JUL-20 BOUDHIK YOJANA
Jul-05-2020 Gurupuja
Who is a GURU ?
Guru has a very important place in Hindu pantheon. Guru is said to be Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh and Parbrahm himself and hence one bows before him.
गुरुर्ब्रह्मा गुरुर्विष्णु र्गुरुर्देवो महेश्वरः
गुरु साक्षात परब्रह्मा तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः
Guru is one who has seen the feet of the Lord which pervades everything in the universe.
ॐ अखण्डमण्डलाकारं व्याप्तं येन चराचरम्
तत्पदं दर्शितं येन तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः
All the saints have sung glory for Guru, even bowing before him and more than God himself.
Guru means heavy so the biggest planet in solar system is Guru (Jupiter). Someone who is on a higher plane in terms of knowledge or experience is a Guru. All great men or women in Bharat had an unflinching devotion to Guru and attained great heights. Even avatar like Ram and Krishna had Guru like Vasisht and Sandipani to guide them.
Gurupurnima
Every year on Ashada Purnima, we celebrate Vyas Poornima i.e birth of Bhagwan Vyas. Born in a simple family he attained an immortal place in Hinduism on basis of unparalleled knowledge. It is said that all knowledge in the world is already touched by him.
He is the creator of Mahabharat, Bhagwat, all Puranas, and even the classification of Vedas into four parts. In tenth chapter of Geeta, Bhagwan Krishna describes Vyasa as his vibhuti. Vyas is not his real name but an upadhi to him and it actually means diameter. We think of knowledge as a circle and Vyas or diameter is a person who has gone through the center and reached the end i.e gained complete knowledge. What can be a better occasion to celebrate about Gurus than Vyas Poornima hence it is also referred as Guru Poornima.
Guru for RSS
Guru as a person is very important but more important is his message. It is his message or Tatva which a shishya has to follow throughout his life. When first Gurupurnima happened in RSS, many people felt that Doctorji is their Guru because he was a living embodiment of RSS. However Doctorji himself worshipped Bhagwa Dhwaj as Guru and offered his samarpan. Everyone followed suite and worshipped the Dhwaj.
Bhagwa Dhwaj has been our flag since time immemorial, even Ram and Krishna fought Dharma Yudha under this same flag. It inspired men like Chanakya- Chandragupt, Vidyaranya-Harihar, Ramdas- Shivaji to face all odds and worship victory. The color of the flag is saffron which is a depiction of Tyag the highest virtue. Hence all sanyasi wear the same color. The flag is also in a peculiar shape i.e two triangles which are a depiction of flames of Yagna. Yagna is not just a sacrificial fire but it is the fire of knowledge which burns all our base desires and inspires higher ideals.
Samarpan
It has been a tradition from Gurukul days that shishya offered whatever possible as a samarpan to Guru. It was not a fees for the knowledge imparted because knowledge is free in our culture. It was a form of love which the shishya offered to his Guru and he accepted it. However it was also incumbent on the shishya to offer as much as possible for the Guru even though he did not demand it. A pertinent story is Bhagwan Krishna and Rishi Sandipani. Although the Rishi did not ask explicitly but Bhagwan realized his sorrow for lost son and brought him back from the clutches of demon.
As a Swayamsevak, our Guru has shown us the path to glory. Hence it becomes necessary for us to walk on this path for life and make a samarpan of all our qualities in the Ishwariya Karya.
Jul 12 – 2020 Galwan Border Clash
After 1967, India and China border has seen a violent clash, with martyrdom of 20 brave Indian soldiers. It has been a rude shock or validation for people who have been calling out Chinese intention of nibbling Indian Territory.
The Chinese always attempt, albeit often unsuccessfully, what is called ‘salami slicing’ — chipping away small portions of Indian territory very silently and surreptitiously. They do this by encroaching into areas that are unofficially considered to be Indian territory. Once the Indian side gets to know about the transgression and sends its own soldiers, the usual faceoff occurs. The PLA soldiers eventually withdraw, but not fully.
Since the border is un-demarcated and there are very often no physical structures or formations to informally delineate the LAC, the Chinese do not withdraw fully into their territory.“They retain a bit of the area they transgress into and it is very difficult to prove that. We then have to rely on maps and satellite imagery to show the Chinese that they have not withdrawn fully. This happens at the senior commanders level at the border meetings.
