The best book to read if you want to start understanding "Sri Vaishnavism" Dismiss
“VAAZHGA TAMIZHAGAM”!
Very eloquently articulated !
I say this gentleman in the video is a true example of the enlightened Tamizh voter !
As long as we have common citizens who think similarly like him in Tamil Nadu, no matter who wins or loses in the upcoming Assembly elections , we can all still hold our heads high and say “vaazhga tamizhagam” in this great country of ours !
Jai hind ! 🙏👏👏👍
Sudarshan Madabushi
MR KARAN THAPAR , IF YOU INTERVIEW ME AND WERE TO ASK ME “WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HINDU IN INDIA?” , THIS IS HOW, SIR, I WOULD ANSWER YOU”.
Greeks, Turks , Persians, Afghans, Mongols, Kushans, Portuguese, British , Dutch, French …. all in the name of trade, plain looting, or else “bringing enlightenment” or “civilisation“ to native heathens (“saving lost souls”) and in the name of their respective religions … had a gala field day invading India throughout both pre-Christian and post-Christian era.
Between 640 AD and 800 AD , Islam spread and conquered the entire Middle East , North Africa , Spain , Turkey, The Stan countries , Mongolia , India and even further east .
Much of the modern world therefore cannot disabuse itself of the notion that India was and is a nation custom-built for enslavement — militarily, ideologically, economically and culturally.
Post-Independence in India, most minorities settled down as peace-loving communities in a pluralistic society where they realised the reality of their minority status. The Parsis are a notable example .
There are still however sections of minority groups in India who yet suffer from the hangover of history. They cannot stomach the thought that Islam and the West after all were once sovereign kings and rulers of this vast country and its teeming millions of meek Hindu slaves. They are acutely aware of their present minority status and cannot help smarting under the feeling of being somewhat disempowered , disenfranchised and dispossessed. They want status quo ante somehow and somewhat restored in India . It’s a drug withdrawal symptom … where the drug happens to be memories of power, grandeur and overlordship of a vast sub-continent across centuries.
Such wishful thinking they know cannot be fulfilled in a modern republic like India given its robust Constitution. Except through and with parliamentary superiority gained through engagement with the larger body politic of a predominantly Hindu India , the minorities simply cannot hope to regain the old glory days of minority-rule over an enslaved Hindu country that had always been up for grabs in history.
So what then is the alternative for the disgruntled historically hung-over minorities in India ?
The obvious answer is to seek solidarity abroad with larger international forces who have the same agenda of neo-imperialism and whose numbers today are legion across so much of political space within the West, the Middle-East and of late in emerging China too . The minorities of India now see that the only way for them to recapture power over the subcontinent —- the same one that they ruled for over a millennium — lies in active covert and overt collaboration with the larger forces of Pan-Islam, Pan-Western Neo-Liberalism and Pan-Neo-Communism forces that wield power and influence in varying degrees in the rest of the prevailing world order. . This is a battle for the long-haul … they know it … but then given their experience of history of India the minorities believe they are very much on the right side of history.
This is the reason why many of the more militant-minded minorities of India (with the exceptions of the Parsees and Jews here perhaps) will never accept or reconcile themselves to their minority status, or settle down peacefully in India. This battle for them has no end-date … ideologically speaking , for them , it is going to be as perennial as both the “jihaad” and the “crusade” are — which both are fundamentally conceptions of world domination.
After 75 years after Independence, the Hindus of India at last seem to have woken up, fully grasped and understood the ingrained psychology and history-driven predisposition of the minorities. And much of Hindutva thought that is being articulated today in the political arena of the country is really nothing more but the average Hindu’s way of asserting “no way am I going to let the History of the last 2000 years repeat itself!”.
Regards,
Sudarshan Madabushi
Bhaarath Maatha ki Jai 🇮🇳 🙏
Talking about the wisdom of our forefathers and ancestors … and talking about the perennial tug-of-war between husbands and wives over an equitable division of labour and chores in the kitchen at home … I’m reminded of what actor Kamal Haasan has promised in his election manifesto . It’s actually his crass election stunt to woo women voters ( thaai kulam) in the state .
