Technology Aided Ignorance

Technology Aided Ignorance

Debi Prasad Choudhary

10/21/2014

As a child, Dasrathi admired his village chief, a tall white old man with a solid golden ring. He admired not only because the chief was dominating with wealth and power, but mostly for his rational and common sense approach to complex problems of villagers. Once there was a theft in the village, where some brass (पीतल) uncials were missing from the house of a strong man. He called a group of tantric, who had special power to find out hidden stuff. The tool for these people was a wooden bed frame called “khata (खट )”, which was placed in front of the village Godess’s temple for worship. The tantriks offered chicken, country liquor and other stuff to the goddesses in the morning and invited her to sit on the Khata. After the completion of the rituals, four young tantric carried the Khata and ran around in search of the lost stuff.  This is commonly known as “ ¹Khata Bidya (खट  बिद्या )”.  Before the carriers of Khata could start running, the village chief asked them to find a sealed packet that he had placed at some secret location prior to searching the lost items. He wanted to make sure that the group could do a good job and avoid the quarrel in case of a wrong identification. As a curious child, Dasrathi followed the group with the khata on bare foot and khaki pant. Until the evening the group was drinking liquor, hitting the khata with a stick, to emulate beating the Goddess and scolding her with uncivilized filthy language. Dasrathi was impatient and praying the Goddesses to show the sealed packet, so that these guys will make her free. The cows returned in the evening but there was no hope for finding the packer hidden by the village chief. The group was asked to go away. It was an eventful, entertaining and exciting day for the villagers though. Dasrathi was relieved that the Goddess is now free, but did not like the village chief who created such situation for her.

This incident generated doubt in “²tantra vidya (तांत्रिक  बिद्या )”, since he was very much interested in these practices. He was, in fact planning to start a simple act to gain supernatural power. He learnt the procedure from a small book bought from a village fair. The procedure was that he would place a lizard under a mud pot with a hole. He would pee through the hold for 21 days. In the end, he would collect the skeleton and recite few prescribed sentences and gain wizard power. He was only 10 years old, so it was really difficult to catch a lizard and place it under the mud pot. So, he was postponing the activity to a future date. From the same book, he also learnt few procedures of practicing on the graveyard, but never proceeded fearing his parents. After the “Khata Vidya” incident, he decided to abandon these ideas altogether. Those days, there was no mass media and the wise village chief contained the ignorance locally.

After many years, Dasrathi was spending a night in a leading research institute as a practicing scientist. Suddenly his colleague came running and said let us go to give milk to Sri Ganesh (श्रीगणेश), who is now drinking from the devotees. He was tired, so did not agree to go to the town, but watched in live television that millions of people were offering milk and Gaaneshji was having a good time. That day, milk price soared to 10 to 15 times. This was an event managed by cable media and mobile phones.

Couple of years back, Dasrathi was resting one evening in a hotel in the national capital before catching a flight next morning. He watched a heated TV debate³ between astrologers, who were challenging scientists and clearly winning. Poor scientists were over powered with logic and debating skill of astrologers. It was as exciting as following the khata in the childhood, but a single wise village chief could not have contained the situation. Use of social media like facebook for propagating false knowledge is becoming rampant. Now the ignorance is spread with modern technology!!!

¹Khata Bidya (खट  बिद्या ): This is still being practiced in those villages even today. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-otherstates/rationalists-challenge-khata-vidya-practitioners-to-prove-its-efficacy/article4159221.ece

²Doctrine of enlightenment as the realization of the oneness of one ' s self and the visible world ; combines elements of Hinduism and paganism including magical and mystical elements like mantras and mudras and erotic rites ; especially influential in Tibet and many rural part of India.

³Here are some still pictures from the TV debate.

Running title: (top) The biggest debate of the country. (bottom) Debate between Astrology and logic.

Running Title: (top) The biggest debate until now. (bottom) Challenge to predict future from horoscope.

Running title: (top) Anil Vats, the Astrologer Professor, (bottom) Challenge thrown by experts.

Running title: (top) Anil Vats, (bottom) Challenge to predict future from horoscope.

