19 Feb 2015
Opponent: A woman is also untouchable in the four days during the cycle of menses. Due to this reason, the woman is boycotted from the Vedic rituals.
Defendant: The monthly cycle of menses in the case of women is described as the 1/4th part of the sin in killing Vrutra asura by Indra as per the scripture. The 3/4th of the sin was distributed equally among scented earth, water with froth and flowers with pollen grains. Therefore, the sin is equally divided between women, water, flowers and earthen soil. If one is untouchable, the other three must be also untouchable. But, you are using - the scented soil (scent means the natural scent that comes from the soil) to prepare Vedic altar in the ritual, the water with froth for washing the divine statues and the flowers with pollen grains to worship God. In such case, how can you say that a woman in the menstrual cycle is not sacred? The woman in those four days of the cycle is a patient due to profuse bleeding and is a patient needing full rest. Even a male person with profuse bleeding is a patient and is forcibly bedridden. If you reveal this truth, the women will not take rest and participate in the house hold duties as usual. To restrain them from the daily work by force, such a lie (Arthavada) is projected. A lie that does good is not a sin. The other three partners of the sin are non-living and hence, such condition is not applicable. Therefore, on this basis you cannot reject women from the rituals.
The classification of the public into four castes is not at all wrong. Every profession has its own dignified respect. The high or low status given to any caste on the basis of the profession is totally wrong. The face, hands, thighs and feet of God gave birth to Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vyshyas and Shudras as per the Veda. All the limbs are equally important and if any limb is injured, all the other limbs experience the pain. The face indicates the knowledge and teaching. The hands indicate the capability to fight. The lap indicates the rich and prosperity for the dynamism of the society supporting the feet. The feet indicate the dynamic public service. These indicate the professions of the four castes, which are not by birth but by qualities and actions. Killing a living being for the selfish food even though the food is available in plenty as grains and vegetables created by God, is considered to be the highest sin. Non-violence is treated as the highest justice (Ahimsaa paramo Dharmah). In contrast, violence like injury and killing living being is considered to be highest injustice. Based on this point, the high and low respect is developed in the caste system. In such case, the Kshatriyas must be in the third place since they take non-vegetarian food. But, they were given the second place of respect since they are rulers. A ruler must be given extraordinary respect to facilitate effective administration. Some argue that since the rulers are fighters, they need non-vegetarian food for good strength. This is not correct justification because the components of strength like proteins, minerals and vitamins are available in large quantities in vegetables only. The medical science also says that the protein from vegetable is far better than the synthesised protein from animal. Parushurama, a pure vegetarian, was the greatest fighter and defeated all the non-vegetarian fighters. Hence, there is no compromise in this point. Brahmin, being the source of knowledge to guide every aspect is given the highest place like the place of a prime minister in our country. The President and the army represent Kashtriyas. The community of business and industrialists represent Vyashas. All the public servants in the posts of administration and governance involved in the public service represent Shudras. Shudras are the most important machinery of the Government established for the public service. A Shudra resembles the house wife engaged always in the duties. The society is also compared to a big home. Hence, shudras were given the option of public service like the house wife given the option of family service. Just like the woman gets her share from the fruit of the divine worship of her husband, a Shudra also will get his share from the fruit of the divine worship done by every Brahmin. By this, everybody in the society gets the blessings from God and divine protection. At the end of divine worship, a Brahmin says that the fruit of his worship should protect everybody (Sarve janaah sukhino bhavantu). The Kshtriyas and Vyshas do the worship and their families are protected. From the worship of a Brahmin not only the women of Brahmins are protected but also the males and females of Shudras are protected. Hence, a Brahmin should do more worship than other castes. By this, everybody in the entire society gets protection.
Opponent: Brahmins never say that the community of Shudras should be benefited from their worship.
