No similarity between Hindu and Vedic doctrine

Since I have frequently started writing about Hindu and Vedic religions being different, naturally I keep on receiving many objections, threats and questions.  Just today I received a series of the questions from Mr. Aryan Sharma and I am happy to answer them. 

Most of the times many people are under false impressions about the religion and its origin; hence the ignorant questions or objections are the inevitable outcome. I urge upon the readers to study carefully the cultural history of subcontinent Without keeping any biases or prejudices so that they also can reach the same conclusion as I have!

Q1.How Vedic tatva gyan differ from yoga darshan,Vaisheshik, Upanishads?

Ans. : As per Vedic doctrine one only can attain better life after the death if he believes in sacred Vedas, Smritis and offers respect to the abstract gods through fire sacrifices. There is no concept in Vedic doctrine like ultimate salvation. The concept or even word “Ishvar” is absent in the Vedas like sacred syllable “Om”. Yoga also does not find any place or mention in the Vedic doctrine.

Samkhya, Vaisheshika along with Nyaya and Yoga Darshana are totally contrary to the Vedic philosophy. Also, Samkhya Darshana has pre-Vedic roots those thrived in Asura clans, ancient predecessors of the Hindus. The core of Hindu philosophy is duality in the form of Shiva-Shakti which gets unified in the form of Advaita. Samkhya Darshan treats Shiva-Shakti, not as the personified gods but the fundamental principle in form of the Prakriti and Purush. Salvation is the ultimate aim which can be attained by simple puja, bhakti or practicing the Yogic ways. Hindu doctrine essentially finds unity in the self (atman) and creative source that is abstract in form of the "Parmatman".

Vedic philosophers have been against these ideas including idol worship which is prohibited by the Smritis. Later on, when the Vedics could convert many from the Hindu religion, these ideas were penetrated in the Vedic religion but they appropriated by maintaining the supremacy of the Vedas while giving the subordinate position to the Hindu scriptures.

  

Q2.If Vedas were not allowed to women then how Devi Lopamudra, wife of Sage Agastya wrote verses of Rigveda?

Ans.: Banning women from the Vedas and Sanskrit was far later development in the Vedic religion. First of all Vedas themselves had become indiscernible as its language was a mix of Old Persian and old Prakrits. Vedic language has been gone through at the least five modifications as per Witzel. What women would do even if they just recited Vedic verses without understanding them? A Vedic scholar Kautsa also had declared that the Vedas are meaningless!

Prohibiting women from Vedic rites also had another reason. Vedic religion is based on the patriarchal order where women are treated secondary, just as a mean for reproduction. They do not have equal rights, either in religion or in domestic matters. Hindu order always was egalitarian where women possessed equal rights and freedom in the society. If we go through the Prakrit literature, we find hundreds of poetess and their invaluable compositions. Many female yoginis have authored Tantra scriptures. If we look at the saints we will find many female saints emerged boldly claiming genderless equality.  Such phenomena is absent from Vedic social history.

As far as Lopamudra is concerned, verses in Rigveda have been composed by her to woo her husband to satiate her desires instead of taking the path of celibacy. The verses attributed to her do not create a picture of husband and wife being equal. In fact, her verses are an outcry of a woman who is deprived of her conjugal rights. This is why the Vedics never want to discuss her hymns those are in a way outcry of the Vedic women!

Gender-based equality is totally absent from the Vedas.

Q3.If vedas were not allowed to Shudras than how Kavash Ailush who was born to a Shudra became mantra drashta of Rigveda?

Ans.: Kavasha Ailusha was not “Shudra” though many try to conveniently misinterpret the term to show how Vedics also were egalitarian. The fact is since Vedics had not come across Shudra tribe till then, on what basis kavasha could be termed as Shudra? The only fact is though he was inferior by birth as per Vedic social norms, he very much was the product of the Vedic society. Conflating him with Shudra (a tribe, originally known as Sudda) is not only erroneous but misleading.

Q4. If Vedas brought discrimination and upper and lower caste division, Brahman supremacy etc . than How was Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati able to prove from Vedas that Vedas are for all varnas and women.

