Somanath Syndrome

This essay has been in the back of my mind for decades, but I always had better things to do than write it. Today I decided that that IS the Somanath Syndrome: we Hindus always had “better things to do” than confront the demons, imaginary or real.

The civilization of BharataVarsha, today called “South Asia” seems continuous from at least 10,000 years ago…. down to about 300 BCE. Its people developed agriculture, industry, transportation, social systems, stable governments with good means of top-down and bottom-up communications. Their technology grew to be absolutely amazing. Today only some metal artifacts of the international trade and commerce remain. Even more surprisingly, those are seen not to be Imperial Edicts or Holy Stones, they are simply accounting ledgers, product-tracing, trademarks, advertising, artifacts. “Harappan Seals”.

Wealth grew. Society could afford to fund great thinkers and scholars who integrated and packaged knowledge bases for long-term travelers. If you think a Mission to Mars will be long and hazardous, how much worse was an expedition to Hanoi or Haifa or Samarkhand or Bali in those days? Also, history, arts, sciences, medicine, law. I could go on and on.

But their Search For The Truth had a huge flaw: it succeeded brilliantly. Their scholars were productive: Compare Panini or Kalidasa or AryaBhatta or Chanakya to today’s pompous South Asia Furniture or Stockton Deans! They became CIVILIZED. And with that any zeal to go kill their neighbors was replaced with other, greater pursuits. They built grand monuments. Universities without parallel, before or since. They were generous in acknowledging the Powers that afforded them such wealth and a good life. Takshasila became the greatest technical university in the world, Nalanda the greatest intellectual/ philosophy center.

They also donated generously to their temples. The Siva Temple at Somanath (“Lord of the Moonlight” per British and JNU historians? Or Owner of Soma, the Cosmic Fluid Connecting the Timeless Paramatman and Temporal Existence per the Rg Vedam? ) was one of the most shining symbols of that wealth. It was easily visible, located at the sea-shore where the ships from the Sarasvati and the Sindhu went out to trade, and brought in riches from the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and points east as far as Vietnam and beyond. It was fabled to have a treasury that was a veritable mountain of gold and jewels. Everyone had heard about it, in the known world. Everyone. Including all the wrong ones.

The people of BharataVarsha looked inward. And saw deep insights. They neglected to look outward. They focused on the best of human nature. They ignored the worst: it was too petty and unclean for them to waste their brilliant minds on.

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The line from “ABBA”‘s “Cassandra” comes to mind

“And on the darkest of nights.. nobody knew how to fight…And we were caught in our sleep..”

There must have been those (like me) that tried to direct attention to the outside but as usual:

“Sorry Cassandra, I didn’t believe… You really had the power.

I only saw it as dreams you would weave.. Until the final hour”.

Look at the Indian diaspora, particularly the Hindus, in America, and our relatives in India. Exemplary. Peaceful. “The most law-abiding.” Kids well-brought-up, well-behaved, though rather clueless about their history that matters. Or its contemporary and urgent relevance. In the words of Tom Clancy, “Clear and Present Danger”, the impetus to do what Swami Vivekanada urged: AWAKE! ARISE! And Stop Not Until the Goal Is Reached. To be clear the Goal that Swami V. was seeking was to throw out the looters from that cold land where nearly everything down from the Crown Jewels came from stolen property. From our ancestors and other gentle people around the world, but mostly from ours.

I heard a recent presenter on India’s famed “Jaipur Dialogue” reel off the stuff about Wealthiest and Most Highly Educated and Nicest and Most Law-Abiding and Least Demanding and Most Mouse-like Quiet and Peaceful and Harmless Ethnic Group in the US, and shuddered.

That’s exactly what Comrade St. Vijay Prashad of Trinity College, CT, said of us long ago as he counseled “Model Minority Suicide” – and did what he could towards that outcome. For those who don’t know, his other works are “Red Salute to Comrade Ho”, a glorification of West Bengal’s murderous Communist regime that used to “win” elections by murdering opposing candidates, and “Saffron Dollar” – salivating at Hindu charitable fundraising, as well as co-authorship of the infamous and ill-fated “Comprehensive Report” that I mentioned before.

