Manusmriti

Who is a Hindu? What they don’t tell you about Advaita Published on 30th August, 2020, in Mumbai Mirror. Advaita Vedanta is the de facto philosophy followed by Hindutva. The reason for this is not spiritual. It is political. Advaita Vedanta says the whole world is a manifestation of the one and only God (brahman) and all diversity we see is delusion (maya) as the result of ignorance (advidya). This idea works very well when you are trying to unite various caste groups into one vote bank. The idea of Advaita Vedanta being the foundation of Hinduism is relatively new, with origins in writings of ..

Published on 5th August, 2018, in Mumbai Mirror. The text Manusmriti does not call itself Manusmriti (recollected reflections of Manu on social affairs); it calls itself Manavadharma-shastra (a treatise on human social conduct). It has a thousand verses for Brahmins, a thousand verses for the king and his law, only eight verses for vaishyas (merchants) and barely two for shudras (service providers). Yet the British saw it as a Hindu rulebook paralleling Sharia, the Muslim rulebook. Sharia derives authority from the words of god and god’s messenger, concepts unfamiliar to Hinduism. Manusmriti states that it is based on Shurti (Vedic ideas), Smriti (tradition), the behaviour ..

Published on 31st January, 2017, on www.dailyo.in . Manusmriti is usually traslated as "code of Manu", but it literally means "reflections of Manu". It presents itself as a document that compiles and organises the code of conduct for human society. It came into being roughly 1,800 years ago, around the period that saw yagna-based Vedic Hinduism transform into temple-based Puranic Hinduism. Many assume Mansumriti to be the law book of Hindus, something like the Sharia is for Muslims, or the Church Dogma for Catholic Christians, or the Constitution of India. It is not. Manusmriti is a code of conduct put together by brahmins, mainly for brahmins, and maybe ..

Published on 30th December, 2016, on www.dailyo.in . Before we answer this question, we must keep in mind that the current laws against homosexuality in India are based on colonial laws, which are based on Abrahamic mythology. It involves a reading — some would say a deliberate misreading — of a tale where God destroys the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone because they perform acts that go against God’s commandment. What these acts were is open to interpretation, depending on how you read the old Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek scripts. The anti-queer lobby says city dwellers indulged in homosexuality. The queer ..