Yantra , Tantra, Mantra

This is really a response to our beloved captains yet another crackpot claim ALL ANIMAL SACRIFICES IN HINDU TEMPLES, STARTED BY THE WHITE INVADER - CAPT AJIT VADAKAYIL THE WHITE INVADER CREATED FAKE BACKDATED HINDU MUTTS AND FAKE SHANKARACHARYAS  - Please provide evidence --  TO MAKE THE HINDU SELF LOATHING,   TO DRIVE FISSURES INTO HINDUISM - FOR EASIER CONVERSIONS AND TO FOSTER DIVIDE AND RULE  . . Why exactly would animal sacrifices make Hindus self loathing? Please speak for yourself and stop imposing your emotional biases and obsessesive compulsive disorders onto our religion! THE WHITE INVADER HAD A KINK-- LIKE A SERIAL KILLER HE LEFT A SIGNATURE  . Thankfully the white invader is more subtle than Vadakayil , but then again who isn't? ALL HIS FAKE BACK DATED BHAKTI MOVEMENT CREATIONS , HE CALLED DASAS . Bhakti is an indigenous movement Im...

In Bharatavarsha, for sure we never lacked for dieties. Whether these were forces of nature(Indra, Agni) or representations of philosophical ideas(Vishnu, Shiva, Kali etc) there was always a constant churn of gods,goddesses being born, dying and reborn under different names as our ancients were always trying to understand the world, physical,metaphysical and spiritual, around us. Earth dieties were usually feminine whether Prithvi or kul devata(goddesses of the grove) and therefore hardly unfamiliar to the ancients. Curiously we have here a macro goddess(indeed the entire earth) and micro(associated with sacred groves).   Curiously while we certainly had a concept of a nation -Bharatavarsha named for Bharata muni, we never sought to deify this idea as we did with so many others. Why was that?   It is really hard to get an answer to non action even more so when it comes to the history of ideas. However there is strong circumstantial ...

  I could not help but cringe when our Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly exposed his ignorance on Hindu philosopy and the Puranas which deal with the birth of Ganesha.   Just for the record Ganesha is a diety ie a philosophical concept not an actual mortal entity be he animal or human.   I will let a very perceptive and knowledgable Indian American software consultant Kunal Singh speak eloquently on this issue (from the archives of Google groups)     Ganesh was a deity produced by the Shakti cult represented by Parvati, thus Parvati creates him from his own body without Shiva's help.  The Shakti cult also undergoes several reincarnations, Sati being the precursor to Parvati, Durga being another form of Parvati.  A cult can give birth to a new deity in Hinduism.   Ganesh has an elephant head because he is renowed for buddhi which relies on memory represented by the elephant.  His legend is associated with the union...

It was with a mixture of shock and frankly arousal which I watched two Bengali films Gandu and Chatrak. Both have explicit sex scenes with rather mainstream actresses and I mean explicit ,unsimulated fellating(Gandu) and cunnilingus(Chatrak). The ladies in question are Rituparna Sen and Paoli Dam respectively.                                   Ms Sen sporting a tshirt of a diety associating with erotic hijinks                                          As attractive with her traditional clothing as without Im in half a mind to link them but I think my readers, the males anyway, are industrious enough to find these ...

Before people dismiss me as a sexist,misygonist dinosaur- a relic of the Cold War as Judi Dench's M dimissed Pierce Brosnans James Bond in Golden Eye, please keep in mind my background- raised in a liberal semi Westernized family in India with two older sisters both of whom had swallowed the the feminist propaganda who "helpfully" regurgitated the same for yours truly. So to some extant I believed some aspects of feminism. Mostly gender equity feminism ,that a woman can do anything a man can do, atleast in the work environment. The preference of women for traditional gender roles in my dating experience which contradicted feminism did not at the time concern me at the time . Neither did my subconscious clamping down of my feminist credentials during courting. I just thought- well that's how it is. Behold the mystery of woman and all that gobbledygook.  I grew up admiring Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and (later) Sarah Palin and Angela Merkel. With t...

 I had promised one of my commenters truthsayer that I would do another write up on Ajit Vadakayil on occasion of his arrest for libel of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan. Work matters however prevented me from concentrating on my blog and while I could whip up something about our dear captain, it didn't feel right. Skewering and fisking other bloggers ,especially easy target such as Layla Anwar and Ajit Vadakayil just seems like cheating if I don't post other content rich posts. It is like reaching for dessert without finishing my broccoli. Feels like instant gratification -a symptom of indiscipline. So I first bit the bullet and finished two essays which to my mind are always a work in progress so forgive me on that regard. So on to Capt Vadakayil What was most interesting to us is that the Captain was arrested in Manipal NOT his beloved Kerala, lands of gods,kings, sages with 12 strand DNA ,land of incomparable beauty and so on.  Now indeed Kerala is nice but I am told Manipa...

Short answer: Post WWII American exceptionalism Long answer: In the previous decade or so , I had been pre occupied with U.S, Indian and Middle Eastern politics and history so I had sort of missed the boat on the revival of Empire apologists We see respectable scholars like Niall Fergusson, Robert Kaplan, Andrew Roberts and William Dalrymple waxing nostalgic about the lost glory of Britannia and her dominions. Is this a last gasp reaction to the ongoing Londonistanizing of Britain?  Is it because the native Brits are unable to stand up to third world thugs in their backyard that they have to resort to such lionizing of what was a very dubious past? Or were they always closet imperialists(albeit increasingly emasculated post 1945)but their impulses received a shot in the arm from the U.S neocon and neocolonial(but then I repeat myself) adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It most likely is a combination of both.The neocon role though is very interesting. Prominent ...