A Foreword to Y. G. Krishnamurthy's "Independent India and a New World Order" by S. Srikanta Sastri

Y. G. Krishnamurthy with Nehru

IN this as yet half-created, half-understood world where Religion without Ecstasy, Law without Justice and Charity without Love attempt a delicate balance between social obligations and individual spiritual life, it is increasingly difficult because of a perverted sense of values to envisage a World-Society. The unique values of Personality escape integration into even a dynamic democratic state with its emphasis on standardization as a corollary to the materialistic trends of physical sciences and the temptation to power of vitiating the timeless spiritual values. 

Genuine creativeness demands a synthesis of ethos and humanitas in conformity with the laws of mediation between the phenomenal and noumenal, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, between the thesis and the antithesis. A materialistic, mechanist and fatalist doctrine of progress without purpose-whether conceived as a struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, a struggle between the "we-hold-what we-haves" and "we-grab-what-have-nots" or a crude nationalism, resulted in a new idolatry-a worship of concepts as enduring value, pseudo-rational and anthropomorphic. The result is apparent-fear and anger, menace and humiliation, wars and increasing authoritarianism trying to impose law, and order without creating peace.

The fundamental problem for a world-peace is how to rediscover the aptitude to create that

Y. G. Krishnamurthy

peace in ourselves and educate ourselves. It will be a re-discovery because the history of humanity presents us with personalities past and present, who are "mid-wives" and mediators, who deliberately willed and created a concept of freedom and a conquest of fear individual, tribal, national and international. Fear-the characteristic of the animal in Man has been shown by all great philosophers and prophets to be the root of "sin" assuming diverse forms of destructive herd-instincts, nationalism and sovereignties, class-wars, misuse of science and denial of religious absolutes.

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India - The Original Home of the Aryans by Dr S. Srikanta Sastri

Priest - King (Harappa)

The theory of the indigenous origin of the Aryans has been advocated by a number of scholars. MM. Ganganath Jha has tried, to prove that the original home was the Brahmarshi-desa. D. S. Triveda suggests that the original home of the Aryans was in the region of the river Devika in Multan. L. D.  Kalla advocates the claims of Kashmir and the Himalayan region. The various arguments in favour of this view may be summed up as follows:

1. There is no evidence to show that the Vedic Aryans were foreigners or that they migrated into India within traditional memory. Sufficient literary materials are available to indicate with some degree of certainty, that the Vedic Aryans themselves regarded Sapta-Sindhu as their original home (devakrita-yoni or devanirmita-desa). Migrating races look back to the land of their origin for centuries. The Parsis in India remember their origin after eight hundred years. The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians remembered their respective lands of origin even though they had forgotten their location. The Vedic Aryans, if at all they came from outside, therefore, must have lived in Sapta-Sindhu so many centuries before the Vedic period that they had lost all memory of an original home.
2. The linguistic affinities are not positive proofs of Aryan immigration. The Vedic Sanskrit

   

   "The History and Culture of Indian People - Vol I"

   has the largest number of vocables found in the Aryan languages. These are preserved in the languages of the Sanskritic family in different parts of India even when there has been inter-racial contact for centuries. On the other hand, if the pre-Vedic Aryan language was spoken in different parts of Europe and Asia where the Aryans had settled before coming to India, how is it that only a few vocables are left in the present- day speech of those parts, while the largest number of them is found in the distant places of ultimate settlement and racial ad- mixture in India? On the contrary this disparity can easily be explained if the pre-Vedic was the language of the homeland of Aryans and the other Aryan languages came into existence as a result of the contact between migrating Aryans and non-Aryan elements outside India and Persia.