Just today I heard some “Scholars” (at the 9/10-9/12/2021 Terrorist Conference) moan about the unkind Govt of India. Since 2014 it has become so hard for them to get money in India from their Sponsors to destabilize India and destroy it, starting with Hindus. The foreign terrorists sitting with them shook their heads in sorrow. India now insists on Charities having clear accounts, from what I hear. Recently even specified that all such funds should come through State Bank of India, New Delhi, for accurate tabulation. Tut-tut! How tough for those to whom Indian law meant nothing!

This is also how the robbers from Ghazni and Sikandr and Ghori and Ibrahim Lodhi and Babar and all those other sex-offender-murderers as far as England salivated about the grand temple of Somanath. While Hindus celebrated and sang and danced and worshipped and donated wealth in blissful oblivion of the utter catastrophe building to their north and west. Somanath Syndrome.

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And so goes the history of Somanath (I use the Samskrtam version of the name, not the Urdu-ized version that truncates words. For a recent update on the temple, and a very large and far older structure being found under the present site, please see the article by Shri Kishan Ji Dubey.

• 1. The first known Shiva temple perhaps was destroyed in the catacylsm that sank Dvaraka. Perhaps there were many before that. 10,000-20,000 years is a long time.
• 2. Sikandr of Macedonia was probably headed to Somnath when he gave up.
• 3. Temple #2 built by Yadava kings of Vallabhi circa 649 CE.
• 4. Looted and destroyed in 725CE by Al Junayd, Arab Governor of Sindh.
• 5. Somanath # 3 built by Nagabhata II in 815CE, out of sandstone. Another temple at the site attributed to Chaulakya King Mularaja, 997CE.
• 6. Mahmud of Ghazni looted the temple in 1024 but did not bother to raze it. He knew a good deal when he saw one. Probably said: “I Shall Return!” or “Auf Wiedersehen!” Islamic texts brag that 50,000 Hindoos were massacred.
• 7. An inscription in 1169 brags that the temple was “rebuilt with excellent stone and studded with jewels” validating Moh. ul Ghazni’s hope.
• 8. Alauddin Khilji sacked Somanath in 1299. But Alauddin also raided the Afghan capital of Ghazni in a Global Offensive on Terror (GOAT) without taking Pakistani help, and ensured that he had monopoly over sackings etc.
• 9. Rebuilt by Mahipala & Sons 1308-1351. Its not that it was hated by Muslims: Haj pilgrims regularly stopped there to collect blessings before the perilous trip to Mecca, given all the kindly co-Believer tribes waiting along the way.
• 10. In 1395, Zafar Khan, Mughal Delhi’s Governor of Gujarat, sacked the temple. But did not destroy it, following Ghazni wisdom. Donations poured in.
• 11. In 1451, Mahmud Begada, Sultan of Gujarat “desecrated” it, again collecting the loot.
• 12. In 1665, Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb ordered the temple looted and destroyed. In 1702 he ordered that if Hindus tried to rebuild it, it was to be demolished completely. Bigotry over economic sense, the true party-pooper Father of today’s Pakistani Taliban. He is worshipped today in JNU texts as a Holy Emperor who Lived a Simple Life. On par with Comrade St. Pol Pot of Kampuchea.
• 13. The Maratha Ahilyabai Holkar built a temple at Somanath.
• 14. I will ignore the British era scam pretending to Return the Gates of Somanath by looting Ghazni. That was a petty tiff between robbers, no great concern for Hindus. They forced Hindu soldiers to drag some Persian-looted gates down to Somanath from Ghazni, said “Oops! Wrong Size!” and probably extorted more taxes from Gujaratis.
• 15. The British novel “Moonstone”, which I happen to have read in my mis-spent childhood, recounts casually how the “hero” broke said huge precious stone out of the Main Idol from Somanath (hence the name), murdering Hindus by the dozen to rapturous applause from Britons.

And at least the first few times, it is clear that our people did not bother to learn – that concentrating material resources in one place is an invitation to those who see robbery as the easiest way to riches. With impunity. Somanath Syndrome.

