Gandhi, Godse and Geeta

Does anybody think that untimely death (assassination) of Gandhi helped Nehru to prolong his rule and through total control of Congress party, establishing a dynasty in Indian politics continuing to this day?
What is the probability of having Gandhi living 10 more years and never coming in conflict with Nehru on any major issue?
Sadna: You are right that not just Gandhi but Nehru and Jinnah never had personal popularity in Punjab the way they enjoyed in many other part of India. Eevn now various Muslim Leagues do not use Jinnah speeches or Independendent movement history to win votes because it won`t work. I know in Congress rallies, Nehru dynasty pictures alongwith Gandhi dominate, not so for Jinnah and other ML leaders in P-Punjab.

THIS IS AN ENLIGHENING ESSAY ON THE EFFECT OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ON MORALITY ELUCIDATING GHANDI,S IMAGE OF A PERSON OF GREAT ACTION DUE MAINLY TO THE EFEECT OF GEETA ON HIM IN THE CHILDHOOD. THIS IS SOMETHING VERY INSIGHTFUL.

dost-mittar #134
Just to clarify, I was not doubting there were threats to Gandhiji`s life. The quote in #88 seems to indicate he himself expected them.

Pardesi #133
Thats right. What you relate is also quoted as the reason why Yudhishthira had to go to hell for a spell in the version I know, ie he said `Aswathama the elephant is dead`, intending that Dronacharya should think its his son. It didnot help Yudhishthira that it was technically not a lie and that Krishna put him up to it.

As for Krishna, he was the Supreme Self which is the seed in every being and etc, but in his bodily form he didnot escape unscathed. Gandhari, the mother of the Kauravas, is said to have cursed him, that as all her sons had been wiped out, so would all his kinsmen, the Yadavas. And thats what eventually happened.

harimau #132
``the Kauravas do not have the legal right to inherit half the kingdom. So, why were they given half of the kingdom? ``

The answer is a bit long and anyone may correct me if I am wrong.
After the cousins` education, they all returned to Hastinapur. Yudhishthira as heir apparent became very popular with his subjects and Duryodhana got jealous. So he plotted to kill the Pandavas. He got King Dhritrarashtra to send the 5 Pandavas and Kunti to attend a Shiva festival in Varanavrata where he got built a highly infammable lac palace for them to stay. The plan was to burn them to death, only the Pandavas and Kunti escaped in time. Everyone thought the Pandavas and their mother had died in the blaze because the bodies of some beggars who had stopped for the night were later found.

After an year spent hiding in the forest, the Pandavas emerged from hiding so that Arjuna could attend Draupadi`s swayamvara, win her and ally himself with his future in-laws as a step towards recovering their kingdom.

Once she had been won and the Pandavas` identity revealed, Bhishma, Dhritrarashtra and other elders decided to keep the peace by splitting the kingdom into half between the Kauravas and Pandavas and to give the Pandavas the ancient capital Khandavaprastha. The Pandavas cleared the forests around the old overgrown capital and rebuilt it calling it Indraprastha which is said to be Delhi.

Sadna # 130 . . . exactly my point to . . . logical inference and illogical inference are almost the same thing . . . thus, what is evidence for one person is not for the other! The other point is that the missing 4th corner was my mising 4th corner, my child had his/her own missing 4th corner, which was not related to mine.

Please appreciate the concepts of illusion?

As for Gandhiji wrt Punjabis . . . I have heard it so often . . . who gave a billy-goat about religion? How come Punjabis got shafted, along with bengalis, in what was essentially a game over imperial ambitions by British WOG lawyers? Did you read Jack Straw`s latest statements in England?

Ref sadna #19

[harimau #7
You are mistaken. The story goes that legally, being blind Dhritrarashtra could not be king and so his brother was King. When King Pandu died, Dhritrarashtra became the Regent while waiting for the princes to grow up while Yudhishtra was heir apparent all along. Looking at C Rajagopalachari`s Mahabharata in English, Duryodhana himself mentions this in a number of conversations, eg when persuading his father to allow him to plot against the Pandavas.]

