Jagat

I did not say anything about heinous. I don't remember what I said, as I can't find it in this very long thread. The point here is that Sridhara Maharaj and everyone else has these exaggerated expectations of what is necessary from a diksha guru. It has to be this exalted self-effulgent dramatic superhero fantastic being who knows everything, sees everything, understands everything, etc., etc. All Gaudiya Vaishnavas accept Rupa, Raghunath, Krishnadas, Narottama, Vishwanath, Baladeva, Jagannath Das and even Gaur Kishor Das. Bhaktivinoda Thakur is more controversial, but I have seen quotations of BVT in books by Kunja Bihari Das Babaji and heard his songs sung at Babaji pangats, etc. The point is that the so-called Bhagavata parampara, or siksha parampara, is accepted by all Vaishnavas, regardless of diksha line. I speculated in my first article on the subject ( that Saraswati Thakur may have originally been intending a unifying principle--as the siksha sampradaya would have been acceptable to all. This might have been treated with favor if he hadn't openly criticized the diksha lines. You can look in <a href=http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles/showarticle.php?id=15>"Charismatic renewal and institutionalization in the history of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and the Gaudiya Math"), where I show clearly that Saraswati was wanted to marginalize the Pancharatrika system in favor of the Bhagavata "system." As far as I can see, Pancharatrika diksha is primarily about connection. The original charisma existed in the avatar generation, and those who descended from Mahaprabhu's associates were considered to have inherited that charisma. Of course, with our modern democratic vision we don't believe in inherited charisma any more, but back then they did. Nowadays, in a society like Iskcon, diksha has reestablished its original function of connecting the disciple to the institution and through it to the founder-acharya. If most of us were aware of existing power structures in the modern West, we would realize that the political critique of heritage can be seen as a successful propaganda exercise rather than a reality--Bush II is the icon of this. Genetic predetermination is the scientific basis that free-willers have to fight against. I have discussed the foundations of the hereditary tradition to some extent in Charismatic renewal article. May I add here that I have stated many times that I am not anti-Iskcon, anti-GM, anti-Ritvik, or anti-Babaji. I am in favor of the good that any of these groups can accomplish and against any of the evil they may do. I have natural preferences among them, in accordance with the extent to which I feel they are enlightened or progressive. I think that Gaudiya Vaishnavism has a strong and beautiful tradition with a rich literature. At the same time, the evolution of the movement requires that we view it in terms of modern critiques. In fact, in the above article, I followed Shukavak in identifying BVT and BSS as modernizers, within certain limits. Fundamentalism is also a modernizing movement, it just has certain myths about what the true, pristine past was really like. Fundamentalism wants to return to fundamentals, but usually with a modernized organizational structure. This is pretty much what the GM and Iskcon are. For more articles related to the issue, for those who have not read them--<a href=http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles/showarticle.php?id=14>Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s relationship with Bipin Bihari Goswami</a>.

I did not say anything about heinous. I don't remember what I said, as I can't find it in this very long thread. The point here is that Sridhara Maharaj and everyone else has these exaggerated expectations of what is necessary from a diksha guru. It has to be this exalted self-effulgent dramatic superhero fantastic being who knows everything, sees everything, understands everything, etc., etc. All Gaudiya Vaishnavas accept Rupa, Raghunath, Krishnadas, Narottama, Vishwanath, Baladeva, Jagannath Das and even Gaur Kishor Das. Bhaktivinoda Thakur is more controversial, but I have seen quotations of BVT in books by Kunja Bihari Das Babaji and heard his songs sung at Babaji pangats, etc. The point is that the so-called Bhagavata parampara, or siksha parampara, is accepted by all Vaishnavas, regardless of diksha line. I speculated in my first article on the subject ( that Saraswati Thakur may have originally been intending a unifying principle--as the siksha sampradaya would have been acceptable to all. This might have been treated with favor if he hadn't openly criticized the diksha lines. You can look in <a href=http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles/showarticle.php?id=15>"Charismatic renewal and institutionalization in the history of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and the Gaudiya Math"), where I show clearly that Saraswati was wanted to marginalize the Pancharatrika system in favor of the Bhagavata "system." As far as I can see, Pancharatrika diksha is primarily about connection. The original charisma existed in the avatar generation, and those who descended from Mahaprabhu's associates were considered to have inherited that charisma. Of course, with our modern democratic vision we don't believe in inherited charisma any more, but back then they did. Nowadays, in a society like Iskcon, diksha has reestablished its original function of connecting the disciple to the institution and through it to the founder-acharya. If most of us were aware of existing power structures in the modern West, we would realize that the political critique of heritage can be seen as a successful propaganda exercise rather than a reality--Bush II is the icon of this. Genetic predetermination is the scientific basis that free-willers have to fight against. I have discussed the foundations of the hereditary tradition to some extent in Charismatic renewal article. May I add here that I have stated many times that I am not anti-Iskcon, anti-GM, anti-Ritvik, or anti-Babaji. I am in favor of the good that any of these groups can accomplish and against any of the evil they may do. I have natural preferences among them, in accordance with the extent to which I feel they are enlightened or progressive. I think that Gaudiya Vaishnavism has a strong and beautiful tradition with a rich literature. At the same time, the evolution of the movement requires that we view it in terms of modern critiques. In fact, in the above article, I followed Shukavak in identifying BVT and BSS as modernizers, within certain limits. Fundamentalism is also a modernizing movement, it just has certain myths about what the true, pristine past was really like. Fundamentalism wants to return to fundamentals, but usually with a modernized organizational structure. This is pretty much what the GM and Iskcon are. For more articles related to the issue, for those who have not read them--<a href=http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles/showarticle.php?id=14>Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s relationship with Bipin Bihari Goswami</a>.

Well, we did actually have a two dollar bill until a couple of years ago. Now we have a two dollar coin, which we call the "toonie" after our beloved one dollar coin, known as the "loonie". But as far as an American flag being there? No. As you can see from this picture, it was the Canadian flag.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag. Funny, there is no such thing as a Canadian two-dollar bill.

VNN published my original article with the following caveat: [Editor's note: VNN is the most visited Vaisnava web site in the world because of its open and fair publication policy. Many times controversial in nature, VNN has taken heat from almost all sections of the Hare Krsna movement for this policy. It should be noted here that VNN editorials are not written by VNN editors, but are called "editorials" as they represent opinion rather than news. VNN policy is known to publish editorials with many opposing views, most not shared by the editors, sometimes to expose certain conceptions present in the movement to give the Vaisnava community the opportunity to challenge or offer a different viewpoint to what may be misconceptions that exist in the Hare Krsna movement -- but without offending great vaisnavas. VNN usually does not publish "kill the messenger" articles that attack VNN instead of the issue of a text published on VNN. VNN has received some 20 emails strongly protesting a published editorial, some demanding its removal and others the publication of what they see as a rebuttal of said editorial. Following is the text, which was originally rejected by VNN editors, not because of its conclusions, but because, amongst other things, its presentation of the beliefs of the founder acarya of ISKCON as part of the "lunatic fringe" of the movement. For obvious reasons, such texts are normally not published on VNN. It apears that to some, criticism of pure Vaisnava acaryas and the most sacred Vaisnava scriptures, such as Srimad Bhagavatam, is more acceptable than criticism of a particular mundane bodily designation. - end editorial note] Dear Prabhus, I see that you published my editorial with a caveat. I appreciate your reservations, but I would like to say the following: (1) Since my criticism was a very serious one and I was obviously ready to start causing trouble, why did you not write back to me to let me know that I should revise the article according to your reservations? I did in fact receive the same or similar comments from several people and I wrote a "patch" which was published on Chakra. I find it hard to believe that you don't visit Chakra from time to time and so I am sure you saw it. You are EDITORS, so this is part of the job. (2) If you had such a great concern for the disrespect shown to Srila Prabhupada (who was unnamed) in my later, why did you not show the same concern when it came to Srivatsa's original letters? You are sensitive to criticisms of Prabhupada, even indirect, but not aware of the damage that anti-Semitic ideas could cause to the movement as a whole. This is not proof of good judgment. Your servant, Jagadananda Das.

