From: raman@cs.utexas.edu (Raman Rajagopalan)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Subject: Re: more parallels: anti-vedic postings and missionaries
Date: 15 Sep 1992 18:08:55 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: bathtub.cs.utexas.edu

In article <BuF9Bx.BDL@ireq.hydro.qc.ca> srini@ireq-num.hydro.qc.ca (Srinivasan K.) writes:
>In article <laob2gINNnjs@bathtub.cs.utexas.edu> raman@cs.utexas.edu
> (Raman Rajagopalan) writes:

>>Christian Missionaries also learn Tamil and the Hindu scriptures.
>>Their intent is to find something to make fun of in the scriptures, 
>>and to make such great fun of it that the careless listener will
>>give up *all* the scriptures and adopt their faith.  
>>
>> -raman rajagopalan
>

>Father Beschi, Rev Drew, Caldwell, Xavier(?) etc.. are the famous ones,
>who proved as 'exceptions' to your generalization and stero-typing.
>I think an expert in Kamba Ramayanam in Tamil Nadu today is a Moslem.
>We have many other famous Christians (not missionarires), who are
>contributing positively to Tamil and Hinduism.

Fine.  I do not believe that all missionaries are necessarily bad.
That does not change the fact that many are!  Why should a christian school - 
in india - restrict a girl from wearing a pottu when she is a Hindu?  Why
should missionaries like Bedi set up ashrams and wear the clothes
of a traditional hindu saint and tell people that there is new
veda - the yesu-veda, if their purpose is not to mislead?

do you beleive that the christian aid groups simply accept donations
and pass them on to the needy?  No... many also give a healthy dose
of "christ is saving you" in the process.  

I was scanning a book written by some britishman, published
in the forties, which claimed that hindus had not progressed
scientifically because they were too preoccupied with sex.
he talked of women commonly eyeing men in India - measuring up the
potential size of the individual's parts.  Does this reflect
your opinion of Indian women, especially in the forties?

There are as many elements out there who wish to see hinduism
destroyed by whatever means as there are people interested in
genuinely studying it.  Have you ever listened to the "damnation"
speeches of the evalgalists?
You may welcome foreign missionaries, but if even one is bad, I'd
prefer to see them all leave India.  That's my opinion.

Also, I grew up in the the bible belt - memphis, TN, and 
my white friends in the neighborhood attended baptist schools.
Though they apologized later, I have had *many* attacks made
on me because of my religion in my childhood.  An adult called
hinduism a "bunch of bullshit" and even offered $5 to have one
of the guys hit me.  

For my part, I could see the hypocracy in what these guys preached
and what they practiced, and contented myself by pointing that
out to them, and also comparing their grades to mine.  In between
all this, we did enjoy our basketball and football games.  There
was no genuine hatred, but I was definitely *different* and not
quite one of them.

>
>There newsgroup is not just for Tamil Nadu pro-vedic Hindus.
>There are people of other religions and national origins, who
>read this newsgroup.
>
>1. If one wants to refute the translations of selections from Vedas,
>please do so, by all means, giving the true meaning etc..
>Just getting emotional and asking people to shut up does not solve the problem.

It takes time to translate all the vedas and type them in.  I do
not wish to do that.  I pointed out that the Vedas contain many
things, like mathematics, music, art, dance, medicine, etc., which
are tangible contributions in areas others than philosophy.  No one
has refuted this. 

I have also given synopses of the meanings of passages in the
sandhya vandanam and in the pooja books (ganapathi pooja, saraswathi
pooja, etc).  There were no refutations of this either.

>
>2. Also please DO NOT link 'questioning the vedas' to being anti-Brahmin,
>or pro-casteism. There have been famous philosophers in the past who
>have questioned the Vedas (Mr. Gauthama Buddha to mention just one).
>

Many of those who have questioned the vedas on THIS NET have
attacked brahmins in the process.  enough said.

>3. I do not see anything wrong in knowing which sections of Vedas are
>in-appropriate in TODAY's context. One could then plan on eliminating those
>sections in their personal recitals, and also recommend to others, through
>media.
>

I find this objectionable in a public forum since the recommendations
are based on partial truths.  There were people who made fun of sandhya-
vandanam a while back in India on the basis that offerings were made at some
point to the Sun.  That reason was used a recommendation to give up
the sandyavandanam.  That neglects the true nature of that prayer -
what about asking for the ability to control one's mind and actions -
is that a bad thing?

If someone submits a complete, line by line translation, and then
does a comparison, I would not object to that - though I may
wish to comment on the conclusions and recommendations.  What
we are seeing on this net are partial translations designed to
emphasize some negative point - not comprehensive studies.

>4. 'Blind Faith' in a book is not required in Hinduism. It permits
>reasoning and self realization. All Hindu Saints have accepted that.

How does this self realization come about?  many saints have written
than certain paths, also mentioned in the vedas, lead to self realization -
meditation, etc. 

I do not know of any saints who state "path X CANNOT lead to self-realization".

Why have the self appointed saints in the net taken to the task
of telling everyone of the paths that CANNOT lead to self-realization?

One example is making fun of writing sri-rama-jayam on a daily basis.
The potential wastage of time will be well-known to the person doing
the writing.  Leave it to them to decide for themselves whether the
action will lead to salvation, especially when one cannot offer much
more of an argument than "hey, that SOUNDS stupid".

>
>K. Srinivasan    srini@ireq-num.hydro.qc.ca

- raman rajagopalan


Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil