The Dharma Dispatch

[NEW PODCAST EPISODE] As part of our endeavour to provide continuous value and fresh content to our subscribers, we begin a new podcast episode titled, The Plight of Hindus Under the Nizam of Hyderabad. Do listen and🙏 subscribe and share widely in your cirlces! 🎧🔉 https://thedharmadispatch.substack.com/p/the-plight-of-hindus-under-the-nizam#details

Introducing a Miniature Village Republic in the Sevuna Empire   Hindu Dharmasutras define a village in a simple declarative sentence: a village is where righteous men throng. The simplicity of its definition conceals its profundity.   So what exactly was a village? Answer: "a righteous man shall seek to dwell in a village where fuel, water, fodder, sacred fuel, kusa grass, and garlands are plentiful. Access to all this must be easy, and many rich people should dwell in such a village. It ought to abound in industrious people, and where virtuous, cultured, honest and honourable men must form the majority. It should have a strong defence against robbers and other disturbers of peace.”    Anything said further will reveal the suspense 🙂 -- Do the full piece! 📑🕉🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/introducing-a-miniature-village-republic-in-the-sevuna-empire

If the Khalistani vandalism of our High Commission had happened 10 years ago, the UPA would've have made calls to friendly editors & academics who would then write 4000-word pieces calling for “restraint” on the part of the Government, etc. -- My piece in Firstpost 🙏🏽✍🏼 https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/indias-swift-response-to-the-vandalism-of-its-london-mission-is-a-saga-of-history-and-assertion-of-self-confidence-12336702.html

Technical and Literary Education in the Vijayanagara Empire   Skill, competence, excellence and expertise in technical subjects was cultivated generationally, often at home. The boy started very early under his father’s tutelage. For hours each day, he patiently learned the techniques and nuances of the particular craft or profession.   But the real emphasis was absorbing the spirit of the profession, which transcended these external, mechanical aspects. The spirit elevates the profession and can’t be taught in a classroom.    The ultimate goal was the acquisition of mastery, a word that has all but disappeared today. Today’s generalist sees only the forest but can’t identify the trees. Today’s specialist sees only a few trees in isolation forgetting that they form small components in a larger ecosystem.    CLEARLY, THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE VIJAYANAGARA EMPIRE produced prolific, prodigious and invaluable fruits in all walks of life. The most noteworthy element of this system is the fact that it was entirely a private enterprise. -- Read the whole piece! 📑🕉🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/technical-and-literary-education-in-the-vijayanagara-empire

The Village Schoolteacher who Sought Time for Svādhyāya ---   DVG narrates an ennobling anecdote of a poor village schoolteacher who did not mind his incredible hardships but wanted time for Svādhyāya or self-study. This is our tribute to DVG on his 136th birthday.   This is how DVG describes this profound village schoolteacher:   "The joy of Sri Chennakrishnayya exceeded the joy of an emperor who had accomplished a digvijaya. The chief ingredient in his joy was this: he now had enough free time to pursue his scholarly studies in Kavya, or literature… Literature does not flourish due to hefty salaries or perks or suits and coats. It blooms from innate Bhakti and Śraddha and by unswerving penance." -- Read the whole ennobling story! 🛕🕉🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-village-schoolteacher-who-sought-time-for-sv%C4%81dhy%C4%81ya

Contours of the Educational Atmosphere in the Vijayanagara Empire   Education is one area which flourished in an unprecedented fashion under the nourishing shelter of the Vijayanagara Rayas. This essay provides some contours of the profound educational atmosphere in that era. In fact, a separate book can be devoted to exploring this subject in detail.    The Pyal (also spelled, Pial) system of schooling was one of the central educational systems of the Vijayanagara Empire. This was flourishing in Tamil Nadu even a century ago.   Every village or a cluster of villages had a school of its own. Classes were conducted on the verandah of a house or in the porch of a temple. The typical elementary syllabus included a basic course in reading, writing and arithmetic. Children from all socio-economic strata were freely admitted. Fees was not mandatory. The teacher was remunerated in kind or cash by parents who could afford it or by some philanthropist.   The community would take care of education while the Rayas performed their Dharma as its enablers. There is much value in this setup and approach — serious damage occurs if the ruling class directly interferes in education… our experience of the last seven-plus decades only proves this point. -- Read the whole piece! It is an absorbing subject. 📑🛕🕉🪔   https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/contours-of-the-educational-atmosphere-in-the-vijayanagara-empire