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S. R. Ramaswamy - Journalist, Writer, Intellectual & Environmentalist

S. R. Ramaswamy

Sondekoppa Ramachandrasastri Ramaswamy is a renowned Indian journalist, writer, environmentalist and intellectual with more than 50 books and 1000 articles to his credit. His writings essentially mirror the literary, cultural, nationalist and developmental realities that are contemporaneous to the present day scenario. His outstanding support to "Voluntary Rural Development Initiatives" in the Indian state of Karnataka bear testament to his sense of social responsibility. He has additionally come to spear-head the renewed "Swadeshi" movement in the nation. Among his major campaigns was a movement which he led for restoration of people's customary rights over community lands threatened by ill-planned Governmental forestry policies. One such crusade saw him take an uphill battle against a well known conglomerate all the way to the Supreme Court of India accompanied by noted litterateur Shivaram Karanth - which ended in thousands of tribal populace being protected against eviction from their native region in the state of Karnataka. S. R. Ramaswamy is the founder of "Samaja Parivartana Samudaya", a voluntary organization working in Karnataka towards social transformation, tribal upliftment, citizen rights' empowerment among other issues at rural as well as urban levels.

S. R. Ramaswamy hails from a Brahmin family of Mulukanadu ancestry. His parents 

Asthan Vidwan Motaganahalli Subramanya Sastri

S. Ramachandra Sastri and Sarasvatamma belong to the Vellala Motaganahalli clan. He was born on 29.10.1937 at Bangalore, where later on he completed his schooling upto "Intermediate" qualification by 1953-54. Grandson of Asthan Vidwan Motaganahalli Shankara Sastri and nephew of Dr S. Srikanta Sastri & Motaganahalli Subramanya Sastri, S. R. Ramaswamy has inherited a scholastic tradition of research and erudition.

His forays into the world of journalism began with a short stint at William Quan Judge Press at Bangalore in the late 1950s. By 1972, S. R. Ramaswamy was a Chief Sub-Editor at popular Kannada weekly "Sudha' and continued there till 1979. Since 1980 till date, he serves as Editor-in-Chief at "Utthana" and "Rashrottana Sahitya" at Bangalore. S. R. Ramaswamy has

S. R. Ramaswamy with D.V.G

dedicated close to five decades to the world of journalism, writing, literature, environmental issues and social movements across the country. Across the decades spanning from 1960s to 1990s, S. R. Ramaswamy came in close proximity to such intellectual giants as D. V. Gundappa, V. Sitaramayya, A. R. Krishnasastri, P. Kodanda Rao, Rallapalli Anantha Krishna Sharma and Yadav Rao Joshi. His association with D. V. Gundappa over two decades saw him penning many of D. V. G.'s oral ruminations, thus becoming his "eyes" & "ears", so to speak. ! Such a close embrace over the years led D. V. G to acknowledge S. R. Ramaswamy in his book "Jnapaka Chitrashale" as the brother he possibly had in an earlier life..!

At home in a number of languages ranging from Sanskrit, German, French, English, Kannada & Telugu - S. R. Ramaswamy's works defy boundaries of culture, nationality or regional identity. In fact, his earliest piece - a review of "Paul Valery: The Quintessentialised Intellectual" (published in P.E.N in 1972 serves to illustrate his scope of intellect: -

"It is one of the curiosities of Paul Valery's many sided literary activity that not withstanding the versatality of his writings and the steadily increasing sway he gained over the French mind during the first three decades of the present century (21st), the clue to an understanding of his life and work is found to be in what is probably one of his earliest works - "Une Soiree avec. M. Teste" (An Evening with Mr. Teste) published so far back as 1896"

Here is a short list of his works: -

1. "Mahabharata Belavanige" (1972)
2. "Svetoslav Roerich" (Ed.) (1974)

   

   "SVETOSLAV ROERICH"

