifests himself in the points of consciousness in the mind as the 11 rudras. In the ādhyātmika, Shiva is the infinite Time, and hence the deity that creates and destroys Time. He is responsible for the cyclical aspect of Time. He is beyond the senses, and therefore requires Shakti as the dynamic aspect of his persona. Shakti is the feminine aspect. Therefore, the parable is woven that He becomes distraught and mournful when he loses his wife, Sati. It is another way of teaching the Shiva-Shakti ādhyātmika aspect to the ādhidaivika Purānic story. The Purāṇas principally provide ādhidaivika interpretations of the spiritual (ādhyātmika) phenomenon. Let us look at another famous purāṇic story from the Durgā Saptashati, which occurs in the Markandeya Purāṇa. In the very first chapter, the demons Madhu and Kaitabha are slain by Vishnu after a fight that lasts a thousand years. According to the story, Madhu and Kaitabha are two demons who are born from the dirt of the ear of Vishnu who is in yoganidra. Brahmā, the Creator, is coming out of the navel of Vishnu sitting on a lotus. Madhu and Kaitabha rush towards Brahmā to kill him. Brahmā prays to Yogamaya to come out of Vishnu’s body. Yogamaya comes out of Vishnu’s body, Vishnu wakes up from yoganidra and fights them both for a thousand years, then slays them and saves Brahmā, who can then go about doing his creation. The ādhyātmika interpretation is that the ear denotes the sound receptor of the primal force of ākasha (space), the shabda (vibration). This vibration in the consciousness (Vishnu) produces all the three categories of intellect. Madhu and Kaitabha represent the dirt of the ear, i.e., the material (āsuri) intellect. Madhu is the craving intellect (raga), and Kaitabha is the hating intellect (dvesha). These are fundamentally opposed to any wholesome creation, so they attack Brahmā, who implores Yogamaya, who is causing Vishnu to sleep under the dark force of yoganidra. Once this dark tāmasic force is out of Vishnu, he wakes up and fights them, i.e., he tries to tame the dark forces of the mind. The thousand year fight is a metaphor for the difficult task that requires utmost perseverance by Vishnu. A victory by Vishnu enables Brahmā, who can then move apace towards wholesome creation.

The story of Gaṇesha is similarly educative. The human head denotes ego. It is severed by Shiva, who is a harbinger of auspiciousness. It is replaced by an elephant’s head, which denotes wisdom. Gaṇesha is always given the first offering, thus invoking the deity to remove the ego in the ensuing worship. Egoless worship is the highest form of worship. Thus, the Purāṇic stories are rooted in Chitta (Self ) and Brahman (chit or Universal Consciousness), and are entirely based on the teachings of the Vedas and Upanishads. They are narrated in parable forms to correspond with the divinity of the devatās, and act as a guide to the spiritual practitioner. Those who deride the Purāṇas do so out of sheer ignorance.

Chapter 3 Different Attitudes to the Scientific Method is a methodology. In the modern era, science for the lay people has S cience also become a subject being taught and learnt on the basis of authority. Students do not really know whether the earth revolves on its axis, except on the authority of scientists who really have the means to conduct experiments and prove them. Science as a methodology can be defined as empirical, and one that accepts a physical phenomenon as True on the basis of it being universal—true across time and space; verifiable— demonstrable to all; and repeatable—that which will repeat in similar circumstances. To that we add refutability or falsifiability, i.e., one is free to try and refute that physical phenomenon. Sanātana Dharma’s scientific attitude to the universe is not just applicable to the physical world, but also to the spiritual world. It is best exemplified by the famous Nāsadiya Sūkta of the Ṛgveda (10.129) (Translation of AL Basham): 1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existence, There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it. What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping? Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed? 2. Then there was neither death nor immortality nor was there then the torch of night and day. The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining. There was that One then, and there was no other. 3. At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness. All this was only unillumined cosmic water. That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing, arose at last, born of the power of heat. 4. In the beginning desire descended on it— that was the primal seed, born of the mind.

The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom know that which is kin to that which is not. 5. And they have stretched their cord across the void, and know what was above, and what below. Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces. Below was strength, and over it was impulse. 6. But, after all, who knows, and who can say Whence it all came, and how creation happened? The gods themselves are later than creation, so who knows truly whence it has arisen? 7. Whence all creation had its origin, the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows—or maybe even he does not know. This kind of open inquiry about the origin of the Cosmos is unknown in the Abrahamic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It also exhibits the confidence that the Rishi who composed the hymn had, to the extent that he can question the highest power itself. The Abrahamic religions do not allow any questioning and inquiry, and treat the Word of their scriptures as being beyond refutation. Sanātana Hinduism, on the other hand, allows not only open inquiry, but as the subsequent developments of Hinduism show, even open debate and refutation. Every branch of orthodox Hinduism allowed this open inquiry, and allowed debate within various sects. Buddha’s debates with the orthodox Sanātana Brahmins are the best example of this approach. Buddha was every inch a Hindu, but he differed from the orthodox view on the question of existence of the Ātman (loosely translated as the eternal soul). Hindus and the followers of Buddha debated the question for over a millennia, till Hinduism won a final victory led by the Ādi Shankara. To refute the concept of the Ātman, people even carried out physical experiments, without any consequences to their physical well-being. Payāsi Sutta has a description of a person about to die being enclosed in a vessel, being weighed, observations of ātman escaping the vessel being taken; the weight being taken immediately after death; and a final pronouncement of the absence

of the ātman on the weight being found the same. All across the Upanishads, this spirit of inquiry, debate and refutation is present in full measure. Vedānta philosophy speculates on duality, Oneness, qualified Oneness. The sages have derived advaita, dvaita, vishishtadvaita, and bhakti from the same material. People like Chārvāka refuted the existence of Ātman on the basis of direct observation epistemology, yet he was honoured with the title of a Rishi. Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra provides a basis for physical verification of the existence of the Supreme. Kapila Muni’s Saṃkhya philosophy provides a cosmological basis, whereas Vaisheshika of Kaṇāda dwells on the physical cause and effect. The Bhagavad Gitā encapsulates all the philosophies into one whole, and even that great book provides Arjuna with a glimpse of many paths. Krishṇa exhorts Arjuna in the end to choose any of the paths that he had described—yathechchhasi tathā kuru (Bhagavad Gitā 18.67). Thus, it is clear from this evidence that the concept of Creation, as well as that of the Ātman in the Hindu pantheon is physical, subject to personal verification, and refutable. This is a purely scientific approach to the mysteries of the universe. While Ātman in Hinduism is a refutable physical concept, and is, therefore, scientific; on the other hand, the ‘soul’ of the Abrahamic religions is an irrefutable metaphysical concept, hence unscientific. To illustrate this point further—Creation, soul, and God are all based on the revealed Book, not subject to verification or debate (any such act is termed as heresy), and an irrefutable Truth on the authority of God, Yahveh, or Allah. This is a purely unscientific approach. So this is the first major fundamental difference between Hinduism and Western religions. We will explore the entire gamut of fundamental conceptual differences between Hinduism and what are known as the Religions (principally Abrahamic).

Chapter 4 Different Time Concepts “Time is the interface between Science and Religion.” —Dr. C.K. Raju

biggest difference and that which makes it impossible for the Eastern T he and Western cultures to meet at a midpoint, is their concepts of Time beliefs. This is also the fundamental problem of the West, which makes it difficult for them to understand the Eastern cultures. The Biblical dogmas of Noah’s sons Japheth, Shem and Ham, have been used by the Christian West to describe a. themselves; b. Jews and Muslims (Semites); and c. NonAbrahamic world (Hamites). No wonder that when so much ignorance is passed off as scholarship based on the unscientific stories in the Old Testament, it results in hate theories of anti-Semitism and racism. The Holocaust and the Aryan Invasion theories are direct results of this dogmainspired hate and supremacism.

Hinduism or Sanātana Dharma, which is the philosophical origin point of almost all Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Shintoism, and many smaller religions, treats Time as cyclical. Kāla Chakra is a frequently occurring term in everyday conversations of Hindus, meaning the cycle of Time. The Sanskrit term for the Universe, Brahmānda, conceives of

the Cosmos as an egg. The Sanskrit term for the material world, Saṃsāra, itself means ‘the cycle of birth and death’, as opposed to Nirvāṇa, which means liberation from this cycle. Sansarati iti sansārah, it says (that which is forever moving is the world). There are variations to this concept of Time. Dr. C.K. Raju has proposed the concept of quasi-cyclical Time, without which the entire cycle of the expansion and contraction of the Cosmos would repeat endlessly and exactly (eternal recurrence). The Cosmos is presently in the expansion mode, with some scientists positing a concept of the ever-expanding universe. But the Big Bang theory being ever-expanding is now seriously doubted, and scientists are seriously considering the cyclical concept of Time. The cyclical model of the universe is the most probable: an expanding singularity (the Big Bang), an expanding universe (what we currently observe), equilibrium, a contracting universe, and a singularity again. And then, the next cycle. Needless to say, this is what Hindu Cosmology talks about. Hindu Cosmology is the only system of cosmology whose vast time scales are comparable to those of physical cosmology. Prof. Subhash Kak’s new proposition of space being edimensional1 (e=2.71828… which is also the Euler’s Constant) has the potential of completely negating the Big https://subhashkak.medium.com/our-e-dimensional-universe-febb3a20fa64 Bang theory and aligning it to the Hindu Cosmology of Shiva’s Cosmic Dance— an endless cycle of creation and destruction. The Christian West also started out by internalising the Greek notion of migrating soul, and cyclical Time. However, when the Church managed to convert the Roman Emperor, and became the State Religion of the Roman empire through the backdoor, a recurrence of time became a problem. In any cyclically recurring universe, or quasi universe, the freely- willed actions of individuals would be the rational determinants of how they would shape up in the next cycle. That would establish a direct relationship between God and Man, which would finish the role of Church. This led to the Church denouncing the concept of cyclical Time. The Fifth Ecumenical conference of the Church in Constantinople in 553 AD, pronounced a Curse on Cyclical Time. Surprising, but true. Dr. C.K. Raju explains the rationale: 1

Inequity as the basis of ‘linear’ time However, after Constantine, this belief in the equity of all souls stood in the way

of the political goals of the Church, which now viewed the world from the imperial perspective of the Roman state: if all souls would anyway be saved what was the advantage to be gained by turning Christian? If God was within man, where was the need to fear God, and be obedient to the priest? Hence, theologians like Augustine proposed to erase equity and erect a transcendent God who would judge people and establish a simplistic moral division between good (Christians) and bad (non-Christians). In the revised picture proposed by the Christian state, all souls were NOT equal, so not all souls were eventually saved; instead God established a permanent inequity in the world, sending some souls (those of good Christians) to heaven (for ever), and other souls (non-Christians) to hell, as described in gory detail by Dante, for example. Reincarnation was accordingly changed to resurrection—life after death, just once. Since the earlier notion of soul depended upon a view of life after death deriving from the belief in quasi-cyclic Time. Time beliefs were also compelled to change with this changed notion of the soul and of life after death. Time beliefs changed from quasi-cyclic time to ‘linear’ apocalyptic time: the world, as conceived by Augustine began a few thousand years ago, and would soon come to an end. The notion of the soul became metaphysical.

This very concept of ‘Linear Time’ found its way into Islam, even though there was a significant section among the early Muslims, known as Mutazalites, who believed in ‘cyclical time’ and rational thinking. It was the Sufi, Al-Ghazali, who teamed up with the conservatives and completely demolished the rational spirituality in Islam around the 11th century. Even though Al-Ghazali propounded a concept of metaphysically broken Time renewing itself every instant, this essentially killed the spiritual strand of Islam that was close to Hindu thinking in Time beliefs. People like Mansoor Hallaj were persecuted and killed for believing in concepts close to the Sanātana Advaita (‘Ana-‘l-haq’ or ‘I am the Truth’ is considered a variation of Aham Brahmasmi). It is because of this notion of quasi-cyclical Time that the Indian notion of Karma-Saṃskāra inheres as an exercise of autonomy in the temporal affairs of

mankind. It is because of this that Hinduism carries a unique sense of gratitude to the environment around them (the concept of Ṛna or debt) and treats life as a celebration. This is in contrast to Christianity that treats Life as a sin, and Islam that treats Life as a test for a good time in an eternal afterlife. The unique culture of treating all nature and living beings as manifestations of the Supreme comes from this belief in cyclical Time. Beliefs in Creationism and Linear Time are a direct negation of gratitude towards anyone else except the One creator, such as Yahveh, God, or Allah. In essence, culture and values are a by-product of not just the geography, but also of Time belief. The concept of Linear Time had its greatest validation in Newton’s theories, but General Relativity and the concept of spacetime have dealt it a body blow. The problem of time is sought to be resolved through the integration of the Relative (very large) and Quantum (very small) phenomena through a Unified Field theory such as Quantum Gravity. This has not yet succeeded, but the Linear Time is under serious question. This is a challenge to the religions that cast their lot with Linear Time. Do not, however, underestimate the flexibility and manoeuvrability of the Church, which recognised Galileo in 1992 (imagine!), and supported Stephen Hawking’s model of singularity that mimics God.

According to Dr. C.K. Raju, “Hinduism is scientific, because (a) its core notions of ātman and moksha depend upon the concept of quasicyclic time (b) which can be experimentally TESTED ‘here and now’ by using the connection to a local ‘tilt in the arrow of time’, and the testing for a tilt in the arrow of time, as explained in my books. The mark of a scientific theory is that it can be tested or refuted according to Karl Popper.” To sum up, the belief in ātman and moksha is NOT a superstition, but part of a viable scientific theory which needs to be tested experimentally (‘physics’). But the belief in linear time or super-linear time is a superstition. That is,

‘reincarnation’ is possible, but the post-Nicene Church notion of ‘resurrection’ is a superstition (‘metaphysics’).

Chapter 5 Different Logic Concepts Religions of T he assertion that Hinduism is different from the Middle Eastern the Book is further fortified by the different ways in which it approaches Logic. All Middle Eastern Religions follow the Greek system of logic, where any physical phenomenon is viewed only in shades of black and white. Called twovalued logic, the logic recognises only two states of any phenomenon—true or false. When aligned to the super-Linear Time adopted by the post- Augustinian Church, it creates a strong dialectical system of binaries, where Truth is what is ordained from the above, and everything else is False. So the culture of violence that condemns the sinner, or curses a concept (like the concept of cyclical Time by the Church, or the concept of Trinity, or multiple manifestations by Islam), the consequences of heresy or haram visited upon the dissenters, are easily justified. The two-valued logic has had other consequences as well. The Indian gaṇita (system of calculation) was adopted by the West in the Middle Ages as mathematics, and a system of formal mathematics was devised based on proofs. These proofs were products of the two-valued logic, recognising only deductive proof, resulting in such farcical proofs as Russell proving 2+2=4 in 378 pages. Newtonian Science also adopted this two-valued logic along with super-linear Time, producing a mechanistic view of science, which is still being undone. (Please refer to ‘Cultural Foundation of Mathematics’ by Dr. C.K. Raju.) The Indian systems have always followed a multivalued logic, beginning with the Vedas, which prescribed Chatushkoṭi, or the ‘four-valued logic’. (The Nāsadiya Sūkta cited in Part 1 is a good example, and Patanjali and Pāṇini use it extensively.) The four values of this system of logic are ‘True’, ‘False’, ‘Both True and False’, and ‘Neither True Nor False’. Combine this with cyclical Time, and it should be very clear to all that we can then have a very open architecture for debate. It is exactly this kind of debate that we find in the Upanishads. This extends to all other systems of Indian

thought, culminating in the orthodox Nyāya system, and going to the extremes of seven-valued (saptabhaṅga) and eight-valued logic of some Buddhist and Jain philosophers. The scholar of Mahābhārata and Ramayana chronology, Nilesh Neelakantha Oak, summarises it in this quadrant:

Reference: Truth, Nilesh Oak

In the words of Prof. Subhash Kak, “Logic is one of the six darśanas, which are the classical schools of Indian philosophy. These six schools are the different complementary perspectives on reality, which may be visualised as the views from the six walls of a cube within which the subject is enclosed. The base is the broad system of the tradition (Purva Mimāṃsa), and the ceiling represents the large questions of meaning related to the objective world and the subject (Uttara Mimāṃsa or Vedānta); one side is analysis of linguistic particles (Nyāya), with the opposite side being the analysis of material particles (Vaiśeśika); another side is enumerative categories in evolution at the cosmic and individual levels (Sāṃkhya), with the opposite side representing the synthesis of the material and cognitive systems in the experiencing individual (Yoga).” The core philosophies of Hinduism like Ātman and Moksha depend upon inner seeking, and the concepts of immanence and transcendence of the Self. Sat, Chit and Ānanda are the three facets of the Cosmic Truth, with many more variations appearing within the different systems. ‘Ekam sadviprā bahudhā vadanti’, or many ‘paths lead to the same Truth’ is possible only with a manyvalued logic. There is no room for binaries in Hinduism as it is fundamentally a spiritual path through consciousness—described as Chitta (Self- Consciousness

or Awareness), and Chita (Universal Consciousness)—which necessarily requires exploration in different spaces of logic. It is, therefore, a necessary concomitant to the concept of cyclical Time. Even though Christianity also began with a challenge to Judaism, and tall philosophers like Origen subscribed to not only cyclical Time, but also to the non-binary logic, this underwent a change with the wedding of the Church with State power. The Augustinian notion of super-linear Time meant that Logic too had to be reduced to a binary, or two-valued logic in order to deify the concepts of true God vs. false gods, piety vs. sin, believer vs. unbeliever, or simply heaven vs. hell. There is no room for a grey area in this concept of what was also sought to be entrenched as Pure Reason. So the post-Nicene (after the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea) Christianity beginning from Constantine, and more particularly from Justinian to Newton, and right up to Bertrand Russell, simply promoted two-valued logic. It is, therefore, no surprise at all that Marxism became the apotheosis of this two-valued logic, pitting capital and labour against each other. Islam simply got stuck to this two-valued logic of belief vs. unbelief from the time of Ibn Taymaiah—the beginning of the dark age of Islam.

The meaning of the above: Those who have seen the Truth have concluded that of the non-existent (the material body), there is no endurance; and of the eternal (the Ātman), there is no change. They have reached this conclusion by studying the nature of both. It means that there is a Truth (sat), a Falsity (asat), and an in-between or unreal (Mithyā or satasat)—black, white and grey.

The advent of quantum mechanics, and quantum logic is the final tribute of science to the three-valued logic system of the Hindus. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and Schrodinger’s simultaneously dead and alive cat are examples of three-valued logic—clear, not clear and indeterminate. Another form of multi-valued logic is also seen in the field of computing. To quote Dr. C.K. Raju, ‘…one can construct a more realistic desktop model involving parallel computing, although understanding this requires a little more technical knowledge. In parallel computing, a single process executing on parallel processors may be in multiple states at a ‘single instant’ of time. Needless to say, ‘parallel’ is a bit of a misnomer, since it is an essential feature of parallel computing that the processors (logical worlds, in the Wittgensteinian sense) and processes communicate with each other, and that they branch and collapse. Time, so to say, acquires a structure, and it is necessary to take into account this structure to understand the semantics of formal parallel computing languages. Microphysical closed time loops enable us to understand how an atom of time can nevertheless have a structure, in the sense that multiple logical worlds are attached to a single instant of time.’ One can simply contrast the Boolean Logic and Fuzzy Logic of the computation systems as a rough guide to the value of Logic in computers. Everyone would remember the famous Indian story of the elephant being described by ten blind men. The multi-valued logic of Hinduism and other Oṃkāra religions, which may be more appropriately called as spiritual systems, is the defining feature of Hinduism. To summarise, Logic varies with culture: the two-valued logic assumed a priori in the West and is integral to Ahl-e- Kitab (of the Book) religions, but is not universal. Indian culture, of which Hinduism is the defining example, has never subscribed to two-valued Logic, and this is also reflected in the way Indians did their science and mathematics.

