Savarkar's advocacy of rape as revenge---was it correct ?

Women and the Hindu Right article on Surat, Savarkar and Draupadi by Purushottam Agrawal; citing V.D. Savarkar in Six Glorious epochs of Indian History, Rajdhani Granthagar, 1963, translated 1971.

The Muslim women never feared retaliation or punishment at the hands of any Hindu for their heinous crime (of playing a devilish part in the mutilation and harassment of Hindu women). Suppose if from the earliest Muslim invasions , the Hindus also, whenever they were victors in the battlefield decided to pay the Muslim fair sex in the same coin or punish them in some other ways that is, by conversion even by force, then with this horrible apprehension in their heart, they would have desisted from their evil design against Hindu ladies.. Even now we proudly refer to the noble acts of Chatrapati Shivaji and Chinaji Appa when they honourably sent back the daughter-in-law of the Muslim governor of Kalyan or the wife of the Portuguese governor of Bassein respectively. Did not the plaintive screams and pitiful lamentations of the millions of molested Hindu women which reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the country reach the ears of Shivaji Maharaj and Chinaji Appa? Once they (Muslims) are haunted with the dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women to stand in the same predicament as is the case with Hindu women, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women. ... But because of the then prevalent perverted religious ideas (sadguna vikriti), about chivalry to women which ultimately proved highly detrimental to the Hindu community, neither Shivaji Maharaj nor Chinaji Appa could do such wrongs to the Muslim women .. It was the Hindu idea of chivalry which saved the Muslim women simply because they were women from heavy punishment for committing heinous crimes against Hindu women.. their womanhood became their shield sufficient to protect them..

http://communalism.blogspot.in/2012/10/savarkars-advocacy-of-rape-as-revenge.html

when Ajatashatru destroyed the Vajjian tribes; and when Vidudabha destroyed the Sakya tribe, women and children were also killed by the victorious armies.

Moreover, Hindu Tantriks routinely kill women and children to sacrifice before the Goddess Kali.

we are talking about rape , not killing .

Killing for 'Mother' Kali

For the magic to work, the killing had to be done just right. If the goddess were to grant Khudu Karmakar the awesome powers he expected from a virgin's death, the victim had to be willing, had to know what was happening, watch the knife, and not stop it. But even tranquilizers couldn't lull 15-year-old Manju Kumari to her fate. In his police confession, Karmakar says his wife, daughter and three accomplices had to gag Manju and pin her down on the earthen floor before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her, tore off her blue skirt and pink T shirt, shaved her, sprinkled her with holy water from the Ganges and rubbed her with cooking fat. Then chanting mantras to the "mother" goddess Kali, he sawed off Manju's hands, breasts and left foot, placing the body parts in front of a photograph of a blood-soaked Kali idol. Police say the arcs of blood on the walls suggest Manju bled to death in minutes.
Human sacrifice has always been an anomaly in India. Even 200 years ago, when a boy was killed every day at a Kali temple in Calcutta, blood cults were at odds with a benign Hindu spiritualism that celebrates abstinence and vegetarianism. But Kali is different. A ferocious slayer of evil in Hindu mythology, the goddess is said to have an insatiable appetite for blood. With the law on killing people more strictly enforced today, ersatz substitutes now stand in for humans when sacrifice is required. Most Kali temples have settled on large pumpkins to represent a human body; other followers slit the throats of two-meter-tall human effigies made of flour, or of animals such as goats.

In secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on. Quite simply, say the faithful�known as tantrics�Kali looks after those who look after her, bringing riches to the poor, revenge to the oppressed and newborn joy to the childless. So far this year, police have recorded at least one case of ritual killing a month. In January, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern state of Tripura beheaded a woman on the instructions of a deity they said appeared in their dreams promising hidden treasures. Karmakar killed Manju in Atapur village in Jharkhand state in April. The following month, police dug up the remains of two sisters, aged 18 and 13, in Bihar, dismembered with a ceremonial sword and offered to Kali by their father. Last week on the outskirts of Bombay, maize seller Anil Lakshmikant Singh, 33, beheaded his neighbor's nine-year-old son to save his marriage on the advice of a tantric. Said Singh: "He promised that a human sacrifice would end all my miseries."
Far from ancient barbarisms that refuse to die, sacrifice and sorcery are making a comeback. Sociologists explain the millions who now throng the two main Kali centers in eastern India, at Kamakhya and Tarapith, as what happens when the rat race that is India's future meets the superstitions of its past. Sociologist Ashis Nandy says: "You see your neighbor doing well, above his caste and position, and someone tells you to get a child and do a secret ritual and you can catch up." Adds mysticism expert Ipsita Roy Chakaraverti: "It's got nothing to do with real mysticism or with spiritualism. It comes down to pure and simple greed." Tarapith in particular is a giant building site of new hotels, restaurants and stalls selling plastic swords and postcards of Kali's severed feet. Judging by the visitors here, Kali appeals to both rich and poor: the rows of SUVs parked outside four-star hotels belong to the ranks of businessmen and politicians lining up with their goats behind penniless pilgrims. ("The blood never dries at Tarapith," whispers one villager.)

