Agehananda Bharati (was: beef)

[Robert J. Zydenbos]

Srini about Agehananda Bharati:

sp> He sounds irritatingly like a recent convert and an original intent
sp> fanatic on such issues... insisting on something from the Vedas and
sp> then insisting on the same jumping all the way to modern times...
sp> wifully suspending all historical developments in between.
sp> 
sp> Now, this is OK in traditional Indian dialectic ;-) and has always
sp> been a very useful didactic device... but Bharati has these
sp> critical/modern compulsions too, you see. Hence, somehow, it
sp> doesn't jive.

I perfectly agree with you that Bh.'s style of writing at times is quite
aggravating, and in this particular book he spends a lot of energy on
flogging dead horses over and over (cf. his remarks on Gandhi,
Vivekananda etc.).

But I think I disagree with you in your understanding of Bh.'s
historical stance. He does not advocate a 'return to the Vedas' or
something, as far as I can see, and he accuses Indian pundits and
religious leaders of ignoring history altogether (i.e. in his view, it
is they who suspend history). He does advocate a going back to something
when he is convinced that the old thing in question is superior to the
later development; i.e. not merely because the old thing is old. His
scathing attacks on modern Indian puritanism and prudishness are an
example  of this.

The question is not whether beef-eating (and several other such matters
are discussed in the book, e.g. one's attitude to the mind-body
question) in itself is good or not: rather, Bh. condemns the attitude
which says that nothing has ever changed in India (and that nothing
should change, or change back, either), because this attitude is
anti-intellectual, gets in the way of a coherent understanding of Indian
culture  and blocks all serious discussion. Here I agree with him
completely. In this context the "beef issue" is potentially liberating,
and esp. Yaajnavalkya's tongue-in-cheek remark in the
~Satapathabraahma.na that he eats cow's meat while at the same time
saying that it is not so good (after all that we have seen in the
Samhitaas) is something I will remember the next time I get into the
ever-recurring discussion on the relative merits of indigenous and
Western modes of study with a pundit here in India. (Of course only if
the discussion is private and with a reasonable person - in public, in
our present age, people will throw rocks at me if I bring this up.)

RZ.-