The Dharma Dispatch

Rama Rajya is a kingdom where there are no fetters in the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, where Dharma doesn’t depend on others for its functioning and is akin to breathing: effortless. -- Read this today on #SriRamaNavami🕉️ 🛕🛕 https://t.co/0iRE8vGynU

Did you Know about the "Lal Ishtahaar" that Led to a Hindu Bloodbath in Bengal? The hidden history of Nawab Salimullah who caused mass killings of Hindus in Bengal in 1904-5. https://thedharmadispatch.substack.com/p/did-you-know-about-the-lal-ishtahaar?s=w

Remember Dhanga’s Pious Service to Sanatana Dharma the Next Time you Visit Khajuraho. -- Nothing pains the Hindu more than witnessing the ugly bazaar in Khajuraho hawking a vast array of expensively produced coffee table books and DVDs reducing divinity to pornography. In its original avatar, Kharjūravāhaka had done signal service to the cause of the protection and propagation of Sanatana Dharma helmed by the intrepid Candrātrēya (Chandela) dynasty for nearly half a millennium (831 — 1315). Its most glorious expression that has survived till this day is undoubtedly the fabled Khajuraho Cluster of Temples. DHANGADEVA OR DHANGA WAS the seventh monarch in the Candrātrēya lineage. An extraordinary Bhakta of Shiva, he built the grand Visvanatha temple in the Khajuraho temple complex. His final years were exceptional in a profound sense. He stationed himself in Prayaga living like a Sanyasi. As his renunciation matured and ripened, he entered the sacred waters at the Trivēṇi-saṅgama and closing his eyes, fixing his thoughts on Rudra, Dhanga abandoned his mortal body. 🛕🛕🛕✍️🔖🕉 -- Read the whole profound essay! https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/remember-dhangas-pious-service-to-sanatana-dharma-the-next-time-you-visit-khajuraho

Annotations from Prayaga. -- Prayaga, known as the Tīrtha-cakravarti (Emperor of Pilgrimages) is one of the cradles of the Sanatana civilisation. Even the briefest journey into its profound annals helps us grasp the accurate perspective from which to understand Hindu history. This is the first part of a new series. -- The very name Prayaga is itself a reason for its venerated eminence: prakṛṣṭa-tama yāgaḥ meaning, an ”exceptional or magnificent yāga.“ Prayaga is one of the unerring ways to “understand” the genius of the Sanatana civilisation through the prism and the lived experience of a sacred geography. No amount of theoretical knowledge will give you this understanding just as no amount of reading about Aurangzeb’s destruction of the Kashi Visveshwara Temple will prepare you for the violent sight of Nandikeshwara still facing the Gyanavapi mosque. The full and accurate knowledge of Hindu history and culture will dawn when you have a feel for the physical spaces where the history has occurred and where the culture has flourished. Prayaga is and undoubtedly remains one of the greatest cradles of the spiritual civilisation of Bharatavarsha. -- Read the whole brilliant piece! 🔖✍️🛕🕉🛕🛕 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/annotations-from-prayaga-an-introduction

A Tale of Two Picchais: “Śivapiccai” Mudaliar and Sundar Picchai -- The Hindu cultural sensibility must exercise immense caution before celebrating the material successes of Americanised or Westernised Indians who have lost touch with their roots. The astounding material opulence of the Satya Nadellas and the Sundar Picchais of the world dazzle and blind the vision of Hindus in India who see them as emulatory models. “Material” is derived from “matter,” whose other synonym is “gross.” Matter as opposed to spirit. Rather, matter which should be subsumed by spirit. That was the exalted life of Śivapiccai Mudaliar. He should be our ideal. Unshakeable, unswerving faith in a lofty precept. Regarding work as Karma Yoga. Unobtrusive. Frugal. Content. Therefore fulfilled. -- Read the whole brilliant piece! ✍️🔖🛕🕉🛕🛕 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/a-tale-of-two-picchais-%C5%9Bivapiccai-mudaliar-and-sundar-picchai

How Macaulay and William Bentinck Heartlessly Destroyed the Glorious Golisri Sanskrit College -- The tragic story of the Golisri Sanskrit School of Calcutta which was obliterated forever by the educational policy of William Bentinck and Macaulay https://thedharmadispatch.substack.com/p/how-macaulay-and-william-bentinck

The Kashmir Chronicles: A Deep Dive with Sushil Pandit. The long-buried, horrific and painful saga of the genocide of Kashmiri Hindus in the 1990s has finally been mainstreamed. This time, the trigger was the release and the enormous success of the Hindi film, The Kashmir Files. It has awakened not only India but the whole world to that dark chronicle of perhaps the worst Hindu genocide and exodus in recent memory. – My in-depth discussion on the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits with Sri Sushil Pandit. Please watch and share widely. 🛕 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w9Xg2qp1Zs

How Macaulayite Hindus Destroyed the Pandit System of Scholarship -- This essay reveals a forgotten meeting held at the Bombay University Senate in 1913. Among other things, it set a blueprint of sorts to destroy the time-honoured system of scholarly education that produced Pandits of the highest order. Here is an excerpt. -- The pandit is the embodiment of a high cultural ideal which actuates but few of us. He is but little influenced by commercial considerations. He not only imparts education without any fee but also feeds his pupils. Though Brahmacharya has undergone considerable relaxation of late, the physical and mental discipline they are still subjected to is far more wholesome than what is enforced in our English schools. -- Read the whole brilliant piece! ✍️🔖🛕🔖🔖 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/how-macaulayite-hindus-destroyed-the-pandit-system-of-scholarship

