1. life at all. So Alavandar really wanted to give a Vaishnavite interpretation to the Badharayana Sutra or Vedanta and thereby demolish the Advaitic interpretation as well as the Mayavada of Sankara and thereby create a civil war in the Agraharam. Ramanuja’s supreme aim was to destroy and bury the philosophy of Puri Sankaracharya, Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Once again it is absolutely necessary for us to start a similar work today. A similar situation only should have prompted Alavandar yesterday to command Ramanuja to demolish this Sankara Bhasya.(Maya vada)
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2. Once again it has become absolutely necessary to establish the fact that the richest Indian heritage is not the philosophy that of Sankara or even that of the Vedas on the contrary. Tamil an independent language, one not derived from the so-called Indo-Germanic language group, has a rich literature of its own, not in any way inferior to the one found in Sanskrit. In fact it is richer in many respects. It is really the message of the Alvars which has given a very remarkable unity at the base which is the very opposite of the ‘unity’ at the top based on a language neither spoken nor understood by the mightiest majority of our people. Let us not forget the simple fact that this great Prema Marga never spreaded in Sanskrit but in the people’s language and mainly by the non-Brahmins and in many cases by the untouchables and women. It was the voice of greatest protest after the decline of Jainism and Buddhism. We can write the political history of
Advaita in the view of Visishtadvaita
3. Advaita states ‘Brahma Sathyam Jagath Mytha’ and secondly Brahman only is true The ever changing world is an illusion.
4. One who renounces all these relationship (Samsaram) only reaches the heaven (Moksha).
5. ‘Samsaram Sa Vihaya gacchati puman vishnoh Sasvatham’.
6. Now let us hear what Rev. Sri Parthasarathi Yogi, the Vishnavite saint, who lived in the first decade of this century in Tamil Nadu, has to say of this Advaita Mayavada. Sri Atkondavalli Govindacharya has quoted him# in his book on Ramanuja. ‘For one to whom this world is a mirage or Maya or an illusion morality and ethics become bug–bear and nonsense’. For him there is no such thing as a crime or a virtuous act. There can be nothing sacred too. He need not brother as to what happens to the child, which is dying for want of food. At the same time it is the limit of arrogance to state that ‘I am Brahma ‘: which is very different from the other statement ‘Tat Twam Asi’. One who declares that he is the Brahman cannot but be an atheist and Dvaithy (Madhava) no wonder accuses Sankara as a concealed Buddhist, no doubt without an iota of ethics. It is also a fact that Sankara’s Brahman is the Sunya of Nagarjuna the Buddhist whose disciple Gowda pada, was the ‘teacher’ of Sankara. We can say with considerable justification that this Advaita of Sankara is Buddhism (atheism) without its ethics. We all know where atheism minus ethics will land. No wonder the Chanakya, (of course before Manu he is a Buddha!), idol of Advanis, the ancient Vaideeka Brahmin could write the Arthasastra, one of the most cynical documents in our history. Those who extol him can only be a Hitler or a Mussolini who also dreamt of great Empires just as our ‘patriots’ (a very loaded word) also dream of an Akanda Bharat which may extend even up to Afghanistan because it was also a part of this Bharat in the days of Ashoka. According to the Vaishnavite Alvars and the Acharyas the so called pure Gnanavada of Sankara is at best the most sterile, heartless inhuman reasoning which also is the ideal of modern science and positivism described often as dispassionate, disinterested and honest enquiry to understanding the objective truth. No wonder, the positivist scientists of this land strongly admire this Gnanavada of Sankara. This evaluation is strengthened by the statement of the Sudra Sanyasi Sri Vivekananda, himself an Adviati. In fact it was Sri Vivekananda who has been very much responsible to make the world believe that the Advaita of Sankara is the Everest of Indian philosophical
7. It was just in a similar situation when these Advaitic Vaideeka Brahmins became the principle advisers of the kings in Tamil Nadu during the 7th and 8th centuries, there arose the two great protest movements. One was the Saivism of the Nayanmars (sixty-three in number) who also called their path, the path of love. They go to extent of declaring that Shiva is nothing but the embodiment of love. It should be said that this Saivism has very little to do with Advaita. However Saivism did not take up the cause of social reform. The main reason can be traced to the caste background of the majority of these Nayanmars. Of the sixty-three, barring a dozen all were from the upper castes and many were from the Non-vedic (who do not accept fire worship and sacrifice of animals) Anthanars. However they were not against caste system as such. But they did not accept this inhuman heartless sterile Brahminism, which should have become the cause of total indifference towards the suffering of the vast majority. It was also the period when the anti-vedic and anti-casteist Jainism and Buddhism had declined. At this stage it is also necessary to know the cause of the decline of these two great humanist trends. How are we to know the causes? It is often said and perhaps also believed that the great Saivite saint was responsible to see that thousands of the Jain monks were beheaded after he won them in dispute. The same fate is said to have been, met by the Buddhist monks. The Vaishnaivite Alvars were also anti-Buddhist and anti-Jain. But this can never be the whole story. There is no record of any popular revolt, which should have been there when such popular and hence influential monks were beheaded. To understand it, will be instructive to look into the events that are occurring almost every day in the so-called Socialist world. Don’t we see almost everyday the communist rulers are hounded by the ordinary people and the statues of Lenin and Marx are simply demolished? Can we accuse Marx and Lenin? Lenin by all standards was a man of incorruptible flesh. In our language he was unquestionably a Mahan. However, even the names of these men are removed from the atlas.
8. It is in a similar way the Buddhist monks and Jain should have forgotten the people, should have become like the churchmen about whom Boccassio Decamaron has brilliantly satirised in his ‘Nights’. That should have been the main reason for their downfall and eventual near extinction in this land. However, the philosophy did not vanish. I can say that while the Sunyavada of Buddhism was given a new name and new life by Sankara the Namboodri Brahmin, Saivism and Vaishnavism sucked the essential ethical aspect. In fact in a real sense the social reform aspect of Buddhism is taken over by the Vaishnavites. No wonder Buddha is accepted as an Avatar in this tradition. So in that sense neither Buddhism nor Jainism can be said to have vanished. Such a thing is impossible in a society that continues its history.
9. The background of the Alvars the Vaishnavite saints and the philosophy of Vaishnavism
10. Of the twelve Alvars barring three all others were from very backward class and a few of them were untouchables. The great woman Andal may have been born to an upper caste woman through a lower caste man a child of a secret and perhaps secret love affair! Only in such a case the mother of the upper caste will abandon such a sweet child. If the child had been born to a lower caste woman the mother would never have abandoned such a child. So for all practical purposes the majority of the Alvars was from the oppressed and alienated sections. When Vaishnavism began to spread it should have been in the earlier phase mainly amidst the highly backward caste. The remarkable teacher of Ramanuja was himself a non-Brahmin. Further most of the Alvars coming from the backward communities would not have known Sanskrit. They sang in remarkable Tamil a language that can stand independently because this Tamil culture is a very old one and it has the richest ancient literature of all the Indian languages apart from Sanskrit. Being most of them from the lower castes how can we expect them to have any love or respect to the cruel caste-system, which segregated a sizable section to the slums calling them untouchables? Will they praise the Arthasastra or the Manu-Neethi? They were ‘Kallan’, Pallan, Paanan, Mallan and so on. What else their voice could have been, except one of the most serious protest? It was indeed a voice of protest. It was the other voice, the voice of the alienated hence of the great majority. Is it any way surprising that these people wanted to see the Advaita mayavada of Sankara, which called all the suffering under the grand word Maya or illusion, buried deeply without any chance of resurrection? Well, they could not bury it so easily. However, the days are not far away when it will be buried and sent to its eternal sleep.
11. Let us also know why Ramanuja the Brahmin was chosen to establish this philosophy? Secondly we should also see why this Brahmin became a Vaishnavite and undertook the job of demolishing the Advaita Mayavada, the philosophy of the upper caste Brahmins.
12. During the period of Alavandar (11th -12th centuries AD) Vaideeka Brahminism should have become very dominant in the social life of the Tamil people and their philosophical language was Sanskrit, as it is English today. Today, many are conducting philosophical battles in this outlandish language. At an earlier time the languages in which philosophies were written or debated in Tamilnadu were in Paali, and Tamil. However, at this stage the main struggle was undoubtedly against this Mayavada, which was the philosophy of the hundreds of Agraharams. It means the battle should be conducted in the camp of the adversary itself. Hence it had to be conducted in Sanskrit, the language of Vedanta. However, that was not enough. The person should have a great understanding of the Advaita mayavada of Sankara. Even that would not have been enough. The person should have become a genuine Vaishanvite with the full knowledge of essence of the teachings of the Tamil saints, the Alvars. Let us see whether what Ramanuja studied had all these qualifications.
13. Ramanuja studied at Kancheepuram under Yadavaprakasa, the great Advaitic scholar. No doubt he studied it in Sanskrit. At the same time he was the most devoted disciple of one Thiru Kacchi–Nambi (called Kaancheepurna in Sanskrit), who taught him the teachings of Alvars. Thiru Kacchi–Nambi was a devotee of the Lord Varadaraja of Kancheepuram and Tradition would say that the Lord Varadaraja would speak to him while he was massaging the Lord with oil everyday. We should also know what this saintly Thiru Kacchi–Nambi could have taught to Ramanuja who was after all a Brahmin, hence not much of an ardent lover of Tamil and at the same time an obedient disciple of Yadavaprakasa, the great Advaiti. He would have pointed out to Ramanuja that in the Vedanta of Sanskrit there was only Purusha and not the great Mother (Prakrithi and Feminine principle). This is the most single serious flaw in it. If we reject this feminine principle where is the basis of loving and protective principles? So, it is not a true philosophy. Mother is embodiment of sacrifice and love. In short he would have taught the most essential aspect of this philosophy of Feminine approach which is the core of the Saraganathi or Prapathi principle, the central principal if Vaishnavism. In the philosophy of Advaita any relationship more so the loving relationship, is a real hurdle for free existence. Hence the advaitic principle ‘Samsaram sa vihaya gacchathi puman vishnoh padam saswatham’. Every kind of relationship being an obstacle to free existence, woman whose power is the most irresistible one, should have been considered as the cause of all delusion, distraction. No wonder she is called the Jagath-Maya. She is the seducer and the greatest witch! While Sankara rejected the great Woman, Ramanuja under the inspiring teaching of Thiru Kacchi-Nambi become the great devotee of the divine Mother the Sri or the Piratti, the embodiment of compassion and love.
14. Let us see when and why Ramanuja abandoned the Advaita Mayavada of Sankara and became a devoted Vaishnavite and started his battle against this heartless sterile Gnanavada. Secondly, we should also know how he understood the true nature of this Advaita.
15. While discussing of the subject of philosophy the Chinese revolutionary Mao said that he went to philosophy when Chiang Kai Sheike tried to kill him. The story of Ramanajua too is not dissimilar. While he was studying with Yadavaprakasa on one occasion Yadavaprakasa explained a word in the most unacceptable manner. When Ramanuja gave a very different meaning and that too the most attractive one Yadavaprakasa became extremely jealous. He could not tolerate this young upstart who could challenge him. He felt, not wrongly, that this Ramanuja would soon establish a real school that too successfully. All this Ramanuja did. In a real way Yadavaprakasa’s guess was prophetic. So Yadavaprakasa wanted to kill Ramanuja by drowning him in
How the Advaities characterise the vishnavite
16. We should also know the Smarthas characterise the Vaishnavites. They would say that the Vaishnava community is a Sudra community and it has no sacred works in Sanskrit (meaning divine language) and have only some absurd songs in the Tamil. They are converts. Ramanuja destroyed the caste purity. Hence they are not gifted intellectually and so on.
17. Well, there is an element of truth in this kind of charge or even call it characterisation. .Vaishnavism is a prosilatising religion. How can a Paanan or a Pariya or a Kallan glorify this caste system? Can he have a heart for praising it? If Vaishnavism were to be the true voice of such people it could by no ghost of imagination lend the smallest support to this inhuman caste system. Secondly any one belonging to any caste can become a Vishnavite and a guru. In fact the Brahmin Alvar Madura Kavi also an elderly person by age prostrated at the feet of Nammalvar, the greatest philosopher of Vaishnavism who was from a highly backward community, a black fellow perhaps a Marameri (Toddy tapper). It appears the saint Madura Kavi did not even bother about God. He sang some ten hymns only on Nammalvar. For him Nammalvar was enough. In a similar way the Ramanuja the Brahmin wanted to eat what was leftover by his teacher Thiru kachi Nambi a sudhra.
