Category Archives: Historical / Scientific facts

The purpose of this category is to rewrite the TRUE & AUTHENTIC World & Indian History without any Pride or Prejudice towards any individual or community or country or religion. Also the purpose of this category is to explore the Sciences behind different Customs & Traditions, Rituals & Followings, Mythology & Scriptures.

Reason why British left India in 1947

Posted on 27th December 2014 | Comments Off on Reason why British left India in 1947

British - India
Writing in his much-acclaimed book Indian Struggle, Subhas Chandra Bose stated, “Mahatma Gandhi has rendered and will continue to render phenomenal service to his country.” “But”, he added, “India’s salvation will not be achieved under his leadership.”

Nearly 70 years after power was transferred to Indian hands, sufficient information has come on record to give a new thrust to the old question: “Who brought India freedom — Gandhi or Bose?”

The people who were best positioned to answer the question were those who had an inside knowledge of the situation as it prevailed in India from 1942 to 1947. In 1942, Gandhi launched the Quit India movement. The view from the Bose’s side was that it was his suggestion in 1939 to serve a 6-month’s ultimatum on the British Government, which was accepted by Gandhi in totality in his Quit India resolution of August 1942. Prior to this, Gandhi was, as Bose himself stated repeatedly, most reluctant to launch a movement. This is what he wrote in Indian Struggle.

“On 6 September(1939), Mahatma Gandhi, after meeting the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, issued a press statement saying that in spite of the differences between India and Britain on the question of Indian independence, India should cooperate with Britain in her hour of danger. This statement came as a bombshell to the Indian people, who since 1927 had been taught by the Congress leaders to regard the next war as a unique opportunity for winning freedom.”

Be that as it may, the Quit India movement was launched in good earnest. Bose praised Gandhi’s stirring speech as he launched it. But, unfortunately, the movement was “crushed within 3 weeks”. Thus spake Khushwant Singh, someone who was not a fan of Subhas Bose. Anyhow, having lived through those times, Singh further explained: “The British were not evicted from India; they found it increasingly difficult to rule it and decided to call it a day.”

So what happened between 1942 and 1947 that made the British take the call? Conventional wisdom can be explained by way of 1954 Bollywood hit “दे दी हमें आज़ादी बिना खडग बिना ढाल/साबरमती के संत तू ने कर दिया कमाल”, which extols Gandhi for having singlehandedly delivered freedom to India solely through the non-violent means. Celebrated historians and researchers with all their experience and exposure (which doesn’t come easily to those who go against the current) can put it better

There is a ground rule in journalism — and also in intelligence — that if 3 informed reliable sources independent of each other make similar statements, the sum of their statements has to as close to truth as one gets it.

So let’s try and connect some dots and see what story they tell.

As late as 1946, Gandhi stated, “We shall be able to win freedom only through the principles the Congress has adopted for the past 30 years.” Gandhi’s own three pet principles were “truth, ahimsa and brahmacharya”. The first 2 are well-espoused by Gandhians, who rather not speak about the third for it is a blot on the Gandhian legacy.

No one knew India’s internal situation better than the Director, Intelligence Bureau. One who thinks it’s the editor of some newspaper is superficial. Here’s what Sir Norman Smith, DIB, noted in a secret report of November 1945 that was declassified in the 1970s: “The situation in respect of the Indian National Army is one which warrants disquiet. There has seldom been a matter which has attracted so much Indian public interest and, it is safe to say, sympathy… the threat to the security of the Indian Army is one which it would be unwise to ignore.”

An agreement of sort came from Lt General SK Sinha, former Governor of Jammu & Kashmir and Assam, who was one of the only 3 Indian officers posted in the Directorate of Military Operations in New Delhi in 1946. “There was considerable sympathy for the INA within the Army… It is true that fears of another 1857 had begun to haunt the British in 1946.” Sinha wrote this in 1976.

Agreeing with this contention were a number of British MPs who met British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in February 1946. “There are two alternative ways of meeting this common desire (a) that we should arrange to get out, (b) that we should wait to be driven out. In regard to (b), the loyalty of the Indian Army is open to question; the INA have become national heroes….” This minute too was declassified in the 1970s.

A most valuable light on the role of the INA was thrown by Bhimrao Ambedkar in February 1956, a few months before he passed away, in a tell-all interview to the BBC. “I don’t know how Mr Attlee suddenly agreed to give India independence… It seems to me from my own analysis that two things led the Labour party to take this decision: 1. The national army that was raised by Subhas Chandra Bose. The British had been ruling the country in the firm belief that whatever may happen in the country or whatever the politicians do, they will never be able to change the loyalty of soldiers. That was one prop on which they were carrying on the administration. And that was completely dashed to pieces.”

The clincher of an argument came from Earl Attlee himself as he visited India in October 1956. Some 2 decades later, PB Chakravarty, Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court and acting Governor of West Bengal in 1956, recalled his talks with the former British PM in the following words: “Toward the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Attlee’s lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, ‘m-i-n-i-m-a-l!”