Making out a case for women being paid by Government for the housework they do , Haasan has alluded to housewives traditionally being given a raw deal at home since unlike menfolk who get a weekly day off from work at office … women at home get no such privilege since their kitchen duties are 24/7/365 …
Kamal Haasan obviously does not know much about our Dhaarmic history and ethos . … which would never impose an unfair balance of duties and obligations on men and women.
It is inaccurate to say that women at home never got even a day’s respite from their daily routine of kitchen work. Not true at all…
In our Brahmin homes all menfolk are obliged to observe “upavaasam” .. ritual fasting … once every fortnight on “ekadaashi” day . On those days the men are not to be fed at home for the whole day . The women folk used to prepare minimum food only for children and the aged of the house … once … and no more. The kitchen then would be shut down and the women could easily take the whole day off . (In today’s homes there are only nuclear families … and hence the duty to prepare minimal food for the aged and infirm in an extended family even does not arise . )
So , since “Ekadasi” day was designated by our ancient saastra as a day of fasting for men , it automatically became a “day off” twice a month for the women folk. (I’m not going to say anything here about the other obligatory but perhaps anachronistic practice of women taking 3 days off while quarantining themselves during periods) .
Today, for example, is Ekadasi day . If men at home faithfully observed the “upavaasam” enjoined on them by saastra , the women folk would have today as “day off” from kitchen chores …
And you and I could then prove, couldn’t we, that Kamal Haasan’s election promise is nothing but a mischievous stunt … and we might also perhaps persuade our womenfolk .. our respected “thaai kulam “… not to fall for the actor’s wiles and charms ..
The only way Kamal Haasan as might-be CM could ever pay salaries to women for doing housework from out of Government Treasury is to raise tax or levies for sops on all citizens of the state. That would tantamount to robbing the husbands to bribe the wives … an unholy taxation concept on which Kamal Haasan seeks to put a left-liberal holy spin.
He is nothing but a troublemaker for our homes and domestic harmony . Not having himself a great track record of stable and healthy relationships with the many wives he has had in the past …he only tries to sow the seed of discord and disharmony amongst otherwise happily married couples in our homes.
As for Brahmin men … we should all please go back to observing strictly the “Ekadasi Upavaasam. “
🙏🙏
Sudarshan Madabushi
The TIRUPPAAVAI in MARVELLOUS METALLURGY !!
This lamp-shaped bowl described in the video-clip is not just a work of great ancient iconography and metallurgical marvel ! Whoever conceived of it and fashioned it out of the most extraordinary labour of aesthetics and love must surely have been a consummate artist-cum-philosopher-cum-religious-devotee steeped in the Bhakti tradition of India . ..
As a Sri Vaishnavite myself, I consider myself to be a student of the most outstanding scriptural literature of Tamizh Bhakthi tradition of Sri Andal . In the “Tiruppaavai” of 30 stanzas, the most famous of her Bhakti poems , there is one stanza which is a standout one and it is that which must be recalled here while appreciating the antiquarian beauty of the lamp-shaped bowl we see in the video-clip :
#மாயனை_மன்னு #வடமதுரை #மைந்தனைத்தூய பெருநீர் யமுனைத் துறைவனைஆயர் குலத்தினில் தோன்றும் அணி விளக்கைத்தாயைக் குடல் விளக்கஞ் செய்த தாமோதரனைதூயோமாய் வந்து நாம் தூமலர் தூவித் தொழுதுவாயினால் பாடி மனத்தினால் சிந்திக்கபோய பிழையும் புகுதருவான் நின்றனவும்தீயினில் தூசாகும் #செப்பேலோர்_எம்பாவாய்#
If we understand the true meaning of the above Tiruppaavai verse we will realise then how to relate it to this “Ani villakku” … lamp being idolised by Sri Andal ; also the poetic reference to “tooya peruneer” represented in the rising ebb of the tiny water level inside the hollow of metal icon as the River Yamuna ; the baby Krishna … whose other name is Damodaran (as in the verse) … being ferried across the river in spate by Krishna’s father Vasudeva both of whom are represented here in the lamp as its iconic leitmotif.