18. When Ramanuja’s wife threw away the leaf in which Thiru kachi Nambi ate there-by preventing such a chance, Ramanuja really scolded her. In the Vaishnavite tradition who ever may be the teacher even the Brahmin should fall at his or her feet and accept the Paada-theertham. So in a sense the Advaitic upper caste Brahmin is correct when he accuses that Ramanuja has been responsible in destroying the ancient caste system created by Bagvan Himself. Has not Bhagvan in the Githa said ‘Chatur Varnam Maya Srishta’? How are we to interpret this? Men did not create the castes deliberately however clever they may have been. Later on the ideologists may go on writing all sorts of things to justify and ossify such a system that is a different issue. The castes arise in the course of social development, just as classes arose in the West. However later on sanctity is ascribed to it by the ideologue.
Vaishnavism and Social reform
19. Because of the fact that Vaishnavism is the voice of the oppressed and alienated section of the society it will invariably and necessarily engender social reform. Ramanuja became no wonder one of the great social reformers of this land; can we not say that it was the continuation after Buddhism and Jainism had declined? Can we not say that it was an anti-castist reform movement? When Ramanuja learnt the secret message of freedom from his teacher Thiru Kotti Nambi he asked him as to what will happen to those who hear it. The teacher said that those who heard it would reach heaven when he further asked him as to what will happen to him, who revealed that secret he was told that the person would go to hell. In spite of his teacher’s instruction that Ramanuja should not teach except to the truly deserving, it is recorded that at Thirukkotiyur from the ‘temple top’ (Gopuram) Ramanuja openly declared the secret message to all and made it a public property. When his teacher questioned about his gross violation and reminded him of the dire consequences of such a violation, Ramanuja replied ‘what if I were to go to hell when all have the chance to go to heaven’. Such an answer naturally startled his teacher and he was ashamed of himself and praised Ramanuja for his large heartedness. The main thing here is that the Brahmin can never have the freedom unless the Pariah has Marx utters the same truth seven hundred years later in
20. During the time of Ramanuja caste distinctions and caste oppression should have become more intense and widespread. Otherwise there is no reason why Vaishnavism should have been keen on social reform. Nor can we imagine a high caste Brahmin to take up neither such a task nor the message having such an appeal. Only whenever social injustices become wide spread people become readily receptive to radical revolutionary ideas. However, if such a situation is not there such ideas will not be given any great hearing. After all ideas, particularly social ones are also emerging in relation to social needs. However an idea may be great, if the social conditions are not conducive, the idea will not generate any great upsurge. So Vishnavite reform movement had to be a historical necessity.
21. Let us know how the authorities of his day reacted to this reform movement. When the people of lower caste and class start claiming that they too were men and women and hence are social equals to those above them, how can those who have enjoyed by exploiting those who were socially and economically below them for generations tolerate? Was it not questioning the sacred divine plan? So the person who was fomenting this trouble was naturally hounded out. Ramanuja then runs to Karnataka. However, the other Bakthi movement namely Tamil Saivism did not indulge such a kind of dangerous subversive experiment. So it was not persecuted. It did not also move out of Tamil Nadu. It is because of its base being feudalism its voice was not one of real protest. Let us not forget the fact that the Saiva Mutts of Tamil Nadu like the Catholic Churches of
22. Vaishnavism as the most popular religion was taken to the people in the form of songs, stories and ballads and people flocked sang and danced. It created big communities and brought a remarkable unity amongst this people. Such a unity really ties the hands of the cruel upper caste Brahminism and to a very great extent lessened the caste oppression. It built the unity of the people at the base, which even today is the real unity and this has given great cultural identity to the people. It was such a movement that was also responsible for the flowering of the various languages. On the other hand Sanskrit is the most unusable one hence comparable to Latin. Even God cannot make it a spoken language of
23. This Vellala is the Neo Brahmin of the rural area. It is also not surprising that the Vellala is a Saivite and not a Vaishnavite.
The achievements of Vaishanavism
24. Some eight hundred years back Ramanuja allowed the so-called scheduled castes to dip in the lotus pond at the mountain
25. Now emerges the most important question. How is it that these remarkable movements did not destroy the caste system but have become docile. We have to examine the cause or the causes as to how such remarkably revolutionary movements lose at a later stage the revolutionary character. Was it not the same fate met by the most of the revolutionary movements of our own century? Let us see what happened to the Vaishnavite movement. In fact it was choked from inside and that made it yield to the reactionary forces that were not destroyed of their power. If we understand the causes of such set backs we will neither be shocked nor surprised by the set back that has occurred in International Worker’s Movement of today. On the contrary, we will realise that it is an inevitable development of the movement itself, an aspect of the dialectics of the movement, which can be seen throughout history. Hence Marx wrote that the essence of human history was ‘Man cognising himself, loosing himself and regaining himself again and again’. That is also the reason why Lenin saw such set backs were not just creations of some scoundrels and thereby emphatically declared that ‘revisionism was not a sin’. It was a necessary outcome of the very development of the movement. Hence historical movement of social progress will have to be meeting and transcending such phases. If there were to be no such crises in human or social history, this being may soon relapse into animal life. There won’t be this kind of human and humanising enquiry at all. In a way these phases are to be treated as rejuvenating or reinvigorating and life generating phases. It is during such periods that this being goes deep to enquire about itself, its potentials and its destiny which is nothing but an act of ‘cognising itself’. Because of this very soon we will see the new upsurge also. That is the only reason why many in the advanced rich nations of the West are becoming more and more interested in the teaching right from Buddhism to Islam. It is in such a context that the great revolutionaries emerged who did go back to rediscover the eternal revolutionary message, which once elevated this being to the human level.
26. However we should also know as to how or wherefrom such revisionism gets its strength. What should be its material and ideological bases? The material basis is the very material wealth that is generated by the revolution ushered earlier by the great sacrifice or Yagnya of the earlier generation, which was inspired by the great prophet who invariably appears like an Avathara Purusha. Now this very wealth swallows him and hides the truth. Man loses himself. He has to re-find himself’. This wealth becomes the be-all and end-all of life. The fetish becomes the sole aim. The earlier phase was one when the movement was a freeing one. Thousands were freeing themselves from the object–bondage. This was the cause of the new society, a great society of brother and sisterhood. It was the basis of the remarkable creative activity, which generated this wealth. Now those years are forgotten by the new generation. Now the more practical and worldly-wise men begin to quote from the same great masters one half of what they said. That is the basis of their ideological strength. The revisionists do not tell what the great revolutionaries did not tell. If they had said something else the people would not have believed them. But they said only one half what these great revolutionaries had said. Therein lies the ideological base for the grip of revisionism. Further they invariably emphasise on the aspect of immediate material comforts which no doubt receives very sympathetic hearing from most. The other person who curses all these and accuses the revisionist as a betrayer and so on is looked upon as an impractical outdated person at best fit for a period that has vanished never to return. He will be accused of dogmatism and who cannot recognise the great changes that have taken place. Did we not hear such an accusation from every kind of easy-chair Marxist? So modern revisionism is not something new.
27. Now let us know the kind of revisionism that developed inside the Vaishnavite movement, which naturally split it in two trends that continue to this date. We should also know the differences between these two sects and their social significance.
28. After the social reform movement gained momentum that is when the Vaishnavite movement began to spread and was gaining strength a considerable amount of changes should have taken place in the society. It was precisely during this period that a section of the Advaitic upper caste Brahmins should have embraced Visishtadvaita. Even today the popular saying is ‘when the Northerner, meaning the Smartha Brahmin’ who prides himself as the person who knows the Devabasha – Sanskrit and looks down upon the vast other section which only knows the Desibasha or the basha of the Sudra becomes mature which should also mean more humble, he becomes a Vaishnavite. However, this notion will never be relishable to the arrogant Advaities like all knowing editor of ‘Thuglaq’ the Tamil weekly nor an Advani who is totally unmindful of the fate of the river cauvery or to the Sankaracharya. The Mayvadi of Puri who will be supremely happy to send all the women to the burning pyre to safeguard their purity and thereby win the approbation of the Rajmatha. However, it remains a fact that a sizable section of Brahmins should have entered into the fold of Vishnavities, which till then should have been predominantly a community, of backward castes signing the hymns of the Alvars set to melodious music.
29. Did not we see a similar phenomenon in our land immediately after the end of Second World War particularly after Mao’s peasant army drove away the
30. The relation between the high caste Brahmin and those from the ‘lower caste’ could never have been extremely cordial. How can the, arrogance cultivated over hundreds of generations can evaporate in a few generations? It is even today there. In fact it is quite open today. We shall see how this is reflected today inside this community. When many brahmins of the upper caste did became Vaishnavities that too when Vaishnavism being the voice of the alienated which naturally should have upheld the equality of all human beings – the boys from the lower castes who are no doubt Vaishnavas would have demanded the hands of girls of the upper castes no doubt with right. How would have the high caste fellow felt it can only be imagined. However, he could not have behaved in the way the non-vaishnavities behave in similar situation even today, because of his having accepted Vaishnavism. He may have even cursed why he or his ancestors had embraced this philosophy. Well, it is this promiscuity, which should have been the major cause for the split inside the Vaishnavite community. It occurred some two hundred years after Ramanuja. The person in whose name the split is justified is none else than the great scholar Vedanda Desika. It will be quite instructive if we know not only the differences in principles between these two sects but also how each describes or define or defame each other. The two groups can interdine and intermarry, no doubt. The sect which claims to follow Vedanta Desika is called Vadakalai and the other which calls to its help one Manavalmuni is called the Thenkalai Apart from some external differences including facial symbols the true significance of which are of no great interest for our discussion we shall see the essential differences. The Vadakalai claiming to follow Desika gives more importance to the Sanskrit tradition and second place to the Divyaprabandam or the Tamil sacred writings so much so in the procession of the deity Veda Parayanam will lead and Prabanda-goshti will follow. In the case of Thenkalai temples it is the reverse. Secondly the widows in Vadakalai Sampradaya are compelled to shave their heads and made ugly deliberately. This is an act of atavistic throwback to the Smartha Sampradaya the tradition of the Advaiti Brahmins, which is an expression of the worst kind of male chauvinism. We should know that there is no place for female deity in the vedas. If the Advaities of today worship Kamakshi, Meenakshi and Vishalakshi and
31. Now let us hear how each sect defames the other. If you were to ask a Vadakalai fellow what he thinks of the Thenkalai fellow he will without any hesitation declare that this Thenkalai fellow is a Sudra, hence intellectually inferior but was brought with in the Brahminical fold by this Ramanuja who in that sense has been responsible for Varna mixing. Somehow, it has come to stay. Hence, the Thenkalai fellow is only fit for ‘Madappalli’ and Maniyattu (ringing the bell to be a temple priest) both held inferior place in social life. Hence, it is all right, he will say if we marry the Thenkalai girls. So sooner or later the Thenkalai boys will be compelled to marry only the Sudra women and hence get out of the brahminical fold. In fact the disciples of Sri Mad Andavan a pontiff of Vadakalai sect inform me.
32. That the Vadakalai girls can marry Smartha boys or even ‘White men’ but should never marry even a brilliant Thenkalai boy. That is the limit to which this rabid upper caste Brahmin could go. This is down right revisionism with in the Vaishnavites tradition.
33. Now let us hear how the Thenkalai fellow defames the Vadakalai fellow. The Thenkalai fellow will assert if not more at least with equal vehemence that the Vadakalai fellow is an unscrupulous one and to gain higher social position will do anything. He is unconcerned about the suffering of others. ‘He won’t give even a small amount of chunnam (lime) to heal a cut finger’. He is doting always for gold (golden vessel) and so on.
34. If we examine the social position of these two sects one thing would be strikingly seen. The Smarthas and the Vadakalai Vaishnavites will hold high places in society. They will be also economically at the higher level but the Thenkalai may produce scholars and revolutionaries, certainly not so many in the bureaucracy. This is not without a philosophical basis.
