HVK Archives: How to create a golden age of Hindu culture
How to create a golden age of Hindu culture - The Hindustan Times
Rizawan Salim
()
18 May 1997
Title : How to create a golden age of Hindu culture
Author : Rizawan Salim
Publication : The Hindustan Times
Date : May 18, 1997
Over the past 4000 years, the supremely imaginative Hindus have created a culture
so abundant with awe-inspiring architecture and vigorous sculpture, alluring
dances and spell-binding music, amazingly potent mind-body disciplines and a
wholistic medical system, recondite philosophical doctrines, arcane fortune
telling systems, epics of vast scope densely textured with meaning, comprehensive
theoretical systems from aesthetics to rhetoric, arts of love making to making
war, and intensely sensorial rituals - that an individual with a receptive mind
can spend several lifetimes to master just one aspect of Hindu culture.
There should have been several first rate institutions to preserve and study,
teach and propagate Hindu culture's knowledge and wisdom, and accomplishments. In
fact, there is not one school of the first rank where a scholar can study or
research various aspects of Hindu culture all under one roof.
If I want to research under professional guidance the Hoysala temple architecture
in Karnataka, there is no world-class academic institution I can go to. If I want
to take a college course just to read all the Puranas in English translation or
some modern Indian language, there is no Indian "Ivy-League" quality university
for me to attend. If I want to teach a seminar on the literary quality/layers of
symbolic meaning in the Ramayana, there is no reputable academic programme to
welcome me. If I want to learn and conduct a serious scientific study of the
Jyotish vidya or the tantrik yoga, I will have to do it in my own library. A
serious student of Hindu culture has very few superlative quality -world- lass -
institutions in Hindustan.
To ensure that the ancient Hindu tradition and wisdom uplifts present-day Hindu
society and that Hindu culture lasts, rich and poor, for thousands of years to
come, a number of first-rate institutes for the study and preservation of Hindu
culture and tradition must he established all over Hindustan. These institutes
should regenerate intense cultural pride among Hindus and inaugurate a Hindi
cultural renaissance. The founders of the Hindu culture studies institutions
should possess the vision to establish centres that are equal to or superior in
quality to the finest academic institutions of Europe and America. Such centres
of excellence for a broad and rigorous study of Hindustan's history and culture
are 50 years overdue.
The intellectual and creative labours of the Hindus in the centuries past have
also left us a brilliant legacy of regional cultures and languages, Tamil above
the rest. Hindustan's different regions (linguistic states) also need institutes
worthy of their rich heritage to collect and preserve, study and research ancient
documents and manuscripts, texts and inscriptions in the local language to gain
deeper knowledge of the region's history, tradition and culture.
Special institutes are also needed in many parts of India to record and study --
and thus keep alive - the vibrant tribal and village folk culture: dances and
music, theatre, stories and songs, festivals and ceremonies, rituals and deities,
customs and crafts. It is a fact that a lot of even highly educated Indians lack
awareness of the vitality of the nation's folk traditions, except the "tribal
dances" observed at some official ceremonies. India needs superb and well-equipped
institutions dedicated to the idea that all folk arts of the nation must live -
and remain forever a source of joy.
India also needs a class of scholars who have studied at the finest American and
European universities archaeology and history, anthropology and psychology,
philosophy and literature, history of the arts, comparative literature and
comparative religion, literary criticism and textual analysis, aesthetics and
hermeneutics to be excellently capable of educating us - and the world - on the
imaginative and intellectual superiority of Hindu culture and accomplishments.
The new class of Hindu intellectuals should explain to us - and the world - that
the Ramayana, even as a literary work, is far superior to the ancient Greek/
European epic The Odyssey; and that the temple of Konark a far greater
architectural achievement than the Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
Over a period of 1,000 years (roughly between the fourth and the 14th centuries),
Hindu kings and emperors built more temples than rulers of any other historical
civilisation ever did. Thousands many thousands - of stone temples of all sizes,
exquisitely beautiful and awe-inspiring, were built block by block or carved out
of solid rock everywhere in Hindustan. A lot of the Hindu temples built over the
centuries have perished: Still, what survives today is remarkable.
Hindu culture today needs an ambitious project to repair, rebuild and restore
every ruined no matter how much damaged the ancient Hindu temple. The
reconstruction should be historically accurate and done using the same kind of
stones in the original temple. Since June 1988, I have travelled thousands of
kilometres all over India to gaze in wonder at more than 200 ancient Hindu
temples. I have also done considerable research in this country and at Library of
Congress in Washington on Indian History and Archaeology, ancient Hindu temple art
and architecture. I claim on the basis of my research and travels that at least
600 ruined and abandoned ancient Hindu temples are scattered all over the country
(except Kerala and NE frontier states). A number of the antique temples are fairly
intact, but most of the forsaken temples survive in a more or less ruined
conditions A large, number of Hindu temples were number of Hindu temples were
shattered altogether. At several old temple sites visited, I found a large number
of fragments of the demolished temples still lying scattered.
Every dilapidated and wrecked ancient Hindu temple can be made whole again. All
remaining ancient Hindu temples can be rebuilt. All surviving ancient temples
should be recreated. The task is not impossible or even very difficult. The much
damaged temples can be made whole again by the labour of Hindustan's talented and
skilled stone carvers. Even today, Hindu artisans in several parts of the country
(e.g. Khiching in North Orissa and Mahabalipuram near Chennai) possess the skill
to carve stone decorations and sculpture as well as their remote ancestors did.
The temples' restoration can be achieved relying upon the ancient Sanskrit (or
other regional language) treatises on architecture, examples of ancient Hindu
temple art in museums, and comparison with other surviving temples in the same
style and of the same period.
In the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, but
especially in Orissa and Rajasthan, I have counted nearly 80 damaged ancient
temples that can be restored. It would be a challenge of enormous complexity to
rebuild completely the shattered Kakatiya temple at Warangal. (Warangal was sacked
in the 17th century by the Muslim ruler of Hyderabad and the temple - which must
have been stunningly beautiful judging from broken pieces - was demolished.)
State-of-the art computer programmes use in archaeological reconstruction can be
of enormous help in restoring the ancient Hindu temples, even in cases where many
carved stone blocks and portions of decorative carvings are missing.
As necessary as recreating the original architectural beauty of all the
dilapidated and forsaken ancient Hindu temples, there is also the urgent need to
protect and preserve the glorious architecture and sculpture of the temples that
have survived intact. There is no excuse for not using the best able conservation
technologies and the most far-sighted protective measures at every one of the
intact. ancient Hindu temples.
Back
Top
|