Chapter 6 Different Epistemology (Science of Proof) pratyakshānumanāgamāh pramaṇāni. Direct perception, inference, and evidence of background knowledge, are proofs. —Patanjali Sūtra 1.7 The above aphorism from the Yoga Sūtra epitomises the Sanātana approach to gaining true knowledge. Each of the nine darshanas in Indian philosophy (six orthodox darshanas—Veda, Vedānta, Yoga, Sāṃkhya, Nyāya, Vaiśeśika; and three heterodox darshanas—Buddhism, Jainism and Ćārvāka), relies on a certain number of valid means of gaining knowledge. These are: 1. Pratyaksha—Empirical Evidence 2. Anumāna—Inference 3. Upamāna—Analogy 4. Arthāprapti—Deduction 5. Anupalabdhi—Non-existence 6. Shabda Pramāṇa—Scriptural evidence, or background knowledge The nine systems of Indian philosophies have their own ways of treating these evidences as valid means to knowledge: 1. Veda—all six 2. Vedānta—all six 3. Yoga—1, 2 and 6 4. Sāṃkhya—1, 2 and 6 5. Nyāya—1, 2, 3, and 6 6. Vaiśeśika—1 and 2 7. Buddhism—1 and 2 by the Buddha, 6 added later

8. Jainism—1, 2, 3, and 6 9. Ćārvāka—1 only In every Indian system, which obviously includes Hinduism, empirical evidence, or knowledge gained through direct sensory perception, is common to every darshana or philosophical system. The empirical is also placed at the highest pedestal in every system. What is most striking in this elaborate methodology of gaining knowledge is the fact that the Shabda Pramāṇa, or the scriptural evidence in our context is worthless in the absence of empirical evidence, or the Pratyaksha Pramāṇa. Isn’t this also the way of science? The Srimad Bhāgavatam puts it in a different way, though in a similar vein: :



śrutiḥ pratyakṣam aitihyam anumānaṁ catuṣṭayam pramāṇeṣv anavasthānād vikalpāt sa virajyate —Srimad Bhāgavatam, 11.19.17 From the four types of evidence—Vedic knowledge, direct experience, traditional wisdom and logical induction—one can understand the temporary, insubstantial situation of the material world, by which one becomes detached from the duality of this world. Further elaboration may be had in the Mahābhārata: ‘pratyaksham hyetyormūlam kritantai etihyorapi, pratyaksheṇāgamobhinnah kritanto vā na kinchan’,2 essentially meaning that in case of a conflict between direct evidence and inference/shastric evidence, direct evidence shall prevail because it is at the root of both inferential evidence and shastric evidence.



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There cannot be a greater acceptance of the scientific method. Srimad Bhagavad Gitā, the last word in Sanātana Dharma, has Shri Krishna going to the extent of saying that if you have experienced the Truth, even the Vedas are of no use—I treat it as the ultimate expression in privileging the pratyaksha pramāṇa over even the Vedas, which many traditionalists claim to be the revealed word, a generally wrong translation of Apaurusheya: yāvān artha udapāne sarvatah samplutodake/ tāvān sarveshu vedeshu brāhmaṇasya vijānatah —Shrimad Bhagavad Gitā 2.46 :

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46 Translation: A Brahman knowing Brāhmaṇa has only that much use for the Vedas as a man surrounded by great mass of water has for a small pond. Ādi Shankaracharya also said: ‘gnānam na purushatantram, kintu vastutantram’—knowledge is not derived through word of command, but through objective reality. Sūtra 9 of the Patanjali Sūtra, Samādhi Pāda makes it even more explicit: ‘shabdagnānupāti vastushūnyo vikalpah’— acquisition of knowledge through scriptural evidence is delusional in the absence of objective corroboration. This is an illustration of Sanātana Dharma’s concern about the right means of knowledge through scientific and objective methods, and not through blind belief. The way of science depends upon hypotheses tested through empirical evidence against a background of existing knowledge. As explained in part 1, verification, universality, repeatability and refutability are the essential components of the scientific method. The tools of Logic and Evidence are the means to achieve this objective. Though the empirical evidence in the scientific method concerns only the external sensory perception, the pratyaksha pramāṇa in Hinduism encompasses the internal direct perception as well. This is where the Rishis and Gurus are important in the Hindu system.

The story of Swami Vivekananda accepting the discipleship of Ramakrishna Paramahansa is instructive in the context of internal sensory perception. Narendranath Dutta was an extremely brilliant student and a rationalist, who was deeply troubled by questions around the meaning of life. His quest took him to many great spiritual masters, including Maharshi Debendranath Tagore. Even as all of them claimed that they had realised the Supreme, not one of them could satisfy his query as to whether they were in a position to bring him face to face with the Supreme. When he posed the same question to the Paramahansa, the latter smiled and said, “Yes, I can do that, but are you prepared to come face to face with Him?” This paused the young Narendra. After an intense period of inner struggle, he finally found himself up to the challenge and approached the Paramahansa in a fully prepared frame of mind. Paramahansa then showed him the Way that led Vivekananda to the ultimate realisation. I have narrated this story to highlight the point that the meaning of pratyaksha pramāṇa in the spiritual field is much wider than the empirical evidence countenanced by science. Yet, this spiritual approach remains fully scientific. Evidence is required for validation, as Swami Vivekananda had demanded from Paramahansa Rāmakrishṇa. There are minor sects among Hindus that are now closer to Abrahamic epistemology than Sanātana. A good example is the Ārya Samāj, which accepts only shabda pramāṇa of the Vedas, and that too by arbitrarily limiting it to only its saṃhitas. This makes it unscientific, and a carbon copy of the Semitic religions. It retains its Sanātana roots on account of its ‘belief ’ in karma and saṃsara. The present day Sikh religion as postulated by its highest body the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) also resists anything except belief in shabda pramāṇa. This turns what was a scientific religion into a completely unscientific one. Now we must contrast this with the way of the Semitic and Japhetic religions. The Torah, the Bible, and the Qur’an rely on the strength of Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1.1) “A Messenger (Muhammad (Peace be upon him) from Allah, reciting (the Quran) purified pages, purified from Al-Batil (falsehood, etc.)) “Containing correct and straight laws from Allah…” —Qur’an, al-Bayyinah, 98:2–3

In the Abrahamic Religions, the Word of God is the only Truth. It cannot be questioned. It is the only Proof. It cannot be refuted; it cannot be falsified. To utter anything against it is heresy. Some elements of this creed have probably been inspired by the apostasy and heresy doctrines that found their way into Zoroastrianism, but the contrast cannot be starker. While in Hinduism, the Word without empirical evidence and other admissible evidence is worthless, in the Noah religions, the Word is the only Truth. From this totalitarian precept emerges the exclusionary principles of belief/unbelief (fortified by Linear time and two-valued Logic), heresy, apostasy, hypocrisy, and their dire punishments in this world and the hereafter. While it is possible to apply scientific principles of evidence to the concepts of cyclical time, and multi-valued logic, and come up with a very inclusive, open architecture religion, culture and society, it becomes impossible when the only available evidence is to be found in a revealed Book. It is possible in Hinduism to have different attitudes based on the acceptance of different sets of evidence. One can be a seeker, a believer, and an unbeliever, and yet be a Hindu. In contrast, it is simply not possible for an unbeliever to be a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. The consequences are writ large over the history of mankind. Hindus and Buddhists had fundamental doctrinal differences. A lively system of debate continued for over one millennium without any bloodshed. Debates were well structured, with five well-ordered elements—vishaya (subject of debate), vismaya (doubts), purvapaksha (statement of others’ position), siddhānta (statement of one’s own position), and saṅgati (reconciliation)—forming the framework of these debates. There was no such respite to competing philosophies by the Noah religions. From the time the Church managed to convert Constantine to Christianity in 312 CE, and similarly with the march of Islam, the route of debate was firmly closed. This led to bloodshed becoming a norm to establishing supremacy. To compound the problem, the unique Cosmology and Eschatology associated with the irrefutable Word of God went well with the super-linear concept of Time, as also with the two-valued Logic. It is, therefore, not at all difficult to see from this that Hinduism does not fit into the category of religion in the Abrahamic framework. 2

Mahābhārata, Shāntiparva, 218.27—Gita Press

Chapter 7 Different Cosmology is that part of a religion or of a spiritual system like the Eastern C osmology Oṃkāra Dharmas, which defines its view of the Universe and the way human beings interact with it. Hindu Cosmology derives its view from its concepts of Kāla, or Time, and the way it rationalises it through the use of Logic. Logic as a function of culture, is an important determinant of the way a culture, and a religion as a product of that culture, uses its collective intellect to rationalise the transcendent and immanent through use of perceptions and reasoning. The commonest cosmological narrative is found in the Puranas. According to this, Vishnu is sleeping in Yoga Nidra on the Sheshanaga. A lotus comes out of his navel with Brahmā sitting atop. Brahmā creates many Brahmāndas, with their own Prajapati. This Prajapati then lays down the Rules of Rta and Dharma for each of them. Shiva brings this creation to an end. This cycle repeats endlessly. The cycle is called Saṃsāra Chakra, or simply Saṃsāra. Saṃsarati iti saṃsārah—the one that moves on endlessly is called Saṃsāra. This cosmological conceptualisation of endless creation-destruction-creation, or expansion-contraction-expansion also finds its echo in the scientific community. In Kashmiri Shaivism, the five powers of Shiva define the cosmological phenomena. Starting with Chit Shakti (consciousness), the creation occurs, and is then taken through Ānanda Shakti (Bliss), Ichchha Shakti (Free Will), Gnāna Shakti (Wisdom) and Kriya Shakti (Movement and destruction), thus completing the cycle and then beginning again. Abhijit Chavda, a scientist friend, who has been researching theoretical physics for over 20 years, had this to say on Hindu Cosmology: “From my 20 years of study and research and calculations in theoretical physics and cosmology (based on several factors, primarily the inter-relationship between dark matter and dark energy and how the latter drives the universe’s expansion), I firmly believe that the cyclical model of the universe is the most probable: an expanding singularity (the Big Bang), an expanding universe (what we currently

observe), equilibrium, a contracting universe, and a singularity again. And then, the next cycle. Needless to say, this is what Hindu Cosmology talks about. Hindu Cosmology is the only system of cosmology whose vast time scales are comparable to those of physical cosmology.” Dr. C.K. Raju makes a modification to the singularity- expansioncontraction-singularity cycle. He considers the Friedmann cyclical model inappropriate for Hindu Cosmology. Instead, he uses the quasi-cyclical Time, like the lines on a record, so that Time does not flow in a straight line, nor does it loop on itself, but instead tilts—the ‘tilt in the arrow of Time’. In a recent breakthrough, Prof. Subhash Kak has applied the mathematical principle of e-dimension, which is the mathematically optimum value rather than three-dimensions, to cosmology and gravity. This aligns it to the Indian concept of expansion and contraction and also explains away dark matter and dark energy. So, Hindu Cosmology is an eternal cycle/quasi-cycle with a scheme of accountability for all living beings—humans, animals and plants, with a reflection of Universal Consciousness in every being—living and non-living. Divine is immanent in all, and it is possible for the highest in the evolutionary cycle— the human being—to transcend the cycle of karma-saṃskāra and achieve liberation. One of the best concepts is provided in the Saṃkhya system, where the Purusha is the Cosmic Consciousnes—the Chit. Modifications in the Chit produce the Individual Consciousness—the Chitta—called Prakriti. Prakriti is transcended by the Chitta with the help of ordinary pramāṇas available to the intellect. Samādhi is the ultimate experience and is also the ultimate pramāṇa at the level of Purusha. Samādhi is the Union of Yoga Sutras, and Ānanda or Chidānanda of Vedānta. The Theory of Creationism does not apply at all. Divine and Man are interchangeable at one level. This is applicable across the Multiverse, and just not the one Universe that we can perceive through our ordinary senses. The Vedānta verse of Nirvāna Shatakam by Ādi Shankara is a perfect illustration:

The meaning of the above: I am not the mind, nor the intellect, nor the identity of self, not even the consciousness/I am also not the sense of hearing, nor taste, nor smell, and nor even the sight//I am not the ether, nor the earth, nor fire, and not even the air/I am the form of that Pure Cosmic Consciousness, I am the Shiva, I am the Shiva. Please note the different use of ‘chitta’ and ‘chit’—similar to the use of Purusha and Prakriti in Sāṃkhya. The Cosmos finds a reflection in the human brain. That is why the different cognition points in the brain are revered as devatās. This view of the Universe and Multiverse is totally different in other religions, including in Zoroastrianism. In the Abrahamic religions, the common factor is the concept of Creationism, and an all-powerful God/Yahveh/Allah, who sits outside the Universe and creates it for the enjoyment of the human beings alone. They have their different reasons for creating this Universe, and they command their followers to regard their version as the only and Exclusive Truth. All these religions are based on a revealed Book, which must be followed implicitly, on the pain of punishment. Quite logically, they have to follow the two-valued Logic of the true/ false variety. Whatever the Book certifies as true is true, and whatever the Book says is false, is false. Time must necessarily flow in a straight line, and lead to the eschatology of another binary called heaven and hell. As for the scheme of Evidence in an epistemological sense, there is no proof required against the Word of the Book. The Word is the only Truth. The Word is the only Proof. This has resulted in quite absurd scenarios in the past. It also explains the orgies of library burnings witnessed in Alexandria, Takshashilā and Nālandā. Bakhtiar Khilji, on being confronted by the huge wealth of books in Nālandā, appears to have remarked, “If there is anything useful in this world, it is

contained in the Qur’an. If it is not there in the Qur’an, it is not useful. So either way, these books are not required.” The burning of the library at Alexandria also had similar, if not exactly the same sentiments behind it. The Church had acquired political power, and established a dogma which was required to consolidate its newly-acquired political power, with the religious power which it already possessed. The pagan world was an open world with many belief-systems coexisting. The pagans believed in cyclical Time, and migration of the soul. This did not suit the Church, as Christ could not be born again and again across what it termed as ‘Eternal Recurrence’, and be made to suffer the Cross again and again. It would be totally against the character of ‘Son of God’ bestowed upon him by the Church after the First Nicaean Ecumenical Council in 323 CE. The Church had to have the power over humans in order to save them on behalf of Christ. So the concept of eternal heaven and hell in an eternally flowing straight line of superlinear time became necessary. It necessitated the burning down of all pagan knowledge, and the destruction of all pagan symbols. One would see the same puritanical zeal among the Evangelicals even today. I remember a very recent example. An Islamic scholar produced evidence from the Shari’a that the Peshawar attack on the Army Public School, Peshawar was carried out by India. It was a gathering of well-informed people, who possessed the empirical evidence on the attack. Yet, not one of them could get up and point out the absurdity, as empirical evidence has no value in front of the scriptural evidence in Islam.

Hindu Cosmology permits an open architecture of spiritual seeking and spiritual belief, whereas the Abrahamic religions do not permit any such liberty. From this exclusivism, there is a logical flow of the doctrine to the exclusivist hate for

the non-believer, and violence in the name of blasphemy, apostasy, idolatry, and non-conformity. Please note that we are discussing only the doctrinal aspects of the religions, and not their behavioural distortions. Om. Purṇamadah, Purṇamidam, Purṇātpurṇamudachyate Purṇasya Purṇamādāya, Purṇamevavashishyate. The meaning: That is whole. This is whole. The whole comes out of the whole. Still the whole remains. —Ishopanishad

Chapter 8 Different Eschatology (Death Concepts) his story I narrate below from the Kaṭha Upanishad is a broad T explanation of how Hinduism views death. This gives a complete exposition of how a man decides his own course, as beautifully explained in the Bhagavad Gitā: ‘Uddhared Ātmanātmānaṁ Nātmānam Avasādayet Ātmaiva Hyātmano Bandhur Ātmaiva Ripur Ātmanaḥ’ —Bhagavad Gitā 6:5 The meaning of the above: Elevate yourself through the power of your mind, and not degrade yourself, for the mind can be the friend and also the enemy of the self. The story goes thus: Vājashravasa, desiring a gift from the gods, started an offering to donate all his possessions, what is termed ‘Sarva Dakshina’. But Nachiketā, his son, noticed that Vājashravasa was donating only the cows that were old, barren, blind, or lame; not such as might buy the worshipper a place in heaven. Nachiketā, wanting the best for his father’s rite, asked: “I too am yours, to which god will you offer me?” After being pestered thus, Vājashravasa answered in a fit of anger, “I give you to Death (Yama).” So Nachiketā went to Death’s home, but the god was out, and he waited three days without any food or water. When Yama returned, he was sorry to see that a Brahmin guest had been waiting so long without food and water. In Indian culture, guests are believed to be equal to god and causing trouble to god is a great sin. To compensate his mistake, Yama told Nachiketā, “You have waited in my house for three days without hospitality, therefore ask three boons from me.” Nachiketā first asked for peace for his father and himself. Yama agreed. Next, Nachiketā wished to learn the sacred fire sacrifice, which also Yama elaborated.

For his third boon, Nachiketā wanted to learn the mystery of what comes after death.

But Nachiketā replied that material things will last only till tomorrow. He who has encountered Death personally, how can he desire wealth? No other boon would do. Yama was secretly pleased with this disciple, and elaborated on the nature of the true Self, which persists beyond death. The key of the realisation is that this Self is inseparable from Brahman, the supreme spirit, the vital force in the universe. Yama’s explanation is a succinct explication of Hindu darshana, and focuses on the following points: • The sound ‘Om’ is the syllabus of the supreme Brahman • The Ātmā, whose symbol is Om is the same as the omnipresent Brahman. Smaller than the smallest and larger than the largest, the Soul is formless and all- pervading • The goal of the wise is to know this Ātmā • The Ātmā is like a rider; the horses are the senses, which he guides through the maze of desires • After death, it is the Ātmā that remains; the Ātman is immortal • Mere reading of the scriptures or intellectual learning cannot realise Ātmā • One must discriminate the Ātmā from the body, which is the seat of desire • Inability to realise Brahman results in one being enmeshed in the cycle of rebirths. Understanding the Self leads to moksha, or liberation Thus having learned the wisdom of the Brahman from Yama, Nachiketā was

freed from the cycle of births. This story contains within itself all that we have discussed till now. Quasicyclical Time, Multi-valued Logic, direct experience as Pramāṇa, and the vastness of Cosmology… are all there for us to experience in the story. It is for good reason that this story is often considered to be the essence of Upanishadic wisdom. Death ought to liberate a human being and make him become One with the Truth. Parā Vidyā, or knowledge of the transcendent, obliterates the line between Purusha and Prakriti. Death facilitates this obliteration of identities, as in Sāṃkhya, or as Samādhi in Yoga. Death in the Abrahamic religions is the route to an eternal bondage, as opposed to liberation. In keeping with the concept of linear/super-linear Time, and two-valued binary Logic, the concept of reincarnation is replaced by resurrection. All human beings shall die and be resurrected on the date of the Last Judgement, and the Creator who is outside the Cosmos shall visit these resurrected souls and give them into the eternal bondage of either heaven or hell. Note that this only applies to ‘human beings’, since other living beings are not considered to possess a ‘soul’. This is also a state of inequity, as a person hardly has the opportunity to correct his mistakes. The Book rewards or punishes a man not necessarily for his freely-willed actions, but for his beliefs. Creationism and Determinism are close allies. In some extreme cases like AlGhazali, Time is metaphysically broken from instant to instant so that Allah is busy producing events every instant, and destroying them the next instant. This is the ultimate in Determinism. The binary of consciousness vs. reason; and necessity vs. freewill dictates everything. God/ Allah/Yahveh does not care for your freely-willed action, or reasoned choices. If you have followed the Word, and done right by the diktat, you get an eternal reward—which is in the form of an eternal bondage to pleasure or pain. So death in the Abrahamic Religions happens because: 1. There is only one life 2. Death is the route to eternal heaven and hell 3. Heaven and hell is a reward of loyalty 4. A believer alone has the right to heaven 5. A non-believer is mandated to go to hell 6. Upon death, the body and soul rests in peace (RIP) till the Last Judgement Day 7. Everyone is resurrected on the Last Judgement Day

8. Their accounts of piety and sin are read out and they are sent to heaven and hell 9. The world ends and God remains in his abode; while everyone else remains bound to his heaven and hell eternally.