What is to be a Vaishnavite?
35. The Vaishnavite Sanyasi is a Thridhandi - who holds in his hands three sticks, which symbolise the two sets of three principles of his philosophy. Let us know what they are. The first set consists of the following three principles. He believes in the existence of God, then Jeeva and the world (Prakrithi). In accepting that there is a world independent of one’s thinking he is agreeing with all the materialists. He rejects the Advaitic notion that the sensual world is an illusion or Maya. He considers such theory as a reactionary outlook. The second set of three principles called ‘Mukkurumbu’ is the three basic errors are crimes, which form the basis of all other crimes and perpetual enslavement. They are the caste arrogance, wealth arrogance and intellectual arrogance. According to Vaishnavite one should become free of these three, which is comparable to the Marxist notion of declassing. Even the Western Marxist concept of declassing does not deal so pointedly regarding intellectual arrogance. According to Vaishnavite outlook these three errors effectively hide the social truth from our eyes. Not merely that, they erect the worst kind of barrier between people and us. We become hence strangers and aliens in our own society. We cannot understand nor trust each other. We are hence un-free. The worst obstacle that prevents us from knowing the truth as well as those makes us alien is the false ego or the Ahankar. It is that which we do not and cannot easily destroy. If we destroy this bondage and free ourselves from it we get onto the royal road of freedom. It may be the Tao or the Way. How to destroy this arrogance or Ahankar is the supreme question faced and answered by all the great reformers. There are two trends in this. In our language we can call one the Gnana Marga and the other.
36. Bakthi Marga the summit of which is the Kainkariya Marga. It is a historical fact that Sankara in his encounter with that remarkable woman Bharathi the wife of Mandana Misra of Kasi admitted the defeat of his Gnana path. However the caste Brahmins will not abandon this path. It is neither the short route nor the safe route. In fact more often than not it only inflates the false ego. In the case of lesser mortals it creates the worst kind of arrogance, that too when modern science is mistakenly taken as the most dependable path to show the truth. On the contrary the easiest and safest and most dependable and most populist method to destroy this Ahankar, the worst kind object-bondage, is by gladly serving all. No wonder the great Chinese revolutionary Mao declares ‘love the cadres, love the people, serve the people and struggle against self’. Such an instruction can come only from one who adopts the path of Kainkarya and not simple karma or the pure sterile Gnana. Kainkarya opens the vision and the path of real liberation. It breaks every kind of barrier. The Thenkalai’s version should be clearly distinguished as Kainkarya Marg. It is hence different from that of the Prema Marg of the other trends.
37. Now let us know the nature of Advaitic Mayavadi. The Advaitic Mayavadi Sanyasi is an Ekadandi. He holds only one stick. Here also it may stand for two separate principles. One is that he believes only in the Brahman. Does not he say ‘Brahma Satyam, Jagan Mithya? Only the unchanging Brahmam is real and this changing universe is a myth or illusion and so the only goal is to realise the state of Brahmatva. Let us not enter into any discussion of exposing the inherent and irresolvable contradiction in the above premise itself. The second principle is the cause of all these illusions. It is only the sexual longing. For the Advaiti the woman is the Maya. She is the source of all delusion, distortion and she is the greatest threat for his liberation. He is damn scared of this woman. The same kind of an approach is glaringly witnessed in the Tamil Saivite saint Pattinathar. So, from the beginning to the end he is an anti-feminist. Love cannot free that are united. Love is a snare, which mans he does not understand the true basis of freedom or free relationship. Herein the Vaishnavite like all the great mystics of the world just rejects the Advaita. In short while the Advaita is male chauvinist the Vaishnavite is a genuine feminist. So, the truer and greater voice of
38. Till now we examined the anti-brahmin voice of yesterday after Jainism and Buddhism declined. It was the voice of the ancient atheism as well as the voice of the anti-vedic majority. It was defeated not so much due to external causes. The external cause is invariably incidental and nonessential. The essential cause is always internal. Anyhow the essence of these non-vedic or anti-vedic trends did not evaporate. It is simply impossible. The essential truth of these trends namely Buddhism and Jainism was sucked and got incorporated by the Bakthi Movement specifically by the Kainkarya Marga of which the most powerful one was the Vaishnavite one. It was this Bakthi Movement, as movement that starts form the south in the12th century that inundated the entire subcontinent and it was the basis for the emergence of Sikhism, which in a way is remarkable hybrid of Vaishnavism, and Islam. Its anti-vedic stance is not at all unnatural. Hence the militant Sikhs often declare that they don't accept the Advaita of the Brahmins and hence the Dharma Sastra of Brahminism. They are very correct. A Vaishnavite cannot at all call himself a Hindu (Vaideeka Brahmin). It has no meaning at all. Hindu is a term given by the Muslim who could not classify the religions found in this subcontinent. Subsequently all the European used the term. Now for one or the other purpose this is used. However in this vast land we have two trends the Vedic and non-vedic. It is true the Vedic trend has now borrowed a lot from the non-vedic. The truly Vedic trend is non-existent. Hence, the vast majority rejects the Gnana Marga of Sankara. So also the Dharma Sastra. So the true voice of
39. However a new wave of anti-brahminism started during the anti- Imperialist national movement. This anti-brahminical struggle appeared as pro-British and hence as one that weakened the anti-Imperialist front. The struggle against Brahminism cannot be equated to a struggle against the Brahmins as a caste or community. However anti-brahminism often degenerated into a crude struggle against the small community and thereby became self-defeating. The same thing can also be said of class struggle. The struggle should be against caste values and practices in various forms. It does not at all at that stage go into the heart of the matter. Fight against the Brahmin community is not at all a fight against casteism or even caste oppression. Unless the right way is clearly grasped and implemented the struggle of the largest section of this land cannot achieve the noblest goal, the goal of Mahaveera, Buddha and the Alvars of the south, which is also the goal of Basaveswara, Kabir and Nanak and a Chaithanya and the great reformers of modern times.
40. Let me now attempt to examine the strategy of the recent leaders of this great struggle which really started more than three thousand years back which remains yet unfinished. How did the ancient teachers approach this great problem and how do our present leaders approach is the issue. Secondly can the path chalked our by our present day leaders really take us to the cherished goal is the most important question.
41. Not let us examine the history and the logic of this recent anti-Brahmical movement. The most prominent leaders, no doubt Dr. Ambedkar in the north and E.V.R. Periyar in the South. Both of them at a certain stage did not support the so called National Movement led by the such leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel etc., These men were often accused as the agents of British Imperialism. Such an accusation came from the Marxists too! But such Marxists who dubbed them as British allies fail to see the big truth nor see the justified criticism of these men on the ‘National’ leadership. Even if these men had openly sided with Briton there was ample justification in that. The backward communities as well as the so called untouchables, the Panchamas simply did not have any great trust or confidence on the ‘National’ leadership which was basically made up of high caste male-chauvinist gentlemen. They called the national leadership as Brahmin-Bania one, not without some justification. That these critics did not show any great faith in this national leadership was not totally unjustified. Have they not been the victims of the worst kind of Aparthism in this land? Did these upper caste people not treat them worse than dogs and pigs? Were they not compelled to live outside the village in the filthiest hovels?
42. They were unable to get even fresh water. They could not wear good cloths nor were allowed to wear sandals. Their women had no right to wear upper garment to protect or conceal their breasts. This was their history over hundreds of generations. How can they believe that these upper caste men had become suddenly Buddhas? Added to all that was it not during the British rule, the rule of the white skinned Parias who also ate pork and beef as they ate, that they could go out without fear of being beaten? Was it not during their rule they could think of schooling? No wonder they took the guns supplied by these white pariahs during a previous period to destroy the power of these brahminical upper caste to establish the rule of the white Paraiahs. So they were in a real way indebted to the Britishers. So they could never be accused of lack of patriotism. Patriotism is also a class concept. It cannot transcend classes and castes. So those who accuse them of lack of patriotism should either be down right idiots or the most heartless, inhuman unscrupulous beings. After all the Mayavadis could be only such heartless men. They wanted just change of power. This was keenly understood no wonder by Periyar hence he did not cooperate with the Brahmin Bania-national leadership. That this may have suited
43. If we are to evaluate the ‘National’ leadership's true characteristics or quality we should do it by only studying its attitude towards these downtrodden men and women who for centuries have been subjected to unfold miseries and were treated worse than beasts of burden. From only such an angle can we make an evaluation of men like Gandhi or Nehru or for that matter anyone. Was it not this attitude of Ramanuja towards such men that marked him a very different person from many of his contemporaries? Was it not the basis of our evaluation of Vaishnavism itself? Well, it is the truest criterion or touchstone. That is also the Marxist criterion.
44. Now-a-days many good men who were Marxists and got disillusioned by the developments within the Marxist movement are finding great inspiration in the teachings of Gandhi. Some of the Marxists find a good deal of identity of views between Gandhi and Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese Marxist. Some of the Gandhians too see such an identity in several areas between these two. In fact the Gandhian Ramadhar had tried to show such an identity in his very lucid work ‘Gandhi and Mao’. Is it a fact that Gandhi and Mao had similar objectives and as well as similar approaches? The reason for such an apparent similarity between the ‘Hindu Sananthanist’ who never rejected the caste system, and the atheist Marxist who never accepted such a such system or any kind of bureaucracy is because of the great shift that has come about in the Marxist movement itself, a shift, from the urban to the rural bias. In Marx we see the urban as the saviour of mankind where as this is not the implied message in Mao. Mao has rejected this word of Marx. The bias definitely is in favour of the rural. The contradiction between the urban (mental) and the rural (manual) was expected to be resolved, by urbanisation (electrification and mechanisation of agriculture) of the rural areas by Marx and those who followed him apparently faithfully but really blindly and uncritically. to this date. In this issue Trotsky the so-called critic of Stalin does not have an iota of difference with Stalin. In fact it is here we see a very fundamental difference between Trotsky and Mao. Trotsky was an Euro centrist. Mao was never. Mao’s way of resolving this contradiction was by some kind of ruralisation of the urban. He sent the urban elite to the rural areas to work with the poor peasants and soil their delicate hands and there by roughen the skin and toughen the body thereby brightens their soul. He saw that the higher educational centres, the breeding grounds of intellectual arrogance, a contempt for the dirty menial work and selfishness were closed. He saw them as the breeding ground of modern Chinese Mandarins. In all this there is unquestionably a certain kind of similarity between Gandhi and Mao. Added to that these two men were the most important revolutionaries who took very seriously the problem of Ends and Means. Hence it appears as though there is a lot of factual material to work out a thesis that Mao was really coming very close to Gandhi.
45. When this Brahminism in the name of Hindutva is now trying to dominate this land it becomes compelling that we should once again take up the weapon of the Alvars, update it and thereby defeat this inhuman Brahminism which if it were to be allowed a free had will plunge this land into untold misery. Was not this the reason why some 800 years back the great philosopher and social reformer made his journey to
46. However we should also know who or which forces are really assisting this modern inhumanism and how? This is our next important problem. Let us not forget for a moment that it was the Prema-marga that tied the hands of this inhumanism of yesterday. Have we any movement even remotely resembling such a one with in the Indian context of today? Should we have such a movement or not is the most important question, which should be answered by all who are for a humane society. Further our Gandhians of today are simply unable to raise up to challenge this militant Hindutva of RSS, BJP, and V.H.P. Can that be a pointer to indicate some kind of a similarity between the philosophy of Gandhi and Hedgevar? That is why we find today Manthan (an organ of BJP) publishing the authentic statements of Gandhi praising the activities of RSS cadres. Well the only thing that can correct the RSS is to bring inside the Hindu court a real struggle – which also means a struggle inside the camp of R.S.S. How can we achieve this is the next issue before us. Should we prepare the external condition most conducive for such a struggle to develop inside the camp of the Hindus or not is a very important question? This is in a sense the content of the class struggle that should take place in every serious organisation of this land in today’s context. I am almost certain that such a struggle will take place sooner or later inside the Hindu as well as the Muslim front. However it is also bound to take place at the global level during the best part of the next century which alone can alter the global situation in favour of Man in particular and life in general. If such a movement does not emerge to envelop this globe the very survival of man will be at peril.
