jay74

Hi, Currently I do Sandhya Vandhanam (Upanayanam) in the evenings. There is a part which I do Pranayama as part of the entire process. I would like to skip Upanayanam and just meditate on Pranayama. Is this advisable?

In 1947 when India and Pakistan was divided, Muslims in the name of Jihad ethnically cleansed all Hindus from Pakistan in the name of religion. Thousands of women were kidnapped or raped. In 1972 Pakistani Army rampaged through Hindu neighbourhoods in Bangladesh killing approximately 3mill people and mass raping women. In 1990 in Kashmir half a million Kasmiri pandits were driven out of thier homes in the name of Islam. This despicable cult has always been a curse on India ever since it came into existence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India 14.67% population of the entire world is hindu. Dont beleive people who take numbers out of the air. Hinduism is the the third largest religion in the world right after Christianity and Islam. It is very surprising to see this religion survive after being persecuted for thousands of years. Compare that with the Jewish faith with just 10mill people. Also Buddhism/Jainism had its orgins in India. So 1 in 4 people in this world whose belief was out of India.

Niahra, Iam a rationalist, I dont beleive what is in the scriptures just because it is in the scriptures, I try to rationally ascertain what makes sense and what does not. But let me tell you this Hinduism is the only religion which is a man's genuine effort to know the ultimate truth. Hindu Philosphies have changed over time and will continue to evolve. Last thing I would ever want to do is to get associated with abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam. My mind just revolts just thinking of the idea of Heaven and Hell.

http://www.dlshq.org/messages/celibate.htm

10 mill is a big number and there are lot of forces out there to ruin our name. Indian girl abortion claims are challenged By Peter Foster, in New Delhi (Filed: 11/01/2006) A claim that 10 million girl babies have been aborted in India over the last 20 years has been called into question by the country's leading doctors' organisation. The figure, which was published in The Lancet, was challenged yesterday by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), which said that it was misleading and failed to take into account restrictions imposed by the courts in 2001. The statistic was based on a national survey of 1.1 million households done in 1998 by researchers in India and Canada. "This [the selective abortion of girls] is not happening for the past four or five years after strict laws were put in place," said Dr Narendra Saini of the IMA, which represents about 178,000 doctors. He added that the use of ultrasound scanning equipment to check for girls had waned since India's Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 2001. But activists are convinced that the abortion of female foetuses remains widespread. Ranjana Kumari, of India's Centre for Social Research, said that no one had ever been convicted for sex-selective abortion and that this showed how lax the system was. "There is connivance between the doctors and the parents who don't want girl children," he said. "The government has to come forward on a war footing to put an end to this practice." Traditionally, boys are preferred because of the practice of dowries which, particularly among the 250 million Indians living in extreme poverty, can cause crippling debt. But the study found that a "girl deficit" was more common among the families of educated rather than uneducated women, suggesting that those with access to modern medicine were using it to determine the sex of their foetus and selectively abort.

Post deleted by Admin5

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> There was no border where visas were being regulated. Do you think man originated in India independently? What are your reasons for not accepting that man came out of Africa? I can bet you will not find a single reason which is not politically motivated. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Please reread my post, I have never said man orginated in India. Orgination of man from Africa is a proven fact. Recent Genetic research by renowned genetist Stephen Oppenheimer has invalidated the Aryan Invasion Theory. In his latest book The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa, he has argued that based on Genetic research of Y Chromosome and mtDNA that entire non-african population came out of single group from Africa. They followed a coastal route through Yemen and finally to India. From India after a brief halt they populated entire planet. Root of all Genes was the M168 in the paternal side and L3 in the maternal side. By taking statistically valid DNA samples Oppenheimer came to the following conclusions.[4] On the maternal side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India the birthplace of Nasreen is uncertain tentatively placed by Oppenheimer in southern Iran or Baluchistan. Manju and Rohani (should be Rohini), Nasreen's most prolific daughter both born in India are the progenitors of all non African peoples. The story on the paternal side is a lot more complex. M168 had three sons, of which Seth was the most important one. Seth had five sons named by Oppenheimer as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishnna. Krishnna born in India turned out to be the most prolific of Seth's sons. Krishnna through his son Ho, grandson Ruslan through Polo, and great grandson M17 through Ruslan, played a major role in the peopling of South Asian, East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia. In summary migration happened but it happened in the reverse. He makes a point that all physiological changes in people are all environmental. Coastal people from Tamil Nadu as they moved north became lighter in color and thier complexion changed. That is why North Indians are of lighter complexion. As these same people moved further north into the frozen tundra they became white with blonde hair and blue eyes. This is a ground breaking work

Just give it up man, your bias is showing. Just point to me one solid single evidence the Aryan Invasion Theory is valid? Dont give this BS about linguistics, because if you twist the truth hard enough you could even find scientific miracles in the Quran. Rig Veda clearly mentions Pasupati or Shiva and was found in the seals of Indus Valley Civilization.

1) What is this "aryan invasion" theory? Why is it discredited? How did it come about? Premise of the Aryan invasion theory is that Aryans probably around 1500 bc invaded India and they formed the Brahmin class. They had responsible for the Sanskrit and the Vedas. The reason it was discredited is that there is no evidence that it really happened, everyone is speculating. Only solid evidence we have right now is our genetic make up. Genetic evidence points that from India, people migrated some 15000 years back to various parts of the Globe. http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ 2) The Indus Valley civilization is part of Pakistan, but is it still considered part of Indian history? How is it related to India's history? And, most of all, what was it like? From WIKI- Seals have been found at Mohenjo-daro depicting a figure standing on its head, and one sitting cross-legged; perhaps the earliest indication, at least illustration, of the practice of yoga. A horned figure in a meditation pose (see image, Pashupati, below right) has been interpreted as one of the earliest depictions of the god Shiva. Pakistan was part of India 63 years back. Hindu/Buddhist kings ruled Pakistan time immemorial. Just because Arab and thier more recent Pakistani thugs ethinically cleansed Hindus does not mean Hindus did not live there. Chandragupta Maurya's kingdom extended all the way from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. 3) Besides the Indus Valley civilization, what other cultures were there in India? Was hinduism even a religion back then? What kinds of worship did hindus do, and were there any other religions besides hinduism? Hinduism has no definite beginning and there is no founder in Hinduism. Hinduism started of as a Sacrificial religion. When the Vedas were codified around 1500bc it was all rituals and sacrifices to various Gods. Upanishads was first attempt to understand and realise supreme Brahman.

As far the body evidence points out that Brain is the most crucial part of the entire system. If the Brain undergoes irreparable damage then for all practical purposes person is dead. A person can live without heart beat can still be considered live. A person in coma is just in a suspended state with all his brain functions intact. So all these points to the fact that if there is a soul it has to be in the brain. Iam intermingling Consiousness with Soul here. From WIKI- The bilateral removal of the Centromedian nucleus (part of the Intra-laminar nucleus of the Thalamus) appears to abolish consciousness, causing coma, PVS, severe mutism and other features that mimic brain death. The centromedian nucleus is also one of the principal sites of action of general anaesthetics and anti-psychotic drugs. Even with all the understanding of the brain sceintists can reason why brain functions the way it does.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> It can't be merely the components, because in a corpse, there are exactly the same components as in a living body, but there is no soul in the corpse. If the components alone gave rise to the soul, it would give rise to it as long as the components are together. But it does not happen. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I have to disagree here. When a person dies it always ends up with the brain not having oxygen and gets permanently damaged. So when a person dies the section of the brain which regulates the body dies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death So basically a person who is considered a vegetable sustains loss of brain activity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_vegetative_state Will you consider such person having a soul? Based on the above soul is somewhat tied to the brain.

I have read some where that it needs to diverted some where else. If it gets subdued it will come back up with more force. If you are an alcholic or a smoker inorder to quit you need to take up some constructive habit to get over it. Sexual energy is probably is one of the most difficult urges to control.

I was pretty busy today. Your reply requires some time to understand. I glanced at it and definitely have some questions.

http://www.sci-con.org/tiki-view_articles.php

http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/askascientist/highlight.pl?kw=&file=answers%2Fneuroscience%2Fans_003.html The following question was submitted by Darrin, a high school student from Toronto, Canada. What's left to be done and what can be concluded about what in our brains allows us to have consciousness? I'm under the impression that we still don't know if we have some sort of a soul or if our brains are purely chemical. How would one find out either way? How could you prove that we don't have souls? Are there any papers on this topic already? Who else can I ask about this? Thanks a lot for any information you can give me. answer The following answer was provided by scientist Crista Barberini. The question concerns a topic of enormous interest to many people, both in the field of neuroscience and in general. The question is best divided into two parts: the issue of "consciousness" and the issue of "souls." The issue of "consciousness"—what it is, how to define it, how to quantify and measure it in humans and other animals, and ultimately, how to find the activity in the brain that corresponds to it—has received more attention in recent years. The topic is highly controversial, and currently, there's no consensus among neuroscientists even on such basic things as what the definition should be (for example, does consciousness involve self-awareness, the ability to imagine the future, both, or neither?), let alone whether the few studies that exist have successfully shown a neural correlate of consciousness. It's also important to note that many neuroscientists don't think the topic is a valid one for neuroscience, that is, that "consciousness" is not a quantifiable, clearly defined entity that scientists can measure, but instead is a poorly defined concept used in other fields and areas, such that "consciousness" doesn't necessarily correspond to a particular neural function. At the forefront of researchers who have spent some time thinking about this issue is Francis Crick (who won the Nobel Prize many years ago for his work with DNA). References to some of his articles are included below. In addition, the University of Arizona has hosted a conference on consciousness every year for the past couple years; the proceedings of that conference would serve as a nice summary of the current viewpoints on this topic. (You'll find the proceedings at http://www.imprint.co.uk/tucson.html, and you can find out more about consciousness studies at http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu.) Regarding the issue of "souls," no neuroscience research is being done on this topic, and the questioner will not find an answer to the question of whether humans have "souls" within this field. While each neuroscientist is a different human being with a different set of beliefs, religious or otherwise, such that I can't speak for all neuroscientists, it is safe to say that most if not all neuroscientists would agree that the question of whether we have "souls" is not a scientific one. This is easy to see if one notes that a scientific question is one that involves a hypothesis that one can test by doing an experiment; if this is not the case, the question is not scientific (instead, it could be, for example, philosophical or religious). What experiment could one do to prove or disprove the existence of a "soul"? While each individual will have things they may take as evidence for or against the idea that we have "souls," one will find that there is no objective criterion that people will agree on, and that the things people take as evidence do not (and cannot) qualify as scientific experiments. The proper subjects of scientific enquiry are those things which exist entirely within this physical world, and which are clearly definable and quantifiable. For anything that doesn't unquestionably fall into this category, science has (or at least should have) no comment. References Crick, F., and C. Koch. "Consciousness and neuroscience." Cerebral Cortex 8(2):97-107, 1998. Crick, F. "Visual perception: rivalry and consciousness." Nature 379(6565):485-6, 1996. Crick, F., and C. Koch. "Are we aware of neural activity in primary visual cortex?" Nature 375(6527):121-3, 1995.

