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Dear fellow-Iyers
We, Iyers, Iyengars Brahamanas, Pattars seem to have a sudden New God in the Firmament — and, in oder to expound his faith and doctrines, we have also a New Prophet-cum-Saviour, who is EVR and EMSN rolled into one.
My little note of five short paragraphs has evoked from this New Prophet-cum-Saviour a torrential and highly emotional outburst of twenty-six paragraphs spread over four sheets of A4-size paper all forcefully set out in thick bold black print — almost shouting from the top of the temple flagpole to drown out the truth. To him, the Truth hurts, of course. The absolute Truth hurts absolutely. Especially when set out soberly and somberly, in small print.
One of our more prolific contributors, this Prophet-cum-Saviour has newly discovered, out of the cerulean blue sky, WESTERN UNIVERSALISM, whose basic tenets are:-
Eternal Religion gives way to enacted law.
All men and women are the same.
All temples and places of worship are the same.
All gods, daemons, and spirits are the same.
All religions, faiths, creeds are the same.
Everything is equal to everything else; no distinction exists anywhere, in anything, at any time; to any degree — never existed before, will never exist in the future. Utopia everywhere. God is in his Heaven (or Hell), and All’s Right With The World !
Our newly-self-christened Prophet-cum-Saviour will slash you to slivers of meat if you dare to disagree, or even think otherwise. This is the Brave New World! His Brave New World.
But is it?
Enacted law in Norway says that Anurupa and Sagarika Battacharya from Kolkata, parents of a three-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl, and who work and live in Norway, are guilty of unforgivable crime against their two babies. Acting accordingly to this enacted law, the authorities forcibly removed the tiny tots from their parents’ custody and proximity, and placed them under alien foster care — to be reared “properly”. They are still in custody. The law is adamant that it is right.
The hapless parents’ great crimes? They fed their children by their own hand, because the children did not know how to feed themselves. They also let the children share their own beds at night.
Enacted law in Australia said that parents of aborigine children — the black-skinned race existed and flourished, prayed and played together, cooked, ate, cured their illnesses through their own native medicines, long before white-skinned Europeans in the British Isles learned not to live in pits in the ground, learned not to cover their naked bodies with woad [blue dye] to catch the sun and protect their skins from the cold, learned not to hunt for grubs in rotting wood to feed themselves — are genetically incapable of rearing children, and that all children born to aborigines should be captured like wilk animals and be transported away to special camps, there to be “brought up properly”. All the children died in captivity. As did many aborigine parents “in the Outback”, pining for their absent progeny.
Enacted law in the United States of America says that the brown Native Americans do not own the land or the resources under it, but the White Invading Europeans do. Therefore the Native Americans are confined to small undeveloped “reservations” in inhospitable and inaccessible places of the country, and forced to fend for themselves.
Under the doctrine of “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” enacted law in the United States of America gave White Invading Europeans the right, under God, to hunt down and kill off in one-sided genocidal war after genocidal war, in holocaust after holocaust, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, every Native American who dared to oppose them.
Read, for example, “Indians and Other Americans — Two Ways of Life Meet” 274 pages, by Harold E Fey & D’Arcy McNickle, read “I Will Fight No More Forever — Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War” 398 pages, by Merrill D. Beal, and read “Men To Match My Mountains – The Monumental Saga Of The Winning Of America’s Far West” 562 pages, by Irving Stone. You will even find accounts of cannibalism — white men killing and eating the flesh of their Native American guides and porters after crossing the Sierra Nevada, in the last-mentioned book.
Enacted law in the United States of America gave White Invading Europeans the right to poison the wells, streams and other drinking and cooking fresh water resources of the Native Americans, the right to toss into the latter’s tepees and wigwams pieces of cloth and blanket deliberately infected with smallpox, a hitherto unknown disease in the New World, and against which the Native Americans had no defence. The right to burn down tepes and wigwams, and destroy stock of food and clothing, after forcingt the Native Americans to fglee form their settlements. The right togun down all bison, elk, deer, and other animals on which the Native Americans depended for food.
Enacted law in the United States of America gave White Invading Europeans the right to slaughter Native American women on sight, the right to string up their naked bodies high up between two poles with their torsos stretched out by ropes ties to their wrists , the right to cut off their breasts, and make tobacco pouches out of the dried breasts, and to flaunt these prizes in the bars and saloons of the country.
Enacted law in Saudi Arabia prohibits praying to anyone other than Allah, even in the innermost privacy of your own home, even if you are not a Muslim. You can be put to death for defying the law.
Enacted law in Singapore prohibits the importation of even one stick of chewing gum, or one stick of cigarette. You will be swiftly hanged by the neck until you are dead, after due process of law, if you are found in possession of 12 grammes of heroine or similar narcotic drug, even if you are only in transit and do not exit from your plane on the airport runway or exit from your ship in the harbour, and do not set foot at all on solid Singapore soil.
Enacted law in India has authorised seizure without compensation, of the ancestral fertile agricultural lands of hundreds of thousands of expert Brahmin agriculturists and foresters, lands on which they and their families depended for a living, and had done so for generations.
Enacted law in India has authorised fragmentation into unviable little plots of these seized agricultural lands, and to distribute them among individuals who had formerly been employed to till the fields or otherwise to help in tilling the land, planting, watering and harvesting crops, under supervision of the owners and their families.
Enacted law in Brazil allows white wold-be settlers and ranchers to machine-gun down and to slay by machete any natives they meet in the deep dark jungles of the Amazon basin, to seize their land, to cut down all trees, and turn the land into huge ranches for raising beef cattle and construct abattoirs and beef-packing plants.
And so the list goes on.
Our Prophet-Saviour of Western Universalism waxes eloquent on “the theory that there is only one god.” He trots out the tired tirade quoting our Rig Vedam. He concludes passionately with the fervent supplication: “Differentiating between (our god and their gods) will only split our society further and isolate us more and more.”
What noble sentiments. What self-evident truths, axioms, to be accepted without proof!
Is all this fiery oratory only to flay practicing Brahmanas and practicing Hindus who pray to “our gods”?
Will our red-blooded Universalist convince the Protectors of the Holy Places of Islam; convince the Pope in Rome and his Cardinals; convince the Defender of the Faith sitting on the Throne of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (whose ancestors were Emperors of India and Empresses of India) and the Archbishop of Canterbury, convince the Grand Patriarchs of the Orthodox Christian Churches, convince the quarrelling hundreds of reformist and independent Christian sects, convince the Heads of the Hasidim, of the Orthodox, of the Reformist, and of the Conservative Schools of Judaism, — to accept his theory that there is only one god, so they should all drop their differences and merge into one whole Soup Supreme together with Hindus, as was the case before Judaism arose, and give birth to the Nazarene creed and its brood of dissidents, and gave birth to the Mecca-centric followers of Muhammad? Convince them to demolish their basilicas, cathedrals, and churches, their mosques and mausoleums, their synagogues and prayer-houses, their grottoes and cave-shrines?
Would it appease our red-blooded tomtom-beating Universalist a bit, if I were to gently remind him that he appears incapable of distinguishing between “non-Brahmins” entitled to Upanayanam and all that confers, such as Kshathriyas and Vaishyas, and those falling outside the four varnas such as worshippers of the phalanx of “Karuppan, Karuppaayee, Maareeaayee, Madurai Veeran, Muthallathu-raaja, Mooneeaandee, Aatchee, Kaava,-theivam, Ayyanaar, Naachiappan, Naachiammayee, and many, many more”?
“Our gods and their gods — What’s this?” Our rhetorician demands.
This is the reality of this world today. Nothing less. Nothing more.