I admire their persistence, mind you, but perhaps they could have devoted a percentage also to identifying and studying potential aggressors, and building the resources either for historically deterrent ripostes. And making sure said enemies could not gather without killing each other. Once completely enslaved, they had few options, and the temple was one of the few points of hope that kept them going. No lack of courage, mind you!

So Why Do They Not Like Us?

I have not even watched the movie fully, let alone read through Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. But I have “browsed it”. And one scene struck me. The aging, Noble Russian Colonel rides out to a ridge near the front lines, and exclaims in utter shock:

LOOK! LOOK! They are SHOOTING at ME! ME! Whom Everyone Loves!”

This is one of many insights into human nature that flash through the book. And it came back to me this afternoon as I watched a You-Tube recording of a Congressional Hearing on Biases Against Hindu Americans. HinduPhobia.

It was a brilliant presentation. The team leader was superbly organized. The three speakers were articulate, personable, and sincere. I know one of them: a very long history of fighting, mostly alone, at the frontlines for all of us. Fighting to win, and generally succeeding. For decades, at any cost to himself. For example, as a concerned Alumnus (in a real discipline that takes discipline to get a degree, not “Divinity” or “South Asia Studies”), he would take on the entire faculty and administration of U. Chicago to highlight the hate-p0rn-peddling that passed as “Hindu scholarship” from their university. He would stand outside conventions of the Lashkar-e-Pinocchio and hand out flyers to attendees with his factual information summary of them. And pleasantly point out to enquiring Police that he was peacefully exercising his Academic Freedom. The Bill of Rights. Getting a laugh out of them. Whatever else you might say about them, American Police are not known to greatly favor the 9/11/2001 Terrorists or their supporters.

If he ever wins any sort of recognition or Award from the “Pravasi Bharatiya Divas”, or all the other pompous or holy Award events of our Most Wealthy And Successful and clueless Community, please wake me up, like Marshal Kutuzov was woken up from his depressed nap by a smart officer, saying (in Russian of course!): “The French are leaving Moscow, heading back.” The Marshal leaps out of bed (in the movie), drops to his knees, looks up with clasped hands and prays: “Holy Mother of God, Thank You!” and proceeds to give the orders for his long-dreamt Action Plan. I too will do something along those lines. Give thanks, I mean. It will be a sign of our Community Waking Up. But I digress.

The Congressman from Georgia was obviously impressed with the presentation. And then he asked the simple, obvious question:

So why are these people targeting Hindus? Why do they hate you?

Sorry to say, this caught the team by surprise – or there was some reason why they did not want to give a thorough and convincing answer. They came across as waffling.

The answer is absolutely not:

1. “Because we deserve to be hated.
2. Because we have done something very bad.”

The Congressman probably did not have any “blame the victim” intentions. He was trying to get to the root causes, to have an understanding of the attackers and the genesis of the attacks. He asked again. Without success.

So let me try to explain to these (young relative to me) people. It is BECAUSE there is nothing wrong with us.

Somanath was not looted or razed so many times because there was something evil about it. It was looted because the looters saw the success and wealth and productivity of the people and decided to grab the wealth and kill or enslave the people. Because they COULD.

Takshasila was not razed because there was something wrong with their course syllabus or grading standards or they scrawled cartoons of the Prophet in the campus news-tablet. It was razed because it was so far ahead of the civilization of the invaders that they HAD to destroy it. And because they COULD.

Napoleon did not invade Russia and race to Moscow because he didn’t like Russians. It was because he thought he COULD. And he did. Get to Moscow. The rest is history: about one out of three of his soldiers returned from Russia out of the 450,000 who rushed in. France has never tried to invade Russia again. And there is a lesson.

Mohammed of Ghazni, Ghori, Ibrahim Lodhi, Al Sikandr, Taimurlane or all the rest of the genocidal goons did not invade India because Indians had done something wrong. It was because (a) they COULD. They saw that Indians were militarily weak and poorly organized, and (b) they had no fear of massive, disproportionate retaliation.