47. Mao demands an essentially non-hierarchic equalitarian society where the ordinary people who work hard in the field should be the real masters. Whether Mao’s goal is a utopia or really possible is also not the issue here. The one identity between Mao and Ghandy that both of them are for a non-competitive, non-aggressive society in which the internal fear is no more. But this is not merely the aim of these two men. It has been the perennial dream of mankind after it got split internally.
Means and End
48. Modern struggle against Brahminism about which we have mentioned above which starts along with the ‘national’ struggle for freedom from British domination has adopted a strategy which is very different from that which was adopted by the earlier one. All this depend upon the understanding of the notion of freedom, or freeing process, the way or the means to achieve it, and the necessary conditions, which we should be preparing for the realisation of the goal. For the Leftist movement it is a western solution. Both Ambedkar and Periar were also convinced that the path for the final solution of the caste issue of this land could only be along the path that modern
49. Before we examine the way and the conditions when the enslaved section really gets its freedom we should have an objective understanding of freedom. It is one of the most difficult notions, because it is a paradoxical notion as every other true concept is.
What is real freedom?
50. One of the first acts of the revolutionary is to demystify this situation and dispel this illusion and reveal the hidden slavery. Marx’s did it admirably. It is also the same Marx who also states that freedom is indivisible and adds that the working class cannot achieve its own freedom until and unless it frees the entire society, which unquestionably includes the master, the exploiting class too. Only then the master-slave relationship can vanish. The real issue here is the production relationship, which is most unequal. So the working class dictatorship should be a phase where this basic production relationship is expected to be, actively changed which means that this proletarian dictatorship is a step or the kind of power that frees the bourgeois class also. It cannot hence be one of enslaving that class. However the main point is that the freedom of this slave involves at the same time the freedom of the enslaver. If you enslave one you will be the slave of another. You may not be aware of your own being a slave of another. In fact such knowledge is only a torment, so if you are not aware as to how and for whom you are a slave so much it increases your happiness. So the Christian is right in saying that ignorance is bliss! So it is better to create such an illusion so for as the exploiting class is concerned.
51. However while discussing this most fundamental issue, namely the nature of free relationship Marx nowhere discusses the role of love and loving service. It is this that makes his concept of freedom highly partial, not merely so it becomes very much similar to that of Bacon, which also is that of his predecessor Machivilli. Both of them assume that the freedom of one is based upon the enslavement of another and it follows that the happiness of the minority, the ‘flower of this culture’, the aristocracy, the Brahmins has to be based upon the enslavement and the consequent agony of the majority, the Pariahs. Marx no doubt rejects this. But did he bring into the discussion of the quality of such a free relationship? Nowhere he discusses it.
52. In fact his world of freedom is far away. He is in that sense an advocate of Videhamukti. Freedom in this world is almost impossible if we were to believe it is possible only after the establishment of a non-exploitative classless society. Once we accept such a position the state can enforce any kind of slavery. (Lenin too expressed a similar idea). Then it is impossible to criticise any state. The only thing is that in some states this is very much unbearable. In some it is tolerable. So all that should be done is to create an illusion, which will hide the ugly truth, and in this the bourgeois state appears to have succeeded much better when compared to the states where the proletariat apparently ruled. This is so if we are to accept that freedom is possible only when the last trace of coercive power vanishes. There are others who go to the extent to state that such a freedom is a dreadful thing; it is a nightmarish situation, hence it is not at all a desirable state of existence. That is the reason why people prefer even an authoritarian state be it under Fascist or Stalinist. I still maintain that for the poor peasants of
53. However when we really examine the life of any genuine revolutionary he or she always feels that the revolutionary activities are really freeing activities in more than one way. They also are the very activities, which enhances his or her happiness. Not merely that, they promote the happiness of others too with whom they are connected. He or she feels that they are really freeing others too and this work is true basis of tapping the slumbering creative activity in them too. Such an activity is a life generating humanising activity. It only means that at no time we can be absolutely free. No relative being can absolutely be free which means no living being can be concerned with such a notion of absolute freedom which is a myth. If any being is absolutely free it will be and completely severed of all relationships. So absolute freedom does not exist anywhere. Hence an absolutely free being can have no real existence at all. In fact this appears to be the line argument adopted by Ramanuja to refute the
54. Let us examine the other dimensions of freedom. Normally people associate (it need not to be that they should be Marxists) freedom with the range of real control of the external reality. Such an area of control expands depending upon the development of the productive forces. Day-in and day-out this is what every technocrat talking about. However what is usually if not deliberately hidden is that such a freedom enjoyed here in this way by the minority is at the cost of the even available freedom of the majority. The dam on the river
55. If the production relationship, is leading to a very unequal economic disparity there will be a general demand for economic equality. But economic equality is not that easy. If it is not readily and easily achievable nor achievable in the near future how can there be a free relationship is the issue. Can there be a free relationship in the context of economic inequality? It is true that if the economic inequality is very steep any talk of free relationship is simply nonsensical. However we should also not think that free relationship could be built only on the basis of economic equality. It also is similar to the notion that freedom can be possible only if a non-exploitative classless society is achieved. It is such a standpoint that will lead to the justification of even ruthless exploitation and enslavement before such a heaven dawns. So we should clearly realise that it is the freeing process that is real. This process will also be at the same time expressed in the change in the relationship of production. Instead of making the world yours if it makes this world more and more alien and beyond your grip and control the production relationship is becoming alien and you are becoming more and more enslaved. At that stage it is not a freeing but enslaving activity. Such a relationship is unquestionably one that you will hate. On the contrary the freeing activity or the free relationship is one you can enjoy and love and hence it is a lovable relationship. So the Catholic Mystic Ramon Lull was absolutely correct when he said that ‘love frees that are united and unites those that are free’. Finally genuine free relationship is invariably a loving one. The full significance of love and loving service is not at all found in the message of modern West. Marx too did not rectify this basic flaw of the European Enlightenment. Our so-called progressives continue this. The Indian Marxists do not have any great respect to our heritage. That the alienated sections have no great respect or love for this heritage particularly to the dominant and dominating culture is quite understandable. However they cannot ignore the earlier protest voice and the message from the history of the earlier protest movement. They have to draw the proper lessons from that history which is very much theirs. The voice of the Alvars unquestionably is that of the Pallan and Parayan. It certainly is not that of the upper caste Brahmin or that of the Satsudra who is really the backbone of this casteism. Without the Kshathriya or the Vellala the Brahmin cannot perpetuate this caste system. The voice of the Alvars as pointed out earlier is the continuation of the voice of protest found in Jainism and Buddhism. It emerges most powerfully when these two had lost touch with the masses by becoming corrupt.
56. This above analysis naturally leads to the most difficult problem namely that of Means and End. This problem became the biggest one before the International Communist Movement particularly after Khrushchev’s revelations about the atrocities committed by the CPSU during the period when Stalin was the supreme leader. The problem in the initial stages was considered by most if not by all only as a problem of the party as well as its relation with the people. However it is now realised by more and more people that it is one very much concerned with the proper means or appropriate means of building socialism or the egalitarian society. Such a discussion naturally leads to the issue of the take over (not capture) of power by the downtrodden. There are two pathways as well as the proper utility of both at the appropriate times. The popular version is that it is democratic and the other the extra-parliamentary method is by the forcible over throw of the state power. Ambedkar and Periar and such critics of Gandhi had not opted in favour of the armed struggle. At the same time more and more sections becoming disgusted and disillusioned by the so-called legal means and are tempted to the other road to power.
57. Let us examine the strategy advocated by the earlier leaders of the alienated sections. They demand reservation of seats in higher education similarly reservation of jobs in the Government and representations in the legislative bodies. Assuming that all these are really given to them that too in a fast manner can it solve the most basic problem? Can it solve even the problem of class question? When taken into account the class question is very simple when compared to the caste issue so also the problem of colour. We all know that Christianity in our land has not solved the caste question or the colour issue inside the Church itself. Even the burial places are different. A Nadar Christian girl cannot marry a Pariah Christian boy though she may either educationally or economically not so well placed as the Pariah Christian boy. Is this not our experience over the last four decades? However let us examine what will be the result of such a strategy, assuming that the education and administration at all levels are even in the language of the people. (If they are in a foreign language it is worse) Is there any way to understand this issue and draw the correct conclusion? To understand this we have to examine great experiment of
58. In
59. All the institutions and the so-called infrastructure carry the imprint of this social order. They all should be radically altered. On the contrary if we accept them and try to use them we will only help to strengthen the very system, which we honestly wanted to dismantle and destroy. So the system in our land produces Brahminism and its domination. If we adopt its method or its way and that too if it is well implemented it will only produce a bunch of neo-brahmins who will only actively and most willingly give the maximum support for the very system, which they criticised when they were outside it.
Means and End
60. The problem of means and End is one of the most important aspects of Marxist analysis namely the class-nature of the tool or the instruments. This analysis was not carried our at all except by Mao. This is the seminal idea in his remarkable work, ‘Peoples War’, where he most emphatically rejects the idea of using merely the most advanced and sophisticated weaponry but also the way in which aggressive wars were conducted. He not merely said that there were two kinds of war like just and unjust but equally two methods of war. Even if the war were to be a just one if it were to be conducted in such a way where the superiority of weapons were to be the determiner of the outcome, even in the event of victory the objective, the namely a people’s power, will not be achieved. It will only result conclusion that we are compelled to draw is that the weapons, be it whatsoever, right from language to knowledge to material instruments and methods of material–production to methods of waging war all cannot but be class biased. It is the design that determines its nature. They can never be neutral. However during the life time of Marx and Engels only two instruments showed most glaringly the class bias. They were Ideology and the State. So they demanded the rejection of these two. But today it is a very different story. All the mediating links that can unite men and women in production relation can be designed in such a way that the very use of them invariably will give all the advantages to one class and never for the other. Neither Lenin nor Trotshy who is said to be an acute critic of bureaucracy ever made such a Marxist criticism and analysis of the instruments. The idea of socialist pattern of production is a very recent Marxist notion. However it is not accepted in any undisputed way. In fact it is not at all acceptable to all those who have not gone beyond J.D.Bernal and Stalin. Mao has clearly indicated the way. This is clearly brought out in the cultural history of this land. Let us see that side of our cultural history.
61. Sankara’s philosophy is called the Gnana Marg. It is said to be the path of great knowledge. It is claimed even superior to that of modern science. It is hence not easily accessible to the majority. The Alvars saw that his Gnana Vada actually condemns the majority. Don’t we see the same process of rejection of the majority as misfits and unfits in our educational system too? Our education system is a war of mutilation and annihilation of the majority. It is intimidating the majority, makes them cowards and beats them to become docile and tame slaves who will work without a word of protest for the elect, the minority or the so-called aristocracy of our society. To defeat this Gnanamarga, the Alvars did not use the same weapon. They knew the remarkable truth that the instrument, the pride of the Brahmin, could not be used to defeat this Brahminism. It is specifically designed to consolidate Brahminism and never destroy or liquidate it. This same thing can be seen in the Chinese history of recent times. When Chiang as the supreme commander during the second united front period commanded the People’s Liberation Army nominally under the single command, to fight the Japanese by mainly depending upon weapons and soldiers, Mao simply rejected it and said ‘Mr. Chiang you fight in your way we will fight in our own way’. Mao knew fully that by adopting the way Chiang demanded or recommended the goal of the communists, namely people’s power, can never be established even in the event of victory. The principle behind this was very well known perhaps to these Alvars even thousand years back. So it can be said that they adopted the method of people’s war and that is Prema Marg (Kain Karya Marg). We all know from our cultural history that it is this Marg that drew within its fold the millions in which the backward and the women played a very great role, made them the most articulate section and this unity did tie the hands of the intellectually arrogant Brahminism. Of course Brahminism and casteism and cast oppression was not totally eliminated form this society. It cannot be done unless; historical and objective conditions become ripe. This can be well understood by every student of historical materialism. The objective conditions conducive for freedom of the oppressed people are emerging.