VNN published my original article with the following caveat: [Editor's note: VNN is the most visited Vaisnava web site in the world because of its open and fair publication policy. Many times controversial in nature, VNN has taken heat from almost all sections of the Hare Krsna movement for this policy. It should be noted here that VNN editorials are not written by VNN editors, but are called "editorials" as they represent opinion rather than news. VNN policy is known to publish editorials with many opposing views, most not shared by the editors, sometimes to expose certain conceptions present in the movement to give the Vaisnava community the opportunity to challenge or offer a different viewpoint to what may be misconceptions that exist in the Hare Krsna movement -- but without offending great vaisnavas. VNN usually does not publish "kill the messenger" articles that attack VNN instead of the issue of a text published on VNN. VNN has received some 20 emails strongly protesting a published editorial, some demanding its removal and others the publication of what they see as a rebuttal of said editorial. Following is the text, which was originally rejected by VNN editors, not because of its conclusions, but because, amongst other things, its presentation of the beliefs of the founder acarya of ISKCON as part of the "lunatic fringe" of the movement. For obvious reasons, such texts are normally not published on VNN. It apears that to some, criticism of pure Vaisnava acaryas and the most sacred Vaisnava scriptures, such as Srimad Bhagavatam, is more acceptable than criticism of a particular mundane bodily designation. - end editorial note] Dear Prabhus, I see that you published my editorial with a caveat. I appreciate your reservations, but I would like to say the following: (1) Since my criticism was a very serious one and I was obviously ready to start causing trouble, why did you not write back to me to let me know that I should revise the article according to your reservations? I did in fact receive the same or similar comments from several people and I wrote a "patch" which was published on Chakra. I find it hard to believe that you don't visit Chakra from time to time and so I am sure you saw it. You are EDITORS, so this is part of the job. (2) If you had such a great concern for the disrespect shown to Srila Prabhupada (who was unnamed) in my later, why did you not show the same concern when it came to Srivatsa's original letters? You are sensitive to criticisms of Prabhupada, even indirect, but not aware of the damage that anti-Semitic ideas could cause to the movement as a whole. This is not proof of good judgment. Your servant, Jagadananda Das.

Just noticed, Pitadasji, that you have decided to continue with your memoirs. If you want me to edit them for you like before, just send them to me at the address. The devotees are saragrahis and will accept them in any shape or form, so you don't really need me.

Just noticed, Pitadasji, that you have decided to continue with your memoirs. If you want me to edit them for you like before, just send them to me at the address. The devotees are saragrahis and will accept them in any shape or form, so you don't really need me.

<h3>We're all to blame for the trade talks' collapse</h3> By JEFFREY SIMPSON Saturday, September 20, 2003 Japan, guilty. Korea, guilty. The European Union, especially France, guilty. The United States, guilty. Canada, guilty, sort of. These are the countries that should be in the dock of world opinion for the collapse of world trade talks. That those talks just failed in Cancun, with revival uncertain, had nothing whatsoever to do with the usual collection of demonstrators. The talks collapsed instead because the rich countries still insist upon obscene subsidies for their farmers, to the detriment of their consumers and taxpayers, and the developing world. Finally, after years of being jerked around by the rich countries, developing countries led by Brazil, India and others stomped out, saying they wouldn't accede to requests to open parts of their markets until the rich countries stopped, or at least reduced, their subsidies. They were right to walk out, although the risk now becomes that the entire trade round will fail, a failure that will hurt the developing countries more than the rich ones, no matter what the demonstrators say. Rich countries give more to their farmers in agricultural subsidies -- $300-billion (U.S.) -- than they give in foreign aid. Rice farmers in Japan and Korea, cotton, sugar beet, peanut and wheat farmers in the U.S., all kinds of farmers in the EU -- they all suck mightily at their government's fiscal teat, yet they represent only 3 per cent or less of their populations. Why do these few people exercise so much political muscle? In part, it's because hell hath no political fury like an aggrieved French farmer or a U.S. wheat grower or a Quebec dairy producer. Farmers have been dependent on government assistance for so long that they have developed brilliant skills of political manipulation, from the street theatre of demonstrations to discreet lobbying. But there is more. In each of these countries -- and in Canada, too -- for all the talk of modernization and urbanization, institutions and timetables are still set as if agricultural life still predominated. The school system, for example, maintains the long summer break as if students were needed to help on the farm, as they were a century ago. In some areas, clocks are set according to daylight hours to maximize farmers' time in the fields. Political maps reflect population patterns that no longer exist, and therefore give disproportionate weight to rural areas. The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan gets the farmers' votes in constituencies that have far fewer electors than urban ones. It's the same pattern everywhere, the Japanese one just being more blatant than the others. In the U.S. Senate, an agricultural state such as North Dakota has the same number of senators as industrial Michigan. In Canada, rural ridings sometimes have half as many voters as big urban ones. In any Parliament, the number of questions asked about agriculture vastly eclipses those about cities. But there is still more. In each country, according to its traditions, mythologies have grown up about the farmer. In France, le beau paysage français (and it is a beautiful countryside) is deemed part of the nation's soul and heritage, so that government protection for farmers has become part of a national self-image. In Japan and Korea, the very shortage of farmland has been twisted into a mistaken belief in the need for self-sufficiency in rice, as if these countries could not be sure of buying supplies on the world market. Myths have developed in Canada, too, the sturdiest being that somehow the supply-management system does not disturb world trade. True, we do not dump excess capacity on world markets, as the European Union does, but we restrict imports with vast tariffs on eggs, dairy and poultry, which makes Canada guilty, sort of. When the federal and provincial agriculture ministers meet in Ottawa Monday, however, we can be sure their tone will be of virtue sullied, as if Canada's hands were clean in the messy business of the Cancun collapse. Such a pose works well at home, whatever its divergence from the facts. This protection here, as elsewhere, is justified by recourse to the noble countryside, the fine people who work it, and the gratitude we should all feel to those who produce what we eat, whatever the cost. In fairness, Canadian grain farmers do have cause for complaint, since Canadian per farmer subsidies pale beside those of the United States and European Union. For confirmation, check out the annual reports on agricultural subsidies from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The numbers are all there, and they tell a depressing story. The developed world's hypocrisy knows no limits. The rich countries and the institutions they control, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the regional development banks, exhort developing countries to get with the program and produce things efficiently. But when they do, the rich countries say sorry. Our farmers are at the trough, and we're petrified of their ire. jsimpson@globeandmail.ca

http://www.harinderveriah.com/articles.html

A very, very persuasive article. NPR did a documentary on Kofi Annan recently, which showed the man to be almost a saint in bearing, speech and physical appearance. The man is effulgent.

