Dear Ananya
Vajpeyi Ph. D.
I looked at
your letter making three points.
1.
You request support to JNU in
its present predicament.
2.
You allude to Rajiv Malhotra’s
plagiarism.
3.
You praise Sheldon Pollock’s scholarship.
While I
expected a more profound analysis of The Battle For Sanskrit from a Ph. D.
degree holder like you or at least a
rebuttal of the statements attributed to
Sheldon Pollock on Sanskrit and Brahmins,
especially considering that you are his student, I will settle down for
the mediocre emission, and I take it
then that TBFS represents your guru’s stance on the crucial subjects of
Sanskrit and Brahmins, let me proceed
with my own, a physicist’s,
consideration of what lurches in the minds of the hate mongers. I also
include a Sanskrit poem at the end which your guru can get translated into
English by one of the Indian slaves he employs. Stop stereotyping people, a
despicable exercise of the West, and be original true to your sampradaya.
1. 56 Professors of
Madras IIT said "We support intellectual freedom, and alternative views
are a must for democracy and creativity. However, there is a deep distortion of
the meaning of academic freedom.”
They have requested the President to take steps for saving
educational institutions from the "scholarship of abuse, hate and
discord" and restoring the atmosphere of sobriety, reflection and harmony
necessary for genuine scholarship, Shreepad Karmalkar, a professor and one of
the signatories, said in a statement. In view of this statement I can’t
support JNU as requested by you.
2. I have thoroughly examined the evidence on Rajiv
Malhotra’s alleged plagiarism, and have written three articles on the subject. Please read them.
3. Sheldon Pollock’s Scholarship: All scholars make evidence based statements.
Contrarily, if any person makes statements and does not provide evidence, that
person cannot claim to be a scholar.
·
Pollock says a king patronized Valmiki. Can he provide the
name of that king? Does Valmiki say in Ramayana anything about a patron king? How was the first Hindu poem written? One morning on the banks
of Ganga Valmiki saw a couple of cranes mating,
but the very next instant the male bird died, hit by an arrow. He became angry and was overcome with grief. He looked around to find out who had shot the
bird. He saw a hunter with a bow and arrows, nearby. Valmiki became very angry.
His lips opened and he cried out,
मां
निषाद प्रतिष्ठां त्वमगमः शाश्वतीः समाः।
यत्क्रौंचमिथुनादेकम्
अवधीः काममोहितम्॥'
mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṁ tvamagamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ
yat krauñcamithunādekam avadhīḥ kāmamohitam
You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity
For you killed a bird in love and unsuspecting.
This was the first Hindu verse, and the first Sanskrit verse. The
natural chandassu was Anustup which he used for Ramayana rachana inspired by
Brahma and getting the story from Narada. Do you see a king here? Why is
Sheldon Pollock distorting history saying there was one, without providing a
name?
·
Mauryan Emperor
Ashoka sent his daughter Sangamitra and son
Mahendra to Sri Lanka to propagate Budhdhism. Muslim hordes invaded India to propagate their
religion and culture. Christians from Europe came and occupied India. Name one Hindu king who sent Armies or led an
invasion on a foreign country to spread Sanskrit and Hinduism.
·
Muslims killed 18
million Hindus, majority of them Brahmins and the Christians killed 7 million in
Bengal famine alone under Winston Churchill in 1943 in a manmade Holocaust. Can
you name a Hindu king who did anything closely resembling these massacres of
Hindus by Muslims and Christians?
·
Sheldon Pollock
says all Hindu art and literature developed under kings. Let me mention three
great poets in Telugu language who refused any patronage from kings - Potana,
Tyagayya and Shyam Sastri. Potana
(1450-1510) wrote Mahabhagavata inspired by Rama and dedicated it to Rama even
though he was a Shaivite. He wrote:
ఇమ్మనుజేశ్వరాధములకిచ్చి పురంబులు వాహనంబులున్
సొమ్ములు కొన్ని పుచ్చుకుని సొక్కి శరీరము వాసి కాలుచే
సమ్మెట వేటులంబడక సన్మతి శ్రీహరి కిచ్చిచెప్పె ఈ
బమ్మెర పోతరాజొకండు భాగవతంబు జగధ్ధితంబుగన్.
Refusing to
give in to the lowly king, this Bammera Potaraaju dedicated his Bhaagavatam to
Sreehari. Look at the word Potana
(Potaraju) uses to describe the kings “LOWLY”. He went on to become one of the
greatest Telugu Poets.