Of course, he is free to reject the evidence before his (closed? Partially closed?) eyes, and dwell in the realm of fantasy. He is free to say that all men and women are the same, all temples and places of worship are the same, all gods, daemons, and spirits are the same, all religions, faiths, creeds are the same. He is free to insist that:
Voodoo and Vedam are the same
So are the Devil and the deities
So are Ganga and Koovum rivers
So are Kashmir and Kanyakumari
So are Aani and Maarghazhi months
So are Amaavaasya and Pournami
So are the ballet and Bharathanaatyam
So are Idi Amin and Nelson Mandela
So are James Joyce and Siegfrid Jung
So are Pidgin and elegant English
So are Rafflesia and the rose
So are the vamp and the virgin
So are koorkan-kizhangu and Elephant Yam
So are plywood and sandalwood
So are vinegar and wine
So are rice powder in water and cows’ milk
So are Singapore and Shanghai
So are Ocala, USA and Osaka, Japan
So are faeces and manure
So are Eskimos and Papuans
He is free to insist that, in his Brave New World of Equality and Universalism, all metals are equal; therefore lead is equal to tin is equal to copper is equal to silver is equal to gold. Similarly, all carbons are equal. Charcoal is equal to anthracite is equal to diamond. His logic is irresistible — or, in his own words, muddled “because of superstition and stupidity and also greed for free flush (whatever that means – non-coin-operated modern toilets?).”
When all is said and done, what can you possibly make of one who cannot distinguish between his distorted imagination of my allegedly “visiting the Pazhani temple, with freshly collected cow milk from brahmin cow”, and the truth, which I related as to how I was cheated by the rascally paal-kudam supplier at Pazhani Adivaaram who had surreptitiously filled the vessel with water mixed with rice-powder, and boldly cheated me by assuring me that it was fresh cows’ milk milked that very morning?
Also, how can you possibly rely on a man’s ability to tell the truth, when he cannot distinguish between my praising a Brahmin married woman in Dubai who faithfully observes all our rituals such as Vara-Lakshmi Nonbu and is a dharma-pathni to her Brahmin husband, and my condemning a totally different woman who uses the foulest of languages on the Internet, so much so that even our tolerant moderator had to excise the entirely of her two e-mails when I quoted them verbatim to disprove our Prophet-Saviour’s false accusations?
Further, how can you be sure of where a man’s loyalty lies or where his orientation is, when he broadcasts that every Shiva-Lingam has a monkey’s head and face protruding from the top and a monkey’s tail protruding from behind, since his unshakeable belief is that Lord Shiva is an avathaaram of Hanuman, and vice-versa? How can you trust him when he sneers at a Brahmin priest pouring water on the Shiva-Lingam which, he smirks, bears the River Ganga on its head — so pouring water on the head of Gangadhar is eminently stupid?
And how pious and god-fearing is a man who goes to Shiva Temples in south Kerala during festivals, to meet buxom young black outcaste women (in snow-white saris) at night and there, after a private stroll hand-in-hand through the deserted temple kitchens, hugs them to his chest, murmuring “I like you,” in the darkness?
The final sting in the tail — or the utmost acme of hypocrisy. “We survive only if our country survives,” he declaims. Which country? Then United States of America where he is comfortably settled? Truncated, riven, vivisected India — or what remains of it now — which he fled? Canada and Vancouver, from where he continued his diatribe against Brahmins? Some new destination? Pre-historic Gondwanaland? Bharatha Varsham? Bharatha Khandam?
Although his ingrained anti-Brahminism surfaces every now and then, what about the survival of Brahmins as a community? What about the survival of Brahmanas, Kshathriyas, and Vaishyas, as those entitled to access to the Vedas? How about the survival of Brahmanas, Kshathriyas, Vaishyas, and Shoodras as the four varnas mentioned in our Vedas? How about the survival of Vedic Dharmam? Sanathana Dharmam?
S Narayanaswamy Iyer |