Gandhi and Jesus – The history

Gandhi and Jesus – The history

Debi Prasad Choudhary

Los Angeles

About Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein said, "Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” Perhaps he, like many physicists, was skeptical of “history recordings”, which often presents the perspective of historian and not so much what happened. Also, there is no way to verify them in an active manner like we do in physics. Gandhiji's¹ last words were supposed to be “Hay Ram²” (है राम - Oh God). That is the version of girls escorting Gandhi to the evening prayer site. Recently, I came across the version of another person from my native state of Orissa, who was working as a gardener in Birala House³, where Gandhiji was killed. He did not hear any such words, he heard only a sound of pain some thing like “Ahhh..”. Gandhiji was falling down on to the ground after three bullets entered his frail body from a point blank distance.

I can imagine the situation. My father says, when Gandhiji used to fast in New Delhi, people in my remote town, that is located 1674 km away, were fasting!! On his 100^th birthday, when I was in class 5^th, our entire village worshipped him like a God. So, I can imagine the situation at his death site. I imagine an absolute shock that could have put many people in blank mind. Even, two associate of Gandhi-killer could not believe what happened, as the entire world was rushing towards the Birala House. So, constructing the exact historical account of what Gandhiji said at the time of death is futile. I rely on my image of Gandhiji and believe that he said “Hay Ram”, because any other version is equally true or false.

Like Gandhiji, I am equally fascinated with the life of Jesus Christ, who walked upon this earth with flesh and blood some 2000 years ago. My interest in this character got renewed today after attending a very interesting and enjoyable lecture by Dr. Bart D. Ehrman from University of North Carolina on “Does The Bible Present a Historically Accurate View of Jesus?” I draw parallel to Gandhiji’s death in history to illustrate how difficult it is to get the facts in the history of important moments. Dr. Ehrman said that the account of Jesus’s death by two apostles does not match. One of them write that Jesus said “"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”. The other apostle says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In one case, Jesus seems to be in full control of the situation and generous, in the other he is helpless. Similarly, other apostles say different things that are not consistent, perhaps factually.

Let us, for a moment, imagine the situation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, when he was nailed on a cross and hanged. The gruesome feeling, fear and shock of seeing a man, whom one loves and admires, in such a situation would haunt any body throughout the life. The apostles, who were admirers and followers of Jesus, would be undergoing through the trauma of this very moment in the rest of their life. After 40 or 60 years they finally decide to write these accounts, may be to free their minds from this intense feeling. It is hard to imagine, what they went through these years. Each of them would have thought about the events of that day continuously. (I myself think of my grand mothers death and cremation after 44 years). So, in their mind they attribute “thoughts” to what Jesus “said” and “could have said”. While writing down, they summarized what they thought it was. It was their account, what happened is immaterial to them. Future historians did not matter to their emotional account. After 2000 years of the death of Jesus, it may be unwise to determine what exactly he said at the time of that gruesome moment.

So, like in Gandhiji’s case, I makeup for myself. As Dr. Ehrman said, Jesus was not divine. May not be divine, who knows how is divine. But, I think he was a great man, a leader. If the apostles were his followers, he cannot be ordinary. If “some things” of what are said and written can be attributed to him, he was a great man. He was definitely wise. He felt for poor and suffering. He imagined a better life for all. Like many, this character impressed me throughout my life. So, I would like to think his last words were "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do".

According to oriental thinking, whenever righteousness in the society is diminished, God appears to establish it by protecting the gentle and eliminating the wicked⁴. It may be a fantasy for some, but I think these great men, like Budha, Srikrishna, Jesus and Gandhi appear among us to serve this purpose. To give hope to hopeless. What else an ordinary individual has to live until death in many places where war, deadly disease, hunger and exploitation are rampant? They die, for them nothing else happens until than. The stories of these great men are relevant and history is irrelevant for them.

¹Gandhiji: Mahatma Gandhi was also called Gandhiji in reverence.

² Ram: Ram is believed to be an incarnation of God in Indian subcontinent. Ram lived a life of most ideal human and ruled the nation in righteous manner. The period of his ruling is known as “Ram Rajya” or “Kingdom of Ram”. Gandhiji was most fond of Ram and wanted India to be like Kingdom of Ram after independence from British.

³Birla House: This is the house in New Delhi where Gandhi lived after independence of India and conducted evening prayer. After prayer, he talked about the unity of Hindus and Muslims, who were rioting following the partisan.