·
Tikkana the greatest Telugu poet dedicated his magnum opus Mahabharatam to
Hariharanatha a deity he created from the words Hari (Vishnu) and Hara (Siva)
to promote harmony among the followers of these two.
·
Thyagaraaju, another great Telugu poet refused patronage of any king,
singing his songs in the temples of Rama and likewise another great Telugu poet,
Shyama Sastri, sang in the Kanchi temple. Both of them joined Muttuswami
Dikshitaar to become Carnatic Music Trinity.
·
Thus there are many Telugu poets who dedicated their works to their
favourite deity and not to a king. How can Sheldon Pollock say that all Hindu
literature was patronized by Kings and get away with a blatant lie?
·
Three great Telugu poets Nanne Choda, Vemana and Ramaraja Bhushana were non-Brahmins.
·
Sheldon Pollock
says Sanskrit was a reserved area of Brahmins. The greatest Sanskrit poets
Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa were not Brahmins. Valmiki was a hunter, Vyasa was the son a fisherwoman Satyavati and
Kalidasa was not a Brahmin. Even if Valmiki mentioned he belonged to Bharadwaja
clan, does it preclude him being the son of a hunter woman?
·
Marriages between
Brahmins and non -Brahmins were common. Vashista the Brahmarishi par excellence
married Arundhati, a Dalit Kanya.
·
Sheldon Pollock
says the subject material of all kavyas was kings. Here again he fails to
produce fool proof evidence. Mrichchakatika one of the best Sanskrit plays and
definitely the best known in Europe, had a poor Brahmin, Charudatta, as hero
and Vasantika, a courtesan as heroine. The other roles were from lower classes
who spoke all languages like Prakrit in addition to Sanskrit in the play. A disregard to Natya Sastra that frowned
upon. Krishna Karnamritam, another kavya
did not choose a king for hero.
·
Even Ramayana’s
Aranyakanda, Kishkindhakanda, Sundarakanda and Yuddhakanda deal with rakshasas,
vanaras and birds, and have no mention of a single Brahmin. The Guru
Vishwamitra was not a Brahmin.
·
The other great playwright
of Sanskrit Bhasa chose themes involving common people, against the
stipulations of Natya Sastra. Not always
were sastras obeyed as Pollock
would have us believe. In Telugu,
Palkurki Somanatha wrote in Dwipada Chandassu, a disrespect to
Lakshanika Sastra.
·
A strange statement
is attributed to Pollock that Muslims and British tried to rejuvenate Sanskrit
and Brahmins refused. I lived in Telangana under Nizam for 21 years before I
left for Canada. Nizam did not give a cent for the development of Telugu, the
local language let alone Sanskrit. Everyone had to learn Urdu. In Pakistan Sindhi, Punjabi, Pustu and Balochi
are not spoken today because of the domination of Urdu, according to Tarek
Fatah. That is how Muslims treated other Muslims in a Muslim country. Imagine the atrocities Nizam committed in
Telangana against Hindus - rapes, murders and looting. Telugu language is full
of poems describing the Nizam’s atrocities.
Not only Telugu, but there are similar poems in Marathi and Kannada
languages also, as they were under the Nizam’s rule as well. No Marx, or no
Pollock can say those atrocities did not happen.
·
In one of his papers
Pollock complains the prayoga (experiment) was not developed in India as much
as sastra (theory). He should know
better. Hindus were best in three areas -
metallurgy, textiles and shipbuilding. Did they get to be the best without
prayogas?
·
Madhva based his
Dwaita sidhdhanta on Pratyaksha (प्रत्यक्ष – perception), Anumāna (अनुमान inference) and Śabda (शब्द - relying on word), a rationalistic approach unheard of in the Abrahamic religions or
even in dogmatic Marxism.
·
Calculus was developed in
India 250 years before Leibnitz and Newton by the Kerala school as reported by a Manchester-Exeter universities
team. The Kerala school developed the Pi series and used it to calculate Pi
correct to 9, 10 and later 17 decimal places. It goes on to say “….. there is
strong circumstantial evidence that Indians passed on their discoveries to
mathematically savvy Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the 15th
century. That knowledge, the researchers argue, may have been passed on to
Newton.
·
So called
Pythagoras theorem, Pascal’s Triangle and Diophantine equations were known to
Vedic people long before they were to Europeans. Zero, infinity, negative
numbers , age of the earth, age of the universe , shape of the earth as being
round as opposed to Biblical version of a flat earth, and plastic surgery are
some of the achievements of Hindus so pre-occupied with power, prashasti according to Pollock.
·
The plastic surgery
developed by Susruta was practiced by potters, not Brahmins.