British historian Michael Edwardes fairly summed this up in his 1964 book, The Last Years of British India. “It slowly dawned upon the Government of India that the backbone of the British rule, the Indian Army, might now no longer be trustworthy. The ghost of Subhas Bose, like Hamlet’s father, walked the battlements of the Red Fort (where the INA soldiers were being tried), and his suddenly amplified figure overawed the conference that was to lead to Independence.”

It is a wide known fact that Bose met Hitler during WW-2 & had the german support against the Brits. He also met many Indian POWs in German ccamps & motivated them to fight for independance against the Imperialist British.

The crucial point to note is that thanks to Subhas Chandra Bose’s activities, the Indian Armed Forces began to see themselves as defenders of India rather than of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason why the British Empire disappeared from the face of the earth within an astonishingly short space of twenty years. Indian soldiers, who were the main prop of the Empire, were no longer willing to fight for the British. What influenced the British decision was mutiny of the Indian Navy following the INA trials in 1946. While the British wanted to try Subhas Chandra Bose’s INA as traitors, Indian soldiers saw them as nationalists and patriots. This scared the British. They decided to get out in a hurry.

(Attlee repeated his argument on at least two other occasions, including once in the House of Commons. During a debate in the House of Commons, he told Churchill that he would agree to the latter’s suggestion of holding on to India if he could guarantee the loyalty of the Indian armed forces. Churchill had no reply. The Labour Prime Minister was as much an imperialist as Churchill, but more pragmatic, prepared to see the writing on the wall.)

This will come as a shock to most Indians brought up to believe that the Congress movement driven by the ‘spiritual force’ of Mahatma Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both evidence and the logic of history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy. It was the fear of mutiny by the Indian armed forces – and not any ‘spiritual force’ – that forced the issue of freedom. The British saw that the sooner they left the better for themselves, for, at the end of the war, India had some three million men under arms. One would have to be extraordinarily dense – which the British were not – to fail to see the writing on the wall.

So, as the great historian R.C. Majumdar wrote, Subhas Bose with his INA campaigns probably contributed more to Indian independence than Gandhi, Nehru and their movements. The result of Subhas Chandra Bose’s activities was the rise of the nationalist spirit in the Indian Armed Forces. This is the reason why Nehru, after he became Prime Minister, did everything possible to turn Bose into a non-person. He wanted no rivals.

As Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his famous “Tryst with destiny” speech, not a word in it was devoted to Bose or his INA, but without whom the transfer of power wouldn’t have taken place in 1947.

Also check the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c579ZHgc9IM&feature=player_embedded

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The history of Christmas

Posted on 25th December 2014 | Comments Off on The history of Christmas

The History of Christmas

I. When was Jesus born?

A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.

B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.

C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:

a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome’s reign, etc.

b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.

c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.

d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).

e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.

f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.

D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.”

E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.

F. Luke 2:8 explains that when Christ was born, “there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” Note that they were “abiding” in the field. This never happened in December. Both Ezra 10:9-13 and the Song of Solomon 2:11 show that winter was the rainy season and shepherds could not stay on cold, open fields at night.

II. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”[6] On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

III. The Origins of Christmas Customs

A. The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.[7] Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B. The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8] The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]

C. The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).[10]

D. The Origin of Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children’s stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

IV. The Christmas Challenge

· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.” It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.

· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning. “We are just having fun.”

LAWRENCE KELEMEN

Alternate sources – The Speaking tree

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LIFE after DEATH

Posted on 6th December 2014 | Leave a comment

What happens after death?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: What happens after death is the mind gets freed from the body, the spirit. The mind has memory and intelligence, so these two things become like a balloon. The karma, the deepest impressions form a balloon. It is like in sleep.

Death is nothing but a long sleep. Before going to sleep, see the last thought that you get, and as soon as you wake up, see what is the first thought that comes. Have you noticed? It will variably be the same though.

So the physical body decays and the pranic body with all the impressions forms a balloon and leaves the body and hangs around.

Don’t imagine a balloon hanging around! It is a light; an energy.

I will give you the best example. In a television station, they conduct a program and then they transmit it through the dish and the program remains in the atmosphere – it is the same way.

When you send an email from the computer, you type all the letters and then you press the send button. What happens? It goes into the space. Does your email remain in the space till it is downloaded? Even after several days you can download your email. Even one year later or ten years later you can download an email. There is no expiry date, isn’t that so. It is not like those greeting cards which sometimes people send you that expire in 24 hours.

The messages or letters you send don’t hang as letters in the space, it remains in the space as energy.

Like that every soul is a particular frequency and every thumb is different because a thumb is like a particular cell phone chip.

So after death, every individual energy stays, and the impressions it has taken, accordingly to that it experiences those stages there. But then after sometime that soul comes back.

The soul enters the body at three times – this is all a secret. It is called the birth secret and death secret.