<h3>The global hierarchy of race </h3> As the only racial group that never suffers systemic racism, whites are in denial about its impact. Martin Jacques Saturday September 20, 2003 The Guardian I always found race difficult to understand. It was never intuitive. And the reason was simple. Like every other white person, I had never experienced it myself: the meaning of colour was something I had to learn. The turning point was falling in love with my wife, an Indian-Malaysian, and her coming to live in England. Then, over time, I came to see my own country in a completely different way, through her eyes, her background. Colour is something white people never have to think about because for them it is never a handicap, never a source of prejudice or discrimination, but rather the opposite, a source of privilege. However liberal and enlightened I tried to be, I still had a white outlook on the world. My wife was the beginning of my education. But it was not until we went to live in Hong Kong that my view of the world, and the place that race occupies within it, was to be utterly transformed. Rather than seeing race through the prism of my own society, I learned to see it globally. When we left these shores, it felt as if we were moving closer to my wife's world: this was east Asia and she was Malaysian. And she, unlike me, had the benefit of speaking Cantonese. So my expectation was that she would feel more comfortable in this environment than I would. I was wrong. As a white, I found myself treated with respect and deference; my wife, notwithstanding her knowledge of the language and her intimacy with Chinese culture, was the object of an in-your-face racism. In our 14 months in Hong Kong, I learned some brutal lessons about racism. First, it is not the preserve of whites. Every race displays racial prejudice, is capable of racism, carries assumptions about its own virtue and superiority. Each racism, furthermore, is subtly different, reflecting the specificity of its own culture and history. Second, there is a global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power and the prejudices of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are whites. The reasons are deep-rooted and profound. White societies have been the global top dogs for half a millennium, ever since Chinese civilisation went into decline. With global hegemony, first with Europe and then the US, whites have long commanded respect, as well as arousing fear and resentment, among other races. Being white confers a privilege, a special kind of deference, throughout the world, be it Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos - or even, despite the way it is portrayed in Britain, Harare. Whites are the only race that never suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere in the world. And the impact of white racism has been far more profound and baneful than any other: it remains the only racism with global reach. Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims. Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed by whites does not reside simply in an abstraction - western societies - but in the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by our colour. It is something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently take for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary, backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen. The existence of a de facto global racial hierarchy helps to shape the nature of racial prejudice exhibited by other races. Whites are universally respected, even when that respect is combined with strong resentment. A race generally defers to those above it in the hierarchy and is contemptuous of those below it. The Chinese - like the Japanese - widely consider themselves to be number two in the pecking order and look down upon all other races as inferior. Their respect for whites is also grudging - many Chinese believe that western hegemony is, in effect, held on no more than prolonged leasehold. Those below the Chinese and the Japanese in the hierarchy are invariably people of colour (both Chinese and Japanese often like to see themselves as white, or nearly white). At the bottom of the pile, virtually everywhere it would seem, are those of African descent, the only exception in certain cases being the indigenous peoples. This highlights the centrality of colour to the global hierarchy. Other factors serve to define and reinforce a race's position in the hierarchy - levels of development, civilisational values, history, religion, physical characteristics and dress - but the most insistent and widespread is colour. The reason is that colour is instantly recognisable, it defines difference at the glance of an eye. It also happens to have another effect. It makes the global hierarchy seem like the natural order of things: you are born with your colour, it is something nobody can do anything about, it is neither cultural nor social but physical in origin. In the era of globalisation, with mass migration and globalised cultural industries, colour has become the universal calling card of difference. In interwar Europe, the dominant forms of racism were anti-semitism and racialised nationalisms, today it is colour: at a football match, it is blacks not Jews that get jeered, even in eastern Europe. Liberals like to think that racism is a product of ignorance, of a lack of contact, and that as human mobility increases, so racism will decline. This might be described as the Benetton view of the world. And it does contain a modicum of truth. Intermixing can foster greater understanding, but not necessarily, as Burnley, Sri Lanka and Israel, in their very different ways, all testify. Hong Kong, compared with China, is an open society, and has long been so, yet it has had little or no effect in mollifying Chinese prejudice towards people of darker skin. It is not that racism is immovable and intractable, but that its roots are deep, its prejudices as old as humanity itself. The origins of Chinese racism lie in the Middle Kingdom: the belief that the Chinese are superior to other races - with the exception of whites - is centuries, if not thousands of years, old. The disparaging attitude among American whites towards blacks has its roots in slavery. Wishing it wasn't true, denying it is true, will never change the reality. We can only understand - and tackle racism - if we are honest about it. And when it comes to race - more than any other issue - honesty is in desperately short supply. Race remains the great taboo. Take the case of Hong Kong. A conspiracy of silence surrounded race. As the British departed in 1997, amid much self-congratulation, they breathed not a word about racism. Yet the latter was integral to colonial rule, its leitmotif: colonialism, after all, is institutionalised racism at its crudest and most base. The majority of Chinese, the object of it, meanwhile, harboured an equally racist mentality towards people of darker skin. Masters of their own home, they too are in denial of their own racism. But that, in varying degrees, is true of racism not only in Hong Kong but in every country in the world. You may remember that, after the riots in Burnley in the summer of 2001, Tony Blair declared that they were not a true reflection of the state of race relations in Britain: of course, they were, even if the picture is less discouraging in other aspects. Racism everywhere remains largely invisible and hugely under-estimated, the issue that barely speaks its name. How can the Economist produce a 15,000-word survey on migration, as it did last year, and hardly mention the word racism? Why does virtually no one talk about the racism suffered by the Williams sisters on the tennis circuit even though the evidence is legion? Why are the deeply racist western attitudes towards Arabs barely mentioned in the context of the occupation of Iraq, carefully hidden behind talk of religion and civilisational values? The dominant race in a society, whether white or otherwise, rarely admits to its own racism. Denial is near universal. The reasons are manifold. It has a huge vested interest in its own privilege. It will often be oblivious to its own prejudices. It will regard its racist attitudes as nothing more than common sense, having the force and justification of nature. Only when challenged by those on the receiving end is racism outed, and attitudes begin to change. The reason why British society is less nakedly racist than it used to be is that whites have been forced by people of colour to question age-old racist assumptions. Nations are never honest about themselves: they are all in varying degrees of denial. This is clearly fundamental to understanding the way in which racism is underplayed as a national and global issue. But there is another reason, which is a specifically white problem. Because whites remain the overwhelmingly dominant global race, perched in splendid isolation on top of the pile even though they only represent 17% of the world's population, they are overwhelmingly responsible for setting the global agenda, for determining what is discussed and what is not. And the fact that whites have no experience of racism, except as perpetrators, means that racism is constantly underplayed by western institutions - by governments, by the media, by corporations. Moreover, because whites have reigned globally supreme for half a millennium, they, more than any other race, have left their mark on the rest of humanity: they have a vested interest in denying the extent and baneful effects of racism. It was only two years ago, you may remember, that the first-ever United Nations conference on racism was held - against the fierce resistance of the US (and that in the Clinton era). Nothing more eloquently testifies to the unwillingness of western governments to engage in a global dialogue about the problem of racism. If racism is now more widely recognised than it used to be, the situation is likely to be transformed over the next few decades. As migration increases, as the regime of denial is challenged, as subordinate races find the will and confidence to challenge the dominant race, as understanding of racism develops, as we become more aware of other racisms like that of the Han Chinese, then the global prominence of racism is surely set to increase dramatically. It is rare to hear a political leader speaking the discourse of colour. Robert Mugabe is one, but he is tainted and discredited. The Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, is articulate on the subject of white privilege and the global hierarchy. The most striking example by a huge margin, though, is Nelson Mandela. When it comes to colour, his sacrifice is beyond compare and his authority unimpeachable. And his message is always universal - not confined to the interests of one race. It is he who has suggested that western support for Israel has something to do with race. It is he who has hinted that it is no accident that the authority of the UN is under threat at a time when its secretary general is black. And yet his voice is almost alone in a world where race oozes from every pore of humanity. In a world where racism is becoming increasingly important, we will need more such leaders. And invariably they will be people of colour: on this subject whites lack moral authority. I could only understand the racism suffered by my wife through her words and experience. I never felt it myself. The difference is utterly fundamental. · Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. The death of his wife, Harinder Veriah, in 2000 in a Hong Kong hospital triggered an outcry which culminated in this summer's announcement by the Hong Kong government that it would introduce anti-racist legislation for the first time martinjacques1@aol.com

As Bush said, "The Afghan people will know the generosity of America and its allies."

"We were living in a graveyard, but we were secure." What is especially potent about this article is the focus on the status of women. The main thrust of propaganda against the Taliban focused on the situation of the women. Things have not improved. "Two girls who went to school without their burkas were killed and their dead bodies were put in front of their houses," she said. "Last month, 35 women jumped into a river along with their children and died, just to save themselves from commanders on a rampage of rape. That is Afghanistan today; the Taliban and the warlords of the Northern Alliance are two faces of the same coin. For America, it's a Frankenstein story - you make a monster and the monster goes against you. If America had not built up these warlords, Osama bin Laden and all the fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion, they would not have attacked the master on September 11 2001." So friggin' true. Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us". Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us". Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us". Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us". Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us".

No relation to Zbigniew, by the way.

