BJP chief claims English bad for India, triggers outrage

[anonymus]

1. How and where is Buddhism not considered part of Hinduism ?

Buddhism rejected the doctrine of infallibility of Vedas and are considered to belong to Nastik school philosophically.

2. Where is nastik school of thought rejected in Hinduism ?

Nastik school of thought rejects the infallibility of vedas and are not considered part of Hindu philosophy. If they are part of hinduism them muslims and christians are also part of hinduism.

3. Are you claiming Tantrism is not a school of thought for Hinduism ?

Tantrism is not considered a philosophical school. It never developed it's independent philosophy.

 

[sankranti]

Why shouldn't atheists know anything about Hinduism? Why should people wearing tinted glasses be given a free pass.......? Maybe they are the ones with half baked ideas.....

I have no problems if atheists know anything about Hinduism, in fact I welcome it.

I also agree that people with 'tinted glasses' should not be given a free pass. I don't plan to give them that.

 

[sankranti]

Buddhism rejected the doctrine of infallibility of Vedas and are considered to belong to Nastik school philosophically.

I repeat my question ............ How and where is Buddhism not considered part of Hinduism ? .....not how has Buddhism rejected Hinduism.

Nastik school of thought rejects the infallibility of vedas and are not considered part of Hindu philosophy. If they are part of hinduism them muslims and christians are also part of hinduism..

Nastik school rejects 'creationist god' so that will automatically reject islam and christianity. However you still have not answered my original question, Where is nastik school of thought rejected in Hinduism ?

Tantrism is not considered a philosophical school. It never developed it's independent philosophy.

99% of all Hindu practices today are Tantric in nature. Mantra and Yantra is the way in which realization is reached in Tantric practices. I am not sure what you mean by "not considered philosophical schools' .....by whom ?

 

[anonymus]

If you can have advaita and dvaita and allow for both to be within Hindu philosophical thought, it is not much of a leap.....

That was my point. Once you have dvaita and advaita along with atheism, there is nothing left to be covered and no new school of thought need to come into existence to accommodate someone who want to be accommodated.

 

[anonymus]

I repeat my question ............ How and where is Buddhism not considered part of Hinduism ? .....not how has Buddhism rejected Hinduism.

Simply because it does not believe in vedas and has it's independent philosophy.Buddhist believes that only Buddhist texts namely Jatak stories and Pitkas to be source of shabda or accumulated knowledge.

There is cultural similarity as mahayana buddhism is more closer to hinduism than himayana and claim of Buddha being avatar of vishnu but no serious scholar consider Buddhism to be a part of Hindism, at least in philosophy.

Nastik school rejects 'creationist god' so that will automatically reject islam and christianity. However you still have not answered my original question, Where is nastik school of thought rejected in Hinduism ?

Nastik is derived from the root words, veda-nasti which means not believing in infallibility of vedas. It is not synonymous with atheism as atheism is part of hindu philosophy.

So the point remains the same. Why can't Muslims be considered part of hinduism when their concept of one god is in sync with advaita, if Buddhist are considered to be part of Hinduism?

99% of all Hindu practices today are Tantric in nature. Mantra and Yantra is the way in which realization is reached in Tantric practices. I am not sure what you mean by "not considered philosophical schools' .....why whom ?

It is not considered a philosophical school because it is not a philosophical school. You could consult any source on this point. It does not have an independent philosophy.

 

[sankranti]

Simply because it does not believe in vedas and has it's independent philosophy.Buddhist believes that only Buddhist texts namely Jatak stories and Pitkas to be source of shabda or accumulated knowledge.

There is cultural similarity as mahayana buddhism is more closer to hinduism than himayana and claim of Buddha being avatar of vishnu but no serious scholar consider Buddhism to be a part of Hindism, at least in philosophy.

You have attempted to avoid the direct line of questioning and have resorted to circular logic to establish 'Buddhism is not part of Hinduism'.

Your basic premise for identifying Hindu philosophy is by its association with the vedas. That basic premise itself is wrong. Yoga has no basis in Vedas. Yogic practices has more in common with Tantric practices than anything vedic.

Your circular reasoning can now claim Yoga is not one of the path in Hiduism.

However as you can see not being vedic does not necessarily make it Non Hindu.

Nastik is derived from the root words, veda-nasti which means not believing in infallibility of vedas. It is not synonymous with atheism as atheism is part of hindu philosophy.

