Silent Genocide of the Peacock People

When Saddam Hussein regime built the gigantic Saddam Dam on the Tigris River in 1985 it was not yet the ‘terror state’ and was aided actively by super powers aiming for geo-strategic advantages. Then it started a systematic removal of a particular religious sect in the Kurdish region. Many recorded individual testimonies pinpoint the date to September 23 or 24 1988 when the displaced persons were asked to present themselves to the police station without delay. Ali Hassan al-Majid who was in-charge of the campaign had stated that ‘they should arabize their area’.

Who were these people?

They were the Yezidis. They spoke a language called Kurmanji. They had been consistently termed as devil worshippers by the dominant Abrahamic religionists. They worship no devil but a divinity on a peacock. They have no concept of evil. Their worldview is monist. And they consider themselves as the original Kurds. For centuries this colourful sect of people had lived in freedom and had syncretistic assimilation of many streams of local as well as alien spiritual traditions. But with the advent of Abrahamic monocultures of belief a new saga of organized persecution started taking shape. Islamic regimes raided them, displaced them and exploited them. With the advent of European Christianity the missionary sketches of these people started fanning a picture of devil worshipping exotic cult. Soon they entered the popular psyche of modern world through fictionalized accounts. From pulp fiction writer Robert Howard to philosophical writer George Gurdjieff they were devil worshippers.    

They were the last pagan people of the Arabian Peninsula. Today after the Turkish caliphs, Iraqi dictators, the warlords of the colonial period, they are being mercilessly and humiliatingly being driven to extinction by the dreaded ISIS. Only today the conscience of the world has woken to the human tragedy of Yezidi extinction. It may be mainly because of the social media which is more decentralized and hence does not suffer from the Abrahamic bias of the mainstream corporate media. Throughout history the massacre, genocide, persecution and extinction of non-Abrahamic pagan societies have never got the same attention as the persecution of their Abrahamic counterparts – real or perceived.

For example the world very rightly is agitated over the holocaust of Jews in the Second World War. But the attitude of Winston Churchill towards Hindus was as hate-filled as the attitude of Hitler towards the Jews. And his attitude translated into action in the form of engineering the great Bengal famine. The holocaust of Gypsies-Roma do not yet have a memorial though the Gypsies went to the Nazi gas chambers along with Jews.  Even to this day Roma get persecuted throughout the West. While the anti-Semitism of Idi Amin had been well documented and criticized, his ethnic cleansing of Indian people from Uganda had never been criticized or even documented enough to enter the mind of the world conscience. In 1972 Idi Amin claimed that Allah told him to expel the Indians from Uganda. Even today 20,000 Indians are unaccounted for. The loss of 20,000 Indian lives is no subject matter for any major Hollywood movie or a Pulitzer winning literary account.

 

It is agonizing that it is always ethnic communities of Indian origin that have been facing the worst persecution for ages followed by genocide or mass murder. Today it is happening to the Yazidis. ISIS is abducting women and children and is starving them to death. It is subjecting them to the worst abuses. Even before ISIS, Yazidis have been systematically subjected to persecution, torture, humiliation and occasional mass murder. Even other Kurds who have been otherwise at the receiving end of the minority Sunni theocracy of Iraq do not worry about the discrimination and suffering the Yazidis face. Worse, the Arabs have joined ISIS to loot and destroy this miniscule minority. US tries to help but airlifting these people – what will happen to them if they are uprooted from their native land and made another ethnic group in US? They will become prey to evangelical forces in the US –destroying their spirituality in exchange to US citizenship.

In this connection it is worthwhile to remember what Swami Vivekananda said about the persecuted communities in the world history and the approach of India to them. In his September 11 address to the World Parliament of Religions he spoke of Mother India as : “… a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.”  

Today the cultural and ethnic children of Mother India settled in different parts of the planet due to various historic reasons expect the world community to treat them as their Great Mother treated them all. Is that too much to ask? If not then make it a point to shed a tear for the Yazidis and raise your voice for their freedom and safety.