The purpose of this lamp thus is that it is intended to kindle in us a deep spiritual fervour … To make us dwell long and contemplate devotedly upon its wondrous form and significance … Such inward contemplation that is part of the very nature and spirit of pure Bhakti is what the Tiruppaavai verse too calls தூயோமாய் வந்து நாம் தூமலர் தூவித் தொழுதுவாயினால் பாடி மனத்தினால் சிந்திக்க
This is no ordinary lamp indeed! In my eyes, it is iconographic masterpiece that captures and distills the deepest mystic import contained in the entire 5th verse of Sri Andal’s Tiruppaavai. 🙏🙏
Sudarshan Madabushi
BEING APATHETIC ABOUT VOTER-APATHY IS UNDEMOCRATIC
Well , once again in this election in April 2021 as in previous ones, Chennaities have proved that on voting day morning when it’s time to wake up and go to polling station, they’d rather lay back and laze about on a welcome holiday … Chennai once again recorded the lowest voter turnout in the entire State — less than 60% against the expected state average of about 72%! What a shame for the citizenry of a State capital-city that continues to exhibit the same bilious voter-apathy that as a constituency it has been afflicted by all these years …
I ask myself what is it that motivates a Tamil citizen … especially the Tamil bourgeoisie of the Mylapore constituency of “Tambrahms” where I live … to climb out of bed on Election Day and drag himself to the polling booth? I can’t put my finger on any one or two convincing reasons except to attribute it all to that easy catch-all diagnosis : voter apathy … which only explains away , but hardly truly explains the voter behaviour.
I like to look at the behaviour pattern through the lens of social-class categorisation.
Take the low-to-lower-middle-income or under-privileged classes. What perhaps motivates them to go out on voting day is that they have received , for good or for worse, some sort of material gratification — either lawful or otherwise, in cash or in kind, covertly or overtly — from the local dada of the neighbourhood political party competing with others for “pettai” or “vattam” votes. This is plain and simple to understand motivation. This is classic “vote-for-cash” or “carrot and donkey” or “freebies” theory of voter behaviour.
Next , take the upper-crust of society… I mean the rich , the very rich and the super rich . This constituency goes to the polling-booth and votes on Election Day because it is incentivised in a very real sense to do so . Most political parties competing in elections are either direct or indirect beneficiaries of the rich man’s donation… And remember the brilliant Arun Jaitley thought up the Electoral Bond Scheme mainly to facilitate and legitimise political donations the rich classes wished to make anonymously to politicians under whatever quid pro quo arrangements , either tacit or otherwise, had been struck as unspoken-about and unwritten “deals”between the two . So , here too , plain and simple , the quid pro quo principle more or less easily explains what makes the rich rise from bed on Election Day morning to go and exercise his or her franchise in fine clothes and in their gleaming BMWs and Mercs.
Then there is the glitterati or celebrity class of society that also has its own drivers that makes them to go out and vote. The motivation for cinema-stars, popular cricketers, public performers , philanthropists and VIPs of all plumage and specie is rather easy to understand : Voting Day serves as a great opportunity for most of them to project, showcase and preen their public image … while for some of them it is a rather inexpensive way to remind the public that they are still around and should not be forgotten .
Such self-image projection is often staged through grand gestures and stunts making for good press. Today, we all saw it being reported with great fanfare that the popular but rather slowly fading actor of tinsel town, Mr “Thalapathy” Vijay riding a bicycle from home to the polling booth to cast his vote . A great stunt indeed that is sure to give his image a boost keep it fresh and glittering amongst his legions of fans. Long forgotten also-once-ran actors such as “style king” Sathyaraj, for example , made an entry into a polling booth today and brief TV footage of the event made it to prime time evening news slot .. !
Now then … what about what motivates the ordinary urban middle-class, “honest Joe”, tax-paying citizens of Chennai and its suburbs to drag themselves towards a polling booth on Election Day to do their ordained democratic duty ?
While it’s relatively easy to guess what incentivises the lower, the rich and the famous sections of urban Chennai society to go and vote, I find it very difficult to put a finger on and analyse what disincentivises the great middle-classes of Chennai city to turn up to vote … In other words I’m at a loss to understand what it is that causes their apathy, or the sloth and stupor that we know seems to descend upon them suddenly on voting day.