PART II The Sanātana Umbrella

Chapter 9 The Layers—Vāk, Kośa, Chakras and Manifestations of Brahman “We need more studies on the ancient Indian psychology. Modern psychology, compared to ancient Indian psychology, including Buddhist psychology, looks like kindergarten level. Ancient Indian psychology is highly developed.” —His Holiness The Dalai Lama, speaking at Presidency University, Kolkata, January 13, 2015 resolution T he Ṛig Veda and the other Vedic books do not present a logical of the paradox of consciousness, but assert that knowledge is of two types: it is superficially dual, but at a deeper level, it has a unity. The Vedic theory implies a complementarity by insisting that the material and the conscious are aspects of the same transcendent reality. The modern scientific tradition is like the Vedic tradition, since it acknowledges contradictory or dual descriptions but seeks unifying explanations.3 Indian psychology is deeply internalised in all Indian philosophies and darshanas. The fundamental comprises in defining the levels of manas (basic emotion), buddhi (intellect), ahaṃkāra (ego), and chitta (the Self ). Brahman, or Universal Consciousness lies beyond, denoted as chit. There is a corresponding hierarchy of divinity—Brahman as the singular Supreme consciousness corresponding to chit, Ishta or the Trinity of Brahmā, Vishnu and Mahesha are at the second level corresponding to buddhi. The Devatās are at the third level—they correspond to the cognition points in a human being and can be said to correspond to ahaṃkāra. And manas or the basic emotions correspond to human beings or in a larger canvas, all conscious beings (Chaitanya jiva).

In Vāk, or the psychology of speech, often considered next to agni (as consciousness), the four levels can be related to what is called vaikhari, madhyama, paśyanti, and parā, as per Bhartrahari. The Rig Veda 1.164.45 says “catvari vak parimita padani tani vidur brahmana ye manishinah, guha trini nihita neengayanti turiyam vaco manushya vadanti” (i.e., The cognoscenti know of the Vāk that exists in four forms. Three are hidden and the fourth is what men speak.) In Western psychology, only three levels are recognised. The beyond-Self or Parā is not recognised. It is said that the foremost psychologists, Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung, learnt much from the Indian psychological systems, but the Church did not let them codify the fourth dimension as that would have completely negated the raison d’etre of the Church. Thus, Western psychology has remained incomplete, exactly as the Dalai Lama indicated. Consciousness in the Western system cannot exist without objects, but in the Indian system, it can exist by itself. Canadian psychologist, Melzack, says: “The field of psychology is in a state of crisis. We are no closer now to understanding the most fundamental problems of psychology than we were when psychology became a science a hundred years ago. Each of us is aware of being a unique ‘self ’, different from other people and the world around us. But the nature of the ‘self ’, which is central to all psychology, has no physiological basis in any contemporary theory and continues to elude us. The concept of ‘mind’ is as perplexing as ever… There is a profusion of little theories—theories of vision, pain, behaviourmodification, and so forth—but no broad unifying concepts… Cognitive psychology has recently been proclaimed as the revolutionary concept which will lead us away from the sterility of behaviourism. The freedom to talk about major psychological topics such as awareness and perceptual illusions does, indeed, represent a great advance over behaviourism. But on closer examination, cognitive psychology turns out to be little more than the psychology of William James published in 1890; some neuroscience and computer technology have been stirred in with the old psychological ingredients, but there have been no important conceptual advances… We are adrift, without the anchor of neuropsychological theory, in a sea of facts—and practically drowning in them. We desperately need new concepts, new approaches.” Sanātana Dharma has many other psychological levels as in tantra (kundalini chakra), and Yoga (kośa). In the Taittirīya Upanishad, an individual is represented in terms of five different sheaths or levels that enclose the individual’s self. These levels, shown

in an ascending order, are: • The physical body (annamaya kośa) • Energy sheath (prānamaya kośa) • Mental sheath (manomaya kośa) • Intellect sheath (vijnānamaya kośa) • Bliss sheath (ānandamaya kośa). These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels. At the highest level, above the emotion sheath, is the self. It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellect. This is a recognition of the fact that eventually, meaning is communicated by associations which are influenced by the emotional state. The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prāna. One may look at an individual in three different levels. At the lowest level is the physical body, at the next higher level is the energy systems at work, and at the next higher level are the thoughts. Since the three levels are interrelated, the energy situation may be changed by inputs either at the physical level or at the mental level. When the energy state is agitated and restless, it is characterised by rajas; when it is dull and lethargic, it is characterised by tamas. The state of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva. Prāna, or energy, is described as the currency, or the medium of exchange, of the psychophysiological system. The levels three, four, and five are often lumped together and called the mind.4 At another level, it may be related to the five shaktis (powers) of Shiva (in descending order)—Chit Shakti (power of consciousness), Anand Shakti (power of bliss), Ichchha Shakti (power of will), Gnāna Shakti (power of knowledge) and Kriya Shakti (power of creation). In the Tantra branch, which is the practical or technological approach to liberation, the Kundalini Chakras are the energy levels to which a person ascends through discipline of Yoga. They are described as Mulādhāra Chakra (base level) at the lowest level, rising up to Svādhishthāna Chakra (procreational level), Manipuraka Chakra (navel level or distribution level), Anahada Chakra (heart level), Vishuddha Chakra (throat level), Ājnā Chakra (between the eyebrows level), and Sahsrāra Chakra (crown level). As we have already seen in Part I, these are differentiated processesandamanifestationoftheOneSupremeConsciousness, the Brahman. The Brahman is all-pervasive, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. It is, therefore, permissible for a Sanātana follower to relate to this Supreme Force in any form, including murtis, nature, animals and humans.

Kathopanishad 2.2.12. (eko vaśī sarvabhūtāntarātmā ekaṁ rūpaṁ bahudhā yaḥ karoti—one controlling Spirit within all creatures maketh one form into many forms). In Abrahamic religions, God/Allah/Yahveh has the same powers, but strangely, He cannot manifest Himself, and is extremely jealous of any competing manifestation. We need to ponder whether this is a self-imposed limitation, or whether it moves Him to the third level of divine hierarchy, i.e. the Devatās. 4

On the Science of Consciousness in Ancient India, Subhash C. Kak, pp 7

3

On the Science of Consciousness in Ancient India, Subhash C. Kak, pp 7

Chapter 10 The Nine Darshanas nine Darshanas are detailed out in Chapter V on Epistemology. These T he are: 1. Veda (also called Purva Mimaṃsā) 2. Vedānta (Also called Uttara Mimaṃsā) 3. Sāṃkhya 4. Yoga 5. Nyāya 6. Vaisheshika 7. Bauddha 8. Jain 9. Chārvāka Each of them have their epistemological foundations as detailed out in Chapter V. There are many minor descensions like Ārya Samāj, Prarthana Samāj and Brahmo Samāj, with their own philosophies that are usually based on the denial of murti puja (idol worship). The Vedas are the seed scriptures of Sanātana. They are very old and go back into deep antiquity. Western chronology loves to date them to around 1500 BCE, but we know that their chronology is coloured by their Biblical prejudices. With the discovery of the Bhyranna site in the Saraswati-Indus Civilisation sites, the date of Indian civilisation has already been pushed back to 6000 BCE or older, thus destroying the basic foundation of what was called the Aryan Invasion Theory. The Vedas are a descriptive corpus with hymns to many deities. They are also referred to as Purva Mimaṃsā. Many sampradāyas (denominations) of Hindus consider the Vedas as divine revelation, but this is clearly a later influence. As we have seen in the Nāsadiya Sūkta (Rig Veda 10.129), the Vedas

also have an agnostic streak, as well as a deity-worshipping attribute, as would be evidenced by the 16 suktas composed in the worship of various deities, including Devi Sūkta and Narayana Sūkta. The Vedas are now discovered to be composed by Ṛishis, as given in the Indices (Anukramaṇikā) of Rig Veda. This is in direct contrast to the divine revelation theory, which is a belief among many Hindu sects, including the Ārya Samāj. Ārya Samāj goes to the extent of viewing Sanātana Dharma as based entirely on the Shabda Pramāṇa of the Vedas, which flies in the face of the standard epistemology of Sanātana Dharma as discussed in the chapter on Epistemology. The Srimad Bhagavad Gitā has summarised it beautifully in 2.46: yāvān artha udapāne sarvataḥ samplutodake tāvānsarveṣhu vedeṣhu brāhmaṇasya vijānataḥ The meaning is thus: Just as there is no need to dig a well when fresh water is flowing everywhere, so too, one who knows the pleasures of Brahman ‘the transcendental realm beyond matter from where we come’, does not need to seek material pleasure separately through means of Vedic rituals. In Bhagavad Gītā, 15.15, Krishna similarly places himself above the Vedas. Thus, the Vedas are a means to knowing the Supreme, and not an end in themselves. The Vedānta, or the Gnāna Kānda of the Vedas, makes it even clearer. Comprising of the 11 great Upanishads and many minor ones, Vedānta delves into deep philosophy. Vedānta teaches that the ultimate reality is Brahman, which is the source and essence of all existence. It also teaches that every individual has a true Self or Ātman, which is identical to Brahman, and that the goal of spiritual practice is to realise this identity and achieve liberation from the cycle of birth and death. There are several schools of Vedānta, including Advaita Vedānta, which emphasises the non-dual nature of reality. Vishishtadvaita Vedānta places Brahman, Jeevatama and Jagat in one vessel, and Dvaita Vedānta, emphasises the dualistic relationship between Brahman on the one hand and Jeevatma and Jagat on the other. Vedānta has had a profound influence on Hinduism and has also had an impact on other philosophical and religious traditions around the world. Sāṃkhya is the next one of the six major schools of Hindu philosophy that is based on the Samkhya Karika, a text attributed to the sage Kapila. The term ‘Samkhya’, is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘sankhyā’, which means

‘enumeration’ or ‘counting’. Sāṃkhya philosophy is dualistic, and posits that there are two fundamental principles of the universe: Purusha (consciousness) and Prakriti (matter). According to Sāṃkhya, the universe is created by the interaction of these two principles, and all objects and beings are a combination of the two. Purusha is the conscious element (Chetana) and Prakriti the matter (jaḍa). Sāṃkhya holds that the ultimate goal of human life is to achieve liberation (moksha) from the cycle of birth and death, and that this can be accomplished through the realisation of the true nature of the self, as being distinct from the body and mind. Samkhya also recognises the importance of ethical conduct (dharma), as well as meditation and self-discipline, as a means of achieving spiritual progress. The Srimad Bhagavad Gitā dedicates one full chapter to Sāṃkhya. Yoga Darshana, as postulated by Patanjali, is the technology to achieve samādhi, which is almost the same as direct perception of the Brahman as posited in Vedānta. Patanjali Yoga, or the eight-limbed Yoga is focused on control of the mind. There is also another form of Yoga that is focused on control of the body, and is called Hatha Yoga. The progenitor of Hatha Yoga is Guru Gorakhnath. The Nyāya system is based on the Nyāya Sutras, which were authored by Gautama, also known as Akṣapada. The Nyāya Sutras provide a framework for understanding how to reason correctly and arrive at true knowledge. The Nyāya school is characterised by its emphasis on critical thinking and logical analysis. It is concerned with the nature of knowledge, perception, inference, and testimony. The Nyāya school also provides a classification of different types of knowledge, such as direct perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumāna), comparison (upamāna), and testimony (shabda pramāṇa). The Vaisheshika system is based on the Vaisheshika Sutras, which were authored by Kanada. The Vaisheshika Sutras provide a framework for understanding the nature of reality, which is believed to be composed of nine fundamental categories or dravyas—earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, soul, and mind. These categories are further classified into different subcategories based on their properties and qualities. The Vaisheshika school is characterised by its emphasis on atomism and realism. It posits that everything in the universe is composed of an infinite number of atoms, which are eternal and indivisible. It also postulates Laws of Gravity. The Vaisheshika school also provides a classification of different types

of knowledge, such as direct perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumāna), comparison (upamāna), and testimony (shabda pramāṇa). Within these larger philosophical schools, there are also sects of worship that are generally denominated by the principal deities they worship, but almost none of them exclude other deities. These are: 1. Shaiva (Shiva as the principal deity) 2. Vaishnava (Vishnu) 3. Saura (Sun) 4. Shākta (Devi, or Durgā) 5. Gāṇapatya (Ganesha) 6. Kaumara (Kārtikeya) The Bauddha philosophy initially did not honour the Shabda Pramāṇa at all, but has later regressed to a level where it honours the Shabda Pramāṇa of Gautam the Buddha, but does not honour Veda Pramāṇa. Prof. Subhash Kak demystifies many myths associated with Buddhism: “The layperson believes that whereas the Veda accepts the idea of the ātman (translated into English as “Self”), which is both immanent and transcendent, Buddhism does not. Indeed, in the popular imagination, the Buddha promoted the doctrine of anātman or anattā, and he took the ground stuff of reality to be nothing, what came to be called śūnyatā or emptiness. Generally speaking, the recognition of the three doctrines of anattā, the absence of self, anicca (Skt. anitya, impermanence), and dukkha (suffering) as three characteristics of all existence (tri-lakṣaṇa), constitute “right understanding” in Buddhism. “In reality, early Buddhist texts do discuss ātman as in Dīgha Nikāya, Samyutta Nikāya, Vinaya, Majjhima Nikāya and Aṅguttara Nikāya. But for certain historical reasons, anattā became a bedrock doctrine of Buddhism. Nagarjuna (~200 CE), explicitly rejected ātman (self, soul), claiming in Mūlamadhyamakakārikā that ‘Buddha taught the doctrine of no-self.’ “The circumstances under which Śākyamuni Buddha died and his last sermon are described in the Pali Mahāparinibbāna- suttanta and the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (or just the Nirvāṇa Sūtra), the latter of which is a much more substantial text in which the Buddha goes into the very heart of the teachings that had been taught earlier by him. “We find the eighty-year-old Buddha unwell. He and his entourage are in transit to the town of Kuśinagara in the land of the Mallas, where in the outskirts

he lays down between a pair of sal trees, announcing his impending death. Hearing of this, throngs assemble. Amongst them is Chunda, an artisan from the town. He and others get down on their right knees and address the Buddha entreating him to stay longer in this world. The Buddha reminds Chunda: “All created things Have impermanent nature Having come into existence, they do not last Tranquil extinction is bliss “But Chunda presents many arguments why the teaching of emptiness was not going to give them comfort and words like nirvāṇa—or even the non-nirvāṇa— of the Tathāgata seemed contradictory and difficult to understand. This prompts the Buddha to eventually reveal the secret doctrine of the ātman. “The MPNS is one of the most important scriptures in the Buddhist canon and in the fifth century two translations based on two different Sanskrit texts were produced, one by the famed traveller Faxian (418 CE); and the other longer ‘Northern version’ by Dharmakṣema in 422 CE. There is also a later Tibetan version (c 790 CE). “The Buddha had used emptiness to help his disciples separate themselves from earlier attachments. He explains the supersession of the Nonself doctrine by the Self doctrine with this parable: “‘Consider the story of mother whose infant son is ill. The physician gives her medicine for the boy with the instruction, ‘After the child takes the medicine, do not give him your milk until he has fully digested the medicine.’ The mother smears a bitter-tasting substance on her breasts and tells her young child that the breasts have poison on them. Having heard this, the child pulls away from her when he is hungry. But after the medicine has been ingested, the mother washes her breasts and calls out to her son, ‘Come and I shall give you milk.’ “The Veda is the mother’s milk that the Buddha did not allow his disciples to partake until they had purified themselves with the austere message of emptiness.”5

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Prof. Subhash Kak—The Buddha and the Veda

Chapter 11 The Nirguṇa (formless) and Saguṇa (with form) ‘Nirguṇa kaun des ko baasi?’

stanza is taken from Soordasa’s Soor Sagar, and is part of the T his Uddhava-Gopi dialogues which take place when Uddhava who is sent to Vrindavan to console the Gopis, preaches Nirguṇa Brahmā to them and ends up getting schooled himself. The event demonstrates how Saguṇa Upāsanā is an equally valid path to experiencing the Supreme. The debate between Nirguṇa and Saguṇa appears to be an extension of the same binary that plagues the Abrahamic religions who vilify what they call ‘idol worship’. As a purely common sense argument, it is impossible to rationalise why an all-powerful God would deny itself any physical expression. Is an all-powerful God so powerless that it cannot be located in a physical form? That amounts to a vote of no-confidence in the all-powerful nature of the Supreme, or what Hindus would call Brahman, or Universal Consciousness. Any God that cannot manifest itself in every form is a powerless God. The Kathopanishad (2.2.12) states: eko vaśī sarvabhūtāntarātmā ekaṁ rūpaṁ bahudhā yaḥ karoti | tamātmasthaṁ ye’nupaśyanti dhīrāsteṣāṁ sukhaṁ śāśvataṁ netareṣām || This means: One calm and controlling Spirit within all creatures maketh one form into many manifestations; the calm and strong who see Him in the self as in a mirror, theirs is eternal felicity and ‘tis not for others. The Sanātaṇa Nirguṇa vs. Saguṇa debate is slightly different from the Abrahamic loathing of the worship of God in physical form. The Abrahamic theology makes God totally separate from man. It believes in Creationism, with God/Allah a distinctly separate power. The Indian Dvaita argument revolves around whether the Jeeva is a manifestation of the Supreme itself (Advaita), an Ansha or part of the Supreme (Vishishtadvaita), or a reflection of the Supreme

(Dvaita). The Bhagavad Gitā deals with the issue in its twelfth and thirteenth chapters as bhakti vs. gnāna. The issue has also been addressed in the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gitā. There is an even greater confusion among Abrahamic religions about Nirguṇa-Nirākāra and Saguṇa-Sākāra. The Abrahamic God is full of attributes, it is Saguṇa but it is also without form (Nirākāra). The Ārya Samāj Ishvara is even Sākāra, but cannot enter into an idol. That makes the argument incompatible with the pratyaksha pramāṇa and is untenable. In the seventh chapter, the Bhagavad Gitā exalts the gnāni (wise) over ārta (in pain), jijnāsu (seeker) and arthārthī (seeking wealth) as follows: chaturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino ’rjuna/ ārto jijñāsur arthārthī jñānī cha bharatarṣabha —Bhagavad Gitā 7.16 teṣāṁ jñānī nityayukta ekabhaktir viśiṣyate priyo hi jñānino ’tyartham ahaṁ sa cha mama priyaḥ —Bhagavad Gitā 7.17 The meaning of the above is: Of these four, the person who is dedicated to acquiring knowledge about Me and engages directly in My service with eka bhakti, ‘single-minded devotion’, is most affectionately linked to Me. They are extremely priya ‘beloved’ to Me, and I think of them constantly. However, in the twelfth chapter on Bhakti Yoga, the Bhagavad Gitā seemingly contradicts what it says in the seventh chapter, Bhagavad Gitā verses 3 to 9: ye tv akṣaram anirdeśyam avyaktaṁ paryupāsate/ sarvatragam achintyaṁ ca kūṭastham achalaṁ dhruvam (12.3) Meaning: But those who are constantly focused upon the Brahman reality as akshara—imperishable anirdeshya— undefinable avyakta—materially unmanifest sarvatraga—all- pervading achintya—inconceivable kutastha— unchanging achala—unmoving dhruva—constant… saṁniyamyendriyagrāmaṁ sarvatra samabuddhayaḥ/ te prāpnuvanti mām eva sarvabhūtahite ratāḥ (12.4) …and those who have completely subdued their indriyas ‘bodily senses’, who are even minded and indifferent in all of life’s situations, and who rejoice in

the well-being of all living entities—they also attain Me. kleśo ’dhikataras teṣām avyaktāsaktachetasām/ avyaktā hi gatir duḥkhaṁ dehavadbhir avāpyate (12.5) Those whose yoga is focused upon My inconceivable, unmanifest, and imperceptible nature follow the most difficult yogic path. For those who are embodied, the pursuit of My quality-less, undifferentiated Brahman nature is the most difficult and troublesome way to approach Me. ye tu sarvāṇi karmāṇi mayi saṁnyasya matparāḥ/ ananyenaiva yogena māṁ dhyāyanta upāsate (12.6) But those who surrender all their actions to Me, who adore Me and are intent upon My association, dedicating everything to Me in undisturbed bhakti yoga… teṣām ahaṁ samuddhartā mṛtyusaṁsārasāgarāt/ bhavāmi nacirāt pārtha mayy āveśitacetasām (12.7) …those who approach Me in this way, O Arjuna, I quickly deliver them from the ocean of samsara, ‘repeated birth and death’. mayy eva mana ādhatsva mayi buddhiṁ niveśaya/ nivasiṣyasi mayy eva ata ūrdhvaṁ na saṁśayaḥ (12.8) Therefore, just focus your manas and buddhi upon Me in every way and under all circumstances, and you will dwell in Me always and forever. There is no doubt about this bhakti yoga practice. atha chittaṁ samādhātuṁ na śaknoṣi mayi sthiram/ abhyāsayogena tato mām icchāptuṁ dhanaṁjaya (12.9) But if you cannot hold the steady focus of your chitta faculty upon Me, O Arjuna, then practice abhyasa yoga ‘one-pointed concentration’ in order to attain Me. Thus, Shri Krishna tells Arjuna that gnāna marg through Nirguṇa being the most difficult, the Saguṇa Bhakti is the easy and faster path. This is the harmony that the Bhagavad Gitā establishes between Bhakti and Gnāna, Saguṇa and Nirguṇa. A similar harmony is established between Nirākāra and Sākāra.