So, since Dhritarashtra was never King, the Kauravas do not have the legal right to inherit half the kingdom. So, why were they given half of the kingdom?

[Its not the claim of the Kauravas on the kingdom which makes them villianous, there was a lot of villiany quite apart from this.]

Hey, villainy is not the issue here. The question is who has legality on his side. Sometimes, the villains do. We must then swallow hard and grant the villains their due.

Sadna, Dost-mittar 112 & 118
We learned another version of Yudhishtra (Y)’s last journey.
In their last journey, while others died for different reasons (e.g., Draupadi died for her special love, little extra than her other four husbands, for Arjun), Y lost a thumb before reaching heaven. When he asked, he was told that he had knowingly kept quite during Krishna inspired trick they played upon Draunacharya (D).
You see, in order to kill D (the master of all his student warriors) with shocking, but false, news of his son Ashvasthama (A)’s death, Krishna prepared a game plan. D would only believe the news if it comes from Y, due to his 24-carat reputation. They found an elephant whose name just happened to be A, and they first slaughtered him. Now all our saintly prince Y had to do was to say, in front of D, that A the elephant has died, and that was technically right. However, Krishna, our holy avatar, blew his shankh, for a few moments when the word elephant was mentioned. Poor D, did not hear the word elephant and believing Y, died due to his enormous love for his only son A.
Moral of the story, when you go upstairs they do take into consideration the intent not just legalities of your actions. If this is true, I wonder how Krishna was judged. But then he must have been exempt from all this since his intentions, on a higher level, were to promote peace by winning war. Not to mention the fact that he himself is the ultimate boss or avatar. Who knows.

veeresh #124
A number of things we can safely accept by logical inference though we cannot see it with our own eyes. For example, that each of us has a brain(have you ever seen yours?), that ABVajpayee is our Prime Minister, that if you lived on a higher floor and the 4th corner was indeed a Mars traveller, your small children would fall off whenever you turned your back. Trust noone`s small children are habitual Mars travellers too :).

dost-mittar #118
There are holy scriptures and then there are the Sopranos and car commercials. Given that the West`s policy toward one major region is shaped by the philosophy in one of the above items .. :)
--
It so happens that my mom was in N.Delhi in 47-48. She herself doesnot remember any anticipation of an assassination, though perhaps others did. She remembers the Thursday fasts when children took their share of flour to school for the refugees. She says that she too attended a few of Gandhiji`s weekly prayer meetings at Birla house. One Friday they found the Birla House gardens were all laid waste and that the prayer meeting was cancelled. The next week`s meeting(which they didnot attend) was the one where Gandhiji was assassinated. They got the news from the radio and the announcer wept while announcing his death.

I`ve met Punjabis who hated Gandhi, but I donot fully understand why. Recently events in Gujarat have revived curiosity about Bengali/Punjabi nostalgia about commonalities. It is without doubt a very worthwhile blessing now. But were there similar sentiments back then and if so why didnot these sentiments translate into bonds strong enough to get through those difficult times? What is it that Gandhiji could have done which these bonds failed to do?

Nooralain 127
I am neither anybody`s grave-kisser nor anyone`s ass-licker. If you find some brilliance in my writings then it obviously means that you have not come across brilliant writings.

I do not fancy myself a `writer` at all. Most present-day `writers` and `poets` are losers anyway. Please spare me the `honor` to seat me in their midst.

I have never had a chance to read the Geeta but if Mahatma Gandhi`s
assassin used it as an excuse for his crime, he misread it.

Ras

GhalibZaman...reading your posts, I find you display the same religious brilliance as fellow interactor farangi kush, hamzad afaqui and progresive etc. Have I been interacting with the latest incarnation of the above? :)

re: #121 by arjun_m

``You have failed the first rule of debating. When you state something, it is for you to prove that god/whatever exists. It is for people who claim the existence of god to prove their assertion.``

Good to know you are an atheist. At least that is what you imply in the above statement. I have no problem with that. It is your personal matter.