Defendant: A Brahmin does not also say at the end of worship that the Brahmin females should be benefited. Yet, the females get their share. The Brahmin says that all the people of the society should be blessed by his worship. You can deduct Kshtriyas and Vyshyas since they also do the same worship and their females get the share. Hence, the needy are only the community of Shudras and the females of their caste. Therefore, everybody means the needy only. The Brahmin is enjoying the fruits of the service of his wife in the house. Similarly, he enjoys the fruits of service of shudras in the society. Hence, the share from the worship is disposed automatically to the women of his caste and all Shudras.
Opponent: Why Shudras and ladies were not equally respected?
Defendant: The less respect given to Shudras is only a constant remainder of their non-vegetarian food, which is a sin. The less respect is only to rectify them and not to insult them. As far as the ladies are concerned, ancient sages always respected women and Manusmruthi says that Angels feel happy if the ladies are respected (Yatra naaryastu...). Hence, the respect is always linked to good action and bad action only. Of course, the middle age scholars treated the respect linked with foolish and ignorant ego of caste by birth and hence are to be condemned.
Opponent: You may give all this explanation to cheat Shudras in order to bring false satisfaction in their mind.
Defendant: Since Shudras are from outside, the cheating of shudras by Brahmins may be accepted for a while. But, will the male Brahmins cheat their own females by this same very process? If Brahmins cheated outside Shudras, they must have simultaneously cheated their inside females also. Since the process of transmission of fruit of worship is true, the ancient sages have established this system in the beginning of Kali age.
Performing this ritual Upanayanam to all castes by Swami Dayananda may be an immediate remedy to pacify the hatred and anger of the other denied castes in order to prevent their conversion to other religions. But, a patient analysis with cool mind reveals that this specific ritual performed by Brahmins alone is not upanayanam. Any worship applying the mind in God with full devotion through singing a prayer is the real Upanayanam with Gayatri Mantra. Therefore, no injustice was done to any caste at any time if you understand the upanayanam in its real and broader sense. Since no injustice was done in the past, there is no need of running after this meaningless ritual alone assuming that some divine treasure was hidden in it, which was enjoyed by certain castes only. In fact, if you examine carefully, the ritual done by Brahmins is not at all the Upanayanam with the real sense of Gayatri Mantra. The reason is that the ritual is done like a big function as in the case of marriage. Perhaps, it is justified to call such Upanayanam as Thread Marriage. There is no song of divine prayer since the females are not allowed. A hymn from the Veda written in Gayatri meter is called as Gayatri Mantra, which is just read or murmured or chanted only. The mind of the child is not at all absorbed in God in the absence of a sweet divine song. In fact, the mother should initiate the boy in to Gayatri Mantra through a melodious sweet song involving the prayer of God. Due to the foolish tradition of egoistic middle age scholars, who are egoistic of their gender, the mother and the song disappeared. Hence, it is not the sacred activity of taking the child near to God (Upanayanam) through a sweet song (Gayatri Mantra). A child is always attracted by a song and not by mere recitation of a hymn. If you compare an egoistic Brahmin chanting the Gayatri Mantra (since he does not know its meaning, you cannot justify him at least that he is grasping the knowledge of the divine form from it and hence Gayatri in the sense of Rudhi also cannot be taken here) and his wife worshipping God through sweet songs (Vratam), My dear friend! tell Me really by putting your hand on your heart, which of these two worships is real Upanayanam by Gayatri Mantra? Gayatri is really present with the women since she is also a woman. When you boycotted the women, the woman Gayatri also was boycotted by you. The proof of this is that you are not entertaining the idea of a song in your worship, even though you know that the song is the highest attractive form of worship. What is the reason for your rigid mind in not allowing this idea in to your brain? The only reason is that the Divine Mother Gayatri cursed you and left you since you boycotted women from the Upanayanam.
