I got this question and I thought of writing the answer as a short post. It may not be very agreeable, so read on only if you can appreciate uncomfortable truths…
“At this point of time- Which is the most dangerous state in Bharat?”
The world is currently a battleground for several life philosophies. A civilisational conflict of very high intensity is on in every corner of the world and it will take a long time to settle down. We have one small window of opportunity in the mid-late 30s. If we do not act in this small window, the conflict will drag on for another 1-2 decades at least.
In all this turbulence, we must understand this one point – whatever happens to India will have a severe repercussion on the entire world. There are several reasons for this, but the two major reasons are –
1. % of world population – India has a population of 1.4 billion people. That is 18% of the world population in 2.4% of world’s land area. To make sense of this number, compare the entire African continent which also has 1.4 billion people. They have the same 18% world population, but in 20% of global land area.
2. Civilisation – The core conflict is always between the Astik Shastra v/s Nastik sampraday. And today the Astik shastra is present only in Bharat. The rest of the world follows different variations of the Nastik sampraday. India is the oldest continually existing and Astik civilisation. Every ‘new’ culture from the ancient greeks to the newest muslims has tried to destroy India. Bharat has always been at the epicentre of civilisational conflict. And today also, it is 50 crore Hindus against the billions of Nastik sampradayis.
The Conflict of Core life philosophy /Dharma
Vedic Dharma, Sanatan Dharma, Arsha Dharma or Hinduism is the only Astik Shastra. The final authority is of the Ved. Astik Shastra is purely Vedic Dharma. The Ved assert that Existence is Eternal, there is the Parameshwar – Eternal Intelligence, there are the jivatma – individual souls, there is a birth – life – death – rebirth – life – reincarnation cycle, karma exists, karmic fruits exist. And eventually you realise your own self to be the eternal Self and that is Moksh. For this to happen you have to study and understand the core of the Ved. You have to follow Dharma. But despite all this, Vedic Dharma does not force anyone to follow the Ved. You are required to think for yourself. There is always freedom of choice. You can choose your actions, but obviously you cannot choose the fruit of your actions. And anyone who insults the Ved, does ‘Ninda’ of the Ved is an Adharmi. And the Ved does not bother about Adharmic persons, he/she is left at that. There is no ‘conversion’ into Hinduism, no threats. Every Hindu has to simply acknowledge he/she ultimately follows the Ved. You just have to acknowledge the wisdom of the Ved in your own heart/ brain.
Nastik sampraday say that there is no soul, no reincarnation, no karma, no karmic fruits, no Parameshwar, no Moksh. The physical body is everything. There is nothing beyond the physical universe, whatever you see with your eyes is the only truth. Your sense organs are the limits of life. There is no eternal consciousness, no intelligence, no awareness, no soul. Nastik sampraday believe in a ‘son of god’ or ‘messenger of god’ and force their followers to follow their thoughts/ book. Every nastik sampraday says that you live only once. After you die, you go to eternal heaven or eternal hell. There is only eternal happiness or eternal torment depending on whether you have followed their book/leader or not. Then at some distant future, there will be a day of resurrection and then only the faithful followers will be raised back to their bodies and live eternally on this earth. The non-believers will be again in eternal torment. Here you are not allowed to think for yourself. You cannot leave a Nastik sampraday, you cannot insult their leaders/book etc as the punishment for this is death and ‘eternal damnation’.
The Nastik sampraday do not acknowledge the wisdom of the Ved, they strongly insult the Ved, thus are by the Vedic definition termed as ‘Adharmic’. And correspondingly the Nastik sampraday refer to the Vedic people as ‘pagan’, ‘kafir’ etc as per their book’s terminologies.
