Religious Experiences in America

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THE LEGEND OF BAJI PRABHU DESHPANDE:
It was during the days post-the slaying of the goliath Jehadi giant Afzal Khan. (And this is a story by itself, where Shivaji was induced into a treacherous parley by the giant Khan, who in actuality had other ideas. The giant 7 foot plus Khan’s plan was to stab Shivaji in a bear hug paraded as a friendly embrace. But Shivaji was a clever and cautious warrior over and above his daring nature. He had worn an armour beneath his robes and worn tiger claws in his hands. And in that very embrace, he disembowelled the giant Khan by tearing his stomach to shreds and had his entrails hanging out. The goliath Jehadi screamed in terror and ran trying to hold his intestines from falling out of his bloody abdomen; so the legend goes)

Coming back to the post-Afzal-Khan slaying, Shivaji and his men created “NAAK-MEIN-DUM” on Aurangazeb’s powerful forces and harried and tormented them relentlessly with their ferocious guerilla tactics. Unleashing fierce counter-terrorism backed by good intelligence, the Marathas were a succor to all those suffering Hindu innocents on whom Aurangazeb’s jehadi army rained callous terror without respite like a never-ending nightmare. And it was during these days that Shivaji and his men had based themselves at the Panhala fort. The Jehadi army of Aurangazeb came to know of this and immediately laid siege to the fort under the able command of general Siddi Johar. The siege lasted for many months and Siddi Johar was getting increasingly successful in cutting off vital supplies to the Panhala fort and thereby forcing Shivaji’s hand. He had to get out of there and he had to get out soon.

So, on a rainy full moon night, Shivaji set out with a select band of men and they split up into two groups. One was a decoy that was led by a man called Shiva Navi, who resembled Shivaji very closely and the other led by Shivaj and this group also consisted the valiant Baji and other brave Marathas. Shiva Navi’s group served as the perfect bait as Siddi Johar’s alert troups who had gotten wind of the escape plan through their network of informers. The Jehadis captured Shiva Navi to their undiminished glee but were terribly enraged when they discovered the subterfuge that it was Nakli-Shivaji. The promptly beheaded Shiva Navi (This valiant sacrfice by Shiva Navi for his master brought some much needed valuable time for the escaping Maratha warriors) and the Mugals immediately set in hot pursuit of the Asli-Shivaji.

A TORRID CHASE:
A 4000 plus strong Jehadi Mugal army ignited the chase while Shivaji and his men had already set up an electrifying pace on their horses. (the very picturization of this scene is inspiring for any true Hindu patriot and this is very much the stuff of high voltage movies). The Maratha warriors tore through the rainy night as they burnt up the miles on their horse backs, pushing their steeds to the limit. And then the horses had reached exhaustion point, the sweat lathering of their backs as they reached the Ghod Kind pass (to be renamed as Pavan Kind by Shivaji), a narrow opening which could let in only a few men at a time.

THE TOWERING STAND OF A MIGHTY WARRIOR: THE BATTLE OF PAVAN-KIND
This is where the legend began and Baji Prabhu volunteered to hold the pursuing Jehadis at the pass with a select band of Marathas, so that Shivaji could proceed on to the safety of Vishalgad fort. A reluctant Shivaji proceeded with a heavy heart with the rest of the band. It was agreed that three cannon shots would be fired as a signal to Baji and his men that Shivaji and his group had reached their destination safe and sound.

And here at Ghod Kind the brave Marathas faught like caged tigers to their fabulous war cry: HAR HAR MAHADEV. It was a bloody battle by all accounts. Baji and his men were vastly outnumbered, almost 1:100 ratio by the hysterical Jehadis baying for their blood. The Jehadis, in turn, were relentless as they attacked the narrow pass in wave after frenzied wave. But Baji Prabhu in the vanguard was like a granite boulder. Wielding two huge and very heavy swords, one in each hand, he almost singlehandedly repulsed the waves, using his body as a wall to prevent the Jehadis from getting through. And he paid a heavy price indeed for this and very soon his body was crisscrossed by grave injuries: sword cuts, spear thrusts. At times it seemed that he would buckle in to his injuries and pass out but with iron will summoned from the very depths of his soul, he stood firm and kept on fighting. Baji would not quit till he had heard the cannon shots.

