Lord Mahaveera and the Tenets of Jainism

The 6th Century B.C. witnessed the rise of the twin sects of Buddhism and Jainism in India following a period of spiritual unrest. They were both fallouts of a revolt against the orthodoxy as enshrined in the Brahamanical tenets of Hinduism and yet neither propagated the surrendering of one’s existing beliefs in the spiritual deities of the Hinduistic cult.

The founder of Jainism was believed to have been Lord Parasvanath, the 23rd Teerthankara (Prophet) of the Jain hierarchy, whose order of ascetics was governed by the four basic tenets – non-injury to life, truthfulness, abstinence from stealth and non-attachment to property. Historically, the religious sect of Jainism owes it genesis to Vardhamana (one who brings in peace and prosperity), the son of a Kshatriya noble called Siddhartha who ruled at Kundagram, Vaishali more than 2,500 years ago. Vardhamana was rechristened as ‘Mahaveera’ owing to the unusual strength he displayed at quite a young age. However, Mahaveera was not destined to be the powerful Emperor of Vaishali as everyone had anticipated for as time went by, He decided on a path of renunciation. Like the Holy Buddha, He too wanted to find a way for mankind to be rid of sorrows in a world torn asunder by the differences of cast, colour & creed. At the age of 26, He embraced the life of an ascetic and for 12 long years, led a life of deep penance, oblivious to pain or pleasure, food or starvation, sleep or awakening. It is believed that once, while seated under a Sal tree on the banks of the Rijuwalika river near the Parasvanath hills, he found ‘enlightenment’ as a ‘Jina’ - the one who understood the cause and the cure of sorrow. He acquired ‘Kewal Jnana’ or the only knowledge that is infinite and supreme. The ‘Jain’ or the ‘Jaina’ thus, was an offshoot of the ‘Jina’, the conqueror. Once he attained enlightenment, Lord Mahaveera emphasized upon freeing the soul of earthly bondage with the possession of three jewels – ‘right faith, ‘right knowledge’ and ‘right conduct’. His teachings espoused God as the extreme manifestation of all that is good in human soul. Thus, according to Him, ‘Nirvana’ or the state of final emancipation was attainable by one’s own efforts without the aid of a supreme authority, simply by controlling one’s passions and desires. The Jains came to be divided into ‘Swetambaras’, the white-robed and the ‘Digambaras’, who use no clothes in adherence to the stress on chastity, added by Lord Mahaveera as the fifth to the earlier four tenets of Jainism.

Unlike Buddhism that branched off considerably from its Hinduistic parentage Jainism kept itself closer to its origins and never really attempted any serious overtures outside India. Mostly it was confined to Bihar and parts of North India before extending to Gujarat, Rajputana and to the Southern parts of India.

During the thirty years of His teaching life, Lord Mahaveera, developed a sizeable number of followers to his religious order, before attaining immortal peace at the age of seventy-two at Pavapuri in Bihar around 527 B.C.

The Occult of Theosophy

It happens to us often in our lives, when we wonder – Is there a God and is there a universal order that follows God’s decree?’ It so happens that in spite of belonging to some religious order and following some fundamental basis of religion, we seek a more logical and more inspiring solution. The occult of Theosophy explores a rational explanation to these questions, as a body of ideas, not to be thrust upon an individual but offered for one’s own examination and judgment, for those united by a common search for truth and the desire to learn the meaning and purpose of existence by engaging themselves in study, reflection, purity of life and loving service.

Annie Besant (1847-1933), a reformer, humanist and educationist along with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), one of the outstanding spiritual figures of the 19th century – were the most forceful orators of the Theosophical Cult in India as a leaning towards the metaphysics of pure, unselfish life; to be ever ready to sacrifice one’s own pleasures for the others; of pursuing truth, goodness & wisdom for their own sake and not for the benefit that they may confer. It is a philosophy which renders life intelligible and demonstrates that justice and love guide the cosmos and its teachings aid the unfolding of the latent spiritual nature in the human being without dependence or fear.

Before she came to India, Dr. Besant, a radical freethinker, remained active in the British suffragist movement and an important speaker for women's suffrage. She moved to India to study Hindu ideas (karma, reincarnation, nirvana) which were foundational to the Theosophical school of thought in describing the universe as not just a place where nature’s forces operate by chance, but every event takes place according to certain laws inherent in the universe, which are the expressions of one’s consciousness. Theosophy as a cult outlines the vast schemes of life in which we are involved, the long route towards self-realisation. It says each man is his own lawgiver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself, the decreer of his reward, his punishment.