This is a great article I came across. http://home.att.net/~meditation/soul.html Do you have a soul? To know truth you must have a deep desire to see it, and a willingness to let go of the old lies. -- When I was a child I was an atheist and only believed in what I could see and touch. By age 19 I started to believe in the existence of souls and reincarnation as a result of my exposure to a number of famous Indian yogis and the majestic J. Krishnamurti (see photo), who once claimed to have remembered all of his past lives. At age 21 my belief in soul was dramatically reinforced by explosive experiences with Acharya Rajneesh, later known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Osho. I never believed in any "God," but for 35 years I lived under the shadow of the great meditation masters and was fairly certain that we all possessed souls that would survive our physical death. Unlike Hindus and Christians, most Buddhists believe in some mysterious and poorly defined personal karma that survives death. I never believed in the Buddhist concept of immortal personal karma without soul, because when you reject soul you lose the vehicle for the transference of karma from one life to the next. To my mind, if soul goes so does any possibility of immortal personal karma and reincarnation. When I met Acharya Rajneesh in 1970 he not only spoke of souls and reincarnation, but also claimed to have the power of astral projection. I believed his claim because of what I thought were authentic experiences I had with this "Master" astrally projecting himself, not just into my room, but into my body while he was physically several miles away. After reading Matthew Alper's excellent book, The "God" Part of the Brain, I wonder if those amazing experiences were really what I had thought they were. Alper's book summarizes the latest scientific research into how the human brain functions while having religious experiences. In this essay I have added my own personal experiences, observations, and theories to several of the main points of Alper's book, which I consider one of the most important I have ever read. Medical research has shown that if you stimulate certain areas of the brain with a small electric current, you can give people the experience of spiritual visitation. You may feel that Christ is touching your heart or that the soul of a dead relative is near you. There is no evidence to support a belief in authentic astral projection, however, as all studies indicate that consciousness exists only in the brain cells that create it. You cannot remove consciousness from the physical body because consciousness is a physical phenomena created by chemistry, just as a firefly's light is created by chemical reactions. That is why you can turn consciousness on or off by injecting a person with drugs to wake them up or to put them to sleep. Near-death experiences and even certain drugs, such as Ketamine and Sodium Pentothal, can give you the feeling of being outside of your body, but researchers say that is just an illusion of the holographic nature of the brain. When neural communications between the body and brain are reduced, the brain is free to project our sense of self anywhere it chooses, and this can happen while under partial anesthesia, while partially asleep, or even during the preliminary (and reversible) stages of death. Prolonged fasting and isolation can produce hallucinations and distortions of reality as well, and such extreme ascetic practices are a major source of the Eastern myths of astral projection. While true astral projection may be impossible, there is credible scientific theory to suggest that telepathic communication is possible in human beings. The human brain is an organic electrochemical computer so complex that to match it with current silicon technology you would need a computer the size of a small city. Think of all the things your relatively simple cell phone can do. There is plenty of computer power in the human brain for us to imagine that some portion of it could be allocated to broadcasting and receiving messages from other human brains. This telepathic ability may be the reason disciples feel the presence of their spiritual teachers so strongly. [Note - Meditation is fast becoming a real science, not just an intuitive art. See scans prove meditation alters the brain.] The brain is the most metabolically active human organ and requires a steady supply of oxygen and glucose as fuel. Although the brain represents less than 2% of the body's mass, it utilizes 20% of the body's oxygen consumption and 15% of its cardiac output. Thus the brain produces an extraordinary amount of energy in the form of electrical wattage in relationship to the rest of the body. The entire human body uses chemical reactions to produce both mechanical movements and electrical currents that flows through all our living cells. The brain is an analog computer, but amazingly the DNA code that creates it is digital. The average human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons connected by approximately 50 trillion synapses. It is therefore not difficult to imagine that this fantastically complex device, the human brain-body, could have mysterious communication abilities beyond our current understanding. Perhaps what I thought was astral projection was simply Rajneesh concentrating on me, sending me his supermental energy long distance. That powerful jolt of energy may have caused my brain to supply the added illusion of personal visitation on top of the strong telepathic transmission. Rajneesh had tremendous mental powers, no doubt, but was that power really supernatural or just a product of his unique brain structure and meditative skill? If you inject any human being with enough sedative, enlightened or not, they will become unconsciousness. If you damage certain areas of the brain you can drastically alter human behavior. You can turn a conservative bank president into a garbage-eating bum just by killing off some of the brain cells that contain the biocomputer program for his personality. If you damage other areas of the brain, you can erase all memory. If consciousness, personality, and memory are all physical phenomena of brain cells, then when the brain dies there is nothing left of your individual identity. Your permanent identity of time-energy-space continues unharmed (see The TES Hypothesis), but there is no soul, no reincarnation, and no Buddhist transference of personal karma. If this is true it means that Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam are all wrong. It also means that we all achieve "moksha" (liberation) at the time of death, because there is no personal cycle of birth and death to escape from and no magical afterlife. You are born once and you die once and you will never come back! One theory states that we have personal souls and/or karma, which transmigrates from one life to the next, and another theory states that nothing survives death and only DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and the will of the living determines the future of our species. Which theory is correct? I once believed in reincarnation with a high level of certainty. After many years of seeing the rampant corruption of gurus, "enlightened" or not, the idiocy of disciples, cults, and organized religion, and with the new scientific evidence in hand, I find the soul-reincarnation-karma theory far less plausible. You do not have to believe in anything supernatural to believe in cosmic consciousness (satori). Anyone can take the drug psilocybin and get a cheap, but dramatic, imitation of the natural religious experience. Clinical research shows that our brains are built to have religious experiences. As time-energy-space is one singular phenomena, it is only natural that we occasionally experience the grand cosmic unity. I personally suspect that even animals have satoris, though they apparently have no ability to give it a name or understand its implications. One of the most interesting concepts of Matthew Alper's book concerns the rise of self-consciousness in human animals and how knowledge of our impending death has affected our brains and even our DNA. If you put a dog in front of a mirror he will never figure out that he is looking at his own reflection. If you put a higher primate in front of a mirror, such as a chimpanzee or a human child, the higher primate will use the mirror for grooming purposes because he recognizes himself in the reflection. Because man's self-consciousness is so highly developed, humans have come to realize that our life expectancy is short and our personal demise inevitable. Animals, like human children, fear death, danger, and pain, but they have no real understanding of time and the inevitability of their own destruction. The time-death equation that adult humans understand becomes a constant source of anguish. A strong survival instinct is built into our DNA code from our long evolutionary journey from bacteria to man. When that survival instinct collides with self-conscious knowledge of our impending death, the brain itself needs both a neurological and psychological barrier to block the conflict and tension. That barrier we call religious belief and "the God part of the brain." The theory states that man has invented myths of God, soul, reincarnation, karma, and afterlife as a way to provide the brain with mental opium, a buffer to the constant ticking clock inside our heads that tells us our inevitable doom is getting closer every day. The psychological need for a feeling of immortality is so great that our religious tendencies have become part of our very DNA code. Humans who believe in the supernatural religions tend to be calmer, healthier, and thus live longer than the nonreligious. Believers also tend to show more bravery when courage is needed to protect their tribe. Genetic tendencies to have religious feelings are fortified over thousands of years of evolution through survival of the religiously fittest. If your religious beliefs feel exactly right to you, it may be because your subconscious mind wants you to believe in them so that you will have a better chance for health and a long lifespan. If you intuitively sense that you have been alive here on planet earth before, perhaps that feeling of déja vu comes from your DNA code, not from a reincarnating soul, because DNA has been active on planet earth for at least 3.8 billion years and we are all created and united by its existence. Science knows that there is only one real life-form on planet earth, and that is DNA itself. DNA is like a giant vine that has taken over planet earth. Through the never ending chain of DNA code, we are not only closely related to other mammals, but also intimately related to insects, plants, and even bacteria and viruses. Many times in our past the higher life-forms on earth have been wiped out by impacts of asteroids and comets, yet the surviving bacteria have always evolved upward into more complex plants and animals. DNA is not just a helpful chemical substance inside us. DNA is our biological level identity, our three dimensional physical 'soul,' if you will. All over the world, wherever you find man you will find supernatural religions promising some kind of life after death. Moslem extremists gladly kill themselves in the name of their religion. American war heroes have died fighting Japanese and Germans in the name of Christ, and no doubt many felt they were going to heaven for their heroic efforts. God is a pretty handy device when your tribe is in trouble. Almost all of us, atheist and theist alike, instinctively call out to God for help when we are in grave personal danger. Man's philosophical beliefs have also been shaped by a survival contest of world religions to see which religion can most completely satisfy our emotional needs for a feeling of comfort and safety. Organized religion is a business and must have money and public support to survive. If your spouse or child dies, you want a priest, rabbi, monk, or swami to tell you that your loved one's soul is going to a better place. Can you imagine a funeral where a holy man bluntly states that the deceased has no soul and is gone forever? That would seem cruel, and any religion that provided such a funeral service would not last long in the religious marketplace. Why do so many enlightened teachers believe in souls and karma? It has been my observation that even the enlightened are affected by cultural conditioning and have a tendency to pass on the religious teachings of those who came before them with only minor modifications. For example, the famous enlightened teachers from meat-eating societies in Tibet, China, and Japan also ate meat, while the great sages from strictly vegetarian India claim that eating meat is a horrible unspiritual practice. So I ask, did Rajneesh and J. Krishnamurti believe in souls because of some direct experience or because they both grew up in soul-oriented India? Rajneesh once stated that even plants have souls, and that if an enlightened man (Rajneesh himself) sat next to a plant, that plant would be so graced that in its next incarnation it might be born as a human being. I find that grandiose and self-serving statement difficult to believe, and I suspect a significant amount of the time Rajneesh was simply shooting his mouth off without even thinking about what he was saying. On another occasion Rajneesh stated that we are attracted to beautiful people because their outer beauty represents the inner beauty of their souls, because it is the soul which creates the physical body and mind. Science has proven conclusively that DNA creates the body and brain, not any mysterious, immaterial "soul." Outward beauty does not always mean inward beauty, or even a sane mind. The infamous serial killer Ted Bundy was quite handsome outwardly, yet he is estimated to have murdered between 35 and 50 women just for the thrill of it (see photographs of Ted Bundy). If Rajneesh could be mistaken about something this basic, then couldn't he be wrong about anything? The "Master" Rajneesh presented many idiotic theories about life right here and now, so why should anyone believe his theories about souls and reincarnation? It is only because of his great presence that his disciples refrained from laughing out loud at some of his ridiculous ideas (see The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way Rajneesh). Rajneesh was living proof that enlightenment, intelligence, and honesty are separate phenomena. You can be a fool, liar, and a criminal and also become a great energy channeler (enlightened) if that is your predisposition and desire. Freedom means free choice to be good or bad, and you have that choice no matter how powerful your meditation skills have become. George Gurdjieff (see photo), the famous Greek-Armenian mystic, was an alcoholic. Rajneesh (see photo) became a drug addict, yet both men could channel great cosmic presence that inspired thousands of spiritual seekers. Rajneesh's use of drugs, especially nitrous oxide, Valium, and LSD, also casts doubt on his soul theory of enlightenment. In his last years Rajneesh declared that from his own experience, LSD could produce the same consciousness as a Buddha. During his younger, sober days he stated that LSD produced a "false samadhi" and that consciousness was the product of "soul," not just physical chemistry. Rajneesh changed his teaching to rationalize his drug use by stating that "you are nothing but chemistry." He thus implied that it is OK to use chemicals to alter consciousness because you are chemicals bonded together in an organic biological machine. One could ask that if Rajneesh really had the ability to leave his body and fly around the world at will, wouldn't that be more entertaining than getting cheap thrills from LSD and nitrous oxide? Rajneesh claimed to be as enlightened as the historic Buddha, and I believe that he was, but why does a Buddha need to take hallucinogenic drugs? My answer is that Rajneesh became bored with the Void because the Void can only provide peacefulness long term, but not an eternal buzz of blissfulness. Judging from my own meditative practice and reading of science, the buzz and bliss of meditation comes from a build-up of excess neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine in the brain (see "Increased dopamine tone during meditation-induced change of consciousness."). When you meditate in formal sessions you are conserving the chemical energy of your brain by not wasting it on thoughts and sensory distraction. Thus you become blissful and may experience nonsexual orgasms during meditation sessions, but that ecstasy gradually dissipates after you return to your normal work routine. The feeling of spaciousness and peacefulness continue, but the buzz settles down to a feeling of neutrality and quiet emptiness. There is no eternal orgasm-ecstasy-bliss-buzz possible because any human feeling that has a beginning must have an end due to the inherent chemical nature of the brain. The Buddha is reported to have said that there is "no bliss." Rajneesh at times admitted that he himself