[Advaita-l] The 'Snake-and-ladder' game - The Spiritual path

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Sat, 11 Aug 2018, Kalyan via Advaita-l wrote:

> Skepticism for events like holocast, is not justified.


It is precisely when emotional manipulation is used as a tactic that 
skepticism is most warranted.  Else you end up with fraud like this:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/stealing-from-the-dying-t_b_781227.html

>Similarly, 
> skepticism about the ill-treatment of shudras, is not justified. I dont 
> know where you live, but instances of atrocities against dalits are 
> still common in India.

Instances of violence against Brahmans and everyone in beteen are still 
common in India.  This is a problem no doubt.  The fraud is in trying to 
blame that violence on the Manusmrti.


> The point I was trying to make is that no one is going to dig up 
> cemetaries, unless they are ancient, because digging up functioning 
> cemetaries is forbidden.

You really don't have a clue about archeology do you?  To avoid disturbing 
ancient sites (not limited to cemetaries by which I assume you mean 
smashanas?) archeologists use spectrometric techniques which detect the 
radioactive isotopes which naturally occur in all metals. They decay at 
very specific rates so it is possible to tell a great deal.


> Moreover, if such brutal punishment is 
> prescribed, it would act as a great deterrence in itself, so 
> statistically, very few will break the law. So even if you search, it 
> would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

First you were talking about violence now you've shifted to law.  If a law 
can deter without violence that is a good thing.

> So while you can triumphantly proclaim that the punishment is not handed 
> down,

Atleast I'm glad to see you've given up on pretending that shloka caused 
any violence.



> you are ignoring its deterrence value and its discriminative 
> intent and its brutal nature.Having said all this, I dont understand why 
> such texts continue to be treated as sacred, when they are blatantly 
> discriminative and horrible to contemplate.


So all this long-winded argument of yours boils down to a simple question: 
"Why do the shastras treat some people differently from others?"  The 
short answer is "Because they are different."  I'll expand upon that 
later.


> I think somewhere below you said 99% Indians have been illiterate. So on 
> what basis are you expecting literary evidence?

Well, given 99% illiteracy how do we know anything about premodern India?

1% is still a lot of literate people.  And throughout Indian history there 
have been people who would jump at the chance to badmouth dharma.  And 
foreign travellers and so on.


> Firstly, it does not need one to be a Marxist to see the obvious.

Simply asserting something is obvious does not make it so.  You have to 
rouse yourself to actually make an argument.  And the arguments that you 
have been making stem from Marxist ideology.  Dr. Ambedkar can be forgiven 
for making them in 1935 when they atleast had some plausibility but 83 
years later intelligent people people point and laugh when you repeat such 
nonsense.


> That a text like Manusmriti is blatantly discriminatory, can be 
> deciphered by most neutral people.

The Manusmrti like Vedic dharma in general or for that matter any 
civilization is not equalitarian.  So what?

Since the Reign of Terror in the French revolution extreme violence has 
occurred in the name of equality too.  Marxism alone is responsible for 
100,000,000 deaths during the 20th century.  Venezuela was a developing 
South American democracy with tremendous oil resources.  There was quite a 
gap between the rich and poor but not extreme poverty.  Nevertheless a 
left-wing populist got elected, made himself dictator and ran the country 
into the ground.  Now everyone is equal.  Equally hungry and destitute. 
They have been reduced to killing zoo animals for food.

The most advanced nations of the world (and the most hospitable to the 
poor) practice capitalism.  And capitalism is "blatently discriminatory." 
Advanced nations try and soften this by welfare relief measures (and there 
is no reason why we couldn't do that in India but) that doesn't mean 
everyone has equal access to everything.


> Secondly, there are SC groups spread all over India. This is what I call 
> as the shudra community. They have been uniformly discriminated against. 
> Modern day parlance for them is dalits. So your contention that there is 
> no shudra community, is incorrect.

Nobody gives a damn what you call a Shudra.  The word has a meaning and 
throughout history it has been applied to many more than just the Dalits.

If you are just going to make up your own definitions then there is no 
point is arguing with you.


> Here is something about Reddy caste. The Reddys are 
> pseudo-shudras.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddy

How very convenient.  There is no category called pseudo-shudra in the 
shastras.  If there was any doubt that you are arguing in bad faith before 
there is none now.  As a result I'm removing you from advaita-l.  You can 
pontificate somewhere else.


> There you go. You have proved my point. The punishment was meted out 
> because the sonars were not seen as dvijas.
> That means they were not 
> seen as members of first 3 varnas. Hence, they were seen as shudras by 
> the dominant caste. This proves my point.


No the punishment was meted out because the Chitpavans were having a turf 
war with the Daivajnas.  Unfortunately such things happen in every 
religion.  For example one of the Catholic crusades which were ostensibly 
for the purpose of freeing holy sites in Jerusalem from Muslim control 
actually ended up sacking the Christian Byzantine Empire instead.  Money 
problems amongst the Crusaders were the cause even if theology was the 
excuse. Even your beloved communists have various sectarian divisions 
(which has led to violence.)  I would not put such things in the same 
category as incitement to violence committed in the name of the religion 
itself such as this:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/review-two-sisters-into-the-syrian-jihad-by-asne-seierstad-the-teenagers-who-became-jihadi-brides-rrd5d0kg0

The equivalent would be if the Chitpavans in the Mahratta empire went 
around attacking other countries for the purpose of killing rival 
Brahmanas.  And that didn't happen so enough of your false equivalencies.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>