After thinking about it long and deep , I have come to the conclusion that the only way to incentivise the middle-class member of the Chennai bourgeoisie to go out and vote in large numbers is to severely disincentivise him or her against playing truant and skipping vote on the day altogether.
Here is perhaps how the “apathy-disincentive” might work in my imagination :
A. With the help of the registered voter-lists already prepared by the election commission of India , target those delinquent voters guilty of “no-show” on voting day and failing to fulfill their sacred democratic duty.
B. Pass on the Voter delinquent-list to the Income Tax Department.
C. The IT Dept. then sends a Notice to each delinquent voter informing him or her that in the Return of Income he or she is to file for the relevant financial year, a disallowance amounting to 10% of gross taxable income assessed will be applied as penalty for failing to perform prime civic duty as a citizen of India.
D. The total of such disallowance per completed tax-assessments will be consolidated by the IT Dept. and handed over to the Election Commission of India to be utilised by them for conducting other elections across India .
This I believe would perhaps be one of the effective ways how Voter Apathy in India can be cured.
If democracy in India is to thrive and prosper we, as a nation, have to stop being apathetic about voter-apathy .
Bhaarath Maatha ki Jai
🙏🙏
Sudarshan Madabushi 🇮🇳
www.facebook.com/117607580083650/posts/273419347835805/
CULTURAL CO-MORBIDITY
I wish for the proper edification and detoxification of some Tamil-language chauvinists and jingoists in my State of TamilNadu … a similar chart as this one gets made by some well qualified expert linguist just to show how the various rich languages of South Indian languages and dialects have evolved over thousands of centuries in India …. and that , at the end , history and language are to each other only what even great rivers, and their numerous tributaries, are to terminal but then even greater oceans ….
A chart like like this one prepared for Indian languages would make us all more humble in our awareness and assessments of our history . More importantly, it would instil in us the realisation that to be a language fanatic or “linguistic sub-nationalist” is not any great “cultural patriotism” but a pathological health condition called “cultural co-morbidity”.
Sudarshan Madabushi
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-history-of-the-english-language-in-one-chart-1641158929
“We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so”
—— Alexander Pope
I am willing to bet that years from now my wiser son and grandsons would be thinking of me as nothing but a fool … And here’s why I think so :
As I watched this video-clip I realised why our ancestors used to advise us … both men and women in Sri Vaishnava homes … to do the daily prostrations on the floor (“Perumal puja Sannidhiyil keezha vizhundhu sevithaL” as we say it in Tamizh ) to the household deities morning and evening at least 4 times each .
In that posture we assume, in fact, more than less, the same physical pose that this medical doctor in the video has demonstrated as being effective for Covid patients to help their lungs cope with the pain or discomfort the infection causes in their lungs.
Instead of the coughing thereafter as he instructs the patients in the video, our ancestors devised for Sri Vaishnava menfolk the practice requiring them to bend down and forward from the waist , hold upper arms and palms over the ears on either side of the head and recite the “abhivandanam” (abhivaadaye…) litany which is really a formal but very brief mode of introducing oneself as identified by ancestral and genetic lineage and markers…
For womenfolk there was prescribed another specific posture of prostration which doubled up the pelvis more than needed for the men … it did not need thus any “abhivandanam”, the reciting of litany that was the “coughing” equivalent for men.
We grew up pooh-pooing all what our ancient ancestors advised us. The habit of daily “Perumal Sannidhi yil sevitthal” or “saashtaanga dandasamarpanam” is hardly ever practised at all by any of us Sri Vaishnavas in our homes and families today. Some of the young members of our community often look upon the prostration as rather uncouth or ridiculous posture and quite unnecessary religious routine… That they do not however feel the same way about the many physical contortions they are happy and willing to subject themselves to in gyms and health or yoga-spas is another matter, of course.
But now in these times of Covid, we are forced to accept the same advice to perform “uncouth postures and ridiculous prostrations” given by expert pulmonary doctors !
What an irony indeed! How the more things change the more they remain really the same 🙏
I’m sure though however that many of us, after all, will still remain rather skeptical and secretly be even derisive about the efficacy of the “Perumal sevittthal” daily routine no matter what!