Aravindan Neelakandan

YB-ET

ISRO Parliamentarians and Ancient Literature

The 27^th flight of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C23) launched SPOT-7 a French earth observation satellite into a 655 km Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). Along with SPOT-7 there were four co-passenger satellites – AISAT from Germany, two from Canada and one from Singapore. The successful launch of all the satellites by Indian PSLV marks an important landmark in the march of ISRO after it entered the international market for satellite launch vehicles in 1999.  On 26-05-1999 the Vajpayee government, then in a visionary bold move used the PSLV-C2 to launch the DLR-TUBSAT satellite of Germany and thus commenced the journey of India as a major player in the international market of space launch vehicles. The saga continued with the tally of satellites launched by the PSLV of ISRO now touching 40. The Antrix corporation – the commercial arm of ISRO was established under yet another visionary leader – P.V.Narasimha Rao in 1992.     

It is not just the launch vehicles that ISRO is taking to the global community. The global outreach of Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) services has been growing in a steady phase for the last two decades. IRS data particularly from Resourcesat-1, Cartosat-1 and Cartosat-2 are penetrating into new territories. The down-linking of IRS data with Australia has made the IRS presence in a significant manner in the southern hemisphere for the first time. In Africa IRS data is a major player with Cartosat-1 and Resource-1 data. Euromap seeks IRS data in Europe.

Now the urgent need is to use the full potential of ISRO’s various services to the benefits of the Indian people at all levels.

ISRO’s remote sensing applications have a vital importance for the planning of sustainable development in India and conserving her national resources. IRS series satellites - Resourcesat, Cartosat, Oceansat etc provide vital data regarding natural resources like forest, river basins, ground water, ocean status etc. The ISRO communication itself states: ‘Some of the important projects carried out in the country include Groundwater Prospects Mapping under Drinking Water Mission, Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land based observations (FASAL), Forest Cover/Type Mapping, Grassland Mapping, Biodiversity Characterisation, Snow & Glacier Studies, Land Use/Cover mapping, Coastal Studies, Coral and Mangroves Studies, Wasteland Mapping etc.’

Each of these reports is available in the ISRO website comprehensive data rich reports with attractive info-graphics.  However our people-representatives in both parliament and state legislative assemblies seldom have the knowledge of these reports pertaining to their constituencies and the link of their constituencies with those of others. In this connection Yuva Bharathi editorial team proposes a scheme that is ancient and rooted in Indian tradition which can also synchronize itself with the needs of our people representatives to apply the IRS data for their constituency development.

Let every people’s representative be given a laptop or an application that has the five – geo-resource zones of each constituency and bordering constituencies. The five geo-resource zones are based on the ancient Tamil classification of land into five categories. These categories were originally intended as literary techniques and yet they do seem relevant when we think of developing people-centered usage of IRS data for sustainable development. The categories are given below with their traditional Tamil names in the brackets:

·         Forest and Forest related activities: (Kurunchi)

·         Grassland and grassland related activities: (Mullai)

·         Farmland and farmland related activities: (Marutham) 

·         Ocean and Ocean related activities.: (Neithal)

·         Desert and sparsely populated areas and activities related to them: (Palai)

Interesting enough ISRO has reports for each of these categories. The categories cannot be seen as pigeonhole classification with no inter-connectedness. Each of these zones has specialized communities associated closely with the defining natural resource of the zone. They have cultural and spiritual dimensions also. Thus the forest based Kurunchi has as its Deity Murugan whose consort is Valli the daughter of tribal chieftain. The grassland has as its Deity Vishnu as His most popular avatar is as cowherd which is the human-resource interlink for the grassland eco-system. The farms depend on rain and Indra the celestial lord of rains is the Deity of this zone Marutham. For Neithal it is the Vedic Deity Varuna. For the deserts the fierce Goddess is the Deity. The zones are interconnected: The children of the ocean have to supply the inner-land salt and the mainland has to support the coastal communities with raw materials for boat making as well as net making. Specialized occupational groups have to come in contact with each other. The Deities then form a family relation thus emphasizing the organic inter-connectedness of these zones. Murugan of Kurunchi is married to the daughter of Neithal: Varuna and Indra are Vedic deities sharing many commonalities. All these point out that the natural resource based classification of ancient Tamils also has in it the possibilities for all kinds of networks between them: cultural, resource-based, occupation-based, economical, socio-political etc. 

