Battle the forces of casteism, illiberalism, and injustice

Caste Wars in Tamil Nadu: a Sanghathan Perspective from Centre Right India by Aravindan Neelakandan

Thus Hindutva has both ideological as well as institutional capacity to battle the forces of casteism which have been unleashed by the Smrithi-based psyche that centuries of social stagnation has produced. In Tamil Nadu context, this psyche has been reinforced by perverted racism of Dravidian politics which has only added anti-Brahminical hatred to the Dalit hatred in the name of social reform movement. To reach out to the Dalits who have been singled out by Dravidian casteists and who have been denied justice for centuries by Hindu society, Hindu Sanghathanists can take a cue from that film of 1980s.

It is time to create a popular spiritual culture that is based on the Vedantic ideal of Integral Humanism – all humanity is part of the same Divinity. Scriptural barriers become meaningless before the vision of compassion of the Mother. If Hindutva movement can take this message forcefully through all possible media to all sections of the society and liberate caste-Hindus from the shackles of their casteism and Dalit Hindus from the injustice they are suffering from the mindset of the caste Hindus that shall be the day Hindu Sanghathan has arrived in this ancient land of Tamils.

Gurcharan das exposes the illiberalism at the core of India's ruling caste of dynasts and bureaucrats from Shadow Warrior by nizhal yoddha The Economist Modern India: Liberal worries

India desperately needs a fiercer push for liberal capitalism. Mr Das calls his new book “India Grows at Night”, a clarion call for such ideas. He wants a pro-market political party to be founded (like the Swatantra centre-right movement of the 1960s—see article) and for the dysfunctional, “flailing” state to be shrunk and improved. The author is likely to be ignored, even if his case is broadly convincing.

India enjoys a rich liberal heritage. For every story about feudalism, caste repression and the ongoing backwardness of a largely rural country, Mr Das counters with optimism about a bright, fast-rising, urban middle class. Indian society, he says, is by nature strong, free and tolerant…

The book raises some excellent questions. But what is missing, perhaps surprisingly given Mr Das’s connections, is a real insider’s account of why the sort of ideas he is promoting so often fail to get implemented. Relatively few Indians claim to be avowed classic liberals, yet a clutch of powerful people, including the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and others in cabinet, would agree with much of Mr Das’s argument.

The Hindu : Book Review : Integration of the sacred and the secular 6 Mar 2007 – PREMA NANDAKUMAR - ANCESTRAL VOICES - Reflections on Vedic, Classical and Bhakti Poetry: Ramesh Chandra Shah

Nearer our times we have Sri Aurobindo writing poetry as part of his `Yoga sadhana'. Ramesh Chandra Shah asks himself: "How exactly is Yoga, that realm of silent wordless inward action related to the same man's unrelenting passion for the order of words?" Relation there must be, a connection with our earliest dawns but which we have lost by limiting our visions to our own "egoistic shells of separativity." These ideas and more are woven with expertise by Shah in a seamless argument. 

Ancestral Voices: Reflections on Vedic, Classical and Bhakti Poetry - Page 32 - Ramesh Chandra Shah - 2006 - According to Sri Aurobindo, 'an itihasa was an ancient historical or legendary ...

Plain & Simple: Sri Aurobindo views the adventure of ...

Yeats and Eliot: perspectives on India Ramesh Chandra Shah - 1983 - 174 pages - This is not entirely unjustified, because Samkaric monism does tend to world-negation in a way that the original Vedanta doesn't. That is why Sri Aurobindo ... 7:48 PM 

A Writer in the Role of a Teacher

What happens to our culture conditioning – our actual cultural boundaries when we come to face the ‘final facts’? Doesn’t it demonstrate conclusively the fact, poetry can sometimes speak across cultures and thus acquiring a universal voice, make its unique contribution towards realisation of what Sri Aurobindo calls ‘the ideal of Human Unity’.

And it’s not just poetry which has this potential: fictional and other kinds of creative prose too can incarnate and enact a similar force and capability. Only he can be credited with the capacity of real ‘seeing’ who can become everybody, i.e. who can empathise with and embody all sorts of human types and states of being. Now, if you consider this in depth, you come to understand how great novelists and dramatists can produce such more than real-life impact upon you. It is precisely by dint of their personally acquired and superior knowledge by – indwelling, i.e. by their powers of empathy that they are enabled to reproduce the illusion of actual life – situations and actual characters which affect you like real-life events. The competent teacher of literature has to re-enact this capacity of literature experientially and not just through academically ‘correct’ procedures. Correctness after all is a rather tame ideal and there is a yawning gulf between mere correctness and real clarity of understanding. There in lies the challenge, before the real teacher. Professor Ramesh Chandra Shah, Padmashri, is an eminent scholar, thinker, creative writer and critic. Dialogue (A quarterly journal of Astha Bharati) - Astha Bharati

Interview with Ian Bogost - anotherheideggerblog Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Here I find McLuhan's invitation to investigate the properties of specific technologies to be liberating... not to mention a hell of a lot clearer! ... (As a sidenote, McLuhan does take things too far when he insists that the content of media doesn't matter)] 10:42 AM