62. Chiang Kai Sheik, the arrogant leader of the most reactionary section of the Chinese society and the agent of the all powerful US imperialism ‘accepted’ to drink a cup of tea with his most hated rival, the despicable leader of the underdog and the ‘bandit leader’ Mao, only when his and his tribe’s very survival became problematic. Till then he would never have even cared to hear what the other section of the Chinese people was saying. Was there any need? He would have preferred to a compromise with Japanese imperialists. Did he not say that the problem of
63. From the previous analysis the one inescapable conclusion is that the weapon of the adversary, which he prepares and perfects can never be ours as our aim, is different. However more often than not we don’t realise that our aim is not merely different but indeed the very opposite. We feel that both of us are fighting from the same kind of power, be it state power or anything. However we don’t realise that even in power there are two distinct kinds. Physics may not know such distinctions. While our adversary wants such a kind of power as to enslave, dominate and exploit, we want the kind of power to liberate and put an end to exploitation. The most fundamental question here is whether the two kinds of power are of the same quality. How to find that? The people fear the one, they hate it, and they would like to overthrow such a power. It will always be challenged and so it will increase perpetually all kinds of coercive instruments. That is the kind of power that can help to develop only a slave society. It is the one hailed by the state philosopher statesmen Macchivilli whose ancestor we have in Manu and Kautilya the author of Arthasasthra before whom Macchivilli is very small. However we all know that the bakthi movement (Kain Karya Marga) rejected this Dharmasastra and the Arthasasthra the code of caste society. The other kind of power is yet to be known by the modern West. It was known to the Catalan mystic-Ramon Lull when he wrote that ‘Love liberates those that are united and unites that are free’. This focused on a feminine kind of powers, the non-coercive kind. It is the power that can free those that are united. The other kind can only chain to enslave. The two kinds of power emanate from two different methods of work. They can never converge. The Western Marxist did not appreciate this. Even Trotsky the so-called a cutest critic of Stalin whom many praise sky-high did not know any thing about the other kind of power. Hence he would not have alerted the situation had he been in power in
64. Mao shows that there are not merely two kinds of wars like just and unjust but equally two methods of war. In a similar way we can find today two kinds of energy options. We can go for the concentrated non-renewable fossil fuel or even the atomic fuel or for the renewable soft energy. The consequences are diametrically opposite. One will lead to an expansionist dominating imperialist state, which have to go for war to control the non-renewable resources. So neither
65. Two pathways or methods or means or modes can be seen at all levels. We saw it at the level of war and energy option. The same kind of distinct pathways or modes can be very readily seen in the choice of technology or production-patterns. The most classic example is unquestionably tropical agriculture. The so called traditional way basing itself on soft and renewable energy and the recyclable pattern is the safest and it leads to an non-aggressive, non competitive and peaceful society. It is also highly non-wasteful. It will not be marginalising larger and larger sections of people by depriving them even the most natural gifts of clean water and fresh air. On the contrary the so-called modern agriculture based on petroleum, the non-renewable material, is driving more and more people to destitution by destroying the life sustaining ecological context. When we come to education there also we see the two methods. Modern education with its basis on the production of experts in every possible way is actually the method by which the largest majority is driven out as misfits or fit for only the most beastial and menial work. It is not designed to give enthusiasm and confidence to the majority. It is a blitzkrieg to shoot out such a majority at the first chance. It is the way to suppress the weak. However our stalwarts of anti-brahmin movement never cared to see the true nature of this method, which is from start to the finish anti-people both in orientation and contents. No wonder this was clearly condemned by Mao. He demanded that these expert-production factories should be closed down. Will our BJP; the national patriotic Hindus accept such a proposition? How can they accept, the followers of the worst kind of Gnanvada? Are they not claiming that right from theory of relativity to nuclear physics were all anticipated in the Atharva Veda, the Veda created by the beef eating cattle drivers – perhaps by their remote Aryan cowboys? However we can be very certain that these Aryans were aggressive people who were to destroy, subjugate and enslave inoffensive peaceful settlements as the Krugans did with the peaceful settlements of the Mediterranean region in 3000 BC. The Krugans and the Aryans should have been unquestionably brothers by the same semen. The first great aggressive peoples appear to be these pastoral peoples who rode the horses and created weapons to kill others. They were not producing artifacts for cultivation. These people are migratory like the swarms of locusts and no wonder they play havoc. The Brahmins are also not cultivators and they too migrate. Now the exodus is towards the West. This is not at all in any way surprising too. Still their representatives talk of their land and patriotism. People who do not till the land can never have real love of the soil. All they want is to dominate and exploit the cultivators. Why the Brahmins were actually prevented from acquiring any kind of knowledge connected with technology in ancient days is itself a very interesting question. In fact Dhrona, was accused by the Kshatriya prince, that he was the first cause for the great destruction, because of his having taken up to archery. The Brahmin had no business to wield any astra or instrument. He should be totally unarmed. However he is now prepared to become a top leather technologist! No wonder he has become the greatest threat for the working people. If the BJP upholds Varnahsrama Dharma it should demand all the Brahmins to get out of every kind of technical institution. Will they do so? In fact they want that all the productive forces should be under the control-effective control of the heartless Advaities and the Neo Brahmins. The effect of this is already felt in the area of agriculture. The criteria of selection are based upon the number of marks the fellow gets. It is not at all based upon any moral consideration. If an immoral, unethical, rascal becomes the controller or chief engineer or an administrator what could be the fate of our innocent people is anybody’s guess. Has the BJP any other criterion of efficiency? Can the criteria be acceptable to the heartless Brahminism also be acceptable to the protestors? This is the most important question.
66. When we come to the question of health once again the two pathways or mode of approach are very clear. The one that gives all the power to the elite and authoritarians who would control the body of the people and the other, which will give freedom for the people. The Allopathy is definitely the Baconian way fully developed. It has driven out virtually the goddess Hygia. It worships only Panacea, which means money and power over the body of the diseased. Hygia is prophylactic or preventive and suggests mainly the way of life to have a healthy life. It is not at all a science to liberate them. This is also a case of two kinds of knowledge; call it technology, once again enslaving the large majority to a small minority. Mao challenged this and it resulted in the evolution of the barefoot doctors whose approach was the very opposite of the experts.
67. Regarding the building a majority opinion or support for a policy, be it a very correct one, there should be a proper method to achieve the most desirable result. If we adopt wrong means, (there is more than one such way), even if the policy were to be correct the result would be totally counter productive. Hence Mao states that the method is very important be it in production or building a majority for a policy inside the organisation or in war. The quick, apparently efficient method is to gather yes men by hook or crook and build up a majority. This is now the norm in almost all the so-called third world countries. This is the creation of the
68. Finally one of the most disputed areas would be concerned with the mode of cognition of the truth. It is the area of epistemology. Here too we have two kinds or methods each having a different quality. However here also such a distinction is unacceptable to the majority of Marxists. Only in recent years some of the soviet ideologies have come to recognise this distinction. However they don’t seems to know the exact nature of such a distinction. But most of our Marxists will ask us as to how there can be two kinds of truths? After all truth is in the quality of the images or statement we make about an object. There is a considerable correspondence between the image and the object of which it is the image. The truthfulness or identity increases with the increase of practice though at no time, they will admit no doubt, the correspondence will be complete or absolute. It is from such an angle that they will declare that our knowledge is never absolute and they may quote Lenin stating that even an electron is an infinite. This is the limit to which most of our Marxist will go. During the pre-Revolutionary periods the Mensheviks came out with the notion of two kinds of truths. Lenin accused them of Kantian deviation. It is true that they were Kantians because it was Immanuel Kant the great German philosopher – scientist who really made such a distinction. His distinction was however not similar to the one made later on by Mao the Chinese revolutionary. However Mao has not openly stated that there are two distinct kinds of truths. Yet any one who understands the full meaning of his remarkable instruction ‘Love the people, serve them and struggle against self’ can clearly understand that he makes a distinction of two kinds of truths. Mao invariably connects the cognition with practice. He states that, man cognises the truth of the objective situation by scientific experiments, in the production process and class struggle. He clearly distinguishes here the two kinds of truths. The truth got from the first two is of one kind.
69. They are obviously not activities that could be called class struggle. If they are also aspects of class struggle he need not have made such a distinction. Secondly the truth that one understands by involving oneself in class struggle cannot be the one that one can get by the scientific experiments or even by involving in the production process. It only means the two are not same. Secondly Mao makes another distinction namely antagonistic and non- antagonistic contradictions a distinction much pooh-poohed or even hated and rejected as down right revisionist nonsense by the Albanian Stalinist Enver Hoxa.
70. Mao does declare that both kinds of class struggle should give the participant real knowledge of the objective process, which means truth. Do they differ? They should certainly differ. Here one kind of contradiction may eventually lead to armed struggle which means here the cadre has to know about the adversary, his aim, his mind, etc. and also the ways and means to defeat him. But the other kind of class struggle can never lead to such a kind of situation. It is in this area where Mao says that the cadre should gladly and lovingly serve the people and it is here he adds that the cadre should struggle against self. These three instructions are put together.
71. Here Mao not merely distinguishes the two kinds of truths but also clearly shows that the two cannot be cognised by the same means. However both of them can be subsumed under the title Practice. Mao’s practice not only involves scientific experimentation, production process, and wars but very much loving service to people. In fact loving service to people is the most important aspect of class struggle because we know we are not fighting always with an adversary takeing swords and guns, which is a very small part of class struggle.
Class struggle - loving service and struggling against self:
72. The ideas of loving, serving and struggling against the self (Ahankar) are exactly what we find in the philosophy of Bakthi movement (Kainkarya Marga). Actually it is not at all found in the Gnanamarga of Sankara. In the Sankalpa of Gnanavadis that is the Smartha brahmins as well as the Vadakalai Vaishnavites (the revisionists who have reverted back to the smartha sampardaya no doubt still being inside the fold of Vaishnavism, just as the revisionists from Dange to EMS all are still with in the fold of Marxism using the phrases of Marxism) the word kainkarya is characteristically absent. The same kind of an absence of loving service can be seen in western Marxists. So Western Marxism is at best comparable to the Vadakalai Vaishnavism, because it also is not in any case an absolute Monism. The Vaishnaviteconcept is ‘identity in and through and because of the difference’. The Bakthi Marga realised just as Mao had realised that to grasp the social truth or the truth of life the best and easiest way, method or means was by serving the people gladly. This cannot be possible unless you really love the people. We should see the full significance of this aspect. We should also see whether the modern protest movement has appreciated this aspect.
73. Let us examine the third part of the instruction namely struggle against self. This is a very important aspect in this method of cognition. Here Mao distinguishes the two modes depending whether one should destroy this false ego or not. It means to understand one kind of truth there seems to be no need to destroy this false ego while it appears that it is absolutely necessary to destroy this ‘self’ to understand the other kind namely the other truth. How to destroy such a false ego becomes the most important question.
74. It should be said to the great credit of Marx that he was one with the great reformers in declaring that all the illusions and crimes are due to object–bondage. However he never gave much of any thought as to how to get rid of such a kind of object–bondage. Also he never says that of all kinds of object–bondage the most difficult one to free from is that of the attachment to the false-ego. You can throw away the money or property but it is not that easy to destroy your false ego. You can put an end to yourself most easily. It is not at all that easy with your Ahankar. If we can define in a single sentence Brahminism it can be characterised as the most abominable intellectual arrogance. It is enough to lead one in every kind of crime. It is this Ahankar that hides the most important truth, the truth of life. Gnana Marga is not at all the path to destroy this Ahankar. This is clearly realised by all the advocates of Bakthi Margas. To put it in our language, Mao demands the cadres to be Kainkaryamargi, which means both Bakthi and Karma. That is the true Gnana. This is very much the message of the Vaishnavite Alvars who have voiced the greatest protest against the arrogant Vaideeka Brahminism. It is very unfortunate that our modern protest movements have not cared to draw the lessons either from our history or a similar one but the recent movement of modern
Answers to the American lady (a catholic nun) Denis Hanusek of
75. Did Ramajuja desire to teach everyone?
76. From the temple top of the temple (Gopuram) Thirukottiyur gave the secret message to all and sundry violating the command of his own teacher.
77. His other Quality?
78. He had no caste prejudices though he was born and brought up in the Brahmin fold and had as his teacher Yadhavaprakasa an advaiti who had strong faith in casteism. He was prepared to partake the remains of the food of his teacher – Kanchipurna (Thirukacchi nambi) who was a Sudra.
