jabdakhata

Vivekananda is worshiped nowadays as a patriot prophet. But was he truly concerned about India as a patriot would? Also did Vivekananda stood for Hinduism only? Was he himself sectarian, a term that he despised strongly and criticized vehemently? If we buy into the opinion of today's politicians and the so called secular liberals and some off the other detractors of Vivekananda these seem to be the case. They portray him as the champion of Brahminical Hinduism, militant Hinduism and aggressive Nationalism. He is given at best the status of a social reformer and a militant nationalist. He is also clubbed in the same bracket as a humanitarian. So how much true are these assessments? Let me make a bold claim here. Only Vivekananda's disciples and ardent devotees who follow his principles know him truly, rest are mere blind men seeing a part of the elephant and mistaking it as a whole. Two stories come to our mind, both narrated by Vivekananda as part of his lectures, one bei

Therefore Shiva Linga is possibly contemporary to Vedic rituals, or even earlier than that. It is likely that the worship of Shiva which needs minimum of paraphernalia, was developed to suit the needs of the poor who could not perform costly Vedic rituals as performed by Kshatriya princes and therefore needed a low cost alternative. This is the reason why Shiva worship is so easy. it just needs some local flowers, some water etc as offering in contrast with Vedic sacrifices. In place of altars we have the lingams and the Yoni on which the Lingam is placed - depicting the eternal reunion between Shiva, the Brahman and the shakti, its power. This was possibly prevalent even among the so called non Vedic tribes like Kiratas, Chandalas, Nishadas and Yavanas. We have read in Mahabharata several examples of how Shiva or Mahadeva was the prefered God of all the so called non Aryan tribes including Rakshasas. This is because He was easy to worship, did not need any elaborate rituals and coul

Swami Vivekananda attended Paris Congress in Aug-Sep 1900 as a delegate. Even though Paris Congress was merely a session of the scholars who were involved with several topic and themes like history of religion, it was important for two reasons - 1) It formed a platform for the scholars to come together and exchange ideas on a host of  issues and topics relevant for the modern age, possibly for the first time 2) It had a good visibility among all the leading intellectuals and formed one of the basis for further academic research of the later period into various aspects of the religious history. However it was neither as critical nor as important as the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, nor it enjoyed visibility. In his words in a letter written to Udbodhan -  Congress of the History of Religions recently sat for several days together. At the Congress, there was no room allowed for the discussions on the doctrines and spiritual views of any religion; its purpose was only to inquire i

Let us now try to describe Krishna and analyze his activities in Vrindavan. Unfortunately there isn’t much realistic information available on how Krishna looked like, even though there are a lot of poetic descriptions. So it’s really difficult for us to construct the human Krishna from the poet’s or devotee’s imagination. However there are some pertinent and relevant pieces assimilated from various sources. For instance, he had curly hair, his body colour had a greenish (like that of new born grass) hue and was not exactly blue as depicted in popular imagination, he had large eyes (like petals of a lotus), he was fond of yellow garments, used to wear ornaments possibly of wild flowers and used to carry peacock’s tail plume on his head and carried a flute. His eyebrows were thick but not bushy. Atleast that was his description from Vrindavan days and since we have been discussing the Vrindavan days so far let us focus on these descriptions and their inherent meaning. Krishna is dark i

A word about Devas and their king Indra. In Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas there is copious reference to devas and Indra. In fact when we read these scriptures it seems to us that these devas were actually humans with more powers. For instance, they had constant fights with the danavas. The danava king Vrishaparva’s daughter Sarmistha was wife of Yayati. Yayati’s son Nahusha was offered the post of Indra in heaven. Devas were constantly mingling with the humans and even had human sons, like the five Pandavas. Devas and Danavas were inter related as both were sons of sage Kashyapa through his two wives Aditi and Diti. This leads us to naturally assume that these devas were actually a tribe like Nagas, who were more powerful than ordinary men. The same has been claimed by Swami Vivekananda in his East and West. He shows clearly on how the tribes of the Devas and Asuras evolved from human beings an. The word divine came from devas – derived from div or light. So possibly they had som

The most important mysterious incident is however the lifting of the Govardhan hill in order to save Vrindavan residents from a possible deluge owing to incessant rainfall. The story goes like this – The residents of Vrindavan used to worship Indra for having rains at regular intervals when needed, Indra being the god of the rains. This included an elaborate sacrifice aimed at propitiating Indra. Krishna stopped this practice by influencing his people to worship Govardhan hills instead of a costly sacrifice to propitiate Indra because he felt that Govardhan and surrounding areas confer more benefits to a primarily agrarian community such as the Gopas as the hilly region provides the grasslands and forests with streams that help in nourishing the cattle and livestock. People accordingly stopped the sacrifice in honor of Indra and started a custom of Govardhan Puja. This angered Indra so much that he deluged Vrindavan for 7 days and nights. But Krishna protected the Gopas using Govardh

So there is no reason to discard the special feats of Sri Krishna, although we need to be cautious about the possibility of loss of information over time and some exaggeration by ardent devotees and admirers which is quite natural. Gopas migrated to Vrindavan and thought that they were safe but Kamsa was not sitting idle. He had spies everywhere and he had friends who would attempt the assassination of Krishna and Balarama. One of them was Pralamba, who carried Balarama away, to be eventually overpowered and killed by him. Bankim thinks that the incident of Dhenuka involved actual wild asses who were very dangerous and reigned over the palm groves. Dhirendra Nath Pal seems to agree that Krishna possibly got rid of dangerous animals in the Vrindavan and made it safe for the habitat of the Gopas. The logic seems incorrect because mere slaughter of dangerous animals would not have earned Krishna the reputation that he earned. Kings usualy went in Mrigaya or hunting expedition and killed