Sudarshan Madabushi
HINDUS OF INDIA, PLEASE WAKE UP! IT IS NOT THE JUDICIARY BUT THE LEGISLATURES ALONE THAT CAN REALLY HELP REALISE THE CAUSE OF YOUR TEMPLES!
Suhrith Parthasarathy’s article in THE HINDU Hindu today (April 22) is a well written early-warning to ordinary people like me that the prime objective of the Hindus of India to win full freedom for their temples and places of religious worship from Government —- and from the society of venal, so-called “secular” politicians too — does not lie in pursuing judicial means . There is only one hope for them….. It can only be secured through an act of the legislature.
His article clearly shows that the fraternity of “Constitutionalists” in India will do everything they can to stoutly defend to their very last breath their diehard position that the Temple and the State cannot be separated, and that so long as Article 25 and 26 of the Indian Constitution continue to be read and interpreted according to the way they have, in their own wisdom, specially determined and interpreted to be, the Hindu temple cannot .. and should not … be freed from governmental regulation and interference .
A new law to bring amendments to the constitution and ushering in such untrammelled religious freedom for the Hindu is the only way out for the majority community in this country to win their cause.
Even in 2024, in the unlikely event of the Hindu party of BJP winning a landslide majority in both Parliaments — and succeeding in enacting too a new law to liberate temples from the clutches of the government — I for one fear that Constitutional pundits and activists like Suhrith Parthasarathy and his tribe will immediately challenge then such amendments to law in the Supreme Court again. They will go crying hoarse that the amendment is violative of their holiest of “holy cow” legal-gospels viz.:, “the basic structure of the Indian constitution “!
That legal challenge will be supported of course by a motley crowd of shrill champions of “secularism” in India — who today regularly make a cottage-industry out of their pet cause of “defending the constitution” … Prashant Bhushan will lead it … and be ably followed by intellectuals such as for example Karan Thapar , Barkha Dutt , Ramachandra Guha … why even T M Krishna and Kamal Hassan perhaps … in fact by the whole of the Lutyens Delhi brigade that has its chapters and affiliates today spread all across India , including Chennai.
Sushrith Parthasarathy’s article helps me really understand where the battle lines are being drawn in the long and tortuous battle that lies ahead of the Hindus of India to win for themselves their fundamental right of worship and their right to self-manage their own temples . The civilisational and cultural divide that looms large today in our country could not have been more starkly portrayed than by this article penned by one of the most brilliant and articulate young legal minds in Chennai today .
Suhrith Parthasarathy I must say I am personally really very fond of… He is a damned good constitutional lawyer , there’s no doubt about it .. but it’s his clients who I find that I don’t and won’t want to care a damn for.
🙏🙏
WELL SAID , KANGANA ! 👍👏👏
Kangana Raut is absolutely right in asking why the Western powers US, UK and EU countries having no guts or gumption to investigate why, how and wherefrom the deadly Covid outbreak emerged out China — and has now destroyed half the world in less than a year and caused untold misery to millions — are instead however wasting no time in coming forward to shed copious crocodile tears for India , composing eloquent funeral dirges and requiems for the Covid deaths here and planting false narratives in TIME magazine, NYT, WP, WSJ, Guardian etc about the “failure of the Modi government”, the “collapse of Indian medical and administrative infrastructure” , the sins of omission and commission committed by Modi himself: the man who — and this they in quite evident Schadenfreude point out gleefully through the worldwide columns of Arundhati Roy, Shashi Tharoor or Barka Dutt — went about strutting “arrogantly” just 6 months ago prematurely claiming he had conquered the pandemic ?
I agree with Kangana Raut !
She is right in asking why Sonia Gandhi , Sitaram Yechuri , MK Stalin or Mamata Bannerjee aren’t screaming about why the combined might of the UNSC and WHO is doing nothing at all whatsoever to get to the bottom of clear Chinese culpability in causing the worldwide Covid pandemic in the first place but then, however, is instead moved to lachrymose, moral indignation and carping criticism over how India is dealing or is failing to deal with the large-scale ravages of the pandemic ?
Sudarshan Madabushi 😡😡🤬🤬
BY PHILIP LARKINI work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Philip Larkin, “Aubade” from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)