79. Ramanuja a thinker?
80. He was undoubtedly a remarkable thinker. But that was not his strength. In fact he did not find out the way to defeat the remarkable Adviatic scholar Yagnya Muni. They debated for eighteen days. Finally it was Yagnya Muni who yielded to Ramanuja stating by logic or mere reasoning one cannot reach the highest of truth. So saying he abandoned his Advaita and became a Vaishnava and a disciple of Ramanuja. Hence we say the `Tharka is not the Marga'. That does not mean we throw it away as useless. It is definitely useful. Yet we should know its limitations. This was also the position of Emanuel Kant. Yet he did not solve the epistemological problem. Why? I will say shortly.
81. Holy man - Whether Ramanuja was one?
82. What do you mean by the term Holy? Some may call even a Gandhi a holy man. If Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and Ramana could be called hole, Ramanuja was certainly a very holy person. His idol adores every Vaishnavite temple where it is worshipped.
83. What sets him apart?
84. A Vaishnavite is a Tridandi. He should eschew the caste arrogance, the wealth arrogance and finally the intellectual arrogance. Only then one can really see the truth, also see the true path of freedom. This is the essence of the Vaishnavite teaching. This is the unique feature of its epistemology. This is very different from that of the Advaiti Sankara. It is not at all surprising that the monist was believer or accepted the case system and never worried about the caste discrimination. He perhaps consoled his conscience by conveniently calling the entire world Mythya. Whereas the term Maya so far as I am concerned should mean Magical. Is not creation a remarkably a magical phenomenon?
85. Ramanuja lived up to that. Secondly it is a way open to all, even to an illiterate and Chandala. It is the easiest path and the most reliable one. It is the path of `Kainkarya' `Gladly serve all beings'. This is the easiest way to destroy the three kinds of arrogance. So Ramanuja opened the door for all to enter the great way of freedom, while the great Sankara closed it for the mightiest of the mighty and in the process only could produce the most arrogant Brahmin. That is the reason shy anti Brahminism is still very much a movement.
86. Ramanuja's life is inspiration or not? Do you teach his philosophy to those who come?
87. Even as an atheist but because of being a social worker I am clearly realising that to understand the people and social truth and to make them work for them interpretation of Ramanuja's philosophy (Kainkarya Marga) is the most suitable one. This is also the message of Mao, the Chinese revolutionary ` Serve the cadres, Love the people, Serve the people and struggle against self'. This is the quintessence of `Kainkarya Marga' of the Alwars expounded by Ramanuja. This is what I have learnt in my life as a social worker.
88. Regarding the books of Ramakrishna Ashram people on Ramanuja and the stories on Ramanuja by the Vaishnavite community, what is your opinion?
89. Most of the people of R.K.A. do not know Tamil. They may have heard or read from other. They may have rejected some instances as myth, while others as real. Such a critical attitude is quite good. However Ramanuja was very much a historical figure, much nearer than Buddha, Christ and even Sankara. Almost all the events of his life can be very well treated as real fact. Very few can be treated as myths. His social work is readily recognisable. There is very much less myth in the life of Ramanuja than even the life of Sankara. When you go through the lives of Moses and Jesus, we cannot say what could be a fact at all. However for the believers it is a very different story.
90. In fact I do teach the essence of the teachings of the Alvars. Ramanuja expounded the philosophy and turned to use the message for social upliftment of the alienated sections. Secondly he started the battle against the Vaideeka philosophy (Advaita Mayavada) in the Agraharam itself. Hence the Vaishnavites used the language Manipravalam very much. We can say and I also fee, that to justify caste elimination or to destroy the caste barriers the best indigenous source is the philosophy of the Alwars, as expounded by Ramanuja and to defeat the heartless Brahminism of Mayavada Ramanuja's philosophy is the best weapon in the Indian context. In fact its epistemology is superior to the one, which is called scientific. Western Marxism is not adequate, because in it the cognitive, creative and liberative role of love and loving service is not at all recognised. However as we all can easily know the subsequent changes did choke the movement. The Vaishnavites really forgot the true meaning of the philosophy of Vaishnavism. The same thing can be said of all great social movements to this date. Revisionism is not unique to the communist movement. It is a regular feature, which we can see in every movement. `History is man copying himself, losing himself and regaining himself again and again' wrote Marx, one of the great thinkers. I believe he clearly understood the pattern of social changes. Hence it becomes necessary to dig the past. We recognise the revolutionary message. It is the same, but emerging in a different yet similar context.
91. Was Ramanuja a mystic?
92. If you think that one who claims to have reached the Jeevan Mukthi or the Sadeha Mukthi as a Sankara or Ramakrishna or a Ramana claims, the so called Nirvikalpa Samadi where even the subject – object contradiction vanishes, where one becomes the supreme Brahma is a mystic, Ramanuja is not.
93. In fact it is such a claim that Ramanuja calls an illusion of the claimant. You cannot come back to tell that, he says, you will escape the universe, you have lost all relationship. So you will become a (Kantian) unknowable. It is an idea with out any reality. Sankara may be honest, but he was like drunken man. So none can accept the claims of drunken man. Such is the criticism of Ramanuja. The Dwaithi, Madhwa, can make a similar criticism. There can be no compromise on this. Many will be attempting to bring about some kind of compromise, saying that they all are stages and the Brahma padam of Sankara is the highest and Ramanuja's is just below it. I don't agree with it. Ramanuja's position is clear. He rejects the claim of Sankara. He is a firm advocate of Videha Mukthi and he rejects categorically the idea of `Aham Brahmosmi' as interpreted by an advaitin. Visishtadwatin is really called Dwayam. Let us be true to what one says.
94. Had Ramanuja the experience of Vasudeva?
95. How can one agree or refute such a claim? When Moses could speak to the Lord, and such a claim is believed by Jews, Christians and Muslims, will it not be the same with a Ramanuja? This is also the claim of the Alvars. You cannot say any thing about such claims. As a convinced Atheist, I am not prepared to accept such claims. You cannot say anything about such claims. What are the evidences that you have in the utterances of Moses, or in the glorious Quron or in the Bible? In Sankara's utterances there is no great evidence at all. Yet finally he says that we should worship the Govinda and Vinayaka. The faithful will believe that the saints did see the deity. All the `miracles' cannot in any way be taken as evidences.
96. Should we imitate them?
97. There is no meaning or purpose in imitating. In fact the term is a very bad one. This can be said of a one who acts in a drama or cinema! All that I would say is that you should realise the great aim or purpose behind these remarkable literature which can be called #. Which is always amenable to interpretation and hence misinterpretation. This is not the case of the statements in the so-called exact sciences, where phenomena can be interpreted but not the statements. The statements can only be explained be then be of
98. Only the experience of those mystics who claim to have reached a stage where they experience, or live, an uninterrupted bliss or Ananda, can be, so I think, can be called unique. Because it is against the most normal experience of all of us, hence can be called unique. I personally do not believe in such a state. Nor do I find it having any great value so far as the millions are concerned. For the suffering humanity this can offer nothing. Hence Ramanuja accused the Mayavadin as one for whom morality and ethics become bugbear and nonsense.
99. However I have a different kind of belief. We all can become a Tao. In that sense I firmly believe that Ramanuja became a Tao, the Way. It is the way by which you become a freeing agent. It is by perpetually emptying oneself. The easiest way is by doing loving service to one and all. You become fearless, you become supremely happy, you are the cause and the consequence of real happiness, you are hence not a cause of fear to any intruding to the so called adversary.
100. However all I can understand is that the universe is not a gushing chaos. There is in it a kind of an order or a principle akin to our intelligence. You may call it by any name. That is the dialectic, which is of course very complex. We may understand a bit of it. In this respect it is just comparable to our knowledge. We can never exhaust this dialectics. This order is revealed at every turn at every level. It is this that seems to be adored and worshipped by all human beings by various names. What I believe is that we can become consciously a part of such a dialectical freeing process. That I believe seems to be the aim of all great revolutionaries. Even the revolutionary party, it can be the churches; it can be any of the artifacts, including no doubt words, ideas, customs etc. All are designed by the revolutionary to help in moving in the right direction, the goal in the process. The process is the most refreshing one. It is the freeing process. The swimmer is supremely happy.
101. Why should we seek such people?
102. There also arises the question of understanding them. They are the experiences of life's experience. The purpose is clear. It is to free mankind. It is continued to this date. The words are guide to action. If Ramanuja was social reformer his words should be guide to continue that. Such social reform is the way to free mankind. So to understand the true meaning, `Rahasyartha', you should carry out the same task, that is following him, not imitating him, you realise the spirit, at times you may change the word, you may say even the opposite, it means you are apparently violating, rejecting the word. You do so only to be true to the spirit. Those who go on repeating the word, (that is also an imitation) kill the spirit. This is dogmatism or scriptualism. However if we do not carry out the task scrupulously we will end as dogmatists and go on repeating the petrified words.
103. Entering most willingly this great liberative process (appears to me) can be called the Prapatti, the sweet surrender. This is the supreme way to realise the meaning of this life. Here the Atheist can agree with the Theist like Ramanuja, because Vaishnavism is essentially a Kainkarya Marga, and all social revolutionaries at some stage fully realise that the true path is Kainkarya Marga. Hence a Mao can shake hands with a Ramanuja!
The Need for The New Programme
Answer to the first question of N.S. Jagannathan (Chief Editor, financial Express)
Basis of my confidence?
104. My view or opinion should be true and just. (Sathya & Dharma). It is not at all necessary that my opinion should get thousands of supporters. I should not get any personal benefit by holding such an opinion. I may ever suffer for such a belief. Finally all should be happy. That is being Karmayogi.
105. In this respect Lenin was unquestionably a Karmayogi.
How long will it take to realise this goal?
106. It may be even two hundred years. I added that one who plants the seedling of a palmera palm cannot harvest its fruits, only his grand children can hope..
107. Jagannathan – “Then your work will be purposeful” (It was in 82-83)
108. I have not changed my basic understanding…
109. The collapse of Soviet Union and the change of colour of
110. Whatever may be out verdict on the solution offered by Marx, his criticism of capitalism cannot in any way be disputed? In fact today the greens and the eco-socialists have added a lot more. Let us hear what the greens have said. Further such a kind of criticism would have been most welcome and endorsed by a Gandhi also. In fact the co-called Marxist by and large have not added more than what Marx had said. Let us hear what the German greens have said. They may not be even Marxists. Regarding Capitalism: “Destruction of resources, wasted, nicely packed useless consumer articles as substitutes for one time easily available gifts of nature, leading finally to catastrophe, threatening to extinguish all higher forms of life. However this did not produce any joy for the Marxist left because they did not understand the scope of the ecological debate. Like military technology the ecological crisis threatens the very survival of man. Occidental rationalist demystification of reality has led only to control nature (Weber). The fundamental optimism of Marx and Engels is simply refuted. Their assumptions are false.
111. The relation between Man and Nature as opposite and the idea of struggle and control will only lead to the consolidation of the very class system they (Marxists) want to destroy, but only strengthen the apparatus of oppression.
112. The ecological debate (1970) provided a chance to extend Marxist theory and practice to make it up to date, but it did not happen. The European left has not become a part of the ecological movement. The issue being the development paradigm (the Marxist obsession) the revolutionary left has purely an abstract concern of the ecological issue.
113. With-in the traditional Marxist thought, the ecological question is merely an after-thought, which is forgotten when other questions are dealt with. In their debate Mandel and Alex Nova did not pay any attention to the ecological question (New Left Review). In the debate (Marxist no doubt) on the issue of the future socialist society they did not pay any attention to the ecological question. The ecological question has become a symbol for general dissatisfaction with the model of development. The question presents us with the need for a new model of eco-socialism. It demands new thinking on the part of the Left. The Greens have posed the question and that is the great credit.
114. There is no systematic Marxist theory of Nature as such conscious of its own speculative implication (criticism of Smidt – student of Adorno of Franfort School).
115. At this stage we can really understand as to why there is an inability of a principled unity amidst the Reds, Greens and Feminists to this date, a unity based on a sound philosophical basis. That also can be a kind of subconscious reason why Prof JBS Haldane, a brilliant Biologist and at the same a Marxist came to the conclusion that Marx and Gandhi should be blended. He became an advocate of non-violent Biology too.