[PERIODIC ANNOUNCEMENT] The Dharma Dispatch Newsletter is now on Substack as well. To subscribe and suppport our work, click the link below. ✍️✍️ https://thedharmadispatch.substack.com/

THE HINDU COMMUNITY still produces men of the Sattvik type, though their number is much smaller than before. They rarely, if ever, appear in newspaper; what they do is done in silence and secrecy. -- The losses just break the Hindu heart. Do read..😞😔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-neo-indian-is-caught-in-the-silken-net-of-woven-by-western-civilisation

Unable to reconcile illiteracy with enlightenment, the European regards the Hindu society as immersed in darkness. That there is room for reform in Hindu society as there is in every other society goes without saying. But the Neo-lndian reformer knows no way of reform except that of Western Civilization. Burning with zeal, he loudly proclaims the gospel of female emancipation on Western lines, and girds up to lift up the benighted females by making them race with the males along the paths of University education and Western Civilization little reflecting upon the goal to which they are likely to lead and to which they are already leading in the West. https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/european-contempt-for-hindu-society-ingested-by-neo-hindus

I did not see a single Hindu in Vijayanagara who would act like a coward. Theirs was a tradition of courage & duty -- Paes -- Indeed, it is one thing to defeat the invading forces of Izlam but it is entirely another thing to sustain the victory for centuries. This is perhaps the greatest legacy and gift of the Vijayanagara Empire to the Hindus of south India. As long as it was at the helm, no Mu$lim ruler from the north dared to look in the direction of south India. For about three centuries. -- Read the final episode of our series on the Vijayanagara Empire as the most successful story of Hindu resistance against I$lam. 🛕🛕💪💪🔖🔖 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/not-a-single-man-in-vijayanagara-acted-like-a-coward

[SUNDAY READING] How the Magnificent Belur Chennakeshava Temple was Built: A Photo Essay. 🛕🛕 https://thedharmadispatch.substack.com/p/how-the-magnificent-belur-chennakeshava?s=w

2022 Assembly poll results: Bringing out the worst in the usual suspects — again. --- My latest column in Firstpost. https://www.firstpost.com/politics/2022-assembly-poll-results-bringing-out-the-worst-in-the-usual-suspects-again-10470751.html

The bloodless transfer of Hindu political power from the Hoysala dynasty to the Sangama Brothers is a unique and unprecedented epoch in the Hindu historical milieu. In fact, this epochal event has largely been overlooked in most history books on the Vijayanagara Empire. We present an excerpt below. -- IN FACT, JUST THREE YEARS before his death, Vira Ballala III had coronated his son Virupaksha Ballala as his successor at the historic city of Hosapattana. A few months later in the same year, he had also elevated the Mahāmaṇḍaḷēśvara Vira Hariyappa Odeya as the caretaker of a substantial territory of his Empire. Likewise, he divided his empire among various Nayakas and Odeyas. It was both a literal and symbolic presage of transfer of power from a dynasty at the dusk of its former glory. Hariyappa Odeya would eventually emerge as a great frontline warrior who fought against Islamic forces under the leadership of the Sangama Brothers. Vira Ballala III had truly shown great foresight when he spotted the Sangama Brothers who had taken the sacred vow to safeguard Sanatana Dharma against the Turushkas. -- Read the whole brilliant episode! 🛕🛕🛕🔖🙏🕉 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/the-bloodless-transfer-of-hoysala-power-to-the-house-of-sangama-and-the-liberation-of-srirangam

On Thursday the 17th of March at 5pm, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Chair, Dept of HSS, IIT-Madras, Chennai presents an on-line talk by   Sri Sandeep Balakrishna on Inner Refinement and Outer Culture :      The Blueprint provided by Dr. DVGundappa       (on the occasion of DVG's birth anniversary ) All are welcome. KSKannan SRSJMChair Professor, IIT-Madras Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85308004339?pwd=UFRZNnVERXlXdEJhR0J1OVArMGd4dz09 Meeting ID: 853 0800 4339 Passcode: 17322

In the third episode of our series on the rise of the Vijayanagara Empire as a force against Islamic invasions, we narrate how Hindu disunity was the Success Recipe of Malik Kafur. -- Ala-ud-din Khalji and his general Malik Kafur were able to devastate the Hindu Kingdoms in South India owing to the senseless disunity of Hindu Kings. Even if two of these empires had joined hands, there is little doubt that Malik Kafur would not only be beaten back but would have perhaps been killed in battle. On the contrary, the foolish Yadava King of Devagiri actually aided Kafur against his own Hindu brethren. -- It is a depressing tale but do read it fully! 🔖🙏🛕🔖 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/hindu-disunity-as-the-success-recipe-of-malik-kafur

If your surname is Mudumbai, Kadambi, Setlur, Kumandur, Asuri, Gomatha, Nallan, Kandadai, Madapusu, Somasiyandan or Vinjimuru, know that you're the descendants of a great Bhakta whom Tirumala Venkateshwara Swami Himself garlanded. 🛕🛕🛕 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/when-tirumala-venkateshwara-swami-himself-garlanded-his-beloved-devotee