Aavarana: The Veil

by S.L. Bhyrappa

We cannot truly comprehend our own selves or the history of our nation or, indeed, the history of the entire world, unless we unshackle ourselves from the bonds of false knowledge, desire and action, and elevate the intellect to a state of detached observation.

In a move to placate the Hindus here—actually, he needed their support after his financial humiliation in the Third Mysore War of 1791, which was when he had to submit his two sons to the British—he gave a large donation to the Sringeri Shankaracharya Mutt. Our secular-progressives uphold this as an instance of Tipu’s non-sectarian noble quality. But there’s tons of evidence on the other side:

Tipu actually wrote to the Afghan king Zaman Shah and the caliph of Turkey to invade India and establish the rule of Islam. In his infamous sack of the Mysore palace in 1796, he rounded up the entire library containing invaluable ancient Hindu palm-leaf manuscripts, inscriptions, papers and books and had them all burnt as fuel.

History is not tied to slogans and ideals and reform movements. It is to rid ourselves of notions of doctrines and movements and look at the incidents of the past as they actually happened.

We create our gods based on the stage of development we are at in matters of ethics, morals and spirituality. Allah is a jealous god. He casts into everlasting Hell anybody who worships another god. Doesn’t this mean that the man who created such a god was endowed with the same jealous spirit? And what kind of a faith is it that claims itself to be the only truth and allows no accommodation to any other that thinks differently? It is a faith driven by desire, greed, anger, pride, attachment and covetousness.

‘We believe that spirituality is the basis of faith. They don’t have the concept of spirituality. We believe that every man must grow, evolve, mature, and purify himself from the inside. It’s a slow, gradual, ceaseless, and lifelong process. Non-violence, truth, non-covetousness, celibacy, non-acceptance, purity, joy, penance, self-study…have you heard of these?’

true spirituality doesn’t need God. Someone who doesn’t believe in God can still be spiritual. And to be truly spiritual, a person must cultivate the qualities of compassion, non-violence—in thought, word and deed—and celibacy, because unless you’ve defeated desire, you cannot

‘Have you heard of Saqi Mustad Khan? He wrote the history of the life and times of Aurangzeb after being commanded to do so by Inayatulla Khan Kashmiri, the last prime minister of Aurangzeb. This was Inayatulla Khan’s way of paying posthumous tributes to someone he truly regarded as the ideal emperor. And in order to write the book, Saqi Mustad Khan went through the official records documented, maintained and archived during Aurangzeb’s rule. This

Original source citation of Aurangzedb temple destruction

He said he was confident that the riots