No Disrespect Meant #04 – Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?

The truly serious part of the investigation is upon us, and a heartfelt plea to not report the blog, and god forbid my true identity to the purveyors of moral/religious turpitude. I would so very much prefer not to be hit repeatedly on my head… by planks… MDF planks… HDF planks … pinewood planks… plywood planks… 3-minute-side-planks… poll planks. 😐

So, getting back to the stream of consciousness (thanks Pranay my batch-mate for Inception-ing this into the pureed oatmeal bowl I call my brain), now we have a trinity, which is actually a duo of supreme godheads.

First named, yet holder of a slightly lower prestige, a fair skinned, evolved and civilized “Eminent-One”. Made a bit player in the game which was planned to be his and his alone.

He is not worshipped, save in a few places, later on reduced to one place. In his earlier description as the monotheistic idea in a polytheistic pantheon, he could see in every direction, so let’s give him multiple heads, each facing towards a cardinal point. Make him old, as he is the oldest of the three. Make him look wise. That’s a good image you painted. May I have a copy of that. Umm, what about the direction towards the sky, you ask? How do we signify that? Let’s not. Remind me later to tell you the story how the-eminent-one lost one of his heads.

Second named, with a more acceptable civilization level, the god who comes again and again as a champion of righteous cause, a dark-hued, nayy… a blue-hued “All-Pervading-One”. Who cannot be a true son-of-man (Nar-aayana) hence must have come from water (Naar-aayana). Let’s make it an ocean. Let’s make it, infact an ocean of the one product that is seen as a sure sign of prosperity, milk. His incarnations are supported by the-hooded-snake people regularly. So, he must be supported on this ocean-of-milk (ksheer-saagar) by the Great-Hooded-Snake, the Adi-Naag, the Anant-Naag or the Sesha-Naag. Nice picture there. Umm… could one of you please paint us a picture or two?

So, how do we worship him. The picture we painted is quite interesting, but we cannot create an amalgam of the faces of the kings who are accepted universally as his incarnations. So keep the picture with a face of your choice in the eye of your mind, and take a well rounded river stone (comes from water), where there are snakes around, put it in your worship halls and wash with milk regularly.

Lastly, of a very uncivil appearance in all respect, but one of the most popular, the “Terrible-One”. Some stories remember his incarnation as dark skinned and some as red-skinned. So let’s say he covered his skin in ash, and let’s keep the dermal pigmentation vague. OK, let’s make the throat blue, and let him have snakes as companions. Happy! Hmmm, that’s a good picture again you painted. Quick… ten copies of that for the more affluent devotees.

So, how do we worship this “Innocent-Lord”? How about a stone again? But as the “Great-Lord” through his incarnations is known for his virility and love of intoxicants, let’s make the stone symbolize the male organ.

So,we have three beautiful images, two worship ready models and the color of skins suitably modified to agree with our innate racist tendencies.

Again, some of you are getting angry for me calling you racists. Let me paint a picture for you.

No let me paint two pictures for you.

Remember THE Epic Song, the longest yarn of heroics and battle. The one I call the M-Story, on and off. The one where cousins fight. Yes…. that one!

There are two instances, I want us to pay especial attention.

First, lesser known, is the setting of the telling of the song which got dictated to the scribes, hence is available to us. It was of a great sacrifice, where a great king from the line of the victors of the great war, was sacrificing snakes, burning them in fire, as revenge for one of them killing his father. For the record this king was the great-grand-son of the Bow Wielding third brother of the quintet.

Second, more well known, the dark/blue hued incarnation of the-all-pervading-one of the times with the Bow Wielding third brother of the famous quintet, burnt a well populated forest, with especial care taken to drive back into the fire and kill all the snakes and the demons in the forest; all for creating a new city for the brothers to settle and rule.

Now, in both these pictures, remove snakes and demons in the stories and re-imagine with actual humans, the dark skinned aborigines and the race who due to the shape of their eyes, their dress and their living style were called the-snake-people by our ancestors.

These two stories are about genocide, open and blatant. Just because of the skin color and race of the aborigines (two of the three), they were first killed to create a new kingdom for our “heroes”. Then when the kingdom so bloodily found was lost to their cousins, and after the fight to finish immortalized in the Epic, descendants of the survivor of the earlier genocide took revenge on the only extant descendant of our “heroes’. And in bloody reprisal, almost the whole race was annihilated by the son of the killed one, and stopped at last by the retelling of the horrors of war and the timely intervention of a half-breed, a son of a brahmin from a woman of the “snake-people”, who told that the death of the father of the revenge-seeking king was in fact a long overdue revenge for an earlier genocide.

The EPIC, I believe, was and is not told and retold to just talk of the prowess of our “heroes” but to show us horrors of all out war. And in the first documented instance, to ask one of their descendants to stop a bloody genocide, by reminding of earlier bloodshed. It is said, not by me, but by the truly wise men of our culture, that the Story-Of-Coming-Of-The-One-Who-Gives-Happiness is to be kept and read by a householder as it tells of brotherly love. But the Story-of-Victory or The-Great-Story-Of-The-Land-Of-King-Bharat not be kept in the house of a householder, but listened to in public, as it scares us from war but may also accentuate our quarrelsomeness, just like the cousins in the story.

The EPIC starts with this setting.

I am not asking anyone to agree to what I have said.

But, could we all look into our own hearts, our own prejudices and the images we have been handed down, and ask… could this be the true great (“Maha”) Story of the land of King Bharat.

Could it be true that in spite of the one-up-man-ship shown by the darker skin colors in the popularity sweepstakes of worship, in day to day life, the inbuilt racism came out as marked preference to a fairer skin, which denotes a closer genetic history to the aryas rather than the aborigines?

Come to think of it, was the import (sic!) of a princess from the far north (Kaikeyi in one case and Gandhari in another) be an attempt of those times to maintain the racial purity of the ruling class by mixing with the far flung northern regions where the genetic effect of the intermingling had not (and still has not) reached?

If that thought is too close to sacrilege, could we at least look at the fairness cream adverts splashed on the idiot box, and ask why in our Closely-Multi-hued Present, this product is still the staple of a large part of our country? Is it in memory of a Past where skin color was the easiest way to say who is US and who is THEM? Is it funny or is it sad?

Could it be that, when the intermarriages became too innumerable to keep track, could the temporary lightening of skin pigmentation by powders/creams or the use of home-made-skin-lotions be an attempt to fool the inbuilt and well neigh forgotten racist tendencies?

I sincerely hope not, but could the pre-marriage use of turmeric (and nowadays diamond facials 😀 see I know current stuff as well) to make the skin look fairer, and the tradition of the bride to fully cover her face and skin during and long time after marriage, be a throwback to the abhorrence (in others) and unreasonable shame (in self) for the dermal pigmentation which has been seen as handsome in our greatest of heroes (Rama, Krushna, Arjun et al) and beautiful in the one woman the desire for whom may have started the biggest battle (Draupadi)?

Let’s leave this at that.