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Jan 083('
’This is yet another classic example of people using their freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they can’t make use of!
Look at this travel guide published in Guardian by some Chris Madigan , there jump directly to the month of September which talks about Mumbai. The author says that Ganesh is a God revered by the gay community in Mumbai !
Let me ask every Mumbaikar, is there anything in this article that talks about what really Mumbai is?
Let me also ask every Hindu, is there anything in this article that talks about what really Ganesha is to Hindus?
This writeup projects hinduism, the city of Mumbai and its people in a completely misleading manner. Labeling a hindu religious festival, a hindu deity, and the people of a proud city with an unnatural sexual affinity is completely unacceptable and only shows the writer’s ignorance.
The author who wrote these comments should note that this non-magentic law of like poles attracting each other (gay) is in reality the patent of the west and the most prevalent phenomenon there, not in India nor in east.
Is the author an expert on Hinduism and Mumbai?
Have the contents been verified and validated before publishing it?Have you ever heard of any Hindu owned paper or channel or industry misrepresenting or maligning any religious symbol of any other religion or faith? Its in the culture of Hindus to treat all religions equally, irrespective of whether other religions treat hindus alike or not. We believe in the principle of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam , the whole world is a family, and Sarve Jana Sukhino Bhavantu, may all the people live prosperously (irrespective of their religion).
Why do these people create such unnecessary controversies?
And this is not the first time that it is happening.
In September 2007 a Hindu worker was sacked in UK for wearing a nose stud!
Then came a Seattle based toilet seat manufacturer who used hindu deities on the toilet seats they sold!
Some where I read some article in the west which said that Hindus worship the sex organ of Shiva! How ignorant of them! Do these people ever think about anything other than sex at all?
Then an american online store started selling women’s undergarments featuring Hindu Gods on them! Have hindus ever treated Gods of other religion like this? No, because for Hindus, God is one and the same for all, it takes a bit of common sense to understand this. Those who sold those undergarments should realize that it was their God too. You cant have multiple Gods if God is really what you are believing to be
In 2005 edition, the Oxford English dictionary had published about Bangalore being called so because many Bengalis live there! As if Canada is called so because Kannada is the national language there! I dont know how such mistakes can be made at all! In the age of Internet, a simple search would tell you what the truth is.
Personally, I really dont care about such things, for a Dog’s bark wont spoil God’s heaven. We have better things to do in life. But sometimes it becomes really irritating.
The Culture of Hindus
Hindus always respect the religious sentiments of all. Hindus never say that non-hindus will go to hell. Hindus say God of all religions is one and the same, it doesnt matter with which name or in what form you worship God. But the abrahamic religions disagree and say those who dont follow their faith will go to hell! What a disrespect to the human freedom of choice of faith!
If all religions say like that, then every human will have to go to hell, because for every religion which says you wont go to hell, there will be ten others which will say that you will go to hell. Thankfully Hinduism doesnt say that you will go to hell if you are not a Hindu, and no you dont have to convert to Hinduism to go to heaven. In other words, non Hindus can be happy that there is another religion from their own which says that they will go to heaven, provided their deeds (karma) are good.
When the Iranian Parsis (Zoroastrians) came to India twelve centuries ago, they requested the Hindu king in Gujarat to provide them shelter. He agreed. Then they told him that they have brought their sacred fire which needs to be kept lit continuously and the Hindu king agreed. Then they again said that their religion says that non-parsis should not enter the premises of their sacred fire and their temples!
Look at the situation here. Land is of Hindus. People are Hindus. King is a Hindu. The demand is by those who had fled their land Persia (modern Iran) to avoid persecution at the hands of Arab conquerors invading their land!
And still the Hindu king again not only agreed, but also ensured that no Hindus enter the premises of the sacred place of parsis. The sacred fire of parsis still continues to glow in India even today. This is the greatness of India and Hinduism and every Indian is proud of it. Today parsis are one of the richest community of India. Our great beloved industrialist leader Ratan Tata of the Tata group is also a parsi and from the city of Mumbai. Tatas, Wadias, Godrejs and scores of other Parsis have contributed a lot in terms of making India a progressive state.Take another instance, the Jews of India . The only country in the world where the Jews have lived and continue to live without fear of persecution or antisemitism for the past two thousand years is India and India alone. Israel has said it officially that, all over the world wherever the jews went, they have been persecuted for the past thousands of years, but if there is any single place on this planet where for the past 2000 years jews have been living with peace and prosperity, it is INDIA.
INDIA – A land which even when being invaded for centuries and centuries, neither did it destroy the invaders, nor did it allow its own culture to be destroyed, instead absorbed the invaders into its own!
To say in the words of Mark Twain India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition
Aa No Bhadrah Kratavo Yantu Viswataha
May the universe bless all with wisdom and noble thoughtsRelated posts:
15 Responses to “Freedom of Speech vs Freedom of Thought”
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Abhilash Menon says:
Scientists… please change the basic laws of the universe each time you formulate a new theorem. Else some people might be disappointed.
