DIALOGUE QUARTERLY Volume-17 No. 4 April-June, 2016 DIALOGUE QUARTERLY Editorial Advisory Board Mrinal Miri Jayanta Madhab Subscription Rates : For Individuals (in India) Editor Single issue Rs. 30.00 B.B. Kumar Annual Rs. 100.00 For 3 years Rs. 250.00 Consulting Editor J.N. Roy For Institutions: Single Issue Rs. 60.00 in India, Abroad US $ 15 Annual Rs. 200.00 in India, Abroad US $ 50 For 3 years Rs. 500.00 in India, Abroad US $ 125 All cheques and Bank Drafts (Account Payee) are to be made in the name of “ASTHA BHARATI”, Delhi. Advertisement Rates : Outside back-cover Rs. 25, 000.00 Per issue Inside Covers Rs. 20, 000.00 ,, Inner page coloured Rs. 15, 000.00 ,, Inner full page Rs. 10, 000.00 ,, Financial Assistance for publication received from Indian Council of ASTHA BHARATI Social Science Research. DELHI The views expressed by the contributors do not necessarily represent the view-point of the journal. Contents Editorial Perspective 7 Non-misplaced Concerns 1.North-East Scan 11 An Election Verdict That Created Waves Patricia Mukhim Will Assam Results Impact Other Congress Ruled NE States? 15 Pradip Phanjoubam © Astha Bharati, New Delhi 2. Between Tradition and Modernity: Some Reflections on Professor A.K. Saran’s Intellectual Sojourn 18 R.K. Misra Printed and Published by 3. Agyeya : The Ideal Poet-philosopher of Freedom 27 Dr. Lata Singh, IAS (Retd.) Ramesh Chandra Shah Secretary, Astha Bharati 4. Agyeya – Exploration into Freedom 36 Registered Office: Nandkishore Acharya 27/201 East End Apartments, 5. Romesh Chunder Dutt and Economic Analysis of Mayur Vihar, Phase-I Extension, India Under the British Rule 43 Delhi-110096. Naresh Kumar Sharma Working Office: 6. Naoroji: The Patron of Economic and 23/203 East End Apartments, Political Nationalism in India 66 Mayur Vihar, Phase-I Extension, Vijay Kumar Delhi-110096 7. Philosophical Contributions of Professor J.L. Mehta: Phone : 91-11-22712454 Some Reflections 72 e-mail : [email protected] Sanjay Kumar Shukla web-site : www. asthabharati.org 8. The Ideas of Acharya Rajneesh 86 Printed at : Nagri Printers, Naveen Shahdara, Delhi-32 Vijay Kumar DIALOGUE, Volume-17 No. 4 5 9. Political Thought of Muhhamad Iqbal 100 Naresh Kumar Ambastha 10. M.N. Roy, New Humanism and Post-Modernism 108 R.C. Sinha 11. Census 2011: The Religious Imbalance Continues to Worsen but Hindus show Great Resilience 118 Editorial Perspective J.K. Bajaj 12. Political Philosophy and thought behind Bangladeshi Non-misplaced Concerns Minority Eviction and Majority Infiltration into India 134 Charles Darwin wrote: “Wherever the European has trod death seems Bimal Pramanik to pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide extent of the 13. Value, Education and Social Reconstruction 145 Americans, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope and Australia and we Xavier P. Mao find the same result.” India encountered the foreign sword even earlier, and its adverse impact was that it lost men, as well as, the immense 14. The Significance of Naga in Thai Architectural treasure of knowledge. Al-Beruni writes us how “Mahmud ruined the and Sculptural Ornaments 154 prosperity of the country (India),” how they (Hindus) were turned into Phan Anh Tu “atoms of dust scattered in all directions,” and “this is the reason, too, 15. Muslim Women’s Educational Backwardness: why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the Contemporary Contexts and Concerns 176 country conquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand Dr. Anita Nuna cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places.” When Muslim inroads became deeper, our centres of learning—Nalanda, Vikramshila, Astha Bharati Annual Lecture : A Report 190 etc.—were thoroughly ruined. We lost our knowledge wealth. Our books were so thoroughly destroyed that out of the 4000 books of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit literature translated into Tibetan, hardly 200 were extant in this country. The Europeans, after the discovery of Sanskrit, found their own new identity, and new roots. Amaury de Riencourt, in his The Soul of India says that philosophers like Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, poets such as Goethe, Schillar, Novalis, Tieck and Brentano, historians like Herder and Schlegel, all acclaimed the discovery of Indian culture with cries of ecstasy: “India, the home of Universal religion, the cradle of the noblest human race, of all literature, of all philosophies and metaphysics.” He further adds that “this enthusiasm was not confined to Germany. The entire Romantic movement in the West put Indian culture on a high pedestal which the preceding Classical Movement had reserved for Greece and Rome.” This, however, came in the way of the interests of the (a) Christian Missionaries, and (b) the British Empire. Many Orientalists, who expected the harvest of souls for Christianity as the result of such studies, were not happy. H.H. 6 DIALOGUE, Volume-17 No. 4 DIALOGUE, Volume-17 