This was in response to what my friends were talking about Tejomahalaya. The object here, is Taj Mahal which according to a historian ( allegedly an "RSS-guy") , was a temple, rebuilt or probably just refurnished to be labelled as a memorial.
I started having problems when people started making unnecessary comments on RSS (taking this as an average object of "RSS" interest) To those people, this was just another silly (or idiotic) issue RSS or VHP (or the Hindutva Brigade, as it is called by the leftists in India) like to bring up.
Here is what I said:
This is nothing new which I or most of us didn't know about. I remember something in this regard having forwarded once.
1. Ram mandir, or any other temple is not for elite people like us. No true temple (true to me!) is needed for metrosexuals. As far as I am concerned, I don't share my religion with such folks. I would rather consider myself sans religion than someone with this modern Indian flavor of Hinduism or Jainism or Buddhism or even the secular Islam.
2. There "was" something before everything. So is the case with the Ram Mandir. Rama became superhit only after Ramacharitamanas, the poem by Tulsidas (who came at the time of Akbar, grandson of Babar). Before that, he was just a glorious king, an avatar of Vishnu, just like the Nepalese king of relatively "modern" times. Kali, Durga, Siva, all have had tribal connections. Hindus (the term which was coined by the same "muslim" invaders, the term which is not found in any scripture, and doesn't have sanskrit roots) would have done some kind of nihilism too, replacing something with something else.
Buddhists did that too, made religion something by and for the king (this is debatable, the likes of Ambedkar consider Budhhist as "socialistic"); Brahmins established in the villages, getting fucked, fired back, and even massacred a bunch of Buddhists, managed to remain on the top for some more time. What followed after that is what the article(s) might be emphasizing in a fundie tone which itself is part of the Hindu misery.
http://www.salagram.net/VWH-temples-defiled.html
The misery of worshipping cultural symbols and only symbols, associating one's identity with that, is how Hinduism is celebrated and preserved. Its gone worse since Siva of South India is different from Shiva of North, ganapati of Maharashtra is different from ganesha of marwaris in western UP and Rajasthan. But the "sacred" tradition goes on ....redefining itself with debauchery and whoremongering,
dubbed as "economic" and "socio-political" needs in the 21st century!
I don't see anything wrong in some monist trying to impregnate such people with a religion - a true religion rather than one rotten to its core (in words of a missionary). Muslims ravished temples all over Arab, why spare India? Christianity spread all over Europe, why should India be bereft? What is the 'raison d'etre' of this great land with the greatest religion? A fantasy described in imperceptible Sanskrit poems which nobody bothers to grasp?
Where the heck is need of the temples, if you don't want to answer these questions, if you don't "have" a raison d'etre at all? India simply doesn't have a religion anymore; its people don't want any contribution of theirs to ethics of what the world calls "humanity"! Buddhists held Hindu philosophy better, so to say. Of course, we would never need any temples in India...Even if some assholes try to make some, brand them as the blockade to the development.
Thats all so good. India, on an ever-developing, and ever Westernizing path now, looks better as a loose union of states built upon race, language, ethnicity. Is there anything else I missed? ... Not religion of course - the muslim states don't consider themselves even in the Indian subcontinent anymore. How would they if they got a religion to live with?
3. Why blame just Muslims and Christians? After getting English education, the so-called Hindu reformers have been no less deleterious than how Christians or Muslims would have been. These were attempts to have a Hindu "missionary zeal" as futile counter-attacks to what "foreigners" from the West did. It has really nothing to do with the philosophy/spirit of the natives.
I am not gonna respond to any replies / arguements that shall arise from this silly mail of mine. I know some educated responses very well:
* India needs development => forget religion for a while. Yeah sure!
* Talk secularism... all religions are equal (its a different issue, if I know nothing about any one of them) ...Carry on!
* Iranians must have been lunatics when they went for an Islamic revolution discarding all the "development", and now they are having thoughts on democracy...silly! Aint it? Of course, all Muslims are backward anti-democratic oppressors of sexy chicks and potential beauty queens. So true! They are not "developing" ; stuck in a religion, dammit!
* What has politics to do with religion? They are separate… - An educated Indian thought, thanks to British!
I got nothing to say. We are all following the West anyways, and we trust 'em more than anyone else. So why worry, why even argue? Just follow the light…
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