By Karthik Vaidhinathan
(CHAKRA) I would like to discuss briefly my ideas on the English terms like religion, faith and culture and Indic terms like dharma, sanatana dharma, vaidika dharma etc. and also touch upon what we should call ourselves.
Our Religion – Our Dharma
Different cultures have had different experiences which have conditioned them in different ways, and thus the categories they create to analyze the world also are very different. For instance, west as we know it is a synthetic combination of Christianity and Greco-Roman traditions. Since probably the times of Renaissance, the idea of the separation of religious and secular affairs, the former dealing with church affairs and the latter dealing with outside the church affairs has taken a strong root in western society. As a result of this, a large group of people have emerged that see the world purely from a “secular” worldview, removed of any church influence in their lives. This is the primary motivation for seeing the world of human affairs through a divided paradigm of religion and culture.
Indian history of ideas has had a different trajectory. Here, we have not had the overpowering control of churches, but rather, the philosophical schools that emerged were more abstract and tried to explain, rather than control the way the society functions. As a result of this, the strict division between religion and culture did not exist. Instead, we have a radically different formulation: the notion of dharma, that permeates the ideas of Indians. However, due to western education becoming the norm in India since the times of the British, it has become a norm for even Indians to see their own tradition in terms of western categories like culture and religion, instead of rightly viewing not just our society but also others in terms of our paradigm of dharma. Now that we are independent of foreign rule for the past 65 years, we should also take the next rightful step of reclaiming our own categories and using them to view the world.
So what is dharma? Dharma literally means that which supports or upholds or maintains the order of the Universe (called Rta). This is a much more far reaching categorization than religion or culture. While religion in the western sense typically refers to an institutionalized framework where a church maintains a list of commendments to follow, dharma is a more deeper principle and is not applicable to humans alone, but pertains to everything in existence. So for instance, what upholds an atom or maintains its existence? It is that the sub-atomic particles in the atom are adhering to their dharma (of doing what they ought to be doing). When we come to the human realm, we all humans have our own social identities. Not one, but several. We carry these as various kinds of labels, depending on where and to what parents we were born, what we studied, what professions we chose, what organizations we choose to belong to, what kind of relationships we enter into with other human beings etc. For instance, we all would be, in relation to other people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends, co-workers, fellow citizens, and so on, at the same time. We could belong to birth based groups (jAtis) or membership based groups (sanghas). What “upholds” all these labels then is the dharma of human beings. My brotherhood to my sibilings is upheld by my properly adhering to brotherly dharma. My sonhood to my parents is upheld by my properly adhering to filial dharma. My citizenship to my country is upheld by my adhering to the dharmas of the citizenry and so on and so forth. Thus, the separation between religion and culture would be a meaningless thing in our viewpoint, because dharma encompasses both these western categories. So, a westerner might consider his eating etiquette at a dinner table as belonging to the realm of culture and a secular act, while going to church on sunday with his family as a religious act. But from our viewpoint, both are acts of dharma – the former a dharma to be followed at the dinner table as by adhering to it, he/she is upholding good relations with those who are eating with him (as it is expected behaviour at the table) and the latter upholds the institution called the church, which is a membership based group he/she belongs to.
Next coming to the question of what to call our “religion” (I put it in quotes because I just discussed that we should not use that word to describe ourselves). Now, as we see, dharma is a universal principle. And the illustrious beings that have gone before us have also identified this dharma to be ever-existing. After all, even if humans do not exist, there could be animals and insentinent creatures, which would have their own dharma. Even if earth itself ceases to exist, so many things exist in the universe, like the stars and various galaxies, adhering to their dharma. Even if the entire universe gets unmanifest, the unmanifest Prakriti is also adhering to her dharma of pulsating between manifestation and unmanifestation and so on. Thus, dharma is certainly eternal. This is why dharma is given an adjective of Sanatana. So, Sanatana Dharma is not an object different from dharma – it is dharma itself, but explained by adding an adjective to it, describing its property of being eternal. So, it certainly does not refer to any religion in the western sense. So, how did we categorize ourselves then in the past? How for instance, are the differences between Buddhism and Jainism and Vedic thoughts expressed in Indic categories? Here comes the term called Darshana. Darshana is literally seeing. It desribes a particular coherent way of viewing dharma. For instance, all schools of thought which take the texts called vedas as an inviolable source (they could have others sources also like smritis, puranas, itihasas etc. in addition to Vedas) are called vaidika darshanas or Astika darshanas. Those that do not give this position to vedas are called avaidika darshanas or nAstika darshanas. And each of these darshanas, try in their own way, to explain what dharma is. As examples, vedic schools would say performance of the yajnas prescribed in the Vedas is a Dharmic act. Or Buddhist schools would say adhere to the Noble eightfhold path. These exhortations thus are different in the various schools. But they all are attempts to explain the single Sanatana dharma. While each school could claim that its explanation is the actual Sanatana dharma, it is very important to see the difference between Sanatana dharma itself and the various competing claims to Sanatanahood of the various darshanas. This appreciation should exist, even when we consider our own darshana as the actual Sanatana Dharma (after all, each one of us considers his or her view the right view, don’t we?).