Notice that the great Hindu King, after DEFEATING the invading Al Sikandr, presented him with a Made in India sword. Exotic metal. Studded with precious stones. Ornate handle. Commercial advertising. Buy Our Model 666 Swords! To Kill Us Better Next Time. When he should really have emulated Sakthan Tampuran. ST was the most feared ( “Sakthan” means “strong” and was not what his Mom called him) and revered King of the Grand Empire of Kochi, from where I come. He would have tossed each one in the backwaters with a stone tied to their feet. And sent a nice beer mug by FedEx to Macedonia as advertising instead of a sword. Peaceful. Ahimsic.

And American Hindus are not being attacked because there is something wrong with them. It is precisely because they are winners in civilized society. Exemplary. They even know how to spell Terminological Exactitude. Decent. Well-brought-up. Top of the class. Would get into Hahvahd to pay them $80K/yr so they can sponsor Terrorist Conferences and afford their employees the spare time to host the Indo-Euracist Hysterics Forum. Even though Hahvahddiscriminates against them, so they can use their stupid parents’ money to educate more of those who hate us. Pleasant. Harmless. Easy Meat for the predators?

And THAT is the crucial problem. The perception that they are harmless, will not retaliate massively and disproportionately. And are too absorbed in their work to look up and see the hate in the eyes of the entities conducting the 9/11/2021 Terrorist Conference.

Just building moats and forts is not enough. There has to be the planning and credible threat of massive, disproportionate and if possible pre-emptive retaliation. You show INTENT to try to attack me, I destroy you utterly and without any pause or relenting. At minimum, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), but preferably, just deterrent superiority and threat.

The sackings of Somanath stopped for 95 years, strangely enough, after Alaudddin Khilji raided and sacked Somanath himself to replenish his treasury after his Afghan expeditions. Because he did what few predecessors had done. This is one thing I really admire about an otherwise disgusting disgrace to homo sapiens with the general outlook of the coronavirus. When the invaders tried invading, he didn’t stop with a swat (on the banks of the Ravi river in Punjab/Kashmir). He went straight for their caves and “palaces” inside Afghanistan, burned their capital and utterly destroyed everything. No intent to steal anything, just destroy. Massive, disproportionate destruction. Brought a long period of peace.

Lesson conveyed. The rest was up to Karma, which still seems to be extracting a horrible payment from the descendants of those mighty conquerors in Afghanistan.

Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov did not stop and declare Ceasefire when Napoleon’s La Grande Armée withdrew from Moscow, their champagne supplies depleted and no Russians supplying vodka. (Did you notice how the Europeans evacuated their booze from Kabul first, and left their Gurkha Embassy guards behind citing lack of space on the planes, sorree only? National culture and priorities). That was not what he was Thanking Mother Of God for. Kutuzov’s forces kept attacking them all the way to the borders of France, utterly destroying them. If I were Czar I would have ordered Kutuzov all the way to Paris and burned it to the ground: they had no army left to defend France after all. But Russia saw accurately that the loss of 300,000 men was enough to deter the French. And I am glad: without that, how could we have have had all those Pink Panther movies starring Inspecteur Clouseau? Christophe Jaffrelot speeches?

I could go on and on, like I said this is something that has been burning in the space between my ears a long time. One has to avoid the Somanath Syndrome. All that stuff about Civilization and Non-Violence and Turn The Other Cheek and Be Nice, and Have Empathy, Walk a Mile In Another’s Shoe, yadayadayada. Truth, “twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools” as Kipling wrote. I too am sure that Blessed Are the Meek for They Shall Inherit The Earth: but only when the Not-Meek are done destroying Earth and need some suckers to unload it on.

Hindus: The Jews of the 21st Century?

This is the hardest of my paranoiae to type in: my fingers shake. Study the history of the Jewish people. The destruction of the Temples of Solomon, and the scattering of Jewish people all over Europe. Persecution, progroms, anti-Jewish propaganda everywhere. In Atlanta, until say 40 years ago, Jewish people, however wealthy, were not allowed into the (White-only) Country Clubs. Only those who made it to my home state of Keralam lived without persecution, respected citizens under the Maharajas of our tiny kingdoms such as Sakthan Tampuran, free to practise their religion and trades. The other evening (well before the pandemic shutdown) a Jewish lawyer came up to me at some function (maybe at the Indian Consulate) and said: “I have to talk to you. Where are you from? I told her and she declared that she KNEW IT! With features like mine I MUST have some Jewish DNA. I told her that it was the other way round: with such good looks and smarts, she HAD to have Malayali DNA. Point is, we Indians do have a very long-ago tie to the people who became known as Jews. Enough said.