·
Soldiers were non
Brahmins who spoke Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali.
·
Thus Hindu
intellectual achievements spanned a spectrum of areas from arts, science,
mathematics, technology, medicine, surgery, governance, metaphysics,
philosophy, literature and others where non Brahmins made significant
contributions.
·
Certainly we didn’t
have kings like Henry VIII or other syphilitic monarchs of Europe. Europe introduced syphilis into every country
they travelled. A major genocide of
First Nations people in North America happened from other diseases carried in
blankets brought from Europe. Let Pollock deny this!
·
It seems Pollock
has Hindu phobia and Sanskrit phobia. One wonders why? Hindus opened their arms to all refugees
including Jews, Syrian Christians, Parsis, Buddhists and even Muslims. India, a Hindu country had one time in the
recent past, a Muslim President (APJ Abdul Kalam), Sikh Prime Minister
(Manmohan Singh) and Christian Congress Party President (Sonia Gandhi) - all
minorities. Can Pollock show a religion
like Hinduism that showed so much tolerance to minorities? We know what Christians did in Canada, in
America, in Mexico, in Chile, in Australia –
genocide of unbelievable proportions. Even today in Canada the rapes and
killings of First Nations women, children and men continue unabated, sometimes
at the hands of the police. In the
USA, police and Euro-Americans kill
African Americans routinely. Did Hindus
do anything like it? Why oh, why, does Pollock hate Sanskrit and Brahmins so
much? I think I know the answer. He is
directing his anger toward Hitler onto Brahmins and Sanskrit. Hitler admired
Sanskrit, he took Swastika as his symbol, he admired Aryans and then he killed
so many Jews. So Pollock hates Hitler who liked Sanskrit – ergo in his little
mind Pollock has to hate Brahmins and Sanskrit. However unreasonable it may
sound. I just want to remind Pollock
that Leningrad is no more Leningrad - it is St. Petersburg once again. USSR failed, communism failed. Will Frankfurt
school be any better? No. It won’t
be. Al l Western philosophies share one
thing common with Monotheism, even the communists and Marxists - the belief
that <MY WAY IS BETTER THAN YOURS. I
WILL GO TO ANY LENGTH TO DEFEND IT - EVEN KILLINGS ON MASS SCALE> Now let me
tell you why Hinduism survived - it accepted everyone with love, patience and
tolerance, qualities absent in the West and in the middle east and in the
Abrahamic Religions. Let Pollock consider this awhile.
·
I will stop here
and let you apply the theorem to Sheldon Pollock of not furnishing evidence for
his statements.
Following Valmiki who addressed the Nishada
cursing him with no rest for ever for killing the unsuspecting male crane in
the process of maithunam, I send the following poem to Sheldon Pollock for
being so uncharitable to Sanskrit and to Brahmins.
रामायण कविता नाटक (कल्पित रचना )
This is a work of fiction. Main characters in this poetic play are from Ramayana. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental. The author wishes to acknowledge with profound thanks the editing done by Dr. Ratnakar Narale.
Naveen Chandra Ph. D.
पात्राणि : वसिष्ठः, सूत्रधारः, दशरथः, कौसल्या, उर्मिला, लक्ष्मणः, विश्वामित्रः, दूर्वासः, मशकासुरः (पेल्डोन् सोल्लक:), दुर्गा माता
संध्याकाल:, कोलंबिया-विश्व-विद्यालयम्
पेल्डोन् सोल्लक: :
संस्कृतं मृतकलेवरम् ! संस्कृतं भ्रष्टम् !
संस्कृतं कृयति परिप्लव !
रामायणम् अशुच्यम् ! रामायणं अनृतम् !
रामकथा निर्वीर्या, रामायणं बहु दुष्टम् !
दुर्गा माता :
पापी! प्रलापी! त्वं प्रसारयसि रोगम् !
तव दौष्ट्यं भीषणं दण्डं अर्हति !
भवतु मशकासुरः अवद्य नरकः!
खादसि अवकरं दूषितान्नं किं सदा !
वसिष्ठ उवाच :
शुक्लाम्बरधरं विष्णुं शशिवर्णं चतुर्भुजम् !
प्रसन्न वदनं ध्यायेत् सर्व विघ्नोपशन्तये !
सूत्रधारः :
पृथ्वीकम्पनं भवति ! श्यामम् धरति अम्बरं !
उत्तुङ्गतरङ्गांबोधिः ! झञ्झामारुतं प्राणीति !
स्फुटति अग्निपर्वते धूम्राच्छादनम् च अनलः !