ESCAPE COMPLETE
After what seemed like an eternity to Baji and his Marathas, the much awaited cannon-shots boomed from the distant Vishalgad. It was almost dawn and Baji was still on his feet but barely and that too in mortal danger because of his wounds. With another cry of HAR HAR MAHADEV, Baji’s’ men cleared the pass, carrying their wounded leader with them. And then the valiant Baji Prabhu Deshpande passed away with a smile on his face, secure in the knowledge that Shivaji had reached Vishalgad and in the process forever glorifying the annals of Maratha history and Hindu Bharath.

GHOD-KIND RENAMED TO PAVAN-KIND: BAJI BECOMES A MARATHA MARTYR.
Shivaji was with heavy heart when he came to know about the death of Baji, a soul-tugging emotion that he would hold on for the rest of his life. In Baji’s honour, he renamed the Ghod-kind pass as Pavan-Kind (Pavan meaning pure, purified by the blood of this great Maratha Hindu martyr.) For the rest of his life, Shivaji would also act as the guardian for Baji’s children. To this day, many Maharashtrians make that sacred pilgrimage on foot between Panhala and Vishalgad,

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Continuing my blog post series on people who lived, fought and laid down their lives to protect Sanatana Dharma and India I would like to talk about Peshwa Baaji Rao I in this post.

Peshwa Baaji Rao I - At age 17 (in 1719 CE) the youngest Peshwa tobe appointed (by Shivaji’s grandson Shahuji) upon the death of his fatherPeshwa Balaji Vishwanath. Responding to skepticism about his youngage and ability lead the Maratha warrior clans, Baji Rao stated proudlybefore Shahuji, that his goal was “to throw the mlecchas (barbarians)out of Bhaarata Varsha, back across the Hindukush where they camefrom, and reclaim Hindu lands all the way from the Indus down to theKrishna river, thus regaining the lost wealth of our ancestors - whichis now locked down in vaults of gold by vandals in the north”.

In the next 3 decades of his life BajiRao fought and won each and everyone of the 25 battles he waged against the Mughals — thus becomingthe architect of the Maratha Confederacy. The length and breadth of this empire exceeded that of ANY medieval kingdom ever to rule BhaarataVarsha (including Mughals).

Much of the northern border of India today follows the lines of this erstwhile Maratha Confederacy, bravely won byBajiRao. It wasn’t until after the 3 Anglo-Maratha wars in early 1800s,that the Confederacy finally collapsed into British subsidiary alliances.

Let us take a moment everyday in our comfortable lives to reflect upon the honor and glory of our selfless Hindu warriors who made unimaginable sacrifices for the cause of Sanaatana Dharma.

The least we can do in return is to ensure a pro-Hindu government in our own country.

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I would like to start a series of blogs about great individuals who lived, fought and died for the protection of Hinduism aka Sanatana Dharma and the land of its origin: India. Since I have ready information about few of the Maratha bravehearts I would like to start with them. These are not the well known people, ideally they should have been better known and talked about than the Mughal invaders like Akbar etc… but that is the irony of our history texts. Hindu heroes are just not as important as Muslim invaders.

Anyway in my first post in this series let me talk about Taanaaji Maalusare, one of the leading lieutenants of Chatrapathi Shivaji.

Taanaaji Maalusare is known as the “lion” general of Shivaji’s army who wrested the almost-impregnable Raigad fort back from Aurangzeb’s misguided Rajput loyals, at the costof his own life. Tanaji was summoned by his commander in chief Shivaji on the evening of a moonless night, with the mission to claim Raigad.