At times, the Chinese do not agree and remain adamant. We can’t do anything then and accept the ‘salami slicing’ as a temporary fait accompli by them. But eventually and at the earliest opportunity, we send our own patrols and reclaim our territory.
In the meetings between Corps Commanders of the Indian and Chinese armies on June 6 and June 22, it was decided that as part of stage-wise disengagement, a de facto ‘buffer zone’ will separate the troops — the clashes on June 15 had taken place over vacating this buffer zone.
Jul-19-2020 Dragon at Doorstep
Tensions along LAC between India and China, have brought Chinese nation in focus for Indians. It has been almost 58 years after the full scale war of 1962 and 1967 border clash.
Background
China is one of the oldest human civilization and like India saw emergence of advanced human settlements along rivers. Buddhism was transmitted to China from India in first century CE during Han dynasty. Many Chinese scholars like Fahein , Huen Tsang stayed in India for decades and took valuable texts back to China for translation.
Till start of 19th century, China and India controlled 60% of world trade. There was a severe balance of payment in trade between China and Britian, favorable for China. To reduce the deficit, Britian introduced opium grown in India into China. Opium became popular among Chinese and destroyed social structure which led to Chinese emperor objecting the British. The defeat by the British Empire in the First Opium War (1840) led to the Treaty of Nanking (1842), under which Hong Kong was ceded to Britain and importation of opium (produced by British Empire territories) was allowed. Subsequent military defeats and unequal treaties with other western powers continued even after the fall of the Qing dynasty.
Republic of China
The provisional government of the Republic of China was formed in Nanking on 12 March 1912. In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen established a revolutionary base in Guangzhou and set out to unite the fragmented nation. He welcomed assistance from the Soviet Union and he entered into an alliance with the fledgling Communist Party of China. After Sun's death from cancer in 1925, one of his protégés, Chiang Kai-shek, seized control of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and succeeded in bringing most of south and central China under its rule in the Northern Expedition (1926–1927). After the loss in civil war Nationalist Government moved to Taiwan.
The bitter Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists continued, openly or clandestinely, through the 14-year-long Japanese occupation of various parts of the country (1931–1945). The two Chinese parties nominally formed a United Front to oppose the Japanese in 1937. Following the defeat of Japan in 1945, the war between the Nationalist government forces and the CPC resumed, after failed attempts at reconciliation and a negotiated settlement. By 1949, the CPC had established control over most of the country.
Communist China
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Within a year i.e 1950 China attacked and occupied Tibet and Xinjiang which were independent states. Lack of political will in Indian leadership allowed this brazen act of aggression by China and gave a free hand to them to occupy strategic routes. Even British had taken care to keep Tibet as a buffer state between India and China.
The PRC was shaped by a series of campaigns and five-year plans. The economic and social plan known as the Great Leap Forward caused an estimated 45 million deaths. Mao's government carried out mass executions of landowners, instituted collectivisation and implemented the Laogai camp system. Execution, deaths from forced labor and other atrocities resulted in millions of deaths under Mao. In 1966 Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, which continued until Mao's death a decade later. In 1972, Mao and Zhou Enlai met US president Richard Nixon in Beijing to establish relations with the United States. In the same year, the PRC was admitted to the United Nations in place of the Republic of China, with permanent membership of the Security Council.
Middle Kingdom
China sees itself as a peerless global hegemon and refuses to even acknowledge the possibility of any other sovereign state. Other countries can either be tributaries if they accept Chinese domination, or barbarians if they don’t. It was only in 1861, after the defeat at the hands of European colonial powers that the Chinese emperor reluctantly conceded that “England is an independent sovereign state, let it have equal status with China". A number of scholars hold that this world-view forms the genetic code of Chinese foreign policy to this day.
One problem for China is that India does not see itself as anyone’s tributary. But there’s a deeper problem. India’s own civilizational world-view recognizes multiple sovereigns in co-existence and contest in a raja-mandala, and is comfortable recognizing China as another sovereign state in a plural international system. The Middle Kingdom, as we saw, does not reciprocate this. There is thus a fundamental underlying tension between the two states arising from mutually irreconcilable differences in their civilizational world-views.
Guruji on China
Firstly, we have to keep in mind that China has always been expansionist. It is in its blood. Over one hundred and fifty years ago Napoleon had forewarned not to rouse that yellow giant lest he should prove a grave peril to humanity. Seventy years ago Swami Vivekananda had specifically warned that China would invade Bharat soon after the British quit.