Now, we are in times, where we commonly consider ourselves to belong to a religion and we call this religion Hinduism. And in these times, different darshanas, for various socio-political reasons do not want to associate with the word Hindu. In this scenario, Hinduism has come to mean not the traditions of all people of India, but have come to have a limited sense of referring only to Vaidika darshanas. Hence, it would be incorrect to call this limited term Hinduism as Sanatana dharma. This is not to say that we cannot consider our own Darshana’s standpoint as the real Sanatana Dharma. In fact, we should most definitely do so, as it would be meaningless to claim to belong to a darshana, when we at the same time hold some other Darshana to be more correct than our own. But it certainly means that we should recognize the difference between Sanatana Dharma as an abstract all-encompassing principle, and our own claim to represent this Dharma. So, the best name that we can give ourselves is to identify our Darshanas with unambiguous terms. So for instance, Vaidika Darshana could be a common apellation to a large variety of darshanas. Within Vaidika darshanas would be the Vedanta Darshanas like Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, etc. We could even have a view different from all these traditional schools and still consider ourselves vaidika. In that case, it would be our own personal Darshana. Similarly, we should also be able to say what darshana someone else belongs to (as part of viewing the world outside also in Dharmic terms). Thus within Nastika darshanas, we can have a big family of western darshanas and Christianity (with all its denominations), secularism, capitalism, communism, feminism and so on would all count as darshanas in this western darshana group. Similarly, Islam would form a large darshana group within which we could have Sunni Darshanas, Shia Darshanas, Sufi Darshanas, etc. In my opinion, it is only when we learn to remove our western lens and start viewing ourselves in such traditional categories, and also use these categories to understand the rest of the world, that the real Independence of our civilization is achievable.
I am deeply thankful to the very insightful book Being Different by Shri Rajiv Malhotra, from which I have learnt a lot about the need for a reverse gaze at the west and also about the nature of the western society and they reflect is this write-up.
Also read the 2nd part Dharma and Religion – A Rejoinder which covers some of the objections and questions left in the comments.
What brilliant insight, thank you for this amazing analysis, it sheds light on a lot of subtle points which would go unrecognized without this writing
pranams
I like your blog… but do not understand your westernization of the Sanskrut words…
Dharma is Dharm.
Sanatana is Sanatan
Vaidika Darshana is Vaidik Dharshan
You have distorted the language… so how much distortion happens when translating is unfathomable…. sorry to criticize you…
Respected Madhu Gohilji,
Thank you for your comments. Actually, the original Sanskrit words end in a short a like Dharma, San?tana, Vaidika, Dar?ana etc. However, Hindi regularly trims the Sanskrit pronunciation by removing the final short a from these words. What you have indicated are the Hindi pronunciations, while what I have used in the article are the Sanskrit ones.
Regards.
@Madhu Gohil
Actually , calling Dharma as Dharm is the distortion. Dharma is pronounced in that way in sanskrit. The language to which it belongs. Its not a word which belongs to hindi. Same is the case with Sanatana and Vaidika.
@Karthik anna
You are a university.
No Madhu ji..
Am afraid you are wrong.. This swallowing of the ‘a’ ending in Sanskrit is not westernization but arabisation or urduisation of sanskrit that is very prevalent in north.. It is a spill over of hindi to sanskrit
Almost every sanskrit word that correctly ends in ‘a’ maatra gets twisted.. when used.in northern parts of India
These days even words like yoga ends up being called ‘yog’.. veda becomes ‘ved’.. absolute distortion of the sound.. even when the script is abundantly clearly that there is no need to swallow the ‘a’ maatra
This is influence of arabic and urdu in hindi which spills over to sanskrit…
Succinct and erudite, Kartikji. While Rajivji has given us an opus on dharma and how it stands in distinction to western frameworks, it is works like this that makes it easier for thousands who have less time but are real keen on knowing these distinctions. I hope more and more people of dharma become part of this awareness, so that we can raise a unified voice against the naked aggression of dominant, imported “isms’ that are destroying dharma in the very land of dharma. Thank you.