So the soul enters at the moment of conception, or it enters in the fifth month, or at the time of birth. So the three sections are there, but there is no way to determine when it enters.

So if at conception time it comes then what one should do to care for that?

Keep yourself happy. Usually pregnant women are kept very happy in India. Whatever she wants is provided to her.

I would say, don’t watch all these violent movies, and scary songs, and scary things. Generally light flute music would be good because it is soothing. It is good to listen to music, knowledge and wisdom. All these things would be preferable.

The soul also chooses where to be born, the place to come. According to its wish it will just come there.

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Tipu Sultan a COMMUNAL Fanatic !!!

Posted on 20th November 2014 | Leave a comment

TIPU SULTAN UNMASKED

Tipu Sultan had, ruled his kingdom only for sixteen-and-a-half years, from December 7, 1782 to May 4, 1799. The territory of Malabar was under his effective control only for a short period of eight years. If he had not secured the assistance of the wily Purnaiyya, there would not have been so many Muhammadans in the states of Kerala and Karnataka. Hindus also would not have become less prosperous, and fewer in number.

When that Brahmin Prime Minister, Purnaiyya, presented to Tipu Sultan 90,000 soldiers, three crore rupees, and invaluable ornaments made of precious stones, he was tempted to rule as the Emperor of the South India. Tipu did not consider the Hindu rulers of Maharashtra, Coorg and Travancore or the Muslim ruler Nizam as impediments. He was afraid of only the British. He had convinced himself that he could easily become the Emperor of South India if he could somehow vanquish the British. Because of his intense anti-British attitude, the so-called progressive and secular historians have made a vain attempt to paint Tipu Sultan as a great national hero.

Opposition to foreign powers need not always be due to love for one’s country. To achieve his selfish goal and to face the British forces, Tipu Sultan sought the assistance of another foreign power, the French, who were manoeuvring to establish their own domination in the country. How is it possible, therefore, for Tipu Sultan to be an enemy of foreign forces when he himself had sought help from Napoleon who was then a prisoner in St. Helena Island and also the French King, Louis XVI?

Besides, he also wanted to establish Islamic rule in the country; to achieve that he had to first defeat the British. For this purpose, Tipu Sultan solicited the assistance of Muslim countries like Persia, Afghanistan and Turkey. It is true that Tipu did not harm the Raja of Cochin or anyone for that matter who surrendered and pledged loyalty to him. But how does that make him a friend of Hindus?

Tipu and the Nizam were the only Muslim rulers in the Deccan at that time and hence he wanted to avoid any dispute with the Nizam. He insisted that the Nizam should agree to give his daughter in marriage to his son. But the Nizam, considering Tipu as an upstart with no aristocratic heredity, refused the offer. (According to Bhagwan Gidwani, Hyder Ali Khan had suggested earlier to the Nizam that he should agree to the marriage of his daughter to the young Tipu, then in his teens.) As if to spite the Nizam, Tipu Sultan got another of his sons married to the daughter of Arackal Bibi of Cannanore mainly to secure the loyalty of Malabar Muslims for subjugating the entire Malabar region. The result was for everybody to see in due course. It may be noted that the family of Arackal Bibi, though converted to Islam, followed the matriarchal system a system which the Muslim fanatic, Tipu, wanted to reform.

HE WANTED TO BE A PADISHAH

He wanted to become an Emperor after defeating the British. He wanted to achieve his ambition after consulting the astrologers. There were a few Brahmin astrologers in Sree Ranganatha Swami Temple. They predicted that if some of the suggested remedial rituals were performed, Tipu would achieve his cherished ambition. Believing that he could become the undisputed ruler of the whole of South India, after defeating the British, he performed all the suggested rituals in the Sree Ranaganatha Swami Temple, besides giving costly presents to the astrologers. This act is being widely interpreted by secularist historians as love and respect for Hindu religion and traditions! They also doubt if there were any Hindu temples which were desecrated or destroyed by Tipu Sultan and his Islamic army in Malabar.

The reputed historian, Lewis Rice, who wrote the History of Mysore after going through various official records, stated as follows: “In the vast empire of Tipu Sultan on the eve of his death, there were only two Hindu temples having daily pujas within the Sreerangapatanam fortress. It is only for the satisfaction of the Brahmin astrologers who used to study his horoscope that Tipu Sultan had spared those two temples. The entire wealth of every Hindu temple was confiscated before 1790 itself mainly to make up for the revenue loss due to total prohibition in the country.”