<h3>What good friends left behind </h3> Two years ago, as the bombs began to drop, George Bush promised Afghanistan 'the generosity of America and its allies'. Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. What was the purpose? John Pilger reports Saturday September 20, 2003 (The Guardian) At the Labour party conference following the September 11 attacks, Tony Blair said memorably: "To the Afghan people, we make this commitment. We will not walk away... If the Taliban regime changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is broadbased, that unites all ethnic groups and offers some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence." He was echoing George Bush, who had said a few days earlier: "The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and its allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan. The US is a friend of the Afghan people." Almost every word they spoke was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions that prepared the way for the conquest of both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the illegal Anglo-American occupation of Iraq now unravels, the forgotten disaster in Afghanistan, the first "victory" in the "war on terror", is perhaps an even more shocking testament to power. It was my first visit. In a lifetime of making my way through places of upheaval, I had not seen anything like it. Kabul is a glimpse of Dresden post-1945, with contours of rubble rather than streets, where people live in collapsed buildings, like earthquake victims waiting for rescue. They have no light and heat; their apocalyptic fires burn through the night. Hardly a wall stands that does not bear the pock-marks of almost every calibre of weapon. Cars lie upended at roundabouts. Power poles built for a modern fleet of trolley buses are twisted like paperclips. The buses are stacked on top of each other, reminiscent of the pyramids of machines erected by the Khmer Rouge to mark Year Zero. There is a sense of Year Zero in Afghanistan. My footsteps echoed through the once grand Dilkusha Palace, built in 1910 to a design by a British architect, whose circular staircase and Corinthian columns and stone frescoes of biplanes were celebrated. It is now a cavernous ruin from which reed-thin children emerge like small phantoms, offering yellowing postcards of what it looked like 30 years ago: a vainglorious pile at the end of what might have been a replica of the Mall, with flags and trees. Beneath the sweep of the staircase were the blood and flesh of two people blown up by a bomb the day before. Who were they? Who planted the bomb? In a country in thrall to warlords, many of them conniving in terrorism, the question itself is surreal. A hundred yards away, men in blue move stiffly in single file: mine-clearers. Mines are like litter here, killing and maiming, it is calculated, every hour of every day. Opposite what was Kabul's main cinema and is today an art deco shell, there is a busy roundabout with posters warning that unexploded cluster bombs "yellow and from USA" are in the vicinity. Children play here, chasing each other into the shadows. They are watched by a teenage boy with a stump and part of his face missing. In the countryside, people still confuse the cluster canisters with the yellow relief packages that were dropped by American planes almost two years ago, during the war, after Bush had prevented international relief convoys crossing from Pakistan. More than $10bn has been spent on Afghanistan since October 7 2001, most of it by the US. More than 80% of this has paid for bombing the country and paying the warlords, the former mojahedin who called themselves the "Northern Alliance". The Americans gave each warlord tens of thousands of dollars in cash and truckloads of weapons. "We were reaching out to every commander that we could," a CIA official told the Wall Street Journal during the war. In other words, they bribed them to stop fighting each other and fight the Taliban. These were the same warlords who, vying for control of Kabul after the Russians left in 1989, pulverised the city, killing 50,000 civilians, half of them in one year, 1994, according to Human Rights Watch. Thanks to the Americans, effective control of Afghanistan has been ceded to most of the same mafiosi and their private armies, who rule by fear, extortion and monopolising the opium poppy trade that supplies Britain with 90% of its street heroin. The post-Taliban government is a facade; it has no money and its writ barely runs to the gates of Kabul, in spite of democratic pretensions such as the election planned for next year. Omar Zakhilwal, an official in the ministry of rural affairs, told me that the government gets less than 20% of the aid that is delivered to Afghanistan - "We don't even have enough money to pay wages, let alone plan reconstruction," he said. President Harmid Karzai is a placeman of Washington who goes nowhere without his posse of US Special Forces bodyguards. In a series of extraordinary reports, the latest published in July, Human Rights Watch has documented atrocities "committed by gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the United States and its coalition partners after the Taliban fell in 2001" and who have "essentially hijacked the country". The report describes army and police troops controlled by the warlords kidnapping villagers with impunity and holding them for ransom in unofficial prisons; the widespread rape of women, girls and boys; routine extortion, robbery and arbitrary murder. Girls' schools are burned down. "Because the soldiers are targeting women and girls," the report says, "many are staying indoors, making it impossible for them to attend school [or] go to work." In the western city of Herat, for example, women are arrested if they drive; they are prohibited from travelling with an unrelated man, even an unrelated taxi driver. If they are caught, they are subjected to a "chastity test", squandering precious medical services to which, says Human Rights Watch, "women and girls have almost no access, particularly in Herat, where fewer than one per cent of women give birth with a trained attendant". The death rate of mothers giving birth is the highest in the world, according to Unicef. Herat is ruled by the warlord Ismail Khan, whom US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld endorsed as "an appealing man... thoughtful, measured and self-confident". "The last time we met in this chamber," said George Bush in his state of the union speech last year, "the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today, women are free, and are part of Afghanistan's new government. And we welcome the new minister of women's affairs, Dr Sima Samar." A slight, middle-aged woman in a headscarf stood and received the choreographed ovation. A physician who refused to deny treatment to women during the Taliban years, Samar is a true symbol of resistance, whose appropriation by the unctuous Bush was short-lived. In December 2001, Samar attended the Washington-sponsored "peace conference" in Bonn where Karzai was installed as president and three of the most brutal warlords as vice-presidents. (The Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum, accused of torturing and slaughtering prisoners, is currently defence minister.) Samar was one of two women in Karzai's cabinet. No sooner had the applause in Congress died away than Samar was smeared with a false charge of blasphemy and forced out. The warlords, different from the Taliban only in their tribal allegiances and religious pieties, were not tolerating even a gesture of female emancipation. Today, Samar lives in constant fear for her life. She has two fearsome bodyguards with automatic weapons. One is at her office door, the other at her gate. She travels in a blacked-out van. "For the past 23 years, I was not safe," she told me, "but I was never in hiding or travelling with gunmen, which I must do now... There is no more official law to stop women from going to school and work; there is no law about dress code. But the reality is that even under the Taliban there was not the pressure on women in the rural areas there is now." The apartheid might have legally ended, but for as many as 90% of the women of Afghanistan, these "reforms" - such as the setting up of a women's ministry in Kabul - are little more than a technicality. The burka is still ubiquitous. As Samar says, the plight of rural women is often more desperate now because the ultra-puritanical Taliban dealt harshly with rape, murder and banditry. Unlike today, it was possible to travel safely across much of the country. At a bombed-out shoe factory in west Kabul, I found the population of two villages huddled on exposed floors without light and with one trickling tap. Small children squatted around open fires on crumbling parapets: the day before, a child had fallen to his death; on the day I arrived, another child fell and was badly injured. A meal for them is bread dipped in tea. Their owl eyes are those of terrified refugees. They had fled there, they explained, because warlords routinely robbed them and kidnapped their wives and daughters and sons, whom they would rape and ransom back to them. "During the Taliban we were living in a graveyard, but we were secure," a campaigner, Marina, told me. "Some people even say they were better. That's how desperate the situation is today. The laws may have changed, but women dare not leave their homes without the burka, which we wear as much for our protection." Marina is a leading member of Rawa, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a heroic organisation that for years tried to alert the outside world to the suffering of the women of Afghanistan. Rawa women travelled secretly throughout the country, with cameras concealed beneath their burkas. They filmed a Taliban execution and other abuses, and smuggled their videotape to the west. "We took it to different media groups," said Marina. "Reuters, ABC Australia, for example, and they said, yes, it's very nice, but we can't show it because it's too shocking for people in the west." In fact, the execution was shown finally in a documentary broadcast by Channel 4. That was before September 11 2001, when Bush and the US media discovered the issue of women in Afghanistan. She says that the current silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlord regime is no different. We met clandestinely and she wore a veil to disguise her identity. Marina is not her real name. "Two girls who went to school without their burkas were killed and their dead bodies were put in front of their houses," she said. "Last month, 35 women jumped into a river along with their children and died, just to save themselves from commanders on a rampage of rape. That is Afghanistan today; the Taliban and the warlords of the Northern Alliance are two faces of the same coin. For America, it's a Frankenstein story - you make a monster and the monster goes against you. If America had not built up these warlords, Osama bin Laden and all the fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion, they would not have attacked the master on September 11 2001." Afghanistan's tragedy exemplifies the maxim of western power - that third world countries are regarded and dealt with strictly in terms of their usefulness to "us". The ruthlessness and hypocrisy this requires is imprinted on Afghanistan's modern history. One of the most closely guarded secrets of the cold war was America's and Britain's collusion with the warlords, the mojahedin, and the critical part they played in stimulating the jihad that produced the Taliban, al-Qaida and September 11. "According to the official view of history," Zbigniew Brzezinski, Presi dent Carter's national security adviser, admitted in an interview in 1998, "CIA aid to the mojahedin began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan... But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." At Brzezinski's urging, in July 1979 Carter authorised $500m to help set up what was basically a terrorist organisation. The goal was to lure Moscow, then deeply troubled by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Soviet central Asian republics, into the "trap" of Afghanistan, a source of the contagion. For 17 years, Washington poured $4bn into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war. One of them, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord particularly favoured by the CIA, received tens of millions of dollars. His speciality was trafficking opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. In 1994, he agreed to stop attacking Kabul on condition that he was made primeminister - which he was. Eight years earlier, CIA director William Casey had given his backing to a plan put forward by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the SAS training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989. "I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard," said Lord Curzon, viceroy of India in 1898, "upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world." Brzezinski, adviser to several presidents and a guru admired by the Bush gang, has written virtually those same words. In his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, he writes that the key to dominating the world is central Asia, with its strategic position between competing powers and immense oil and gas wealth. "To put it in terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires," he writes, one of "the grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy" is "to keep the barbarians from coming together". Surveying the ashes of the Soviet Union he helped destroy, the guru mused more than once: so what if all this had created "a few stirred up Muslims"? On September 11 2001, "a few stirred up Muslims" provided the answer. I recently interviewed Brzezinski in Washington and he vehemently denied that his strategy precipitated the rise of al-Qaida: he blamed terrorism on the Russians. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, the chessboard was passed to the Clinton administration. The latest mutation of the mojahedin, the Taliban, now ruled Afghanistan. In 1997, US state department officials and executives of the Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) discreetly entertained Taliban leaders in Washington and Houston, Texas. They were entertained lavishly, with dinner parties at luxurious homes in Houston. They asked to be taken shopping at a Walmart and flown to tourist attractions, including the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where they gazed upon the faces of American presidents chiselled in the rockface. The Wall Street Journal, bulletin of US power, effused, "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history." In January 1997, a state department official told journalists in a private briefing that it was hoped Afghanistan would become an oil protectorate, "like Saudi Arabia". It was pointed out to him that Saudi Arabia had no democracy and persecuted women. "We can live with that," he said. The American goal was now the realisation of a 60-year "dream" of building a pipeline from the former Soviet Caspian across Afghanistan to a deep-water port. The Taliban were offered 15 cents for every 1,000 cubic feet of gas that passed through Afghanistan. Although these were the Clinton years, pushing the deal were the "oil and gas junta" that was soon to dominate George W Bush's regime. They included three former members of George Bush senior's cabinet, such as the present vice-president, Dick Cheney, representing nine oil companies, and Condoleezza Rice, now national security adviser, then a director of Chevron-Texaco with special responsibility for Pakistan and Central Asia. Peel the onion of this and you find Bush senior as a paid consultant of the huge Carlyle Group, whose 164 companies specialise in oil and gas and pipelines and weapons. His clients included a super-wealthy Saudi family, the Bin Ladens. (Within days of the September 11 attacks, the Bin Laden family was allowed to leave the US in high secrecy.) The pipeline "dream" faded when two US embassies in east Africa were bombed and al-Qaida was blamed and the connection with Afghanistan was made. The usefulness of the Taliban was over; they had become an embarrassment and expendable. In October 2001, the Americans bombed back into power their old warlord friends, the "Northern Alliance". Today, with Afghanistan "liberated", the pipeline is finally going ahead, watched over by the US ambassador to Afghanistan, John J Maresca, formerly ofUnocal. Since it overthrew the Taliban, the US has established 13 bases in the nine former Soviet central Asian countries that are Afghanistan's resource-rich neighbours. Across the world, there is now an American military presence at the gateway to every major source of fossil fuel. Lord Curzon would never recognise his great game. It's what the US Space Command calls "full spectrum dominance". It is from the vast, Soviet-built base at Bagram, near Kabul, that the US controls the land route to the riches of the Caspian Basin. But, as in that other conquest, Iraq, all is not going smoothly. "We get shot at every time we go off base," said Colonel Rod Davis. "For us, that's a combat zone out there." I said to him, "But President Bush says you liberated Afghanistan. Why should people shoot at you?" "Hostile elements are everywhere, my friend." "Is that surprising, when you support murderous warlords?" I replied. "We call them regional governors." (As "regional governors", warlords such as Ismail Khan in Herat are deemed part of Karzai's national government - an uneasy juxtaposition. Karzai has pleaded with Khan to release millions of dollars of customs duty.) The war that expelled the Taliban never stopped. Ten thousand US troops are stationed there; they go out in their helicopter gunships and Humvees and blow up caves in the mountains or they target a village, usually in the south-east. The Taliban are coming back in the Pashtun heartland and on the border with Pakistan. The level of the war is not independently known; US spokesmen such as Colonel Davis are the sources of news reports that say "50 Taliban fighters were killed by US forces". Afghanistan is now so dangerous that it is virtually impossible for reporters to find out. The centre of US operations is now the "holding facility" at Bagram, where suspects are taken and interrogated. Two former prisoners, Abdul Jabar and Hakkim Shah, told the New York Times in March how as many as 100 prisoners were "made to stand hooded, their arms raised and chained to the ceiling, their feet shackled, unable to move for hours at a time, day and night". From here, many are shipped to the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. They are denied all rights. The Red Cross has been allowed to inspect only part of the "holding facility"; Amnesty has been refused access altogether. In April last year, a Kabul taxi driver, Wasir Mohammad, whose family I interviewed, "dis-appeared" into Bagram after he inquired at a roadblock about the whereabouts of a friend who had been arrested. The friend has since been released, but Mohammad is now in a cage in Guantanamo Bay. A former minister of the interior in the Karzai government told me that Mohammad was in the wrong place at the wrong time: "He is innocent." Moreover, he had a record of standing up to the Taliban. It is likely that many of those incarcerated at Bagram and Guantanamo Bay were kidnapped for ransoms the Americans pay for suspects. Why, I asked Colonel Davis, were the people in the "holding facility" not given the basic rights he would expect as an American taken prisoner by a foreign army. He replied: "The issue of prisoners of war is way off to the far left or the right depending on your perspective." This is the Kafkaesque world that Bush's America has imprinted on the recently acquired additions to its empire, real and virtual, rising on new rubble in places where human life is not given the same value as those who perished at Ground Zero in New York. One such place is a village called Bibi Mahru, which was attacked by an American F16 almost two years ago during the war. The pilot dropped a MK82 "precision" 500lb bomb on a mud and stone house, where Orifa and her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, lived. The bomb killed all but Orifa and one son - eight members of her family, including six children. Two children in the next house were killed, too. Her face engraved with grief and anger, Orifa told me how the bodies were laid out in front of the mosque, and the horrific state in which she found them. She spent the afternoon collecting body parts, "then bagging and naming them so they could be buried later on". She said a team of 11 Americans came and surveyed the crater where her home had stood. They noted the numbers on shrapnel and each interviewed her. Their translator gave her an envelope with $15 in dollar bills. Later, she was taken to the US embassy in Kabul by Rita Lasar, a New Yorker who had lost her brother in the Twin Towers and had gone to Afghanistan to protest about the bombing and comfort its victims. When Orifa tried to hand in a letter through the embassy gate, she was told, "Go away, you beggar." In May last year, the Guardian published the result of an investigation by Jonathan Steele. He concluded that, in addition to up to 8,000 Afghans killed by American bombs, as many as 20,000 more may have died as an indirect consequence of Bush's invasion, including those who fled their homes and were denied emergency relief in the middle of a drought. Of all the great humanitarian crises of recent years, no country has been helped less than Afghanistan. Bosnia, with a quarter of the population, received $356 per person; Afghanistan gets $42 per person. Only 3% of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for reconstruction; the US-led military "coalition" accounts for 84%, the rest is emergency aid. Last March, Karzai flew to Washington to beg for more money. He was promised extra money from private US investors. Of this, $35m will finance a proposed five-star hotel. As Bush said, "The Afghan people will know the generosity of America and its allies." © John Pilger, 2003. John Pilger's documentary, Breaking The Silence: Truth And Lies In The War On Terror, will be shown on ITV1 on Monday at 10.45pm.

