Every great mind of the human race is stung by one question and one question only..The search for meaning
Let's see Veer Savarkar wrestled with this same question
Veer Savarkar gave rise to a very reified form of cultural nationalism, you might as well say he Deified Cultural Nationalism
He saw Hindus as the inheritors of the same culture that took shape in the Rakhagirhi, Lothal continuum...The same culture that extended unbroken till the Marathas,Dogras,Sikhs and the Shah Dynasty
You might say he was the reincarnation of the lost Maratha consciousness
He had undying love for the people who animated this culture and love for the Gods that was venerated by this culture, eventhough he never thought that these Gods or any God for that matter were real..He had love for the temples.for the gathas,for the epics, for the songs, for the bards, for the sculptures
He had undying love for the defiant struggle that these people put up for 1300 years as the world's last great Bronze Age civilization. A civilization which may not amount to much but whose very identity is shaped by relentless struggle to survive against all encompassing doctrinally straitjacketed monotheism
He was a vehement anti-casteist. He wanted to ,and in some way succeeded posthumously, forge a singular Indic race under the umbrella of Hinduism that overrides every division based on caste,doctrine,language,ritualism,scripture
His disdain of therefore non-pagan religionists was a disdain for the foreigner who had encroached on India which is not only the motherland,but also the sacredland of the Indic pagans
In a way he was no different than proto-cultural nationalists of PDF who want to forge Indus nationalism and want to override every difference that is in Pakistan based on religion,sect,language,untouchability of lower caste Christians and want to forge a singular Indus race
People like
@War Thunder @Indus Pakistan @PakSword @Talwar e Pakistan @Mangus Ortus Novem @AgNoStiC MuSliM @SecularNationalist
In their proto-cultural nationalistic context the disdain of India or the Gangu is justified and I can understand that
Blood,geography gives rise to more durable,coherent nationalism than religious doctrine ever could
Veer Savarkar was a great atheist. When he knew his body could not keep up with his mind anymore, he refused food and medicine and chose death by starvation..Thus following the ancient Jain tradition of Sallekhana
He never had any dreams of heaven,reincarnation or afterlife--->he only had a simple dream, that the people and the culture he loved so much may have a future
@Chhatrapati @Suriya
But the best defence of Veer Savarkar was found on Quora by Trilochona Rout...This was the best defence of
Hindutva ever
The Question was:
Why did Veer Sawarkar form Hindu Mahasabha if he was atheist?
Trilochana Rout, lives in India
Updated Feb 28, 2015
Culture is the physical manifestation of an individual's spiritual immortality. We humans- despite our mortal bodies, crude natures & flawed minds- are luminous beings who can exist for millennia, travel across oceans at will, and speak to entire generations at once- under the right conditions. For this one & only one condition must be met- the individual must overcome their delusions of mortality & instead identify with an immortal reality.
Once that is done, all else follows.
vidyamkavidyamkayastadvedobhayamsaha
avidyayamrtyumtirtvavidyayamrtamasnute
The primary fallacy the average Atheist makes in the course of their reading is their belief that they've somehow slipped off the chains of religion's delusion & developed some sort of individualistic freedom. That's nonsense. The only thing they've done is exchange one set of chains for another. There is absolutely no difference between the rituals of organized religion & the Flag marches of Communism- or for that matter, Liberal Socialism. There is no Heaven- religious or liberal. There was never any heaven. Merely duty- never-ending thankless duty, as part of a unknowing, all-knowing greater being with no sense of individual good, evil or even indifference.
That is what the Bhagavad Gita actually says.
That is what Liberals don't understand. Human beings want to, have to be part of a greater whole. This sentiment is the very basis of Humanity, its civilizations & its ethos. Religion- like all ideologies, is merely another set of lies meant to justify the existence of yet another unjust, exploitative society (because all 'societies' by their very collective existence, are unjust & exploitative of the individual. But that is okay- because Human Beings either want to exploit or be exploited themselves. Even the oh-so-holy Liberals are bound by their own set of untruths, and thus must constantly be justifying & arguing over a group of nonentities. They do not see that their stand of absolute knowledge is no different from that adopted by the Christians & Muslims when they were persecuting/ being persecuted by the Pagans who preceded them.
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without
mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
There is not a single argument Liberals have that hasn't been raised ten thousand times earlier- by St Thomas Aquinas, by Lao Tzu, by the Buddha himself, by the Mahabharata. There is not a single argument in the God Delusion that hasn't been discussed far more exhaustively, dedicatedly & comprehensively in the Tripitakas. There isn't a single criticism of the Bible that wasn't known to or countered by St Thomas Aquinas.
The individuals concerned- St Thomas Aquinas, the Buddha- were not only far more intelligent, learned & enlightened- than your Liberal thinks, they were, in all probability, some of the most intelligent beings to grace this species. The idea that they were foolish enough to fall under some sort of superstitious nonsense is ridiculous. They- we believe because we choose to. We chose to in order to defend our chosen group. The virtues or sins of this group- whether this group be Christians, Hindus, Muslims or even the people known in certain circles as 'Sickulars'- don't even figure in this equation.