There are people who proclaim to the world that Tipu Sultan’s rule was fair and progressive in his own state of Mysore. It would be appropriate to have a look at what a Mysorean, M.A. Gopal Rao, stated a few years ago in one of his articles: ‘In a deliberately designed taxation scheme, the religious prejudice of Tipu Sultan became quite clear. His co-religionists, Muslims, were exempted from house tax, commodity tax and also the levy on other items of household use. Those who were converted to Muhammadanism, were also given similar tax exemptions. He had even made provisions for the education of their children. Tipu Sultan discontinued the practice of appointing Hindus in different administrative and military jobs as practised by his father, Hyder Ali Khan, in the past. He had deep hatred towards all non-Muslims. During the entire period of sixteen years of his regime, Purnaiyya was the only Hindu who had adorned the post of Dewan or minister under Tipu Sultan. In 1797 (two years before his death) among the 65 senior Government posts, not even a single Hindu was retained. All the Mustadirs were also Muslims. Among the 26 civil and military officers captured by the British in 1792 there were only 6 non-Muslims. In 1789, when the Nizam of Hyderabad and other Muslim rulers decided that only Muslims would be appointed henceforth in all Government posts, Tipu Sultan also adopted the same policy in his Mysore State. Just because they were Muslims, even those who were illiterate and inefficient, were also appointed to important Government posts. Even for getting promotions, one still had to be a Muslim under Tipu Sultan’s regime. Considering the interest and convenience of only Muslim officers, all the records relating to tax revenue, were ordered to be written in Persian rather than in Marathi and Kannada as followed earlier. He even tried to make Persian the State language in place of Kannada. In the end all the Government posts were filled by lazy and irresponsible Muslims. As a consequence the people had to suffer a great deal because of those fun-seeking and irresponsible Muslim officers. The Muslim officers, occupying important posts at all levels, were all dishonest and unreliable persons. Even when people complained to him with evidences against those officers, Tipu Sultan did not care to inquire about the complaints lodged.”

EVEN THE PLACE-NAMES WERE CHANGED

Gopal Rao had written all these on the basis of the writings of Tipu’s own son, Ghulam Muhammad, and Muslim historians like Kirmani. Even the Hindu names of places, the Sultan could not tolerate. Therefore, Mangalapuri (Mangalore) was changed to Jalalabad, Cannanore (Kanwapuram) to Kusanabad, Bepur (Vaippura) to Sultanpatanam or Faruqui, Mysore to Nazarabad, Dharwar to Quarshed-Sawad, Gooty to Faiz-Hissar, Ratnagiri to Mustafabad, Dindigul to Khaliqabad, and Calicut (Kozhikode) to Islamabad. It was after the death of Tipu Sultan that the local people reverted to old names.

ISLAMIC ATROCITIES IN COORG, BEDNUR, AND MANGALORE

The cruelties which Tipu Sultan committed in Coorg, has no parallel in history. On one occasion, he forcibly converted over ten thousand Hindus to Muhammadanism. On another occasion, he captured and converted to Islam more than one thousand Hindu Coorgis before imprisoning them in the Sreerangapatanam fortress. In the period of confusion and anarchy prevailing in Sreerangapatanam during the last war of Tipu Sultan against the British, all the Coorgi prisoners escaped from the prison and became Hindus again after reaching their native kingdom. Against the solemn oath given to the Raja of Coorg, Tipu Sultan forcibly abducted a young princess from the Coorg royal family and made her his wife against her will.

The atrocities committed by Tipu Sultan in Bidnur in North Karnataka during and after its capture by him, were most barbarous and beyond description. Ayaz Khan who was Kammaran Nambiar from Chirackal Kingdom before his forcible conversion to Islam by Hyder Ali Khan, had been appointed as Governor of Bidnur. Tipu Sultan was jealous of and opposed to Ayaz Khan from the very beginning because Hyder Ali Khan had considered the latter more intelligent and smart. When Ayaz Khan learnt that Tipu Sultan was scheming to kill him secretly, he escaped to Bombay with plenty of gold. Tipu Sultan came to Bednur and forcibly converted its entire population to Islam. The people accepted Islam for the sake of their lives.

After the capture of Mangalore, thousands of Christians were also forcibly sent to Sreerangapatanam where all of them were circumcised and converted to Islam. Tipu Sultan’s justification was that during the Portuguese domination, prior to the arrival of the British, many Muslims had been converted to Christianity by their Missionaries. He proudly proclaimed his action as a sort of punishment for the conversion of many Muslims by the Portuguese.

Then he marched upto Kumbla on the northern borders of Kerala, forcibly converting to Islam every Hindu on the way. This time, his argument (repeated by the Muslim and secularist historians of today) was that if all belonged to one religion – Muhammadanism – there would be unity and consequently it would be easy to defeat the British!

INSIDE MALABAR

In Malabar, the main target of Tipu Sultan’s atrocities were Hindus and Hindu temples. According to Lewis B. Boury, the atrocities committed by Tipu Sultan against Hindus in Malabar were worse and more barbarous than those committed against the Hindus in Hindustan by the notorious Mahmud of Ghazni, Alauddin Khalji, and Nadir Shah. He disputes in his book Mukherjee’s version that Tipu Sultan had converted only his opponents. Normally even a cruel person kills or tortures only his enemies. But that argument does not justify the cruelties committed by him against innocent women and children.