There are no human sacrifices at the temple these days. But the mystique of ritual killing is so powerful that even those who actually don't perform it claim to do so. In their camp in the cremation grounds beside the temple, a throng of tantrics tout for business by competing to be as spooky as possible, lining their mud-walled temples with human skulls and telling tall tales of human sacrifice. "I cut off her head," says 64-year-old Baba Swami Vivekanand of a girl he says he raised from birth. "We buried the body and brought the head back, cooked it and ate it." He pauses to demand a $2 donation. "Good story, no?" While most of this is innocent, some followers, like Karmakar, are inevitably emboldened to take their quest for power to the extreme. Karmakar, like many others, was caught. But in the dust-bowl villages of India, where superstition reigns and blood has a dark authority, the question is how many other "holy men" have found that ultimate power still rests in the murderous magic of a virgin sacrifice.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,322673,00.html#ixzz2BkC2phyQ

Rashmun,

Animal sacrifices as part of offerings in Hindu rituals was banned by your friend - Sankara!

The practice is still lingering among tribals, worshippers of Gramdevtas, etc. The sacrifices by "tantriks", disgusting as they are, are not as frequent as you suggest. The average, modern Hindu doesn't support such practices.

The difference between monomaniacs and chaddis is that the latter are not becoming pieceful when the old practices are changed. The pieceful, however, are prohibited from changing the practices advocated by Dr. PBUH. They are condemned to live in the 7th century!

basically savarkar says that in medieval times the muslim rulers used to rape hindu women . but hindus rulers like shivaji never used to retaliate in kind . in fact they used to take pride in protecting muslim women .

savarkar says that had shivaji retaliated in kind , the muslims would have been struck with terror that even muslim women can be raped in retaliation for rape of hindu women . so rape of hindu women would have been prevented or lessened as muslims would have had second thoughts about raping hindu women---as the fear of hindus retaliating in kind would have stalked them .

but is savarkar right ?

You know what Savarkar can go do with himself.

ashdoc wrote:basically savarkar says that in medieval times the muslim rulers used to rape hindu women . but hindus rulers like shivaji never used to retaliate in kind . in fact they used to take pride in protecting muslim women .

savarkar says that had shivaji retaliated in kind , the muslims would have been struck with terror that even muslim women can be raped in retaliation for rape of hindu women . so rape of hindu women would have been prevented or lessened as muslims would have had second thoughts about raping hindu women---as the fear of hindus retaliating in kind would have stalked them .

but is savarkar right ?

in medieval India, hindus were killing young women by forcing them to commit sati. It was the mughal emperor Akbar who banned forcible sati. Akbar wanted to ban voluntary sati also but orthodox hindus of the time persuaded him not to do so claiming that there would be a reaction from the hindus if he were to do so. i think Akbar should have taken the bull by its horns and banned forcible sati also. since ultra-religious people essentially have the same beliefs. but then i appreciate the fact that he was ruling in the 16th century and stop myself from criticizing him.

The way hindus were treating widows was nothing short of barbarous. The hindu widow was treated as some kind of inferior being and forced to live an austere and ascetic life. Alternatively she was forced to commit sati voluntarily (through brainwashing) or forcibly.

Shivaji was a progressive ruler, but then he only ruled over a small part of India and he himself greatly praises the mughal emperors Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Jahangir in the letter he wrote to Aurangzeb. Shivaji in my opinion was only following in the footsteps of Akbar when he declared that muslims in his kingdom would not be persecuted. In fact some of Shivaji's top officials were muslims.

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:Rashmun,

Animal sacrifices as part of offerings in Hindu rituals was banned by your friend - Sankara!

The practice is still lingering among tribals, worshippers of Gramdevtas, etc. The sacrifices by "tantriks", disgusting as they are, are not as frequent as you suggest. The average, modern Hindu doesn't support such practices.

The difference between monomaniacs and chaddis is that the latter are not becoming pieceful when the old practices are changed. The pieceful, however, are prohibited from changing the practices advocated by Dr. PBUH. They are condemned to live in the 7th century!

i think the practice of refraining from animal sacrifices must have started long before Adi Sankara. It was probably initiated by criticism of this aspect of hinduism by the budhists and jains. even today, however, animal sacrifices continue to take place in many prominent hindu temples though. The most renowned of such hindu temples is the Kamakhya temple in Assam. I also saw animal blood in the courtyard of the Vindhyavasini temple in Uttar Pradesh and also in the courtyard of a temple in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu.

The practice of Tantrism, from what i know, is concentrated in Bengal, North-East India, and parts of South India although it does have adherents all over India.