Dr. David Frawley's article: Hindu right is really newleft, Amma mentioned too

[Guest guest]

OM Amrtesvaryai Namah!!

 

Namaskarams dear brothers and sisters!!

 

i was browsing the google groups searching under the Ammachi label,

and Mother's grace lept into action once more, with this interesting

article about the so called Hindu " right " ....it clearly shows just how

the Marxist leftwing intellectual rationalist types in India artfully

USE the label " rightwing " to arbitrarily blacken the names of those

they consider to be their ideological foes...it shows the sterility

and emptiness of their perverted unsupportable views, whose purpose is

solely to perpetuate the materialistic marxist communist view of

" so-called " reality, views which are no better than those of the

extreme right wing capitalistic corporation....equally selfish and

unsustainable for Mother Earth and all Her children....

 

Dr. David Frawley is also known as " Vamadeva Shastri " , the Shastri

title bestowed upon him by Hindu Pandits and scholars signifies that

he is a master of the Shastras, the traditional Hindu teachings. He is

an acknowledged expert in Jyotish, Ayurveda, the Tantras, the

Yogas,and Indian History, as well as the Vedas, Vedangas and all the

related knowledges. He was initiated by Sri Ganapathy Muni who was a

senior disciple of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. in short, in my view,

he is an impeccable source of knowledge of all things Hindu,

especially in the Sakta, and Saivite traditions....

 

i have several of his wonderful, well written books on various topics

that fall within the Sanatana Dharma...he is one of my most reliable

and honoured sources. He is one of the major " way-showers " in my life

in Jyotish, Tantra, and Ayurveda, as well as general philosophy. i

have studied his Jyotish books, and d to his Jyotish

course...he is a member of the American Vedic Astrology

Association...one of the founding members i believe....and spent many

many years in India....in conclusion i would like to offer my sincere

pranams to this wonderful heartmoving Pandita and Bhakta, Tantrika,

Jyotishi...a man of many talents.

 

please take some time and thoughtfully read what he has to say...i

apologise for posting such a long article in one piece, but that's how

i got it.....and he is well worth your time and effort.

 

The Myth of the Hindu Right

 

By Dr. David Frawley

American Institute of Vedic Studies

http://www.vedanet.com

 

In media accounts today, particularly in India, it seems

that any group which identifies itself as Hindu or tries

to promote any Hindu cause is quickly and uncritically

defined as 'right-winged'.

 

In the Marxist accounts that commonly come from the

Indian press, Hindu organizations are routinely called

fundamentalists, militants or even fascists. This may be

surprising for the western mind, inclined to think of

India as a Hindu country. But not only have states in

India like Bengal and Kerala been long dominated by

Marxists, most of academia and much of the English-

language media has been as well. Their slanted views are

often uncritically accepted by the western media as well.

 

However, if we look at their actual views, Hindu groups

have a very different ideology and practices than the

political right in other countries. In fact, most Hindu

causes are more at home in the left in the West than in

the right.

 

The idea of the 'Hindu right' is largely a ploy to

discredit the Hindu movement as backward and prevent

people from really examining it. The truth is that the

Hindu movement is a revival of a native spiritual

tradition that has nothing to do with the political

right-wing of any western country. Its ideas are

spiritually evolutionary, not politically regressive. Let

us examine the different aspects of the Hindu movement

and where they would fall in the political spectrum of

left and right as usually defined in the West.

 

Hinduism and Native Traditions

 

The Hindu cause is similar to the cause of native and

tribal peoples all over the world, like native American

and African groups. Even Hindu concerns about cultural

encroachment by western religious and commercial

interests mirrors those of other traditional peoples who

want to preserve their cultures. Yet while the concerns

of native peoples have been taken up by the left

worldwide, the same concerns of Hindus are styled right-

wing or communal, particularly by the left in India!

 

When native Americans ask for a return of their sacred

sites, the left in America supports them. When Hindus ask

for a similar return of their sacred sites, the left in

India opposes them and brands them as intolerant for

their actions! When native peoples in America or Africa

protest missionaries for interfering with their culture,

they are supported by the left. Yet when Hindus express

the same sentiments, they are attacked by the left. Even

the Hindu demand for rewriting the history of India to

better express the value of their indigenous traditions

is the same as what native Africans and Americans are

asking for. Yet the left opposes this Hindu effort, while

supporting African and American efforts of a similar

nature.

 

In countries like America, native traditions are

minorities and thereby afforded a special sympathy.

Leftists in general tend to support minority causes and

often lump together black African and native American

causes as examples of the damage caused by racism and

colonialism. In India, a native tradition has survived

the colonial period but as the tradition of the majority

of the people. Unfortunately, the intellectual elite of

India, though following a leftist orientation, has no

sympathy for the country's own native tradition. They

identify it as right-wing in order to express their

hostility towards it. They portray it as a majority

oppression of minorities, when it is the movement of a

suppressed majority to regain its dignity.

 

Not surprisingly, the same leftists in India, who have

long been allied to communist China, similarly style the

Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause as right-wing and

regressive, though the Dalai Lama is honored by the

American left. This should tell the reader about the

meaning of right and left as political terms in India.