For the past eight years we of the Sangh (this is 1962), too, had been unambiguously warning that China had aggressed into our territory at various strategic points. Then nobody was prepared to believe us. The editor of a leading English daily even said that we were talking like mad men. And now our leaders say that they were taken by surprise!
Now, added to the expansionist blood of China is the intoxicant of Communism, which is an intensely aggressive, expansionist and imperialistic ideology. Thus in Communist China we have the explosive combination of two aggressive impulses. It is a case of - Api Cha Kapi, Kapishayan Madmattah (Already a monkey, moreover drunk with wine.) We would therefore only be deluding ourselves and taking false steps in our preparation to face it if we attribute Communist China's aggressiveness only to its racial nature and not to its present Communism also.
Further reading: 1) Bunch of Thoughts 2) Wikipedia on Chinese Buddhism, Chinese history and PRC
26-Jul-2020 Katha: Lokmanya Tilak
Lokmanya Tilak was born in Ratnagiri on 23rd July, 1856 at Ratnagiri. His first name was Keshav. His father, Gangadhar Tilak was a school teacher and a Sanskrit scholar who died when Tilak was sixteen. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in first class in Mathematics from Deccan College of Pune in 1877. He left his M.A. course of study midway to join the LL.B course instead, and in 1879 he obtained his LL.B degree from Government Law College . After graduating, Tilak started teaching mathematics at a private school in Pune. Later, due to ideological differences with the colleagues in the new school, he withdrew and became a journalist.
Inspired by Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, he co-founded the New English school for secondary education in 1880 with a few of his college friends, including Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahadev Ballal Namjoshi and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar. Their goal was to improve the quality of education for India's youth. The success of the school led them to set up the Deccan Education Society in 1884 to create a new system of education that taught young Indians nationalist ideas through an emphasis on Indian culture.[8] The Society established the Fergusson College in 1885 for post-secondary studies. Tilak taught mathematics at Fergusson College. In 1890, Tilak left the Deccan Education Society for more openly political work.[9] He began a mass movement towards independence by an emphasis on a religious and cultural revival.[10]
In 1894, Tilak transformed the household worshipping of Ganesha into a grand public event (Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav). They were organized by the means of subscriptions by neighbourhood, caste, or occupation. Students often would celebrate national glory and address political issues; including patronage of Swadeshi goods. The Rowlatt committee has described how Tilak managed to weave a net of revolutionary propaganda and activities under guise of Ganesh festival. However need was felt of a medium which could propagate extreme contempt for foreign power and indomitable love for freedom. This was the backdrop in which Tilak founded the Shri Shivaji Fund Committee for the celebration of "Shiv Jayanti", the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji. The project also had the objective of funding the reconstruction of the Samadhi of Shivaji at Raigad Fort.
During late 1896, a bubonic plague and famine had spread in Maharashtra. The alien government displayed a callous and apathetic attitude towards both calamities. Lokmanya Tilak took up the cause of famine by representations to the government, raising funds and criticizing the callous attitude through his newspaper. He fanned discontent among people by laying the blame at the doorstep of the foreign government and self-rule as remedy. During his speech on Shiv Jayanti, quoting Bhagavad Gita, he said that no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward. Following this, on 22 June 1897, Commissioner Rand and another British officer, Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates.
Following the Partition of Bengal, which was a strategy set out by Lord Curzon to weaken the nationalist movement, Tilak encouraged the Swadeshi movement and the Boycott movement. The movement consisted of the boycott of foreign goods and also the social boycott of any Indian who used foreign goods. The Swadeshi movement consisted of the usage of natively produced goods. Once foreign goods were boycotted, there was a gap which had to be filled by the production of those goods in India itself. Tilak said that the Swadeshi and Boycott movements are two sides of the same coin.
Besides his articles in Kesari and Marhatta, he was a prolific author in his own regards. During his stay in Mandalay, he composed Geeta Rahasya, a scholarly treatise on Bhagwad Geeta. It focused on Karma Yog aspect of Geeta and exhorted people for their own upliftment. Besides Geeta Rahasya, Orion, Arctic Home of Vedas are his other works. He was also an authority on Jyotisha and his favorite subject was Mathematics.
Reference: 1) Armed Struggle for Freedom: Balshastri Hardas 2) Wikipedia on Lokmanya Tilak
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