The abiding truth is that the nature of God resides in every man and woman, for we live, move and have our being in Him. Man has sought for the Almighty in many ways, but the one place where He can be found, never to be lost again is beyond emotion & intellect, in the depths of one’s own spirit. In other words, all that we postulate concerning God, of goodness, holiness, truth and beauty resides in a man, who as an immortal being, unfolds the divine powers that are latent within through repeated lives in mortal bodies. Theosophy primarily offers an optimistic view of life based on the law of natural justice – ‘As a man sows, that shall he reap’, which means that man is a master of his own destiny.

As a lateral perspective on divine wisdom, Theosophy emphasizes on the fact that the spirit of God is derived from the mind, the ‘spiritual soul’ using the mortal life of the man in whom it is captive. It militates against a religious thought that occurs at a level of sensibility not susceptible to reason. It concludes that the God in us – that is, the divine wisdom of justice, goodness & power alone should be our true and permanent love, our faith, which will never fail us even if all other things perish, which shall bring about our fundamental unity with all other living beings.

Nehru’s Letters to the US President and the Indo-China Conflict

China has been India’s bete-noire since the time a horde of Yuch-chi nomadic tribes from North-West China had overrun Indian territory in around 150 BC. Subsequently, the 1962 war, which resulted in an embarrassing loss of face to the Nehru Government, proved a watershed in Sino-Indian relations. In the context of the war, the two letters of Nehru, as addressed to John F. Kennedy, the then President of the US, that were recently made public, make for interesting reading. Apparently, they were reeled off in quick succession on 19th of November, 1962 after China had made deep inroads in the North-Eastern territory, following their crossing the MacMohan Line in the month of September.

In the first letter, Nehru thanked Kennedy for the ‘speed at which the urgently needed arms & ammunition were rushed to India’ and voiced his grievance at the ‘grim situation in the struggle for survival against an unscrupulous and powerful aggressor’. At the time of drafting of the two letters, China had all but captured Bomdi La in the Kameng Division, the headquarters of the NEFA command. A distraught Nehru also happened to address the nation acknowledging the serious reverses with the imminent takeover by the Chinese of Chushul in the Ladakh valley which would lead them to Leh, the headquarters of Ladakh. Within hours of dispatch of the first, Nehru reeled off a second letter, after the fall of the Sela Pass, requesting Kennedy for comprehensive air support in the form of ‘a minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters’ and for the US Air force personnel to ‘protect the radar installations from Chinese air attacks’. Nehru, despite a desperate need to deploy the nation’s own air force, expressed his inability to do so in his letter, as ‘the present state of India’s air and radar equipment did not provide a defence mechanism against retaliatory action by the Chinese’. All of this, became meaningless as the very next day, China declared a unilateral ceasefire and a withdrawal from most of the Indian territories that they had taken over, perhaps with a foreboding of the possible intervention of Western powers. They of course, refused to give up the highway stretch in Aksai Chin that gave them direct access to Tibet from Xingiang region.

But the harm had been done and India was downsized in a military showdown with China like never before. The events were a direct offshoot of a flawed defence policy, troops that were ill-equipped to fight the enemy in alien terrain and a lack of tactical resources. It was ironical that less than a decade of his rejecting Eisenhower’s offer of military aid with no strings attached, Nehru had to turn to the US for immediate air support with an unceremonious volte-face to India’s committed non-alignment policy.

Almost 50 years have since gone by, yet the vestiges of the war still remain. Despite friendly overtures by the Prime Ministers of both the countries recently, relations continue to be strained over boundary disputes, which seem unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

Is India Home to the Oldest Civilisation?

The discoveries of the Indus Valley Civilisation are now well-documented. It is also believed that the ruins of Harappa were first located when a British Engineer, John Brunton accidentally stumbled upon some bricks close to a railway line being laid to connect Lahore and Karachi towns in 1856. It wasn’t until the 1920s that Sir John Marshall carried out excavations at the site to fix a time-zone of 3250-2750 BC when civilization at the Indus Valley flourished. It is generally agreed upon that civilization took shape sometime between 8000 and 4000 BC.

There have been several theories on when and where did the oldest civilization take root. The most popular one is that it all began in what has come to be known as the 'cradle of civilisation', Mesopotamia, primarily because some human settlement has been sourced to the region during the Neolithic age which dates back to 7000 BC. However, concrete evidence points to the fact that civilization flourished in the region during the times of the ancient Sumerians, roughly coinciding with the Bronze age, which in turn, ran concurrent with the mature Harappan period during 3100-1900 BC. The rise of dynastic Egypt in the Nile Valley occurred in approximately 3200 BC, which is concurrent with the same age as the Sumerians and some of the oldest, but pre-civilized settlement relics found in China again date back to about 7000 BC.