In the 21st century, the Jewish State of Israel seems finally settled: feared for her military might – and propensity to use it almost daily with massive violence – as much as admired for ingenuity, hard work and persistence. No, I don’t think it has yet brought them real peace, but it sure beats the alternative that their dear neighbors have been declaring intentions to do to them if they let down their guard. Said neighbors appear to be slowly coming around to the realization that it is smarter to be at peace. Their planes can fly over Saudi Arabia, the first such flight being pioneered by Air India. The UAE has established formal relations with them. But let’s not forget their experiences in the 20th century and before that.

Look also at the former Yugoslavia. For about 40 years after liberation in WW2, they held together, a reasonably advanced nation. Have you studied the history of how they came to be 5 nations? The horrors when their society broke down completely?

Or just consider the history of the Hindus of Bengal. East, including the genocide of 1947-1947 and the bigger one of 1969-71. And now, West Bengal as well in 2021 under the so-called “Hindu Nationalist Regime” of SuperPower India. And all the lesser pogroms through the centuries and recent decades, continuing even after Indian soldiers died liberating the nation of Bangladesh. The land of Kalidasa. Of Rabindranath Tagore. Of Jagdish Chandra Bose.

Where would we be if India as we know it today ceased to exist? Do you understand that seemingly harmless “Academic Conferences” such as the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” circus of Sep. 10-12, are EXACTLY about destroying India so that they can destroy Hindus? Yesterday at least one “Panelist” salivated about precisely that prospect, just in case you had any doubts.

Destroy Hindus? But we are so many! We have learned in our Communist-authored textbooks that “India assimilated all invaders” over 5000 years. But do you know at what cost?

The notorious pest Timur from Afghanistan, killed 100,000 captives BEFORE he attacked Delhi and murdered all the inhabitants of Delhi. Brags about mountains of severed heads. If you have not seen the photograph of the Basket of Severed Hands, courtesy of the Pakistani-imposed Taliban in Kabul, I am not going to show you.

Vijayanagara (Victory City) had much to brag about, but again, they made the mistake of letting their enemies live to gang up. Perhaps they had no choice. The enemies made no such mistake: The city was utterly razed, all its inhabitants killed. Genocide. But even Nobel Laureate V.S.Naipaul got attacked when he pointed out the obvious. Genocide against Hindus must not even be mentioned today!

“Hundreds of thousands” of Hindus were driven as slaves over the mountains of Afghanistan to the slave markets of the Middle East. If you have not seen the color painting from a photograph, titled “Rawalpindi 1948”, I am not going to show you.

Just as the Yezidis, a tiny minority of people with clear links to Hindu culture, were brutalized and enslaved by the perverts of the “Islamic State” just about 7 years ago- cousins of those who have now been presented with the keys to “modern” Afghanistan. But you can read a very recent paper on contemporary versions and see the pictures there. It’s OK, you will be able to sleep after a couple of days. If you can forget.

Must Hindus repeat the experience of Jews from the destruction of Solomon’s last temple, through the 20th century, to learn? Imagine the Bay Area of California turning into the West Bengal of today – its well on its way there already. Fertile breeding ground of innovation, dynamic thought, art, poetry, literature, Naxalite murderers and South Asia hate-mongers.

I have heard that Israel takes its young people to the cliff of Masada (where the starving defenders finally leapt to their deaths rather than surrender to Italian slavery) and get them to promise: “Masada Shall Not Fall Again!”

Yes, Empathy is essential: Learn to Think Like A (fill in the blanks). You will see why they want to attack us, and will attack us. Unless massive, disproportionate retaliation, even pre-emptive destruction, are guaranteed. Study them as one would study the COVID-19 virus and all its cousins and distant relatives. Not to love them but to turn them to peaceful and harmless pursuits. Nothing so evil about this: All those Divinity Schools at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Emory, Oberlin were set up precisely to study us so that they could destroy us, from within and without. You know, the same Paragons of Academic Freedom that are so upset about India having a “Nationalist” government, elected by a “majority” of the people in democratic elections. As I heard again yesterday.