Dear Karthik,
Thanks for this beautiful piece – for me, it reinforces many points and clarifies some others. I think this is the taxonomy we should follow and teach to our children at school – so we finally start to view the world through our own eyes and understand it in our language, on our own terms; it will re-root us into our own world which has otherwise started to seem alien, illiogical and chaotic to us, threatening us to lose our identity.
There is one point which I do not totally agree with and tend to believe it is rather simplistic: putting Christianity, Islam, etc. as various (Nastika) darshanas trying to explain Sanatana Dharma. That is not the case. Less so are feminism, etc. I think they are not set out to explain Sanatana Dharma. Their ambition and agenda are not lofty enough. They aim much lower and do not understand or acknowledge the very concept of Sanatana Dharma – neither Sanatana nor Dharma. You could come up with other analogies and formulate/identify other terms for them but they cannot be held parallel to Advaita, etc. which are darshanas meant to explain Sanatana Dharma. By contrast, science could be seen as one of the competing Darshanas.
Madhu Gohil does not know Samskrtam he thinks Hindi is the language of our scriptures. Just because Hindi uses devanaagari script does not make it capable of handling Samskrtam (which incidentally is not Sanskrut like MG says but Samskrtam = samyak krtam iti Samskrtam). We should allow time for folks like MG to become familiar with Samskrtam – until then they cannot even understand or appreciate the point being made. Meanwhile we should politely ask them to confine their half letter endings to Hindi kavi sammelans only, and not try to speak for Samskrtam without studying it from a teacher.
Harish…and others…I disagree…
it is not urdu or arab language to blame… it is westerners who were either too lazy to learn or indifferent who translated to english and changed the language… in fact it is pronounced better in the north of India then in the south…. and you are also wrong … it is not sanskrit but sanskrut…. you are wrong in every way you have written…it is the total opposite of what you write…
Respected Madhu ji,
At first I felt you would understand given the above explanations, but it appears you are just keen on pointing out mistakes. Though statistics are meaningless here, let it be noted that I am the third person here to politely disagree with you, and perhaps that might tell you something.
Firstly, it is neither Sanskrit, nor Sanskrut, technically speaking, it is sanskRt. The ‘R’ sound is a vowel, which neither takes an ‘i’ or an ‘u’ sound, but due to the limitations of the English language.
Secondly, I am what you would call a “North Indian”, though I balk at such identifications you give, and I can tell you some of our greatest sanskRt scholars are found in both North AND South India.
Thirdly, it is ‘yoga’, ‘dharma’, ‘veda’ etc with an ‘a’ ending in sanskRt, while it is ‘yog’, ‘ved’, ‘dharm’ etc in Hindi. Since the vedas, upanishads and the rest are written in sanskRt, the usage of Mr. Karthik Vaidhinathan ji is absolutely correct.
Fourthly, kindly hold off on criticism when you refuse to even consider the alternatives presented to you by many others.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
-Prashant Parikh
Errata: ‘third person’ should read as ‘fourth person’
Dear all,
It is not sanskrut, it is sanskrit (the closest transliteration for the word.) Do you call a seer a Rishi or a Rushi? I fail to understand why people confuse the two…
@Parikh :
I don’t agree with you.
There is no such thing as ‘a’ in Sanskrit. This ‘a’ firstly sounds different as in America, Asha (??? or ??? ?) and anus. Similarly, ‘o’ sounds different in oral, onion and owl, the latter one giving the sound of ‘a’.
English is indeed a funn language which grossly distorts the pronunciation of the sanskrit terms. There is neither any word like Veda-s and Upanishad-s. You just mixed sanskrit with the English ‘s’ to make the Ved and Upanishad plural in English.
Further, if you are talking about ending in ‘a’, then please tell me why Upanishad are not written as Upanishad-a, Laxman as Laxmana.
? is given to ved where “? ends with a halant” in sanskrit to make it a full ?.
The original usage of the term is ??? . In English Veda is pronounced as ???? and ????? as Krishna which distorts the whole pronounciation. I have hardly seen any Englishman speaking “Ved” without pronouncing the ending ? on a half ?. On the contrary, English doesn’t have the concept of a half letter and thus anyone who speaks English is compelled to speak even the root words like nrt (??? on a halant) completely i.e with an ending ? on halant to ?.