So the point remains the same. Why can't Muslims be considered part of hinduism when their concept of one god is in sync with advaita, if Buddhist are considered to be part of Hinduism?

As mentioned earlier Naskti is not only Veda nasti ...its also rejects the concept of a creationist god. Will muslims and christians reject the concept of an all creationist god ?

It is not considered a philosophical school because it is not a philosophical school. You could consult any source on this point. It does not have an independent philosophy.

Again you are unable to provide an answer because you cannot point to anything other than 'christian interpretation of Hinduism'.

Tantric Hinduism is almost as old as Vedic and of course has a philosophy behind it. Tantra approach is using astrological measure, elaborate worship using Mantra and yantra with proper rituals for attaining various siddhis for spiritual salvation.

Sadly Tantra practices were never revealed to British 'Indophiles' and hence they did not / could not claim it as part of 'Hindu philosophy'. Never the less it remains one of the most practiced hindu philosophies that has influenced even Yoga. As mentioned earlier, Yoga has more in common with Tantric practices than with vedic.

 

[rubyjackass]

how can they when we dont use them for technical study... So first cut a person's legs, and then condemn him for not running the race

Again you missed my point. If you want an Indian language to be the language of technical study especially Sanskrit, then the ship has long sailed. And don't blame it on the British. Sanskrit had no new research for centuries, may be even a millenium. That is the reason why we see BS like vaastu and kundali and fake 'rationalists' who explain the 'science' behind those. For centuries, India was ruled by kings, Hindu and otherwise, whose court language was not Sanskrit.

Sanskrit was opposed as a lingua franca after independence for a simple reason that we would be reinventing the wheel. We would be in a tragic situation where the illiterate would be struggling to learn a tough language which was not their and worse, the educated people, the intelligentsia would be learning their alphabet in Sanskrit instead of teaching other students. So our scholars would have been the pandits, basically only a subset of Brahmins who still learned Sanskrit. We are in dark enough age with the kundali BS, we would have sunken to even a worse situation. The obvious corollary being that the upper castes only would dominate education(even worse than it has been). No wonder sensible and educated people opposed Sanskrit.

Whatever you think of 'technical study', I will quote a German professor joking: "... English is THE language of science today, except probably for the French who won't agree..."(his emphasis). And this guy is from the land which gave us Einstein and Godel, whose path breaking papers were originally written in German. I can't emphasize this enough; even with people like Einstein and Godel, English is today the language of science.

You may be right if you say, ancient Sanskrit texts should be studied and understood for any scientific findings which we might have missed. But to revive a language because it was once the greatest sounds like paying off a debt. When Sanskrit was THE language of science, people from all corners of India did rush to learn it. But now, it is past its sell by date. It is too costly to attempt what you are saying unless there is a huge social change. We are already being forced to learn three languages.

 

[rubyjackass]

Sanskrit, how dare you! Didn't you hear Rajnath Singhji!!!

I heard him Singhji. Just starting with my slate and pencil to a Hindi medium school with Sanskrit as second language. I tried finding a Sanskrit medium school with Hindi as second language, but had no luck.

 

[livingdead]

Once you learn sanskrit the aura of holyness and reverence evaporates quite fast. I studied sanskrit and can understand AIR sanskrit news.(used to listen to them when I was studying in school). Whats special?

This is a non issue. Sanskrit can be learnt by north Indians very easily. But it cant replace English.

 

[Sashan]

And where do you find Shiva, if not the Vedas??

You did not get my point, right? I do not deny that many of the Hindu gods have the basis from Vedas but the Sanskrit language and the Vedas itself was hijacked by a elite few of the society later and denied the common people the access. You might quote few examples here and there where common man learnt the language but people see it as a elitist language and even now they do. That is the reason why Hinduism went into decline and Buddhism and Jainism took over. The revival of hinduism happened because of Bhakti movement where Nayanar and Alwar saints tookover and started preaching the religion in local languages and this was helped by emperors like Raja Raja Chola much against the opposition from the elitist few - for example the Dikshitars from Chidambaram temple where the Tevaram palm leaves were found and were lying in ruins and which was retrieved by Raja Raja Chola.

Not just that - in Tamilnadu there were local village gods who the people pray to and is part of their culture for ages which got absorbed into Hindu religion as well.