In the North-West part of the sub-continent, the revolution is believed to have occurred somewhere around 8000-7000 BC when the use of metallic objects and agriculture for livelihood began. Based on the excavations carried out by a French Archaeologist, Jean-Francois Jarrige in 1974 around the Indus Valley region and from remnants of the pottery, the tools, as well as the human and animal bones, it has been concluded that even during the pre-Harappan period, some form of civilization existed in the Kachi plains of Baluchisthan, specifically the region of Mehrgarh dating back to 7000-6500 BC, arguably the earliest urban site identified that pre-dates all others in substantial measure. Another evidence of a ‘lost river civilisation’ was found in 2001, when marine archaeologists detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Khambhat off the West coast of India in Gujarat and carbon dating of one of the wooden samples has fixed the period to 7500 BC.

So could it be that the most ancient forms of civilization existed in this part of the world? If one takes into account that life on earth has existed over 2 lakh years of which the pre-historic age dates back to the best accuracy of about 10000 to 8000 BC, it is hard to establish facts as incontrovertible truths, based on research that at best stretches over a few decades. But the fact remains that no form of civilization pre-dating 7000 BC that is representative of organized community living, has been identified with a level of certainty as yet and some of the ones that did seem to have existed during the period have been sourced to the sub-continent.

Honour Killings – Blatant Transgressions of Human Laws!!

A series of incidents related to ‘honour killing’ are coming to light with a promptitude that defies logic. The slaying of young couples is based simply on the premise that the family’s honour is sacrosanct and thus, supersedes all forms of attachment to the kin. Then we have had a glut of human rights activists & NGOs filing petitions to introduce new legislations that would curb this burgeoning menace.

What exactly is the sin of the girl or the boy in question to be condemned to eternal perdition? Simply that they undertook a peremptory pledge to spend the rest of their lives together as two like-minded human beings would and justifiably, should with regard to the Universal law of nature. This has set me thinking as to what ideals, morals & ethics fall within the ambit of human survival, which one believed held good so long as you are true to yourself and to the laws of the Universe. Bernard Gert, a philosopher of ethics & utilitarianism had propounded a theory on moral rights based on the hypothesis that every human had a right ‘not to be killed’ inasmuch as ‘not to be deprived of basic freedom’.

In fact, every human faces the ethical dilemma of choosing his or her actions in such a way as would be morally acceptable to everybody and that one’s motives would be constructive rather than exploitative. In that sense, a couple which defies age-old conventions is bound to attract some amount of indignation, yet, the fundamental basis of human rights is that everyone should be treated as a free individual to execute his or her own will within the permissible laws. So, as long as two adults are compatible, it appears quite a travesty that the ruse of ‘family honour’ could be used as a bayonet to fragment their moral & spiritual union.

The Universal declaration of human rights validates what Immanuel Kant in his metaphysical thesis on morality had stated – ‘an action could be deemed morally right for a person if he acts in such a way that the maxim is generalized or becomes universally applicable’. For such families who are fettered by the strongholds of orthodoxy and thus, indulgent in such barbaric acts, the question that needs to be answered is whether they would be accepted unanimously and whether every other person would have acted on similar lines given the exigencies of the same situation.

The ambit of the society stretches out to castes and sub-castes so that it often does not result in similar interpretation of moral rules. Yet, in spite of this, nature has bestowed in varying capacities the power to freely choose the aims that each one of us desire to pursue. Thus, ‘honour killings’ committed without a sense of guilt or shame are nothing but transgressions of natural laws beyond acceptable or defensible limits, whereby, a person’s basic rights to live and to co-exist in harmony & peace are being ruthlessly trampled upon.

A Carbon-conserving Economy for Environmental Sustenance

We all are bearing the brunt of one of the hottest summers ever. As one grapples with the scorching clammy heat, there is an intense desire to be swathed in the summer-cooled sheaths in a ceaselessly ‘arid’ zone. The successive climatic changes are a clear pointer to the fact that the summers are getting longer and more ruthless with every passing year.

We may truthfully say of our ancestors that for years on end, they left the earth quite vibrant & undamaged. People lived a modest life based on limited renewable energy sources for centuries together on planet earth, which consisted of a combined availability from plant growth and the power of sun, wind & water for their sustenance. However, the industrial revolution in the later part of the 18th century, gave humanity the power to start exploring the rich stores of fossil fuels that had accumulated in the earth’s crust over several million years. As a result, human power and thus, the damaging impacts of human activities in a way, grew exponentially.

