Indian State is in conflict with its own civilisation

by M.K. Teng

We reproduce here the keynote address delivered by Prof MK Teng at the convention organised by Panun Kashmir and NS Kashmiri Research Institute to commemorate this years Kashmiri Pandit Balidan Divas (Martyr's Day) at Abhinav Theatre Jammu. The day was observed as the day of 'Asmita' to highlight the importance of preservation of Kashmiri Pandit cultural identity, image and voice.

Preface to the keynote address delivered by Dr. M.K. Teng:

Due to the liberalist moorings of the English speaking Indian intellectual class, which flourished with the consolidation of the British power in India, the Indian historiography followed a methodology, which in the ultimate analysis reflected an ideological commitment to liberalist reformism. The Indian renaissance performed the most vital task of the assertion of the Sanskrit identity of India which formed the foreground of the Indian nationalism . Starchey's definition of India as a "geographical expression" was basic to the claim of the legitimacy of the British rule for the 'geographical expression" negated the national identity of India and its right to unity. The Indian intellectual class which directed the Indian national movement followed Strachey's negativism for the British and the Muslims in India, from whom the British had inherited power. This class visualised India as a special plurality which could not claim a national unity as the basis of its independence. Liberal reformism could not visualise Indian unity as an expression of its civilisational content. The Muslims and the Christians, could not accept Sanskrit civilisation as the basis of their participation in an independent India. The Indian intellectual class, under the leadership of Congress set out in search of a unity in diversity, rejecting the Sanskrit substratum of the Indian civilisation as the basis of the Indian nationhood. The Indian emphasis on unity in diversity, deepened the ethno-centric conflict in the Indian political culture and when the British left, the Muslim also joined them to leave India. The time has arrived to re-emphasis the basic current of the Indian renaissance and redefine the basis of the Indian identity. India continues to be visualised as a geographical identity and not as a national unity based on its own civilisational content, because, the Indian intellectual class is still trapped in the reformism of the British liberal tradition. The only way, therefore, for India to unite into a nation, is to of find the roots of its identity.