The BBC show “Yes Minister” summarized Anglo-Saxon Wisdom into a superlative Rk:

“When u have them by the (*****), their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.”

Peace is great. Peace with security is awesome. And that takes constant vigilance, imagination, and very hard work.

Post-Script, Sep. 12: Back to “What was the point of this?”

The “DGH Conference” which neither presented ideas on how to Dismantle Global Hindutva, whatever that is, nor was a Conference, has ended with the expected self-congratulations read from a script prepared long ago, that had nothing at all specific about what they actually said. Which was OK because they had nothing to say: barked again about what they were barking about 20 years ago and totally debunked. Confirmed an experienced friend’s advice to me 20 years ago when I emailed him in panic as the Attack on the IDRF was starting, asking how to reach out to the attackers are correct their misperceptions: “They are Communist extremists. Reasoning with them is a total waste of time, they will just keep repeating the same thing”. His next advice saved us a lot of time in “dismantling” that attack.

Like that one, the DGH also has dissolved in Days of Guffawing Hilarity. The last speakers, despite their trained, timed grins of feigned happiness, seemed happiest to get out of there after 3 days of utter disaster, starting with the hungover-looking “Moderator” on Day 1 squatting on his Dhirubhai Ambani “Throne”. They erased their own videos as they finished them, they forbade recording (Ha! as if anyone needed to record that bilge), they did not take questions from the audience (which was mostly there to guffaw), and they seemed their usual hate-filled, incoherent loser selves. And even at the very end they said they were not naming the real sponsors. Q.E.D.

But… as I mentioned in my first article on this a few days ago, the visible conference was always a non-event. Now that you have seen the “Conference” itself, ask yourself: What Was The Point Of So Anonymously Organizing It? In Fall 2021 as we struggle with the Pandemic?

The presenters at this “conference” were reminescent of the lobotomized sleeper agents in “Telefon”. Each activated periodically by a Robert Frost verse on the telephone:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep… but you have promises to keep .. and miles to go before you sleep.. and miles to go, Comrade! Get moving!”

What should worry us is the general M.O., going by the “Siting Secularism” conference organized by the “Oberlin Foundation Trust”: announced on Oct. 1, 2001, for April 2002. No program. No proceedings. No presentations seen. Just a Big Noise on Feb. 27, 2002, timed for their Resolution to Condemn the Indian Government for Genocide. Coming after the December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament failed. Like the Comrades in “Telefon” these were most probably just wound up to repeat a pathetic puppet show and have no clue why they were ordered to do so. Would YOU entrust such a bunch with any serious plans?

It should be a Red Alert time. No pun intended.

And.. Who Are The Real Sponsors?

The immediate ones are sadly obvious:

1. Reliance India Corporation. The first day’s hate-spewing session was “Moderated” by a rather hungover-looking gent. The RELIANCE DHIRUBHAI AMBANI CHAIR IN ANTHROPOLOGY at Stanford University. His CV reads more anti-Hindu, anti-India, than that of Mullah Masood’s and Robert Clive’s combined. Every time you hear of a Hindu or Indian kid beaten up by “Dot-Busters”, take a moment to thank Shri Mukesh Ambani, in loving memory of his Dad, Dhirubhai Ambani.
2. INFOSYS Corporation. Funded Professor Sheldon Pollock. I hear that one of his dear PhD alums is a leader of the barking bigot India-Haters. As you read Ms. Trusckhe’s hate-tweets, take a moment to thank Shri Narayana Moorthy. Named after the primary deity of Hinduism. A Brahmin, you know, the type that the recipients of his generosity so adore?
3. MAHINDRA Corporation. Funded the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. Antics take too long to list here.

And to think it was my dream to buy a Mahindra Bolero, fill it with Reliance petroleum, and go bouncing over the roads with an Infosys-made map like one of the Bollywood villains who generally have all the fun in the movies!

SOMANATH SYNDROME.

Satyam Eva Jayate.

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