Hello Ankur-Da!
A few of reflections on your posts:
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The whole argument is based on the assumption that Hindutva is the same thing as �championing of Hinduism� which is not entirely true. Even though on the surface it looks like a religious movement, the Hindutva propaganda is based on RACE not religion, the religious struggle being merely a primary offshoot of the racial struggle.
The primary belief of Hindutva is that the Indian subcontinent is the homeland of the Hindus including the area south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, usually Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and sometimes Afghanistan. THE HINDUS, AS DEFINED BY THEM, ARE THOSE WHOSE RELIGIONS ARE INDIGENOUS TO INDIA (India as including the region mentioned above and the religions including Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc.) So the Hindutva-warriors do not implicitly have to conform to Hindu beliefs to be supporters of Hindutva as long as they follow a religion indigenous to this area. How deeply or how closely one has to follow a HINDU religion to lay a claim to the land of the Hindus, I will deal with towards the end of the post.
The Hindutva-fans consider the Muslims as invaders and therefore even though on the surface it seems like RSS/BJP Hindus are fighting with Muslims; theoretically, THEY ARE FIGHTING THEM NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE MUSLIMS BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE INVADERS. Hence a proper line of refuting the Hindutva arguments would be to discredit that the present population owns the area called India. Making RSS/BJP guys look like bad Hindus is at best merely a flank attack at Hindutva.
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Proposition 1 : The present spatio-temporal empirical world with its
distinctions of �I� and �you�, �we� and �them� is a radically >defective one inhabited by human beings who are in the sway of >Ignorance (avidya)
Proposition 2 : This actually follows from Proposition 1 as a >corollary and states that the empirical distinctions such as �male�, >�female�, �RSS�, �non-RSS�, �Mughal�, �Turk�, �Marxist� and so on do >not touch the �essential self� : they affect only the outward bodily >shape and generic characteristics of human beings. ...[snipped]...
I do not see how anyone who accepts Proposition 2 can claim
that the empirical distinctions that exist(ed) between a �Hindu� and
�Mughal� are �essential� distinctions.
The Monism or more accurately the Idealism of the Vedas/Upanishads is not the same proverbial jelly-like Hegelian Idealism where everything is ONE and the difference lies only in the perception. Contrarily, the metaphysics therein is nearer to a blend of Anne Conway�s concept of �Creature� and Immanuel Kant�s concept of NOUMENA and PHENOMENA. The Noumena is something that cannot be experienced by senses while Phenomena is something that can be.
To expound on it, Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad says:
Brahma is �made of knowledge, of mind, of breath, of seeing, of hearing of earth, of water, of wind, of space, of energy and of non-energy, of desire and of non-desire, of anger and of non-anger, of virtuousness and of non-virtuousness. It is made of everything. That is what is meant by the saying �made of this and made of that�.� (4.4.5)
But thinking of Brahma as a conglomerate of various parts opposes that idea that it is fundamentally One. The Taittiriya Upanishad solves this dilemma as follows:
�He (Brahma) desired:� Would that I were many! Let me procreate myself!� He performed austerity. Having performed austerity, he created this wholeworld, whatever there is here. Having created it, into it, indeed, he entered. Having entered it, he became both actual(sat) and the yon(tya), both defined(nirukta) and the undefined, both the base and the non-based, both the conscious(vijnana) and the unconscious, both the real(satya) and the false (anarta). As the real, he became whatever there is here. THAT IS WHY THEY CALL IT REAL� (2.6)
The Brahman is thus the NOUMENA (which cannot be sensed) while the manifestation of the same is the Aatman/Maya which is the PHENOMENA (and can be sensed).
The bottom line of this definitely long and probably tiring discourse is that even though everything developed from an original and still immanent unity, yet the PHENOMENA, or more simply put, the WORLD including the individuals therein are Plural and different.
I do not see how anyone who accepts Proposition 2 can claim that the empirical distinctions that exist(ed) between a �Hindu� and �Mughal� are �essential� distinctions
It is because even though each individual connects to the ONE and same Brahman, the individuals themselves are different.
Also on stray thoughts, if a Hindu or a Muslim is not real but something slapped on me by Maya then isn�t my act of violence towards a Muslim an act of Maya and hence unreal too? After all the TRUTH i.e. the Aatman of the Muslim doesnot die hence all I do by killing a Muslim is free its Aatman from Maya!
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Proposition 3 : The law of Karma is individual-istic and pertains >only to individuals, not in a �whole-sale� manner to societies. To >claim that the �sins of the fathers� are visited upon �their >children� is a complete violation of the law in its classical form.My post-mortem existence is dependent on my
own meritorious or non-meritorious actions performed in my life. I cannot therefore brand my �enemies� such as the Mughals as �they� or as �the others� since if I accept the law of Karma it is possible I myself was a Mughal in one of my previous existences!
I find this piece of argument self-defeating; it sounds pro-Hindutva to me! The EVIL has to be punished and in Hinduism it is an �a priori� principle. Whether I myself was evil or not has got nothing to do with it. From the Hindutva viewpoint (CONSIDERING we think of Muslims as Evil) if I was born as a Muslim it means I am suffering from bad Karma and had to be punished. So in effect since the Muslims are ALWAYS evil, they have to be ALWAYS punished whether I myself have to suffer or not.
The statement �To claim that the �sins of the fathers� are visited upon �their children� is a complete violation of the law in its classical form.� is totally pointless and this is why. According to the RSS, the Muslim kids are guilty NOT because their parents were sinners BUT because they THEMSELVES SINNED in their previous life( and hence are born as Muslims or children of sinners). They earned bad/negative Karma and hence have to be punished! So, I don�t think this is a fool-proof argument.
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I don�t believe that only if you obey the three propositions you are a Hindu. The problem with arbitrarily building a framework of beliefs that define a Hindu is that since there are no definitive rules, such frameworks are very subjective. E.g. I will always decide on a framework based on MY beliefs. Even in other religions like Christianity, a Christian doesnot have to believe in EVERYTHING the bible says to be Christian. All he needs to believe in are the basic principles of Christianity. But the basic principles of Hinduism are not defined! So how do we decide?
Due to its very nature, questions like �What is Hinduism?� or �Who is a Hindu?� can never be answered to any degree of satisfaction. What we can strive to answer though, is �When is a person a Hindu?� Note that the last question is not an ABSOLUTE question but a RELATIVE question as in �when is a person more Hindu than, say, a Christian or a Jew�.
Since we have no DEFINITE characteristic which defines a Hindu, there are only two ways of answering this question; one is through the STRUCTURALIST method of Levi-Strauss. In layman�s terms, it states that every religion (or for that matter culture, lanugage, mythology, anything) has basic underlying structures which are constant through all cultures and societies. In other religions, there are exact circumstances when someone is initiated into their religion (e.g. a person is Christian as soon as he accepts Christ as his Saviour or is baptised etc). According to the Structuralists, even though Hinduism and Christianity or Islam are different on the surface, they still share the basic underlying structure even though it might have undergone changes with the goal of furthering its development. A structuralist will basically explore the root structure of well-defined religions like Christianity, compare Hinduism to it and then decide which elements are necessary elements and which are mere embellishments.
The other is through the Deconstruction method championed in books like �Acts of Religion� (Jacques Derrida) which I won�t even attempt to discuss here due to its complexity.
Syamanta Saikia
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