It is summed up beautifully by Raskhan, a Sufi Muslim poet who became a devotee of Krishna: Ses ganes mahes dines suresahu jahi nirantar gavain/ Aadi, anadi, akhanda, ananta, ached, abhed subed batavain// Narad so suk byas ratain pachi haari tau puni paar na pawain/ Tahi ahir ki chhohariyan chhachhiya bhar chhachh pe nach nachawain// (One whose praises are continuously sung by Sheshanaga (Ses), Ganesha (Ganes), Shiva (Mahes), Surya (Dines) and Indra (Sures); One who is described by the great Vedas as the Beginning (Aadi), without a beginning (Anadi), without division (Akhanda), without end (Ananta), cannot be pierced (Achheda), without difference (Abheda); One who is difficult to fathom by such Rishis as Narada, Shukadeva and Vyas in spite of great effort; He is made to dance for a few drops of buttermilk by daughters of cowherds (Gopis).)

Chapter 12 Hindutva vs Hinduism Debate “Hindutva is Hinduism that resists.” —Sankrant Sanu

litterateur, T he term Hindutva was first used by Chandranath Basu, a Bengali in his 1892 magnum opus Hindur Prakriti Itihas, meaning ‘History of Hindu Nature’. However, the term has come to be associated with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar for his work ‘Hindutva’. Etymologically, ‘ism’ is a binary that puts the particular ‘ism’ in conflict with the rest, whereas ‘tva’ is the essence of what it describes. Thus, etymologically Hindutva is the essence of Hindu Dharma, or Hindu religion if we use the western construct. Hinduism on the other hand would mean the assertion of the Hindu religion, in the manner of Marxism or Islamism or Socialism. The world, which usually runs on the basis of western points of view, distinguishes between Islam and Islamism, calls the Christian religion Christianity with no scope for Christism, or Christianism, but puts the Hindus and Jews squarely within the bracket of Hinduism and Judaism. The present Hinduism vs. Hindutva debate is nothing but a rehashed version of the debate over Gandhi’s methods vs. methods of other Hindus in the pre-independence era. It is important to note that Subhas Bose once remarked in exasperation that Gandhi started a movement, and pulled back to help the British just as the movement was on the verge of getting a definite result. It is now widely acknowledged that it was the Indian National Army and the doubts that it created in the British mind about the loyalty of Indian troops, further reinforced by the Naval Mutiny, that the British decided to leave India. Gandhi was ever the supplicant, willing to pick up the crumbs thrown to him by the British as long as the Congress and his favourites could get power. It always suited the British and the West to praise Gandhi’s pacifist methods. The British had noticed the martial qualities of Indians and had taken action to

disarm them through the Arms Act. The West used Gandhi after his death to lull Indians into thinking that the world appreciated a brand of Hinduism that followed the Gandhian path of ‘ahiṃsā’. This ensured that India did not rediscover its martial spirit and remained pacifist, so as to enable the global forces of Left, Islam and Evangelicals to destroy it. Hindutva, on the other hand, embraces the teachings of the Bhagavad Gitā that cures the delusions of a confused Arjuna to persuade him to fight injustice. The concept of a just war taught by the Bhagavad Gitā is reflected in Hindutva. It essentially makes the Arjuna in every Hindu arise. Gandhi’s ahiṃsā is completely flawed. He forgets the very basis of Sanātana Dharma and brings ahiṃsā down to the physical level, even though the Bhagavad Gitā (18.17) is absolutely clear that the real ahiṃsā is in the ego, or even in the mind: yasya nāhaṅkṛto bhāvo buddhir yasya na lipyate hatvāpi sa imāḻ lokān na hanti na nibadhyate Meaning: One who is not motivated by false ego, whose intelligence is not entangled, though he kills men in this world, does not kill. Nor is he bound by his actions. Thus, Gandhi’s definition was actuated by a false ego. Gandhi was always plagued by this ego. This was his failing and he took his followers down with it. It resulted in the partition of India. Ironically, his policy of ahimsa brought untold misery and bloodshed for millions. His followers were the ones who got hit the most. They lost everything—a part of the country, millions of fellow Hindus, and their pride as well. To add to the stupidity, he retained those very same people who had caused this denouement. Savarkar traces Hindutva to the development of Hindu consciousness. He calls an ‘ism’ as a theory or a spiritual or religious dogma. Hindutva, according to him, is a far broader term that includes the essentials of being a Hindu. He then goes on to trace this consciousness from the Vedic times to the present times, and specially highlights the Maratha period when this consciousness rose in resurgence after the dark period of Islamic rule in India. He says that ‘had not linguistic usage stood in our way, Hinduness would certainly have been a better term than Hinduism, as a near parallel to Hindutva’. The Hinduism vs. Hindutva is, therefore, a contrived debate devised by the West. This was corroborated by the way many Western India-hating groups

became active in the academia and began hosting ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’. It bore uncanny resemblance to the demonisation of the Hindus that was let loose in the 19th century for the purpose of national demoralisation, and the weakening of the basics of Sanātana Hindu Dharma, as the Church feared its innate power of inclusive embrace. Islam had similarly tried to build a cocoon around itself as witnessed in the literature (mainly letters) of Mujaddid Alf-eSani Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi. In the 21st century, India is rising and Hindus are becoming more confident. They are also taking advantage of the internet revolution to literally dismantle the dogmas that the Marxists, the Church and Islamic clergy bound Hindus hand and foot with. These chains are now being discarded faster than ever, and Hindus are discovering their true identity rooted in Dharma and Karma, and also discovering the dogma-filled world of Islam, Christianity and Marxism. Because Hindu philosophy is comfortable with the scientific method and empirical evidence, its rise is feared. This is the reason these forces seek to vilify the real essence of the Hindu Dharma with a pacific brand of Gandhian clap trap they call Hinduism. Hinduism vs. Hindutva is, therefore, a faux debate. Hindutva is the teachings of the Bhagavad Gitā as propounded by Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, as opposed to cowardice exhibited by the teachings of Gandhi that the West so loves, only in order to keep the Hindus from the true light of wisdom that their ancient tradition offers them.

Chapter 13 Understanding Hindu Symbolism

A s stated in Chapter 2, each mantra/story can be interpreted in three different ways, depending on the level at which a person’s mental faculty is operating. For example, the Vedic Agni is either the sacrificial fire, or the fire deity, or Universal Consciousness (Brahman) depending upon whether your mental faculty is operating at the ādhibhautika, ādhidaivika or ādhyātmika level. More simply put, you can divide the deities and symbols into lower meanings and higher meanings. Here, we provide a list of ādhyātmika meanings of many deities and symbols: 1. Agni Agni is the sacrificial fire to the gross eye. It is a deity that provides light, heat and warmth to the mental eye and consciousness, or even Parabrahma to the subtle eye in the Vedas. Agni has multiple meanings too, and is the primal force behind many body functions, e.g., jatharagni, or the heat that provides the power of digestion, or chidagni, the light of consciousness, or pashchatapa agni, the light of penitence (in which Sita entered to purify herself ). Once you identify Agni as Universal Consciousness in the Vedas, the meaning of many verses change their meanings as compared to Western translations that are totally at a loss to make sense of the Vedas. 2. Shiva and Shivalinga Shiva is the Supreme Consciousness in the Shaivite tradition, similar to Brahman of the Vedantic tradition, and Mahavishnu of the Vaishnavite tradition. As a part of the second level trinity (the three-guna-division of Universal Consciousness), Shiva is the timeless pole that joins the Purusha and Parkriti, or chit and chitta. The Shivalinga is the mark or the representation of that pole (linga is defined as a mark in Vaisheshika Sūtra 2.1.8), which is undergirded by the Vishnu Tattva and Brahmā Tattva (the hexagonal and the rectangular part underneath the ellipse at the top). As the Lord of Time, or Mahākāla, He spans everything visible and

invisible, which is again contained within the mark of Time, or linga. 3. Ardha-Nareeswara Shiva encompasses the masculine and feminine, and is thus depicted as the force that is half male and half female. 4. Gaṇesha/Ganapathi Ganesha is the symbol of a being that has had its ego-filled head of a human being cut off and replaced with the wisdom- filled head of an elephant. That is why Ganesha symbolises viveka. He is the first to be invoked in every worship so that one is able to approach the worship without ego, and with viveka. Every part of Ganesha or Ganapathi symbolises elements of wisdom. The large ears symbolise the listening capacity. His small eyes denote concentration. The trunk denotes adaptability and efficiency. Its upward orientation denotes the rising kundalini. His large stomach denotes the capacity to digest all the good and bad deeds. One broken tusk denotes non-dualism. His mount, the mouse, denotes desire, whom He rides and controls. With the axe, he cuts all bondage, with the rope, he pulls you nearer to your ultimate goal, liberation. He keeps the modaka to give you the reward of sadhana. 5. Lakshmi Mother Lakshmi represents the Shakti aspect of the preserver guna of the Trinity, i.e., Vishnu. She is Vishnu’s consort. Lakshmi rides an owl, which has the capacity to pierce through the darkness with its eyes. Lakshmi uses him to ride through darkness and bring light. She is born from a huge churn of the Cosmos, brought up by Varuna, the ocean deity—it signifies the cosmic deity bringing forth the power of material well- being on a lotus, which signifies total detachment, like a water drop on a lotus petal. That the lotus grows in mud is also a symbolism of deep significance as to how sacredness can emerge from dirt due to its intrinsic qualities. Mother Lakshmi is also called Shri, or the deity of prosperity, which is signified by the symbolism of her lower left hand showering gold coins, and the right lower hand held up in blessing. 6. Saraswati Saraswati is the daughter of Vishnu, and consort of Brahmā, the creative force. As the creative force, He is complimented by the Shakti of Gyana, represented by the white-clad Saraswati. 7. Parvati

In Kashmir Shaivism, Parvati is described as ‘The Way’. Shiva is the Supreme, and you can reach Him only through his Shakti, which is Mata Parvati, who is also his consort. In Shākta sampradaya,6 Parvati is the Devi who manifests herself as the different forms of Shakti, including Navadurga. In the non-dual system, She is the energy that takes one to Universal Consciousness. She is also the Prakriti, or yoni, that can house the Purusha, or the Brahmānda within. 8. Mahishasuramardini The goddess Chandika represents the transformative power by which men can conquer the beast (Mahishasura) in them. Chanda means ferocity, passion, anger, or cruelty. It represents the impure, animal nature. 9. Devatās Devatās are different points of consciousness in a person’s brain. Thirty-three categories of Devatās are defined—twelve Adityas, eleven Rudras, eight Vasus, and two Ashwini Kumars. 10. Demons Demons are the destabilising points in our consciousness. 11. Naga or snakes Nagas are the forms of cosmic energy that rise up through our points of energy or Chakras. There are seven chakras— mulādhāra, swadishthana, manipuraka, anhada, vishuddha, agnā and sahasrara. 12. Amrita-manthana Ksheersagar is the Cosmic Ocean of Consciousness. Churning of this milk consciousness with the mountain of concentration yields jewels. Churning occurs with the serpent of energy between good and evil traits of the mind. 13. Hanumana Hanumana represents the Prāna Shakti that drives the universe. Prāna is fleeting or Chanchal, hence Hanumana is in the body of a monkey. The monkey is tamed by the great qualities of yoga, wisdom and valour in Hanumana. 6

Loosely translated as denomination

PART III The Abrahamic Principles and Origins

Chapter 14 Zoroastrians, Mandaeans and Nabataeans have discussed the basics of Abrahamic faith in the initial chapters. W e However, the Time concepts, Cosmology, Prophetism and Satanism can be found in many other religions that were common in Persia and the wider Middle East. 1. Zoroastrians There is now very strong linguistic and archaeological evidence to support the notion that Zoroastrians were later Vedic people who went west. However, Zoroastrians have done many things that show their keenness to distinguish themselves from the Vedic people. Zarathushtra was the Prophet, Avesta the Book, Ahura Mazda the monotheistic God, and Ahurmanyu, the Satan. Apostasy punishments are seen for the first time in Zoroastrianism. Prof. Subhash Kak explains it as follows: “Zarathushtra presented his religion as the rival to the religion of the daevas, that is Daevayasna. Zarathushtra came from Bactria in northeast Iran, near Afghanistan. The Avesta speaks of several lands that include the Sapta Sindhu (Sindhu-Sarasvati region of North and Northwest India).” The scripture of the Zoroastrians is the Avesta. It includes the Yasna (Sanskrit yajna) with the G¯ath¯as of Zarathushtra, Videvdat or Vendidad (Vidaeva-dat, ‘anti-daeva’), and Yaˇst (hymn), which are hymns for worship. During the Sasanian period, the Avesta was translated into Pahlavi and this version is called Zend Avesta. The Zoroastrians speak of mathra (Sanskrit ‘mantra’) as utterances that accompany meditation. Like the Vedic tripartite division of society, Zoroastrians have the classes of priests (zaotar), warriors (nar), and pasturers (v¯astar). It has been assumed formerly that the daevas of the Mazda faith are the same as the Vedic devas, and therefore, Zarathushtra inverted the deva-asura

dichotomy of the Vedic period. In reality, the situation is more complex. The Vedic and the Zarathushtrian systems are much less different than is generally supposed. From Kashmir, which belongs square within the Vedic world, comes crucial evidence regarding a three-way division consisting of devas, asuras, and daevas. The scheme reflects the three-way division that is basic to Vedic thought. These three divisions in the outer realm are the earth, atmosphere, and the sun; in the inner world they are the body, breath (pr¯an. a), and consciousness or ātman. This tripartite classification is mirrored in the gunas of Indian thought: sattva, rajas, and tamas. The concept of finite time that ends with the Last Day of Judgement, was first brought in by Zoroastrianism, which postulated a time cycle of 10,000 years, in which souls went through many life cycles till the Day of Last Judgement. Thus, the three key concepts of Monotheism, Prophetism and Finite Time were first brought in by Zoroastrianism, and were adopted by the Abrahamic religions with variations. 2. Mandaeans The Mandaeans practised Mandaeism. Mandaeism is sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism. It was a gnostic and monotheistic religion centred in Judaea. They later migrated to the plains between the Euphrates and Tigris. They had a series of Prophets, and regard John the Baptist as the final Prophet. They, however, do not have the concept of the Day of Last Judgement, as they believe in reincarnation, since they believe that a merciful God cannot punish anyone for eternity. Their Holy Book, the Ginza Rabba, is very similar to the Qur’an in its language, verse patterns, and intonations. Modern experts even consider the Qur’an to be a copy of the Ginza Rabba. 3. Nabataeans The Nabataeans were an Arabic people who can be traced between the Euphrates and the Red Sea, with evidence of their presence from as far back as the 7th century BCE. They worshipped Dushara and Al-Uzza as gods, with Dushara being the Supreme God. They also traced their origins from Ismail, through Ismail’s son Nabit. Petra in today’s Southern Jordan, was their capital. The language that was

used by them was similar to the Arabic in which the Qur’an is written. The fact that the language of the Qur’an is similar to Nabataean Arabic, and not to the Meccan Arabic, along with the fact that Petra was the qibla (direction towards which Islamic prayers are offered) almost till 720 CE, has given rise to very credible theories that Islam was not born in Mecca or Medina, but in the area stretching from Damascus to Petra. They are regarded as polytheistic in the manner of pre- Islamic Arabs. However, they also believed in afterlife in the manner of Islam. Their concept of afterlife does not seem to be very different from that of the Islamic concept of afterlife.

Chapter 15 Akhenatens, Mitanni and Hittites Akhenatens were an ancient Egyptian civilisation. The Mitanni and T he Hittites were Vedic civilisations centred in present-day Levant (Syria and Iraq) and Anatolia (Turkey) respectively. Prof. Subhash Kak has studied this subject closely. He states that Tadukhipa, daughter of the Mitanni King Tushratta or even Dasharatha (reigned c. 1382–1342 BCE), was married to an Egyptian pharaoh named Akhenaten (reign 1352–1336 BCE), who was a sun-worshipper. The Mitannis of the West Asia worshipped Vedic deities. Some scholars believe that Tadukhipa and Nefertiti are the same person. Letters exchanged between Akhenaten and Tushratta have been found in Amarna in Egypt, and also in the tombs of that period, which are in excellent condition. The Amarna age is considered an idyllic age, and Akhenaten is believed by many to have pioneered religious beliefs that became the seed of western monotheistic traditions. Prof. Kak has examined the widely-held belief that sun- worship introduced by Akhenaten had its root in the Vedic belief of the Mitanni, and later in Jewish and Christian beliefs, has directly borrowed from Akhenaten beliefs. He has shown that Akhenaten’s famous hymn to Aten was a precursor to the Psalm 104 of the Bible, and was actually influenced by the Vedic heritage of the Mitanni. “The Mitanni, who worshipped Vedic gods, were an Indic kingdom that had bonds of marriage across several generations with the Egyptians 18th dynasty to which Akhenaten belonged. The Mitanni were known to the Egyptians as the Naharin (N’h’ryn’), connected to the river (nahar), very probably referring to the Euphrates. At its peak, the Mitanni empire stretched from Kirkuk (ancient Arrapkha) and the Zagros Mountains in the Western Iran in the east, through Assyria to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. “But how could an Indic kingdom be so far from India, near Egypt? A plausible scenario is that after catastrophic earthquakes dried up the Saraswati

river around 1900 BCE, groups of Indic people started moving west. This idea of western movement of Indic people is preserved in the Vedic and Purānic texts. “We see Kassites, a somewhat shadowy aristocracy with Indic names and worshipping Surya and Maruts, in western Iran about 1800 BCE. They captured power in Babylon around 1600 BCE, which they were to rule for over 500 years. The Mitanni, another group that originated thus, ruled northern Mesopotamia (including Syria) for about 300 years, starting 1600 BCE, out of their capital Vasukhāni (Wasukkani). “In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, Indic deities Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and Nasātya (Aśvins) are invoked… Their chief festival was the celebration of viśuva (solstice) very much like in India. It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have been unearthed in the records from the area.”7 ‘Hymn to the Aten’ is a poem written by Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE. It is a hymn of praise to the god Aten, the sun disc, and is considered one of the earliest examples of monotheistic literature. Here is an excerpt from the hymn: “Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky, O living Aten, creator of life! When thou risest on the eastern horizon, Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. Thou art gracious, great, and radiant, High above every land. Thy rays encompass the lands to the limit of all that thou hast made.” The hymn reflects Akhenaten’s belief that Aten was the only god, and that all other gods were false. This was a radical departure from the traditional Egyptian religion, which recognised a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Akhenaten’s reign was short-lived, and after his death, the old religion was restored. However, his ideas about monotheism would have a lasting impact on the development of religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity. Now let us look at the Psalm 104 of the Bible. Psalm 104 is a hymn of praise that celebrates the greatness and majesty of God as the creator and sustainer of the universe. It begins with a call to worship and an acknowledgement of God’s power and glory: 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendour and majesty, The psalmist then goes on to describe the wonders of Creation, from the light and darkness, to the waters and mountains, and the many creatures that inhabit the earth: 2. …covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the

heavens like a tent. 3. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind. 4. He makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. And so it goes on…. We can clearly see the connection between the ideas of Akhenaten and monotheism of the Bible. We have also seen the close connection between the Hittites and the Mitanni. Hittites were also a Vedic people, who moved west of Iran. Iran later developed a monotheistic counter-Vedic philosophy that became Zoroastrianism. However, the Hittites and Mitanni continued to embrace their Vedic roots. The present Yazidis are perhaps the last remnants of the Mitanni in what was the original centre of the Mitanni empire. The Hittites, as mentioned earlier, flourished in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) from the 18th to the 12th centuries BCE. They were known for their military prowess and their skill in working with iron. The Hittites established a powerful kingdom that stretched from central Anatolia to northern Syria, and encompassed many other regions as well. They were known for their advanced military technology, including their use of chariots and iron weapons, which gave them a significant advantage over their enemies. The Hittites were also known for their impressive architecture, including the construction of massive fortifications and impressive temples. They were skilled in the use of stone and metal, and they produced some of the finest metalwork and sculpture of their time. The Hittite empire declined in the 12th century BCE due to a combination of internal instability and external pressure from invading tribes. However, their legacy lived on through the Hittite language, which was written in a unique form of cuneiform script and was deciphered in the early 20th century by archaeologists and linguists. Today, the Hittites are recognised as one of the most important and influential civilisations of the ancient Near East. Thus, we can see the earliest influences that later coalesced to form the monotheistic creed in the Near East, or the Middle East. 7