DANCE OF THE ISLAMIC SATAN

According to the Malabar Manual of William Logan who was the District Collector for some time, Thrichambaram and Thalipparampu temples in Chirackal Taluqa, Thiruvangatu Temple (Brass Pagoda) in Tellicherry, and Ponmeri Temple near Badakara were all destroyed by Tipu Sultan. The Malabar Manual mention that the Maniyoor mosque was once a Hindu temple. The local belief is that it was converted to a mosque during the days of Tipu Sultan.

Vatakkankoor Raja Raja Varma in his famous literary work, History of Sanskrit Literature in Kerala, has written the following about the loss and destruction faced by the Hindu temples in Kerala during the military regime (Padayottam) of Tipu Sultan: “There was no limit as to the loss the Hindu temples suffered due to the military operations of Tipu Sultan. Burning down the temples, destruction of the idols installed therein and also cutting the heads of cattle over the temple deities were the cruel entertainments of Tipu Sultan and his equally cruel army. It was heartrending even to imagine the destruction caused by Tipu Sultan in the famous ancient temples of Thalipparampu and Thrichambaram. The devastation caused by this new Ravana’s barbarous activities have not yet been fully rectified.”

KOZHIKODE MADE A GRAVEYARD

As per the provisions of the Treaty of Mangalore of 1784, the British had allowed Tipu Sultan to have his suzerainty over Malabar. ‘In consequence, the Hindus of Malabar had to suffer the most severe enormities the world had ever known in history,’ observes K.V. Krishna Iyer, in his famous book, Zamorins of Calicut, based on historical records available from the royal house of Zamorins in Calicut. “When the second-in-line of Zamorins, Eralppad, refused to cooperate with Tipu Sultan in his military operations against Travancore because of Tipu’s crude methods of forcible circumcision and conversion of Hindus to Islam, the enraged Tipu Sultan took a solemn oath to circumcise and convert the Zamorin and his chieftains and Hindu soldiers to Islamic faith,” he adds.

L.B. Boury writes: “To show his ardent devotion and steadfast faith in Muhammaddan religion, Tipu Sultan found Kozhikode to be the most suitable place. It was because the Hindus of Malabar refused to reject the matriarchal system, polyandry and half-nakedness of women that the ‘great reformer’ Tipu Sultan tried to honour the entire population with Islam.” To the Malabar people, the Muslim harem, Muslim polygamy and the Islamic ritual of circumcision were equally repulsive and opposed to the ancient culture and tradition in Kerala. Tipu Sultan sought a marriage alliance with the matriarchal Muslim family of Arackal Bibi in Cannanore. Kozhikode was then a centre of Brahmins and had over 7000 Brahmin families living there. Over 2000 Brahmin families perished as a result of Tipu Sultan’s Islamic cruelties. He did not spare even women and children. Most of the men escaped to forests and foreign lands.

Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai wrote in the Mathrubhoomi Weekly of December 25, 1955: “Muhammadans greatly increased in number. Hindus were forcibly circumcised in thousands. As a result of Tipu’s atrocities, strength of Nairs and Chamars (Scheduled Castes) significantly diminished in number. Namboodiris also substantially decreased in number.”

The German missionary Guntest has recorded: ‘Accompanied by an army of 60,000, Tipu Sultan came to Kozhikode in 1788 and razed it to the ground. It is not possible even to describe the brutalities committed by that Islamic barbarian from Mysore.” C.A. Parkhurst also noted that ‘Almost the entire Kozhikode was razed to the ground.”

TEMPLES DESTROYED

Thali, Thiruvannur, Varackal, Puthur, Govindapuram, Thalikkunnu and other important temples in the town of Kozhikode as well as those nearby were completely destroyed as a result of Tipu’s military operations. Some of them were reconstructed by the Zamorin after he returned following the defeat of Tipu Sultan in Sreerangapatanam and the Treaty of 1792.

The devastation caused by Tipu Sultan to the ancient and holy temples of Keraladheeswaram, Thrikkandiyoor and Thriprangatu in Vettum region was terrible. The Zamorin renovated these temples to some extent. The famous and ancient Thirunavaya Temple, known throughout the country as an ancient teaching-centre of the Vedas, revered by the devotees of Vishnu from Tamil Nadu, and existing before the advent of Christ, was also plundered and destroyed by Tipu’s army (Malabar Gazetteer). After dismantling and destroying the idol, Tipu converted the Thrikkavu Temple into an ammunition depot in Ponnani (Malabar Manual). It was the Zamorin who repaired the temple later. Kotikkunnu, Thrithala, Panniyoor and other family temples of the Zamorin were plundered and destroyed. The famous Sukapuram Temple was also desecrated. Damage done to the Perumparampu Temple and Maranelira Temple of Azhvancherry Thamprakkal (titular head of all Namboodiri Brahmins) in Edappadu, can be seen even today. Vengari Temple and Thrikkulam Temple in Eranadu, Azhinjillam Temple in Ramanattukara, Indyannur Temple, Mannur Temple and many other temples were defiled and damaged extensively during the military regime.