It is said, Tanaji scaled the incredibly steep wall of the least guarded sideof this fortress with the aid of a “Ghorpat” or mountain lizard, then threwdown rope ladders for the rest of his troops to follow. The ensuing rooftop battle claimed Tanaji’s life - while his younger brother led a secondfront at the door of the fortress, dealing a surprise defeat to the enemy.

Tanaji left his SON’s wedding, to obey the command of his leader Shivaji.He would not return alive. Describing his sorrow at the loss of his deargeneral, Shivaji said “gad aala, paN singh gela” (We won the fortress butlost the LION). In honor of Tanaji Malusare, the Raigad fort was renamedas Singh-gad, a name which endures even to this day. To this day the image of Tanaji is worshipped daily at hisshrine in Singhgad.

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Rentaloo helped me find great deals on holiday properties. For example, during one of my holidays to the mountainsides of Colorado, I found Breckenridge lodging very conveniently using the internet. And it was one of my most memorable vacations ever. I have also noticed that internet sites are the best for finding vacation rentals, hotels & bed and breakfasts. One of the websites I frequent has over 120,000 properties listed and these includes hotels, villas, inns, apartments and condos in 15,000 worldwide destinations. This is simply the most extensive choice of holiday homes I have ever found. From Puerto Vallarta villas to apartments to beach houses, the site had everything I was looking for.

My favourite destination however is in the Beaches of Florida. I’d love to rent Kissimmee condos and stay for short intensively rejuvenating weekends and come back home a new and transformed person. I am pretty sure that Rentalo.com has the right options to suit my tastes and budget. That is the beauty of using a professional and traveller friendly service.

I received information about this book over e-mail from a friend of mine. As expected the book deals with the elusive subject of Hindu history and linguistic history of world languages, which I am sure will not be liked… or should I say will be hated by several people in this world. Here is a brief preview about the book… I hope to get hold of the book and review it soon.

The Rigveda and the Avesta: the final evidence evidence by Shrikant G. Talageri, Aditya Prak., 2008, xxxviii, 379p., bibl., ind., 23cm. ISBN 9788177420852 Rs. 750 (hb), Rs. 350(pb)

About This Book.
The single most significant unresolved problem in the study of World History today is the problem of the geographical location of the Original Homeland of the Indo-European family of languages. This is because this is the most important family of languages in the world in terms of the number of primary as well as secondary speakers, as also in terms of geographical spread, ethnic diversity, and political and economic clout. This family of languages has twelve branches (two of them, Anatolian and Tocharian, now long extinct): the extant branches, from west to east, are Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan.

The question of where exactly the original homeland of this diverse family was located has been a hotly debated issue among linguists, historians and archaeologists, and, especially in India, where the issue has acquired deep political overtones, also among politically inclined writers of every brand.

In his two earlier books, The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal (1993) and The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), the author of this book put forward the hypothesis, backed by detailed arguments, data and evidence, that this Original Homeland lay in the northern parts of India, and that the other branches of Indo-European languages spread out from India to their respective historical habitats. In this book, he presents the final case with conclusive new evidence based on an unassailable interpretation of old but hitherto universally misinterpreted data. The result is a hypothesis which critics will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to counter and disprove.

The two highlights of this book are as follows.
One. the establishment of the Relative Chronology of the Rigveda vis- à-vis the Avesta and the Mitanni inscriptions, and of the Geography of the Rigveda; followed by a detailed analysis of the Internal Chronology of the (different parts of) the Rigveda; and, finally, the first steps in the establishment of the Absolute Chronology of the Rigveda in terms of the actual point of time BCE when the hymns of the text were composed.

And, two, the presentation of a linguistic hypothesis which shows finally and conclusively that the Indian Homeland hypothesis is the only hypothesis which explains all the linguistic problems which arise in the course of the quest for the Original Homeland.