felt "no energy," though those around him felt awash in his energy. U.G. Krishnamurti has stated that there is "no bliss." When I meditate in formal sessions I feel bliss and non-sexual orgasms felt in the hara (belly center), the heart center, the forehead center, and in the center of the head directly behind the eyes. The problem is, the orgasmic feelings never lasts. I have to go back to my meditation room and sit to regain the neurochemical energy that dissipates during the daily routine of work. Using my brain for utilitarian proposes eats up those neurotransmitters rather quickly. It may also be that the brain itself wants to bring us back to a state of neutrality because a neutral brain has the greatest ability to ensure our physical survival. A man distracted with a blissed-out brain is likely to be the first member of the tribe eaten by the lion, not the last. Meditation and enlightenment may be a neuro-chemical experience, not a magical soul experience outside the laws of brain chemistry and physics. Rajneesh changed his name to "Osho" and ended his life in a state of dementia due to illness and drug addiction. J. Krishnamurti avoided major scandals, stayed sober, and is still highly revered long after his death. But was J. Krishnamurti really a saint and somehow better ethically than any normal human being? I know many people who lead virtuous lives and who don't meditate at all. What made J. Krishnamurti different was not how he lived, which was ordinary, but his tremendous presence of being. You stood next to him and felt flooded in cosmic energy which pushed you high into the sky and destroyed all feelings of limitation. Was J. Krishnamurti's grand presence the result of many past lifetimes of spiritual effort, or was it the result of modest effort in meditation in this life combined with a genetic gift for cosmic consciousness? Matthew Alper points out in his book that some forms of epilepsy (see temporal lobe epilepsy) cause hyper-religiousness and mystical experiences. J. Krishnamurti's mother was an epileptic and we know epilepsy can be a genetically transferred disease. J. Krishnamurti never had fits, but he often mysteriously passed out, giving those near him warning that he was about to lose consciousness (see pictures of an intense Krishnamurti as a young boy). George Gurdjieff and the Indian sage Ramakrishna are reported to have had fits in which they thrashed on the ground uncontrollably. The universally revered Ramana Maharshi claimed that his emotional heart center was located in the "right side" of his chest, which I suspect represents a brain abnormality, as in normal human beings the emotional heart center is felt in the exact center of the chest. Is it possible that natural variations in our genetic code could produce in each century a handful of people with brains perfectly adapted for enlightenment, thus making meditative practice so easy that they reach the goal with little effort? Ramana Maharshi is reported to have achieved "God consciousness" at the tender age of 17! Rajneesh claims to have become enlightened at age 21. J. Krishnamurti was in his early twenties when people around him started to feel that he was fully enlightened. Ramakrishna was reported to have been "born enlightened," as was the ancient Chinese mystic, Lao-Tse. Are the spiritually gifted among us the rare but naturally occurring result of genetic variation? Of the 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make up a human being, roughly half are suspected of being devoted to blueprinting our central nervous system. Thus, with 10,000 to 12,500 individual genes controlling the formation of our brain and spinal cord, the potential for major variations in the level of human consciousness is enormous. For example, scientists have found that changes in just a few human genes can have a dramatically positive effect on human intelligence. Is it therefore logical that human gene combinations exist that control the amount of raw consciousness we possess as well. Few have the artistic talent of a Michelangelo or the scientific genius of Einstein. If there is a natural genetic "bell curve" for intelligence, then why not a natural genetically driven bell curve for spiritual power as well? [see The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray] Research has shown that identical twins tend to have the same level of interest in religion and/or mystical experience. This suggests that there is a strong genetic component to our personal meditative potential. If DNA can explain the vast differences between a mosquito and a human being, then why can't genetic variations in human DNA also explain the mental differences between a Hitler and a Buddha? Are the enlightened simply those few individuals at the extreme forward edge of the bell curve, with the masses of the world population stuck near the middle? If there are child prodigy pianists, artists, and even astounding child prodigy golfers like Tiger Woods, then why not child prodigy meditators as well? The Asian cultures may have simply mistaken naturally occurring genetic variations in the human brain for evidence of a romanticized past life history that does not exist in fact. The group conditioning became so strong that the myths of reincarnation fooled even the enlightened ones. History shows that the easiest explanation for a phenomena that has the most supporting evidence is usually correct. Grand claims require grand evidence to justify a belief in them, and there is currently no scientifically valid evidence of reincarnation or a magical transference of personal karma. If the spiritual bell curve theory is true, it could help explain the obvious corruption of gurus. Rajneesh was a convicted felon and a proven liar of historic proportions. George Gurdjieff was a chronic liar and a loud and often rude alcoholic. The genetics-based view of enlightenment also helps explain why there are so few enlightened ones at any given time. If every soul has multiple chances to improve its meditation skills over lifetimes of effort, then surely the world would produce more than the meager handful of enlightened sages that are born each century. Since at least the dawn of Hinduism (about 1500 BC), long before the historic Buddha was born (about 563 BC), millions of human beings have been making sincere effort at meditation, yet where are the results of these heroic lifetimes of effort? The mathematics and logistics of the soul-karma theory do not add up any way to look at it. The argument for souls and/or immortal karma is that enlightenment is a process that takes many lifetimes of effort, and the fruition of our long journey through time is the eventual payoff of moksha, infinite ecstasy, and liberation from all suffering. This highly romantic idea appeals because it brings a sense of warmth and justice into a cold and often pointlessly cruel world. It intuitively seems fair that right action is eventually rewarded with positive results. But this belief in inevitable karma has also caused negative results. In Tibet it produced a kind of fatalistic inaction which aided the Communist Chinese in their military takeover in 1950. To quote Drupon Samten Rinpoche, "They can be taking this life, but they cannot take the next life." This feeling of immortality has brought Tibetan Buddhists a great sense of peace and compassion in the face of invasion and genocide, but is it based or truth or wishful thinking? Belief in souls and immortal karma has had many negative effects in India, where the theory of reincarnation helped establish the ancient Hindu caste system. The caste system was abolished by law in 1949 but lives on as an unfair social class structure, considerably worse than the traditional class snobbery practiced in Europe. The lower class, the sudras, are considered inferior while the outcasts, the "untouchables," are looked down upon as being spiritually unworthy due to past life sins rather than just being poor and uneducated human beings. Skin diseases like leprosy are considered signs of punishment for evil deeds in past lives, though medical science recognizes leprosy as a disease anyone can contract given sufficient exposure to the bacillus: Mycobacterium leprae. Even the great Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh promoted the antiscientific and inhumane karmic explanation for leprosy. Reincarnation and immortal karma were a way ancient peoples could explain the inherent inequities of life, death, disease, riches, and poverty in religious terms that often had no basis in fact. All the major world religions are relics of the prescientific era and all have negative biases woven into their teachings. I therefore suggest that now is the time to create a new pro-science religion that does not promote the irrational belief in magic and the supernatural, things which exists only in our imagination, not in fact (see The TES Hypothesis). Rejecting the soul theory negates any need to answer such impossible questions as where souls come from and why they exist at all. The rebellious sage U.G. Krishnamurti has been saying for decades that "there is no such thing as enlightenment" and that his state of continuous cosmic consciousness was without cause, or "acausal." Could it be that the real cause of enlightenment is rarefied DNA combined with modest effort? Perhaps the ancient Hindus and Buddhists invented myths of souls and immortal karma simply because they had no science and were thus uneducated observers of the phenomena around them and inside them. Siddhartha Gautama never knew about neurons or DNA, so how could he be expected come up with any explanations for life that were not based on the imagined supernatural? I dismiss claims of past life memories because of the projective nature of the human brain. The brain can project any image or feeling, and it is exactly the same neurological mechanism that projects fantasies of the subconscious that also projects authentic memories stored in brain cells. What comes out of that one singular projector may be real memory or real fantasy, but no one can tell the difference with certainty, not even the late J. Krishnamurti or the Dalai Lama. False memories are a common occurrence in courtrooms and have sent many innocent men to their deaths for crimes they never committed. Just imagine a monk walking into a courtroom claiming to remember all of his past lives. Then imagine the monk being grilled under cross-examination and he cannot even remember what he had for lunch just a few days before. Even the enlightened sages have memory problems and need to write down important dates and facts so they won't forget. If a high Tibetan lama or Hindu yogi enters a medical laboratory full of skeptical scientists and proves through testing that he can transfer his consciousness out of his body, then belief in soul and reincarnation would be easier for everyone. To date that has not happened, and hospital tests designed to prove out of the body episodes during near-death experiences have yielded no positive results. As far as scientifically valid evidence of soul is concerned, the well is completely dry. Human beings exist as footprints in the sand. One day the footprint will be erased and only the sand will be left behind. There is no reincarnation and there is no personal continuity of karma. Until fairly recently I had dismissed U.G. Krishnamurti's claim that there is no enlightenment, no soul, and no reincarnation as just his negative way of teaching. Perhaps, however, he is just trying to tell the truth no matter how shocking that truth may be. Instead of becoming attached to the small personal identity of a soul, it is apparent that one must become attached to nothing less than infinity itself. All of the great religions of the world may be wrong and just a product of our own fear of dying. That idea is electrically shocking to me, but it may well be true. A summary of the main issues 1) There is no positive proof for the existence of souls, immortal karma, reincarnation, or any spiritual afterlife. It is interesting to note that in their last years even Osho and J. Krishnamurti reversed themselves and stated that there was no reincarnation and thus, presumably, no soul. If there is no reincarnation and no heaven or hell, then the question of soul is moot. 2) There are legitimate science-based alternate explanations for phenomena attributed to souls and immortal karma. The enlightened teachers seem to confuse the effects of DNA for the effects of soul. For example, people with higher intelligence and a more finely articulated DNA code are perceived by them as being older and higher souls. 3) There are obvious profit and political power motives for those who promote belief in the supernatural. How many gurus have made fortunes off the idea of souls and reincarnation? How many monasteries, ashrams, churches, mosques, and synagogues would go out of business if people found out there is no soul or immortal karma? How can governments and the religious hierarchies control the masses if word leaks out that we all end up in the same state of eternal unconsciousness when we die, no matter how we behave while we are alive? Would there be a Vatican City or Tibetan Portola Palace without a belief in souls and/or immortal karma? The idea of soul has historically been as much a matter of politics as it has been an issue of personal religious belief. 4) It is highly probable that human animals have a built-in genetic predisposition to avoid the inevitable fact of our future death in order to reduce fear and stress. Our brains create myths of God, soul, immortal karma, reincarnation, and afterlife as a buffer against the hurtful knowledge of the inevitable demise of ourselves and everyone we know and love. By inventing myths of afterlife and/or reincarnation the brain can exist comfortably without the highly charged survival instinct electrically connecting to the newfound knowledge of the inevitability of our future death. The supernatural myths thus act as a resistive electrical shunt, blocking a dangerous short circuit between two parts of the brain. 5) Life on earth was created through the nonhuman laws of chemistry, physics, and probability. Strands of chemicals (DNA) were created by sheer accident and replicated themselves faster than they could be destroyed. By further accident, some DNA strands became encased in protective shells which increased their survivability dramatically, creating the first bacteria. From simple bacteria more complexity was added until a myriad of multi-cell creatures were produced. Through this slow process of evolution over billions of years there was never any need for soul, except as a myth to help human animals deal with their growing consciousness of the inevitable time-death equation. Scientists have produced real living viruses from their base chemical components, and they did so without concocting any "soul." The logistical mathematics of the soul theory do not add up. Does every new bacteria, seed, egg, minnow, spider, or cockroach that appears in the world demand a soul to go along with its already sufficient DNA code? We know that humans evolved from bacteria. Where did soul come into the picture and why? Is there a printing press somewhere stamping out trillions of new souls every day to keep up with the demand? The soul theory lacks logical credibility and science has shown us that the universe is extremely logical in its structure, formation, and evolution. 6) The famous film director Alfred Hitchcock often added a ploy to his movies called a "MacGuffin." The MacGuffin distracted the audience long enough that suspense could be created and the plot could develop without giving away the true course of the story. In the end the MacGuffin had no meaning in itself. Likewise, Hindus and Buddhists have invented complicated myths of reincarnation and/or immortal karma, declaring that we are all trapped in a cycle of birth and death and that only our eventual enlightenment can free us. The Eastern traditions have created a highly sophisticated myth structure, but the underlying function of their myths is identical to the more childlike myths of Christianity, with its almighty God, angels, and heaven. The belief in immortal karma and reincarnation is the MacGuffin that keeps our minds diverted from the inevitability and finality of our own death. No one can honestly say that it is impossible that human beings have souls or immortal karma. You cannot prove an absolute negative against such a big and complex issue. One can only say that given the evidence the possibility is unlikely. The burden of proof is on those who believe in the supernatural and there are currently no facts to back up their case. A more realistic and scientifically valid way to view the big issues of life and death is detailed in The TES Hypothesis. Christopher Calder - E-mail - my home page Please feel free to copy, repost, or publish Do you have a soul? Suggested reading The "God" Part of the Brain, by Matthew Alper, available at http://godpart.com/ or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. Other Web pages at this site