Civilisational conflict is always based on life philosophy. And this civilisational conflict is always initiated by the Nastik sampraday who want everyone to comply to their specific ideology or die. Thus they have a system of ‘converting’ by force or by inducement. On the other hand, Astik Shastra does not bother with the Nastik sampraday populations as long as these groups do not interfere with the Vedic population’s way of life. There is no concept of ‘missionaries’ or ‘religious war’ or ‘invasions for propagating religion’ in Vedic Dharma.
Ved = Sanskrit
There is one thing that we must understand about the Ved. They are written in Vedic Sanskrit. And Vedic Sanskrit is extremely old. In my opinion it is at least 100K years old. eg – Vedic Sanskrit on the west of the Saraswati eventually gave rise to the language of the Zend Avesta. And the Classical Sanskrit of Panini was later derived from Vedic Sanskrit. I would estimate Classical Sanskrit to be at least 20K years old and we speak it even today. All Bharatiya languages have come from Classical Sanskrit. In my opinion, the youngest language born from Sanskrit is Marathi. Even today 80% Marathi is Sanskrit. Some languages split farther back in history, so these have typical accents and some grammar changes etc which make them sound different. But the main point here is that all of today’s Bharat has a common Vedic foundation. Ved are written in Sanskrit. All of Bharat worships the same Devata. The Vedic Devata are worshipped in various forms – Varuna, Agni, Mitra, Indradev / Indrani, Saraswati, Ushas (today she is called Chhatti maiyaa in Bihar). The Itihasic Devatas – Shri Ram/ Devi Sita, Maruti, Shri Krishna/ Devi Rukhmini etc. The Puranic Devatas – Bhagwan/ Devi – Shankar, Vishnu, Surya, Ganpati, Parvati, Saraswati, Laxmi, Kartikeya, etc. Bharat worships all these Devatas, but they are all rooted in the Ved. And the language of worship, pujas, Yajnas, homa, Sankalp throughout Bharat is uniformly Classical Sanskrit.
The Ved are written in Sanskrit. And obviously if you have to understand what is written in the Ved you have to first understand Sanskrit. Ved = Sanskrit. If you cannot understand Sanskrit you cannot understand the Ved. Today most Indians have been systematically cut off from Sanskrit, but we all recognise that our mother language is Sanskrit. If you are a follower of Vedic Dharma you have to, at the very basic, acknowledge Sanskrit, the language that the Ved are written. If you denigrate Sanskrit, insult Sanskrit, hate Sanskrit, then it is equivalent to insulting the Ved. If you deny Sanskrit, you are automatically by Vedic definition – Adharmic, Nastik, Avedic, non-Sanatani, not ‘Hindu’.
All major post-Vedic books, Ramayan, Mahabharat, all the Bhashyas, are in Sanskrit. Even as late as the 14th Century where Swami Vidyaranya of Shringeri Math, (who also founded the Vijaynagar empire,) wrote his Panchadashi in Sanskrit. All Tantra is derived from the Ved and is in Sanskrit. All books of Vedic Dharma are in Sanskrit. All Shastra are derived from the Ved and are written in Sanskrit.
If you are a follower of Vedic Dharma, please do not deny Sanskrit, this feeling creates very highly negative karmic fruits. Even if you do not know Sanskrit, at least have some respect for it in your heart.
Dharma = Sanskrit.
Now with this, let’s come to the Bharat of today.
Most areas of the world are burning and India is no exception. It is like a collective insanity, and practically every part of the nation is in turmoil. Some states are severely disturbed like JK UT, Punjab, WB etc. And some of these regions are suffering for years. So let’s analyse the current life philosophies in Bharat today.
First, the muslim dominated regions like Jammu Kashmir UT, West Bengal etc and also the Muslim dominated areas of all the other states the nation. Extremists here openly claim to convert India into an islamic nation by violence, they still follow the ‘convert or die’ system of conversion by terror. And they do not hide their intentions. And the progressive muslims are scared to speak up, so it is a mess.
Second is the christian dominated areas eg Kerala, Punjab etc where they also claim to ‘save’ India by converting it into christianity. There are several christian groups in every state, in tribal areas etc where they engage in mass conversion by fear, inducement and money. Their extremists also do not hide their intentions of converting India into a christian nation, by force if necessary. (eg Murder/lynching of Vedic Sadhus in Palghar, Maharashtra.)
These two civilisational conflicts have been active for 1400yrs and 2000yrs respectively and they are no secret. Both christanity and islam are Nastik sampraday, they are fundamentally opposed to everything that the Astik Shastra says. The conflict lines are based on declared life philosophies – Nastik v/s Astik and as expected the aggressors are the Nastik sampraday. This is as expected and clearly understood by all concerned. This is something that is going on for the past 1-2 thousands of years and it will run through its defined life cycle. Once a Nastik sampraday is born it will go through its unavoidable cycle.
And now finally with all this background, we come to the currently ‘most dangerous state of Bharat’. This is, as expected or perhaps as unexpected, – Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu is at an extremely dangerous tipping point. We are seeing the birth of a new identity which is insistently declaring itself to be separate from the Ved. This is the most dangerous ‘separatist’ movement, as they are separating themselves from their Sanskrit/ Vedic roots! And I really do not understand why the real followers/leaders of Vedic Sampradays in Tamil Nadu are allowing this terrible terrible thing to happen. A new nastik sampraday is taking birth in Tamil Nadu. And if this process is not stopped now, it will lead to centuries of turbulence in this region of Bharat.
The current leaders of Tamil Nadu claim a ‘Dravidian’ identity which they say is separate from the mother language Sanskrit. They are separating themselves from Sanskrit = Ved. And the bulk of the Tamil people are mindlessly following their lead. But ‘Dravid’ itself is a Sanskrit word. द्रविड – is the Sanskrit term for a historical region of Bharat which includes the current states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Telengana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala! And द्रविड is derived from the word द्रविण ‘dravin’ which means – to flow, wealth, money, strength, power, goods, essence, property, moveable wealth etc. And Dravini is another Sanskrit name for Devi Laxmi! Tamil is derived from Sanskrit. eg the first word that every Tamil baby learns अम्मा ‘Amaa’ ‘mother’, is derived from अम्बा ‘Ambaa’ ‘mother’ in Sanskrit. Tamil people can loudly deny Sanskrit, but the reality is that they are also speaking only a version of Sanskrit! Just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately today Tamil Nadu has a very toxic mix of conflicting ideas all targeted at destroying their Sanskrit = Vedic roots. All this has happened in a short 100yrs or so. And if the Tamil Dharmic leaders do not stop this nonsense, it will reach its logical end. They have a max of 4-5yrs in which to act decisively. Things are are already at a very dangerous point on the slippery slope. People who deny the Ved, continually insult the Ved, lose the protection of their Kuldevata, their ancestors /Pitru and their Sanskars are destroyed. The Vedic Dharma is also called the Arsha Dharma, ie the Rishis have given this foundation to us. And this is represented by our respective Gotra Maharishi whom we revere. If you insult the Ved, you are also insulting your family Maharishi, who, with time, will stop giving you his blessings. This combined negativity adds and amplifies and within 1-2 generations, allows the birth of a full-fledged Nastik sampraday. And once a significant population splits from Sanskrit/ the Ved, it becomes very difficult for them to ever regain their Dharma. The collective loses its Dharma, the individual faces his terrible karmic fruit and this is the ultimate tragedy.
This process is happening to some extent in Karnataka also. But at this point of time they are not claiming a non-Vedic identity. They are not yet denying their Vedic roots. I hope their Gurus and Vedic ashrams bring some sense in this state at least and very soon. But for the people of Tamil Nadu, the situation is extremely dangerous, almost on the point of irreversibility.
(These are my personal opinions and based on my interpretations of fact, language and history as per my understanding of Jyotish, Ved, Sanskrit and Dharma.)
Dr. Tejaswini Arvind Patil.
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