<h3>The Muslim refusenik</h3> Meet the young Canadian who wants to prove that Islam and her Western ways are compatible By MARGARET WENTE Saturday, September 20, 2003 - Page A27 Imagine a world in which every Christian is taught to believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, delivered directly to His prophet. Religious education largely consists of memorizing the Holy Book uncritically. People are taught that their faith, being perfect, is superior to all others, and those who question it are accused of apostasy. In this world, supposedly devout Christians engage in terrorism in the name of God. Some of them believe that they can achieve sainthood by blowing themselves up in restaurants and killing enemy children. These people attract worldwide sympathy from other Christians. Scholars are divided on whether such acts are justified by the Bible, but the Archbishop of Canterbury endorses it. In this Christian society, homosexuals are reviled and women are unequal. Women must generally obtain the consent of men to marry or go to university, and can be punished or killed (sometimes legally, sometimes not) for crimes against the family honour. Hundreds of millions of Christians around the world are obsessed with a tiny sect of people who occupy a sliver of land the size of New Jersey. They blame these people for many of their problems. When outsiders are critical, Christians accuse them of prejudice. They argue that violence committed in the name of God is not, at any rate, the true Christianity. Their faith has been hijacked by a small group of fanatics. Theirs is a religion of tolerance and peace; the Bible proves it. When Christians themselves are critical, they are likely to be ignored or vilified, or even threatened with death. And that's why Irshad Manji is a brave woman. Ms. Manji is a blazingly articulate young Canadian Muslim. Her subject, of course, is not Christianity but Islam, and her new book, The Trouble with Islam, is a loud, clear call for honesty and reform. It is wry, blunt and irreverent, but never bitter. As a thought experiment, I summarized her main criticisms of Islam and then substituted Christianity, a faith with which I'm more familiar. It was unnerving. If Ms. Manji is right in her critique (and I believe she is), then Islam badly needs a reformation. "Mohammed said that how we behave is Islam," she says. "It doesn't matter what the Koran says. It's about what's happening on the ground. And we have to ask ourselves: Why have so many Muslims chosen hate?" Ms. Manji's book is as much about her own personal journey as it is a call for honesty and change. Her family emigrated from Uganda to Vancouver, where she grew up. A strong-minded girl, she had a habit of questioning authority of all kinds. At 14, she was kicked out of the madrassa for giving the teacher a hard time. After that she set out to learn about her religion for herself, a journey that consumed her off and on for years. She questioned, probed, explored, and eventually concluded that although much needs to change, Islam is not inherently incompatible with pluralistic western values. Ironically, she points out, such inquiry is only possible in the West. Today, at 35, she describes herself as a practising Muslim, a lesbian and a feminist. Not surprisingly, the Muslim establishment regards Ms. Manji as nothing but trouble. "Born-agains and self-haters: Muslims have them too" begins a recent press release issued by the Canadian Islamic Congress, a mainstream group. "Most self-hating Muslims claim to practise their faith. They call themselves liberal, moderate, and contemporary . . . [but] self-hating Muslims secretly (or not so secretly) despise their religion and curse the day their parents gave them Muslim names. When self-hating Muslims write books or op-ed articles, they have little or nothing good to say about Islam and its nearly two billion global adherents. They attribute every failure of Muslims in both the past and present to the beliefs of Islam, the teachings of the Koran, or the sayings of the Prophet." Ms. Manji admits that if the faith cannot reform itself, she may have to leave. But first, she wants to see if it is capable of letting in some oxygen. She points to a tradition of self-criticism and introspection in Islam that she hopes can be revived. And she hopes that her book (which also is being published in the U.S., England, Germany and France) will help to rally the silent moderates who have not had a voice, or the courage, or the words to speak out. She is immensely buoyed by the response so far. True, she has been getting the usual e-mail from Muslims who accuse her of being in the pocket of the Zionists. True, the Toronto Star has been full of letters denouncing her for Islamophobia. But many people, calling into phone-in shows, or responding to her website (http://www.muslim-refusenik.com), have expressed their heartfelt thanks. "What has happened to us?" a woman named Saira wrote her this week. "Why have so many turned inward, isolating themselves from the so-called 'evil West'? . . . Yeah, injustices have been done, country against country, no doubt about that. But are we just going to hold onto that resentment and hate for the rest of our lives?" The price to pay for dissent is often personal. Ms. Manji and her father are no longer on speaking terms. ("Maybe we will be again some day," she says hopefully.) Nor is the Muslim establishment the only group that has repudiated her. "I've been told many times I'm not a member of the left any more," she says. (She calls herself neither left-wing nor right-wing but "post-wing.") There is a verse from the Koran she likes. It goes: "Believer, conduct yourselves with justice and bear true witness before God, even though it be against yourselves, your parents or your kinsfolk." Ms. Manji is appalled by the selective blindness of the left, which generally blames the West for the problems of the Middle East. "I'm stunned by the way the political tradition from which I come has abdicated responsibility for universal human rights," she says. "They wax eloquent that Islamic societies have their own form of democracy. But please ask them how these places treat women, how they treat Jews? They love to dissect Israel -- but to the exclusion of Saudi Arabia? How can they morally live with themselves?" Ms. Manji wants to have it all -- just the way most Christians do, I guess. She aspires to be both a faithful Muslim and a faithful Westerner, living in a world that cherishes pluralism, dissent, critical thinking, equality and, yes, tolerance, and where these values do not clash with her religion. She also argues that Muslims must shed their anti-Semitism, which is astonishingly widespread. If she is to achieve her goal, it is Islam and not the West that will have to change. "The West has saved my faith in my faith," she says. "Now it's up to Islam to redeem itself." mwente@globeandmail.ca