Tipu Sultan reached Guruvayoor Temple only after destroying Mammiyoor Temple and Palayur Christian Church. If the destruction caused by Tipu’s army is not visible today in the Guruvayoor Temple, it is mainly because of the intervention of Hydrose Kutty who had been converted to Islam by Hyder Ali Khan. He secured the safety of the temple and the continuation of land-tax exemption allowed by Hyder Ali earlier, besides the renovation and repairs done by the devotees later. According to available evidences, fearing the wrath of Tipu Sultan, the sacred idol of the Guruvayoor Temple was removed to the Ambalapuzha Sri Krishna Temple in Travancore State. It was only after the end of Tipu’s military regime, that the idol was ceremoniously reinstated in the Guruvayoor Temple itself. Even today, daily pujas are conducted in Ambalapuzha Sri Krishna Temple where the idol of Guruvayoor Temple was temporarily installed and worshipped.

Damages caused to the nearby temples at Parampathali, Panmayanadu and Vengidangu are visible even today. The deplorable state of the architecture of the sanctum sanctorum of Parampathali Temple destroyed during the military operations of Tipu Sultan is really heart-rending. The atrocities committed in Kozhikode during the nightmarish days of the military occupation are vividly described in the works of Fra Bartolomaeo who had travelled through Kerala at that time. How cruelly Tipu Sultan, ably assisted by the French Commander M. Lally, had treated the Hindu and Christian population can be clearly understood from his writings.

TALKING RECORDS OF KERALA HISTORY

Govinda Pillai says in his famous book, History of Literature; “During Malayalam Era 965 corresponding to 1789-90, Tipu Sultan crossed over to Malabar with an army of uncivilised barbarians. With a sort of fanatical love for Islamic faith, he destroyed many Hindu temples and Christian churches which were the custodians of precious wealth and religious traditions. Besides, Tipu Sultan abducted hundreds of people and forcibly circumcised and converted them to Islam – an act which was considered by them as more than death.”

A small army of 2000 Nairs of Kadathanadu resisted the invasion of the huge army of Tipu Sultan from a fortress in Kuttipuram for a few weeks. They were reduced to starvation and death. Tipu Sultan entered the fort and offered to spare their lives, provided they accepted conversion to Islam. The unfortunate lot of 2000 Nairs were then forced to eat beef after being converted to Islamic faith, at the end of usual religious ritual of mass circumcision. All the members of one branch of Parappanad Royal Family were forcibly converted to Muhammadan faith except for one or two who escaped from the clutches of Tipu Sultan’s army. Similarly, one Thiruppad belonging to Nilamboor Royal Family was also forcibly abducted and converted to Islam. Thereafter, it was reported that further conversions of Hindus were attempted through those converts. In the end, when the Kolathiri Raja surrendered and paid tribute, Tipu Sultan got him treacherously killed without any specific reason, dragged his dead body tied to the feet of an elephant through the streets, and finally hanged him from a tree-top to show his Islamic contempt for Hindu Rajas.

It may be mentioned here that the entire Wodayar Royal Family of Mysore had been humiliated and kept in prison by Hyder Ali Khan and Tipu Sultan in their capital city, Sreerangapatanam. Even the Palghat Raja, Ettipangi Achan who had surrendered, was imprisoned on suspicion and later taken to Sreerangapatanam. Nothing was heard of him subsequently. Christians in Palghat fled out of fear. Tipu Sultan terrified the entire Hindu population in Malabar, stationing his army contingents in different regions for the purpose. The tax initially imposed by Hyder Ali Khan was forcibly collected by Tipu Sultan. Standing crops were confiscated. This act provoked even some influential Mappila landlords to revolt against Tipu Sultan.

Hyder Ali Khan had exempted temples from the payment of land tax. But Tipu Sultan forced the temples to pay heavy taxes. The famous Hemambika Temple at Kalpathi of the Palghat Raja who had surrendered to Hyder Ali Khan, the Kachamkurissi Temple of the Kollamkottu Raja who had deserted the Zamorin and sided with Hyder Ali Khan, and also the Jain Temple at Palghat suffered serious damages due to the cruel policies of Tipu Sultan.

Many Nair and Brahmin landlords fled the country leaving their vast wealth behind. The Mappilas forcibly took possession of their lands and wealth. Tipu Sultan did not object to their actions. Most of the Mappila landlords of today claim that they purchased the ownership of the landed properties from Nairs and Brahmins after paying heavy compensation. These blatant lies are being repeated by them in spite of the fact that practically nothing was paid to the Hindu landlords then or later. (The same Islamic treachery was repeated during the Mappila riots of 1921.)

In any case, Tipu Sultan succeeded in mass killing, converting lakhs of Hindus to Islamic faith, driving thousands out of their traditional homes, and finally making the rest extremely poor. Many Hindus belonging to lower castes accepted conversion to Islam under duress. However, many others, especially the Thiyyas, fled to Tellicherry and Mahe for safety.