Let us take the case of Mullai – which is grassland and livestock based system. In the case of India with neglect of this eco-system the 80 percent of our grassland has become degraded while the demand as well as production of milk has been on the increase. The need for revitalizing this important national natural resource of 2 Mha in India can be done very effectively by satellite based technologies. ISRO uses IRS-LISS III for the grassland mapping and study. However there is a significant gap between such gathering of data and their availability with the local legislators and members of parliament. The government should make it mandatory that every member of the Parliament should take a session with ISRO extension officer in studying the data available with ISRO pertaining to the five geo-natural zones present in his or her constituency. Already writer Joe D Cruz has made a memorandum to the Prime Minister to study the problem of coastal communities based on the framework of this geo-cultural/resource based framework.  We ask both ISRO and people’s representatives to come together to make a strong people-science network in order to achieve unprecedented exploration of the potential of space technology to benefit the humanity.

Aravindan Neelakandan

YB-ET

Yuvabharati : Youth Icon : August 2014 

 

Charaiveti . . . Charaiveti ...

Charaiveti Suktam (From Aitareya Brahmana)

नानाश्रान्ताय श्रीरस्तीति रोहित शुश्रुम। पापो नृषद्वरो जन इन्द्र इच्चरत: सखा॥
Nanashrantha sreerastheethi rohitha shushruma
Paapo nrushadwaaro jana indra ichaarathah sakhaa
Charaiveti  Charaiveti                                     7-15-7

This particular Sukta is known as 'Charaiveti Sukta'. It is part of'Aitareya Brahmans' and consists of five Mantras. Vedic Mantras give a clear indication ofthe life and philosophy lived and preached by our ancient Rishis who are men of high spiritual realisation. They are known as Mantra Drishtas. Their sole objective was to guide humanity in the right direction with a view to enable them to achieve total fulfilment of life. These Mantras are not only prayers addressed to the Supreme God under various names, butthey are also meant to enlighten the path for the fulfilment of all round prosperity in this world, here and now. They clearly express a positive and optimistic view of life, affirmative and all embracing; they are a mine of inexhaustible and dynamic practical wisdom. 'Charaiveti sukta' which consists of five Mantras are glowing example of what has been stated above.

These suktas exhort us to wake up, be dynamic and keep moving forward. Charaiveti means move forward and still forward, because only those who wake up and move forward achieve success in life. Human life must be successful and the way to success is to constantly move forward in the right direction. It figuratively speaks about the temperament of different types of men by relating them to the fourYugas. When a man is inert, idle and virtually sleeping (though he may be literally awake), he is in the Kaliyuga. When he wakes up and become alert it is Dwapara Yuga for him.

When the same person stands up, with his senses alert he enters Treta Yuga. When the same person sets his foot forward and starts walking Krita Yuga begins. Each Yuga is seen in the same person during these different stages.' Krita Yuga' means Yuga created by his own effort. We can together create Krita Yuga, also known as Satya Yuga by our own effort. For that we have to wake up and keep constantly moving ahead. You are the Master of your own Destiny; you can make it or mar it. If you only sit down your fortunes also stagnate. When you stand up there is an up rise in your fortune. When you sleep your fortune will also sleep. Only one who goes about seeking gets the sweet fruit in life. They alone can show the paths to prosperity who move forward constantly.

Sun is the source of inspiration and energy for all because he never sits idle, takes rest or sleeps. Make sun your ideal and not only you will succeed in life you will also bring light and dynamism to all others. All the five Mantras give us a positive energy to achieve success not only individually but for the whole society.

Vivekananda Kendra after two years of totally dedicated and country-wide hard work as mark of the 150th anniversary celebration of Swamiji is now entering upon the next phase.ln this context it is useful to remember that we never conducted a concluding function of the celebrations. It was a deliberate decision because we felt that Swamiji's work never concludes. It continues. It should continue. It should continue till Swamiji's vision of divinising humanity is achieved. He gave us the Mantra. 'Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached'. Is it not the same as the vedic suktas Charaiveti?

