Monday, March 7, 2011

Many people including the so called religious preachers infer Vedas in a different way and convey distorted message to the mass.. Some even go to an extent of quoting particular shloka number from Vedas & Upanishads in big gatherings to make the audience believe that Vedas advocate animal sacrifice...

However, none of the current day "recognized" stalwarts of Hindu religion openly (read: so as to reach 100's of thousands, not just thousands) challenge such mis-quotations / mis-interpretations. There can be two reasons
1) either they can't defend due to their lack of confidence in their knowledge about Vedas or
2) they say they don't want to defend by calling the mis-interpreters as minnows and they say that they feel it is better to keep quite instead of challenging/arguing with minnows..
and the interesting thing is these people give the second reason, even if the actual reason is the first one... these people are already in their comfort zone where 'they know that they know much less than what their followers think' and they don't want to disturb that feel good factor...

I would like to point out here that if Adi Shankaracharya had not fought for Sanatana Dharma during its declivity, we (in our generation including the recent past) might have never seen or heard about Vedas/Upanishads and other Shritis and Smrithis... and if Hindus don't act now, if we don't defend our sacred texts, then only Brahma can tell whats in the future for us..

The process of saving what our ancestors have left for us should start soon, and someone should start it.. Some may say that God sends another savior to this earth who can argue for Vedas and Upanishads when the problem comes, but I don't think why the articles like AGKM's can't be a step towards such a process... We need many such articles like yours..

Personally, I do whatever I can with my limited abilities.. I give three examples (there are many such even you will know of)

1) Whenever I meet people (especially those who are not from India) and when such a topic arises and when they say oh.. you have many gods, you worship cows, elephants, mice...., I use the opportunity to tell that "Hindus do not worship many gods.. it is a wrong statement... Hindus believe and worship only one god who is the supreme being and the many gods what you are referring to are just different manifestations of the supreme being, not different gods"..

2) Sometimes our own Indian friends say that they don't believe in sacred texts because scriptures like Manusmriti resulted in caste system in India because Manusmriti was the first to divide the society into four castes and we have problems now.. I say.. "my friend, looks like you have misinterpreted the contents of Manusmriti or someone has passed onto you a distorted version of the contents in Manusmriti... In Manusmriti the castes are stratified according to ritual purity, and it doesn't say that the caste is hereditary, it also says that one belongs to a particular caste based on his/her deeds.. so anyone can become more pure (by good deeds like love, non-violence, helping the needy, not hurting others etc..) which means that he goes more closer to understanding the supreme being... but in the course of the development of Hinduism, some people have distorted this message and have implemented this caste system in a wrong way"..

3) People say Hinduism does argue against war, because Mahabharata has an instance of a war.. which means it argues for fighting.. (they give reference to Krishna telling Arjuna not to give up, which is an important part of Bhagavadgita).. I say.. """my friends, you just got it wrong... if you interpret "do not give up" as "fight with bombs" I can't help.. Also, the depiction of war in Mahabharata is to convey the message about 'dharma (good)' and 'adharma (bad)' and how can you equate that to the current day wars which are fought between two dharmas?"""". One has to go beyond the war to understand Krishna...

So, in summary, we need a movement for the safety of our treasures (Vedas), the safety here meaning "to preserve the messages that they convey".. and we need people who can really stand up and contribute with concrete evidences...

Here is a good example of some concrete evidences disproving common misconception of Vedas: http://agmkonleave.sulekha.com/blog/post/2011/02/beef-and-vedas/comments.htm