Dharma sounds like ?????, Rama sounds like ????, Upanishad sounds like ??????? (notice ‘a’ after ‘p’), Ravana sounds like ?????, where in reality it is written like ????. Fortunately, we still don’t have translaters who write like Laxmana for ???????, Upanishada for ??????, Balaka for ????, Phala for ??.
The terms like ??????? and ?????? also end with ?, then why is it not written like Laxmana and Upanishada? And, what do you mean by Veda-s and Upanishad-s?
So when talking about Sanskrit, we not only need to know the root words, but the pronunication and conjunction of the ‘shabd’ as well.
@Jalan, the words like ???????, ???, ????, ??????? etc can never be translated into English correctly. Try it! We just use the corresponding words in English and then words like Vedas and Upanishads for the sake of convenience. Sanskrit language is not called scientific for no reason. It is for the specific way that the words are pronounced and integrated which if distorted in any way distorts the whole meaning of the statement. ?????? is not the same as ?????, but both will be written as sarvada in English due to the limitations of inferior English language. Same goes for ??? and ??, ??? and ???? (former as masculine and latter as feminine if we use ???? as a name).
Reads on Sanskrit -> http://agniveer.com/no-textual-corruption-in-vedas/
http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html
I guess this site doesn’t have support for Hindu fonts. Anyways => http://tempreplies.blogspot.in/2012/06/what-is-our-religion-what-is-dharma.html
Thanks for the overall nice & succinct presentation. I’d agree with the criticism of others that you may want to consider whether Abrahamic (or any other) ideologies qualify completely as “Darshanas”. The bar for being considered a Darshana is pretty high. Any Truth Claim” (like the ones by abrahamic religions) and has to be qualified / critiqued via the rigorous methods of Pramana Shastra ( Shabda, Pratyaksha, Anumana, etc) before being accorded the status of being a Darshana.
Regarding the quibbling over “a” endings in Sanskrit/Sanskrtam/Samskrtam words, let’s just accept that as long as we know the correct pronunciation we’re fine, since roman script is not the best carrier of the sanskrit (or any) sounds. Let’s just make the best of it, or, as Girdhar has done, try & use devnagari or other indic fonts to give proper pronunciation.
Regarding the North/south linguistic divide … wherever traditional sanskrit chanting has survived in a robust form, there the pronunciations haven’t suffered as much. Could be north, could be south, or elsewhere.
Unfortunately, in modern-day Hindi even proper nouns like Raama and Krishna are trimmed to Ram and Krishn. In Shri Raamacharitamaanasa,, which is also in Hindi, Raama is pronounced with an ending ‘a’. It is only modern-day Hindi speakers who have distorted even proper nouns. Mantras with names of Raama, Krishna, Naaraayana, etc. will not be effective if not chanted properly with an ending ‘a’.
More number of people are concerned with the pronunciation and distortion of language rather than assimilating what is being discussed in the post by Karthik ! Thats the irony.
This is where preparedness comes into play. You need that preparedness for things to enter your head, other wise you miss the wood for the trees.
I agree, please lets not sideline our focus on sanskrit transliteration and revert our attention to the article itself. Thank you.
This is a brilliant article and gives us a new paradigm to assess our own identity and reverse the gaze, from western definitions in the light of our own culture.
I have a question for Karthik bhai here, if he would kindly answer.
How does one differentiate ‘Sanatana dharma’ from ‘dharma’. Since dharma upholds/maintains the order (Rta), it is by definition Sanatana, so was wondering if there really is a distinction
Second question: Often we hear words like bauddha dharma, jain dharma, there cannot be different orders that maintain this universe, so does the meaning of dharma change its flavor based on who is using it? THanks for clearing my confusion
I would also like to begin by complimenting Mr. Karthik on an excellent synopsis on the concept of dharma. I would like to point out, however, that dharma is clearly a vaidika position, as the Vedas define the expectations of sAmanya, loukika and visEsha dharma. So, those positions that go against the Vedas cannot be considered to be dharma. Also, when it comes to darshanas, each of them hold some position towards the Veda in being for it or against it; therefore the religions of Abraham cannot be considered darshanas, since they are unfamiliar with the Vaidika position to argue either way.
That being said, one disagreement that I have with Mr. Malhotra, whom Mr. Karthik cites as inspiration for this article, is that dharma is somehow inherent in all Indians, and therefore we can claim this dharma as unique to our society. But, I question how many people, at least in this day and age, even know what dharma is, what to speak of follow it. The rampant corruption among Indians in India and elsewhere is proof positive of the apathy our society has shown towards any type of ethics or decorum.