Woman is the basis of sweet music and sweet song. Thus, you have denied the basis of Gayatri itself. You can find the real Upanayanam involving the worship of Gayatri only in a group singing the divine songs on God in their mother tongue and getting absorbed in the devotion because they understand the meaning of song, which brings down the nectar of devotion. If you see a Brahmin boy chanting the Gayatri Mantra without knowing the meaning and as a result not tasting even a trace of devotion, such boy is anxious to finish the prescribed chanting number of Gayatri Mantra so that he can join his friends to play a game. I, therefore request the present Brahmins to realise the truth and modify the ritual in to such a way so that some traces of the essence of real Upanayanam can be brought over here to benefit the child. By such practice you are not creating devotion to God in the mind of child, but you are creating allergy to God in the beginning itself! The absence of knowing the meaning of Gayatri in the mind of child is nothing but a reflection of tradition of the so called middle age Vedic scholars, who just recited the Veda without knowing its meaning. This cannot be the reflection of ancient Vedic sages, who understood the Vedas and debated to a great depth in order to bring out the real concepts of God. After doing this Upanayanam, the boy is sent to a Vedic school for about 10 years in which he recites the Veda blindly without knowing its meaning, which was similar to his recitation of Gayatri Mantra. This blind recitation of the Veda once again reflects the practice of middle age Vedic scholars, who also spent lot of time in blind recitation. It is highly laughable point that you are calling such a blindly reciting person as Veda Pandita or Vedic scholar. Pandita means the person having the knowledge of it. If you say that a person is a great scholar in Hindi, does it mean that such a person blindly recites the sentences in Hindi without knowing the meaning of any word in Hindi?
This situation gives Me lot of pain in My heart because the very word ‘Veda’ indicates the knowledge. The person after blindly reciting the Veda says that he has completed the Veda Adhyayana. The word Adhyayana again means to know or knowledge. Both Veda and Adhyayana mean knowledge. The person is thus committing a double crime by saying that he has completed Veda Adhyayana. Therefore, the scripture says that you should complete Veda Adhyayana and then know the Veda (Vedo Adhyeatavyo jneyashcha). The aim of the scripture is that since people are wrongly using the word Veda Adhyayana only in recitation without knowing it, a third remainder (Jneyashcha) is given that one should know the Veda. The scripture, at last, scolded the blind recitation without its knowledge as worst recitation (Paathakaadhamaah). All these statements of scripture are useless before such people, who do not understand these statements, which are in Sanskrit language. All these efforts of scripture become useless like the blowing of conch shell before deaf! Devotion comes only when you know the meaning of what you recite. Neither the boy, nor the father of the boy, nor the priest, nor any person attending the ritual Upanayanam knows the meaning of even an alphabet of what is recited there. Don’t you think such a ritual is 100% useless? Of course, you have to perform it in order to escape the criticism of your foolish relatives. I assuredly tell all of you that every paisa spent on such ritual is useless and waste and you can treat this as function of a get-together of all your relatives.
The conclusion of all this analysis is that either you should learn Sanskrit language or do everything in your mother tongue. Either Mohammad should go to mountain or mountain should come to Mohammad. Since the second option is impossible, only the first option is inevitable. Similarly, learning Sanskrit language and understanding the scriptures in that language is little bit difficult, you better perform everything in your mother tongue. In any option, you should understand anything you utter and subsequently do. Remember that God is omniscient and knows every language with equal proficiency and hence you need not misunderstand that God knows only Sanskrit language. It is better to send the child after Upanayanam to learn Sanskrit and various scriptures so that perfect spiritual knowledge can be achieved instead of foolishly killing the time in blind recitation of the Veda. In the ancient time, there were no means to record the knowledge and hence preservation of the Veda through recitation was inevitable. Hence, the sages recited the Veda to preserve it from generation to generation. But, they did not stop with recitation. They studied its meaning and various scriptures also to bring out true spiritual knowledge for propagation. Now, the Vedas are printed in the form of books and there is neither fear of loss of Vedas nor even fear for the interpolation by insertions of new statements.
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