So neither the Dravida movement nor the Kancheepuram Mutt could do anything against this strong beliefs of the people.

Still the Vedic rituals are performed by the Brahmins in temples but people do not care nor try to understand them and leave them as part of the Brahminic practices and leave the language to the Brahmins.

So unless the negativity associated with the Sanskrit language is removed in many places in India and elsewhere it will not be accepted as a National Language nor will it come to represent as the language of the Hindus. Any attempt at enforcing it will go against the basis of Hinduism - Hinduism evolved over few millenium and it is disgusting there are few Hindus even here who does not understand it and try to take the route of the Abrahamic religious path in enforcing certain beliefs.

 

[ranjeet]

What's with Sanskrit being a holy language .... it's one of our languages ... no matter how we learn to call our mother ... MAA, MUM, AMMI, BEBE ... it's the respect for our mother land and mother tongue which matters the most. And it's the respect which we show towards her which counts the most not some language !!!

 

[ranjeet]

.

Although I agree with you that Sanskrit is losing it's sheen among Hindus ... but it's not the binding force nor has been any particular deity. there is no concrete defination of a Hindu ..... we are comfortable how things are working in India ... let's just not jeopardize things in the name of religion. This is a Dharmic land with a tinge of other flavors lets keep this mix together !!!

 

[Sashan]

Although I agree with you that Sanskrit is losing it's sheen among Hindus ... but it's not the binding force nor has been any particular deity. there is no concrete defination of a Hindu ..... we are comfortable how things are working in India ... let's just not jeopardize things in the name of religion. This is a Dharmic land with a tinge of other flavors lets keep this mix together !!!

I was not claiming that Sanskrit is losing its sheen - I am claiming that it had lost the sheen ages ago when casteism crept into Hindu religion and an elite few hijacked the language. I do agree with the rest of your post.

 

[Indianpatriot1]

You did not get my point, right? I do not deny that many of the Hindu gods have the basis from Vedas but the Sanskrit language and the Vedas itself was hijacked by a elite few of the society later and denied the common people the access. You might quote few examples here and there where common man learnt the language but people see it as a elitist language and even now they do. That is the reason why Hinduism went into decline and Buddhism and Jainism took over. The revival of hinduism happened because of Bhakti movement where Nayanar and Alwar saints tookover and started preaching the religion in local languages and this was helped by emperors like Raja Raja Chola much against the opposition from the elitist few - for example the Dikshitars from Chidambaram temple where the Tevaram palm leaves were found and were lying in ruins and which was retrieved by Raja Raja Chola.

Not just that - in Tamilnadu there were local village gods who the people pray to and is part of their culture for ages which got absorbed into Hindu religion as well.

So neither the Dravida movement nor the Kancheepuram Mutt could do anything against this strong beliefs of the people.

Still the Vedic rituals are performed by the Brahmins in temples but people do not care nor try to understand them and leave them as part of the Brahminic practices and leave the language to the Brahmins.

So unless the negativity associated with the Sanskrit language is removed in many places in India and elsewhere it will not be accepted as a National Language nor will it come to represent as the language of the Hindus. Any attempt at enforcing it will go against the basis of Hinduism - Hinduism evolved over few millenium and it is disgusting there are few Hindus even here who does not understand it and try to take the route of the Abrahamic religious path in enforcing certain beliefs.

The situation you describe may be true for south India, especially Tamil Nadu, but it is rather different in the North. Practice of Hawanas and pujas at home is quite common in the better well off families and this keeps us tied to Sanskrit. In a way, as English is a language for secular specialization, Sanskrit is for the spiritual areas. Chanting of Gayatri Mantra and other hymns is common and encouraged.

The Tamil Nadu situation is rather unique and cannot be generalised for the entire country.

 

[ranjeet]

I was not claiming that Sanskrit is losing its sheen - I am claiming that it had lost the sheen ages ago when casteism crept into Hindu religion and an elite few hijacked the language. I do agree with the rest of your post.

Man I am from North India haven't been to Southern India at all, don't know any southern languages but all it's going to take is a friendly smile of a south Indian before I pop open a bottle of whiskey and break bread with my brother. we just have this accommodating quality inbuit in us ... just knowing that the person is from the motherland ... our heart just melts. And I just wish ... we maintain this nature of ours. It's going to take a while before we breach that caste mentality but sooner or later we are going to be there !!!