Most people who believe in God would be hardpresssed to prove His existence (at least the kind proof that would satisfy the scientific community). Does that mean all these people stop believing in God? Again, let me ask you the question, which i have already asked. What kind of a proof are you talking about? How do you prove sugar is sweet or rose smells good? God has to be experienced. Does the fact that spiritual masters of the past (across cultures and continents) have talked about God and felt His presence mean nothing to you?

Now let us see if you can claim to be smarter than some top notch scientists in the past and present, who did believe in a ``higher power`` without any proof/evidence.
A number of top notch scientists like Newton, Einstein, Galeilio, Copernicus, Kepler, Pasteur, Harvey, Faraday, Hawkins etc. have believed in God.
Go to the url: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/quotes.html
and see what many scientists have to say on this.
Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist) has this to say: ``Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.`` (Ref: Hawking, S. 1988. A Brief History of Time. p. 175).
Carl Sagan (Astrophysicist and writer of many popular science books) in his introduction to the book ``A brief history of Time`` speaks of how Hawking set out to understand the mind of God. There is only one other scientist (AFAIK) who could make such a tall claim. Albert Einstein (arguably one of the greatest scientists who ever lived) said this: ``I`m not much with people, and I`m not a family man. I want my peace. I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomena in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.``

The problem with present day science is that it is at a threshold of many new discoveries. Still, you cannot prove existence of God or Soul with all the latest scientific techniques we have. This does not mean God does not exist. It only means man has to wait a little longer to discover the truth.
There are many paths to the same truth. Yogis of the past have discovered a time-tested way. If one has to disprove it, one has to try it out first. Few scientists today have even attempted to look at yoga as a means of reaching higher consciousness. At best, many research centers have validated its usefulness in CV problems, and as a stress-relaxation technique.
But the yogis of the yore were not trying to relax. They were pretty relaxed to begin with! They were trying to reach the state of higher consciousness with a time tested scientific technique. The technique has been explained by Patanjali in his spiritual classic ``Yogasutra`` and has been validated by many renouned yogis. The technique is difficult and time consuming. Like any other scientific query it seeks to answer the question: Does God exist? It has its own inclusion and exclusion criteria set out by Patanjali in first 2 steps (Yama and Niyama). It is clear as to what kind of people can do this and who cannot . It also sets out clearly identifiable results at the end of each stage. Am i being stupid? I am only quoting the spiritual authorities who swear to the efficacy of that technique. Like any good technique, the one elucidated by Patanjali (modified to some extent today) is reproducible and result oriented. I will leave it at that.
The rest of the post about Elvis and others is all rubbish. How many people believe Elvis is alive today? Compare that to the number of people who believe Jesus lived.

Your argument about ``headache and doctor`` is a cheap shot. I am a doctor myself and i am not impressed with that line of argument.

Sridhar

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Nand#117, mirrors are the best ways to create illusions. Also, this is something I tried right now . . . if I try to see my fourth corner by using a mirror, I lose one of the other three corners. Likewise, using a 360 degree camera would also not qualify because, simply, the camera can be fooled too.

This set of questions and answers then progresses into some heavy maya and illusion scenarios.

Zafar . . . yes, it would be good to meet Unkils too?

Sadna . . . the crow and the cockroach, who may actually eventually inherit the earth, do happen to possess 360 degree vision. Maybe there is something there. I presume there are other birds, mammals, insects etcetc which can see the fourth corner. But they can`t tell us about it.

Therefore, does the 4th corner really exist?

Likewise, on a lighter note, what happened to all the missing socks making a zillion single socks worldwide?? Is there proof that a sock-heaven of single socks does not exist?

Zafar miaN why not -- purde ke bahar -- get together in USA when u r in USA -- with Chowkis like dost-mitter, shammi, sadna, aminashah, shanker, hamidm, tahmed, prem, pankaj, roamair, freethinker, soysauce, pmishra,YLH, urstruly -- and Naqshbandi miaN (unheiN phir se mussalman banana hai) -- who like to reveal themselves -- in New York or in Atlanta -- or in Miam -- let`s have an annual sandhya mahfil of chowkis --anywhere in the United States:-)

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts