AUG-20 BOUDHIK YOJANA

Aug 2 – 2020  Samachar Sameeksha: Ayodhya

PM Modi’s visit to Ayodhya to do Bhumipujan for grand temple at Ayodhya has led to lot of tongue wagging in leftist liberal system. Objections have been raised about head of a secular state going for a temple ceremony and domestic and foreign media will lap this up. Future months will see, aspersions being raised about loss of secular fabric and crocodile tears will be shed.

Objections will be based on precedence i.e from Pt Nehru to Indira to Rajiv or Manmohan did not attend such ceremonies and were inimical to them. But the point being missed is all these PMs belong to same party or ideology or one dynasty. Views of a family or party cannot be thought as world view of a country like ours. The close precedence to Ayodhya will be reconstruction of Somnath Temple. KM Munshi a close follower of Sardar Patel led the movement. Pt Nehru not only refused to attend the ceremony but even tried to influence Babu Rajendra Prasad, then President of India to not attend. Good sense prevailed on him and he attended the grand ceremony.

If secular state is a roadblock in attending such a ceremony, how Iftar parties or leaders participating in programs of Pope or Archbishop can be justified. Even these are for a particular group and are widely celebrated as state ceremony. In states like Nagaland and Mizoram, Christmas is celebrated as state festival but liberals, leftists, seculars never find fault with any of them. It is only when a Hindu asserts his right of religious duty all hell breaks loose.

The event also sets a precedence that a head of government can attend such a ceremony. Because similar to Somnath this is an act of national rejuvenation. Nations are not just land or people but they are based on ideas followed by people for ages. Bhagwan Ram and Krishna are the ideals which inspire this country and will do so in the future. Foreign Invaders like Islamic hence destroyed temples and British constrained them through laws understanding the inspiration for Hindus. Hence it is not an act of mere temple reconstruction as made out by leftist historians or secular politicians. Who is better to lead such an act than the Head of Government itself.

 

Aug-09-2020 Boudhik: Rakshabandhan

Rakshabandhan is one of the six utsav celebrated by RSS. In society, it is celebrated as a symbol of eternal love between a sister and brother. But Sangh has adopted it in a different form. On this day every SS ties a Raksha sutra on hand of another SS and says that I will protect you, you will protect me and we together will protect our motherland. Similar to other Utsav it is a simple way of creating a bond among SS and develop dedication towards a common goal.

Babasaheb Ambedkar commented “ Infinite liberty will kill equality and Infinite equality will kill liberty”. Liberty and Equality can only be guaranteed through fraternity i.e brotherly love. Hence he accepted Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as foundation principles of constitution. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. These principles were not derived from French Revolution as was vogue but from Gautam Buddha.

Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood of all Indians – of Indians being one people. It is the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life. Bharat as a land has infinite diversity and had different kingdoms in different parts of the country through history. People are divided in form of language, caste, wealth, religion and so many forms. All the movements which presented before people an all-assuming identity succeeded in uniting and inspiring people.

The movement can be old as Chanakya establishing Mauryan Empire to Shivaji Maharaj’s struggle to Freedom movement against British. All the movements created a sense of brotherhood among its participants to achieve a common goal. The sense was so strong that freedom fighters went to great lengths to achieve their goal even sacrificing their life.

Sangh as a movement has taken a goal of uniting the entire society to make Bharat a great nation. Lasting unity of society can only be based on love i.e a feeling of attachment to each and every living being of the nation. As we say in our Prarthana about Hindurashtrangbhuta i.e we are a part of the body of Hindu Rashtra. If any part of the body is in pain then we are in pain. In current scientific age it might look a matter of faith that someone can be so unified with others that he feels their pain. However, there are several instances in lives of saints which shows that this is possible. Ramkrishna Paramhansa once roaming on the banks of Ganges witnessed a fight between two boatmen. The boatmen who was stronger was beating the weaker one. He was so pained by the sight,that marks of beating appeared on his back.

Rakshabandhan is an occasion to inculcate the feeling of fraternity with our society and moreover our oneness with the nation.

 

Aug-16-2020  Charcha: Swatantrata

Bharat just celebrated 74^th Independence day on 15^th August. It is an epochal event in the long history of Bharat of several millennia. Even Pt Nehru who prided himself more as an Englishman, accepted in his famous speech that India was waking up from thousand years of slavery, it was breaking of new from the old. On this special day we became Swatantra.

The word carries a deep meaning, it is a sandhi of two words Swa (Self) and Tantra (means loosely system). In Hindi or Sanskrit, we call it Swatantrata Diwas. It indicates a day when we should have started our course on creating or reinstalling our own system which had been shattered by a millennia long struggle against foreign invaders. However when we look back on past 73 years, it shows more of blind aping of Western models rather than being confident of our own capabilities.

A society has different facets like politics, judiciary, administration, economics, art, education, media, defence, external affairs, research and development etc

Our political system is a copy of Westminister model of England which has multiple parties, who elect a Prime Minsiter and Cabinet. Gandhiji very prophetically saw the flaws of this system and remarked that “in this model, democracy is a prostitute of the cabinet which keeps changing.” Babasaheb Ambedkar in his speech to the Constituent Assembly said “But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost for ever”. All these words spoken decades ago, now sound prophetic and call for development of a unique Bharatiya political model.

Indians believed in the myth that it was because of white man, savages in India were civilized. India had nothing worthwhile to offer to the world in any field of human endeavor. Acharya Dharmpal in his seminal work on pre-British India, proved conclusively that India was more literate than 18^th century Britain. Education was simple, decentralized and affordable to common Indian against Britain where education was only for elite and that too second grade. Every school taught Arithmetic, Sankrit grammar and epics like Ramayan, Mahabharat and Bhagwat. After a certain grade, people specialized in a field by completing higher studies. Today when education is becoming only for rich, a Bharatiya model based on mother tongue which develops latent qualities in man is crying need of hour.

Since our political leadership after 1947, was enamored with Communism, we followed a socialist model of development. This model made the people dependent on government killing the individual initiative which is corner stone of any development. Global fall of Communism and mismanagement of our economy in 1990s led us to swing to Capitalism and Liberalization. Today slowly and surely we are realizing that rapacious exploitation of nature to satiate human desires cannot achieve lasting development. Bharat can show the way for a holistic model of development, based on four purusharthas i.e Dharm, Arth, Kama, Moksha.

Our health system has become only for the rich, in which poor have nowhere to go. Pre-British health system although destroyed by invasions was advanced than Europe. British officers first noticed instance of plastic surgery in Bharat and copied it from here. Instances of vaccination were also reported which were banned by British to avoid infection of Company officers. The system was low cost and decentralized so village folks did not have need to run to cities for treatment. A complete overhaul of current health system based on Ayurveda is the need of the hour to make a healthy nation.

Bharat was known as the land of self-sufficient village republics. Villages produced whatever was required for their own consumption and exported the surplus to nearby villages or cities or foreign lands. This made prosperous villages with decentralized manufacturing which produced all the stuff required by humans under the sky. It was not a closed economy but when British arrived, Bharat had the lowest custom duty on imports (~ 2%). However the goods produced were of infinite variety and high quality and it was tough to import anything from West or Europe. In view of COVID migration and inhuman living of migrants, a fresh approach on Gramodaya can do wonders.

Lastly it was only in Bharat, man realized the ultimate destination of divinity in human life. Only Bharat and Hindus have kept the goal of Moksha and not heaven. The goal can only be achieved by Adhyatmikta in every sphere of life, which will again make Bharat Vishwa Guru.

Further reading: 1) Beautiful Tree by Sri Dharampal 2) Third Way by Dattopant Thengadi 3) Lectures by S Gurumurthy on Youtube

 

23-Aug-2020 Katha: Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande

Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande was born on 10 August 1860 in Walkeshwar Mumbai. While not a professional musician himself, his father, who worked for an affluent businessman, ensured that Vishnu and his siblings received an education in classical music. After turning fifteen, he became a student of the sitar and subsequently began studying Sanskrit texts that dealt with music theory. He completed a BA degree at Elphinstone College in Bombay in 1885. In 1887, he graduated with a degree in law from Bombay University and briefly pursued a career in criminal law.

He traveled throughout India, meeting with ustads and pandits, and researching music. He began the study of ancient texts such as the Natya Shastra and Sangeet Ratnakara.

After the death of his wife and his daughter, he abandoned his legal practice and devoted the rest of his life to arranging the prevailing forms of Hindustani music and building on that system a coordinated theory and practice of music. During his travels in India, he spent time in the then princely states of Baroda, Gwalior, and Rampur. In Rampur he was the disciple of legendary veena Player Ustad Wazir Khan, a descendant of Tansen.

Bhatkhande's first published work, Swar Malika, was a booklet containing detailed descriptions of all prevalent ragas. In 1909, he published Shri Mallakshaya Sangeetam, in Sanskrit, under the pseudonym 'Chatur-pandit'. To make this cultural heritage accessible to the common man, he published commentary on his own Sanskrit grantha in Marathi over a span of several years; it was published over four volumes bearing the title: Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati. These volumes form today the standard text on Hindustani music, an indispensable starting point for any student of Hindustani Classical Music.

After travelling widely and having discussions with practitioners of various schools, Bhatkhande arranged all the ragas of Hindustani classical music across 10 musical scales, called thaats. Though the thaats do not encompass all possible ragas, they do cover the vast majority, and are a key contribution to Indian musical theory. The thaat structure corresponds to the melakarta system of raga arrangement in Carnatic music, the south Indian variety of Indian classical music.

Bhatkhande started schools and colleges in India for systematic teaching of Hindustani music. In 1916, he reorganized the Baroda state music school, and later, with the help of the Maharaja of Gwalior, established the Madhav Music College in Gwalior.

In 1926, Rai Umanath Bali and his nephew Dr. Rai Rajeshwar Bali, then education minister of United Provinces, established Morris College of Music in Lucknow, Bhatkhande preparing the course material. The college was later renamed Bhatkhande College of Hindustani Music, and is now known as Bhatkhande Music Institute (Deemed University). Preparation of that course material was a landmark achievement of Bhatkhande since musical knowledge used to be passed on orally in earlier times from Gurus and Ustads to their disciples.

Bhatkhande prepared the Hindustani Sangeet Kramik Pustak Maalika as a series of textbooks. He also started the tradition of the All India Music Conferences to provide a common platform for discussion between Hindustani and Carnatic classical musicians.

He died on 19 September 1936.

Reference: 1) Wikipedia

 

30-Aug-2020 Prarthana Abhyas