From Malati devi I recall an intimate moment when you increased the mystique of your being here among us foolish"boys and girls." Nonchalantly recalling how as a child you "always got your way," you proceeded to tell a little vignette about your desire for a cowboy pistol. Finally, after much insistence, your father complied and bought you a toy gun. But you were not to be satisfied until you had two guns, one for each hand. "Oh," said Harsaräni, "you were a cowboy!" With complete gravity, you replied, "Yes." At that second, no one was thinking of you and the Wild West. We just knew you were speaking about being with Krsna and the cows in Vrndävana. We were only spiritual toddlers at best (it was '67 or '68), but you mercifully gave us a glimpse into your heart. I felt very small being there with you at that moment. After that incident, the same devotee penned a short poem about you. In it she described you as playing leapfrog in a pasture with Krsna and the cows and other gopas. It seemed funny and frivolous to us, yet you gravely remarked, "She has become advanced," and ordered that it be printed in Back to Godhead magazine. As the ocean can only be described as very, very deep, you are also very, very deep. Sitting there with you at that moment, I felt very, very shallow.

From Malati devi I recall an intimate moment when you increased the mystique of your being here among us foolish"boys and girls." Nonchalantly recalling how as a child you "always got your way," you proceeded to tell a little vignette about your desire for a cowboy pistol. Finally, after much insistence, your father complied and bought you a toy gun. But you were not to be satisfied until you had two guns, one for each hand. "Oh," said Harsaräni, "you were a cowboy!" With complete gravity, you replied, "Yes." At that second, no one was thinking of you and the Wild West. We just knew you were speaking about being with Krsna and the cows in Vrndävana. We were only spiritual toddlers at best (it was '67 or '68), but you mercifully gave us a glimpse into your heart. I felt very small being there with you at that moment. After that incident, the same devotee penned a short poem about you. In it she described you as playing leapfrog in a pasture with Krsna and the cows and other gopas. It seemed funny and frivolous to us, yet you gravely remarked, "She has become advanced," and ordered that it be printed in Back to Godhead magazine. As the ocean can only be described as very, very deep, you are also very, very deep. Sitting there with you at that moment, I felt very, very shallow.

Thanks for quoting that from Sridhara Maharaj. It will make the women of our sampradaya very happy. Just because someone has not written big books or lengthy commentaries does not mean they are not advanced or self-realizaed. This comment implies that these ladies had no realization. Furthermore it implies that because they were women they were quasi-incapable of realization. This is what I get when I read this, and most people who read it get the same impression. To me it shows the essence of the wrongheaded notion or misunderstanding that has been generated in the Gaudiya Math about the diksha sampradaya, and which is at the basis of all the confusion about self-effulgent gurus and exaggerated expectations from some kind of divine transcendental light coming from the unique representative of God on the planet, etc., etc. When I wrote my Parampara article so many moons ago, when Satyaraj agreed to publish it in JVS, he had it vetted by several senior Iskcon devotees. They found this quote troubling and wanted me to remove it, but I refused.

Thanks for quoting that from Sridhara Maharaj. It will make the women of our sampradaya very happy. Just because someone has not written big books or lengthy commentaries does not mean they are not advanced or self-realizaed. This comment implies that these ladies had no realization. Furthermore it implies that because they were women they were quasi-incapable of realization. This is what I get when I read this, and most people who read it get the same impression. To me it shows the essence of the wrongheaded notion or misunderstanding that has been generated in the Gaudiya Math about the diksha sampradaya, and which is at the basis of all the confusion about self-effulgent gurus and exaggerated expectations from some kind of divine transcendental light coming from the unique representative of God on the planet, etc., etc. When I wrote my Parampara article so many moons ago, when Satyaraj agreed to publish it in JVS, he had it vetted by several senior Iskcon devotees. They found this quote troubling and wanted me to remove it, but I refused.