Swami Vivekananda was an ancient Rishi reborn as a modern Sanyasin to preach the same message. Only the idiom changes because the times have changed and the people understand the same fundamental Truth when expressed in the modern idioms. Swamiji was the tallest Rishi, who brought about a tremendous historic renaissance. He also wanted more and more Rishis to come up from the sacred soil of Bharat and preach the ancient Truth in the modem medium all over the world. He was confident that many more Rishis will come up to carry out this mission. He exhorted us 'Each one of you will have to become a Rishi to enlighten the world'. Eknath Ranade was a stalwart among such modern Rishis. During the centenary celebration of Swami Vivekananda he took up as life mission to establish the wonderful Rock Memorial to Swamiji and setting up Vivekananda Kendra as an efficient machinery to carry on the work forward. He gave us the motivation to work hard, move forward and achieve total success, 'Charaiveti,' 'Charaiveti'. Exceptthe Ultimate Reality everything else is on constant move. Movement is the law of life. The  river keeps on flowing, so it remains pure. If it stops moving, it becomes a pool of muddy water. The wind moves on, so the air we breathe is pure. The seed breaksoutofthe shell to become a plant. It grows and emerges out and gives us fruit. Man is no exception. From the time, the baby is bam, he grows and undergoes various stages of development and ultimately dies. But that is not the end. It is the beginning of a new life. The same is true of organisations too. Every organisation must remain a movement. Otherwise it stagnates. Movement means emerging into life. There is constant self renewal in life going on all over. If the process of self renewal stops, then it becomes fossilised .. Fossilisation is death-the end of the life. According to Sanathana dharma there are three concepts- Satya, Ritam ( ~ ), and Dharma. Satya is the absolute Truth, changeless and eternal. That is the seed from which all that exists comes into being. The entire cosmos with all its forms and names, all level of existence, past, present and the future are the expressions of Satya. The cosmic existence is relative. It is a mighty movement governed by the Ritam which is the cosmic law. The sun and moon, the stars and the planets, everything keeps on moving, strictly within the orbit, because ofthe Ritam governing them. 

Dharma is the manifestation of Satya, Ritam sustains all beings, living and non-living. Dharma is what sustains the world. It operates spontaneously in the animal world. The operation is instinctive to them. In the level of humanity it is conscious application. Dharma is consciously applied. So long as Dharma is observed, society keeps on functioning in a healthy way. If there is a lapse in the application of Dharma, society degenerates. lfthis goes unchecked society degenerates and may ultimately destroys itself. Then again the Divine intervention comes in the form of an Avatar and the movement goes on leading to the progress of the society. The wheels of Dharma are again set in motion. This is called 'Dharma Chakra Pravarthana'. All the renaissance movements that have occurred in our national life are initiated by Avatars as promised by Lord Krishna in Gita. Sri Ramakrishna was such an Avatar and Swami Vivekananda took up his vision which is now expressing itself in multifarious forms and ways. Vivekananda Kendra is part of this mighty, multilevel renaissance movement.

The story of Vivekananda Kendra is an excellent illustration of how the Vedic mantra can work wonders. After Swami Vivekananda visited Kanyakumari and sat in meditation on the rock, it was in deep slumber till the centenary celebrations started and Sree Devi was keeping vigil over it. Suddenly the sleep was disturbed and gradual awakening started creating a stir all around. The local people felt the stir. They started to move but it was slow and when hostile forces started opposing they felt helpless. Some even thought that Swamiji would not have swam and sat on the rock and a nominal memorial on the main land is sufficientto commemorate Swamiji's visit. Butthe stir within and the voice all around made them restless. A committee was formed to erect a memorial on the rock. One did not know how to go about the work. After that divine forces intervened and Man. Eknathji rushed to the spot with his rousing call to the people. People got up and sat to plan the future campaign with Man. Eknathji taking a bold initiative to achieve what seemed unachievable. People all over the country came forward with whole hearted support to the move. This was followed by the entire people standing up ready to take up the challenge, face all hurdles on the way and fulfil the objective. Thus came up the present magnificent Memorial with Swami Vivekananda symbolically standing up to his full stature setting the right foot forward and the movement began. After the earlier three stages or Yugas, the Satya Yuga was ushered in followed by a powerful movement in the name of Vivekananda Kendra.

The hostile forces have been thoroughly defeated. All the divine forces have come together. Next phase is Dharma samsthapana, an ideal state of society with spirituality as its central core, with the society well ordered on the basis of Sanathana Dharma-well organised, socially and economically strong, powerful and progressive, spreading the message of spirituality all around starting from Bharatto the world. Nothing less and nothing else is the mission entrusted to Vivekananda Kendra.

The workers of the Kendra could feel not only proud but also responsible to move further forward carrying the society with them and gradually establish the dream of Swami Vivekananda and Man. Eknathji in actual national life. Till that, there is no looking back, no rest midway. 'Charaiveti', is our mantra. 'Arise awake and stop nottill the goal is reached' is the call. Let us move forward.

P. Parameswaran

President

Vivekananda Kendra