Why do Sandhyavandanam at all ?

May 1, 2009

Namaste.I had done a few blog posts on Sandhyavandanam but they were all about parts and I felt them to be incomplete. For long a post on the necessity of a post on "why at all one should do Sandhyavandanam " was long overdue.The result is this post. By no means this post is complete . By your comments this post will become more so. Please visit the blog at http://sanatanavenkat.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-do-sandhyavandanam-at-all.htmlAs usual, I request you to forward this to as many friends as possible. J Venkatasubramanian

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May 2, 2009

Hari Om!

Very interesting article. On the same site I found more interesting:

http://sanatanavenkat.blogspot.com/search/label/School%20history%20book

Please read:

Showing posts with label School history book. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Rubbishness of Indian History as taught in Indian schools

As a boy, I grew up in the government schools that taught standard curricula for everyone. In my fifth standard, I first studied the History of India. The best thing that I read was that the Vedas were written about three thousand years ago. I also â€˜learntâ€™ that the Vedic Aryans did yagyas and drank soma. That was all.

Now, thirty five years later, when I opened my first sonâ€™s history book who is in Ninth standard (he is 14 years old), I saw nothing about Hinduism . But it had significant chapters on new religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Another notable addition was a large chapter on new European thinkers such as Marx, Engels and so on.

HONOURING A GREAT CIVILIZATION

Obviously, I was aghast. My revulsion is understandable. There is proof in our existent literature and the internet not to mention the new archaeological proof

1.that the Aryan Invasion Theory is a hoax created for the benefit of the British.

2. The term Aryan never meant a race but just an attribute of a people who strived to be noble.

3. The Vedas were the worldâ€™s oldest living texts, preserved by an ingenious way and presented with the brahmanas and six angas(limbs) for an error proof study for anyone who wants to study it. It predates every civilization in the world.

4. Even the modern religions inside the Hinduism such as Vaishnavism, Saivism are at least three millennia old.

5. There is emerging proof that the whole world including the Americas, Europe, Arabia and Australia and Africa were practicing Hinduism once

6. Indians were the worldâ€™s first intellectual race par excellence and have been responsible for major scientific advancements since the beginning of creation.

(please click on the highlighted texts to actually verify the proof for yourselves) (Shiva Statue in a public fountain Bologne, Italy and misrepresented as Neptune . Courtesy www.stephen-knapp.com)

THE RUBBISH HEAP OF OUR HISTORY BOOKS

Now despite all this evidence, our history books are not updated. I think our children must grow up with a feeling of superiority of our heritage. I wonder who is in charge of fixing syllabi for Matriculation and CBSE curriculum. They all bear contorted versions of our history and bear nothing relevant to enable the child to know its own country, its people and history.

I learn from my sources that apart from the British, treacherous writing belittling India started with Jawaharlal Nehru himself who, for political reasons, advised the historians of his day not to dwell on some horrible events of the past such as the demolition of Somnath temple, Akbarâ€™s massacre of 32,000 Rajput soldiers in a single day, the desecration of Kashi, Mathura , Ayodhya temples among lakhs of others.

MANIPULATIVE HISTORIANS

The Historians sensed an opportunity and have clung to the pattern. One of the universities where such historians are most active is the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. I hear that the whole university has been hijacked by politically coloured professors who owe allegiance to Marxist ideologies.

And I am sad. We know the Marxist led propaganda that Hinduism is bad and Indian culture is bad and horrible. With the whole world turning to India for its unique culture be it in terms of Familial love, Educational virtues, piety, righteousness and spirituality, these claims of the Marxists have been defeated. But still these people are calling the shots in fixing the official history in India.

But the worst thing in all this is that NO Government at the centre barring the BJP tried to correct this menace in the 60 years after independence. It is a shame that such things are happening in a democracy. All the elected representatives of the people are overly afraid of this or that section of the people. For example, calling Akbar a murderer of the innocent might offend the muslims and so on.

This is outright cowardice.

WHAT EDUCATION SHOULD BE ?

In a recent seminar on education , a disciple of Aurobindo, Mr Michael Denino told the gathering about Aurobindoâ€™s views on Education They are

Nothing can be taught

The Child must learn from the near to the far

I am interested in the second point. The childâ€™s education must progress from his near to the far. From his village, then his town, his district, then his state, his country and this world , this universe and so on.

But what is the situation ? Afifth standard child of age 10 learns about American democracy and nothing about his own beautiful district which has many unique features. Is it not rubbish ?

HONOURING OUR TRADITIONS:

Take, for example, Vedic Mathematics. When it was introduced during BJP rule, many newspapers even wrote editorials stating that it was totally rubbish. Now, just five years or so, Vedic maths created a niche for itself. A newspaper, The Hindu, which wrote so caustically on this, now voluntarily teaches it in schools. The trend is so hugely popular that, all those â€˜get rich quickâ€™ institutions which once offered abacus , now offer Vedic Maths. You will find many CD s marketed by many people in this subject alone.

Everyone knew the Indians were proficient in Mathematics, but not to this extent ! It is one area where the truth has come out. But we have to bring out the historical truths of our superiority in the fields of textile, armour, agriculture, medicine, education, astronomy, linguistics, literature, story telling( all the fairy tales are crude copies of Indian stories), science, hydraulics, geometry, navigation and many others.

THE WAY FORWARD:

Everyone in India should write to the newspapers, to the concerned schools, education departments, ministers and the union government of the disaster of this self defeating education system which is based on self degradation than truth. Most important, every parent, every elder must educate the child on what is not taught in the schools. They must be made proud of our heritage.