Akhenaten, Sūrya and the Ṛgveda—Subhash Kak

Chapter 16 The Tanakh and Judaism

or the religion of the Jews is an Abrahamic and monotheistic J udaism religion with Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible as its holy book. Its features are somewhat different from the earlier monotheistic creeds like Zoroastrianism and Akhenaten’s religion. Monotheism is often touted as a ‘One God Religion’. However, it is more proper to call it ‘Only God Religion’, because it lays more emphasis on its God being the only God, rather than on being One God. Even the Eastern religions talk about Brahman, or Ik Omkar, being the one Universal Consciousness. Monism, therefore, is about One Supreme. Abrahamic religions, however, also emphasise their God to be the only God, and reject the many manifestations of the One Supreme. Judaism emphasises the importance of following the Torah, which in itself a part of the Tanakh, the central religious text that contains the Jewish laws and teachings. The Torah consists of five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Jews believe in the concept of the covenant, a sacred agreement between God and the Jewish people. This covenant involves God’s promise to protect and guide the Jewish people, and their promise to follow his laws and teachings. The Jewish God is called Yahweh. He passed on His commandments through Moses and Abraham, and promised them the land of Canaan. Features: 1. Only God 2. Prophetism 3. Creationism 4. Rule by Commandments

5. Binary Logic 6. Word of the Book being the Only Truth, and only proof 7. Day of Last Judgement 8. Eternal Heaven and Hell 9. Chosen people, therefore, no proselytisation The bedrock on which the Jewish faith rests is ‘The Ten Commandments’ of Moses. These read as follows: 1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. 2. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 4. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. 5. Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 6. You shall not murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal. 9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. 10. You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or

anything that belongs to your neighbour. As one can see, these are purely material concerns codified as commandments. They require only the Word of the scripture to become their own proof. They are axioms, which scientists call dogma. Supremacism and exclusivism are very much in evidence. Cosmology is limited to the dogma of Genesis, based on creationism, and the Time concept is that of Finite Time. It may be noted that the Jewish God, Yahweh (Jehovah) reveals himself to Moses as a ‘jealous God’, who hates disbelievers. This means that the God is equivalent to level three of the Hindu hierarchy of Gods, at the level of the Devatās. Level three Gods in the Hindu pantheon are full of humanly attributes. They can be jealous, angry, hateful, and partisan in their love and compassion. Judaism also espoused extreme physical violence in taking possession of The Promised Land of Canaan/Judaea. They killed off all the original natives in the land and enslaved their women and children. The succeeding faiths of Christianity and Islam eagerly espoused these parts even as they adapted the Torah for their own use, and the additions that they made were to make their religions more and more intolerant and ferocious towards non- believers.

Chapter 17 The Bible and Christianity can be called Judaism Plus. It has taken the entire creationist C hristianity philosophy from Judaism, added its own Prophet in the form of a Son of God called Jesus Christ. The history of Jesus Christ, who was almost certainly born as a Jew, is unclear. A doctrine called Christology has been developed that studies the human and divine attributes of Jesus, and also studies the historical Jesus. (Christology is the doctrine of Jesus as the Christ.) We enumerated the basic principles of Judaism. Christianity makes some modifications in these principles, while retaining the basic features. To summarise: 1. Only God 2. Prophetism 3. Creationism with the concept of Original Sin 4. Rule by Commandments 5. Satan as antithesis of God 6. Binary Logic 7. Word of the Book being the Only Truth, and only proof 8. Jesus as the Only Saviour—Redemption, Resurrection, Ascension 9. Day of Last Judgement 10. Eternal Heaven and Hell 11. We are saved from eternal damnation not by our actions but by our belief that Jesus is the one true God and he is the only way to heaven, the salvation 12. It is the God-given duty of Christians to save all the souls in the world from perishing, therefore, proselytise 13. No sin in killing non-believers as they are devil worshippers—False

God Syndrome 14. Church as the enforcer of all of the above and more, its mandate and mission Christianity added some of its own dogma to the prevalent beliefs of the first century of the Common Era. It added the New Testament to the Tanakh, and called it the Bible, now popular as the Judeo-Christian Bible. It added a messiah figure and labelled him the Christ, building on the existing Jewish belief of an expected saviour to save the Jews. It attributed labels like ‘the son of God’ in the likeness of the Roman Sons of God. Last but not the least, it leveraged on the eastern philosophy of the Trinity by ascribing a spirit-like attribute to the alleged Son, and called him the Holy Ghost, creating the concept of the Holy Trinity, which has no mention or even basis in the Bible. Then there is the proselytisation that has been added to the religion, making conversion of indigenous populations a divine mandate. The Chosen People principle was substituted by Blessed People. Christians believe in proselytisation because they believe that the universal problem (sin) has a universal solution (Christ’s sacrifice). “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23) and are deserving of death. Yet Christ “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). This is the gospel, the good news, that must be shared with the needy world. We proselytise because we believe the need is urgent, Jesus is coming back soon. Christianity arose as a sect within the Jewish religion, but developed the Church as the central authority after it inveigled the Roman Emperor Constantine to convert to Christianity. It then developed various methods to expand. There is also the claim that Constantine was not inveigled to convert, but instead chose to make Christianity one of the official religions for political reasons, even though he remained a pagan to his dying day. As the Church took root and became strong with the help of the power of the empire, they started inventing Church doctrines and continuously updated them, making the process of their evolution a never-ending phenomenon. All this was carried out with a view to assert the supremacy of the Church. Over the centuries, and through Ecumenical Councils, Church Doctrines evolved in the following way: 1. From Unity of God to Trinity of God 2. From transportation of souls to eternal hell and heaven 3. From recurring Time to a curse on Cyclical Time

Even though Christians talk about Bible as the One Book, it is a collection of many books, including the five Books of Torah (called the Hebrew Bible by the Christians), and overall 46 books in the Old Testament by the Catholics, 39 books by the Protestants, and 52 books by the Greek Orthodox Church. In the New Testament, though, all the three Churches have the same number—27 books. The New Testament contains Gospels, Epistles of Paul, and the lesser Epistles. Over the centuries, it got to be called Bible or the One Book. This is quite unlike the One Book of Islam, which is indeed one concise book. The development of Christ as God from being a Son of God, took all of 600 years. Even today, there is considerable disagreement among the three major Churches about the status of Jesus as God/Son of God/God incarnated as son of God. From the 7th century onwards, both Christianity and Judaism entered into conflict with the newly-emergent Islam. Christianity’s conflict with Islam resulted in intense research about Islam, and it slowly evolved tools to claim superiority over Islam. This resulted in proclaiming Christianity as a rational creed in order to claim superiority over Islam. Thomas Acquinas (1225–1274) wrote a treatise on reason in the 13th century. This was the time when Christians stopped destroying pagan knowledge and started appropriating it. Once Toledo was reconquered during the Spanish Reconquista, something remarkable happened. For the first time, the city library was not destroyed. Instead, Christians set about translating all the knowledge contained in the books the Arabs had brought. A whole lot of knowledge contained in those books as brought from India was studied, copied, translated and later appropriated, in the movement towards Reason, under the influence of Thomas Acquinas. The difference between Judaism and Christianity has been that of expansion and appropriation. As the Church expanded to non-White areas, it invoked doctrines of Mosaic Ethnology (explained in detail in Chapter 18) to sanctify racism. Then the Catholic Church issued Papal Bulls to sanctify the Doctrine of Discovery. This latter doctrine stipulated that the Christians had the right on all the lands, peoples and knowledge that they discovered. It was under these doctrines of race and discovery that the Christians wiped out entire civilisations, including those of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, wiped out the natives in North America, and the aborigines in Australia and New Zealand. Colonisation was only a variation of these doctrines and was very much a Christian project. Papal Bulls (Commands issued by Pope) in 1452, 1455 and

1492 propounded a Doctrine of Discovery, which later became the foundation of the Colonisation Project. Colonisation was somewhat different from Islamic conquests in the sense that the Christians invested a lot of effort in understanding the cultures and practices of the people they conquered.

Chapter 18 The Qur’an and Islam is Christianity Plus, or Judaism Plus Plus. Even though it retains I slam the basic features of Time, Logic, Epistemology and Cosmology of the other two Abrahamic religions, it made significant modifications to them: 1. Only God 2. Prophetism 3. Creationism with the concept of ‘testing’ of the created 4. Satan as permanent rival of Allah (not clear whether created by Allah) 5. Rule by precepts of the Qur’an 6. Binary Logic 7. Word of the Revealed Book being the Only Truth, and only proof 8. Allah as the only God worth worshipping (La ilaha illalah) 9. Day of Last Judgement (Akhirat, Qayamat) 10. Eternal Heaven and Hell 11. Heaven (Jannat/Jannah) in afterlife the only objective 12. Allah’s grace alone can grant Jannah 13. Whole world to be converted to Islam before Qayamat (Qur’an 8.39) 14. Holy War (jihad) a must for every believer (Qur’an 9.123) 15. Mohammad as the ‘Final Prophet’ 16. Mohammad as the perfect example to follow (Qur’an 33.21) 17. All Rights Belong only to Allah (of sole worship, being feared and having believers as slaves) 18. Jihad as Total War Islam is a lot simpler than Christianity in that its doctrine is contained in the One

Book, the Qur’an and its two exegeses, the Hadis collection of the Prophet’s tradition, and the Prophet’s biography, Sirat-un-Nabawi. Islamic Arabs benefited from a long-standing strife between the Sassanians and Byzantines. The two had become weak through a long war. The Arabs had been acting as mercenaries for both the sides. After Islam came into Arabia, they leveraged their position to grab large swathes of territory, and using the ‘Total War’ Doctrine of Jihad, converted the conquered people. They also enforced Zimma (Pact of Omar) on the conquered, to humiliate them so that the cost of maintaining their erstwhile religions would be high. They had learnt all these tactics from the Christians and applied it against them. According to most scholars, Islam’s modern doctrines are retro-fitted onto an era in Mecca and Medina, which has no historical evidence. The first Qur’an is found from the time of Abd-al-Malik, the Marvani Ummayad king of the Ummayad dynasty. There is a whole branch of modern history that has proposed that Islam actually grew in Sham (Levant) and Northern Arabia in the land between Damascus and Petra. This is fortified by the fact that the present Qur’an bears no resemblance to the language of Mecca in the 7th century. It is accepted even by the Islamic scholars that the second leg of the Shari’a Law (which is basically the trilogy of Qur’an, the Hadis collection—traditions of the Prophet, and Sirat Rasool Allah—the biography of Prophet Mohammad) was compiled more than 200 years after the death of the Prophet in an area far away from the place of Islam’s birth, in Persia and Central Asia. The Prophet’s biography came to light even later, when Al Tabari wrote his history of Islam, basing his history on ibn Hisham’s biography of the Prophet, in turn stating that it was based on Ibn Ishaq’s original. Thus, the official biography of the Prophet around whom Islam is woven, saw the light of the day 300–350 years after the death of the Prophet. The traditions of the Prophet, or Sunnat, which are to be followed by every pious Muslim, came to light about 200–250 years after the death of the Prophet. Even the first Qur’an is recorded only in the reign of Abdal- Malik in 693 CE, 61 years after the death of the Prophet. The problems of interpretation led to a big war on the interpretation of the Qur’an during the 8th century, during and after the Islamic Golden Age in the first half of the 9th century. The Mutazzali was a rationalist movement that disputed the literal interpretation of the Qur’an. Their opponents, the Asharites, either discovered or invented the Hadis during this period and supported the literal interpretation of the revealed Qur’an. By the end of the 9th century, the Asharites had prevailed.

The Asharites were the conservatives. Theirs was also a quasi-spiritual movement of the Sufis that has its roots in the mystical traditions of Persia. However, Al-Ghazali wedded Sufi spirituality with the Ashari interpretation in a way that it became subservient and subordinate to the Shari’a. He also exalted determinism to a level where the role of free will was diminished completely. The Spanish school of wahdat i wajood briefly resisted Al-Ghazali’s wahadat I shahood doctrine through their philosophical works. However, Ibn Rush was publicly punished with public spitting on his face every Friday in front of the Cordoba Mosque for his temerity in mocking Al-Ghazali with his work Tahaffuz e Tahaffuz. The wahadat i wajood doctrine was buried ten cubits deep by Ibn Taiymiyyah who debunked the wajood doctrine, and went along with AlGhazali. The Indian masters of Islam were more eclectic, but by the time of Mujaddid Alf-e-Sani (Renewer of the second millennium) Sheikh Ahmad Farooqi Sirhindi Naqshbandi, the obsession with Al Arabi and his wajoodi doctrine overpowered every other concern. In Maktoobat Sheikh Sirhindi (Letters of Sheikh Sirhindi), his principal concern was to obliterate the doctrine of Al Arabi and to stay separated from Hindus. Additionally, he advocated the humiliation of Hindus, and promoted the slaughter of cows as the principal means of inflicting contempt on them. He opposed Akbar for diluting the message of faith. Jahangir was more receptive to him and killed Guru Arjun Dev on his advice. In spite of a brief fallout with the emperor, he continued to command great influence in the Mughal court. Aurangzeb was greatly influenced by him, and became a mureed (disciple) of Sheikh Masoom, son of Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi. In fact, the son of Sheikh Masoom, Saifuddin, was a consort of Aurangzeb right till his death. After the Naqshbandis got Aurangzeb to compile the Fatawa Alamgiri, Indian Islam became set into a completely native-hating, supremacist genre of Hanafi ideolology. In Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) of Nejd (nonOttoman Arabia) developed a more puritanical form of Hanbali Islam that is now known as the Wahhabi or Salafi ideology. Shah Waliullah, son of Shah Abdul Rahim, co-author of the Fatawa Alamgiri, was his fellow traveller in Hejaz, mostly in Medina. Hejaz, which used to house the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was then under the rule of the Ottomans. The Ibn Abd al-Wahhab doctrine was adopted vigorously by the rulers of Nejd, who attacked and conquered Mecca in 1803, and continued their occupation till 1813, when it was

retaken by the Ottomans. During their occupation, they demolished a number of buildings, which did not sit in tune with the puritanical Wahhabi doctrine. After World War I, they again conquered Hejaz and firmly established the Wahhabi doctrine over the whole of Mecca and Medina, altering the two cities beyond recognition. After World War I, the collapse of the Islamic Caliphate of the Ottomans (Khilafat-e-Osmania for Muslims), triggered defeatism among Muslims of the world at large. However, the stupidity of those heading the Indian Independence movement allowed the Muslims to use the event to play out the victimhood narrative to such perfection, that they managed to claim nearly a one-sixth part of India in 1947. However, the Jews were smarter—the Muslims lost a major part of Palestine to the new Jewish State of Israel. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the defeated Islam began a revival of its regressive Wahabbi ideology all around the world. The world is still grappling with the outbreak.

PART IV Intra-Abrahamic Conflict

Chapter 19 Christians vs Jews Christians vs. Jews conflict is rooted in the very origin of Christianity. T he Jesus, who may be rightfully considered the progenitor of Christianity, was born a Jew. He ascribed Prophethood to himself and was executed by the Roman Governor of the Judaea province. This is the fundamental aspect of the Christian hate of the Jews, because the Christians, rightly or wrongly, ascribe this execution to the perfidy of Jews. It is but natural for a creed that seeks to put a supposed sin committed by a forefather of the human beings to be the burden of the entire human kind, to blame an entire community for the supposed sin of helping the Romans execute their saviour. Jesus’ followers assume themselves to be the only interpreter of the Mosaic Law, and bear a grudge towards Jews for disputing this. Moreover, the Jews make fun of the Christian claim of Jesus having risen from the dead, because for the Jews, the only resurrection would happen on the Day of Last Judgement. An exception being made for one individual, Jesus, is quite a matter of amusement for them. This too is deeply resented by believing Christians. The Jews do not accept the claim of Prophethood advanced on behalf of Jesus Christ. Both Paul and John accuse the Jews of not accepting the creed of Jesus, and of sticking to the old positions of the Old Testament. After about 125 CE, the Christian persecution of Jews began in select areas. In 380 AD, Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the only official religion of the Roman empire, even though it was still a minority among the peoples of the empire. However, this created a difficult situation for the Jews. The US Holocaust Museum quotes, ‘The popularly elected Ambrose, bishop of Mediolanum, opposed the efforts of Theodosius to acknowledge the civil rights of Jews, pagans, and heretics as equal to those of Christians. In a public confrontation in his cathedral, Ambrose made the emperor back down. He asked rhetorically in one of his epistles (40): “Whom do [the Jews] have to avenge the synagogue? Christ whom they have killed, whom they have denied? Or will God the Father avenge them, whom they do not acknowledge as Father since they do

not acknowledge the Son?” This kind of writing typifies the shape the Christian argument had taken over the course of two centuries.’ During the period 600 CE to 800 CE, Christian nations began to favour the view that discrimination against the Jews was justified as divine punishment for their refusal to espouse the Christian belief. In the 7th century, France and Spain offered them the choice between baptism and expulsion. After a brief lull, Christians let loose waves of repression against the Jews during the Crusades. Even though the Crusades were ostensibly against the Muslims, Jews were subjected to many indignities as the Crusaders travelled to Judaea. The Jews of Germany were a special target of persecution. Accusations of poisoning of wells and ritual murder were commonly hurled against the Jews, leading to many massacres. This led to their eastward migration. They were welcomed in Poland and Russia. Russia was the first country under Catherine the Great (ruled 1762–1796) to give them political rights, but the Orthodox Christians tried their best to subject them to proselytising sermons. When it failed to have any effect on the Jews, even the Orthodox Church turned grumpy and hostile. In the 16th century, Martin Luther tried to attract Jews to his reformed Christianity by writing ‘That Christ Was Born a Jew’, but turned against them in great fury when it did not result in the waves of Jews seeking baptism, as he had expected this movement to catalyse. Overall, the Christian dogma surrounding their zeal for proselytisation became a major cause of their hostility towards Jews. They then added the superstructure of hoax stories and demonisation to build immediate cases for hounding them. This is what the anti-Holocaust Museum has to say for the post-1800 persecution of the Jews: ‘From the early 19th century on, however, anti-Jewish sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Europe, itself increasingly secularised, had other roots no less mythical. The proper term for it is anti-Semitism. Its target was Jewish ethnicity. It was primarily politically and economically motivated. Demagogues, however, were only too happy to put the ancient Christian rhetoric of anti-Judaism in its service. ‘Germany was populated with more Jews than any country in Western Europe when Hitler came to power. It also had the same ugly heritage of antiJewish sentiment as all of Christian Europe. The short-lived Weimar Republic could not deliver Germany from the severe economic hardships it experienced after World War I. Jews had been the Republic’s strong supporters and a few

of them were the architects of its constitution, a fact that Hitler capitalised upon. Huge inflation in 1923 and the Depression of 1929, increased Germany’s problems. Some leading capitalist families, gentile and Jewish, managed to escape these problems, but the eyes of the angry populace were trained on the Jews rather than the gentiles.’ Post-WW II attitudes among Christians towards the Jews is shaped by the guilt of the Holocaust. This largely explains the Conservative West supporting Israel through thick and thin. However, the present upsurge of the Left in the United States and its alliance with Islamist forces, is producing an unusual concoction of anti-Semitism, which treats only the Jews as the hated race, while making an exception of the Arabs. One more justification of persecution of the Jews, besides the ‘revenge for the murder of Jesus’, and ‘divine punishment for heresy’ is Mosaic Ethnology. It has been well explained by Thomas Trautmann (born 1940) and also by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan in their seminal book ‘Breaking India’. It relates to the story of Noah’s Flood. After the Flood, Noah got drunk and was lying naked. Among his three sons, Ham looked at him and laughed, Shem stood and watched, while Japheth covered him. Noah got up and having learnt of the events, cursed Ham. This became the basis for the Race Theory, with the progeny of Japheth becoming the blessed White Race, the progeny of Shem becoming the Semitic Races (Arabic Islam and Jews), and the progeny of Ham becoming the black, brown and yellow races. Thus, the superior race of White Christians was fully justified in hating, persecuting and meting out divine punishment to the Semitic and Hamitic races.