116. To day the Marxists simply do not know what to do to save the name of Marx. He has not shown the high road to build the new society, the dream of all the great saints. How are we to understand this? At any rate we have to admit that it was not only Marx who rejected capitalism. Apart from the European Anarchists the Indian Gandhi, who till the end called himself a Hindu, also rejects Capitalism. In face his criticism of capitalism or even modern west was even more pointed than that of Marx. His future was also an egalitarian society. He called it Gramarajya, and that was his Anthyodaya (final vision). His vision of such an egalitarian society was in a way the very opposite of what Marx envisaged. However both had one thing in common. They wanted the brave new society of noble men and women – a society free from every kind of internal fear, one of brothers & sisters – of universal brother & sisterhood. However they had differences in achieving that kind of stateless society. Gandhi accepted a thoroughly non-violent overthrow of the capitalist rule as the way.. Secondly Gandhi firmly believed that such a society of good people can never be possible unless the reduction of personal needs is done voluntarily which is a very old hoary notion in the Indian tradition, called “Aparigraha”. Hence Gandhi did not accept the economic foundation that Marx envisaged, the basis of the future communist society. Marx did not raise the issue of Needs. Gandhi declares: “Nature can provide you your needs but not your greed”. In a similar way while the Marxists following Marx and Lenin and other so-called progressives declare “Industrialise OR Perish”, Gandhi emphatically gives his rebuttal by declaring “Industrialise AND Perish”. In this respect Gandhi’s approach towards machinery is also very clear. Further, Gandhi’s approach towards the need for manual work as a part of general health also is not the same as that of Marxists. It is a problem of leisure. While Marx is biased in favour of urbanizing the entire society to resolve the contradiction between the town and the country, Gandhi’s solution is the very opposite. In his vision the urban is to be very much a complementary side and never a determining aspect. In this respect Prof Haldane unquestionably one of the eminent biologists, also a Marxist agrees with Gandhi while he discusses the size of a living organism. The Gandhian Gramarajya world will be a world of millions of very much self-reliant villages and the urban centers will be scattered amidst group of clusters of such villages. It is also not one where experts are needed or experts dictate. In all these world power will be decentralized or can be decentralized. Marxian way can only lead to centralisation of power. That is why in the Marxian plan the State will not wither away. Ghandian gramarajya can work on soft energy, which only will be eco-friendly. While Marxian socialism (also non Marxian) cannot work on soft energy. It has to finally opt to the so-called “cleaner and hardest energy – namely the atomic one, which will be highly eco-destructive. Already clear indications are there. Yet Marxians are unable to have a sound ecological programme only because of their developmental model to which they are clinging most tenaciously, a variety of religious fanaticism!. However much the Marxists can reject capitalism their developmental model essentially is the same as that of capitalism. Their only difference is in their rejection of the ruling class and the production relation, also an illusion when the developmental model is not differing in essentials from that of capitalists. That also is the reason why to this date there is no socialist ecology or socialist geography as Bottomore has pointed out in his (Marxist dictionary).
117. At this stage we to have examine the most important fundamental defect in the foundation of Marxism which is really coming in the way of developing of the necessary ecological approach and also is blocking the development of real socialism or the egalitarian society. It means that we have to examine the very philosophy of Marx, which is contained in the eleven theses on Feurbach. We can clearly note that Marx does not recognise the cognitive and liberative role of love and loving service. It is that which clearly differentiates Gnana from Bhakti. So, Marx in our tradition is a Gnanamargi. And hence his Karma also bears the shortcoming. Because of it he did not also understand the full dimension of free relationship. Marx wrote “all the consequences are contained in the proposition that the product is related to the producer in a hostile inimical manner”. So his demand is just to change this relationship, which are just the production relations. It is also finally an economic relationship. However, the Catalan mystic says that free relationship is a loving one. He states “Love unites that are free and frees that are united”. Neither Marx nor Lenin recognised this most profound truth. This lapse very much reflected at the ontological level too. Hence, Marx could not recognise the true relationship between Nature and
118. In this connection, we should know that Marx said about love. When his guru Feurback began to toy with the idea of creating a new religion based on the foundation of love as he felt deeply that atheism would create a kind of spiritual restlessness amidst people and when Marx and Engels came to know of this, they simple chided him by saying that Feurbach had become rusticated and had abandoned politics. They did not take the trouble to search why Feurbach, the convinced atheist, should seek to create an ideology based on love. Marx did not go beyond production relationship. However his defeat cannot in any way be equated to either a defeat of the socialist aim or a triumph of capitalism. All that can be said is that Marx did not show the way to realise socialism. However the was very clearly indicated at Yenan, which was very much admired not merely by some of the most important Gandhians like JC Kumarappa, Pandit Sundarlal but also by a very young communist Rolph Fox. The new world will be the work of the women of the world. It means that we should have the new programme. So the appeal to the mothers.
119. Marx reminds of the old urban Jew Cain who kills his rural brother Abel and resolves the contradiction. Marxists follow him, hence their failure.
P. RAMAMURTHY
One of the top leaders of the C.P.I. who became later the political bureau member of the C.P.M. He was also a member of the parliament. His sole aim was to remain always a member of the parliament for which he was preferred to any kind of compromise with the enemy class. When the
One of the top leaders of the undivided communist party of
PROFESSOR D.D. KOSAMBI
An outstanding versatile scholar, a mathematician worked on path geometry. He was collaborating with Professor Einstein. A Marxist who has written on Indian culture, and the way to study Indian history. He did not support the Indian government’s stand on the
A.K. GOPALAN
One of the great mass leaders of the communist movement in
RAMON LULL (12th 13th Century AD)
He was a Spanish Mystic, a catholic no doubt. His idea of freedom was the very opposite of Bacon and those of the European enlightenment. After him we can say with confidence the real message of Christ died out in the European context. The throne at
SRI NARAYANA GURU
A great Social reformer hailing from a highly backward caste in Kerala, who died in the earlier half of the twentieth century. He said that ‘one who does not know love does not know life’. This was the most telling refutation of Darwinism. He too advocated the path of loving service as the way. As in the case of all such men to day the reactionaries and vested interests use his name very much.
THIRUKKOTTI NAMBI
He is also called Ghostipurna in Sanskrit. That is how the Brahmins would like to call him! He was a contemporary of Sri Ramanuja the vaishnavite theologian and a social reformer of the 12th century. Ramanuja learnt the great message of the vaishnavite Alvars from Thirukkotti Nambi. The meaning of Thirukkotti is driving sway of the three kinds of twisted warped mind (crimes) – namely, the arrogance of caste, wealth, and learning. To be freed from these three is the way to get freed from every kind of bondage – the worst being that of the false – ego (ahankar) or rugged self. This is achieved by loving service (kainkarya) to the lowly. This is the message of the Chinese Marxist revolutionary of the 20th century Mao Tse Tung! This is the essence of class struggle.
ALVARS
They are twelve in number. They lived in south
NAYANMARS
They were the savite saints of Tamil land. They too were from between 3rd and 6th century AD. Though more than 60 are accepted as the saivite saints only 4 of them are considered the most important Nayanmars, (Sundaram, Manikkavachakar and Thirunavakkarasu and Appar). They are called the ‘Saiva Acharyas’, who created the great religion of Tamil saivism, which also called itself a religion based on devotion and love. Of the saivite saints a dozen may be from backward castes. Saivite saints uphold vegetarianism. Also they refused the Mayavada of Advaitee. Their matadhipathies (religious priests) like those of the
JOSE PE MIRANDA
He is a Mexican upholder of the tradition of liberation theology. His book ‘Marx against Marxists’ is a brilliant criticism of # of Marx. He wants to show the way, how Marx and Jesus could be combined. In effect he attempts to show that Marx continues the aim of Jesus. That was also in line of approach of the Red dean of
RAMALINGAM (Vallalar)
He was a Saint of the Tamil land belonging to the sect of Saiva vallalars. He rejected most emphatically the caste system, accepted that God was finally the bright light or flame. His final words were ‘ I have opened the shop but there is none to purchase the goods’. His demand for social reforms no doubt fell on deaf ears of the feudal forces of Tamil land that however hail him. His philosophy will be the basis of deep ecology.
J.C. KUMARAPPA
He was the true gandhian apart from people like Pandit Sundarlal and a few others. However we are not certain whether he supported the varnashrama dharma (caste based order). His main platform was economics. Where he saw great inspiration in the developmental pattern of Modern China. He visited along with Pandit, Kichhlu and Raghavan, New China and was most impressed in the Yenan Modal, where he saw the possibility of the evolution of a new civilisation. Where man was not enslaved to the dehumanising pattern of industrialisation or where man was not coerced to become the slave of the soulless machine, where technology was not the determining factor of development. However this remarkable person was almost hated by the arrogant Nehru who loved sycophantism. In fact Jawaharlal Nehru called him a mad man.
BHARADAN
He was another general secretary of the C.P.I. There is nothing extraordinary to say about him. He was no doubt another revisionist.
SAILENDRANATH GHOSH
He was an important person in the undivided communist party. He also did not fight for a proletarian line while he was inside the communist party. He resigned from the communist party. He became later the top research officer in the establishment and helped in the nationalisation of the petroleum. However when those who were with the establishment were demanded to support the government he could not oblige and so resigned his job and became a freelance writer. He became an admirer of Gandhian economics and approach towards politics. He had also last his faith in an armed revolution at least so far as the Indian context was concerned. He can be considered as a good man fallen amidst the revisionists.
PROFESSOR CREEL
He was a professor of philosophy at Harward University of U.S.A. He has written quite a number of books on
SUBRATHA BANERGEE.
He was a senior party member of the C.P.I. and a national council member of the C.P.I.
PROFESSOR J.D. SETHI
He was a communist sympathiser in his early days. At that time he lived in that part of
MANDANA MISRA
He was a contemporary of Adi Sankara. He was a firm believer of animal sacrifices. He was a ‘purva memamsi’ a believer of the Vedas and not the Vedanta or the teachings of the Upanishads. Adi Sankara defeats this purva memansi and Mandana Misra becomes a follower of Sankara. However during their debate Mandana Misra’s wife Bharathi sits as the judge. She was also a very great philosopher. Bharathi asks finally Adi Sankara that his Advaita can be considered as the supreme outlook only when her question could be answered by Adi Sankara. Adi Sankara had to accept the challenge. Then she simply asked him whether he knew the meaning of love. Sankara being a genuine celibate had no idea at all of love. When he expressed his total ignorance, she told him that he knew nothing. Sankara accepts his defeat. For all practical purposes he rejects his iconoclastic advaita and embraces the bakthi marga, hence sang the Bajagovindam, Soundaryalahari, both of them deny the advaita mayavada.
ARAYAR
A sarvodaya activist hails from Melkote (Thirunarayanapuram), a vaishnavite.
Advaita – Monism (A philosophical theory that all being may ultimately be referred to one category)
Advaita Brahmins - A brahmin who believes in only one principle either material or purely a spirit
Advaita mayavada - A principle wither material or purely a sprit The second is an illusion
Advaita Vedanta - Monistic speculative philosophical part following the Vedas
Agraharams - Enclave where the brahmins live
Akanda Bharat - The great Bharat
Alvars - The Vaishnava saints of Tamil Nadu
Andal – Another vaishnava woman saint brought up by Perialwar.
Anti -Brahmin – One who is against a brahmin.
Anti-Brahmical – Against brahminism
Arthasastra - The political economy by Koutilya(Chanakya)
Atharva Veda - It is one of the four vedas
Avathara Purusha - The great incarnation
Badharayana (Bhowdayana) Sutra - Interpretations of vedas written by Badarayana
Badharayana Sutra or Vedanta - Interpretations of vedas written by Badarayana
Bakthi - Devotion Bakthi - Love
Bakthi Margas – Pathway of love
Brahman- The unchanging absolute is the only real and the changing external reality is an illusion
Brahminical – That of brahmin.
Brahmin - One of four castes of the Hindu society
Brahmin Alvar Madura Kavi - One of the twelve Alwars who hails from a backward brahmin community
Brahmin Bania - Brahmin trader
Brahmin’s – That which belongs to one of four castes of the Hindu society
Brahmin-Bania - Brahmin trader
Brahminism - Philosophy of brahmins
Brahmins - One of four castes of the Hindu society
Chandala – Degenerate uncultured person of any caste.