किं कारणं दुश्शकुनाय? कृपया वदसि महन् !
वसिष्ठ उवाच :
क्षुद्रो गर्वोन्नतभाषः अपमानं करोति रामस्य
अगोत्रिकः दुर्भाग्यश्च, नूतन-यार्क-निवासी
मर्यादोल्लन्घनः परमपातकः
वदति अश्लीलान् शब्दान्, लिखति अनृतवाक्यानि
असन्दर्भेण प्रलापान् संदिग्धमेधां
वाचालतः अनिर्णयायान् सिद्धान्तान् च
दशरथ उवाच :
सः दुष्टः मशकासुरः राक्षसः वाचालः दंभी च
करोति वल्गनाः
भारतखण्डनं च भञ्जनम्
अबद्धचरित्रसृजनम्
कपटपाण्डित्यम्
पाश्चात्यविषप्रसारणम्
संस्कृतमात्सर्यपूजनम्
वितण्डवादविराजनम्
गरलभुजङ्गदंशनम्
मशकासुरवर्तनमेव
कौसल्या उवाच :
न पश्यति रमणीयाम्
अत्यन्तसुन्दरां रामकथाम्
मूढो मूढं व्यभिचारम्
अनृतभाषां वदति
अनृतां रचनां लिखति
अनृतं वर्तनं करोति
उर्मिला उवाच :
सर्वं पापं तव जीवनम्
व्यर्थं व्यर्थं तव जीवनम्
निन्दसि मधुरं संस्कृतम्
निन्दसि पवित्रं संस्कृतम्
देववाणीं निन्दसि !
पापं भूयिष्ठं तव जीवनम्
नास्ति नास्ति मुक्तिः तव अन्ते
अस्तु अस्तु जीवन सर्वं नष्टम्
वृथा वृथा तव कपटज्ञानम्
लक्ष्मण उवाच :
रामायण कथा परमार्थिका
तव बुद्धि मन्दतानूह्या
तव कपाले अनाचराः !
तव मेधायाम् अनादरः !
तव कपाले निस्सन्ग्रहम् !
तव मेधायां निस्सन्धानम् !
हीनं हीनं तव जीवनम् !
पापं भूयिष्ठं तव जीविते !
करोषि त्वं मिथ्या अन्वेषणं तव दुर्भाग्यम् !
हे! मशकासुर ! तव पतनं निश्चितम् निश्चितम्!
लाञ्छनम् ते धिक्! धिक् !!
पतनं तथ्यं तथ्यं तव पतनं तथ्यं तथ्यम् !
पतनं तथ्यं तथ्यम् !
विश्वामित्र उवाच :
न जानाति वाल्मीकं, व्यासम् !
न बोधति भासं, कालिदासम् !
डिम्भकः अधमः ! दंभाचार्यः! मन्दबुद्धिः !
वृथा ! वृथा ! तव जन्म तुच्छं ! तुच्छं !!
छद्मपाण्डित्यं परमदारुणम्!
पण्डितनटनं पापकारणम् !
पण्डितनटनं पापकारणम् !
पण्डितखण्डितः तव सिध्धान्तः तथ्यं तथ्यम् !
भवतु भवतु भवतु तव नाशः !
वृथा वृथा तव जीवनम् !
छद्मपाण्डित्यम् परमदारुणम्!
तथ्यं तथ्यं तव पतनम् !
दूर्वास उवाच :
आङ्लेयो न बोधति सुन्दरां कविताम् !
देवभाषायां प्रकाशितां सुन्दरां कविताम् !
तव कपालं मात्सर्यभरितं !
तव कपालं शिलासदृम् !
नास्ति नास्ति विश्लेषणं तव मस्तिष्के !
किं प्रयोजनम् मोहभरिताङ्ग्लेयस्य !
किं परमार्थं पाश्चात्यदुर्मार्गे !!!
रावण उवाच :
विधिलिखितं दुर्भाग्यं ललाटे
मूढ अचार्याभ्येयः शिरोमणिस्त्वम् !
मूर्खचात्रेभ्यायः अधिपतिस्त्वम् !
अज्ञानतिमिरे निवाससिस्त्वम् !
तव पतनं तथ्यम्
तथ्यं तथ्यम्
समाप्तम्
A poem, रामायण कविता नाटक (कल्पित रचना), written by Dr. Nellutla Naveena Chandra, retired scientist and educator, author, freelance journalist and speaker. Copyright©2016 Dr. Nellutla Naveena Chandra. chandraalex@hotmail.com
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