Chapter 20 Christianity vs. Islam conflict between Christianity and Islam began as Islam began to expand T he beyond its shores. By 635 CE, Damascus had been conquered, and a decisive defeat was inflicted upon the troops of the Roman Emperor Heraclius by Khalid ibn Al-Walid in the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 CE. By 638 CE, Jerusalem had come under Islamic rule. By 647 CE, Byzantine Egypt had fallen, and by the end of the 7th century, all Byzantine possessions of North Africa (Maghreb for the Muslims) had passed into the hands of the Umayyads. This was the first century of the Islamic-Christian conflict, in which Islam was almost completely triumphant. The Byzantine empire followed the Orthodox creed of Christianity. In the next wave of conquest, Islam conquered Spain and Anatolia, and converted most of the population to Islam. Spain was reconquered by Christians. Anatolia was first ruled by the Seljuk Turks, and then by the Osmanian Turks, who shifted the Islamic Caliphate to Turkey. Conflict between Christianity and Islam began as Islam began to expand beyond its shores after the death of Mohammad in 632 CE. By 635 CE, Damascus had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate and a decisive defeat was inflicted upon the troops of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, by Khalid ibn Al-Walid in the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 CE. They concluded a pact called Zimma, known also as the Pact of Omar with the conquered Christians, effectively giving them second-class status in lieu of Jizya for the ‘kind’ act of sparing their lives. As Egypt and North Africa was also part of the Christian Byzantine empire, the Rashidun Caliphate next conquered Egypt between 639 and 646 CE, reducing the Christians there to second-class status as zimmis (dhimmis in Arabic). The Muslim conquest of North Africa, known as Maghreb to the Arabs, continued the century of rapid Arab Muslim military expansion following the death of Muhammad in 632. The conquest of the Maghreb region (more or less

west of Egypt) took place largely under the Umayyad Caliphate (661– 750). The Umayyad regime was founded by Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan in 661. Syria was the Umayyads’ main power base, and Damascus was their capital. The Umayyads continued the Muslim conquests, creating one of the empires with the vastest extent in human history. The Arabs reached the Maghreb in early Umayyad times. Departing from Damascus, Arab forces marched into North Africa, and in 670, the city of Kairouan (south of modern Tunis) was established as a refuge and base for further operations. By 698, the Arabs had taken most of North Africa from the Byzantines. The area was divided into three provinces: Egypt with its governor at al-Fustat, Ifriqiya with its governor at Kairouan, and the Maghreb (modern Morocco) with its governor at Tangiers. Arab forces were able to capture Carthage in 698 and Tangiers by 708. Arab expansion and the spread of Islam into the Maghreb pushed the development of the trans-Saharan trade. Though restricted due to the cost and dangers, the trade was highly profitable. After consolidating themselves in what is Algeria and Morocco today, the Ummayads moved against Spain. Helped by a disgruntled Governor of Ceuta, Tariq-ibn-Ziyad led a force of 1,700 across the Straits of Gibraltar to defeat Toledo and claim the first territory in the Iberian Peninsula for the Ummayads. This was consolidated further as Murcia fell in 713, and Abd-al- Aziz ibn Musa became Governor of Al-Andalus in 715, with his capital at Seville. By 719, they had also captured Barcelona and Narbonne. In between, they had captured Septimania from the Gauls. However, in the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732 CE, Charles Martel defeated Abd-al-Rahman al Ghafiqi, and permanently blocked their advance into Europe. In 755, the Ummayads beat back an attempt by the Abbasids to claim Al-Andalus. By 781 CE, Abd-al-Rahman I had consolidated the Ummayad rule over the whole of the peninsula. The famous pushback of the Spaniards called Reconquista, began in the 8th century and was completed in 1492 CE, with the final expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, and the Islamic armies getting defeated in Spain. In between, the Christians mounted many Crusades between 1095 and 1291, into the former Christian territories of the Near East. Crusades were also mounted into Spain, where they tasted many victories. Initially, the Christians enjoyed great success and reclaimed Palestine and most of Syria. These later came to be known as the Latin States. They reclaimed the Holy Land around

Jerusalem. By 1291, most of these gains had been reversed from the Near East regions. However, Christianity regained Spain from the Muslims, and the last vestige of Islam had been eliminated from Spain by 1492. A brutal Inquisition was unleashed in Spain to ensure that no follower of Islam remained in the Iberian Peninsula. By the 1450s, Christianity had regained sufficient confidence and technological prowess in its fighting capability to inaugurate the ‘Age of Discovery’. This was nothing but a brutal colonisation of the world. Yet, in 1453, the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and started eliminating Christians from the erstwhile Byzantine empire’s territories. They moved further to the west, conquering Greece, the Balkans and parts of the present-day Romania and Bulgaria. They were eventually defeated at the gates of Vienna on September 11 and 12, 1683. The battle was fought between an alliance of the Holy Roman empire and the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth on the one hand, and the Ottomans and their vassals on the other. The Battle of Vienna, the original 9/11, was the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman empire as they could not grow beyond the extent they had on this date, and soon after, they kept declining steadily. The Russians kept pushing back the Ottomans until they ceded their control over Romania and Bulgaria completely. Christians colonised the whole of Africa beyond the equator. However, they came into conflict with Islam in sub- Saharan Africa. This conflict is still ongoing, such as in Nigeria and in Lebanon, where the Muslims have successfully effected demographic change and have become a majority, displacing the erstwhile Christian majority. In Nigeria, an Islamic terror outfit called Boko Haram is ravaging the north-eastern parts of the country, while another Islamic terror outfit, Hezbollah, operates in Lebanon. On the other hand, the wars in the Balkans with Habsburgs and locals, and in the Caucasus with the Russians, saw a decline in the Ottoman fortunes. Towards the second half of the 19th century, the Muslims had largely ceded control of the Christian areas, except for some portions of Greece and Macedonia, and some parts of the Balkans. The First World War ended the Ottoman empire officially, and a large part of the Arab world became either direct colonies of the West, or through their vassals. Hejaz, which had Mecca and Medina, passed to the Saudi kingdom of Nejd, aided by the British, and the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born.

Greece was liberated, and Turkey and Greece exchanged their Christian and Muslim populations. The Turks carried out a genocide of the Armenian Christians, killing nearly 1.5 million of them by marching them into the Syrian desert. The entire map of the Middle East was redrawn after the First World War. The Jews were allowed to settle in Palestine. Hashemites, who had lost their traditional territories in Hejaz, were granted Jordan from the British mandate of the Palestine, and the French controlled Lebanon and Syria. The British were handed Iraq. Much of the boundaries in the Middle East were drawn after the First World War. When decolonisation took place, these Muslim countries became free from Christian subjugation. However, Israel became the new flashpoint in the region for the Islamo- Christian conflict in the Middle East. From the 20th century onwards, organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood have devised new strategies to subvert western democracies to change demography in Europe and USA, to impose Islam in the West in their quest to Islamise the world. Europe is bearing the brunt of this strategy at this moment. They also have subsidiaries like ‘Hamas’, which are wreaking havoc in the Middle East.

Chapter 21 Islam vs. Jews persecution of the Jews started from the time Mohammad I slamic migrated to Medina. It was at that time that the three principal tribes of Banu Nazir, Banu Qanuqa, and Banu Quraiza were persecuted by the Muslims. The massacre of the tribe of Banu Quraiza is spoken of in glowing terms by Islamic historians. The Battle of Khybar was also fought with the Jews of north-western Arabia, in which Mohammad forcibly married Safiya, the widow of the slain Jewish general on the same day as he was killed. The Jews of Khybar were the first community to be subjected to the poll tax, Jizya, by Mohammad. The early animosity of the Prophet of Islam towards Jews is said to be based on the fact of their refusal to accept the Islamic guidance or hidayat (hidayah). Unlike Islam’s battles with the Christians, the relations between Muslims and Jews have only been of one-way persecution. The root lies in Islamic theology, which regards Jews as kafirs, and finds them especially hateful as they dared to disregard their Prophet during his stay in Median, and refused to accept him as Prophet. This, according to them, actuates the Quranic verse 5.32, in which they become guilty of causing chaos/corruption/fitna in the land by not accepting the messages that are brought to them by The Prophet. In a Hadis, Bukhari 2925-26, Mohammad has reportedly said that, “You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews until some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.’” This serves as one of the primary resources for Muslims to hate the Jews. However, as the Jews were non-proselytising, and were not competing with the Muslims to win followers unlike the Christians, their life was relatively peaceful in Muslim lands when compared to the Christian lands. In Spain, and later under the Ottoman Caliphate, their persecution was not as intense as that of the Christians. However, all this would change in the late 19th and 20th centuries, when the Jews started a movement towards regaining their

homeland in Judaea. In the 17th century, the Jews were exiled from Yemen, but it was in the 19th century that the massacres of Jews took place within the Ottoman territory and Persia. Massacres took place in Baghdad in 1828, in Barufurush in 1867, and in the Eastern Persian town of Meshed in 1837. There was a rise of Jewish nationalism after the 1894 incident in France, when Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Jewish descent was baselessly convicted. From the beginning of the 20th century, massacres of Jews by Muslims took place in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Libya. After the end of the First World War, groups of Jews started migrating to the Promised Land after it came under the French Mandate and British occupation after World War II. This began the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, fuelled by the Arabs, as part of the Muslim Ummah, one that continues to this date. Haj Amin al-Hosseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, sat by the side of Hitler during World War II, and helped him craft his strategy of Holocaust. However, a full-fledged war broke out between the Jews and the Palestinians in Jerusalem even as the United Nations divided up the Palestinian territory between Israel and Palestine. Upon its formation, Israel was immediately attacked by a coalition of Arab countries. It managed to defeat them, and has since emerged as the strongest military power in the Middle East. After the 1967 war, Israel won the whole of Jerusalem, Golan Heights of Syria, Sinai of Egypt, and the entire Palestinian territory. Some parts of the conquered territory were later returned after a rapprochement was reached between Egypt and Israel. The animosity between the Jewish nation of Israel, and many Muslim countries and militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, continues to this day. Iran is now in the vanguard of the countries swearing enmity against Israel, while Saudi Arabia and UAE have begun a process of reconciliation with the country.

PART V Conflict of Abrahamics vs. others

Chapter 22 The Christian Conquests win A ccording to Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus exhorted the Christians to go and disciples in nations. This is the basis of the missionary mandate of the Church. The Christian conquests of the Old World, spanning centuries and continents are a deeply contested and controversial chapter in human history. While proponents argue that these conquests brought civilisation and salvation to heathen lands, a critical examination reveals a darker narrative. Driven by religious zeal, imperial ambition, and a disregard for indigenous cultures, the Christian conquests resulted in a legacy of exploitation, cultural erasure, and untold suffering. This essay aims to critically dissect the Christian conquests of the Old World, shedding light on their harmful consequences and the historical events that define them. Imperial Expansion Masked as Divine Mandate Christian conquests in the Old World often operated under the guise of a divine mandate, using religious fervour to justify territorial expansion and the subjugation of indigenous populations. The Crusades, launched in the name of reclaiming the Holy Land, are a stark illustration of this phenomenon. While portrayed as a noble endeavour to spread Christianity, the Crusades were marked by brutality, pillage, and the slaughter of non-Christian populations. The Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204 for instance, demonstrated how religious fervour could be manipulated to serve political and economic interests rather than the tenets of faith. Important Conquests: Illustrating the Dark Reality 1. The Reconquista (711–1492): The Reconquista, a series of campaigns by Christian kingdoms to recapture the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim control, is a prime example of conquest disguised as religious liberation. While celebrated as a heroic struggle against Islamic rule, the Reconquista

involved forced conversions, the expulsion of Jews and Muslims, and the imposition of Christian cultural norms. This conquest perpetuated a narrative of Christian triumphalism at the expense of coexistence and religious diversity. 2. The Conquest of the Americas (15th–16th centuries): Christopher Columbus’ expeditions to the Americas marked the beginning of European colonisation and the devastating impact it had on indigenous peoples. The Doctrine of Discovery, a papal decree that granted Christian powers the right to claim lands not inhabited by Christians, served as a legal justification for the subjugation and displacement of Native American populations. European diseases, forced labour, and cultural erasure, resulted in the decimation of countless communities. 3. The African Slave Trade and Colonialism (16th–19th centuries): Christian European powers’ conquest and colonisation of Africa were marked by the transatlantic slave trade, a brutal system that subjected millions of Africans to slavery, exploitation, and cultural degradation. The introduction of Christianity often went hand-in-hand with the subjugation and the imposition of European values, leading to the erosion of indigenous cultures and belief systems. 4. The Scramble for Africa (late 19th–early 20th centuries): European powers’ partition and colonisation of Africa during the late 19th century epitomise the exploitative nature of Christian conquests. Driven by economic interests, European powers carved up the continent, resulting in borders that disregarded ethnic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. This legacy of colonialism and artificial borders continues to fuel conflicts and instability in modern Africa. 5. The Doctrine of Discovery: The doctrinal underpinning came from the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. The Doctrine of Discovery emerged in the 15th century, notably the Bull etcetera of 1492, primarily as a result of European explorations and imperial expansion. Papal decrees such as the infamous Papal Bulls issued by Pope Alexander VI, granted European powers the authority to claim lands and territories that were inhabited by indigenous peoples. The rationale behind this doctrine was deeply rooted in the belief that non-Christian lands were considered terra nullius, or ‘land belonging to no one’, and that European Christian nations had the divine right to seize and control these territories. 6. Colonisation of India: The colonisation of India stands as a glaring example of the dark side of Christian conquests. The arrival of European powers,

primarily the British, marked an era of economic exploitation, cultural degradation, and social upheaval. Driven by the desire for trade and domination, the British East India Company established control over vast territories, effectively subjecting India to centuries of colonial rule. The Christianisation of India occurred in tandem with colonisation, with missionaries often acting as agents of cultural assimilation. While proponents argue that missionaries brought education and social reforms, the reality is more complex. The imposition of Christianity frequently came hand-in-hand with attempts at eroding indigenous belief systems, suppressing local practices, and undermining cultural autonomy. This resulted in a profound dislocation of Indian society and an erosion of traditional knowledge and values. The Conquest of Goa (1510): The Portuguese conquest of Goa marked the beginning of Christian colonialism in India. While justified by the spread of Christianity, the Portuguese engaged in violent and coercive tactics, undermining the cultural fabric of the region. The Inquisition in Goa further highlighted the oppressive nature of the conquest, as it targeted Hindu, Muslim and Jewish communities. The British Colonisation of India (17th–20th centuries): British rule in India was characterised by economic exploitation, land dispossession, and cultural suppression. The total value of the wealth transferred to Britain is now valued at $45 trillion. The imposition of Christianity was attempted as a tool to exert control over the indigenous population, but did not work except in some areas of the north-east. The repercussions of this conquest are felt to this day, with lasting impacts on socio- economic structures, cultural identity, and geopolitical dynamics.

Chapter 23 The Islamic Conquests Introduction Islamic conquests have permanently changed the areas and H istory’s populations they swallowed. For those who witnessed the unrelenting advance of Islamic forces, the conquests were a terrifying story of oppression, suffering, and cultural change rather than merely being instances of political expansion or religious propagation. The histories of the conquered bore evidence of the atrocities and tortures committed upon them in the name of Islam from the early stages of the Islamic conquests, as empires fell and civilisations shook, until the present day. Driven by a fervent religious belief, the conquering armies thought themselves to be the forerunners of a divine mission, tasked with spreading the teachings of Islam to the world’s most remote areas. But for those who were subjugated, this zeal transformed into a reign of terror as their lands were seized, their customs were ignored, their very identities coming under attack. With a ruthless savagery, the conquests spread from the Arabian Peninsula to India and the Byzantine borders. The vanquished people were given a cruel option: pay Jizya, convert to Islam, or perish. The sword, which was drawn in the name of Allah, arrived to decide their fate. Unimaginable horrors such as killings, forced conversions, enslavement, and the destruction of their sacred sites awaited those who dared to fight. History books are rife with tales of the vanquished going through unspeakable misery. Through the decades, legends of towns pillaged, temples desecrated, and cultures destroyed have persisted. Islamic conquests resulted in the territories being taken from the conquered, their wealth being looted, and their rulers being degraded. The vanquished were treated as second-class citizens, with onerous taxes and restricted liberties under the tight social order created by Islamic rulers. Moreover, the conquered were forced to bear witness to the erasure of their cultural heritage. Treasured libraries were looted and their contents consigned to oblivion. Art, literature, and philosophical works that represented centuries of

human achievement were destroyed, eclipsing the vibrant history of civilisations that once flourished. The scars of cultural annihilation and the suppression of indigenous practices reverberate to this day. The conquests were not limited to the distant past; they continue to shape the present. The echoes of historical torment can be felt in regions that continue to grapple with the aftermath of Islamic conquests. The legacies of the conquered persist, woven into the fabric of modern conflicts and struggles for selfdetermination. And hence, it becomes more important now than ever that we study the history of these conquests. Rashidun Caliphate (632–661 CE) In the early 7th century, the Arabian Peninsula saw the rise of a radical and violent movement led by Muhammad, who claimed to be the prophet of a new monotheistic religion, Islam. This religion quickly gathered disciples, but not peacefully; it frequently came at the point of a sword. Many tribes in Arabia were forced to conform to the new faith out of fear of violent retaliation, while others resisted, resulting in deadly wars and the formation of the Rashidun Caliphate under Abu Bakr. The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, had to contend with challenges from tribes that ventured to contest the legitimacy of the new Islamic authority or refused to pay Zakat, the required tax for Muslims. Abu Bakr turned to military expeditions known as the Ridda Wars to compel those who had rejected their allegiance back into the fold under the banner of Islam rather than embracing diversity and recognising the liberty of other tribes. It served as a forerunner of the oppressive character of the advancing Islamic empire. Under the leadership of Caliph Umar, the Muslim armies were motivated by a relentless quest for dominance. Motivated by the perilous idea of advancing Islam by invasion, they tried to extend their hegemony beyond the Arabian Peninsula. This expansionist and military vision was anything but tolerant or peaceful. The Muslims and the Byzantine empire faced off in the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 CE. The Muslim soldiers, while being outnumbered, were brutal and unyielding, which led to a victory that signalled a turning point in Islamic conquests. The Byzantine army’s defeat was more than just a tactical success; it also served as a warning against the unrelenting pursuit of expansionism and dominance with little respect for the rights or sovereignty of those they conquered.