Ans: Dayanand Sarasvati was attempting to revive Vedic religion in the new order and wanted to bring non-Vedics in the ambit of Vedaism for socio-political reasons. Vedas do not speak at all about to whom the Vedas are applicable and to whom not. The Smritiers codified the Vedic religion and restricted the Vedas to only those who were adherents of the Vedic religion and social system. So-called Shudras had their own religion and hence there was no need to them to learn the Vedas. They had their own Tantra based doctrine and they have been following it since pre-Vedic era.

  

Q. 5 when did Shaiv dharam and Jainism came?

-Shaiva (Hindu) religion has remote roots. Archeological evidences prove that this religion was thriving from at the least 3500 BC. Jainism is offshoot of Shaivism that developed the doctrine of Shaivait renunciation and added non-violence element to it. However, there is little to differentiate between Hinduism and Jainism. The ascetic ways were originally developed by Hindus. Shiva is always seen in ascetic form. The founder of the Jainism is also known as Adinatha, another name of Shiva.

There also are some more questions; however, I have answered only those that have some coherent order.

In fact many do not like to digest the truth that Vedic and Hindu religions are fundamentally different and principally contrary to each other, the basic being the differences in social philosophies.

It is time for egalitarian Hinduism to break free from Vedic varna

It long seemed to me that something was amiss with the various stories about Hinduism and caste. The received theories of Hinduism failed to explain an assortment of facts on the ground. Hinduism was a jigsaw puzzle that did not fit.

The main theory today is that the Vedic religion is the source of Hinduism but this fails to explain how the Vedic belief system could have generated the intense fertility-occultism and idol worship found in Hinduism. From Kedarnath, Kashi and Somnath across to Hampi, the Hindus follow an ancient Shaivite and fertility worship tradition which is fundamentally different to the Vedic religion. Khajuraho or Konark could not have possibly arisen from Vedic thought. This main theory of Hinduism also fails to explain the obvious – that if the Vedas are the source of Hinduism, why are Vedic gods missing from places of Hindu worship. 

I found it difficult to be persuaded by scholars who, in order to prove their Vedic origin theory, claimed that idol worship was a later addition to Hinduism during the Purana era. This did not reconcile with innumerable archaeological proofs about the remote ancestry of fertility worship across India. Also, the ritualistic practices of the Vedics are based on Vedic guidelines (Vedokta) while Hindus conduct their rituals with Puranokta (based on tantra).

I conducted my own research to fit the jigsaw puzzle and have come to three main findings: One, that Hinduism and the Vedic religion are distinct. Two, that caste (jati) is entirely unrelated to Hinduism, being a mere occupational category prevalent in ancient Indian society. Three, it is false that jati has been rigid from time immemorial. Its relative rigidity is very recent and arose from two factors: economic forces and opportunistic attempts by Vedics during India’s medieval economic crisis to graft their varna system on the jatis. This means that since jati (caste) has nothing to do with religion and is merely a socio-economic occupational category, it will dissolve quickly once the Indian economy liberalizes and the poor get an opportunity to rise.

These are bold claims. I am aware that the burden lies on me to prove them. I have written a book in Marathi and none has been able to refute my evidence, to date, after three editions. I am now translating this research into English and have made available the draft on the internet for comment. 

I must mention here that it is important to understand the facts about how the Vedic religion came to India. That research I have published in a separate book, of which an English version is also available.  The Vedic religion came into ancient India via a relatively few Vedic refugees from South Afghanistan. These refugees had fought numerous wars with their co-religionists (the Zoroastrians) and had been forced to flee. 

For thousands of years, India saw the gradual evolution of an occupational jati system – which was entirely unrelated to the religious belief system.  Jatis were highly mobile, being based on expertise and innovation. Occupational guilds were an expression of the economic clout of these jatis which remained dominant at least till the tenth century A.D. and also issued coins. However, socio-political and economic circumstances began to change for the worse from the tenth century, including a series of terrible famines and the take over of trade by new Muslim rulers, and the guilds finally collapsed. These crumbling guilds established defensive barriers to entry in order to minimize competition to their occupation. These events finally led to the fabled self-reliant villages, where occupations become more and more hereditary.

