I reply to AA's previous hurlings:
"These poor people"--referring to me and Chinmaya!

I sure am a poor person. But in my defense, duplicate posting was not
intentional. If it hurts to see the same mail twice, solution is clear: one just
has the option to delete the mails than to ridicule my economic status.
For clarification, I am not in IIT Mumbai. Secondly, I was using the outlook
express to send the mail. It went straight to the outbox. Hence used the webmail
to send the same. It must have landed twice. I apologize for that.

And as for the other adjectives, they are interesting too. Not surprising,
again.

When thousands of poor folks serve inhuman and indefinite jail terms for
sometime stealing money or other times drinking and swearing, and tribal women
rising against the existing systems getting raped inside the prison walls, its a
sane judicial system. When a sankaracharya (by the way i never said this guy was
any magician--magic gurus have at least some amusement values- so that whole
thing about saswat has to "know" before pointing fingers etc does not hold
relevance) having says in politics (proven fact) and charged with MURDER (which
ordinary suspect is given that kind of publicity anyway? this man is clearly
treated above the rest of us ordinary folks for some serious charge as this) is
arrested, it becomes "behavioural discripancy and "andhatwa".

And the 'holier than thou' principle as mentioned in the last paragraph of mr
acharya's mail is interesting. is there some kind of a warranty that no goonda
can be a sankaracharya? that hindu stuff is unlike the western history. how
blindly deterministic can we still get???

___

Chinmaya in solidarity with Vulcan:

Vulcano Bhai,
Yeah, your logic seems true to certain extent.

"Enviornment" plays a dominant role in controlling ones behavarial pattern, apart from ones genetical make up, and food habbits.

All the emotional outbrusts are mere defense mechanisms because of ones deep love,tendentious approach towards a person/system/cause.Nothing_ unnatural_in_it.It's sometimes hard to digest the fact, even we understand the legal aspect of a problem.Our deep association with religion from the very childhood days have made us to think so. We have seen our mothers shedding their tears infront of the idols every dawn,and dusk for our well being.We are told hundreds/thousands of stories from Prahallad, Dhruva to Sudama etc by our parents/teachers, to give a first hand experience of religion,we are manytime forced to beleive the badtimes of our enemy is because of divine punishment. The influence of early childhood days experiences of religion/god has made an everlasting impression in our minds. Even today, the twilights reminds me the evening of village temple, the eye subconsciously goes on searching for a supreme soul to take to the realm of eternal peace and bliss. Fairs, festivals, gatherings, rituals with so much of things, we are associated with religions from the very day of our presence on the earth;Its not only difficult, but almost impossible to make oneself free from those *comfort* experiences.

The people who are born with sliver spoons, who has never confronted difficulties all alone in their life, or even never being privileged to be empathetic with the good/bad times of their fellow beings, a little interruption in their usual life lead them straightly near to GOD/god-man, religion etc.(I do not inlcude here those people who make mockery of religions,and exploits mass for their own benfits). We must understand, the support systems that religion has provided to them.
Discussing with the persons, who have killed their rationalities, logic being overpossesive of their thoughts, makes no sense really.

And yeah, whats the problem if some people are branded anti-religious ? My conscience says, there must be an anti-religious God to support them :=)

With Regards !

Chinmaya ...

___

Sanjib comes forward:
With due respect, you and others(which includes my father and mother
and other elders)just follow religion blindly. There is nothing
wrong to have faith in the superpower..But I have serious issues of
the way religion is practiced in India.

Still in India you decide the right to enter the temple based on
your caste and social status. If you have more money you get special
privileges in Jaganath temple..and our religion is still
exclusionary. Our old folks just DON'T get it. While trying to
respect our elders and not interested to rock the boat..we
youngsters still follow caste system in choosing our partners. We
talk about racism in US, but in India we have caste system that is
even worse. You might say why I am talking about caste system,
instead of religion. Dear friends that is engraved in the way our
religion is practiced.

National Geographic quotes " To be born Hindu in India is to enter
the caste system, one of the world's longest surviving forms of
social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for past 1500
years, the caste system follows a basic precept:All men are created
unequal" I AM ASHAMED.

Many hundred years ago when galileo said earth goes around the sun,
he was ostracized..But the Protestant sect of Christianity was born.
I can speak of myself..I am not anti-religion..But I am certainly
against the way religion is practiced in India. The first thing we
need to be doing is challenging the caste system by marrying
someone who is from a higher/lower caste. Then boycotting temples,
who do not allow admissions based on birth. I have boycotted
Jagannath temple in Puri. The first step is to incorporate modern
outlook and values in your own life. Then influencing others.

Caste system and the distorted form of practice of Hinduism is more
than couple of thousands years old. The first thing we can do is
change ourselves. Then we try to influence school teachers and
others. Realistically speaking it won't be eradicated in my
lifetime.But it is certainly worth a try.
Thanks,
Sanjib

Tags: Saswat, Hinduism, Orissa, India