The Siege of Jerusalem in 637 CE was another instance of a terrible conquest. The Byzantine-held city came under assault from the soldiers of Caliph Umar. Jerusalem was ultimately overrun by Muslim forces after a protracted defence. The desecration of hallowed sites and the imposition of Islamic sovereignty over locations held in high regard by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, however, made the victory unappealing. Muslims tried to impose their religion and destroy the identities of the subjugated, showing scant regard for the peoples’ religious and cultural traditions. The conquering and subjugation pattern was the same with the eastward push into Persia. The roving Muslim forces found the feeble Persian empire to be easy prey, swiftly capturing the country’s capital, Ctesiphon, as well as other important cities. The fall of the Sassanian monarchy was evidence of how harsh and unrelenting the Rashidun Caliphate’s expansionist goals were. In reality, the Rashidun Caliphate’s conquests set the stage for centuries of Muslim regimes that thrived on conquest and growth. Through intimidation and brutality, their quick victories spread Islam, instilling fear and submission in those they conquered. The early Muslim armies were far from being a force for illumination; instead, they served as agents of darkness and oppression who used harsh force to impose their ideas on the unwilling. Their legacy of conquests perpetrated a cycle of oppression and violence that has continued to reverberate throughout history. Ummayad Caliphate (661–750 CE) With the creation of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE, a period of brutal conquest and oppression under the cover of the spread of Islam began. The Umayyads, spurred on by political aspirations and religious zeal, set out on a relentless mission to enlarge the Muslim realm and brutally imposed their control over newly-captured territories. They pursued an expansionist policy, and when Muslim generals waged bloody military campaigns to pacify the local inhabitants, North Africa became a casualty. In the name of Islamic dominion, cities were destroyed and oncevibrant civilisations were reduced to ruins. The forced conversion of conquered peoples to Islam was not an act of spreading religious enlightenment, but rather a tool of oppression. The development of Muslim-ruled areas in North Africa was characterised by the imposition of heavy levies, the exploitation of local resources, and the subjection of native populations to the will of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Continuing the legacy, in the Ummayad Caliphate too, indigenous traditions were suppressed, languages were prohibited, and those who resisted were brutally punished. The most heinous conquest by the Umayyads was the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, where the creation of Al-Andalus was marred by murder and cruelty. Muslim troops swept through the region, destroying any opposition with savage force. As the Umayyads sought to solidify their power, the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania was destroyed and its people subjected to a reign of terror. The so-called ‘sophisticated’ Islamic civilisation that arose in Al-Andalus under the rule of the Umayyad empire covered up the underlying oppression and exploitation of the conquered peoples. Enhancements were made, but they came at the expense of the subjugated people, who were treated as second- class citizens in their own country. Religious intolerance, including forced conversions, church destruction, and the imposition of Islamic law on non- Muslims, characterised the Umayyad era in Al-Andalus. As internal struggle undermined the Umayyads’ control, their expansionist and harsh tactics led to the breakup of the region. The vanquished peoples, however, were not relieved, as they continued to suffer under the yoke of future rulers who maintained the cycle of servitude. The Christian Reconquista that succeeded was not just about restoring lands; it was also a reaction to decades of harsh rule under the Umayyads. While the Reconquista did eventually lead to the end of Muslim control in Al-Andalus, it did not remove the wounds of the Umayyad era, which left a legacy of hardship, cultural erasure, and socio-economic divides. Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE) The emergence of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 CE opened a new era in the spread of Islam, one that would be remembered for its cruelty, oppression, and extremism. The Abbasid dynasty’s caliphs waged an unrelenting war of jihad and conquest, claiming religion as a justification for their tyrannical rule and the forcible conversion of the conquered peoples to Islam. They conducted military expeditions throughout Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, while pretending to be advancing the teachings of Islam. The majority of the Abbasid expansion was concentrated on Central Asia, an area renowned for its deep cultural variety and ancient civilisations. Muslim generals conducted ruthless military operations, creating a landscape marred by

oppression and violence. The Abbasids tried to repress regional customs and imposed their version of Islam onto the conquered peoples. They brutally came to power in cities like Samarkand and Bukhara, previously great centres of study and culture, and changed their identity forever. The Abbasid conquests of the Indian subcontinent were characterised by a similar pattern of bloodshed and oppression. The Ghaznavids, led by Mahmud of Ghazni, launched several military campaigns against Hindu temples, hoping not only to amass wealth, but also to impose Islamic authority. These campaigns were distinguished by the devastation of sacred sites, the theft of valuables, and the forcible conversion of Hindus at the point of a sword. In northern India, the cycle of conquest and subjugation was continued by later Muslim rulers like the Ghurids and the Delhi Sultanate. Muslim kings imposed a reign of terror and brutality on the conquered inhabitants out of a religious desire to increase their dominion over their conquered areas and demonstrate their religious superiority. Desecration of Hindu temples, suppression of cultural practises, and treatment of non-Muslims as second-class citizens were all-occurring. The Abbasid Caliphate’s expansionist goals were supported by the jihad, which was frequently hailed as a holy war. The conquest resulted in the loss of lives, evictions, and the deterioration of diverse cultures, ushering a Uniform Islamic Order. A path of destruction was left in their wake as a result of the Abbasid’s persistent ascent to power, which was motivated by religious zeal. Opposite to what is portrayed in textbooks, the Abbasid conquests were marked by a ruthless ambition to impose authority and put an end to any resistance, rather than by an enlightened cultural exchange or peaceful coexistence. Sejluk Caliphate (1037–1258 CE) The rise of the Seljuk empire as a significant Muslim power during the 11th and 12th centuries, represented a gloomy period in the history of the region. The unrelenting expansionist aspirations of the Seljuks resulted in a string of horrific victories that devastated areas of the Byzantine empire, Anatolia, and Syria. Their brutal governance and military operations fostered the seeds of strife and prepared the ground for the famed Crusades, a string of conflicts that inflicted unimaginable pain and devastation on both Muslim and Christian territories. The Seljuk empire launched a war of conquest and subjugation, because of a passionate desire to increase its dominion. The empire put up a furious fight against the Crusades, a series of military operations started by European

Christians. This resulted in sporadic battles between Muslim and Christian forces. The Crusades resulted in a terrible and destructive campaign that caused enormous misery to both sides, not a heroic effort to retake the Holy Land. The confrontations between the Seljuks and the Crusaders ended in rivers of blood, as both sides committed horrible acts of cruelty and brutality. In the name of religious supremacy, entire cities were sacked, innocent citizens were slaughtered, and sacred places were desecrated. The so-called ‘Holy Wars’ were anything but holy, leaving a legacy of hatred, division, and resentment that is still felt today. It’s in this period that the Mongol invasions, headed by the ruthless conqueror Genghis Khan and his descendants, dealt a devastating blow to the Muslim world, giving them a taste of its own medicine. The Mongols, known for their unrivalled ferocity and savagery, charged over the region, leaving a trail of ruin and death in their wake. They delivered the same cruelty that Muslims had unleashed for centuries on conquered areas. As the Mongols devastated Muslim territory, they subjected the inhabitants to unspeakable horrors, echoing the brutality and oppression visited on others by Muslims themselves. The once-proud Abbasid Caliphate, built on conquests and oppression, was reduced to ruins, and the Muslim world was thrown into turmoil and misery. The Mongol invasions served as a painful reminder of the miseries ushered by the Muslims in the wake of their own conquests. Now that the tables had been turned, they were directly feeling the destruction and loss. As the Muslim world reaped what it had sowed in the past, these invasions left a legacy of sorrow, anguish, and irreplaceable loss. Ottoman Caliphate (1299–1922 CE) The Ottoman Empire: Rise, Expansion, and Legacy The rise of the Ottoman empire began in the 13th century, following the decline of the Seljuk empire. Led by Osman I, the Ottomans established a small principality in Anatolia. Over the next few centuries, the empire steadily expanded through a series of military campaigns and conquests. Under the leadership of Sultan Mehmed II, the Ottomans achieved a significant milestone in 1453 by capturing Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire. This victory marked the end of the Byzantine empire and solidified the Ottomans’ position as a dominant power in the region. The Ottoman empire continued to expand its territories, conquering vast

lands in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Notable battles, such as the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, showcased the Ottomans’ military might. The empire finally reached its zenith during the reign of Suleiman, who oversaw a period of economic prosperity. The empire’s expansionism continued the policy of ruthlessness and oppression. The treatment of subject populations was particularly harsh during times of rebellion or unrest. The authorities often responded to dissent with brutal suppression, leading to massacres and forced migration of entire communities. The End of the Ottoman Empire and World War I Known as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’, the Ottoman empire slowly began to fall apart in the 19th century. The once- dominant Ottomans were undermined by internal conflict, political unrest, and economic stagnation. The empire depended more and more on outside influence and action, as European countries attempted to take advantage of its weaknesses. World War I dealt the Ottoman empire its ultimate blow. Initially, the Ottomans allied with the Central Powers, which included Germany and AustriaHungary. However, the empire’s choice to engage in the war proved disastrous, resulting in severe military setbacks and widespread hunger. The Treaty of Sèvres signed in 1920, was an agreement between the victorious Allied nations that placed harsh conditions on the Ottoman empire. Significant regions were taken from the empire by the treaty, which caused a great deal of unhappiness among the Turkish populace. The empire practically came to an end in 1923, when the Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Treaty of Sèvres, and recognised the fledgling Republic of Turkey. The Caliphate, which had acted as a symbolic and religious authority, was disbanded in 1924, and the empire’s lands were divided up. Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Empire The Ottoman empire’s influence also extended to South Asia, where Indian Muslims held the empire in high regard. The Caliphate, based in Istanbul, was seen as a symbol of Muslim unity and authority, and Indian Muslims were deeply attached to the idea of a central Islamic leadership. During World War I, the Sultan, Mehmed V, called for a jihad against the Allied powers, urging Muslims worldwide to support the Ottomans’ cause. This call resonated strongly with Indian Muslims, who rallied behind the Ottoman empire, believing it to be a sacred duty to defend Islam and its territories.

Indian Muslims’ loyalty to the Caliphate during this period had significant implications for the political landscape in India. It further exacerbated religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims, as Hindus viewed Indian Muslims’ support for the Ottoman empire as evidence of their separatist leanings. However, the Indian National Congress, which was blind to this fact supported the Khilafat movement, sowing the seeds of the partition of India with the end of Caliphate.

PART VI Jihad as Total Conquest Ideology

Chapter 24 Jihad, the Permanent War military phase of Islam begins after the Prophet of Islam shifted to T he Medina. Out of the 114 Chapters (Surah) of the Qur’an, 86 are Meccan, and 28 are Medinan. The Meccan Surah, while emphasising the supremacy of Islam, and claiming itself to be the sole Truth, condemns the unbelievers, calling them enemies of Allah, blaming them as oppressors, claiming unbelief to be the worst oppression, stopping short of calling for violence against the unbelievers. However, the Medinan Surah calls for violence. Qitaal and jihad are the commonest terms for violence against the unbelievers. In the order of revelation of the Medinan Surah, the first four Surahs are 2 (Al-Baqra—the cow), 8 (AlAnfal— the spoils of war), 3 (Al-e-Imran—the family of Imran) and 4 (An-Nisa —the women). I am quoting some representative verses (Ayah) from the first four Medinan Surah (translation— Abdullah Yusuf Ali, a relatively moderate translator accepted by the Supreme Court of India) to illustrate how fighting, terrorising and killing gets normalised in the Medinan Surah. Let me take up the first six Medinan Surah and show how they exhort the believer against the unbeliever, including fight and murder. 2.19 Or (another similitude) is that of a rain-laden cloud from the sky: In it are zones of darkness, and thunder and lightning: They press their fingers in their ears to keep out the stunning thunder-clap, the while they are in terror of death. But Allah is ever round the rejecters of Faith! 2.98 Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and messengers, to Gabriel and Michael,—Lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith (Islam). 2.193 And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevails justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression. 2.216 Fighting (al qitaal) is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.

2.244 Then fight in the cause of Allah (qatiloo fi sabilillah), and know that Allah heareth and knoweth all things. 2.254 Unbelievers are the oppressors. 8.12 Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.” 8.39 And fight them (wa qaatiloohum) on (until there is no more tumult or oppression (fatoon—from fitnah [kufr])), and there prevails justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do. 3.151 Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority: their abode will be the Fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers! 33.57 Those who annoy Allah and His Messenger—Allah has cursed them in this world and in the hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment. 33.60-61 Truly, if the hypocrites, and those in whose hearts is a disease, and those who stir up sedition in the city, desist not, We shall certainly stir thee up against them: Then will they not be able to stay in it as thy neighbours for any length of time: They shall have a curse on them: whenever they are found, they shall be seized and slain (without mercy). 60.1 O ye who believe! Take not my enemies and yours as friends (or protectors), offering them (your) love, even though they have rejected the Truth that has come to you. 4.89 They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. Now let us look at the final three Medinan Surah, 48 (Al Fath—the victory), 5 (Al Maidah—the table spread) and 9 (At Tauba—Repentance) 5.32 to 5.36 On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person—unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land. (32) The punishment of those who

wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; (33) Except for those who repent before they fall into your power: in that case, know that Allah is Oftforgiving, Most Merciful. (34) O ye who believe! Do your duty to Allah, seek the means of approach unto Him, and strive with might and main in his cause: that ye may prosper (wa jaahidoo fee sabeelihee—jihad- fi-sabilillah) la’allakum tuflihoon. (35) As to those who reject Faith, if they had everything on earth, and twice repeated, to give as ransom for the penalty of the Day of Judgment, it would never be accepted of them, theirs would be a grievous penalty. 9.3 And an announcement from Allah and His Messenger, to the people (assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage, that Allah and His Messenger dissolve (treaty) obligations with the Pagans. If then, ye repent, it were best for you; but if ye turn away, know ye that ye cannot frustrate Allah. And proclaim a grievous penalty to those who reject Faith. (Repudiating the Treaty of Hudaibiyyah) 9.5 But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oftforgiving, Most Merciful. 9.28-29 O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is Allknowing, All-wise. (28) Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. 9.120 It was not fitting for the people of Medina and the Bedouin Arabs of the neighbourhood, to refuse to follow Allah’s Messenger, nor to prefer their own lives to his: because nothing could they suffer or do, but was reckoned to their credit as a deed of righteousness, whether they suffered thirst, or fatigue, or hunger, in the cause of Allah, or trod paths to raise the ire of the Unbelievers, or received any injury whatever from an enemy: for Allah suffereth not the reward to be lost of those who do good (i.e. harass the unbeliever). 9.123 O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let

them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him. Other than in the Medinan Surah, where the jihad-fi- sabilillah is featured prominently are 47.4 (when you meet the unbeliever, smite their necks), 49.15, 66.9, 5.54, 8.72, 9.41, 9.81, etc. In all, there are 35 verses that talk of jihad and 135 verses that talk of Qitaal. Both pertain to violence against the unbeliever in order to finish off zulm (oppression), fasad (mischief ), and fitna (rebellion), all of which mean unbelief. Since jihad has to continue till the entire world is converted to Allah’s faith (8.39, also considered the first jihad verse), it follows that jihad will last, with all its variations and less or more violence, till this impossible wish is achieved. In effect, it means that jihad is ever present wherever there is a Muslim.

Chapter 25 The Peaceful Sufi Does Not Exist 1. Theological History The normal misconception about Sufism is that it is very much like the mystic way of the Indian sadhu, and shows a peaceful path to a union with God/Allah. Nothing can be farther from the Truth. In the Sufism of today, and since the victory of the greatest Sufi, Al-Ghazali, over the Mutazzalis in the late 11th century, the separation between the Creator and the created is so clear as to aver anything else is to invite a charge of blasphemy. Whether Sufism began within Islam or Islam adopted it is not very clear, because the Islamic expansion in the 7th and 8th century into the Sassanian and Turkic territories was so swift that Islam hardly had a chance of consolidation, and a course of adaptation was probably the normal outcome. What we do know is that there was a huge churn within Islam against Arab conservatism in the form of the Mutazzali movement. Another strand was the Tahqiqi strand that borrowed from the Sufism that emphasised ‘immanence of divine’. While Mutazzalis laid stress on a synthesis between rationalism and revelation, and refused to recognise the Hadis exegeses, the Tahqiqis and Sufis alternated between complete fusion with the divine, and reflection of the divine within the human soul—something akin to advaita and dvaita of Hinduism. However, it stopped short of the One material unity with myriad manifestation. Mutazzalis also did not recognise the Qur’an as co-eternal with Allah, stating that the created cannot precede the Creator. Both Mutazzalis and Tahqiqis honoured the role of free will. The high point of the rationalist school was 833–848 CE, whereas the high point of the Tahqiqis was Mansour Hallaj, who was executed in 922 CE for his pronouncement of Ana’l Haq (I am the Truth). Both the schools, more particularly the Mutazzalis, asserted the principle of ‘free will’ in gaining Allah’s favour. The counter movement consisted of the Asharites, who regarded Shariat (Shari’a in Arabic) as the Word of Allah, and commandments to be followed. However, the Hadis part of the Shariat (a trilogy consisting of the Qur’an, Hadis

(traditions of the Prophet), and the Sirat-e-Rasool Allah (biography of the Prophet)), was written in the face of the challenge from the Mutazzalis. The compilation of the Shariat went well into the 10th century, and the first instance of the Sirat being made public is from Al Tabari around 900 CE, though he credited it to Ibn Ishaq of the 7th century. The compilation of the Hadis was accelerated because of the Mutazzali challenge, and was it in 848 CE, when the Caliph al-Mutawwakil ordered the Mutazzali privileges withdrawn. The principle of wahadat-ul-wujud (Existential Unity of God, or God is reflected in all), similar in essence to dvaita principle of Vedānta, was propounded by the Sufis of the early era, later to be propounded in detail by Ibn Arabi of Spain, or al-Andalus. However, the most definitive intervention was made in the 11th century by Al-Ghazali (1058–1111 CE), who had the favour of the Abbasid empire. He firmly favoured the Asharites. His treatise ‘Tahaffut-e-Falasafa’ (Confusion of Philosophy, or Incoherence of Philosophers), put paid to the principle of free will. He propounded the principle of ‘ontologically (metaphysically) broken Time’, in which Allah is creating and destroying the Universe every moment. Thus Allah controls the smallest action and event in the Universe. This was a complete antithesis of ‘free will’, and inaugurated extreme determinism among the Muslims. He also put paid to the principle of ‘wahadat-e-wujud’, and favoured ‘wahadat-e- shuhud’, or Observed Unity of God, or there is ‘One God’ without the ‘Oneness’ preached by the early Sufis. Thus, he placed a firm barrier between the Creator and the Created. Till the time of Al-Ghazali, Sufis (Tariqa) were often considered to belong to different sects. After him, this difference was sought to obliterated until it vanished completely. In the 12th century, Ibn Rush (Averroes) wrote a critique of Al-Ghazali titled Tahaffut-e-Tahaffut (Confusion of Confusion). For this impudence, he was condemned by the Spanish branch of the Caliphate, to be spat on by the believers in front of the Grand Mosque of Cordoba at regular intervals. The advent of Sufism in India occurred against this background of a churn in the Abbasid scholarly space, with an emphatic victory for the Asharite Ulāmā (clergy) with help from the devotional Sufis. The intellectuals who believed in spirituality were roundly defeated. The mantle was kept up in Spain by the likes of Ibn Rush and Ibn Arabi for a while, before Ibn Taymiyyah came out firmly in support of the Sufi Al-Ghazali (13th century), and all signs of ‘free will’ and a separate sectarian identity for the Sufis were eliminated. Sufis were indeed considered to be a separate sect in the beginning of