3. "Patra-guccha-Nehru" - co-translated with K. S. Narasimha Swamy (1975)
4. "D. V. G. - a biography" (1976)
5. "Udaya Shankar" - a biography (1979)
6. "Sripad Damodar Satwalekar" - a biography (1980)
7. "Dr Hedgewar: The Epoch Maker" (translated from Kannada) (1981)
8. "Manobodha" of Samarth Ramadas (translated from Marathi) (1982)
9. "Aravinda" - Pt. Seshadri Gawai Felicitation Voulme (Ed.) (1985)
10. "Samaja-Chikitsaka Ambedkar" - co-authored with Chandrashekhar Bhandary (1990)
11. "Bharatadalli Samajakarya" (Ed.) (1992)
12. "Swadeshi Jagruti" (1994)
13. "Swadeshi: Ondu Samvada" (1994)
14. "In The Woods of Globalisation" (1995)
15. "Matantara: Ondu Samvada" - co-authored with Chandrashekhar Bhandary (1999)
16. "Kargil-Kampana" - co-authored with Du. Gu. Lakshmana & Bhandary (1999)
17. "Jayaprakash Narayan" - a biography (2000)
18. "Sardar Vallabhai Patel" - a biography (2000)
19. "Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya" - a biography (2000)
20. "Magadi Lakshmi Narasimha Sastri" - a biography (2001)
21. "Nagarikategala Sangarsha" (2009)
22. "Sahitya Samarayana - Sarvabhouma Krishnadevaraya" (2009)
23. "Kautilyana Arthashastra" (2009)
24. "Sookti-Saptati" (Anthology of Sanskrit Verses) (2010)
25. "Kelavu Itihasa Parvagalau" (2010)
26. "Bharatha Bhaskara Rabindranath Tagore" (2011)
27. "Deeptimantaru" (2011)
28. "Dhruvajala"(2011)
29. "Yajurveda Belakinalli Jeevana Paripoornate" (2012)
30. "Navothhanada Pathadarshaka Swami Vivekananda" (2013)
31. "Kavalige" (2013)

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"Mulakas" (Origins of Mulukanadu Sect) by Dr S. Srikanta Sastri

Sri Tyagararaja

The references to the ancient Brahmanical community of the Mulakas, that occur in epigraphs and Saṁskṛt literature are of interest as indicating the gradual intrusion of the Āryans into the south and the expansion and propagation of the northern culture in Dakshņãpatha. The name occurs in a variety of forms - chief being Mūlaka, Mūtiba, Mūshaka, Mūchipa and Muṛika. The earliest reference is, I believe, in the Aitarēya Brãhmaņa where we have the story of a Viśvãmitra expelling his sons from Āryãvarta (Ait, Br., VII. 18). We are told that they settled down among the Dasyus.

तएतेव्ध्ना: पुण्डा: शबराः पुळिन्दा: मूतिबा इत्युदन्त्या बहवो वैश्वामित्रादस्युनां भूयिष्टा: || तएतेव्ध्न: पुण्डा: शबराः पुळिन्दा: मूतिबा इत्युदन्त्या बहवो वैश्वामित्रादस्युनां भूयिष्टा: ||

The country beyond the confines of Aryavarta thus came to be called in later times

Sir M. Visvesaraya

Mlechhadesa – the abode of barbarians. The term “Mlechha” which in early times was confined solely to the predatory tribes, came to be applied to all peoples beyond the region between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, so that the Yavanas, Chinas, Hunas, the Sakas and Pahlavas are considered to be as barbaric as the indigenous tribes – Kiratas, Sabaras, Pilundas, Poundras, Dravidas and Keralas. Amaranarasimha enumerates Kiratas, etc., as sub-divisions of Mlechhas. The Mahabharata (I. 186. 33-7) and Manavadharma Sastra go further.

Similalry the Harivamsa enumerates the peculiar modes of dressing the hair practised by these Mlechhas – like that of shaving half the head or complete, allowing moustaches and the beard to grow, etc., - these habits being evidently non-Aryan.

It is thus clear Aryans had already occupied the trans-Vindhyan regions by the time of the composition of Aitareya Brahmana (c. 1400 B.C.). The Mutibas evidently associated themselves with Mushakas, a totemistic tribe, and Assakas. Indeed in the Jatakas and Suttanipata, Assaka and Mulaka are intimately associated. Panini speaks of Asmaka and its king also called Asmaka (c. 700 B.C.) 

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