Mohandas Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He ate very little, which made him rather frail. And with his odd diet, he also suffered from bad breath. This made him a super-callused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis.

Could you give me a date and place for that monumental event please? Only a scoundrel would expect anyone to accept that the absence of evidence was "proof" of anything. ================= I was quite pleased to see the following article by Bhakti Bibudh Bodhayan Maharaj, the current successor of Bhakti Promoda Puri Maharaj. As you may or may not know, Puri Maharaj came from a village in Jessore district where there happened to be many disciples of Bipin Bihari Goswami. As a matter of fact, his vartma-pradarsaka guru was a disciple of B.B.Goswami, and through him he learned about Bhaktivinoda and Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. I assume that the position Bodhayan Maharaj has taken here comes from his guru, though I personally have not yet seen Puri Maharaj state this explicitly anywhere. <hr><h3><center>Does taking a siksha guru mean rejecting one’s diksha guru?</h3>B.B.Bodhayan All Glories to Sri Guru, Sri Saraswata Gaudiya Vaishnavas and Sri Gauranga!</center> I have recently heard that a particular group of preachers has taken a position that is, in my opinion, quite unusual. They say that Srila Sachidananda Bhaktivinode Thakur rejected his diksha gurudeva, Bipin Bihari Goswami, and they support this as legitimate by citing the example of Shyamananda Prabhu, who they say rejected his guru Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur. I have not been able to understand their object in spreading this particular point of view, which I take as wrong. I personally saw the way our guru-vargas related to Bipin Bihari Goswami. As I saw it, they kept sound faith in Bipin Bihari Goswami even though His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur Prabhupada did not include him in our Bhagavata parampara, nor place his photo on the altar for worship. It is clear from Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur's writings that he held Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami in a favorable light, for we find the following statements: 1. In the mangalacaranam (auspicious beginning) of Sri Krishna Karnamritam, Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: sri-krsna-caitanya-krpa-patra-sri-bilvamangalaya namah guror hareh padam dhyatva sri-vipina-viharinah krsna-karnamrtasyeyam bhasa-vyakhya viracyate Simple translation: “I offer respectful obeisance to Sri Bilvamangala Thakur, the recipient of Lord Krishna Chaitanya’s mercy. Meditating on the holy feet of my guru Sri Bipina Bihari and Lord Hari, I am writing this Bengali translation and explanation of the Krishna Karnamritam. 2. In two of the concluding verses of the Amrita-pravaha Bhashya to the Chaitanya Charitamrta, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: bipina bihari hari, tanr sakti avatari, bipin bihari prabhuvar sri guru-goswami rupe, dekhi more bhava-kupe uddharila apana kinkar tad-ajna palana kame, amrta-prabaha name caitanya-caritamrta artha racilam sayatane, arpilam bhakta-gane path kari ghucao anartha Translation: “Lord Hari, who loves playing in Vrindaban, incarnated (as) His potency in the form of my spiritual master Bipin Bihari Prabhu. In this form as my Sri Guru Goswami, he saved me, his servant, who had fallen in the pit of material existence. In order to carry out his instruction, I have carefully composed this commentary named Amrita-pravaha Bhashya, which describes the true meaning of Chaitanya Charitamrita. I herein dedicate this commentary to the devotees of the Lord and sincerely wish that people in general will be able to remove all the sinful impediments and obstacles in their lives by reading it in devotion.” 3. In a concluding verse of Bhagavatarka-marichi-mala, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: bipin bihari prabhu mora prabhu vara sri vamsi-vadanananda-vamsa-sasadhara sei prabhupader anujna sire dhari bhagavata-slokasvada nirantar kari Translation: “Bipin Bihari Prabhu is my spiritual master, who is like a moon in the succession of Sri Vamsivadanananda Thakur. Respectfully taking my Prabhupada's (Bipin Bihari Prabhu's) instruction on my head, I engage in tasting the verses of Srimad Bhagavatam constantly.” In my continuing research I have not yet discovered any conclusive statement confirming that Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur rejected his diksha guru, Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami, even though they may sometimes have had differences of opinion. We remain open-minded on this matter and ready to accept any valid proof to the contrary. Now, is it true that Shyamananda Prabhu rejected his guru? Shyamananda Prabhu was first initiated by Sri Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur of Ambika Kalna and his initiated name was Krishna Das. Later, inspired by Srila Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur and through the affectionate guidance of Srila Raghunath Das Goswami Prabhu, he came in contact with Srila Jiva Goswamipad and accepted him as his beloved siksha gurudeva. He was then given the name Shyamananda. Finally, he received the benevolent mercy of Srimati Radharani when She imprinted Her anklet on his forehead in a tilaka-shape, promoting him to be a servitor in the spirit of madhurya-rasa. However, it is nowhere said that Shyamananda rejected his diksha guru in order to accept Jiva as his siksha guru. Rather, he accommodated both Srila Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur and Srila Jiva Goswami Prabhu with full respect. In Bhakti-ratnakara, Narahari Chakravarti clearly states that Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu accepted Shyamananda’s activities and that Shyamananda continued to glorify his guru even after changing his mood from the sakhya rasa to the madhura rasa. vrindavane shyamananda je je karya kare se kevala sri-gurudeva-ajna anusare Translation : “Whatever activities Shyamananda engaged in in Vrindavan, all was done only in accordance with the order of his spiritual master.” (Brk 1.404) sri guru sri hridaya caitanya prabhu boli yamunara tire sada nace bahu tuli siddha bhakta kriya na bujhiya jiva murkha karaye kutarka ithe paya maha duhkha Translation: “[After receiving Radha’s mercy] Shyamanada would dance on the banks of the Yamuna with his arms raised, saying, ‘My Guru is Sri Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu!’ Foolish jivas do not understand the activities of the perfected devotees and so fall into the misery of useless arguments. (Brk 6.56-57) Even the Prema-vilasa, where it is said that Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur did not immediately accept Shyamananda’s changes, comes to the conclusion that the question was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and that Shyamananda’s guru accepted his disciple’s activities and relation to Jiva Goswami. Shyamananda continued to respect Hridaya Chaitanya as his initiating spiritual master. It is thus clear that taking a siksha guru does not mean we have to reject or avoid the instruction of our diksha guru. The diksha and siksha gurus should be accepted in harmony with each other. This siddhanta is fully supported by the shastras. Neither Srila Prabhupada Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur nor Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur ever mentioned in any of their writings that he rejected Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami, nor that Shyamananda Prabhu rejected his diksha guru, Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu. I have refuted these proposals, with which I was confronted while engaged in my preaching activities. If anybody can establish that I am wrong with authentic statements by Srila Prabhupada or Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur, please inform me so I may be cured of my foolish ignorance in these matters. I humbly request, however, that any responses not be based on any self-motivated speculation or logic. Speculation and emotion are the cause of our demotion. Those who have been speculating in the name of my grand spiritual master in this way are doing a great disservice because they go against one of the most fundamental teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, found in the Sikshastaka's third shloka--amanina mana-dena kirtaniyah sada harih. Whereas we are to always pay due respects to even unqualified persons to chant the Hare Krishna maha mantra in humility, we are instead doing the opposite in the name of spreading the teachings of Mahaprabhu. The actual inner meaning of religion is proper adjustment of our identity--to realize the purpose of this human birth by establishing ourselves as the eternal servants of God. The purpose of the established religious institutions of our sampradaya, the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Saraswata Sampradaya, is to preach this message, to enforce the proper behavior of all its members and to respect <u>all</u> Vaishnavas like family members. But instead of doing that, we are quarreling with each other within our own sampradaya. Where are the activities by which we show honor to each other? All the Vaishnava institutions should be unified to fight against the impersonal philosophy and to open the eyes of ignorant people to the glories of the guru, Vaishnavas and Krishna, the Supreme Lord of all the universes. B.B. Bodhayan bodhayan@mandala.org Sri Gopinath Gaudiya Math P.O. Sree Mayapur District Nadia, West Bengal PIN 741313, INDIA p: 91-3472-45307 352 Summit Ave San Rafael, CA 94901 USA p:415-482-0211 fax:415-482-0213 =============== By the way, Alpamedhasa, how about a real name? http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles

Could you give me a date and place for that monumental event please? Only a scoundrel would expect anyone to accept that the absence of evidence was "proof" of anything. ================= I was quite pleased to see the following article by Bhakti Bibudh Bodhayan Maharaj, the current successor of Bhakti Promoda Puri Maharaj. As you may or may not know, Puri Maharaj came from a village in Jessore district where there happened to be many disciples of Bipin Bihari Goswami. As a matter of fact, his vartma-pradarsaka guru was a disciple of B.B.Goswami, and through him he learned about Bhaktivinoda and Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. I assume that the position Bodhayan Maharaj has taken here comes from his guru, though I personally have not yet seen Puri Maharaj state this explicitly anywhere. <hr><h3><center>Does taking a siksha guru mean rejecting one’s diksha guru?</h3>B.B.Bodhayan All Glories to Sri Guru, Sri Saraswata Gaudiya Vaishnavas and Sri Gauranga!</center> I have recently heard that a particular group of preachers has taken a position that is, in my opinion, quite unusual. They say that Srila Sachidananda Bhaktivinode Thakur rejected his diksha gurudeva, Bipin Bihari Goswami, and they support this as legitimate by citing the example of Shyamananda Prabhu, who they say rejected his guru Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur. I have not been able to understand their object in spreading this particular point of view, which I take as wrong. I personally saw the way our guru-vargas related to Bipin Bihari Goswami. As I saw it, they kept sound faith in Bipin Bihari Goswami even though His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur Prabhupada did not include him in our Bhagavata parampara, nor place his photo on the altar for worship. It is clear from Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur's writings that he held Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami in a favorable light, for we find the following statements: 1. In the mangalacaranam (auspicious beginning) of Sri Krishna Karnamritam, Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: sri-krsna-caitanya-krpa-patra-sri-bilvamangalaya namah guror hareh padam dhyatva sri-vipina-viharinah krsna-karnamrtasyeyam bhasa-vyakhya viracyate Simple translation: “I offer respectful obeisance to Sri Bilvamangala Thakur, the recipient of Lord Krishna Chaitanya’s mercy. Meditating on the holy feet of my guru Sri Bipina Bihari and Lord Hari, I am writing this Bengali translation and explanation of the Krishna Karnamritam. 2. In two of the concluding verses of the Amrita-pravaha Bhashya to the Chaitanya Charitamrta, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: bipina bihari hari, tanr sakti avatari, bipin bihari prabhuvar sri guru-goswami rupe, dekhi more bhava-kupe uddharila apana kinkar tad-ajna palana kame, amrta-prabaha name caitanya-caritamrta artha racilam sayatane, arpilam bhakta-gane path kari ghucao anartha Translation: “Lord Hari, who loves playing in Vrindaban, incarnated (as) His potency in the form of my spiritual master Bipin Bihari Prabhu. In this form as my Sri Guru Goswami, he saved me, his servant, who had fallen in the pit of material existence. In order to carry out his instruction, I have carefully composed this commentary named Amrita-pravaha Bhashya, which describes the true meaning of Chaitanya Charitamrita. I herein dedicate this commentary to the devotees of the Lord and sincerely wish that people in general will be able to remove all the sinful impediments and obstacles in their lives by reading it in devotion.” 3. In a concluding verse of Bhagavatarka-marichi-mala, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur writes: bipin bihari prabhu mora prabhu vara sri vamsi-vadanananda-vamsa-sasadhara sei prabhupader anujna sire dhari bhagavata-slokasvada nirantar kari Translation: “Bipin Bihari Prabhu is my spiritual master, who is like a moon in the succession of Sri Vamsivadanananda Thakur. Respectfully taking my Prabhupada's (Bipin Bihari Prabhu's) instruction on my head, I engage in tasting the verses of Srimad Bhagavatam constantly.” In my continuing research I have not yet discovered any conclusive statement confirming that Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur rejected his diksha guru, Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami, even though they may sometimes have had differences of opinion. We remain open-minded on this matter and ready to accept any valid proof to the contrary. Now, is it true that Shyamananda Prabhu rejected his guru? Shyamananda Prabhu was first initiated by Sri Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur of Ambika Kalna and his initiated name was Krishna Das. Later, inspired by Srila Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur and through the affectionate guidance of Srila Raghunath Das Goswami Prabhu, he came in contact with Srila Jiva Goswamipad and accepted him as his beloved siksha gurudeva. He was then given the name Shyamananda. Finally, he received the benevolent mercy of Srimati Radharani when She imprinted Her anklet on his forehead in a tilaka-shape, promoting him to be a servitor in the spirit of madhurya-rasa. However, it is nowhere said that Shyamananda rejected his diksha guru in order to accept Jiva as his siksha guru. Rather, he accommodated both Srila Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur and Srila Jiva Goswami Prabhu with full respect. In Bhakti-ratnakara, Narahari Chakravarti clearly states that Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu accepted Shyamananda’s activities and that Shyamananda continued to glorify his guru even after changing his mood from the sakhya rasa to the madhura rasa. vrindavane shyamananda je je karya kare se kevala sri-gurudeva-ajna anusare Translation : “Whatever activities Shyamananda engaged in in Vrindavan, all was done only in accordance with the order of his spiritual master.” (Brk 1.404) sri guru sri hridaya caitanya prabhu boli yamunara tire sada nace bahu tuli siddha bhakta kriya na bujhiya jiva murkha karaye kutarka ithe paya maha duhkha Translation: “[After receiving Radha’s mercy] Shyamanada would dance on the banks of the Yamuna with his arms raised, saying, ‘My Guru is Sri Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu!’ Foolish jivas do not understand the activities of the perfected devotees and so fall into the misery of useless arguments. (Brk 6.56-57) Even the Prema-vilasa, where it is said that Hridaya Chaitanya Thakur did not immediately accept Shyamananda’s changes, comes to the conclusion that the question was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and that Shyamananda’s guru accepted his disciple’s activities and relation to Jiva Goswami. Shyamananda continued to respect Hridaya Chaitanya as his initiating spiritual master. It is thus clear that taking a siksha guru does not mean we have to reject or avoid the instruction of our diksha guru. The diksha and siksha gurus should be accepted in harmony with each other. This siddhanta is fully supported by the shastras. Neither Srila Prabhupada Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur nor Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur ever mentioned in any of their writings that he rejected Srila Bipin Bihari Goswami, nor that Shyamananda Prabhu rejected his diksha guru, Hridaya Chaitanya Prabhu. I have refuted these proposals, with which I was confronted while engaged in my preaching activities. If anybody can establish that I am wrong with authentic statements by Srila Prabhupada or Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur, please inform me so I may be cured of my foolish ignorance in these matters. I humbly request, however, that any responses not be based on any self-motivated speculation or logic. Speculation and emotion are the cause of our demotion. Those who have been speculating in the name of my grand spiritual master in this way are doing a great disservice because they go against one of the most fundamental teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, found in the Sikshastaka's third shloka--amanina mana-dena kirtaniyah sada harih. Whereas we are to always pay due respects to even unqualified persons to chant the Hare Krishna maha mantra in humility, we are instead doing the opposite in the name of spreading the teachings of Mahaprabhu. The actual inner meaning of religion is proper adjustment of our identity--to realize the purpose of this human birth by establishing ourselves as the eternal servants of God. The purpose of the established religious institutions of our sampradaya, the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Saraswata Sampradaya, is to preach this message, to enforce the proper behavior of all its members and to respect <u>all</u> Vaishnavas like family members. But instead of doing that, we are quarreling with each other within our own sampradaya. Where are the activities by which we show honor to each other? All the Vaishnava institutions should be unified to fight against the impersonal philosophy and to open the eyes of ignorant people to the glories of the guru, Vaishnavas and Krishna, the Supreme Lord of all the universes. B.B. Bodhayan bodhayan@mandala.org Sri Gopinath Gaudiya Math P.O. Sree Mayapur District Nadia, West Bengal PIN 741313, INDIA p: 91-3472-45307 352 Summit Ave San Rafael, CA 94901 USA p:415-482-0211 fax:415-482-0213 =============== By the way, Alpamedhasa, how about a real name? http://www.granthamandira.org/~jagat/articles

priye janaka-nandini prakRti-pezalAm IdRzIM kathaM glapayituM sahe tava zirISa-mRdvIM tanUm | gRhIta-hariNI-gaNatrika-visAri-nAnA-zirA- kSata-kSarita-zoNitAruNa-vRkAnane kAnane ||32|| My beloved Sita, daughter of Janaka! How could I ever allow your body, as naturally beautiful and delicate as the sirisha flower, to fade in the midst of the forest that is frequented by wolves, whose muzzles are red with the blood that has flowed from the veins of deer they have slaughtered and eaten?