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
Thus we clearly see that the tribe is the fundamental necessity as well as the ultimate goal of Human existence. How this tribe defines itself is called 'culture' & this 'culture' in turn can be defined by multiple factors- race, religion, the Communist Manifesto, the Mein Kampf, Nietzsche, the God Delusion- & of course, organized religion. Any tribe, by virtue of the numerical superiority & philosophical strength it provides to its members, is superior to any number of individuals & thus, dominates the latter through slaughter & plunder.
Therein lies the crux of why the three great Monotheistic faiths- Christianity, Islam & Judaism- have destroyed virtually every single pagan faith in the World- save for in India & China. Paganism is simply not robust enough an ideology to effectively bind a people together. It is too individualistic, offers too many choices, has too many freedoms. Don't mistake 'freedom' for 'the lack of oppression'. Murdering babies (though that might've been pure Roman anti-Carthiginian propaganda) or burning widows (which was the British digging up nearly extinct traditions as anti-Hindu propaganda) are oppression- but they do not connote a lack of 'freedom'. By the mere allowing of choice within one's spiritual- & thus cultural fabric, paganism weakens the tribe- & thus paves the way for its own demise.
Then why did India & China survive? The answer is simple. What is the biggest factor that sets India & China apart from the World?
Quantity has a quality all of its own
And thus our hordes have given these two civilizations the immortality not even Eternal Egypt or Mighty Rome could aspire to. Like dragons, we outfought our pagan foes. Like monkeys, we cheated the Mongol tumens. Like rats we out-bred our 'civilized' monotheist oppressors. Thus we survived.
But this state of affairs could've never continued for ever. Fertility rates fall. Schools open & teach new lies in place of old ones. People, in their eternal search for suffering, hanker after new, more horrifying tortures. What people forget is that by leaving their religion, they are effectively abandoning their own culture- & thus, the very basis of Human civilization. True- they do gain a 'better', 'softer' society, a society more amenable to individualistic bliss- but such a state of affairs can only be temporary before such hedonistic loosely-bound members are swept away by hard-unthinking orthodoxy. Hindus- long protected from the depredations of Islam & Christianity by their vast population, multifarious ethnic divisions & warlike nature- by the early 1900s were open to such de-culturalization thanks to several events not under this answer's purview.
Thus, it was evident to any well-read Indian by the early 1900s that India, as a concept, was doomed to extinction. All said and done, India is a Hindu concept- created by Hindus, populated by Hindus, & defined by Hindus. Don't give me that 'secular' nonsense. Hinduism, like all Indo-European faiths, does not correlate morality with divinity, and thus shows a tolerance for other religions unknown to any faith currently existing on Earth (yes, even Buddhism)! Christians would've got by with their belief in a mythical Jerusalem. Muslims would've gone on praying to a Arab stone. But India is India! We are neither Israel or Arabia!
And thus was born Hindutva. Racial pride- for a made-up race no one believed in. Cultural pride- for a non-existent culture in a land with millions. Civilizational pride- for a civilization that had long passed into legend & fallen into barbarism. Religious pride- for a made-up religion that had to be carved out from the very forces it meant to oppose.
I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance
What Savarkar being a Atheist- a real Atheist, unlike the anti-national conformist phonies of Quora & the Indian Liberals- realized was that Hinduism was unlikely to survive for long- merely on account of being a pagan faith. And with Hinduism would've gone the very essence of India. Think of it yourself. There are thousands of Dance traditions in India. How many of them are Islamic in origin? How many are Christian in origin? How many ragas have the Communists authored? What good have the hordes of the Indian media done for Humanity? After one thousand years, what good would a bunch of shouting news anchors have accomplished?
And yet, we play the same raga Bhairavi the Emperor Samudragupta once played on his Veena a thousand years before the first ship sailed around Africa, the same raga Ustad Bismillah Khan performed every day on the ghats of Varanasi until a few years ago.
Thus Savarkar remade Hinduism. From Christianity came the purpose & violence of militaristic organization. From Islam, came the stress on ideological purity & defensiveness. From Judaism came the emphasis on free enterprise & racial-religious existence. The World's oldest religion was reforged in the very image of the newest- in order to withstand a new crueller, more ignorant Humanity. What he did was no different from what Ataturk did when he rebuilt a new Turkey form the ashes of the Ottoman Porte or when Mao took the most bitter, war-torn people of the World & recast them into a united China.
He was a Nationalist. Everything he did was for the Nation. It is for posterity to judge his actions, not us- but to judge his intentions or his character? To be judged by intellectual pygmies who haven't had a single original thought of their own? Veer Savarkar deserves better.
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And that's how my friend Veer Savarkar,the atheist,passed into immortality