http://voiceofdharma.com/books/muslimsep/ch5.htm THE FRUSTRATION OF ISLAM IN INDIA Long ago, some 12 or 13 years before Partition, I had a chance to pass by a meeting of Muslims in Delhi. The chaste Urdu and the weighty voice of the man making the speech at the moment, made me stand and stare. It was a bearded mullah wearing a fez. He was narrating some history which was new for me. The mullah mentioned several dates on which some decisive battles had been fought and won by the armies of Islam. I was not familiar with the names of the heroes and generals who had led those armies. But I knew the names of the countries which, according to the mullah, had been conquered and converted en masse to Islam in rather short spans of time - Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Khorasan, Turkistan and so on. There were repeated references to swords and spears and horses and hoofs and countless clashes in which human blood had flowed copiously. In between, some one from the audience stood up and shouted ‘nãra-i-takbîr’. And the whole assembly roared back Allãh-o-Akbar with full-throated frenzy. Then the speaker moved to Sind and Hind. He recounted the many ‘miracles’ which Islam had wrought here with the might of its sword as well as the spell of its Sufis, for more than a thousand years. I knew some of those ‘miracles’ from my own text-books of history, though I had never suspected that they could be made to sound so superhuman as in the mouth of this mullah. And then, all of a sudden, the mullah’s voice sank and became almost a whimper. His face too must have fallen, though I could not see it from the distance at which I was standing. He was now telling, in very mournful tones, how Islam had failed to fulfil its mission in this ‘kambakht (unfortunate) mulk (country)’ which was still crawling with kufr (infidelism) in spite of all those arduous endeavours undertaken by the heroes of Islam. A funeral silence fell on the audience, and no one now stood up any more to invite another nãra-i-takbîr. I moved away from the meeting and sat down in another part of the same park where the mullah’s voice reached me no more. But after some time the atmosphere was rent again by another bout of Allãh-o-Akbar. I wondered what spell the mullah had spread over his audience again. One thing that had puzzled me a good deal in the mullah’s speech was his description of the great Gañgã as a dahãnã (rivulet) instead of as a daryã (river). I had not seen the Gañgã so far with my own eyes. But my text-books of geography had told me that it was a mighty river, one of the four or five biggest and longest in the world. The mullah’s description of it did not fit with a known fact. He was a middle-aged man, and sounded rather well-read in history and geography. I thought that he should have known better. It was many years later that one day Professor Balraj Madhok cited to me the famous couplet of Altaf Husain Hali in which the Gañgã had been contemptuously described as a dahãnã.1 I was suddenly reminded of the speech I had heard as a school boy. But by now I had acquired a good knowledge of medieval Indian history. A new image of medieval India had also emerged in my mind by reading K.M. Panikkar’s A Survey of Indian History. It was no more the India of Muslim monarchs ruling leisurely over a large empire, building mosques and mazãrs and madrasas and mansions, and patronizing poets and other men of letters. On the contrary, it was the story of the long-drawn-out war which took a decisive turn to the disadvantage of Islamic imperialism with the rise of Shivaji. The war had ended in a victory for the Hindus by the middle of the 18th century. A few months earlier, I had finished a Hindi translation of Kincaid’s The Grand Rebel which I had named Shaktîputra Shivãjî. I had fully concurred with Kincaid’s conclusion that the British had taken over India not from the Muslims but from the Hindus. Shri H.V. Seshadri has also quoted that couplet of Hali in The Tragic Story of Partition.2 He has also given a brief outline of the long war of liberation which Hindu society had fought and won against Islamic imperialism. He writes: “For 800 years Hindusthan waged a relentless freedom struggle - probably the most stirring saga of crusade for national freedom witnessed anywhere on the face of this earth. From Maharana Kumbha to Maharana Pratap Simha and Rajasimha in Rajasthan, from Hakka and Bukka to Krishnadevaraya in the South, from Chhatrapati Shivaji to the Peshwas in Maharashtra, from the various martyr Gurus of the Sikhs including Guru Govind Singh to Banda Bairagi and Ranjit Singh in the Punjab, from Chhatrasal in Bundelkhand to Lachit Barphukan in Assam, countless captains of the war of independence piloted the ship of freedom and steered her through perilous tides and tempests. As a result of their ceaseless and crushing blows, the conquering, sword of Islam lay in dust, shattered to pieces.”3 TWO VERSIONS OF MEDIEVAL INDIAN HISTORY Obviously, there is a deep divide between the two versions of medieval Indian history - Hindu and Muslim. Hindu society may like to forget the first phase of this history during which it suffered defeat after defeat in spite of a succession of great heroes who tried to blunt the sword of Islam, and block the path of Islamic invasion. But Hindu society cannot help taking pride in the phase which opened with the rise of Shivaji, and unfolded further under Chhatrasal, Banda Bairagi, Surajmal and Ranjit Singh. On the other hand, the mullah’s gaze is galvanized on the period when the sword of Islam swept over the length and breadth of the Hindu homeland. He cannot help feeling humbled when he moves to a later period, and finds the hordes of Islam in hasty retreat before a Hindu counter-attack. The feeling in Hindu society at the end of it all is one of fulfilment; the feeling in the mullah’s mind, on the other hand, is one of utter frustration. Islam had suffered in India a second and serious defeat after its first and total rout in Spain. The political pundits have so far failed to lay their fingers on the forces which led to India’s Partition, firstly because they have confined their purview to a brief period of 90 years - from 1857 to 1947. They would have to travel back in time for more than 900 years before they can hope to discover the springs of that deep-seated split - spiritual and cultural - which culminated in the formation of Pakistan. Secondly, they make a serious mistake when they pit a so-called Hindu revivalism against a so-called Muslim revivalism, and put both of them on par as equally guilty parties for making a mess of it all. They would have to undertake a deeper probe into the intrinsic character and inherent dynamics of each ‘revivalism’, before they can hope to acquire an adequate insight into the interaction of powerful and mutually hostile historical forces. HINDU AND MUSLIM ‘REVIVALISM’ Hindu ‘revivalism’ in the 19th century was essentially a resurgence of the national spirit of a people who were native to the land, and who had suffered terribly and for a long time from successive foreign invasions. Hindu society was aspiring to reform and renew itself in the image of its ancient ideals which had endowed it with strength and stability and kept it immune from alien inroads. In the process, Hindu society had an inalienable right to pronounce its own judgments on imported ideologies which had coerced and corrupted it, as also on ‘heroes’ of the histories enacted by its inveterate enemies. On the other hand, Muslim ‘revivalism’ was the frenzied reaction of a foreign fraternity which had finally failed to convert a majority of the native population to its own criminal creed, and which was, therefore, feeling terribly frustrated. The diehard descendants of Muslim swordsmen and sufis were now reviving dreams of an empire which their forefathers had built with so much bloodshed but which had been lost in the last round. They were calling upon their confused comrades and converted victims to revert to those medieval mores when Islam had moulded the pagan and peace-loving people of Arabia into a brotherhood of bandits. In the process, they were fast becoming the inmates of a lunatic asylum crowded with some of the most desperate characters. The history of Arab and Turkish aggressions against India would have been no different from the history of earlier aggressions by the Greeks, the Sakas, the Kushanas, and the Hunas but for the presence of a new factor. A culturally superior and temperamentally compassionate Hindu society would have tamed these latter-day barbarians as well, and turned them into civilized members of its own household. What made the big difference and complicated matters was that the Arabs and the Turks had themselves become victims of the vicious ideology of Islam, and lost their own cultural identity before they came to this country. THE PRISON-HOUSE OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY Islam was born as a totalitarian and terrorist cult, which it has remained ever since. Its only ‘religious’ achievement was to rationalize the lowest human passions, and stamp them with the supernatural seal of an almighty Allah. It was, therefore, inevitable for it to become an ideology of imperialism with a clean conscience. The followers of Islam thus found it easy to feel convinced that they were carrying out the commandments of Allah while they invaded other countries, indulged in mass slaughter, converted the conquered people by force, misappropriated other people’s properties, captured and sold into slavery countless men and women and children, and destroyed every vestige of culture and true spirituality. They could not but regard as legitimate rewards from Allah the loot and the slaves which they took whenever they were victorious. But what made matters much worse, the same theology prevented the Muslims from coming to terms with reality in moments of defeat. They refused to renounce their claim to ill-gotten gains, and tended to become ever more fanatical and frantic in their efforts to recover what they were made to disgorge. The theology had laid down that Allah had mandated the whole world to the millat, and entrusted all its wealth and population to the custody of Islam. How could Allah wish otherwise? Every setback had, therefore, to be interpreted and proclaimed as due to a temporary estrangement of Allah simply because the millat had turned away from practising the pieties prescribed by the Prophet and the first four caliphs. The millat had only to return to those old mores, and Allah would restore to it whatever he had taken away in a fit of wrath. As the millat could not live without Allah, Allah also could not maintain himself without the millat. That is how the argument runs in commentary after commentary on the Quran and the Hadis. That is why the millat has alternated between a riotous living at other people’s expense, and an equally riotous return to piety. THE PIETY OF ISLAM There are many myths afloat about the piety of early Islam, particularly among those Hindus who want to prove that Islam is as good a religion as their own. Many people get impressed by the piety exhibited and exhorted by the Mullah and the Sufi. They do not know that Islamic piety has always been an inherent function of Islamic fanaticism. The more pious a Muslim, the more dangerous he becomes for his fellow human beings. It was the piety of Islam which made its swordsmen behave as they did, both in victory and defeat. It was the piety of Islam which installed the Mullah and the Sufi at the centre of the millat, and enabled them to control its mind as well as its heart. When the armies of Islam rode roughshod over the Hindu homeland, the swordsman of Islam was very likely to relax and retreat from callous carnage after some time. He was likely to get satiated after the first few rounds of slaughter and pillage, or feel some sympathy for fellow human beings, or balk at the destruction of beautiful temples and monasteries, or turn away from burning the sacred and secular literature of non-Muslims, or acquire respect for the spirituality and culture of a people who had behaved so differently from his own comrades-in-arms. It was the Mullah and the Sufi who would not let him relax. They threatened him with hell if he tried to turn away from the work assigned by Allah. The more heinous the crimes which a Muslim monarch or mercenary committed, the higher the place in heaven which the Mullah and the Sufi reserved for him. The greater the slaughter and rapine in which a Muslim army indulged, the more plentiful the wines and houris which were promised to the ghãzîs. But the sweep of the sword of Islam could not continue for ever. The Hindus who had been caught unprepared for this sort of ‘religion’ and this sort of ‘heroism’, were not made of clay. They organized a resistance for many years, and finally mounted a counter-attack. The swordsman of Islam was a mortal man in spite of all the praises which Muslim historians and poets had heaped upon him for his invincibility. He fell back as soon as he came in contact with equally sharp or superior steel, then threw away his sword, and finally accepted defeat. It was the Mullah and the Sufi who refused to get reconciled to the new reality. They compiled some more commentaries on the Quran and the Hadis and called upon the millat to conquer India once again. This time the claim was advanced on no better a basis than the right acquired from an earlier ‘conquest’. Ever since, the Mullah has sedulously maintained and spread the myth of a Muslim empire in India which was ‘stolen slyly’ by the ‘wily’ British. As an after-thought, he adds that Islam has a message for India and that its ‘spiritual mission’ in India is still unfulfilled. Shri Seshadri has quoted a passage from the preface to F.K. Khan Durrani’s Meaning of Pakistan which reveals the mind of the Mullah. It says: “There is not an inch of the soil of India which our forefathers did not once purchase with blood. We cannot be false to the blood of our forefathers. India, the whole of it, is therefore our heritage and it must be reconquered for Islam. Expansion in the spiritual sense in an inherent necessity of our faith and implies no hatred or enmity towards the Hindus. Rather the reverse. Our ultimate ideal should be the unification of India, spiritually and politically, under the banner of Islam. The final salvation of India is not otherwise possible.”4 Perversity loses all limits once the human mind passes under the spell of Islam. India is to be enslaved again for the ‘spiritual salvation’ of Hindu society! There have been many Mullahs and Muslim scholars in India, Pakistan and the wide world of Islam who have been making similar statements, every now and then. The heroics conveyed was heralded by Shah Waliullah, soon after the Mughal empire started crumbling in the first half of the 18th century. It acquired a feverish pitch after Ahmed shah Abdali, whom Waliullah had invited to wipe out the Marathas and the Jats, also failed to save the situation. The heroes of Islam had disappeared. But the heroics had remained. The harangues of Waliullah and company were addressed not to an advancing army but to a demoralised crowd of stragglers beating a fast retreat. The retreat would have soon become a rout if the British had not intervened at a critical juncture. The British did not steal any empire from Islam. On the contrary, they saved the residues of Islamic imperialism from being reduced to their real status vis-a-vis a resurgent Hindu society. The residues used the respite to reassemble their ranks, and get ready for another rearguard action. This is the unmistakable impression left on one’s mind by a reflective reading of Indian history during that period. The rest is only secularist make-belief relished by the Mullah and the Marxist. THE ‘SPIRITUAL MISSION’ OF ISLAM The ‘spiritual mission’ of Islam needs no comment. The residues of Islamic imperialism were not in search of spiritual solace which they could share with their ‘countrymen’. On the contrary, they were missing the very mundane monopolization of power and pelf which they had enjoyed earlier. This becomes quite clear as one reads the Presidential Address of Janab R.M. Sayani delivered in 1896 at the 12th Session of the Indian National Congress in Allahabad. Speaking of Muslim psychology, he had said: “Before the advent of the British in India, the Musalmans were the rulers of the country. The Musalmans had therefore all the advantages appertaining to it as the ruling class. The sovereigns and the chiefs were their co-religionists and so were the great landlords and great officials. The court language was their own. Every place of trust and responsibility, or carrying influence and high emoluments was by birthright theirs. The Hindus did occupy some position but the Hindus were tenants-at-will of the Musalmans. The Hindus stood in awe of them. Enjoyment and influence and all good things of the world were theirs. By a stroke of misfortune, the Musalmans had to abdicate their position and descend to the level of their Hindu fellow-countrymen. The Hindus, from a subservient state, came into land, offices and other worldly advantages of their former masters. The Musalmans would have nothing to do with anything in which they might have to come into contact with the Hindus.”5 A spectre had started haunting the residues of Islamic imperialism - the spectre of British withdrawal from India leaving the Muslims to find their natural and normal place in a nation which had regained its freedom and initiative. That explains the pathetic appeals of the Muslim League to the British rulers to divide India before they quit. Had our national leaders understood the historical situation and had they perceived the paralysis behind the heroics, there would have been no partition, no Pakistan, and no Bangladesh. Why and how the national leaders failed to face and defeat a frustrated Islamic fraternity is a story still to be told. Footnotes: 1 Hati had mourned in his most famous poem that though the invincible armada of Islam had crossed many mighty rivers and seas, it got drowned in the rivulet that was the Gañgã! 2 The Tragic Story of Partition, p. 2. 3 Ibid., p. 1-2. 4 Quoted in Ibid., p. 250. 5 History and Culture of the Indian People, edited by R.C. Majumdar, Volume XI, The Struggle for Freedom, Bombay, 1981, pp. 296-97.