All this has important and far-reaching implications, not only in resolving the academic question of the location of the Indo-European Homeland, and not only in resolving the question of the linguistic identity of the Harappan or Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization, but also in taking the beginnings of the history of Indian Civilization as we know it (as distinct from its prehistory, which is what the Harappan civilization amounts to in current historical discourse) back by several thousands of years:

While the beginnings of the history of the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian Civilizations are known to lie at least as far back as the fourth millennium BCE on the basis of detailed decipherable and deciphered records (inscriptions, scrolls, etc.), the beginnings of Indian Civilization as we know it could not really be traced far earlier than the mid-second millennium BCE, and even this only on the basis of back-tracking the stages of Vedic history (whether logically or illogically done) from the oldest known decipherable and deciphered records found in India: the Ashokan inscriptions of the latter half of the first millennium BCE.

The earlier records, of the Harappan Civilization, are not yet convincingly deciphered; and the interpretation of the signs on the Harappan seals (from the question of the identity of the language represented in those seals down to the question of whether or not, indeed, any language is represented at all in them) has been a matter of motivated debate: the academic scholars presume the language of the Harappan Civilization to be non-Indo-European, since the current academically accepted theory requires that the Indo-European “Indo- Aryans” could not have “entered” India far earlier than the latter half of the second millennium BCE.

However, ironically, decipherable and deciphered records are found in West Asia (Iraq, Syria, and even Palestine and Egypt), dating to the mid-second millennium BCE, which record the presence of “Indo-Aryan” speakers in West Asia at around the same time as they are supposed to have been entering into India. The presence of these “Indo-Aryans” , the Mittani “Indo-Aryans” , in West Asia has hitherto been interpreted as evidence of an “Indo-Aryan” group which broke away from the main body of “Indo-Aryans” somewhere in Central Asia, and moved westwards to appear in West Asia at around the same time as the main body of “Indo-Aryans” appeared in northwestern India.

But the analysis of the Rigvedic, Avestan and Mittani data in this book completely overturns this theory: it presents an unassailable case showing that the culture common to the Rigveda, the Avesta and the Mitanni records is a culture which developed in northern India in the Late Rigvedic Period, and that this Late Rigvedic Period followed earlier periods (the Middle Rigvedic Period, and, before that, the Early Rigvedic Period) which have different cultures and which preceded this common culture; and that not only the “Indo-Aryans” , but also the proto-Iranians, in those earlier pre-Avestan and pre- Mittani periods, were inhabitants of areas deeper within northern India and had only started expanding westwards towards the end of the Early Rigvedic Period.

All this places the “Indo-Aryans” and the proto-Iranians deep within northern India at least as early as the early third or late fourth millennia BCE, with no connections further west. This lends legitimacy to an interpretation of Indian history with indigenous origins going back deep into the fourth millennium BCE, and brings Indian traditional Indian historical traditions (excluding, of course, all the mythical elements, exaggerations and interpolations which have seeped into them) as well as the Harappan civilization within the ambits of the academic study of the history of Indian Civilization as we know it.

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Today I went to participate in the Diwali Celebrations at the BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir. It was a totally Gujju affair and highly conservative settings: separate staircase for men and women to enter the sanctum. Women not allowed to meet the Swamiji of the temple etc. This is perhaps to keep women from getting sexually harassed and preventing unscrupulous men from groping. I have seen this system pretty much working in several temples in India too. But in the US several American Born Confused Desis (especially young women) don’t like the idea and consider this oppression.

Anyway coming back to the function, it was a colorful community affair and loads of food was served in typical Gujarathi style. Lots of sweets and chaat and main courses too. I enjoyed every bit of the event and the kind hospitality extended to us. Hopefully I should be visiting the temple again in the coming weeks. One thing that makes us feel alienated is the fact that being a temple of Gujarathi community, I don’t understand their language and it is too much to ask for to expect them to change their language to English for my sake.

I downloaded some pictures off their website to go with this post.