Musicians please use notes other than the 7 while composing new music. Else some people might be disappointed.
Gurudev quote points from Greek mythology next time you write an article on vedic culture.
Or you might start writing detective novels in your blog so as to keep the readers guessing.
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Anirudh Sharma [Angiras Bhardwaj] says:
Dear Gaurav,
We all like to know more. Also, we all like to know more about different things. It is in our nature. But if we do that at the cost of losing context, the entire effort goes for a toss. If a discussion has carried people from A to B once, the same logic can also carry same people from A to C via B. We need to understand the start and finish.
What Guru means is that there are always new people who visit the blog for the first time. I might not enjoy without experiencing the discussion myself and being part of it. A mere reading of past discussion might not suffice my inquisitive zeal.
Finally I would also like to complain, but I need to justify my own effort in solving the issue first. Perhaps not, when I am totally dependent on someone else for making an effort. In the later case, I have completely lost the righteousness to complain. It is like sitting in a Rolling Stones Concert and saying, “”Alright Mick, I’m here. Now entertain me! I demand the entertainment!”" I have to respect Mick Jagger for the artist he his and for his immense talent.
Please do not take any offense but I just wanted to bring a little perspective here. I fully appreciate your concern though and will try to help Guru, in fact we should all try and contribute in generating enough content without compromising its richness, authenticity, consistency and context.
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Of course yes Gaurav, I take the same basic facts about India always. Because facts/quotes cant be changed, basic or advanced it doesnt matter. If India invented place value system, whereever I refer to it, I have to say that India invented the place value system. I cant change this fact!
If you are talking about the way I end such articles, yes I always end with a universal brotherhood message from the ancient Indian culture to reiterate our commitment for a global society.
Every time I write an article about India, I do repeat the relevant quotes/facts. When we see news in a news channel, apart from the latest news that they are reporting, everything else will be the same basic facts that has already been reported earlier, so can we tell them, ‘please dont repeat whatever you have already told in the past’ There is something called ‘context’ that a person need to understand while reading an article, and I treat every article independently of others, for there might be new readers who are reading for the first time in this blog, and I dont want to limit the information being available to them by assuming that they have already read other related articles.
As for words, yes they change here and there because I dont ‘copy paste’ every time, so in new sentences they are bound to go here and there.
As for the turn that an article takes, for most articles no need to even go through the actual article, you can get that instinct by just reading the title of the article. I am not writing any suspense story everytime to make the reader wait till the end To summarize, my knowledge is very limited and I have to recycle the same stuff again and again to make up for my limited knowledge by changing words here and there. And yes it is really disappointing!
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Gaurav says:
After visiting your blog regularly for a month, I find that you take the same basic facts about India, change the words here and there, and horseshoe them in most of your articles. Reading through an article, I can instinctively tell what turn it will take and what words/phrases/quotes you will use. Please refrain from being repetitive. Disappointing.
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Dear all,
I believe certain outcomes based on thoughts or emotions render themselves pointless for discussion, as each individual has his/her own self construct to improve upon. A variable that invokes logic or illogic will lead to thinking. Whereas, any variable that invokes feeling will lead to emotions.
Ambiguity among the concepts of thought, speech and action lead to degradation of an individual and takes him further from his true reality. Ability is something that will lead to difference on the level of no choice. Whereas, Modality affects the circumstances in which we take an assertion to be satisfied. We should also avoid to apply different realities to the same context or try to obliterate the context to suit our choice.
When a Jeeva doesn’t understand the difference between what he thinks, what he speaks and what he does, he his not so very different from a Pashu. When he understands, he can be at three levels of closeness to the Ishvara.
When a person thinks “”A”", says “”B”" and does “”C”" , he acts as a Manava. When he thinks “”A”", says “”A”" and does “”B”" he acts as a Manushya. And when he thinks “”A”", says “”A”" and does “”A”" he acts as a Purusha.Yet again I object most severely, to the context in which the word Hinduism has been used in the discussion above. Hinduism is not a religion at all. Infact, the usage of the term religion in equivalence to “”Dharma”" is highly derogatory to the light bestowed upon us by all revered Vedic Seer Scientists.
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Thanks Abhilash, well yes in that case I didnt really get that part of your message, hope even Gururaj has his doubts cleared now
Yes I completely agree with you that we should never ever resort to any kind of unmindful violent or non-peaceful approach while protesting against such things. Thats simply not the way we look at the world.
Its not they vs we, its only we. As you rightly said the ‘we’ of hinduism includes the ‘entire world’ which is entire humanity+other life forms+rest of the inanimate universe
Lets all work and hope for a better world.
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Gururaj says:
I couldn’t agree more with what Gurudev had said at January 5, 2008 at 1:35 pm.
One famous saint saw the whole 7 hills of Tirupathi as God and walked on his knees to visit the temple lest he might insult it by stepping on it. How much of God we see everywhere is limited by our own capability.Abhilash (January 5, 2008 at 11:38 am): This was not expected from you
. Hindus have had too much of goodwill for other religions till now and it is time to stop others misusing this good will. -
Gurudeva,
Dont be disappointed buddy. I didnt think youd take that statement literally. I was trying to be sarcastic and was depending on the smiley to convey that message. 