When one looks at the Hindu movement as the assertion of

a native tradition with a profound spiritual heritage,

the whole perspective on it changes.

 

Hindu Economics

 

The Hindu movement in India in its most typical form

follows a Swadeshi (own-country) movement like the

Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. It emphasizes protecting the

villages and local economies, building economic

independence and self-reliance for the country. It

resists corporate interference and challenges

multinational interests, whether the bringing of fast

food chains to India, western pharmaceuticals or

terminator seeds.

 

Such an economic policy was supported by Mahatma Gandhi

with his emphasis on the villages, reflected in his

characteristic usage of the spinning wheel. Its

counterparts in the West are the groups that protest the

World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, these protest

groups are generally classified as 'left-wing' by the

international press.

 

The international press considers the economic right-wing

to be the powers of the multinational corporations,

particularly, the oil industry, which certainly are not

the allies of Hindu economics. Clearly Hindu economics is

more connected with the New Left in the West and has

little in common with the right. The Republican right in

America, with its corporate interests, would hardly take

up the cause of Hindu economics either.

 

Hindu Ecology and Nature Concerns

 

Hindu groups are well known for promoting vegetarianism

and animal rights, particularly the protection of cows.

The Hindu religion as a whole honors the Divine in

animals and recognizes that animals have a soul and will

eventually achieve liberation. Hindu groups have tried to

keep fast food franchises, which emphasize meat

consumption, out of India. Such a movement would be part

of consumer advocacy movements that are generally leftist

or liberal causes in the West. Again it is hardly an

agenda of the right-wing in America, which has a special

connection to the beef industry; or to the right-wing

worldwide, which has no real concern for animal rights

and is certainly not interesting in spreading

vegetarianism.

 

Hindus look upon nature as sacred, honoring the rivers

and mountains as homes of deities. They stress the

protection of Mother Earth, which they worship in the

form of the cow. They have a natural affinity with the

western ecology movement and efforts to protect animals,

forests and wilderness areas. This is also hardly a

right-wing agenda.

 

Hindu Religious Pluralism

 

The Hindu religion is a pluralistic tradition that

accepts many paths, teachers, scriptures and teachings.

One cannot be a Christian without accepting Christ or a

Buddhist without accepting Buddha, but one can be a Hindu

without accepting any single figure. In fact there are

Hindus who may not follow Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Vishnu or

other Hindu sages or deities and still count as Hindu.

 

Hindus have been at the forefront in arguing for the

cause of religious diversity and the acceptance of

pluralism in religion, rejecting the idea that any single

religion alone can be true.

 

This Hindu idea of religion-which is also d to

by so-called right wing Hindu groups like RSS-is

obviously not part of the agenda of the religious right

in the West. The American Christian right is still

sending missionaries to the entire world in order to

convert all people to Christianity, the only true

religion. It is firmly fixed on one savior, one scripture

and a rather literal interpretation of these. Yet when

Hindus ask the pope to make a statement that truth can be

found outside of any particular church or religion they

are called right-wing and backwards, while the pope, who

refuses to acknowledge the validity of Hindu, Buddhist or

other Indic traditions, is regarded as liberal! Such

pluralism in religious views is hardly a cause for any

right-wing movement in the world, but is also considered

progressive, liberal, if not leftist (except in India).

 

Hinduism and Science

 

Unlike the religious right in the West, the Hindu

movement is not against science or opposed to teaching

evolution in the schools. Hinduism does promote occult

and spiritual subjects like astrology, Ayurvedic

medicine, Yoga or Vedanta, but these are the same basic

teachings found in the New Age in the West, generally

regarded as a liberal or leftist movement, not those of

the religious right in the West. Many leaders of the

Hindu movement are in fact scientists. For example, RSS

leaders like former chief Rajinder Singh, or BJP leaders

like Murli Manohar Joshi have also been professors of

modern physics. The Hindu movement sees the union of

science and spirituality as the way forward for humanity,

not a return to medieval views of the universe.

 

The Hindu Movement and Caste

 

The Hindu right is often defined in the media in terms of

caste, as favoring the upper castes over the lower

castes. This is another distortion that is often

intentional. Modern Hindu teachers have been at the

forefront of removing caste. This includes great figures

like Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Aurobindo. It

includes major Hindu movements like the Arya Samaj, the

largest Vedic movement in modern India, and the Swadhyaya

movement.

 

The VHP, the largest so-called Hindu right wing group,

rejects caste and works to remove it from Hindu society,

giving prominence to leaders from lower classes and

working to open the Hindu priesthood to members of all

castes. While caste continues to be a problem in certain

segments of Hindu society, it is generally not because of

these current Hindu social, religious and political

movements, but because their reform efforts are resisted.

 

The real social problem in India is not simply caste but

jati, which refers to family, clan, community and

regional interests. Many so-called anti-caste movements

in India, including those honored by the left (like

movements of Laloo Prasad Yadav) actively promote the

interests of one community in the country over those of

the country as a whole.