No. 4 7 Wilson, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, and translator of Rigveda and the in Colombia University (SVBF stands for Sringeri Vidya Bharati Vishnu Purana, and a celebrated Indologist, speaking at the University Foundation in the US), and (ii) General Editorship of the Murty Classical of Oxford in 1840, made the point clear. He said that the objects of Library of India. Whereas wealthy NRIs have collected $4 million for Indian studies were “to contribute to the religious enlightenment of a the first project, N.R. Narayana Murty of Infosys, has made an benighted but intelligent and interesting and amiable people,” another endowment of $5.2 million for the same. As the task of academic planning object was “to confute the falsities of Hinduism.” Obviously, Oriental shall remain entirely with Professor Pollock, and the funding agencies Renaissance began inviting strong opposition; Missionaries and have no role in that task, there is every reason to worry that the end Imperialism combined to do the needful. product shall have subverting role, rather than helping Hinduism and With the objective of damage control, the Sanskritists, such as the country. It needs to be pointed out that the academic orientation of Max Mueller, were summoned to misinterpret the Sacred Hindu texts, Professor Pollock does not assure us that he will positively deliver. and for myth-making. Whereas, greatest thinkers of Europe, such as Today, India has 15 Sanskrit Universities, apart from 100 university Voltaire, Schelling and Schopenhauer, understood and appreciated India, Sanskrit departments, Gurukulas and the academies. The tragedy is that the powerful vested interests and forces of narrowness and we never try to develop them into centre of excellence. We do not try obscurantism, the Euro-Colonial-Missionary forces, represented by to promote our scholars and the institutions. The patron-client soldier-scholars like J.S. Mill, Hegel, Macaulay, Marx and others relationship between the university teachers of the West and India, for succeeded. Indology, with fullest intellectual irresponsibility, developed the short-term petty interests of the latter is doing immense harm to us. as a colonial discipline. The main role of the discipline is to subvert The cases have come to light when certain research guides force their India, especially the Hindu society. Many Indologists had inadequate research scholars to insert the names of Western scholars, such as Max knowledge of Sanskrit, which even European Sanskrit scholars Mueller. All I can say that we need to have attitudinal change towards acknowledged. Inadequacy of the Sanskrit knowledge of Wendy Doniger our own scholars and institutions. was pointed out even by an American scholar. —B.B. Kumar The Indic scholars of pre-Independence days had the given agenda to fulfil. Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the workings of the Euro- American Indic scholars after the departure of colonial power. The deconstructionist study of India by American universities mostly focus on the study of minorities, women and Dalits, which aim at social divide; invading the Hindu sacred by Wendy Doniger and her children ultimately aim at robbing the Hindus’ of their reverence for the sacred, with ultimate aim of conversion. Sheldon Pollock has re-packaged the ‘Aryan Aggression Theory.’ It is just like the old wine in the new bottle. Sheldon Pollock, Professor of South Asian Studies in Columbia University, a Padmashri awardee of Government of India, and an established American scholar, is also a political creature with his client scholars in India. When a section of JNU students were celebrating the martyrdom of a Jihadi, and announcing the disintegration of India, Pollock came out openly in support of the those students, and for defending the freedom of expression and the their right of dissent. Pollock openly took anti-Hindu stand during post-Godhra Gujarat developments. Recently, Professor Pollock has been vested with the task of (i) setting up ‘SVBF Adi Shankara Chair in Hindu Religion and Philosophy 8 DIALOGUE, Volume-17 No. 4 DIALOGUE, Volume-17 No. 4 9 North-East Scan An Election Verdict That Created Waves Patricia Mukhim* At no time was an election anywhere in the country awaited with so much interest as it was for Assam, West Bengal, Tamilnadu and Kerala this time around. It appeared as if the country was waiting with bated breath, not so much for how the results would pan out in the above states, but rather how the BJP as a party would fare in them. Hence, Assam was of great interest to political observers as it was the one state where the BJP had the greatest chance of forming a government. And indeed the BJP has got itself a strong foothold to make its presence in the so-called Christian dominated states of the North-East. There are several factors that came together for the BJP in Assam. Firstly, the Party chose its alliance partners very strategically.