Since then, the world over, industrial and urban development has been driven by an increase in the burning of fossil fuels and as an offshoot, our continuing our reliance on them. According to most estimates, oil, coal and natural gas presently account for more than 80% of the energy throughout the world. This raises two questions. First, fossil fuels are non-renewable and every barrel of oil and ton of coal that we burn is lost for use by future generations. Second, combustion of fossil fuels continues to dump billions of tons of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. By an estimate, only about half of our annual emissions of some 10 million tones of carbon is currently being absorbed by the biosphere, which is likely to create potentially disastrous long-range effects on the climate. Even though, there are about 20 so-called greenhouse gases that make up the earth’s atmosphere, scientists are primarily concerned about the increase in the levels of carbon-dioxide since it is difficult to quantify the exact cause and effect of the others. However, it can be safely concluded that the capacity of the biosphere to absorb these gases is being reduced majorly through deforestation, erosion and depletion of carbon-rich soil by unsustainable farming methods. The more of the carbon-dioxide build-up, the more heat trapped near the Earth and thereby, raising the temperatures alarmingly worldwide. Thus, the challenges facing us are not just to reduce annual global carbon-dioxide emissions but also their annual concentrations in the atmosphere.

The mainstream of environmental ethic can be realised in terms of the principles which reduce industrial expansion and energy consumption and forbid the use of non-renewable resources like fossil fuels in ways which would threaten their future availability. We must therefore, find the means for sustaining the natural world in such a way as to create a viable future for humanity on a finite planet. A transition to a carbon-conserving economy thus, would be vital for climatic protection and human security.

Kakori Conspiracy [25th August, 1925] – A Historical Testament

A small district oblivious of its historical moorings lies 14 km. North of Lucknow. Kakori, once a flourishing town famous for Urdu poetry & literature, is the seat of Qadiria Qalandria Sufi order. Among its eminent personalities were Mohsin Kakorvi, a great poet of the ‘na’at’ genre and Noorul Hasan Nayyier, the compiler of Noorul Lughaat, among the most authentic of Urdu dictionaries. It traces back the Abbasi clan that claims lineage to Al-Abbas, an uncle of Prophet Mohammed. Nawab Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi, a noted lawyer from the district was married to Akhtari Faizabadi, who rose in stature as ‘Begum of Kakori’. She was none other than the legendary Begum Akhtar, who also earned the sobriquet of ‘Mallika-e-Ghazal’.

The town attained national eminence on 9th August 1925 with the ‘Kakori Conspiracy’, a well-documented testament of India’s freedom struggle, when a group of revolutionaries braved death to capture the British treasury being ferried in the Shahjahanpur-Lucknow section of the Northern Railway. These brave young men shared a common affiliation as members of the Hindustan Republican Association [HRA], later re-christened as Hindustan Socialist Republican Association [HSRA] whose sole aim was to overthrow the British rule through armed revolution. When caught, most of them were either hanged or deported for life for trials under the Birtish were generally farcical.

As the legend goes, one of its members, Pt. Ramprasad Bismil, who often traveled the Shahjahanpur-Lucknow route, observed that the British treasury was loaded and transported to Lucknow with the minimum of security measures. This is how the seed of thought to loot the treasure-chest germinated in his mind, to help fund the activities of the HRA. At the fall of dusk, when Number 8 Down was about to touch Kakori, the group of revolutionaries that had boarded the train, pulled the chain and overpowered the guard. The steel box carrying the cash was pulled out. Though, it had a hole in the middle through which cash used to be dumped in, the box was so huge that no hand could reach down below to pull out the currency notes. It required a few hefty blows by a stout Ashfaqullah Khan to break open the lock. A sum of Rs. 10,000/- of the British Treasury was taken out and transferred to gunny bags which were then carried away by the revolutionaries in batches.

For a while, no one was captured though investigations had begun in the right earnest. The HRA, however, was not a well-organised group and as expected, once the British dragnet was spread, all the revolutionaries involved in the act were rounded up. Pt. Ramprasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Rajendra Lahiri & Roshan Singh were awarded capital punishment, which may appear undeservingly harsh, for all they did was to purloin a diminutive portion of the Government coffers. But it was not so simple. Apparently, during the hold-up, despite the warnings to the passengers not to leave their seats, one European attempted to slip out and was shot dead. That, besides the audacity of the act, was reason enough for stringent court reprisals, for in those days, killing a ‘white’ was considered the most heinous of crimes. Despite a nationwide clamour for mercy, all four were hanged in November 1927. In their poignant memory, a ‘Shaheed Smarak’ has been established just adjacent to the exact spot of the incident, which is identified by an isolated stele (1085 km./47) erected on the left side of the railway track, 02 km. beyond the Kakori station.

This heart-wrenching saga of sacrifice & valour is described somewhat aptly by these lines of Mirza Zauq, set to tune by Khaiyyam and embellished in the vocals of the erstwhile ‘Begum of Kakori’ – ‘Layee hayaat aaye, qazaa le chali chale, apni khushi na aaye, na apni khushi chale..’. Farewell to you, O brave soldiers of the revolution!