Jordan Peterson: The Asura Hiding in Plain Sight A detailed critique exploring the rise of Jordan Peterson from the Hindu civilisational and philosophical perspective. --- Jordan Peterson has himself given us some contours of the fact that he’s no friend of Hindus. It takes some gumption on the part of Jordan Peterson whose declared influences include an impossibly eclectic mix of Carl Jung, Eric Neumann, Dostoevsky, George Orwell, Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn, and Biblical stories, to spout arrant nonsense about Kali. JORDAN PETERSON CLEARLY has no inkling of even an infinitesimal fraction of the Kali tradition in Bharatavarsha. And he wouldn’t get it even if Kali herself gave him tuitions. Even a school-going kid who has memorised say, Bhartrhari’s Niti and Vairagya Shatakams or the Sumati-Shatakam or Sarvajna’s verses will LOL at Jordanian banalities -- Read the whole piece! 📑💪🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/jordan-peterson-the-asura-hiding-in-plain-sight

Announcing Sanatana Devalaya: A Comprehensive Course on Hindu Temples -- VIBHU ACADEMY offers an online course titled Sanatana Devalaya: A Comprehensive Study. It covers the science, art, iconography, philosophy and symbolism of Hindu temples. The course is offered in English and Kannada, spread over 20 sessions, and is open to all. For full details and to register for the course, click the link below. Hurry up and register now! 🕉🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/dispatches/announcing-sanatana-devalaya-a-comprehensive-course-on-hindu-temples

Rahul Gandhi’s Call for Foreign Interference in India is a Lethal Part of an Old Script Rahul Gandhi's recent outbrust in Cambridge is neither random not original. While it clearly falls in the lethal territory, it has a long history. This history is the Nehru dynasty’s almost-umbilical link with England. Nehru’s Man Friday, V.K. Krishna Menon teamed up with Allen Lane and founded Penguin Books, which published Nehru’s Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India. Royalties from these books went on to subsidise Indira Gandhi’s education in England. Did you know that Indira Gandhi's political career after Emergency was rehabilitated in England? No wonder Rahul Gandhi received a red-carpet welcome at Cambridge. It is part of a very old script. This sort of long-term investment that England made in India’s political elite is unparalleled in history. -- Read the whole power-packed piece! 📑💪📝 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/rahul-gandhis-call-for-foreign-interference-in-india-is-a-lethal-part-of-an-old-script

Fighting Over Wheat in Pakistan is what Happens when Dharma is Destroyed THE VIDEOS OF PAKISTANIS BRAWLING amongst themselves over a 10 kg bag of Atta should ideally linger in our civilisational memory and in our active consciousness as an eternal caution. Of what exactly will happen in a society where Dharma is deliberately slaughtered. Pakistan is what we get when barbarism sanctioned by a book gets a piece of geography for itself and destroys the existing order of Dharma there. Let it be said without fear or favour: if you destroy Dharma, you won’t be able to replace it with anything better. What is the Hindu attitude to food? Anna or food is regrded as Brahman. Nobody can give Anna or food as a bribe. Food multiplies in the home of the person who shares food with everyone including strangers. Contrast this with treating food as merely a consumable or as an ingredient of Bhoga (sensual enjoyment). This immediately robs food of its most profound essence. As a consumable, the status of food remains at the bestial level. As an ingredient of Bhoga, it descends even lower — it becomes a deliberate and cold-blooded exploitation solely aimed at satisfying those fleeting moments that delight the palate. -- Read the full piece! 📑🕉🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/fighting-over-wheat-in-pakistan-is-what-happens-when-dharma-is-destroyed

On April 4, 1948, a man named Bharadwaj was picked up by the United Provinces police. His fault: he criticised the Congress. A TB patient, he vomited blood in jail & in spite of 104° fever, cops didn't take him to the hospital. He died in jail. 😞🙏 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/the-dead-bodies-that-cemented-the-invisible-nazism-of-the-nehruvian-congress-governments

Men of Might in India Missions: A Bigoted Book as a Mirror to the Decline of the Hindu Society   IN 1901, HELEN H. HOLCOMB PUBLISHED a fat, celebratory volume of bigotry titled Men of Might in India Missions; The Leaders and their Epochs, 1706-1899. It is basically a rogues’ gallery of prominent Protestant missionaries who are profiled and extolled. That’s a list of sixteen eminent Protestant soul-harvesters  spread over a two-hundred-year period.   The noteworthy soul-vultures in this list include Joshua Marshman who lulled Rajaram Mohan Roy into having “intellectual debates” with him thereby placing a prophetic creed, Christianity on equal footing with Sanatana Dharma. Marshman, along with William Carey and William Ward founded the Serampore College.   The other vulture was Alexander Duff, the first overseas missionary of the Church of Scotland to India, and founder of Scottish Church College, Calcutta. It was Duff’s brainwave to convert “upper caste” Hindus to Christianity by introducing English education in India. The brainwave was so influential that it translated into policy and eventually led to the Macaulayisation of Indian education.    Men of Might in India Missions hails India as a great harvest-field.   Missionaries in India have come a long way since Helen Holcomb’s bigoted book was published more than a century ago. They have acquired frightening levels of political power — they are a decisive force in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and in Andhra Pradesh, they have bagged a sitting Chief Minister. And this has happened in “independent” India.  -- Read the whole thing and share this piece widely! 📑🪔☦️🕉🛕 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/men-of-might-in-india-missions-a-bigoted-book-as-a-mirror-to-the-decline-of-the-hindu-society