 

The Hindu Movement and Women's Rights

 

Generally, the right wing in the West is defined as

opposed to women's rights. However, there are many

women's groups and active women leaders in the Hindu

movement and in the Hindu religion. Being a woman is no

bar for being a political or religious leader in India as

it often is in the West. Hinduism has the worlds' largest

and oldest tradition of the worship of the Divine as

Mother, including as India itself. Great female Hindu

gurus like Ammachi (Mata Amritanandamayi) travel and

teach all over the world. The Hindu movement worships

India on a spiritual level as a manifestation of the

Divine Mother (Shakti).

 

The Indian Left: The Old Left

 

In India, the political terminology of right and left is

defined by Marxists, who like to call anyone that opposes

them right-wing or fascists. According to their view

anything traditionally Hindu would have to be right-wing

on principle, just as only their views are deemed

progressive, even if supporting Stalinist tactics. This

means that in India such subjects as Yoga, natural

healing, vegetarianism and animal rights are all

automatically right-wing because they are causes of the

Hindu mind, with antecedents in ancient Indian culture.

Great Hindu yogis and sages from Shankaracharya to Sri

Aurobindo are classified by modern Marxists as right-

wing, if not fascist.

 

However, the Indian left is mainly the Old Left,

emphasizing a failed communist ideology and state

economic planning such as dominated Eastern Europe in the

decades following World War II and took it nowhere. It

wreaked the same havoc with the economy and educational

systems of India and kept the country backward. Indian

communists are among the few in the world that still

proudly honor Stalin and Mao (while warning of the danger

of Hindu fundamentalism)! Communist ruled Bengal still

teaches the glory of the Russian revolution for all

humanity, though Russia gave up communism ten years ago!

The Old Left was itself intolerant, oppressive and

dictatorial, sponsoring state terrorism and genocide

wherever it came to power. Indian leftists have never

rejected these policies and look back with nostalgia on

the Soviet Union!

 

Therefore, we must remember that the leftist criticism of

Hinduism coming from the Indian left is that of the old

left. This old left in India does not take up many of the

causes of the new left like ecology or native rights. It

even sides with the policies of the political right-wing

in western cultures upholding the rights of missionaries

to convert native peoples and continuing colonial

accounts of Indic civilization.

 

The communist inspired left in India has tried to

demonize the Hindu movement as a right-wing phenomenon in

order to discredit its spiritual orientation. The aim of

the Indian left is to keep the Hindu movement isolated

from any potential allies. After all, no one likes

fascists, which is a good term of denigration that evokes

negative emotions for both communists and capitalists.

 

Hinduism and the Left

 

The causes taken up by the Hindu movement are more at

home in the New Left than in right wing parties of the

West. Some of these resemble the concerns of the Green

Party. The Hindu movement offers a long-standing

tradition of environmental protection, economic

simplicity, and protection of religious and cultural

diversity. There is little in the so-called Hindu right

that is shared by the religious or political right-wing

in western countries, which reflect military, corporate

and missionary concerns. The Hindu movement has much in

common with the New Age movement in the West and its

seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge, not with the

right wing in the West, which rejects these things.

Clearly, the western right would never embrace the Hindu

movement as its ally.

 

To counter this distortion, some Hindus are now arguing

for a new 'Hindu Left' to better express the concerns of

Hindu Dharma in modern terms. They would see the new left

as more in harmony with Hindu concerns and a possible

ally. Hindu thought has always been progressive and

evolutionary, seeking to aid in the unfoldment of

consciousness in humanity and not resting content with

material or political gains as sufficient. Hindu Dharma

should be reexamined by the new left and the distortions

of by the old left discarded. The new left will find much

in Hindu Dharma that is relevant to its concerns.

 

The Hindu movement can be a great ally to many social

movements throughout the world. It has a base of nearly a

billion people and the world's largest non-biblical

religious tradition, with a long tradition of spiritual

thought and practice. The Hindu movement can be an ally

for any native causes, environmental concerns, women's

spiritual issues and movements toward economic simplicity

and global responsibility, to mention but a few.

 

Groups espousing such causes may have looked upon

Hinduism as an enemy, being taken in by leftist

propaganda. They must question these distortions of the

old left. They should look to the Hindu view for insight,

even if they may not agree with it on all points. They

should not trust the anti-Hindu stereotypes of the old

left, any more than they trust the views of the now

defunct Soviet Union.

 

Towards a Non-Political Social Order

 

However, the entire right-left division reflects the

conditions of western politics and is inaccurate in the

Indian context. We must give up such concepts in

examining Indic civilization, which in its core is

spiritually based, not politically driven. It reflects

older and deeper concerns that precede and transcend the

West's outer vision. As long as we define ourselves

through politics our social order will contain conflict

and confusion. Democracy may be the more benign face of a

political order, but it still hides the lack of any true

spiritual order. We must employ the vision of dharma and

subordinate politics to it, which should be a form of

Karma Yog.

 

dear ones, i hope you found that article interesting....if you like

his style of writing and what he has to say, you can get his books

very easily at your bookstore, or amazon.ca.

 

in Amma's Divine Love,

and in Her Service,

as ever,

your your own Self,

 

visvanathan

 

Om Amrtesvaryai Namah!