⁴This part is paraphrased from the Bhagabat Gita (Chapter 4, verse 8): परित्राणाय साधुनाम विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम , धर्म संस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे (paritranaya sadhunam 
vinasaya ca duskrtam 
dharma-samsthapanarthaya 
sambhavami yuge yuge)

SYNONYMS: paritranaya--for the deliverance; sadhunam--of the devotees; vinasaya--for the annihilation; ca--also; duskrtam--of the miscreants; dharma--principles of religion; samsthapana-arthaya--to reestablish; sambhavami--I do appear; yuge--millennium; yuge--after millennium.

TRANSLATION: In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I advent Myself millennium after millennium.

(These materials are taken from the book “Gita As it is” By A. C. Bhaktivadent Prabhupad)

Dasrathi finds Rama Janma Bhumi (Birth Place)

This blog is devoted to Mahatma Gandhi on his पून्य  तिथी (Death Anniversary), for whom RamNam was dear.

Dasrathi finds Rama जन्म भूमि Janma Bhumi (birth place)

Debi Prasad Choudhary

Los Angeles, 1/30 /2013

Dasrathi grew up in a small village, where his father worked as headmaster of a ¹basic school. The village had two temples adjacent to each other. One was ²Raghunath Temple and the other ³Gopinath temple. Dasrathi’s grant mother was a devout lady. Almost every day, she used to make garlands and take to these temples. If there are enough garlands, she used to give to all the idols, but her preference was Gopinath, who was with Sri Radha, because she was Goudya Vaishnav. The temple priests occasionally used to wait her few minutes for evening ⁴arati. Dasrathi used to accompany her, but did not like the garlands for Gopinath. He liked Raghunath because it was his maternal grant father’s name and daily his father used to read ⁵Ramcharit Manas. The Raghunath temple was also a spacious one. Once his father recited Ramcharit Manas in the temple veranda for four months and explained the content to the village folks, which included the ⁶Sarpanch of the village. He performed this act to get a son after three daughters. After completing this activity, Dasrathi’s father and Sarpanch distributed sweets to the villagers. Actually, after few months Dasrathi got a brother. He was happy because now onwards his mother will not leave food after hearing a flute melody from a distance. Dasrathi’s mother used to quit lunch or dinner after hearing flute because ⁷Josada used to practice this every evening to attend to her son on his return with cows. Since Dasrathi was the only son like Sri Krishna, his mother practiced for years, which made him uncomfortable recently. Anyway, since there was a result, Dasrathi had deep faith and respect for Sri Ram. He actually believed that Sri Ram lives there, in that temple.

The Raghunath temple housed two sets of idols of Sri Ram, Lakshman, Sita and Hanumanji with folded hands. One of the sets was made out of brass and and gave a golden look. The other was more colorful in which Sri Ram was blue, Lakshman and Sita were in white and Hanumanji was red. Only, the colored idols were movable (चलंती⁸ chalanti). Dasrathi was never clear about the relationship between these two sets of idols and never bothered to know. He thought the colored idols are real things. During ⁹Ramnavami, every year there used to be almost ten days of festival in the temple. The red triangular flag with a picture of Sri Hanumanji used to be changed. Dasrathi was always eager to know if the eyes of Hanumanji on the flag are in proper orientation with respect to the village. Because, the believe was if there was a mistake it would bring evil to the village mostly in the form of burning straw roofs of poor villagers and increased theft activity.

On Ramnavami evening there used to be ritual for the birth of Sri Ram. Behind closed door there used to be activity in which, as Dasrathi’s grand mother would describe him that Sri Ram used be born from a mud pot filled with rice. He never questioned how every years Sri Ram is born from these mud pots with the same shape, unlike his own sisters and brother. But he believed in this event without doubt. On 4^th or 5^th day, there used to be marriage ceremony of Sri Ram and Sita followed by (बनबास) ¹⁰ Banbas on four separate chariots.  In the end (पटाभिषेक)  ¹¹Patavisak.  In the end, there used be a big village festival with four or five theater groups performing with lots of loud music throughout the day. Dasrathi witnessed this for four to five years when he was younger than 10 years old. He had never seen any other temple, let along the existence of other religions. So, there was no need for doubting that Sri Ram was born anywhere else. For Dasrathi and his grand mother Raghunath temple was the real birthplace of Sri Ram, since she never bothered to find out  any other place either.