In the meanwhile, the Vedics had, after almost two thousand years, managed to finally gain a small political foothold during the Gupta era through royal patronage. This gave them the opportunity to proselytize, with the first goal of increasing Brahmins. They now had the resources to incentivize Hindu temple priests to convert to Vedic Brahmins. Note that Hinduism did not have any Brahmins and till today some Hindu temples do not have any concept of Brahmin. By converting the priests, the Vedics were now able to take over many valuable Hindu properties and got the opportunity to rewrite numerous Hindu texts to introduce their concept of pyramidal varna.  The Vedics managed to persuade others to install them in a position higher than anybody else in society.  The rest was easy. 

The economic collapse that took place a thousand years ago gave the newly converted mass of Vedic Brahmins the opportunity to link the by-now more rigid jati system with varna, making it appear that the economic condition of the lower jatis was the outcome of “god-given fate”. Caste assemblies inadvertently reinforced this message in their economic self-interest to shut out other occupations. At the same time, the Vedics launched a major attack on tantra, gradually causing the Hindus to become suspicious of their own worldview. A sense of impurity and pollution was introduced into Hinduism, leading to untouchability. Despite this, we note that many Hindu rituals and idols continued to remain tantra-centric and a significant level of social and occupational mobility remained. 

Then came the British which gave the Brahmins a further opportunity to advance their Vedic agenda. The Brahmins were the first to explain Hinduism to the British. The British liked to think about Vedic supremacy, and its having come from the West. In fact, the magnitude of the seeming takeover of Hinduism was so huge that the British thought that this could only have occurred as a result of major invasions. The Aryan Invasion Theory received a huge boost. They began preferring the “higher” varnas for administrative appointments and neglected the study of the tantra traditions and what the common people outside the big towns do. 

They classified the Indian people into five different “races” and began looking for a racial link between jati and race – this would further support their own sense of superiority. In this conducive atmosphere, some Vedics now began dreaming of a revival of the ancient Vedic religion – something no one had ever thought of trying in the past. 

The modern caste “system” was now ready to be created – through the British census. During it, many jatis sought to upgrade their varna by changing caste names (today, of course, many jatis seek to reduce their official social status, it being more profitable to do so). In this manner, the superficial British histories of India manage to obscure the fact that had been widely known till before their time – that Hindu and Vedic religions were distinct. Subsequent generations of Indian elites have grown up with this distorted knowledge, given also the fact that many Vedics managed during British times to launch pro-Veda movements. 

This racist history of Hinduism had political implications. The elites from the “lower” jatis, who had been mis-educated through British interpretation of Indian history now underwent an identity crisis. Many blamed Brahmins and the Manusmriti, having forgotten that they (the jatis) had themselves chosen to clamp down into a hereditary system a thousand years ago. Anti-Brahmin movements began and many caste conflicts became violent.

My research demonstrates that Manusmriti is problematic in many ways, but its intent and reach was extremely limited – only to a very few Hindus. It had therefore no role in humiliating the “lower” castes since it was never used against them. To grasp this we need to understand who were the Shudras. Shudra was the name of a tribe into whose lands the band of Vedic refugees first settled. The Vedics broadened the use of this term which subsequently connoted all non-Vedics. Manu notes many neighbouring Shudra kingdoms which shows their political and economic clout vis-à-vis the Vedic refugees. But at the same time, the Vedics did hire a few Shudras as personal servants. It was to prevent the intermixing of the Vedics with these servants, something which was starting to occur, that Manu dictated his humiliating commands against the servants. These commands were not intended, nor could the feeble Vedics refugees possibly have applied them to the broader Shudras (the Hindus). 

That the Vedic project to graft varna on egalitarian Hinduism has failed can be seen from the failure of the Vedic Brahmins to map jatis on to varna. In fact, they simply can’t be mapped – there are just too many jatis. Moreover, similar jatis have been mapped onto different varnas in different parts of India because of local economic conditions. Thus, a caste can be touchable in one region and untouchable in others. Therefore there is simply no link between jati and varna. Caste “system” is a figment of the imagination of historians tutored in ignorant British interpretations of Indian history.

The only way this sorry mess can end is two-fold. First, we need to understand the economic and political history of the two distinct religions and disentangle egalitarian Hinduism from the embrace of casteist Vedic religion. Second, and this is urgent, we need to bring liberal governance to India to ensure education and economic development for the poorest of the poor.