When the British established their rule in Malabar and the Hindu landlords made efforts to recover their landed properties, illegally occupied by the local Mappilas, Mullahs started preaching to their fanatic followers that “killing of Hindu landlords was a sacred Islamic act,” leading to frequent Mappila outrages in Malabar.

In Cherunad, Vettathunad, Eranad, Valluvanad, Thamarassery and other interior areas, local Mappilas unleashed a reign of terror on the Hindu population, mainly to retain the illegally occupied land and to establish their domination over Hindus as during Tipu’s regime. Fearing the organised robberies and violence, people could not even travel freely in the Malabar hinterland of predominantly Mappila population.

Lt. Col. E. Phitiyan, Andriansi, Mayan, K.P. Padmanabha Menon Sadasyathilakan T.K. Velu Pillai, Ullur Parameshwara Iyer, and other prominent people have described vividly the various types of atrocities committed by Tipu Sultan during the days of his Islamic rule in Malabar. There is no count of the wealth looted from Hindu temples and taken away by him to Sreerangapatanam. It is, therefore, very pitiable that a few shameless Hindus of today have come forward to orchestrate the nefarious propaganda of the fanatic Muslims, namely, that it was the imperialist divide-and-rule policy of the British that was responsible for blaming the Muslims for various atrocities committed against Hindus. This Big Lie was surreptitiously entered subsequently in history books and related records. It is obvious that these “Hindus” are speaking on the theme of Hindu-Muslim unity and praising the ‘secular’ credentials of the Muslim League, Tipu Sultan and Aurangzeb to the sky, not sincerely for the sake of Hindu-Muslim amity but only because of their inherent cowardice. They even proclaim that the notorious Mappila outrage of 1921 was part of the freedom struggle!

CONCLUSION

A few observations about the attack of Tipu Sultan on the Travancore State would be appropriate in this context. If the Nedunkotta had not been constructed earlier mainly to stop the danger from the powerful Zamorin, the same fate would have befallen the helpless Travancore State as well. Because of the above fortification, Tipu Sultan could wreak vengeance only in Angamally, Alwaye, Varapuzha, Alangod and other towns on the northern borders of Travancore State. That is what the Dewan of Travancore, Madhava Rao, had written in the history of Travancore. It may be emphasized here that he had relied on the original local records, not the ones published by the European historians. He wrote: “Whatever cruelties, the local Mappilas were desirous of indulging in the land, Tipu Sultan and his army of Muslim converts did. The ancient and holy temples were heartlessly defiled or burnt down. The ruins of those temples destroyed by Tipu’s fanatic army are the existing evidences of the atrocities committed by Muslims in the country. Christian churches also had to suffer widespread destructions. However, Tipu Sultan spared only the territories of Cochin Raja who had surrendered to Hyder Ali Khan in the beginning itself. Still, when Tipu Sultan and his army entered Parur and started firing at Kodungallur, the Cochin Raja sent a letter to the Travancore Raja requesting him ‘to protect me and my family’.” (A copy of the original letter was also published in the book.)

These are the recorded facts about the atrocities unleashed by Tipu Sultan during his military regime notoriously known as Padayottakalam. Poets have written a number of poems about the sufferings of the people and the land during those nightmarish days. The following was written by a member of the Katathanad Royal Family about the consequences of Padayottakalam:

“Oh Shiva! Shiva Lingam (idol) has gone (destroyed) from the temple, and also the Lingam (manliness) from the land:”

(This is the English translation of the Malayalam article by P.C.N. Raja first published in Kesari Annual of 1964. The late Raja was a senior member of the Zamorin Royal Family.)

By LATE PCN RAJA

The TRUTH behind the so called donations of TIPU Sultan to the Sringeri Mutt

During Tipu’s barbaric raid on the Malabar. there was no atrocity that he didn’t commit on the Hindus. There, was no measure for the rivers of Hindu blood he shed, no limit to the cruelties he inflicted. It is worth recalling William Logan’s list of the Hindu temples that Tipu destroyed in the Malabar. It is also worth recalling the frenzy of rapture Tipu felt after his Malabar raid. He describes this rapture in his 19 January 1790 letter to his loyal servant, Badruz Juman Khan:

“I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam. I am now determined to march against the cursed Raman Nair.”

This Raman Nair was the same Dharmaraja Raman Nair of Travancore. This determination cost Tipu dearly. As we have seen in earlier chapters, it directly led to the so-called Third Anglo Mysore war, which badly singed Tipu. His hubris lay in tatters, and he appeared to have softened at least outwardly.

His immediate objective was to recover half of his kingdom, which he had to surrender to the British, according to the 1792 treaty. He realised that in order to achieve this objective, he could not afford to antagonise the Hindus who formed the majority population in his remaining dominions.