Present interpretations of Hinduism cannot be considered to be dharma, either. Our obsessions with self-proclaimed gurus and god-men, and the interpretations of ritual and yoga that they teach, is not at all keeping with Vaidikam; nor can the quick-fix solutions sought by sponsoring special rituals be considered dharma, in any sense, either.
As Acharyas have stated, Dharma takes root in forgetting ourselves for the sake of serving our fellow humanity. I can only hope that Hindu society can mature to once again embrace the noble ideals of dharma which have always existed in Vedic thought.
hello everyone…. see how much destruction has been caused with your minds…. i am a living example in the world of how a group of people, a religion or a conspiracy can totally destroy your mind to accept and live what is not the truth….i will try to explain briefly and I hope that I can show you what I am saying and it will make a difference in your lives…
I was abused and tortured by a religion since I was a child till the time I was in my 30s and they were successful in converting my thinking completely…. I was born to a very staunch hindu family with never having eaten meat…. I was sexually abused as a child as it is legal in this religion to sexually abuse children…. I was then abducted and the first meal served to me was beef…..I was tortured, beaten, my mouth stuffed with beef and it carried on for 20 years. It took me and a lot of people to bring my mind back to who I was originally….. a hindu…..and my name has the vowel ru or ra in it and I know that you are wrong when you say sanskrit and sanskrut….. it is a ru vowel not a ri vowel…. i guess most of you must be punjabi because punjabis say liar and not lawyer…. a very good example….
So it is not DHARMA…… IT IS DHARM
IT IS NOT SANATANA…….IT IS SANATAN
and so on………
You have been ruled for 1000 years by muslims who have totally destroyed who you are…….
You have been ruled by the British for 300 years who have managed to do a lot of destruction….
But your minds have been conditioned in such a way that you will reject any healthy criticism…
you just will not accept it because of what they have done to you…..
So it is up to you to change and go on the CORRECT path or you continue on the destructive
path and help muslims and christians ruin you further and further…..
All my best wishes with you…..
Hi All,
I have responded to some of the objections and questions about this article in another write-up. Please read and leave your responses. http://www.chakranews.com/dharma-and-religion-a-rejoinder/2915
Madhu Gohilji, The exact pronunciations of the words is not the subject matter of the article. Moreover, Sanskrit has not been traditionally written in Latin alphabets and thus this is not a standard. We have a few standards like IAST, but these cannot be used on this site. So, best would be to not digress into discussing how words are to be pronounced and instead concentrate on the subject.
Regards.
Karthik..
Thanks for your comment…. but I disagree with you….
When you are born, you learn a langauge which is baby language
then you learn your mother’s and father’s language
then you go to school and learn other things in life
If your father or mother did not teach you the proper pronunciation, you are ruined
for life as far as pronunciation and language are concerned..
You communicate through language and if you do not keep track of your language
then where else will you be able to hold it intact….
If you see on another comment, someone has tried to blame hinduism for the
shortcomings and challenges to islam…..
It is upto you to stand up and be strong for yourself or let it go and let others
destroy you as much as they can….
What I have found is that GUJARATI is the only language that actually pronounces
words correctly… in fact it even has one more consonant than hindi and sanskrut…
I will never write sanskrit because it is to adulterate the language and first communication
is language before everything else….
If you are not able to keep language intact, what else can anyone depend on you to
keep intact…….
Dear Madhu ji,
It is irresponsible to keep sidetracking the purport of this article by nitpicking on what you perceive to be correct pronunciations. It is highly distasteful and people like yourselves are increasing the chasm between Hindus. Please refrain, I think you are going too far.
Thank you,
-Prashant
This does not include the “Dharma” as described by Jainism which is much distinct view and may be more scientific.
Dear Parikh and et al.,
There is a limit to which one should extend respect to others (Pl. refer some of the discussions recently posted by Rajiv Malhotra in his discussion group). We should not extend respect even after we come to know that the person is persistently wrong. Going by this logic, let us stop pleasing this nut case called Madhu Gohil by calling him/her “respected Madhuji”. He or She (Can’t make out which one) is not getting even a small drop of wisdom abundantly present in Prashant Parikh, Harish and Karthik’s explanations. His/her main point was that the author’s usage of words Dharma, vaidika etc. was incorrect and westernized. Explanations have made it abundantly clear that Karthik is right in his usage and Madhu is wrong. If Madhu is not getting it, let us move on.