I had an argument with a christian friend of mine. He said God created man to have free will. God wants man to worship him. That is the sole reason to create man. My question to him was Is God a narcissist to create entire human race just to worship him? If God is omnipotent and all knowing then why did he create man. What is the purpose?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The line of rulership before Islam runs thus: Siharus, Sahasi II, Chach, Dahir. The first two were Buddhist Rajputs and the last two Hindu Brahmins. The new Brahmin rulers were extremely hostile towards the Buddhists who were in substantial numbers in Sind at that time and they had ruthlessly suppressed the Jats and Meds who formed the bulk of the peasantry. Humiliating conditions were imposed on the Jats depriving them of many civil rightsIt was because of this background that Mohammad Bin Qasim received cooperation from the Buddhists as well as the Jats and Meds during his campaign in Sind. Among others who did not oppose Mohammad Bin Qasim's advance and made peace with him was the Bhutto tribe. In fact he was hailed as deliverer by several sections of local population. The humble position of the Buddhists in Sind seeking support from outside can be read in the Chach Nama. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Finally this is what happenend. Enslavement by the Arabs During the Arab invasion of Sindh (712 C.E.), Muhammad bin Qasim first attacked Debal, a word derived from Deval meaning temple. It was situated on the sea-coast not far from modern Karachi. It was garrisoned by 4000 Kshatriya soldiers and served by 3000 Brahmans. All males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved.1 “700 beautiful females, who were under the protection of Budh (that is, had taken shelter in the temple), were all captured with their valuable ornaments, and clothes adorned with jewels.”2 Muhammad despatched one-fifth of the legal spoil to Hajjaj which included seventy-five damsels, the rest four-fifths were distributed among the soldiers.3 Thereafter whichever places he attacked like Rawar, Sehwan, Dhalila, Brahmanabad and Multan, Hindu soldiers and men with arms were slain, the common people fled, or, if flight was not possible, accepted Islam, or paid the poll tax, or died with their religion. Many women of the higher class immolated themselves in Jauhar, most others became prize of the victors. These women and children were enslaved and converted, and batches of them were des-patched to the Caliph in regular installments. For example, after Rawar was taken Muhammad Qasim “halted there for three days during which he massacred 6000 (men). Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.” Later on “the slaves were counted, and their number came to 60, 000 (of both sexes?). Out of these, 30 were young ladies of the royal blood… Muhammad Qasim sent all these to Hajjaj” who forwarded them to Walid the Khalifa. “He sold some of these female slaves of royal birth, and some he presented to others.”4 Selling of slaves was a common practice. “From the seventh century onwards and with a peak during Muhammad al-Qasim’s campaigns in 712-13”, writes Andre Wink, “a considerable number of Jats was captured as prisoners of war and deported to Iraq and elsewhere as slaves.”5 Jats here is obviously used as a general word for all Hindus. In Brahmanabad, “it is said that about six thousand fighting men were slain, but according to others sixteen thousand were killed”, and their families enslaved.6 The garrison in the fort-city of Multan was put to the sword, and families of the chiefs and warriors of Multan, numbering about six thousand, were enslaved. In Sindh female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were converted and married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats”, and take the women and children as captives.7 In the final stages of the conquest of Sindh, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim… one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number… (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”.8 Obviously a few lakh women were enslaved in the course of Arab invasion of Sindh.

http://india.krishna.org/Articles/2000/07/00057.html The Indian Caste System Although many Hindus to the belief that one is born into a certain caste this belief is not supported by their scriptures. The caste system in India has degenerated into a system falsely recognizing men born in Brahmin families as Brahmins, even though they don't exhibit the qualities of Brahmins. This has caused so many problems. Madhudvida dasa (11-08-04) "Brahmanas, ksatriyas, vaisyas and sudras are distinguished by the qualities born of their own natures in accordance with the material modes, O chastiser of the enemy. "Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, knowledge, wisdom and religiousness--these are the natural qualities by which the brahmanas work. "Heroism, power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity and leadership are the natural qualities of work for the ksatriyas. "Farming, cow protection and business are the natural work for the vaisyas, and for the sudras there is labor and service to others. "By following his qualities of work, every man can become perfect. Now please hear from Me how this can be done. "By worship of the Lord, who is the source of all beings and who is all-pervading, a man can attain perfection through performing his own work. "It is better to engage in one's own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another's occupation and perform it perfectly. Duties prescribed according to one's nature are never affected by sinful reactions." (From Bhagavad-gita 18th chapter) So the Vedas recognize different people have different skills and qualifications, but it is no by birth, it is by guna [qualification] and karma [work]. So if someone born of a sudra [worker] father becomes qualified [guna] and works as [karma] a brahmana he should be accepted as a brahmana... In the same way if the son of a brahmana doesn't have the qualifications of a brahmana or work as a brahmana then he is not a brahmana. There are so many examples of this in the Vedic scriptures. The current Indian system is something like accepting the sons of supreme court judges as supreme court judges... It's nonsense. They have to be qualified, they have to attend the university and pass the course, then they have to work under a qualified judge and get the practical experience, then they may be able to become supreme court judges... So there is actually nothing stopping anyone from bettering his position in the Indian system in the scriptures... But also there is no need for everyone to strive to be supreme court judges. Anyone, from any social position can be liberated by performing his own work... You have the same system in America. You have intellectuals [brahmanas], you have administrators and military men [ksatriyas], you have businessmen and farmers [vaisyas] and you have workers. The Vedic system just recognizes these groups, that's all. It's quite natural. rsjames@husc7.harvard.edu (Rajesh James) wrote: >A question (no offense intended). I am familiar with the idea of the caste >system as traditionally practiced: the child of a Brahmin being a Brahmin >himself, the child of a Kshatriya a Kshatriya, etc. This system, while >perhaps not compatible with present political sensibilities, at least had >two points in its favor. >1) It is logically consistent. Although I certainly cannot prove that a > sudra, for instance, arrived at his present situation in life as a > consequence of his actions in past lives, once I make the assumption > that reincarnation functions as the system implies it does, the > system does not exhibit any glaring logical inconsistencies. It is true that on takes his birth according to his previous karma [activities] so one gets birth in a Brahmin's family because of his past activities. So mostly the son of a Brahman has the potential to become a Brahmin. But it requires training. And it requires the Brahman father to be actually a qualified Brahmin... But in any case the training and the proper observation of the samskaras [purificatory ceremonies] is required... It's not automatic at birth as is generally accepted now. prapya punya-krtam lokan usitva sasvatih samah sucinam srimatam gehe yoga-bhrasto 'bhijayate "The unsuccessful yogi, after many, many years of enjoyment on the planets of the pious living entities, is born into a family of righteous people, or into a family of rich aristocracy." (Bhagavad-gita 6.41) These days, in Kali-yuga, the samskaras are generally not performed or not properly performed and the gurukuls, the training schools for the boys, are no longer in operation... So there is generally no training and also no purificatory ceremonies... So these sons of Brahmins who have no brahminical training have to be called "dvija-bandhus" or friends of the Brahmins... Unless they actually have the qualities of Brahmins and work as Brahmins they can't be called a Brahmin. You may even be qualified as a lawyer educationally but if you don't practice, if you don't work as a lawyer, no one will accept you as a lawyer. The qualities of a Brahmin are given in the Bhagavad-gita: samo damas tapah saucam ksantir arjavam eva ca jnanam vijnanam astikyam brahma-karma svabhava-jam "Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, knowledge, wisdom and religiousness--these are the natural qualities by which the brahmanas work." (Bhagavad-gita 18.42) >2) It is practicable. It is immediately apparent who belongs to what caste. > If my father belongs to a given caste, I know that that caste is my own. Yes. That is there. But because one's father is a supreme court judge one is not automatically a supreme court judge... He may have a good opportunity to become one. His father can help him, all the reference books are in his house, he is hearing about the law all the time... But he has to become qualified, he has to go to school, study the books, pass the exams, work as an apprentice under a qualified judge... If you just let any son of any supreme court judge sit in the supreme court that would be the end of the supreme court... If someone, on the other hand, has a businessman as his father but he develops an interest in the law, attends the university, passes the exams, etc. If he develops the qualities and works as a lawyer, then one has to accept him as a lawyer, even though his father is a businessman. It is his guna [qualities] and karma [work] that are important, not his birth. >Some individuals have said the traditional system is in fact a perversion >of the idea of caste. Caste is instead a reflection of one's intrinsic >abilities and/or inclinations. In such a system, is caste any more >meaningful than the idea that we all fit in some fashion into the divine >plan? Is caste useful any longer as an organizing principle for society? Yes. There are three modes of material nature, [goodness, passion and ignorance] and everyone of us is associating with material nature in a certain way. It is that mixture of our association with the modes of nature that determines our "caste". It is undobutedly influenced by our parents guna and karma, but we can change it... One in the mode of goodness is a Brahmin, one in the mode of passion is a ksatriya, one in the mixed modes of passion and ignorence is a vishya and one in the mode of ignorance is a sudra. This system is everywhere, even in America. Unless it is recognized social interaction and the smooth running of a society become very difficult. It is true that certain people are suited to performing certain tasks... Someone has a very good brain, he can think analytically very nicely, so he can advise the government, he can be a judge in a court of law... But if you put someone with no brain and little analytical thinking ability in that position he will not be very successful... Society will suffer... This is one of the main problems in our society now [both in India and in the US]... No one knows who is who and so many jobs which should be being performed by Brahmins and ksatriyas are being done by sudras... It is said kalo sudra sambhavah, "In the age of Kali everyone is a sudra." So it is a very difficult time. Mostly people are sudras, there may be a few vaisyas [businessmen] but almost no ksatriyas or Brahmins... This is the problem. We are not training them. The intelligent people are available, but instead of training them as Brahmins and ksatriyas we are training them as technologists. But these are sudra jobs... >Furthermore, is there any restriction on my declaring myself to be whichever >cast I wish to be? Is there any authority which can bar any person from >declaring himself a Brahmin? If everyone chooses to adopt the "highest" >caste, has the idea become a meaningless concept? This is the biggest problem! Every sudra wants to be called a Brahmin! But they don't want to follow the principals of brahminical life. In the Vedic age it was the kings duty to see that everyone claiming to be a Brahmin was qualified in terms of guna [qualities] and karma [work]. This safety mechanism has to be there otherwise unqualified "Brahmins" will spoil everything... It has happened in India so now many Indians want to get rid of the caste system altogether, because it has become a system being used by a few to exploit the others... But it is better to correct the system than throw it out. But where are the qualified Brahmins? That is the difficulty... So we should start training some. Srila Prabhupada wanted us to start "Varnasrama Colleges" to train Brahmins and ksatriyas... but it has not happened yet... But these colleges hold the key to the success of society in the future. varnasramacaravata purusena parah puman visnur aradhyate pantha nanyat tat-tosa-karanam "The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Visnu, is worshipped by the propper execution of prescribed duties in the system of varna and asrama. There is no other way to satisfy the Supreme Personality of Godhead. One must be situated in the institution of the four varnas and asramas." (Visnu Purana 3.8.9) But one also has to consider: dharmah svanusthitah pumsam visvaksena-kathasu yah notpadayed yadi ratim srama eva he kevalam "The occupational activities a man performs according to his own position are only so much useless labour if they do not provoke attraction for the message of the Personality of Godhead." (Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.2.8) All things considered, Kali-yuga is a very difficult time for spiritual life and there are many faults. If despite all the faults we chant the holy names of the Lord (Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/ Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare) then everything will be perfect... hare nama hara nama hare namiava kevalam kalau nasty eva nastya eva nastya eva gatir anyatha "In this age of quarrel and hypocrisy, the only means of deliverance is the chanting of the Holy Names of the Lord. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way." Thank you. Hare Krishna! Madhudvisa dasa