It was in this circumstance that he gave grants and gifts to the Mutt at Sringeri. However, our self-proclaimed intellectuals and alleged historians hold such aberrations as proof of Tipu’s amazing religious tolerance. But then, if we examine the conditions under which Tipu wrote honey-dipped letters to the pontiff of Sringeri and made lavish donations to the Mutt, a completely different picture emerges. Leela Prasad, in her Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town, quotes Surendranath Sen:

“Tipu was at this time [in 1793] hard-pressed by his enemies and wanted, therefore, to conciliate his Hindu subjects and at the same time to bring about the discomfiture of his enemies [the Marathas] by means of .superstitious rites.”

This opens to us another facet of Tipu’s personality.

Tipu placed immense faith in astrology. He filled his court with all sorts of soothsayers and astrologers. He would consult them for fixing auspicious dates and times before embarking on a raid. In his book Life History of Raja Kesavadas, VR Parameswaran Pillai narrates Tipu’s obsession with astrology:

“With respect to the much-published land-grants I had explained the reasons about 40 years back. Tipu had immense faith in astrological predictions. It was to become an Emperor (Padushah) after destroying the might of the British that Tipu resorted to land-grants and other donations to Hindu temples in Mysore including Sringeri Mutt, as per the advice of the local Brahmin astrologers. Most of these were done after his defeat in 1791 and the humiliating Srirangapatanam Treaty in 1792. These grants were not done out of respect or love for Hindus or Hindu religion but for becoming Padushah as predicted by the astrologers.”

The British colonel and historian, William Kirkpatrick, who discovered more than 2,000 letters (written in Farsi in Tipu’s own handwriting) in Tipu’s Srirangapattana fort (after his death) also echoes Parameswaran Pillai:

“…in his childish eagerness to give new denominations to everything, he should have suffered Seringapatam [Srirangapattana] and Bangalore to retain their old names; especially as the former appellation, having been derived from an idol, might, on that account, be supposed to have been particularly offensive to a bigoted Musulman. It is not, therefore, improbable, that some superstitious notion may have restrained him in these instances.”

Tipu’s confidence had been shattered by a series of reverses, which had finally culminated in the humiliating defeat of 1792. In this war, he had to cough up a huge sum of money, had lost half his territory, and had to send two of his sons as hostages. The haughty Tipu of the 1782-92 decade now faced an uphill struggle to recover his territory and regain his wounded pride. He had finally realised that in order to face a tough enemy like the British, he had to earn the confidence of his Hindu subjects who formed the majority population. He also understood that he would be in great personal danger if he antagonised them any further.

Therefore, it is more accurate to say that Tipu’s donation to the Sringeri Mutt was born out political expediency and not religious tolerance. If he was indeed a tolerant ruler, why would he demolish so many Hindu temples throughout his kingdom and in that of others? Why would he engage in such rampant and large scale conversions of Hindus? Why would he, in his secret letters, address non-Muslims as kaffirs?

It was the politician in Tipu that gave donations, grants, and gifts to the Sringeri Mutt and a few other temples. The bigot in him remained intact, eclipsed temporarily by a humiliating setback.

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Sanskrit the sound of Existence !!!

Posted on 18th November 2014 | Leave a comment

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev : The Sanskrit language is a device, not necessarily a medium of communication. Most of the other languages were made up because we had to refer to something. Initially, they started with just a handful of words and then multiplied them into complex forms. But Sanskrit is a discovered language because today we know that if you feed any sound into an oscilloscope, every sound has a form attached to it. Similarly, every form has a sound attached to it. Every form in the existence is reverberating in a certain way and creates a certain form. This happened to me as a child: I would be staring at someone who would be talking. Initially, I heard their words, then just the sounds. After some time, I just saw some crazy patterns happening around them which so engrossed, amazed and amused me that I could just sit staring at them forever, not understanding a single word because I was not listening to the words at all.

Sanskrit is like a blueprint of the existence. What is in form, we converted into sound.
Sanskrit is one language where form and sound are connected. In English for example, if you say “sun” or “son,” in utterance it is the same, only in spelling it is different. What you write is not the criteria. The sound is the criteria because today modern science is proving to you that the whole existence is just a reverberation of energy. Where there is a vibration, there is bound to be a sound. The whole existence on one level is in sound form. When you realize what sound is attached to a particular form, you give this sound as the name for that form – now the sound and the form are connected. If you utter the sound, you are relating to the form – not just psychologically, but existentially, you are connecting with the form. If you have mastery over the sound, you also have mastery over the form. Sanskrit is like a blueprint of the existence. What is in form, we converted into sound. A lot of distortions have happened. How to preserve it in its right form has become a challenge even today since the necessary knowledge, understanding, and awareness is largely missing.

That is the reason why when Sanskrit is taught, it has to be learnt by rote. People just chant the language endlessly. It does not matter whether you know the meaning or not. The sound is important, not the meaning. Meanings are made up in your mind. It is the sound and the form which are connecting. Are you connecting or not? – That is the question. That is why it has become the mother of almost all Indian and European languages, except Tamil. Tamil did not come from Sanskrit. It developed independently. All the other Indian languages and almost all the European languages have their origin in Sanskrit.

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