I suspect that Madhu Gohil is actually a Trojan horse. Such people who work against the interests of Dharma slyly get into Hindu groups and either digress attention from main topics so that a convergence does not happen or plant anti-Hindu thoughts slyly. Madhu Gohil has planted many such seeds in his/her postings, each seed capable of snowballing into tens of threads of discussion and luckily it has not happened this time.
Consider the part of his/her posting – “… I was born to a very staunch hindu family with never having eaten meat…. I was sexually abused as a child as it is legal in this religion to sexually abuse children….” what a damaging statement being passed off as if a Hindu victing is saying!! And what a henious mentality to resort to such tactics? Luckily nobody has fallen prey to such a high potential distraction. This “Sexual abuse is allowed in Hinduism….” argument is sounded by many Anti-Hindu people with no or distorted references and is obviously nonsense. Secondly, consider the level to which Madhu is trying somehow to discredit Karthik Vaidyanathan!! Given all this, Madhu is most likely a Trojan horse it is best to ignore him/her.
Prashant Parikh –
So you are audacious enough to call me irresponsible and sidetracking and nitpicking….. your english is much better than your Sanskrut that I can see……..
well the writer never made any rules that you were not allowed to give your honest opinion…. or even if not honest, an opinion…… so everyone’s opinion is going to be restricted to your liking only?
I think it is you Prashant who is getting out of hand and going too far from the subject of DHARM AND ESPECIALLY SANATAN DHARM…. AND WHY NOT JAINAISM…. WHY JAINISM?
HOW YOU SAY YOUR WORDS WILL GIVE YOU THE CORRECT EMPHASIS ON MEANING…
HERE ARE SOME VERY GOOD EXAMPLES FOR YOU….
BOLLYWOOD AND DEFINITELY NOT BAALYWOOD AS SAID IN PUNJABI
LAWYER AND NOT LIAR
COLLEGE AND NOT CAALEGE…
Dear Nagaraja ji,
Yes you are absolutely right, it appears to be troll behaviour, I did not notice that earlier, thank you for bringing it to our attention
Regards,
Prashant
Dear Prashant et. al.,
I am reminded of some lessons that are picked up in communication and public speaking skills and thought that it is worth mentioning here. As they say, we have to decide when to respond to the content of what somebody is saying and when to respond to the intent!!. When the other side has an ulterior intent, there is no use trying to convince the person by responding to the content of what he is saying. It is because his intent is to distract and for that purpose, he picks up any content that suits his intention. If that content doesn’t work, he chooses some other content. So, we have to respond accordingly and in this case ignoring him seems to be the best response for the intent; or may be add a bit of humor and then ignore (If you notice Madhu’s English, part of it is suave and part of it is rustic; given all this I suspect that he is a christian posing as if a Hindu and trying to either distract or plant adverse thoughts about Dharma posing as if he is a victim of some loop hole in Hinduism). Coming back to types of responses, there are other types of responses, and in more congenial settings, they include responding to the process (when a discussion is going astray, somebody has to set right the process of discussion), responding to the person (a person may just have to be pacified!!) etc.
If you all knew this, kindly pardon the superfluous information; otherwise no harm in being reminded of what we know already or picking up some new perspectives.
Hey MEN, I am pleased at receiving such comments to my posts…..I am glad….. this is definitely not a group of people who are into any kind of criticism but have their minds shut off to whatever they need to think and only their views count…. I am glad that you call me all kinds of names…..I may have sparked off something in your wise and brilliant brains that is why the rebuff….hmmm interesting indeed where the author of the blog is not saying anything yet Prashant (I have a very angry and boistrous nephew of this name) goes out of his way to call me names and all others follow……..
do you see the damage done or not yet…….?
You do not wish to correct the damage done? maybe then you better off without me here…..
I resign as a commentator….. I know you have no idea whether I am a man or woman, I guess I can only convince you all when you will strip me naked just as your muslim friends did….. so let it be a surprise……..strip me naked and then you will know whether I am man or woman…..even saints and sages have beautiful faces and long hair and my guru wears a ponytail and is in a suit and wears shiny shoes, drinks alcohol and plays JUA but I was not able to make out whether he was man or woman until I stripped him…. yeah he danced doing it toooooooooooooooooooooo.
I retire from this group……………………
Brother Giridhar,
Can you provide your email id?
god one kartik bhai (y)
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I wish this is available in Hindi to benefit others too. Fantastic clarity on the subject. Thank you very much.