RSS man Hosabale said in a gathering recently : ‘India sent saints and diplomats to other countries. It sent Gautam Buddha to China and by this ruled China culturally and spiritually for 20 centuries without using a weapon. This heritage of India needs to be reclaimed.’
1. What is this right wing need to ‘rule over’ other countries ?
2. No one ‘sent’ Budhism to China. A monk called Bodhidharma, who may have been originally a Brahmin born to a Pallava king in South India, travelled to China in the 5th century and spread the ideas identified with Budhism. It is credit to the Chinese of the time that they saw value in those ideas and adopted them in conjuction with their own contemperaneous religions – Taoisma and Confucianism.
3. In contrast, Budhism sharply declined in india from the 6th century onwards because the rulers patronized Hinduism and Brahmins more.. Islamic invasions thereafter destroyed the Budhist monastries. Even today only a little over 0.5 % of the population are budhist in india, and only about 15 % of them originally Budhist. The rest are Ambedkerite Budhists who converted from Hinduism.
4. Hosabale says above : ‘This heritage of India needs to be reclaimed’. I guess he is talking about India being a regional and global cultural power. He hasn’t noticed that Bollywood has already influenced countries around the world, primarily through the films of Shahrukh and Aamir Khan, the very individuals people like Hosabale demonise.
5. Hosabale may also have at the back of his mind the BJP’s use of yoga as a cultural weapon. BJP’s commandeering of Yoga is actually quite off-putting – like insisting I must use only ayurved therapies for illness. Whether someone walks or swims or does dieting for health or uses Yoga, are not things to be prescribed by political parties. Ofcourse in reality the right wing is not interested in my health, only in my vote !
1. What is this right wing need to ‘rule over’ other countries ?
2. No one ‘sent’ Budhism to China. A monk called Bodhidharma, who may have been originally a Brahmin born to a Pallava king in South India, travelled to China in the 5th century and spread the ideas identified with Budhism. It is credit to the Chinese of the time that they saw value in those ideas and adopted them in conjuction with their own contemperaneous religions – Taoisma and Confucianism.
3. In contrast, Budhism sharply declined in india from the 6th century onwards because the rulers patronized Hinduism and Brahmins more.. Islamic invasions thereafter destroyed the Budhist monastries. Even today only a little over 0.5 % of the population are budhist in india, and only about 15 % of them originally Budhist. The rest are Ambedkerite Budhists who converted from Hinduism.
4. Hosabale says above : ‘This heritage of India needs to be reclaimed’. I guess he is talking about India being a regional and global cultural power. He hasn’t noticed that Bollywood has already influenced countries around the world, primarily through the films of Shahrukh and Aamir Khan, the very individuals people like Hosabale demonise.
5. Hosabale may also have at the back of his mind the BJP’s use of yoga as a cultural weapon. BJP’s commandeering of Yoga is actually quite off-putting – like insisting I must use only ayurved therapies for illness. Whether someone walks or swims or does dieting for health or uses Yoga, are not things to be prescribed by political parties. Ofcourse in reality the right wing is not interested in my health, only in my vote !
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