By: Prashant Parikh
All I Want for “Christmas”, is ‘Yule’
https://prashantparikh.wordpre ss.com/2016/12/25/yule-not- christmas/
Aside from wishing my friends a Happy Yuletide, I also take this occasion to pray for the resurrection (bad pun) of faiths/cultures that have been methodically minimized, maligned by, and misappropriated into the dominant and expansionist monotheistic systems most prevalent today.
My Guru, Pujya Swami Dayananda ji spoke highly of the need to protect ancient traditions and their heritage from disappearing (be it the grand Pyramids of Egyptians or the colorful Creation Myths of the Mayans).
In light of the same, and in hope that we keep them alive in our living memory, I wish to share some background on the lovely festival ‘Yule’, of the Germanic people whose celebrations have been variously connected to the Norse God (the capitalized ‘G’ should not be exclusive to only one cult) ‘Odin’, and the Anglo Saxon ‘Modraniht’, the traces of both of which, over the centuries, have all but vanished. Their remnants have been repackaged into a multitude of festivities we associate today with Christianity (this includes, Christmas and Easter ), but whose antecedents date even further back, beyond the historical era. Thus, too, Yuletide (a festival dismissed pejoratively as “pagan”/”heathen”) morphed into Christmas-tide (or ‘Christmas time’).
Quoting a sentence from Pūjya Swāmi Dayānanda ji’s groundbreaking speech- Conversion is Violence: ///Aggressive religions have no God-given right to destroy ancient faiths and cultures///
Regrettably, this is precisely what has happened to indefinitely many pagan/heathen faiths around the globe, and continues, with equal vigor, even in India (Hindus, too, are considered heathens), to our art-forms and cultural symbolisms, by the Missionary bodies.
Picking just one example to illustrate: Here, in some village in South India, while depicting the ‘Ratha Kalpanā’ (imagery of the chariot), Missionaries have supplanted Krishna with Jesus. One of the horses has even been re-imagined as a reindeer- antlers and all!
Since the time of the European Renaissance, and the rise of the Secular movement in Europe during the Middle ages, Christian Missionaries lost their power to stamp out native cultures, as they did so well during the Crusades, and also later during the Inquisition (just prior to the Renaissance movement) and Witch-hunts (which continued on for a period of time). This reformation Christianity underwent was not a voluntary one, but a means of survival, in the new political milieu they found themselves facing. In time, they perfected new methods of subjugation, which took the following form:
1) Denigrate what pagan traditions one can
(Embodied in the writings of Wendy Doniger, Sheldon Pollock, Jeffrey Kripal, Paul Courtwright, the hoardes of British and German ‘Indologists’ during the Colonial rule in India, and so on…)
2) ‘Digest’ and re-package what one cannot
(As seen in the ‘Ratha Kalpanā’ imagery, or examples where the Iśāvāsyopaniśad is presented as being written in praise of Jesus (since the Hindi word for ‘Christian’ in India is ‘Isāi’, Iśā Upaniśad was a sly attempt to re-cast it as “Christian” (evidently funny to us, but it finds many believers in India, especially in the rural/poor/uneducated pockets of society)))
Quoting Pūjya Swāmi Dayānanda ji further:
The world’s religions can be categorically said to be either aggressive or non-aggressive. Each religion has a certain promise in the form of an ultimate goal. Their faithful people try to live the prescribed life and reach the promised goal. Neither they nor their clergy are out to bring the people of other religions to their flock. Zorastrians follow their religious tradition without attempting to convert anybody to their religion. This is true with the followers of the Jewish tradition, Vedic religion (now known as Hinduism), Shintoism, Taoism and the many other religions of various tribes in the world. I call these religious traditions non-aggressive because they do not believe in aggressive conversion.
Then there are religions like Christianity, whose theologies, containing a number of basic non-verifiable beliefs, advocate conversion. Evangelism and proselytization are sacred commitments of the entire cadre of the highly organized clergy. The clergy-inspired laity are not any less committed to conversion. They are zealous in their mission of preaching and conversion. In their zeal, the end more often than not justifies the means. From the days of the Inquisition, every attempt recorded in history to stop their program of conversion only stoked their flame of zeal.
As a result, many religions with their unique cultures have disappeared, leaving behind only mammoth relics, like the ones in Greece and Mexico. The loss of such great living cultures of the world is the mark of success for the zealous of the aggressive religions. The truth is that where there should be a sense of guilt and remorse, there is a sense of achievement and pride. Many leaders of non-aggressive traditions think that the charity of the missionaries is designed to neutralize any protest from the native religious community. One cannot totally dismiss their thinking.
| Religious conversion by missionary activity remains an act of violence. |
At times I have to convince myself to remain silent, and at least pretend to be Politically Correct, especially in esteemed forums such as these where I understand people peacefully gather to reflect upon Self Knowledge- but that does not serve any good in giving shape to an informed cultural narrative. And truly, reading Pujya Swamiji’s resoundingly clear message, and seeing all that he accomplished (and in some cases what he began, but could not complete- such as the appeal to the Pope to cease Conversion activities in India- which the Pope bluntly refused to do) this seems pretty high on the priority list of Important Conversations to Have. What prompted this message and the stream of thoughts that followed was an innocuous and well-intentioned, but in my humble opinion, a mistaken “Christmas” greeting from a good friend, in a group catering to students of Vedānta, to whom I consequently addressed this lengthy E-Mail response, which I now present as an Article.
On a lighter, and more Hopeful note, I am delighted to share news about the first Viking Temple, in over a 1,000 years, that is being constructed in Iceland. I would love to view photos of the final product!
http://www.history.com/news/fi rst-viking-temple-in-1000-year s-coming-to-iceland
Hope to see this trend continue, and for the subjugated native traditions to rise from their graves (another bad pun), one after another, all around the world.
Yule greetings to one and all!
Filed under: Contemporary World