Reading the article brought tears to my eyes. We should be proud how brave our ancestors were. At the same time be ashamed how morally bankrupt we have become. Where are the new Shivaji's? Iam not a big fan of the Hindutva bandwagon either. They fool people and they are equally corrupt like the congress/communists. My analysis is that only way Hinduism can be saved is by movements like ISKCON. They need to proliferate into the nooks and corners of INDIA. Every other Hindu organisation is controlled or dominated by caste Brahmins which automatically alienates 90% of other Hindus. ISKCON needs to enter into all universities and High schools. Relentless pursuit of Hindu Dharma should be followed.

What a satanic cult. Devoid of Humanity and ethics this religion is one of the grave disgraces for the human race.

How the Maratha Hindus outmatched the Muslims at their own game from 1650 onwards Now we move to the South where the Marathas were the first who crossed the Muslim invader Malik Kafur's path, when he invaded Central India in 1314 C.E. They were then led by the last scion of the Yadava dynasty - Ramdev Rai Yadava who ruled from Devagiri (today's Daulatabad, near Sambhajinagar aka Aurangbad). In their first clash with the Muslims; the Marathas lost to the invaders and accepted the status of being vassals and mercenaries of their tyrannical Muslim masters. Shivaji's mother, Jijabai was a direct descendant of the erstwhile Yadav royal family of Devagiri. She seems to have nursed deep within her mind the idea of recovering independence from Muslim rule which her Yadav forebears had lost in the year 1318. Shivaji grew up with these ideas embedded into him. His childhood stories are those of playing games in which he and his friends attacked and captured forts held by the enemy. When Shivaji was seventeen, he decided to transform what were till then simply games to a reality. He and his friends encouraged by Jijabai and his Guru Dadoji Kondeo; decided to take a formal oath to free the country from the shackles of Muslim tyranny. This was done in the year 1645 in a dark cavern housing a small temple to the Hindu God Shiva (locally called Raireshwar). Here Shivaji and his select band of teenaged Maratha friends slit their thumbs and poured the blood oozing from it on the Shiva-linga (Phallus representing the Lord Shiva). By this act they declared a blood-feud against Mughal tyranny. This was the beginning of a long and arduous Maratha-Mughal struggle that went on for the next century and a half to culminate in the defeat of the Mughals and their replacement by the Marathas as the dominant power in India when the British came into the scene. When Shivaji started his military career by capturing the fortress of Torana, it sent shockwaves in the Adilshshi court at Bijapur. Here was a local Hindu chieftain, daring to challenge the might of a Muslim ruler. The retribution was swift and Adil Shah sent in his most fearsome general named Afzal Khan to bring back Shivaji dead or alive to Bijapur. Afzal Khan who was reputed to be more than six feet tall and of a real massive built, set on his mission and in order to lure Shivaji down into the plains, he destroyed the Hindu temples at Tuljapur, Pandharpur and Shikhar Shenganapur. This ploy failed to work and Shivaji stuck to his Hill fastness in the Sahyadris. Shivaji even sent a letter to Afzal Khan praising the legendary strength of Afzal Khan's powerful arms and his reputed fearlessness. Shivaji addressed him as his uncle and said that he was afraid to come down to meet Afzal Khan. Shivaji asked him to come up into the hills to meet him and on condition that Afzal Khan came with not more than few select soldiers. The proud Khan felt that the Dekkhan-Ka-Chuha (Rat of the Deccan as the Muslims scornfully addressed Shivaji) had really chickened out. Shivaji’s ensnaring and slaying of Afzal Khan proved that the Hindu’s had finally come of age in turning against the Muslims their tricks of subterfuge Before inviting Afzal Khan up to the fort in the densely forested ranges, Shivaji had gone down to the plains in the guise of a fruit vendor with a basket of fruits on his head. This ploy was done so that Shivaji could have a good look at Afzal Khan’s face when the Khan traveled on horseback. No other person could have an excuse to look up to the Khan’s eyes. But a fruit vendor would have to look up to ask if the Khan wanted fruits. This way Shivaji made sure he knew who was the real Khan, as he knew that for meeting enemies, the Muslims sent imposters whenever they sensed that they would be betrayed at the meeting. But this way Shivaji ensured that he knew that it was the Khan himself who had come to meet him and not an imposter in his place. This action of Shivaji clearly indicated that he had made plans for slaying Khan when the two met at the Fort. Afzal Khan agreed to go up the hills at Pratapgad Fort to meet his nemesis. When the meeting took place, Shivaji had come in full armor, that was hidden beneath his thick satin robes, while Afzal had no such protection. When they came face to face Afzal Khan embraced Shivaji and with his formidable enemy (Afzal Khan was about six feet tall while Shivaji was less than five feet) in his embrace, Shivaji suddenly slipped his the 'Wagh Nakh' into the Khan’s abdomen. The 'Wagh Nakh' (literally tiger’s claws) are a sharp weapon resembling tiger claws that could be hidden in the grip of one's fist. In addition, he had the Bichhwa – a curved dagger hidden in the pocket of his waistcoat with which he repeatedly stabbed the unprepared Khan. When Khan realized that he had been betrayed he bellowed “Dagaa, Dagaa” “I have been betrayed” and called for his bodyguard Syed Banda to come to his rescue. The fact that the Khan had not attacked Shivaji is lent credence by the fact the he yelled out “I have been betrayed”. Had he attack Shivaji first, then there was no question of his yelling out that he had been betrayed. After Shivaji had wounded him, the Khan then tried to attack Shivaji in self-defence by using his own dagger, and tried to stab Shivaji. But Afzal's dagger could not plunge into Shivaji Maharaj due to the protective armor which Shivaji was wearing, Afzal tried to throttle him. But the wily Maratha was more than prepared for this as he had come down not only with full armor that was hidden by his thick satin robes, but all his palanquin bearers were hardened Maratha warriors who had been armed to the teeth with their weapons hidden in their clothes and turbans. When Syed Banda, also a burly Muslim was about to strike Shivaji with his sword, Shivaji's bodyguard Jiva Mahalya struck off Banda's upraised arm in the air itself. After this commotion, the bleeding Khan tried to make good his escape and rushed into his palanquin. As the palanquin bearers set off with the fleeing Khan, Santaji Kawji, another of Shivaji's select warriors cut-off the feet of the bearers and Khans' palanquin, with its load of Afzal fell to the ground. Santaji Kawji, then finished off the task of sending Khan to his final resting place. Khan's army which was waiting in the valley was ruthlessly massacred by the Marathas who were hiding behind every crevice and bush in the densely wooded jungles around the Pratapgad fort. At the place where this encounter took place on 10th November 1659 between Shivaji Maharaj and the Khan, there stands today a Kabar (grave) erected by Shivaji for the departed Khan's soul to rest in peace. Thus for once a Hindu had outwitted a Muslim who was twice as strong and was also a towering giant. The pigeons of Muslim subterfuge had come home to roost and with a vengeance too. Thus the Shivaji’s ensnaring and slaying of Afzal Khan proved that the Hindus had finally come of age in learning Muslim tricks of subterfuge. Tricks that were unheard of in ancient Hindu India and which would have been looked down upon according to the ancient Hindu rules of warfare. Shivaji’s attack on Afzal was a pre-planned one, and for which he used the Muslim psychology of killing their enemies, even if there was no immediate provocation. Unfortunately not many Hindu later followed this illustrious example of Shivaji, and so today India remains condemned to face the Muslim threat, which is raising its ugly head once again. Another example of Hindus learning subterfuge from the Muslims - Shivaji’s outsmarting another Muslim general Shaista Khan The next Muslim Khan to come down 'literally' before Shivaji was Shaista Khan. On hearing Shivaji's depredations, Aurangzeb was furious and wanted to desperately crush this infidel upstart. He sent his uncle maternal Shaista Khan with a large and powerful army to checkmate Shivaji. But even this time the wily Maratha proved that brain was stronger than the brawn. Shaista Khan came into Maharashtra and started devastating towns, villages fields, temples, forts and everything that came in his path. To provoke Shivaji, Shaista Khan established his camp in Shivaji's home in Pune called Lal-Mahal. And to top it up, he put up his Harem in Shivaji's Devghar (prayer room). He bided his time for many months and one on fine day (night), he with a select band of Maratha Samurais, sneaked into Pune and into the Lal-Mahal. He tracked down the sleeping Khan to his bed. The Khan sensing that his time was up tried jumping out of the window. At that point Shivaji cut off the Khan's fingers with which he was holding on to the window sill. When the Khan's wife's pleading before Shivaji to spare her husband's life as she considered Shivaji to be her brother (sic). And so killing her husband would mean making her a widow, Shivaji spared the Khan's life. This was a mistake for which Shivaji was to pay dearly later. Shivaji made good his escape from the Khan's lair, but not before the treacherous Khan ordered his troops to give chase and try to capture the fleeing Shivaji. Here too Shivaji had tied burning torches to the horns of a herd of cows and bulls and with bells jangling making a ruckus like swords clashing. So instead of pursuing Shivaji who escaped into the night, the Muslim army went in the direction of this cows and bulls which they though to be the Maratha army that Shivaji had brought out. But when they reached the cows and bulls, they were flustered when they realized the trick played on them by the shrewd Hindu. The Khan then, decided that enough was enough and returned to Delhi - without his fingers. This happened in April 1663. The Hindu counterattack had now begun in earnest. The Marathas after Shivaji managed to reach Delhi in 1720 and by 1756, they had occupied the whole of Punjab to reach the border of Afghanistan. But after Shivaji, there were very few Maratha leaders who realized the depth of the Muslim threat. There were some like Mahadji Scindia, but they were very few. The later Marathas under their Prime Ministers called Peshwa (who came from the crafty Hindu priestly class), opened negotiations with the Mughal (Muslim) King at Delhi and fought battles on his behalf against other Muslims like Nadir the King of Persia and Ahmed Khan Abdali, the ruler of Afghanistan. This was a disastrous policy as the Maratha Hindus became a tool in the hands of the Muslims and suffered many defeats, the most disastrous one being at Panipat in 1761 at the hand of the Afghan invader Ahmed Khan Abdali. But where the Marathas stopped, the bearded and turbaned Sikhs took over and they carried the saffron flag of India into Afghanistan and planted it at Kabul in the year 1820. A city which the Hindus had lost in the year 980 when Sabuktgin had treacherously defeated Jayapal Shahiya, the last Hindu king of Kabul(then called Kubha). Why the Marathas and the Sikhs failed to completely defeat the Muslims After liberating large tracts of the country from Muslim rule, neither the Marathas nor the Sikhs follow the illustrious example of the Spanish Reconquistadors of reconverting the Muslims to their original faith (Hinduism in this context). It was only because of the three alternatives of re-embracing Christianity, leaving Spain or facing death; which the Reconquistadors gave to the defeated Spanish Moriscos (Moors or Muslims), that Spain regained its original Christian character. But there was no such thing in India that was liberated by the Marathas. In fact the Marathas stupidly and shamefully accepted the Mughal (Muslim dynasty in India) court customs, their attires, their habits, except that of converting the subjugated to their religion at the pain of death. This is where the Marathas failed, to consolidate their military victories, while the Spanish Reconquistadors succeeded. The Maratha policy contrasted starkly with the coercion used by the Muslims to convert Hindus to Islam. This proved that for all their valor and skill on the battlefield, the Marathas like all other Hindus had not gauged the nature of the Muslim threat, as the Spanish Conquistadors had succeeded in doing so. The saving grace was that the Marathas were not displaced again by the Muslims, but by the growing colonial power of the British in the year 1818. Later the Marathas disgracefully joined forces with the Muslims in 1857 to launch an uprising against the British. Fortunately this uprising failed to dislodge the British, but it marked the formal demise of Muslim power in India, as the British dethroned the last Muslim (Mughal) king of India, the wretched Bahadur Shah Zafar, a task which the Marathas should have done a century earlier when they became the dominant power in North India. But under the Macheivellian Peshwas who came from the crafty Hindu priestly class, they instead of dethroning the Mughal king, had made him a status symbol and tried to derive legitimacy for Maratha conquests in North India by asking for his seal of approval and wielding power in his name. It was both ironical and shameful that the Marathas collected taxes in North India as subsidiaries of the tottering Mughal king and not in their own right (as Shivaji Maharaj had done), although it was they who in fact controlled the Mughal king. And hence the destiny of formally ending Muslim rule in India lay with the British and not with the Marathas a task which the British thankfully did in 1857. By comparison, British rule in India was looked upon by the Hindus as a relief from the ruthless Muslim tyranny. The departure of the British saw the Muslim clamor for the Muslim majority provinces to be cut off from India and made into a synthetic nation which they called Pakistan. This moth-eaten nation split into two parts when in 1971, the eastern wing of Pakistan split from the Western half, and formed a new nation named Bangla Desh. Today both Pakistan and Bangla Desh are at the forefront of fomenting Islamic Terrorism and trying to destabilize India with the aim of intimidating Indians to five in to Islam and become one more Terrorist nation like any one of the Muslim nations from Morocco to Indonesia. Whatever is India’s fate, this populous nation that boasts the highest number of Software Professionals and Doctors is destined to witness it. How India is once again in danger today If the Hindus do not learn from the Spanish Reconquistadors, on the right way to deal with the Muslim challenge India could be in deep trouble. The clock of the Islamic Jihad has started ticking once again and a swath of disctricts from Kashmir, thruogh Himachal, Uttaranchal, Northern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar up to West Bengal and Assam have become Muslim majority or ones with Muslims fast approaching majority through demographic multiplication and migration. This is a ploy of the Muslim to use demographics to kink up Pakistan with Bangla Desh. Again the proportion of lands owned by Muslims along the Sea shores across India’s vast sea shore is increasing. The strategy is to block off all lands facing the sea, to enable nefarious activities like landing of explosives like RDx, and possibly napalm, and depleted uranium, for serial bomb blasts that were first started off by the Muslim mafia in 1883 at Mumbai in Western India. If Hindus do not wake up then they would in a few decades be pushed towards their own destruction, like the Zoroastrians of Iran who 1300 years back disgracefully surrendered to the warriors of the crescent moon! So we see how after subjugating Persia and Byzantine the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh had to shed their blood to resist the Islamic Jihad. Coercion used by the Muslims to convert Hindus to Islam Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, wrote the following in 1920 regarding the impact of centuries of jihad and dhimmitude on the indigenous Hindus of the Indian subcontinent: Islamic theology, therefore tells the true believer that his highest duty is to make 'exertion (jihad) in the path of God', by waging war against infidel lands (dar-ul-harb) till they become part of the realm of Islam (dar-ul-Islam) and their populations are converted into true believers. After conquest the entire infidel population becomes theoretically reduced to the status of slaves of the conquering army. The men taken with arms are to be slain or sold into slavery and their wives and children reduced to servitude. As for the non-combatants among the vanquished, if they are not massacred outright, - as the canon lawyer Shaf'i declares to be the Qur'anic injunction,- it is only to give them a respite till they are so wisely guided as to accept the true faith. The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State. If any infidel is suffered to exist in the community, it is as a necessary evil, and for a transitional period only. Political and social disabilities must be imposed on him, and bribes offered to him from the public funds, to hasten the day of his spiritual enlightenment and the addition of his name to the roll of true believers... A non-Muslim therefore cannot be a citizen of the State; he is a member of a depressed class; his status is a modified form of slavery. He lives under a contract (zimma, or 'dhimma') with the State: for the life and property grudgingly spared to him by the commander of the faithful he must undergo political and social disabilities, and pay a commutation money. In short, his continued existence in the State after the conquest of his country by the Muslims is conditional upon his person and property made subservient to the cause of Islam. He must pay a tax for his land (kharaj), from which the early Muslims were exempt; he must pay other exactions for the maintenance of the army, in which he cannot enlist even if he offers to render personal service instead of paying the poll-tax; and he must show by humility of dress and behavior that he belongs to s subject class. No non-Muslim can wear fine dresses, ride on horseback or carry arms; he must behave respectfully and submissively to every member of the dominant sect. As the learned Qazi Mughis-ud-din declared, in accordance with the teachings of the books on Canon Law: ‘The Hindus are designated in the Law as ‘payers of tribute’ (kharaj-guzar); and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should, without question and with all humility and respect, tender gold. If the officer throws dirt into their mouths, they must without reluctance open their mouths wide to receive it 18. By these acts of degradation are shown the extreme obedience of the zimmi [dhimmi], the glorification of the true faith of Islam, and the abasement of false faiths. God himself orders them to be humiliated , (as He says, ‘till they pay jaziya) with the hand and are humbled…The Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive…No other religious authority except the great Imam (Hanifa) whose faith we follow, has sanctioned the imposition of jaziya on Hindus. According to all other theologians, the rule for Hindus is ‘Either death or Islam’. The zimmi is under certain legal disabilities with regard to testimony in law courts, protection under criminal law, and in marriage…he cannot erect new temples, and has to avoid any offensive publicity in the exercise of his worship…Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects. In addition to the poll-tax and public degradation in dress and demeanor imposed on them, the non-Muslims were subjected to various hopes and fears. Rewards in the form of money and public employment were offered to apostates from Hinduism. The leaders of Hindu religion and society were systematically repressed, to deprive the sect of spiritual instruction, and their religious gatherings and processions were forbidden in order to prevent the growth of solidarity and sense of communal strength among them. No new temple was allowed to be built nor any old one to be repaired, so that the total disappearance of Hindu worship was to be merely a question of time. But even this delay, this slow operation of Time, was intolerable to many of the more fiery spirits of Islam, who tried to hasten the abolition of ‘infidelity’ by anticipating the destructive hand of Time and forcibly pulling down temples. When a class are publicly depressed and harassed by law and executive caprice alike, they merely content themselves with dragging on an animal existence. With every generous instinct of the soul crushed out of them, the intellectual culture merely adding a keen edge to their sense of humiliation, the Hindus could not be expected to produce the utmost of which they were capable; their lot was to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to their masters, to bring grist to the fiscal mill, to develop a low cunning and flattery as the only means of saving what they could of their own labor. Amidst such social conditions, the human hand and the human spirit cannot achieve their best; the human soul cannot soar to its highest pitch. The barrenness of intellect and meanness of spirit of the Hindu upper classes are the greatest condemnation of Muslim rule in India. The Muslim political tree judged by its fruit was an utter failure. Nearly four decades later, Antoine Fattal, whose 1958 Le Statut Legal de Musulmans en Pays' d'Islam remains the benchmark analysis of non-Muslims (especially Christians and Jews) living under the Shari'a (i.e., Muslim Law), observed 19: …Even today, the study of the jihad is part of the curriculum of all the Islamic institutes. In the universities of Al-Azhar, Nagaf, and Zaitoune, students are still taught that the holy war [jihad] is a binding prescriptive decree, pronounced against the Infidels, which will only be revoked with the end of the world... If he [the dhimmi] is tolerated, it is for reasons of a spiritual nature, since there is always the hope that he might be converted; or of a material nature, since he bears almost the whole tax burden. He has his place in society, but he is constantly reminded of his inferiority...In no way is the dhimmi the equal of the Muslim. He is marked out for social inequality and belongs to a despised caste; unequal in regard to individual rights; unequal in the Law Courts as his evidence is not admitted by any Muslim tribunal and for the same crime his punishment is greater than that imposed on Muslims...No social relationship, no fellowship is possible between Muslims and dhimmis (Hindus, Christian, Jews and other non-Muslims) The Paradox of Hinduism while fighting Islam The more a Hindu become hinduized, he becomes more tolerant, relegating everything to fate, considering all misfortunes (attacks by others such as Muslims) as divinely ordained. But the more a beast (Muslim) gets beastalized (Islamized), he becomes more cruel, more practical and oriented to killing kafirs, So how do you resole this paradox, So the question is do you Hinduize the Hindus or make them atheistic and practical – Sri Krsna is the only exception who practicalized Parth at Kurukshetra, (few other examples are those of Sage Vidyarnya with Harihara and Bukka and Swami Samartha Ramdas with Shivaji Maharaj) otherwise all Hindu saints make Hindus increasingly vulnerable. This is the Paradox of Hinduism while fighting Islam We have no answer on how Hindus will resolve this paradox What has defeated Islam so far and what can defeat it in future The history of Islam tells us that he only contest which the Muslims lost was that between them and the Atheistic-Communists. This was so as it is only the Communists who have it in their outlook to force-fit the Communist outlook in the population, something which it shares with Islam, so when Islam came into conflict with Communism, and when communism had political power, it did not allow Islam to exist, as it also did not allow any other religion to exist. This way the Communist and Islamic outlooks complimented each other. Both the Muslims and the communists had zero tolerance of each other. In this context all other religious outlooks failed to counter Islam, as all of them differing levels of tolerance for other faiths, while Islam has none. So only that outlook can defeat and destroy Islam which has zero tolerance of Islam while its methods are more ruthless, cruel, pervasive , persistent and global than those of Islam. So far only communism has been such an outlook. Maybe in future there would a non-Communistic outlook which is as effective against Islam as Communism was All this notwithstanding today’s alliance of the Communists with the Muslims is because both of them see in the USA a common enemy of Islam and Communism. But ironically whenever the communists had power, they did not initiate a dialogue with any religion, they simply acted, by taking over the education system, closing down the places of worship, or severely circumscribing them, they sent religious (and other) dissidents to re-education centers, and the more committed of the dissidents to Concentration camps and the most incorrigible ones to the firing squad. Communism has been the only attitude that has destroyed religion, although the destruction was unfortunately not complete. Interestingly, it is the ruthless (communistic) attitude in global state policy (after the War on Terror destroys some religions and weakens all others) that will complete this unfinished task of destroying all religion. Communism in the 20th century was a false start for atheism. Now in the 21st century, the real start for atheism (minus the economic ideology of communism) will come, which will sound the death knell of all religions. We do not advocate Hinduism at all, as some might think, we only support the free-thinking that goes with Hindu culture (and all other natural human societies that existed before organized monotheism of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and then the missionary Christianity, and finally the ISLAM of the schizophrenic savages came about) We also do not support the economic ideology of communism. We support a natural human state of existence where atheism and scientific temper rules human outlook. And although we advocate free thought, we will prevent religion to grow in human minds. Since to enable free thought to exist, we need to prohibit religion from being reborn, since religion prohibits free thought. But ironically going by the track record of religion over the last three millennia, especially that of Christianity, and finally the Islam of the schizophrenic savages, freedom of though would have to sanitized so that religious belief never takes hold over the human mind ever again. In this scenario of the fight between religions (war on terror) and the following fight to get rid of the weakened religions, the Hindus are the least capable of being active players in the scenario of the demise of religion, since Hindus cannot battle anybody with their open-ended theology. And so most Hindus will not fight Islam, but advocate peace with Muslims, while Muslims call for the destruction of all religions, including Hinduism. Hence the Hindus are most ineffectual and in fact most Hindus would effectively be obstacles in the process of destroying Islam. Most Hindus would be sterile spectators of this process and some of them (psecs and pacifists) in fact would be trying to defend and save the Muslims. Such Hindus would themselves have to be actively destroyed, if not by the Muslims in their fight with all religions, then by the any anti-Islamic agency. Once Islam is militarily defeated and then destroyed; the need of the day would be to come up with workable creative ideas, for brainwashing the remaining religious fanatics with techniques like anesthesia leading to amnesia and re-education of such brainwashed ex-religious fanatics; or the use of mass lobotomy to achieve the same result. Only such a technique could prevent religious fanaticism from being resurrected with a name other than Islam and insure the progress of human civilization without any obstacle from any religion. The War on Terror is the first step towards that, so we are not surprised whenever there is an escalation of this war, after all in today’s situation, we need an escalation of violence for the next few years or decades to prevent sustained religious violence in the coming centuries. A violence that has been exacerbated to blood-curdling depths by Islam - the most violent and cruel expression of the malady called religion. _____________________________