A short podcast exposing the Far Left politics of TM Krishna. Do tune in and share. 👍🙏🎙️ https://youtu.be/kftVvnA9SYA

Why Don’t we still have any Creative Work on the 1962 Nehruvian Debacle? --- It is stunning and shameful that even after 60 years, there is not a single creative work narrating the dark truths of the 1962 humiliation that India was made to suffer at Chinese hands by Jawaharlal Nehru.   But the sludge of this Nehruvian rot didn’t end even after he died in 1964. When John Dalvi published The Himalayan Blunder in 1968, Indira Gandhi instantly banned it.   On the contrary, look at the sheer volume of work produced in the US about the Vietnam War. A whopping 165 books, 100-plus films across all genres and formats: non-fiction, novels, short stories, poems, plays, feature films, short films, television series and documentaries which explore Vietnam from every conceivable perspective.    We await that talented artist to pick up the Nehruvian betrayal of 1962. If the subject is treated well, it has all the makings of a modern epic. -- Do read the full piece! 📑💪🛕 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/commentary/why-dont-we-still-have-any-creative-work-on-the-1962-nehruvian-debacle

The Debt the Hindu Civilisation Owes to Manu   THIS IS THE EIGHTH AND CONCLUDING EPISODE of The Manusmriti Special Series. To us at The Dharma Dispatch, assembling this profound treatise authored by the iconic D.V. Gundappa has been akin to savouring an intellectual opera of the most exalted standard.   Let us remember one basic fact when reading Manu. We owe our ethical refinement of today to the improvement wrought in social conditions through long ages by the very rigours of Manu's provisions. The punitive clauses in the Manusmriti were largely meant as threats rather than as commands literally to be executed.   We have to relate the punitive clauses of the Manusmriti to the psychology of that time. Today, we are like the young boy who, at a rural fair, sits on the shoulders of his tall father and watches the tamasha. He naturally sees more than the father. But if he is a modest boy, he would remember that he could see nothing if the father put him on the ground.  -- It has been a purifying experience to offer this series to our readership and we hope that our readers have found value in it. 📑🛕🕉🪔     https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-debt-the-hindu-civilisation-owes-to-manu

My conversation with Abhijit Chavda on 70 years of secularism hosted by Jaipur Dialogues. Thoroughly enjoyed the session. -- Do tune in 👍👍🙏 https://youtu.be/evheElcXv_8

The Philosophy of Equality in the Manusmriti   When the last Kshatriya king vanished from the face of the earth, all Smrtis lost their operative authority. When the Kshatriya was gone, Manu became a sepoy with both his arms cut off. No court need listen to him today and no council or cabinet need notice him. He may therefore well be left to rest in the tranquil retreats of the obsolete.    The Manusmriti's philosophy of equality can be examined on five planes.   Self-sufficiency is apt to lead to self-isolation which is not Dharma. Dharma is mingling one’s life with the lives of fellow-humans and therein practising the discipline of self-abnegation as the means to a higher self-realization.   In Manu’s scheme of social values, there is no service that can be called unworthy or mean. It is the quality of service and not rank that matters. A butcher carrying on his trade in accordance with the code of Dharma is a higher unit of society than a Brahmana preferring the work of a more remunerative but un-Brahmanical office.  -- Read the whole eye-opening piece! 📑🛕🪔 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-philosophy-of-equality-in-the-manusmriti

There is Nothing to be Apologetic about the Manusmriti ---   The Manusmriti is a bitter medicine for the so-called modern man. He imagines that the good of life is good eating and unfettered pleasure.  In Manu's eyes, the modern man is in a morbid condition, and needs medicine.   THERE IS NOTHING IN MANU ABOUT WHICH ONE NEED BE APOLOGETIC.    In Manu's view, life is lived not on one plane, but on two planes, the physical and the spiritual; that the visible realities of the world have their roots in an invisible field of reality.   To condemn Manu in our day is to beat the air, for he is no longer an active force in the life of the State.    To those who have no care for spiritual values in human life and for historical continuity in social development, Manusmrti can be of no interest except as a museum piece. -- The whole piece is extraordinary. Do read in full! 💪🕉🛕🪔📑 https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/there-is-nothing-to-be-apologetic-about-the-manusmriti