Key Note Address

Ladies and Gentlemen I express my gratitude to the chairman N.S. Kashmir Research Institute and the Chairman Panun Kashmir for having invited me to deliver the keynote address of the procedings today. There is an urgency to rediscover the identity of the Hindus of Kashmir. In fact there is an urgency to rediscover the identity of the Hindus in India. In the liberation struggle of India the Muslim separatist movement rejected the identity and the unity of the Indian nation. The rootless English-speaking intellectual class of India, which led the Indian movement for liberation, disowned the Indian renaissance because the Muslims rejected it. The British recognised the Muslim claim to a separate nation. The Indian leaders claimed a national unity based upon the diversity of India. In the process both Gandhi and Nehru and the other leaders of the Indian independence movement diluted both the unity of the Indian nation as well as its Sanskrit content. Jammu and Kashmir is part of the national identity of India, which is Sanskrit in origin and Sanskrit in content. India is in the midst of a civilisational war. The expansion of the Muslim power to the east will ultimately depend upon the de-Sanskritisation of the northern frontier of India, more specifically the warm Himalayan hinterland, of which Jammu and Kashmir forms the central spur. Committed to the unity and the Sanskrit foundations of their heritage the Hindus in Kashmir have always formed the frontline of the resistance against the Muslim crusade. They fought against Muslim separatism in India before the independence of the country. They fought, with determined resolution, against Pakistan and the Muslim secessionist movement inside the State, after freedom came to India. The Hindus of Kashmir are an ancient people. They form an inseparable part of the history of the Sanskrit civilisation of India. The contours of their identity are determined heritage. Their social culture is proto-Vedic. Their language has origin in the proto-vedic. Their ritual culture is Sanskrit. The Hindus of Kashmir are a part of the Sanskrit people of India. The Hindus of Kashmir are of proto-Aryan origin and have lived in Kashmir from times, which began with the Bruzahom civilisation between 3500 to 4500 BC, far before the Aryans and presumed to have invaded India. The skeletons found at Burzahom in Srinagar are of the people, were the ancestors of the people who live in northern India today. I saw the skeletons with my own eyes. I had no doubt who they were. The anthropometric survey corroborated the fact that the people, who lived at Burzahom, were of proto-Aryan origin. Kashmir and Jammu including Ladakh, perhaps with the region extending to the Indo-Ganetic plains formed the part of the Aryan heartland. The truth must be told and it is better that it is told by us. The Hindus of Kashmir are no imposters. They never descended on the Karewas of the Kashmir valley from the oblivion of the north. They grew from the soil of Kashmir and had their birth in it. The posterity of the Burzahom Aryans, lived in Kashmir, through ages down to our own time. The Nagas and the Pisachas were no aborigines. They were also people of Sanskrit origin. They were no more ancient than the Burzahom people. They were their descendents and inheritors of the Burzahom culture. Their ritual forms were adopted from the Vedic Kalpa-Sutra and the Vedic Grah-Sutra. They followed Vedic Karma-Kanda which Laugaksh Muni evolved in the first millennium before Christ, which represented the zenith of the Neelmat era. The Hindus of Kashmir became an epicenter of the Sanskrit civilisation of India. To them goes the credit of evolving the tenents of Shiavite Monism. Shiavite Monism represented both a theological doctrine aimed to achieve recognition of a unified field of universal existence and a philosophical concept of logical positivism. The recognition of eternal consciousness, of which universal existence was an expression, was the greatest gift of the Hindus of Kashmir to the Sanskrit civilisation of India. Shiavite monism grew out of 'Advaita in which, time and space vanished with the end of human consciousness. Shiavite monism transcended the limitations of human consciousness and the relativism of time and space. The Hindus of Kashmir Sanskritised the Himalayas and a great part of Asia beyond. Sarvastavadin Budhism filled the Hinyan nihilism with the immortality of the Budhisatva and the foundation of its being by the mother goddess Tara. Sarvastin Budhsim was evolved in Kashmir and was spread by the Kashmiri Pandit masters of Budhism to Tibet, Central Asia, Mongolia and part of Western China. The Hindus of Kashmir founded a script for both the Tibetan as well as the Mongolian language on the basis of linguistic sociology of Sharda. The Budhist theocracy of Tibet was founded by Kashmiri Pandits, who reached Mongolia in the time of the great Chengis Khan. The Hindus of Kashmir are not a part of the so-called composite culture of Kashmir. Islamic Sufism did not represent with cultural and the spiritual ethos of Kashmir. It represented the liberal theology of Islam, which did not accept coexistence of a composite culture. Sufism did not grow in Kashmir. Kashmir was never an abode of Rishis of the Sufi order, as is claimed. Lallshari represented the last resistance to the persecution and the ethnic extermination which the Hindus were subjected to in her time. India is not a geographical expression. It is a unity of people with a universal civilisational ethos which has grown through the millennia of the Indian history. The unity of India is not synonymous with unity in diversity. As a matter fact, the emphasis laid on unity in diversity during the liberation movement in India led straight to the division of the country. The propagation of the sub-national diversity of India was a subtle design to undermine the Sanskrit foundations of the nation of India. The creation of Pakistan was the first phase of the conspiracy. Neither Gandhi nor Nehru resisted the conspiracy. They failed to realise the fundamental conflict inherent in the claim to unity in diversity and what they called the composite culture. Their acceptance of diversity as a basis of Indian unity drove them straight to the partition of India and the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan. After the partition, the insistence of the Indian leaders on the unity in diversity confronted them with the first phase of the Muslim crusade in Jammu and Kashmir. Hidden under the cover of the composite culture of India is the civilisational conflict, which seeks the de-Sanskritisation of the northern India to open the way for the Muslim power to expand eastward. The attempts to recreate the identity of Jammu and Kashmir in Sufism, is a subtler plot to dilute the boundaries and the content of the Sanskrit civilisation of Kashmir. From Kashmir the Muslim crusade has spread to Jammu and Ladakh, which form the two major bulwarks of the Sanskrit civilisation of the Northern India. Sanskrit Himalayas are impregnable. If the warm Himalayan hinterland is de-Sanskritised the Muslim power will spread over the whole of the north of India. The Indian state will ignore the warning at its own perils. Committed to the Sanskrit foundations of their heritage, the Hindus of Kashmir have formed the frontline of resistances against the Muslim crusade. They fought with bare teeth against Muslim separatism in India before independence. They fought with determined resolution against Pakistan and the Muslim secessionist movements after freedom came to India. A new phase of struggle has begun for them now. They must apprise the people of India that the Indian state does not recognise the civilisational unity of India. The Indian people must be told that if the Indian state repudiates the Sanskrit basis of the Indian society, it will disintegrate. The state of India which is in conflict with its civilisation will not survive. The Indian state will not be able face the Muslim crusade without a civilisational face.

Source: Kashmir Sentinel