Of course, I didnt mean that we should bow down and take in all the disdain quietly. We should protest and let those nerds know that they have done something wrong. But the mode of protest should be in line with the teachings of Hinduism or else we would not be true Hindus. We should definitely not go to level of protests you see nowadays by other religions. Hindus are reputed to be broad minded and we should live up to that reputation. We should keep in mind that such insults to our Gods, does not in any way affect God and those people are only exhibiting their ignorance.
I take infinite pride in belonging to a religion which prays Loka samastha sukhino bhavantu. Which other religion has the concept of Vasudaiva kudumbakam? Which other religion urges you to go seek your own knowledge and dont confine yourself to what is said in the scriptures? In fact modern religions forbid its followers from questioning anything in their books.
So I only feel pity to those people rather than anger. O God, forgive them; for they know not what they do -
Abhilash
I agree with your comments except for that I am disappointed when you said “”God is present in those toilet seats and bikinis too. Why should a Hindu complain about these things then”"First of all, its the intention of those who did it. Just because you missed being hit does not mean allow the person who attempted to hit you go scot free.
Second, such argument I believe is the misuse of logic and grammar by either generalizing things beyond scope or applying a rule of one context to a completely different context. Let me explain:
Will you place the God in your toilet and worship there and give offerings?
Or ok, let me speak scientifically, the food that we eat and the excreta in the toilet pit – both are made up of same subatomic particles. So can we eat the latter? No, why?
Because our physical body will accept those subatomic particles only when it is in a specific form, which we call food.When Hinduism says God is omnipresent it does indeed mean it. What you should realize is that every common man is not an “”enlightened buddha”", which is why hinduism also allows idol worship where a common man who cannot comprehend its vedic depths of spirituality can to his own level of comprehension personify the God and worship it with a sanctity attached to it. Which is why we find in Hinduism people worshipping trees, some worshipping other people whom they believe are divine, some worshipping idols, some worshipping animals etc.
God is omnipresent, not common man. God is formless and opinionless, not common man. A common man classifies things as good and bad and excepts things that he
associates with good to be always found in the company of Good. An image of God and a toilet seat are classified differently by humans.
Can we leave criminals without punishing because God is also present in them? How will be law and order situation then?There is a difference between realizing God and making a mockery of God. A person who realizes the omnipresence of God will in the first place never need a picture on the toilet seat to see God there, just seeing the toilet seat would also mean seeing God!
What we need to understand here is that, its not the God who is being offended here, for the omnipresent God of hinduism is formless, opinionless and is the eternal universe itself which lies beyond our temporary physical universe. What is offended here are the sentiments of a section of the species called human being who unlike God have something called emotions.
God according to Hinduism is both the container of the universe as well what is contained within it. And ofcourse it also includes toilet and bikinis.
If we consider ourselves to be omnipresent in our body, which we are, can we swap the functionality of our excretory organs with that of mouth, saying we are everywhere in our body? No, because physically its not possible, similarly there are certain things which are emotionally not possible, and a fellow human is expected to respect that.By the way, I am not speaking here on my behalf, for I give absolutely no importance to such things. I normally dont believe in reaction.
I wrote this post on behalf of those readers who brought this to my notice. After all being a voice to those whose cause you find valid, is valid too.
There is no other reaction here, except an expression of a sense of displeasure on what has been said and done, and an answer to the question ‘Why not?’ -
Hinduism teaches that God (Nirguna Parabrahmam) is omnipresent. So God is present in those toilet seats and bikinis too. Why should a Hindu complain about these things then?
If those people had the intension to really ridicule the Indian Gods, little do they realize that they are ridiculing their own God too (if they truly believe in one God).I think those people of the so called monotheistic religions are really pseudo-monotheistic. They say that there is only one God and fix him a name. Thats it!!! Call God by any other name and you are doomed to eternal hell. How can we mere mortals limit the infinite omnipotent universal God to just one name and label God as formless? Are they not restricting God to their own definitions?
True monotheistic outlook would be the ability to see 1 = 2 = . = Infinity, Form 1 = Form 2 = = Formlessness = Infinite form (the beautiful concept of Vishwaroopa). Seeing the oneness in infinity is true monotheism and not just taking one and kicking all others. -
If some people are deducing that the sun has a lot of dirt on it by looking through a glass tinted with dirt, does it in any way affect the infinite glory of the sun?
I think the sun would just feel pity for these ignoramuses. -
Thank you very much Sam
Yes, we should prevent people from making baseless comments which would cause unnecessary tension and issues in the society. Already the world is divided a lot. All efforts should be towards uniting humanity to ensure a better future for humans and to make earth a better place to live in. -
Sam says:
Thanks for bringing this travesty to light. I’m going to take the guardian (it should be called violator, instead) to task. As for the author, he is an illiterate and ignorant putz, pure and simple.
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Brenda Roy says:
Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
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