Only after many years when Dasrathi was working as a practicing scientist, he came to know the real birthplace of Sri Ram when ¹²Babri Masjid was demolished. By this time he had forgotten the childhood Raghunath temple. It was a tense situation. That day the state government was dismissed and the city where Dasrathi was working had curfew. Following this event, he listened to the heroic act of many people who returned from ¹³Ayodhya and felt a sort of pride that at last the birthplace of Rama will have a grand temple. This changed when there was a big riot related to this event. He was very uncomfortable and became doubtful if the temple was worth it.

Several years after the demolition of Babari Masjid, Dasrathi visited Banaras and Mathura and noticed huge Mosques adjacent to the holy Hindu places of worships. He was uncomfortable and a bit angry.  He thought there was a bad history and it should be corrected, even if there is a brief period of unrest. Now Dasrathi took interest in knowing more about what happened in Babri Masjid demolition and following events. Fear and disgust overwhelmed him as he started hearing the advocates of making a grand temple in Ayodhya. These people were mostly ignorant, funny looking. Once he travelled on train with a group of ¹⁴Sadhus, who are mostly supporters of making temple in the birthplace of Sri Ram. He was in a reserved compartment, where Sadhu’s occupied without ticket. The ticket inspector used to vacate them occasionally. Dasrathi was amused on one of the conversion of Sadhus. One of them was narrating the excitement on the occasion of a gas cylinder blast saying “महाराज, क्या मजा आया । टंकी फटी । और भाग दौड़ मच गई । लूट सुर होगई । ” (Sir, what an excitement. There was a blast of gas tank. There was stampede and rampage.)

These days Dasrathi likes to make sense of Ram Janma Bhumi. For his devout grand mother this sacred place is in that village where he spent his first ten years. His grand mother never went to Ayodhya. It is unlikely that he will ever visit Ayodhya. He feels that village temple as sacred as any other place. As he reads Sri Ram Charit Manas again and again keeping the tradition of his father, he finds making a temple by killing others is definitely not compatible with the personality of ¹⁵Maryada Pursatom, who asked his wife to go to forest to please his subject. Also, Sri Ram is not the contemporary God. Now Dasrathi believes that the God has incarnated in his 9^{th 16}Avatar as Sri Jaganath and living in Puri right now. So, what is the need of temple in his previous birthplace? Since Dasrathi is a devout Hindu like his grand mother, he appreciates the deed of Sri Krishna before his death. Actually, Sri Krishna never bothered about his birthplace. He moved and created grand cities for living. Perhaps anticipating future trouble, Sri Krishna asked the sea to drawn his city before his death. He has now taken the form of Sri Jaganath and residing in Puri. So, for Dasrathi it does not make sense to make a memorial for a living person The God.

But, what happens to hindu pride? Dasrathi thinks, “¹⁷भाड़ मै जाय ” (let it do in drains). Dasrathi is not proud of anything anyway. Dasrathi’s grandmother used to say, अति गर्बे हता लंका (due to pride Lanka of Ravan got destroyed). Those who want to be proud should find some other way without demeaning Sri Ram and making Him ashamed. Dasrathi is convinced that Sri Ram would never have hired the current proponents of temple as his lawyer. So, Dasrathi found Ram Janma Bhumi in his childhood village, where he witnessed the birth of Sri Ram every year on Ramnavami with his grandmother. That is good enough as symbolic memorial, as his God is now living somewhere else.

¹basic school: A school that had up to 8^th standard and followed Gandhian way of teaching that included activities like agriculture and school cleaning by the students.

²Raghunath Temple: Temple devoted to Sri Ram

³Gopinath temple: Temple devoted to Sri Krishna

⁴arati: An evening ritual in the temple when a small lamp is shown to the idol of Gods.

⁵Ramcharit Manas: A book written by Tulsi Das describing the like story of Sri Ram

⁶Sarpanch: Village chief

⁷Josada: mother of Sri Krishna

⁸chalanti: Movable

⁹Ramnavami: Birthday of Sri Ram

¹⁰Banbas: Going to forest  

¹¹Patavisak: ascending to royal throne ceremony  

¹²Babri Masjid: A structure for worship for Muslims believed to have been constructed by Mogul emperor Babar after destroying a hindu temple at the birthplace of Sri Ram.

¹³Ayodhya: The city where Sri Ram was born and lived.  

¹⁴Sadhus: sacred man in Hindu faith  

¹⁵Maryada Pursatom:  The best of man who follows best traditions of the society.

¹⁶Avatar: Incarnation