Chatur varnam maya strishti - The four castes are created by Me
Dalith - A member of the schedule caste
Divyaprabhandam - The four thousand hymns of Vaisnava Alwars
Dvaithy (Madhava) - One who believes in Dwaita
Ekadandi - One stick holder (an Advaitic ascetic)
Githa – Bagavad Gita ( Lord Krishna’s discourse to Arjuna in Mahabarat at the time of war)
Gnana Marga – Pathway of knowledge
Gnana Margi - One who upholds the path of knowledge
Gnanamarga – Pathway of knowledge
Gnanavada - The logic of Gnana
Gnanvada - The logic of knowledge
Gokulam - The birth place of sri Krishna
Gopuram - The temple towers of South India
Harijans - Schedule caste member
Hindutva - Recent interpretation of the Indian heritage by a section of reactionaries in India
Jagath-Maya - The universal feminine deity who is the cause of illusion
Kainkariya Marga - The pathway of loving service
Kainkarya Bhawa – In the form of loving service
Kainkarya Marga - The path way of loving service
Kainkarya rupena - In the form of loving service
Kainkaryamargi - One who believes in the liberation by longing service
Kalakshepa m - Religious discourse
Kallan- A Backward Community from Tamil Land
Kamakshi, Meenakshi,Vishalakshi and Annapurna – Faminine deities
Kanchi Sankara Mutt – The religious institution of Sankara at Kanchipuram.
Madappalli - Kitchen or cooking place
Madura Kavi - One of the twelve Alwars who hails from a backward brahmin community
Mallan - - A Backward Community from Tamil Land
Maniyattu - Ringing the bell. To be a temple priest
Manthan - A journal of Deen Dayal Research Institute
Manu-Neethi - The moral code of Manu
Maya vada - The theory of illusion
Mayavada - A philosophy which upholds the theory of illusion
Mayavada - The theory of illusion
Mayavadi- Believer in the theory of illusion
Mayavadis - One who upholds the theory of illusion
Mayvadi - Believer in the theory of illusion
Moksha Margin - One who believes in the pathway of liberation.
Mukkurumbu - Three kinds of arrogance
Mutts – Religious institutions
Nayeki Nayaka Bhava - Bridal mysticism
Non-Brahmin – One who is not a brahmin
Paada-theertham - The water used for washing of the feet of saints considered sacred
Paanan - A Backward Community from Tamil Land
Palla - A Backward community from Tamil Land
Pallan - A Backward Community from Tamil Land
Pana - A Backward Community from Tamil Land
Panchamas - A schedule caste member out side the four castes of the Hindu society
Parayan - A Backward community from Tamil Land (untouchable)
Pariahs - A Backward community from Tamil Land (untouchable)
Pariya - A Backward community C from Tamil Land (untouchable)
Prabanda-goshti – The vaishnavite gathering.
Prema Marg (Kain Karya Marg) - The pathway of loving service
Prema Margi - One who believes in the pathway of love
Purusha–Bashya - Masculine interpretation
Raghuvamsa - The descendants of Raghu who was the forefather of Sri Rama.
Rajkumaris – Princes (Here it means The princes of Scindia family)
Rajmathas – Queen Mother (here it means The Mother of Scindia)
Ramajanmabhumi- Place of birth of Lord Rama
Sadeha Mukthi - Liberation with the body
Saiva Mutts - Religious institutions of saivites
Saiva Vellala - An agriculturist who is a follower of saivism
Saivism - One of the religions of India
Saivite - Followers of saivism
Sananthanist - One who upholds the ancient traditions
Sankalpa - Dedication or firm decision
Sankalpa of Gnanavadis - Dedication or firm decision of one who believes in the logic of Gnana
Sankara Bhasya - Interpretation of Sankara
Sankarites – The followers of Sankara
Saraganathi - Absolute unconditional surrender to God
Sati – Self-immolation of the widow along with the body of her husband
Satsudras - The Backward Community other than the Schedule Caste
Selvapillai - The deity in the vaisnavite temple of Melkote of Karnataka
Smartha Brahmins - The advaiti Brahmin follower of Adi Sankara
Smartha Sampradaya – The cultural tradition of the smartha Brahminism.
Smarthas - The advaiti Brahmin follower of Adi Sankara
Smarthas- The Advaitic is called the Smartha, the one who accepts the Smrithi
Sri - The consort of the Lord Vishnu
Sudhra - The Backward Community of the Hindu society
Sudra Sanyasi - A Backward class ( of Hindu Society ) Ascetic
Thenkalai – Southern Vaishnavite cultural sect
Thenkalai Sampradaya – The tradition of the southern vaishnavite sect
Thirukulathar - Beautiful people
Uttarakanda - The last chapter of Ramayana of Valmiki
Vadakalai Sampradaya – The cultural tradition of the Northern sect within the vaishnavites
Vaideeka - One who upholds the vedic traditions
Vaideeka Brahmin - Brahmin who accepts vedas as sacred scriptures
Vaideeka Brahminism – Brahminism which upholds the vedas only as a sacred works.
Vaidikas - One who upholds the vedic traditions
Vaishnaivite Alvars - Alwars who believed in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnava saint – A saint who upholds the traditions of the alwars.
Vaishnavism - Belief in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnavite - One who believes in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnavite Alvars - Alwars who believes in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnavite Sanyasi - Ascetic who believes in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnavities - One who believes in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Varnahsrama Dharma – The ethics followed by various classes in Indian context.
Varnasrama - The code of conduct defined for various castes
Veda Parayanam – Recital of vedas
Vedic - Pertaining to sacred scriptures
Vedic Brahminism - Brahmin who accepts vedas as sacred scriptures
Videhamukti - Salvation after death
Visishtadvaita - Qualified monism
Advaitha - Monism (A philosophical theory that all being may ultimately be referred to one category)
Advaiti - Monist
Advaitic - Monistic
Aham Brahmosmi - I am the Brahmam (the absolute)
Ahankar - Ego
Ahimsavad - Believes in non violence
Alakalavisha - All consuming poison
Alakhala-Visha - All consuming poison
Alvar - The Vaishnava saints of Tamil Nadu
Amrith - Elixir
Aparigraha - Non-possession
Apthavachana - Word from the one who is a well-wisher
Athmavat Sarva Bhutheshu yah pasyathi sa pasyathi - One who sees ones own self in every thing only sees the truth
Avidhya - Theory of illusion or ignorance
Bajagovindam - The great contribution of Adi sankara which deals essential with the problem of object-bondage and the way to free from that but it is an idealistic, anti materialistic and anti-feminist approach
Baktha - Devotee
Bakthi - Devotion
Bakthi (Prema) Marga - The pathway of devotion
Bakthi Yogi - One who upholds and practices the devotional way
Bakthiyog - One who upholds and practices the devotional way
Bhagwan – The Lord
Bhajagovindam - The great contribution of Adi sankara which deals essential with the problem of object-bondage and the way to free from that but it is an idealistic, anti materialistic and anti-feminist approach
Bhakthi marg - The pathway of devotion
Brahman- The absolute
Brahmapeet - Establishment, which is based on the essential truth that Brahman is the only real.
Brahma-Peeta - Establishment, which is based on the essential truth that Brahman is the only real.
Brahmin - One of four castes of the Hindu society
Darmam eva jayathe – just only can win
Dharma- jayathe - Just can win
Dharman Jayathe - Just can win
Dharsanas - Pathway
Dvaita - A phylosophy, which accepts the dual nature of reality
Githacharyas - A teacher of Gita (Bhagawan sri
Gnana - Knowledge
Gnana Vaada - The logic of knowledge
Gnana Yogi - One who believes in the pathway of knowledge
Gnanamarga - Path of knowledge
Gnanamargi- One who upholds the path of Gnana
Guru -
Hanuman - The Monkey God of Hindus
Jain and Buddha Vihara – Jain and Buddha temples
Jambavan - The mythological Bear king in Ramayana who knows the whole history
Jeevan-Mukthi- Liberation in life itself
Kainkaryamargi- One who upholds the path of Gnana
Kali - A highly backward community in
Kari - A highly backward community in
Karma - Work
Karma Marga - Pathway of work
Karma Yogi - One who practices the path of work
Karmayogy's - One who practices the path of work
Khama - Desire
Khrodha - Anger or jealousy
Linga - A caste symbol (Idol) also denoting the sex
Lokah samasthah sukhino bhavanthu - Let the whole universe be happy
Madhva - A South Indian Brahmin who came in after Ramanuja highly critical of Sankara who believes in two principles.
Maha Vakya - The great saying
Maha-Muni - The great upholder of knowledge path
Mama jana sukhino bavanthu - Let my people be happy
Mamajanah Sukhino Bhavanthu - Let my people be happy
Maran - A highly backward community in
Margas - Pathway
Maya - Illusion
Maya Vaada - The theory of illusion
Mayavadi Brahmins – The Brahmin who upholds the idea that this phenomenal world is an illusion.
Mayavadin - One who believes in the illusion of this world
Mayawadi - One who upholds the theory of illusion.
Moha-Mudgraha – The path of getting rid of illusion.
Mukkurumbu - Three kinds of arrogance namely, that of caste, that of wealth and that of intelligence
Mukthi- Salvation
Mythyavada - A philosophy, which upholds the theory of illusion
Mythyavadin - One who upholds the theory of illusion
Narayana preethyartam - For the pleasure of the Universal Lord (Narayana)
Nayaki-Nayaka Bhava - Bridal mysticism
Nayanmars - The saivaite saints of Tamil Nadu
Nirvikalpa-Samadi - A state of existence where all contradictions are resolved.
Non–Brahmins -
Paramesvara preethyartam - For the pleasure of the Lord (shiva)
Pariah - A Backward community from
Prakrithi - Nature
Prapatti - The relative holding the absolute
Prema Marga - Pathway of love
Purusha - Masculine
Rajas - Arrogance
Rakshasa–Vadi - The philosophy of the Rakshasas
Ramakrishna Mutt – The religious institution following the teachings of Ramakrishna.
Sanathanists - One who upholds the ancient traditions
Sankalpa - Dedication or firm decision
Sanyas - Ascetic
Saradapeet - A religious seat established by Adi sankara in Karnataka
Saranagathi - Absolute unconditional surrender to God
Sarve janah sukhino bhvanthu - Let the entire mankind be happy
Sathyam Jayathe - Truth wins
Satyam eva jayathe - Truth only wins
Sharada–Peeta - A religious seat established by Adi Sankara in Karnataka
Shiva – One of the trinity
Sishya - Disciple
Soundarayalahari - The contribution of Adi sankara wherein the universe is in the imagery of a remarkably Gnana Marga - Path way of knowledge
Soundaryalahari - The contribution of Adi sankara wherein the universe is in the imagery of a remarkably beautiful damsel
Swathanthra - One who stands without being supported by any
Tharka - Logic
Thath Thuam Asi- That art thou
Upanishadic - That of the Upanishads (Vedanta)
Vaideeka Brahmin - A Brahmin who upholds the Vedic traditions
Vairagya–Purushas - One who takes a firm decision
Vaishanvite Alvars- Alwars who believed in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnava - Follower of Vishnu
Vaishnava Acharya - Preceptor, follower of Vishnu
Vaishnava- Follower of Vishnu
Vaishnavism - Belief in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vaishnavism - Religion, which accepts the supremacy of Vishnu
Vaishnavite Alvars - Alwars who believed in Vishnu as the supreme deity
Vallarar - The saint Ramalinga swamigal who also demanded social reforms
Vedantha - The speculative philosophical part following the vedas
Vellala - Agriculturist
Vignana Bavan – The premises where science discourses/seminars are conducted. Located in
Visha - Poison
Visha–Kanta - The Lord Siva who had contained the poison in his throat
Vishistadwaitin - Follower of qualified monism
Visishta - Qualified
Visishtadvaita - Qualified monism
Visvarupi Bhagwan - The Lord assuming the form of the Universe
Yama – God of deathYin and Yan - Two Taoist principles established by Laotse
Yin and Yan - Two Taoist principles established by Laotse
1 comment:
Good luck in struggle. Mao and Ghandi?
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