Islamic history, but they got subsumed later. Tariqat and Shariat were differently comprehended till the time of Al-Ghazali, after which Tariqat became totally subordinated to Shariat. Anybody who has studied even a smattering of the Shariat trilogy regimen would know that it is an exclusive supremacist creed with no space for the unbeliever. It also resulted in the obliteration of the Sufis as separate sects, and they simply became religious orders within their respective fiqh mazhabs (Hanafi, Shafi’I, Maaliki, and Hanbali), fully subordinated to the Ulāmā. That is how someone like Rumi (1207–1273 CE) could dare to be different in his Tariqat from the Shariat. This became rarer and rarer after Ibn Taymiyyah (1267–1328 CE). Sufism was marked and distinguished by ihsān, or seeing Allah. After AlGhazali’s intervention, ihsān was relegated in importance to number 3. Imān or Belief became paramount, and Din or the religion and its observances came next. Reason and rationality were banished completely, and direct experience of divine was relegated to a subsidiary position. 2. History in India The advent of Sufis in India was mixed. After Al-Ghazali, their independent existence as independent sects had been obliterated. They had to be a part of the mazhab in which they operated, which in India’s case was the Hanfi mazhab. The Chishtis accompanied the invading Army of Mohammad of Ghur, and set up base in India. The line of Moinuddin Chishti-Nizamuddin Auliya and Bābā Farid, is the Chishtiyya Tariqā, that later got sub-divided into many silsilas along Nizami and Sābri divisions. M.A. Khan writes: “Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325), toeing the orthodox line, condemned the Hindus to the fire of hell, saying: ‘The unbelievers at the time of death will experience punishment. At that moment, they will profess belief (Islam) but it will not be reckoned to them as belief because it will not be faith in the Unseen… the faith of (an) unbeliever at death remains unacceptable.’ He asserted that: ‘On the day of Resurrection when unbelievers will face punishment and affliction, they will embrace faith but faith will not benefit them… They will also go to Hell, despite the fact that they will go there as believers.’ “ccli In his khutbas (sermons), Nizamuddin Auliya condemned the infidels as wicked, saying, ‘He (Allah) has created Paradise and Hell for believers and the infidels (respectively) in order to repay the wicked for what they have done.’ “cclii Auliya’s thought on Jihad against non-Muslims can be gleaned from his statement that Surah Fatihah, first chapter of the Quran, did not contain two

of the ten cardinal articles of Islam, which were ‘warring with the unbelievers and observing the divine statutes…’ He not only believed in warring with the unbelievers or Jihad, but he also came to India with his followers to engage in it. He participated in a holy war commanded by Nasiruddin Qibacha in Multan. When Qibacha’s army was in distress facing defeat, Auliya rushed to him and gave him a magical arrow instructing: ‘Shoot this arrow at the direction of the infidel army.’ … Qibacha did as he was told, and when daybreak came not one of the infidels was to be seen; they all had fled!’ “ccliii When Qazi Mughisuddin inquired about the prospect of victory in the Jihad launched in South India under the command of Malik Kafur, the Auliya uttered in effusive confidence: ‘What is this victory? I am waiting for further victories.’ “ccliv The Auliya used to accept large gifts sent by Sultan Alauddin from the spoils plundered in Jihad expeditions and proudly displayed those at his khanqah (lodge). “cclv Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (1141–1230), probably the second-greatest Sufi saint of India after Nizamuddin Auliya, demonstrated a deep-seated hatred toward the Hindu religion and its practices. On his arrival near the Anasagar Lake at Ajmer, he saw many idol-temples and promised to raze them to the ground with the help of Allah and His Prophet. After settling down there, Khwaja’s followers used to bring every day a cow (sacred to Hindus) near a famous temple, where the king and Hindus prayed, slaughter it and cook kebab from its meat—clearly to show his contempt toward Hinduism. ‘In order to prove the majesty of Islam, he is said to have dried the two holy lakes of Anasagar and Pansela (holy to Hindus) by the heat of his spiritual power.’ “cclvi Chisti also came to India with his disciples to fight Jihad against the infidels and participated in the treacherous holy war of Sultan Muhammad Ghauri in which the kind and chivalrous Hindu King Prithviraj Chauhan was defeated in Ajmer. In his Jihadi zeal, Chisti ascribed the credit for the victory to himself, saying, ‘We have seized Pithaura (Prithviraj) alive and handed him over to the army of Islam.’ “cclvii Amir Khasrau (1253–1325), Shaykh Nizamuddin Auliya’s exalted disciple, is lauded as the greatest liberal Sufi poet of medieval India. His coming to India, is deemed by many modern historians, as a blessing for the subcontinent. He had the good fortune of working at the royal court of three successive sultans. Regarded as one of India’s greatest poets, he is also credited with being the founder of Indian classical music and the creator of Qawwali (Sufi devotional music). The invention of the tabla (an Indian drum) is usually

attributed to him. There is little doubt about Amir Khasrau’s achievements in music and poetry. But when it came to the fallen infidels and their religion, his bigoted Islamic zeal was very much evident. In describing Muslim victories against the Hindu kings, he mocks their religious traditions, such as ‘tree’ and ‘stone-idol’ worship. Mocking the stone-idols destroyed by Muslim warriors, he wrote: ‘Praise be to God for his exaltation of the religion of Muhammad. It is not to be doubted that stones are worshipped by the Gabrs (derogatory slang for idolaters), but as stones did not service to them, they only bore to heaven the futility of that worship.’ “cclviii Amir Khasrau showed delights in describing the barbaric slaughter of Hindu captives by Muslim warriors. Describing Khizr Khan’s order to massacre 30,000 Hindus in the conquest of Chittor in 1303, he gloated: ‘Praise be to God! That he so ordered the massacre of all chiefs of Hind out of the pale of Islam, by his infidel-smiting swords… in the name of this Khalifa of God, that heterodoxy has no rights (in India).’ “cclix He took poetic delight in describing Malik Kafur’s destruction of a famous Hindu temple in South India and the grisly slaughter of the Hindus and their priests therein. “cclx In describing the slaughter, he wrote, ‘…the heads of brahmans and idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet, and blood flowed in torrents.’ In his bigoted delight at the miserable subjugation of Hindus and the barbarous triumph of Islam in India, he wrote: The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire? Islam is triumphant, idolatry is subdued. Had not the Law granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of Hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished. “cclxi Amir Khasrau described many instances of barbaric cruelty, often of catastrophic proportions, inflicted by Muslim conquerors upon the Hindus. But nowhere did he show any sign of grief or remorse, but only gloating delight. While describing those acts of barbarism, he invariably expressed gratitude to Allah, and glory to Muhammad, for enabling the Muslim warriors achieve those glorious feats.” (Khan, M. A., Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery. iUniverse. Kindle Edition, Location 3191-3253.)” The Suhrawardys had come to Sind even earlier, and another Suhrawardy, popularly known as Bulbul Shah, went to Kashmir. Bulbul Shah indulged in conversion activities, and even converted the Buddhist ruler, Rinchen, to Islam. After the beginning of the Shah Miri dynasty in 1339, came the next big turn in the Islamisation of Kashmir, when Sayyid Mir Shah Hamadani (Shah

Hamadan), a Shafi’i Kubrawi, came to Kashmir, and became a follower in the line of Bulbul Shah. His son wrought such untold misery for the kafirs in conjunction with Sikandar ‘Butshikan’ that it resulted in the Code of Umar8# (the Zimma) being applied there, and was instrumental in forced conversions and the First Exodus of Kashmir. The Noorbakshi Shi’a silsila of Shams-ud-Din Araqi was even worse, leading to the Second Exodus. There were still a handful of Sufis who continued to espouse the ‘immanence of divine’ and kept treating the Tariqat as different from the Shariat. Some Qadri Sufis were the main among them. Bulleh Shah was the last of them. However, they were just the exceptions, and exceptions only prove the rule of intolerance of Sufis, who had now fully subordinated themselves to the Shariat. However, saints like Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and Sarmad were denounced as heretics by the Ulāmā, exactly in the manner that Raskhan, who was a devotee of Krishṇa. The definite turn towards a full resolution of Tariqat- Shariat became important to the Ulāmā after Akbar’s drift away from hardline Islam into Din-eIllahi. This effort was led by the Mujaddid Alf-i-Sāni, Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi of the Naqshbandi Tariqa. The Naqshbandis are the only Tariqa that claim their descent from the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, unlike all other Sunni Tariqas, the Qadriyya, the Suhrawardy, the Chishtiyya, the Kubrawiyya (including Owaissiya), that claim their descent from the fourth Sunni Caliph/First Shi’a Imam Ali ibn Abi-Taleb. Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624), frustrated by Emperor Akbar’s tolerant and liberal policies toward non- Muslims, which violated Islamic laws, wrote to the emperor’s court: “The honour of Islam lies in insulting the kufr (unbelief) and kafir (unbelievers). One who respects the kafirs dishonours the Muslims… The real purpose of levying the jizyah on them is to humiliate them to such an extent that they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They remain terrified and trembling.” Similar were the views of Sufi saint Shah Walliullah (d. 1762) and of many other leading Islamic scholars and Sufi masters throughout the period of Muslim rule in India. (Khan, M. A., Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery. iUniverse. Kindle Edition Location 2813.) As soon as Jahangir ascended the throne, the charismatic Ahmad Sirhindi, who claimed descent from the second Caliph, Hazrat Umar Farooq ibn alKhattāb, prevailed upon him to move hard against unbelief and shirk. Guru Arjun Dev was a target of Sirhindi. He was arrested and brought to Lahore in 1606, shortly after Jahangir took over, and executed when he refused to convert

to Islam. As a Faroqui hardliner (Hazrat Umar’s descendant), his effort was to enforce the Code of Umar in the Mughal Empire (see footnote #). The Mughal court politics between the Muhaddis would cause a brief setback to Sirhindi, when Jahangir placed him under house arrest in 1619 in the Gwalior Fort, but released him under pressure from the Naqshbandis and due to some clever manoeuvrings from the Sheikh himself. So much so that before he died, in 1624, he was rewarded twice and put in charge of educating the Mughal Army. Not just that, his son Sheikh Muhammad Masoom got an exalted position first in the remaining three years of Jahangir, and later in Shah Jahan’s court, till Dara Shukoh became important. Dara was more under the influence of Qadris of Tariqat persuasion. Sheikh Masoom made his son, Saif-ud-Din, the mentor of Aurangzeb at his request. He was instrumental in inspiring Aurangzeb to launch the massive project of Fataawa Alamgiri, with 500 scholars and countless support staff, that would be completed long after his death. One of the main architects of this project, Shah Abdul Rahim, would also swear allegiance to the Mujaddidi Naqshbandis, and his son Shah Waliullah and grandson Shah Abdul Aziz, would play such a major role, that the entire Sufi pantheon would be coloured in a pro or anti hue of their legacy. It was, therefore, not a surprise, that the Mujaddidi silsila of Naqshbandi Tariqa became the flavour of the season in the remaining period of the Mughal Empire. The Ulaia Naqshbandis drifted apart and as we would see, would join the Barelvis, while the Mujaddidi faction would influence the Deobandis. Shah Waliullah was terribly distressed by the decline of the Mughal empire and the ascent of the Marathas. He was the one who played the traitor to India, in the classic Dar-ul- Islam/Dar-ul-Harb binary. He invited Ahmad Shah Abdali, set up an alliance for him with Najibullah of Rohilkhand and the Shi’a Asafuddaulah of Avadh, and triggered the 1761 Battle of Panipat. The gains of Panipat did not last long and Abdali had to go back, with the Marathas chasing him and winning Delhi and Najibabad back in1771.

Shah Abdul Aziz had two principal lines of disciples. Syed Ahmad Barelvi, with his disciple Shah Ismail Dehlawi, who was also Abdul Aziz’s grandson on the one side, and Maulana Fazle Haq Khairabadi Chishti and Fazle Rasool Badayuni on the other. The former followed the Mujaddidi Naqshbandi’s hardline Sufi ways, and the latter followed the Prophet’s divinity doctrine. The immediate cause of dispute was an 1826 book by Shah Ismail titled ‘Taqwatul Iman’, in which he belittled the Prophet as just an ‘Insan-e-Kamil’ or the perfect human being. He was opposed by the Fazle Haq faction with a fatwa signed by 14 scholars denouncing the book, and as is customary among various factions, labelling Shah Ismail as a kafir. Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail died fighting a jihad against the Sikhs in Balakot, but the schism persisted. The Fazle Haq faction insisted on the three attributes of the Prophet, viz. that he was the ‘noor-ul-Allah’, that he was Hazir-Nazir, or ever present, and that he had the ilm-e-ghaib, or knowledge of the things unseen. After the 1857 revolts, Fazle Haq was transported to the Andamans, and the followers of Shah Ismail founded the Deoband sect. Followers of the opposing sect comprised all other Sufi Tariqas and even the other silsila of Naqshbandis (Ulaia). Under Ahmad Raza Barelvi, they would set up the Barelvi sect in 1904 in Bareilly. Today, both the Deoband and Bareilly regard Sufi Tariqat as being subordinate to the Shariat. Not just that, there is no difference of opinion among them on Da’wa and jihad. The position is the same as that of Hanbalis, and by extension, same as Al Qaida and ISIS. This is what is taught in the madarsas in the country, and the Indian government tolerates it in the name of religious rights. The Barelvi sect is owed allegiance to by every Sufi Tariqa and silsila, except the Mujaddidi silsila of Naqshbandi Tariqa, who are theologically much closer to Deobandi, influenced as they are by Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Ismail.

All one needs to do is to have a look at the ‘nafrat ke ahkām’ (Ordinances/Commandments) contained within the 30-volume magnum opus Fataawa-i-Razvia of its founder Sheikh Ahmad Raza Barelvi Qadri. 3. Behavioural History We saw what the Sufis did in the Kashmir Valley in the 14th and 15th centuries. We have also seen how Ahmad Sirhindi became instrumental in the killing of the fourth Sikh Guru. The influence of these Sufis became all pervasive in Aurangzeb’s time, whose bigotry will need a separate book by itself. We have also seen the activities of Shah Waliullah and his bigoted disciples, including Syed Ahmad Barelvi, who was unique in the sense that he was an Ulema, a Sufi, and a Ghazi—all rolled into one. The 1857 revolt was turned into a jihad by the Sufis. Fazle Haq Khairabadi Chishti issued a fatwa of jihad from Delhi. The Sufi aspiration from the 1857 revolt was to re-establish the glory of Mughal empire by ousting the British. Except for the Faraizi movement of Bengal, whose leaders Shariatullah, Titu Mian, and Dhondu Mian were influenced by Wahabbism, in the 20th century, every major massacre of Hindus had a Sufi sub-text to it. The 1921 Mappilla rebellion and massacre was led by a Qadri Sufi, Abu Musliyar, and his colleague, Kunjahammed Haji. The 1946 Calcutta Killings were led by the able premier belonging to the Suhrawardy Tariqa, Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy. The 1946 Noakhali massacres were initiated and led by Ghulam Sarwar Husseini, a Nizami Chishti and a member of the Pir family of Diara Sharif in Noakhali. The 1947 massacres in NWFP and the bordering J&K areas of Poonch and Mirpur were inspired by the Qadri chief of Manki Sharif in Nowshera district, Amin-ul-Hasanat. The conversion and abduction being done by the Qadri Pir, Mithu Mian of Bharchundi Sharif in Sind, Pakistan, are well known to all. Thus violence and fanaticism does not go away only because Sufis like to sing and dance in fulfilment of ‘ihsān’, which remains subordinate to Imān and Din. Code of Shah-e-Hamadan, in line with the Code of Umar for Christians: · The Muslim ruler shall not allow fresh constructions of Hindu temples and shrines · No repairs to the existing Hindu temples and shrines shall be allowed · Hindus shall not use Muslim names · They shall not ride a harnessed horse

8#

· They shall not move about with arms · They shall not wear rings with diamonds · They shall not deal in or eat bacon · They shall not exhibit idolatrous images · They shall not build houses in neighbourhoods of Muslims · They shall not dispose of their dead near Muslim graveyards, nor weep nor wail over their dead · They shall not deal in or buy Muslim slaves · No Muslim traveller shall be refused lodging in the Hindu temples and shrines, where he shall be treated as a guest for three days by non-Muslims · No non-Muslim shall act as a spy in the Muslim state · No problem shall be created for those non-Muslims who, on their own will, show their readiness for Islam · Non-Muslims shall honour Muslims and shall leave their assembly whenever the Muslims enter the premises · The dress of non-Muslims shall be different from that of Muslims to distinguish themselves

Conclusion A few simple questions to a votary of Sufi syncretism will demolish any claim of peaceful coexistence: • Do Sufis have an existence apart from their Fiqh (Mazhab)? • Do Sufis not follow the Shariat? • Does the Tariqat (tasawwuf/Sufi way) supersede Shariat? • Is there a single verse in the entire Shariat trilogy (Qur’an, Hadis, Sirat) corpus that appreciates the Dharmik way? • Can a Sufi bless any unbeliever? Since the answer to each of these questions is an emphatic no, you have your answer. QED.

Epilogue book is largely a description of facts as they stand. As stated in the T he Preface, the outcomes of a philosophy are important indicators. These can lead to a whole range of analyses of complex human behaviour as a function of religious beliefs. Some examples that I have often made are worth full research papers. For example, the One Life Syndrome (OLS) is a natural outcome of the finite Time concept propagated by the Abrahamic religions. OLS makes it very easy for thought leaders to control and regiment followers. Finite time, combined with epistemology based on a Book, and binary Logic, makes the follower completely fearful of his God and God’s agents. This makes such ‘belief system’ societies incapable of evolving. The ‘inquiry system’ societies on the other hand, tend to become too diverse and too argumentative, making it difficult to rule over them. ‘Rule of Law’ being essentially God’s Command through the organ of the modern State, the ‘inquiry system’ societies find adapting to it difficult, though it can be accomplished through logic and reason, coupled with light enforcement. The attitudes towards God also differs. Abrahamic societies typically think of human beings as slaves to God, whereas open inquiry societies have a very open relationship that can be anything, even that of a friend or a paramour. It is said that a Hindu devotee is the owner of his deity, whereas the only God is the owner of whatever exists. Allied to the OLS is OGS—Only God Syndrome. Though the followers of Abrahamic religions never tire of saying that they are monotheists, the fact is that they do not talk of ‘One God’, but ‘Only God’, or to better paraphrase it— ‘Only Our God’, rejecting every other God, producing an exclusivist, adversarial worldview that can, by extension, be reflected in the violence it produces. Violence comes naturally to ‘Only God’ religions, who are not loathe to impose their worldview on others. The meditative nature of the inquiry system religions on the other hand, is naturally more accommodative. These are just a few of the outcomes that flow from the differences among religions. As laid out in the Preface, ‘belief systems’ seek to dominate and subjugate Nature, whereas ‘inquiry systems’ try to find harmony with Nature.

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About the Author Dixit is a retired IAS S anjay officer of the 1986 batch in Rajasthan Cadre. Prior to joining IAS, he was in the Merchant Navy as an engineer. He sailed the High Seas for four years before jumping ashore, landing in the sea of desert. He has done his graduation in Marine Engineering from DMET, Calcutta (as it then was). After joining the IAS, he added three Masters qualifications to his repertoire—in Indian classical music, Economics, and software Systems; the last one from BITS, Pilani. He also took a professional degree in Law, and has now obtained a licence from the bar to practice as an advocate. He has travelled India and the world extensively, first as a merchant mariner, and then as an administrator. He was also an active sportsman. He went on to don many hats in sports administration, including that of being Secretary and President of Rajasthan Cricket Association, Secretary of Rajasthan Tennis Association, and member of BCCI Finance Committee. As a person of varied interests, he has authored dozens of articles, covering such diverse fields as cricket, general sports, agriculture, Islamism, Spirituality, Strategic Affairs, and current issues. His articles have appeared in DNA, Yahoo India, Mumbai Mirror, Swarajya, Print India, India Facts and Medium.com. Sanjay Dixit also launched the Jaipur Dialogues Forum in 2016 to inform the national discourse on topics of Indic flavor. The Jaipur Dialogues has become an important milestone in the Literary Festival Circuit of India. He is the Chairman of the Forum. He has authored three bestsellers till now—Krishna Gopeshvara, Krishna Yogeshvara (these two as part of an ongoing Krishna Trilogy), and Unbreaking India. The Jaipur Dialogues YouTube channel of his is extremely popular, with over 1.2 million subscribers and an average of 20 million views per month. This is his fourth book.