Mohammed-ibn-Sam or Mohammed of Ghauri, the tormentor of Hindus was a descendant of Hindu converts to Islam The next Muslim onslaught came in the year 1187, when the Muslim chieftain of a place named Ghor in Afghanistan, overthrew the Ghaznavid ruler in Ghazni. These Gauris (pronounced by the Muslims as Ghauri, Ghori and rendered in English as Ghurid) were originally Hindu cowherds and were subjects of the Shahiyas, who had been converted by force to Islam, by the Ghaznavids, who overthrew the Shahiya power in Afghanistan in 980 C.E. Now in the 1180 After a lapse of 200 years, these ex-Hindus had become cruel and merciless like any other Muslims and not a trace of their Hindu ancestry was left, except the name Gauri (derived from Gau which mean cow in Sanskrit) which traced their humble origins as Hindu cowherds. Though Muslims, the Gauris got poetic justice, by annihilating the kingdom of their former tormentors, the Ghaznavids. But ironically these former Hindu cowherds, the Gauris had now become the new ruthless tormentors of their former compatriots - the Hindus. Mohammed defeated by the Solankis of Anahilwada in 1187 After overcoming the Ghaznivid governor of Punjab, Mohammed Ghori found his way into India proper blocked by the two powerful kingdoms. He allied himself with the Muslim governor of Sindh and in 1187, unleashed the full fury of his aggression on Gujarat. But to his misfortune, the Hindu Solankis (Chalukyas) of Anahilwada, defeated him utterly and forced him to retreat across the Thar desert. Thus they for the last time lit the flame of Hindu valor in Gujarat bright in repelling a Muslim attack. The next time this flame was to be lit once again in resisting a Muslim barbarity was when in March 2002, the Hindus of Gujarat, retaliated massively against the Muslims who had roasted alive 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from a pilgrimage to a Hindu holy town Ayodhya, where Babar another Muslim invader had demolished a major Hindu temple dedicated to Rama, an ancient Hindu king, who has been deified as a god by the Hindus and is a popular deity in India. How the Muslims covered their retreat by using a herd of cows to prevent the Hindu army from pursuing them Returning to the 12th century when Mohammed Ghori was defeated by the Solankis and had to retreat from the western edge of the Thar, he tried invading India from another route. But on the other side of the Thar lay the domains of the Maharaja of Sambhar (Shaka-amabara) Prithviraj Chauhan, who was known for his bravery and chivalry. Mohammed having tasted defeat at Hindu hands once, decided to make use of subterfuge. He studied Hindu warfare, as had been done by Sabuktgin two hundred years before him. Thus fully prepared to invade India, he advanced through West Punjab and laid siege to the fortress of Bhatinda in East Punjab, that lay on the borders of Prithvitraja’s domains. Soon, he had to face the wrath of the Rajputs and at Tarain (also known as Taraori) in today’s Haryana, the two armies clashed furiously. In face of the repeated onslaughts of the Rajput cavalry, the Muslims broke ranks and fled leaving their king a prisoner in Prithviraja’s hands. Their defeat by the Solankis of Anahilwada had given them a foretaste of Hindu valor. But in that retreat they had left behind many of the best steeds in their cavalry in the hands of the pursuing Solanki army. This time, they had resorted to a trick. Once the fortunes of the battle turned against them, and their king Mohammed Ghori himself was captured by the Rajputs, and the Muslims broke into retreat, with the Rajput sin pursuit, the Muslim general Kutub-ud-din Aibak let loose a large herd of cows chained to each other to block the path of the pursing Hindu army. Thus with their path blocked by bovines, whom the Hindus looked upon as a deity, it was impossible for the Hindus to cut down the cows blocking their path, and the Muslim army shrewdly made its escape, reducing its losses and preventing many Muslim soldiers from falling into captivity of the victorious Hindus. How Prithviraja foolishly pardoned the defeated and captured Mohammed in 1191 When the captured Mohammed Ghori was brought before Prithviraja bound in chains, he pretended to be humiliated, while internally he was seething with rage at being humiliated for having been captured by a Kafir king. This rage proved itself a few years later when their roles were reversed. Mohammed begged for mercy from Prithviraja from promised that he would never lift his eyes toward India. This melted the innocuous Prithviraja and he ordered that Mohammed’s chains be removed. In his feigned gratitude Mohamed told Prithviraja that he was like his brother. Going against the advice of his general Hammira,and the brave warrior twins Aalaa and Uddhal, he ordered Mohammed to be released and as a token of his generosity, he also gifted his captive some horses and elephants and honorably released him. Once freed, the vengeful Mohammed was seething for revenge. On reaching Ghor, he promptly murdered the escorts and envoys that Privithrajas had sent to accompany Mohammed to Ghor. He immediately started preparing for another assault on India. Going by the experiences of his two defeats at the hands of the Solankis and Chauhans, Mohammed decided to go by subterfuge, the trademarked mentality of the Muslims that has given them victory over more powerful, but less scheming adversaries. Mohammed’s spies told him that whenever the Hindu battled each other, the armies fought from sunrise up to sunset. There was no warfare in the hours of darkness. Mohammed’s use of subterfuge to defeat Prithviraja In the following year, Mohammed broke his sham promise to Prithviraja and attacked India once again. The two armies once again gathered at the same battlefield at Tarain. The Rajput army was camped near a river so as to do their morning ablutions before the war could be joined on the next morning, as was decided by the two commanders. But violating convention, the Muslim army attacked before dawn, as had the army of Sabuktgin in the year 980 (a fact which the Hindus had foolishly forgotten). When the Muslims unexpectedly broke into the Hindu camp, Prithviraj’s soldiers had begun their morning ablutions, and were unprepared for the assault. But they did their best to group their forces and resist the Muslims. The Muslims had the advantage of surprise which they had gained by deceit. The uneven battle continued till noon, by when the Muslims had slaughtered many of the Rajputs. But the Rajputs did not yield and it looked like the second battle of Tarain would also go the way the first had gone. Mohammed saw victory slipping from his hands once again. He resorted to another patented Muslim subterfuge of single combat – called Mard-o-Mard in Farsi – is a technique which Muslims had used quite cunningly against the Zoroastrian Persians, some six centuries earlier when the Muslim first burst out of Arabia In order to humiliate Prithviraj, Mohammed sent word that he would call off the battle, if Prithviraja came and fought his champion Qutub-ud-din Aibak in single combat. To save the lives of his soldiers, and to conclude the war quickly Prithviraja agreed. The rule in single combat was that when one combatant is either pinned down or killed, the army to which he belongs concedes defeat retreats. No other combatant is allowed to participate in this combat, hence the name single combat. But when the two met and Prithviraja’s sword felt heavy on Qutub who risked losing his life, he resorted to a feint and by whirling below his saddle he cut off the feet of Prithviraja’s horse before Prithviraj could realize what he was up to. This made Prithviraja trip and fall of his horse. This was a foul move, but it would have been fair, had Qutub, also dismounted and fought Prithviraja on foot. Instead at a pre-arranged signal from Qutub, a band of truculent Muslim soldiers, who had till then stood aside in the grab of horse-tenders, jumped on Prithviraja, pinned him down, pressed on his face a dose of hashish (that grew abundantly in the poppy farms of Afghanistan) bound the drugged Prithviraja in chains and galloped away with him as a prisoner into their ranks, before the Rajputs could realize what had happened. When they came to know this treacherous capture of their Maharaj (King), the lost nerve and through enraged, fell back against Pithoragarh, their fortified capital at Mehrauli near Delhi. The betrayal and blinding of Prithviraja and how he avenged his humiliation When Prithviraj was presented in chains before Mohammed, he reminded Mohammed how he was himself presented before Prithviraja in chains and how Prithviraja had honorably release him. On hearing this Mohammed and his courtiers laughed derisively at Prithviraja. When Prithviraja glared back at Mohammed and his courtiers, Mohammed ordered him to lower his eyes as he was now a captive. When Prithviraja told him that a Rajput’s eyes are lowered only after death, Mohammed in a fit of rage ordered that Prithviraja’s eyes be pierced with red hot irons. He kept the blinded Pritiviraja in solitary confinement and had him occasionally hauled to his court for being made fun of as the “Lion of Delhi”. Here Prithviraja was joined by his friend and biographer Chandra Vardai who joined his master in prison, after offering himself as a prisoner to Mohammed. It was in Prison, that Chandra Vardai told Prithviraja of a plan to avenge his betrayal and humiliation. Before an annual event of Buskhazi (a kind of Turkish sport in which the Afghans indulged) , Chandra Vadrai told Mohammed, that Prithviraja would like to show his skill in archery, but he would accept orders only from a king who had defeated him. And as Mohammed was the only king who had done that, he himself would have to order Prithviraj to shoot. Mohammed’s ego being rubbed the right way, he readily agreed. On the said day Prithviraja was brought to the assemblage. And when Mohammed gave the order for Prithviraja to shoot, Chandra Vardai in the following poetic stanza “Char bans, chaubis gaj, angul asta pramaan, Ete pai Sultan hai (Taa Upar hai Sultan). Ab mat chuko Chauhan." (Ten measures ahead of you and twenty four feet away, is seated the Sultan, do not miss him now, Chouhan). On hearing these words Prithviraja whirled in the direction of Mohammed and shot three arrows one after the other to wound Mohammed fatally. Thus Prithviraja had his justice, although due to his folly in pardoning the ghoulish fiend Mohammed, he lost his kingdom and India lost its sovereignty. After the Muslim conquest how the Muslim tormentors forcibly converted the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to Islam Today we do not have an idea of how a merciless jihad transformed Hindu society of Pakistan and Bangladesh into a Muslim one. While in Pakistan and Bangladesh Hinduism was supplanted entirely by Islam, in India, the Muslim tyranny succeeded only partially in converting a part of the population to Islam. In fact those parts of India where a majority of the Hindus were converted to Islam have become Pakistan and Bangladesh today. These countries were parts of India, before the Muslims invaded that part of the world. We shall see at the end of this article the methods used by the Muslim tormentors to convert a large part of the Hindus to Islam. Many Muslims today raise a canard about an alleged tolerant nature of Muslim rule in India. They try to pull wool over your eyes, and are supported by the unabashedly pro-Jihadi, pro-terrorist anchors like Rajdeep Sardesai, Rajeev Srinivasan, Barkha Dutt, in the Indian media like the electronic media that includes the Prannoy Roy managed NDTV and the English language press like the Muslim owned Asian Age, and The Hindu along with the Times of India, Indian Express, and many other leading (rather misleading) national dailies in India. These scoundrels often pose (rather impose) a question as to how only eleven percent of the population of India is Muslim if the Muslim rulers were tormentors who made Hindus accept Islam at the point of the sword? The issue here is that in historic times when we refer to India we include all those parts that were inhabited by Hindus before the Muslim aggression. So what is today Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as India, are parts of historic India. And so when we considered this as one whole, the population of Muslims accounts for forty five percent. The fact that Hindus still accounted for fifty five percent of the population is due to the fact that in Rajputana, Maharashtra, Orissa and South India, the Hindu defeated and rolled back the Muslim aggressors, so its was these parts that remained predominantly Hindu. Other parts which were under Muslim rule for an unbroken one thousand years, the Hindu population was decimated to almost zero. As in former Indian provinces of Gandhara (Kandahar), Kubha (Kabul), Makara (Makran), Sakastana (Siestan/Balouchistan), Sindh, West Punjab, Paktoonistan, East Bengal (Bangladesh). Today this process of Islamization is still on in Kashmir through the use of terror, but in other parts of India where these tactics would be fiercely resisted by the Hindus the process of using the womb bomb to increase the Muslim population is being used to the hilt by the mushrooming of high fertility rates among Muslim who can have four wives at one time, and women are treated like baby producing factories. This is happening in the Terai region of Uttaranchal, northern Bihar, Assam, parts of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. There are many districts in India which today are Muslim majority areas. According to unofficial estimates the Muslim population in India is today at 15 percent. Thus if we look at historic India those parts which were under Muslim tyranny the Hindu population was decimated to nil. And on the rest of the country, it was the fierce Hindu resistance and counter attack that led to the Hindu character of some Indian provinces to remain. In the following paragraphs we shall see the fierce resistance put up to Muslim tyranny by Hindu rulers like Man Singh Tomar, Maharana Sangram Singh, Maharana Pratap, Harihara Raya, Krishna Deva Raya, Narsimhadeva, Lachit Barphukan, Guru Govind Singh Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj and other Hindu bravehearts It was after repeated experience with Muslim treachery, subterfuge, deceit, that wisdom finally dawned on some of the Hindus. Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj was the epitome of this successful Hindu counter-attack on Islam which turned the patented Muslim techniques of deceit and subterfuge on the Muslims themselves. The Hindu Counterattack on Muslims The Hindu counterattack against Islam does not have any fixed date. From the very first battle of the Rajas of Makara (Makran) and Sindh in 638, till the Muslim rule was finally eliminated by the Maratha, Jats, Rajputs, Gurkhas and Sikhs in the 18th and early 19th centuries, this constant Hindu-Muslim war did not stop. So we can only define the counterattack as that period when the Hindus started turning the tactics of their tormentors on the Muslims. The first to do that were the kings of Orissa. How Narasimhadeva defeated Tugan Khan in 1248 C.E. After the easy victories over North India from Punjab, through Bengal, the Muslims turned and attacked Orissa. Here the Muslim met their match. The people of Orissa were hardy fighters. (In ancient and medieval times, Orissa was also called Kalinga or Utkal – from Uttam Kala which means Excellent Art that reflects the tradition of sculpture of that region) They had given a hard time when in the 3rd century B.C.E. the king of Kalinga Kumara gave a tough battle to Samrat Ashoka Mauya, before Orissa could be annexed to the Maurya Empire. When Tugan Khan attacked Orissa, the then ruling king of Orissa, Narsimhadeva, decided to use subterfuge against the Muslims. He sent word to the invader that he wanted to surrender as had Lakshmansena, the ruler of Bengal without a fight. Tugan Khan had easily conquered Bengal a few years earlier, since the king of Bengal instead of fighting fled the advancing Muslim armies and Begal fell without a fight. Tugan thought that Orissa would also be a cakewalk, as he had put the fear of death in the heart of the Hindus. Tugan accepted Narasimhadeva’s surrender proposal and asked for the surrender of the major city of Puri (Narasimhadeva had his capital elsewhere at Jajanagara), hand over all weapons and embrace Islam in the central square in front of the Jagannath Temple and convert the temple into Mosque. To the delight of the Muslims, all these terms were accepted and the Muslims advanced into the city, blissfully aware that the shrewd Hindu king had laid a trap for them. On the orders of Narasimhadeva, the bustling city had been completely evacuated of its pilgrims and soldiers from all over the kingdom had occupied every nook and cranny of the city, hidden away inside the closely built houses Once the Muslim army was inside the city, it had to disperse itself into the maze of narrow lanes and bylanes with which they were not familiar and where thy had to dismount from their horses and advance single file. And unaware of the danger lurking they advanced cautiously and slowly towards the central square where the surrender ceremony was to take place. When the Muslim army was dispersed, at a prearranged signal from one of lookouts from the temple spires, the temple bells started ringing, and this was the signal for the Hindus to pounce on the Muslims. The pitched battle lasted whole day and went into the night pierced by the cries of wounded and dying Muslim and Hindu soldiers. While the Hindus took many losses, the entire Muslim army was caught like in a mousetrap and annihilated. Very few Muslims could escape this trap. And this idea succeeded, as it had never been used till then, by any Hindu king, as it went against the Hindu rules of warfare. But precisely because of it being totally unexpected, the Muslims had to suffer from a bloody nose and the Hindus emerged victorious. Orissa was to remain a Hindu bastion for many centuries and this accounts for the very low percentage of Muslims in Orrisa even today, unlike Bengal, where the eastern part (known today as Bangladesh) has been totally Islamized, and the Western half is undergoing the process of Islamization especially in the district of Murshidabad. The victorious King Narasimhadeva erected a victory pillar designed as a war chariot. This temple was dedicated to Surya the Sun god, at a place near the temple town of Puri. He named this place Konark which means “Essence of the Corners” While the structure commemorates the victory in the battle against the Muslims, the name Konark commemorates the science of astronomy of which the King was an avid student. Although the Hindus of south India, like the Kings of Vijaynagar and the Marathas, displayed this shrewdness against the Muslims, in the North the Rajputs continued to wage a noble war with the ignoble Muslims and lost out. It was for this reason, that the Muslim could never subjugate the Southern half of India (Dakkan or Deccan from Dakshin which means south in Sanskrit) as they did with North India. It was Hindus of Vijayanagar in the South who gave a tougher time to the Muslim and held back the tide of Muslim aggression at the Krishna river, to finally throw off the Muslim yoke and march northwards to liberate North India, when the Marathas marched to Delhi, and Punjab and beyond up to Attock in Paktoonisthan. How Vijaynagar survived for two hundred years all through battling the Muslim Aggression from 1331 up to 1565 Vijaynagar, was the first Hindu kingdom which gave up the Hindu practice of not molesting non-combatants. Thus they started paying the Muslims in the same token. When the armies of Vijaynagar overran any Bahamani town or village they torched it. With this they put the fear of death into Muslim minds and soon, the Adilshahi and Nizamshahi sultans sued for a treaty that would proscribe the killing of civilians. Thus from then on till Vijaynagar was finally defeated at the battle of Talikotai, was this treaty adhered to by both the Hindus and Muslims. But with the final defeat of the Hindus at Talikotai, the Muslims repudiated this treaty, as their founder had repudiated the treaty of Hudaibiya, and indulged in a gory slaughter of all the inhabitants of Vijaynagar, they could lay their hands on. Not a single person was allowed to live in that beleaguered city. The city itself was reduced to rubble, after six months of pillage and wanton destruction. This teaches us two lessons. One that only when you pay back the Muslims in the same barbaric token, that they can come temporarily to their senses. But never ever trust the Muslims for their word, since it s given only as matter of expediency. Whenever fortune favors them, they would go back on their word. Likewise, when all non-Muslims should enter into any agreement with Muslims only if the Muslims cannot be beaten militarily, and when the fortune favors the non-Muslims, they should repudiate any treaty with the Muslims and resume hostilities with the one single aim of destroying Islam. There is no other way of salvation for humankind, from this vile creed of the Muslims. The Punjabi Hindu resistance to Islam is called Sikhism In one North Indian province, Punjab, the Hindus resisted Islam by removing the deficiencies from their own religion, and then first matching and finally outmatching the ruthlessness of their Muslim tormentors. The Sikhs considered themselves neither Hindus nor Mussalmaans. But in the eyes of the Mughal rulers, the followers of the Gurus were Hindus who tried to undermine Mughal sovereignty. For this the Sikhs were violently repressed. In the reign of the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, Guru Arjan Dev Ji was the first Guru to be martyred (at the hand of the Mughal oppressors). Jehangir sentenced Guruji to be beheaded after being tormented for days. Burning hot sand was poured on his bare body. After being subjected to such inhuman torture, Guruji we are told, expressed a desire as his last wish, to have a bath in the Ravi river before being beheaded. Guru Arjan Dev Ji who had suffered brutally at the hands of his Mughal tormentors, went into the river till his head disappeared into the swirling currents of the Ravi - never to return. Thus he became the first Sikh Guru to lay down his life due to Mughal oppression. It was under the later Gurus that Sikhism came to appear as the militant wing of the Hindu community. The idea of Sikhs being defenders of Hinduism was strengthened during the tenure of the 9th and 10th Gurus. Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh. During the tenure of these two Gurus the nature of the Sikh religion underwent a fundamental change. And from being a sect with ascetic and pacifist ideals, the Sikhs were transformed into an aggressive military theocracy. Militarization of the Sikhs due to Mughal Oppression. The changes brought about by Guru Gobind Singh were so fundamental that they represented a new phase in the history of Sikhism. It is worth recalling the circumstances that led to this change. Understanding this phase of Sikh history is all the more important as it led to the formation of Sikhism as we know it today. This phase of the Sikh religion was a direct result of Mughal oppression. The Mughal rulers had no love for a sect that originated from among the Kafirs (Hindus) but had adapted Islamic ideas like monotheism rejection of idol worship, military theocracy and who with the indigenous Hindu terminology of expression tried to secure a following also among the adherents of Islam. This was unbearable to the Mughals who looked upon the Sikhs as wanting to usurp the platform of Islam and stall the process of converting Hindus (in Punjab) to Islam. Sikhism was in the eyes of the Mughals - a Panic Reaction of the Hindus against Islam For the Mughals, Sikhism represented a panic reaction from within the Hindu community to salvage its status as non-muslim by accepting the positive ideals of Islam like rejection of idol worship, casteism and ritualism of its Hindu parent religion and infusing militancy into the new Hindu converts to Sikhism. In the eyes of the Mughal rulers, the Sikh reform was detrimental to the conversion of the Hindus to Islam; and the militancy of the Sikhs was harmful to the security of the Mughal empire. Hence the bitter oppression of the Sikhs by the Mughals which was even more severe than the oppression of the Hindus in general. During the reign of Aurangzeb the severest wave of oppression was unleashed on Non-Muslims with a view to Islamize the country. As the Mughal oppression found tough resistance from the Sikhs they were the favourite target for the Mughals. Here the story of Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh needs to be The Martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur During the reign of Aurangzeb Guru Tegh Bahadur who was the then Guru of the Sikhs was approached by a group of Hindu Pandits from Kashmir with a plea for protection from Mughal oppression. True to the spirit of his faith the Guru decided to approach the fanatical Mughal emperor Aurangzeb himself for a redress of the grievances. Unfortunately at the Mughal court he received abuses and threats. He was told to accept Islam at the pain of death. To prove his word the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. tourtured to death the members of the Guru's entourage one after the other. But Guru Tegh Bahadur did not lose his composure and calmly demanded a halt to the repressive policies. Wanting to teach a lesson to the obstinate Guru and to set an example to his followers the emperor ordered that the Guru to be beheaded. Thus after Guru Arjan Dev, Tegh Bahadur was the second Sikh Guru to meet a violent death at the hands of the Mughals. But after his execution some of his followers managed to sneak out the Guru's severed head from Delhi and carried it to Anandpur. At the place where the Gurus severed head was cremated, a Gurudwara was erected to commemorate this sacrifice undertaken in defence of the Dharma. This place is known to us today as the Anandpur Saheb Gurudwara. The Khalsa Panth of Guru Gobind Singh Ji When Guru Tegh Bahadur was martyred, his son Gobindrai, who later became Guru Gobind Singh) was still a boy, but the events which had overtaken his father, influenced him deeply and after succeeding his father as the next Guru, he was determined to carry out the struggle against Mughal oppression. Towards this end he undertook a radical transformation of the Sikh religion. This transformation was too fundamental to be termed as a reform and it virtually amounted to the establishment of a new religious order. And though he transformation differentiated the subsequent Sikhism (the Khalsa Panth from the earlier one; more in temporal and worldly aspects rather than in spiritual matters, it led to the first major split among the Sikhs. The five Ks (Kakkars) The transformation of Sikhism as the Khalsa Panth was formally launched by Guru Gobind Singh Ji on Baishakhi (New year) day in the year 1699. The new community was termed the Khalsa Panth or the 'Pure Sect' as its followers were required to be far more strict in observing the tenets of their reformed faith. The followers of the Khalsa were required to observe five visible symbols of membership. These signs as we know were: 1) Unshorn Hair (Kesha), 2) A curved dagger (Kirpan), 3) A comb (Kangva), 4) A steel bangle (Kada), 5) A pair of shorts (Kachha). All members of the Khalsa were required to suffix their name with the term 'Singh' meaning 'lion'. Guru Gobind Singh's aim in forming the Khalsa Panth was to build up a militarized community which could resist Mughal oppression. An anecdote about his forming of the Khalsa army is worth recalling. The Formation of the Khalsa Army Once the Guru was delivering an inspiring speech before a group of Sikh youths on the necessity for every youth in the community to be ready to sacrifice everything he had including his life for the cause of his faith. The response of the youths was enthusiastic and many expressed their readiness to get enrolled in the Khalsa Panth. But the Guru' s standards of integrity were very high and he said that he would require the heads of those who wanted to join the Khalsa. The Guru pulled out his sword and beckoned the enthusiastic youths to come forward and lay down their lives there and then. The youths were dumbfounded and for some moments nobody volunteered to sacrifice his life, while the Guru waited with his unsheathed sword in hand. Finally one of the youths turned up and offered his head to the Guru saying that his head already belonged to the Guru and the Guru may have it if he wanted. The Guru caught hold of the youth and led him inside the sacrificial tent that had been erected for the occasion. After sometime there was a piercing scream form the youth and the Guru emerged from the tent and in his hand was a blood-stained sword. The Guru now demanded another head. His audience was benumbed at this evident gruesome scene and many devotees fled the place in disgust saying that the Guru had gone mad! But out of the few remaining youths another one offered his head to the Guru. After some time a few select youths had offered their heads to their Guru and has been "sacrificed" by the Guru, while many others had fled carrying with them the memory of a ghastly episode. But those who fled were never to learn the secret of what happened to those brave youths, five in number, who had offered their heads to the Guru and who were the first Panj Pyaras. Contrary to the impression that he created, after leading every youth into the tent, the Guru embraced each of them and installed them as his select soldiers who were to form the Khalsa army. This army was the bravest that could be had as it was made up of men who had proved that they would lay down their lives to serve their Guru and the Panth in their struggle with the Mughal oppressors. The Fierce Commitment to Overthrow Mughal Oppression There is also a less known tradition which Guru Ji is said to have shared orally with the Panj Pyaras in the tent after they had offered him their heads. After baptising them as the first 5 members of the the Khalsa "Pure" Panth Guru Ji decided to have the Panj Pyaras observe the 5 kakkars which included wearing a Kada (signifying a bangle) - as a sign of not yet having fulfilled a commitment of overthrowing the Mughal tormentors who then ruled Punjab(and the rest of India). The Kada was meant to instill a compelling sense of commitment in them to defeat their Mughal tormentors. This aspect of the kada signifying womanhood and shame was later not mentioned for obvious reasons and is not reflected in the Sikh legend. It was this act on part of Guru Ji that spurred on his followers to avenge their oppression by the Muslims and finally led to their successes under Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1799. (This tradition of fighting Delhi was quoted again by the terrorists during the anti-Indian insurgency of the 1980s. But then the rulers of Delhi were different in 1980 from those in 1699!) Sahejdharis and Keshadharis Those members of the Sikh Panth (sect) who observed the five visible signs, and also used the suffix "Singh" (lion) with their names, imbibed the fighting spirit inculcated by Guru Gobind Singh. They came to be known as Keshadharis (wearers of unshorn hair) and those Sikhs (i.e. virtually all the remaining people of Punjab) who revered the Gurus but did not accept the 5 Kakkars laid down by Guru Gobind Singh Ji and did not use the suffix "Singh" were called Sahejdharis (casual devotees), or plainly speaking - Punjabis (i.e. Punjabi Hindus). The Sahejdharis were also followers of the Gurus, though they did not belong to the Khalsa Panth. And despite this difference, there did not exist a feeling of belonging to different sects among the two sects of the followers of the Gurus till recent times. Banda Bairagi Banda Bairagi personifies the ethos of Punjab. His story signifies the oneness of the Sahjedharis and the Keshadharis. Banda Bairagi was born into a Sahejdhari family. He was a devout person from his childhood. Immense love for the Guru attracted him to Guru Govind Singh Ji. In his youth, Banda Bairagi became a Keshadhari and was baptised as Banda Singh Bahadur by Guru Ji. Banda Singh Bahadur carried on a relentless fight against the Muslims. After a stormy life, full of daring adventures, he died on the battlefield fighting the Mughal Oppressors. His name has become legendary in Punjabi folklore. The Political History of the Sikhs The later history of the Sikhs is more a political history rather than religious and centers around the establishment of a sovereign kingdom by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Here let us digress into the politico-military situation in North India in the mid 18th century. The Persian Invasion of 1740 by Nadir Shah The immediate impetus for the establishment of the Sikh kingdom came from the invasion of North India by Ahmed Shah Durrani (Abdali) the ruler of Afghanistan in 1759/61. On his way to Delhi, Ahmed Shah burnt down the Harmindar Saheb Gurudwara at Amritsar. for 2 years and was planning to settle in India forever, when he was challenged by the Marathas. The Marathas who then were on their ascendancy in North India had since the first Persian-Afghan invasion by Nadir Shah, the king of Persia in 1740, established themselves as a dominant power in Northern India. The 20 years from 1740 to 1760 saw a see-saw battle between the Afghans and the Marathas for the domination of North India. With the defeat of Mohammed Shah, the Moghul Emperor in 1740 by Nadir Shah (in whose army Ahmed Shah Abdali was a general), the Mughal power steadily declined and its place was usurped by the Rohillas who were led by an ambitious and ruthless chieftain named Najib Khan. Najib's ambition was to supplant the Moghal Emperor and crown himself as the ruler of India by capturing Delhi. The Rise of the Marathas in Punjab But the growing power of the Marathas in their northward expansion, stood between Najib and his ambition. To overcome the Marathas, in 1755, Najib invited Ahmed Shah Abdali from Afghanistan to help him in defeating the Marathas and crown himself the ruler of India. In this, he was thwarted by the Marathas who decisively defeated the Rohillas and Afghans near Delhi in 1756. The defeat was so decisive that Najib Khan surrendered to the Marathas and became their prisoner. The Maratha forces were led by Shrimant Raghunath Rao and Malhar Rao Holkar. After defeating the Afghan-Rohilla forces, the Marathas pursued the Afghans into the Punjab upto the Khyber pass. The last frontier of the Marathas was at Attock in today's NWFP (or Paktoonistan) on the Afghan border. Thus after nearly 800 after the last Punjabi King Tirlochan Pal Shahi had been defeated by Mahmud of Ghazi in 1020 C.E. did that part of India come under Indian rule in 1756 due to the liberation of Punjab by the Marathas. Meanwhile with machinations and trickery, Najib Khan won over Malhar Rao Holkar and secured his release. On his release Najib started to undermine the Marathas once again and treacherously killed Dattaji Shinde (eldest brother of Mahadji Shinde) . Najib continued to battle the Shindes in 1757-58 and with his newly found confidence again invited Ahmed Shah Abdali to invade India. The 3rd Battle of Panipat - 1761 Abdali's second invasion was launched in 1759. The Marathas who after their successes in 1756 had been hibernating in Maharashtra and Central India again woke up and in alliance with the Jat King Suraj Mal of Bharatpur formed an alliance. This alliance led by Shrimant Sadshiv Rao Bhau and Shrimant Vishwas Rao (the Peshwa Shrimant Balaji Baji Rao's son) won spectacular victories and captured Delhi and Kunjapura (where the Afghan treasury and armoury was located). Here the alliance developed cracks due to the Maratha insistence on not allowing the Jats to loot Delhi. This ultimately split the alliance and Suraj Mal withdrew from the alliance. The Marathas consequently marched upto Panipat, but instead of continuing their attacks to completely defeat the partly defeated Abdali and Najib Khan, they stayed put at Panipat, blocking the way of the Afghans back to Afghanistan. Seeing their way back to their homeland blocked, the Afghans now became restless. They in turn, decided to block the way of the Marathas back into the Deccan. This stand-off continued for a few months, while the Afghans cut-off all supplies to the huge Maratha army. The Afghans with Najib Khan meanwhile recaptured Delhi and Kunjpura. On the decisive day of 14th January 1761, the Marathas decided to break-through the Afghan blockade and re-enter Deccan. The disastrous battle saw about one hundred thousand Maratha troops being slaughtered in a matter of eight hours. But the Afghans too suffered heavy losses and decided enough was enough and went back to Afghanistan. Abdali never returned to India after this stormy campaign, but his decscendants did make unsuccessful attempts to do so. The invasion of Abdali's grandson (Sher Shah) was one such attempt. This time the invader was challenged by the Sikhs. Sher Shah could not proceed beyond Lahore due to the challenge of the Sarbat Khalsa. Thus, this last of the Muslim invasions also turned out to be the only Muslim invasion of India ever to be defeated by the people of Punjab. Maharaja Ranjeet Singh Ji and the Rise of the first Sikh Kingdom However, during this period the Sikhs were still unorganised and in the period after the defeat of the Marathas and the withdrawal of the Afghans there existed a power vacuum in North India in the period 1761-1799. It was this vacuum that was filled up by the rising Sikh power under the dynamic leadership of Maharaja Shri Ranjit Singh Ji. Maharaj Ranjeet Singh Ji was born in 1780 and witnessed these turbulent times in Punjab's history. By 1799, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh had started his attempt to unify the different Sikh Misls, which was to grow into a powerful Sikh Kingdom in the early decades of the 19th century and remained a powerful force till Maharaja Ranjeet Singh's death in 1839. The Sikh kingdom was also the last of the Indian kingdoms that held out against the British (More of this later) When the history of Maratha-Afghan warfare was being enacted, the Sikhs in Punjab had formed themselves into Misls (Local Armed Battalions). Though they did not actively participate in helping the Marathas against the Afghans, they nursed a grievance against the Rohillas and Afghans. Jussa Singh Ahluwalia Jussa Singh Ahluwalia was a leader of the Alhuwalia Misl prior to Maharaja Ranjit Singh's ascent. Before Maharaja Ranjeet Singh's Asendency the Sikhs had formed themselves into various misls which were under control of various tracts of land of the Punjab. Some of these Misls refused to get themselves integrated into the Sikh Army formed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji. These rebellious Misls were eventually overcome and integrated into the Sikh army by Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji. Hari Singh Nallua On the departure of the Afghans, the Sikhs reasserted themselves in the Punjab and Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji who was the leader of the Gujranwala Misl - which was one of the most powerful Misl, formed a kingdom with its capital at Lahore in today's West Punjab in Pakistan. His kingdom stretched beyond the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan. Able generals like Hari Singh Nallua helped in pushing the frontiers of the Sikh kingdom into Afghanistan. It was a tradition in those days for the eldest son of every family from Punjab to join the army (of the Maharaja) by observing the 5 Kakkars. Brave generals like Hari Singh Nallua took the Sikh armies deep into Afghanistan and they are reputed to have brought back the original Gates of the Somnath Temple which had been desecrated by Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century. The gates had been carried off by Mahmud to Afghanistan and had remained there ever since. Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji retrieved them and brought them back to India. Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji's reign marked the consolidation of Indian sovereignty in Punjab after first Muslim invasions eight hundred years before in 1020. The Marathas had broken the continuous Muslim occupation of Punjab by liberating it in 1756 and Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji consolidated Indian rule in Punjab a few years later. The kingdom established by Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji successfully resisted the Afghans, and Rohillas and also out-matched the new imperialist power of the British successfully till Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji was alive. At his death, the Maharaja had warned about the impending coming of the British. (On his death-bed he is said to have expressed a desire to offer his most precious possession to the Jagannath Puri temple at Orissa. He was asked by the chief Mahant (priest) of the Jagannath Puri temple as to what he considered most precious. In reply Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji is said to have told the Mahant that as a Keshadhari follower of the Guru, his unshorn hair was most precious to him and he wanted to donate that to the temple along with umpteen gold and jewellery.) It was during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji that the Harmindar Saheb Gurudwara at Amritsar which had been burnt down by Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1760, was repaired and was completely plated with gold and from then onwards it came to be known as the Golden Temple. Such was Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji who consolidated Indian rule in India's frontier state which had been earlier liberated by the Marathas. Unfortunately the Marathas could not retain their hold over the liberated areas, many of which were re-occupied by the Rohillas and Afghans after a few years. But the rise of the Sikh power ensured that a large part of the Maratha achievements of rolling back alien rule could be consolidated and expanded. Even today the Sikhs continue to form an important element of troops in the Indian army and are an effective bulwark in the fight against Muslim terorism that afflicts India especially so in Kashmir.