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Friday, September 28, 2012

Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



I have in my collection a book titled "Chintanayak Vivekananda". It is a compilation of articles on Vivekananda by distinguished scholars like R.C. Majumdar, Suniniti Chatterjee, Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hossain, and others. The writers have shed light on various aspects of Viveknanda's life and works. Obviously Vivekananda was a not a little man. He has been praised by Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath, Aurobinda, and many other great people. He was a multifaceted genius. I have read his prose that one may confuse with Rabindranath's prose used in "Chhinnapatra". Any way, let me come to the point. The book I have referred to has mentioned that when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress. His family also was going through some sort of trouble. In order to overcome economic crisis he went to Kali mandir to pray. He was at that time 21. Ramkrishna assured him that he would help him overcome the crisis. He got a job in an attorny's office. He also started translating books. Probably he never forgot the economic crisis he went through. That is one of the reasons why his religion and philosophy mainly centered around the poor and the weaker sections of the society. Rabindranath said to Romain Rolland: If you want to know India, know Vivekananda. Every thing in him is positive, nothing is negative. I would not be surprised if Rabindranath was influenced by him in writing poems that emphasised on serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing).    

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com" <bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        

To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what is less known is that his first lecture there on September 11, 1893, catapulted him to such a great stature that the organisers had to invite him to address the gathering every day during that fortnight!

A participant of that conference said, "When the audience was bored with the tedious eloquence of some other speakers and became restive, the president of the conference found that the best means to get them into order was to announce that Vivekananda would be the next speaker again!"

Among those present at that conference, Dr. Annie Besant later commented, "Off the platform, his figure was instinct with pride of country, pride of race – the representative of the oldest of living religions… India was not to be shamed before the hurrying arrogant West by this her envoy and her son. He brought her message, he spoke in her name, and the herald remembered the dignity of the royal land whence he came. Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man among men, able to hold his own. On the platform, another side came out. The dignity and the inborn sense of worth and power still were there, but all was subdued to the exquisite beauty of the spiritual message which he had brought, to the sublimity of that matchless truth of the East which is the heart and life of India…The huge multitude hung upon his words, not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed!"

Profound impact

An agnostic-turned-monk, Swami Vivekananda accomplished in a life span of 39 years what is probably not possible for anyone living even for a couple of centuries. His contribution was not obscurantist revival but rejuvenating renaissance of Hinduism and the Indian ethos. His deep sense of nationalism had a profound impact on the Freedom Struggle. His worldview and success in the Western world revived India's self esteem in the context of the depressed mood of enslavement. Suddenly, here was a new Indian spiritual leader known to the entire literate world.

His admirers included the likes of Leo Tolstoy and Max Mueller. Swamiji's personality combined the qualities of the Buddha, Mahavir, Adi Sankara, Ramanuja, and Chaitanya in a manner of syncretism. He was a great musician even as a teenager, attracting hundreds of people to his singing, a tradition which he continued all his life.

Even his religious ideas were radical. He once declared, "I do not know the 30 crore deities of our pantheon. But I know the millions of my suffering fellowmen who are my gods to be served." He epitomised this sentiment on the lines "Nara Seva is Narayana Seva" (Service to Man is Service to God). He did not believe in salvation by constantly running away from the world to meditate in caves; he believed that such enlightenment was only a means to serve his fellowmen. So he created an Order of Monks at the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, who are dedicated to the uplift of the downtrodden through education, health care and such other activities. He laid the foundation for communal and religious harmony, expanding on the principle his Guru had demonstrated.

The Tamil connection
How can anyone belonging to Tamil Nadu forget the unique relationship this part of the country had with a young Bengali saint who became the world-renowned Swami Vivekananda? It is well known that as a parivrajakacharya (wandering monk), Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari, swam across the sea, reached a rock and sat there in meditation for a few days. Although he had heard that a World Parliament of Religions was to take place in Chicago and a few people in Western India had suggested that he should participate, he could not make up his mind for long.

It was during his visit to Tamil Nadu that he decided to accept the challenge and proceed to America. Even then, he was debating with himself on whether he was genuinely interested in representing an ancient tradition of spirituality or was perhaps giving room to his ego to project himself. The enthusiasm of his disciples in Tamil Nadu led by Alasingar of Tiruvallikeni in Chennai helped him make up his mind.

The decision was clinched when a letter of blessings came from Sri Sarada Mata in Kolkata urging him to proceed to Chicago. The funds collected for his trip by his Tamil devotees became the nucleus which was strengthened by the generosity of the Maharaja of Ketri.

Half a century after the Chicago lecture, Rajaji said in simple words, "Swami Vivekananda saved Hinduism and saved India. But for him we would have lost our religion and would not have gained our freedom. We therefore owe everything to Swami Vivekananda. May his faith, his courage and his wisdom ever inspire us so that we may keep safe the treasure we have received from him!"

(Dr. S. Krishnaswamy is a documentary and television film maker and founder of the recently launched Tamil/English Heritage Channel, KRISHNA-TV.)

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article3917843.ece?homepage=true#.UFskBIOkrlI.email


Thanks & Regards,


Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, Dip.LD
| Architect |

















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Re: [mukto-mona] Free speech?



How was Mona liberal?

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 9:04 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Free speech?
 
Even ignoring these idiotic posters would have been so much better for a liberal person like Mona. This is basically a deja-vu of another Quran or prophet incident. Only God knows what will be the next when both liberals and conservatives are so eager to be assaulted and insulted?Blindness and deafness might be a great blessing at this juncture?-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Sukhamaya Bain <subain1@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 9:01 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Free speech?
 
Indeed, the spray painting lady did not know what free speech was. Her right to free speech would have allowed her to stand there with a placard containing her message of disapproval of the content of the poster. She also had a right to place a counter poster next to that poster, if the city zoning authority allowed that, based upon their standard rules of placing posters, as opposed to the kind of messing up graffiti that we see in backward countries. What she was doing was vandalism. I am surprised that the police did not tell her that vandalism was not free speech, and that she was being arrested for vandalism.
 
Sukhamaya Bain

====================================
From: Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Free speech?
 
I agree - Mona does not understand what a free speech or non-violent protest is all about. She thinks vandalism is free-speech also. This is an interesting case.
Jiten Roy--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] Free speech?
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 8:05 AM

 
Free speech? Judge it! Mona got it totally wrong. The contents of the poster is bad but Mona made the situation is even worse.
This video is pretty explosive!
-SD

The link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P0jSSLleGiY
 
 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS


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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] Love is enough



Particularly true, if after two failed marriages you can fall in love with a teenager daughter of your friend.

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:



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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE



The word God is derived from Persian 'Godde' for leader of a team.  As the leader becomes God, his close associate becomes Devil.  Cosmologically, Sun is the God and Venus is Lucifer the Devil.  Thus the concept of God and his associates in no way extends beyond the solar system.  In the present context of a much larger Universe the old concepts are obsolete.

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 4:01 AM, Sukhamaya Bain <subain1@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

I would distinguish between the images of what is known as God and what are known as prophets/avatars.
 
God is a result of human imagination, and may or may not actually exist. If I understand correctly, people who believe that there is a God also believe that God is almighty, all knowing, and all controlling. If so, no honest and intelligent believer would fight over God's image. If someone wrongfully creates an image of God, or a bad image of God, that would be no reason for the believer to get angry. After all, the offender is also a creation of God, according to the belief. The only sensible option for the believer would be to pray to God for mercy on the offender, and for correcting the offender, the power of which God certainly has, according to the belief.
 
As for the prophets/avatars, they were either real people or believed to be real people. They have respectable images in the minds of their followers. It makes sense for the followers to get upset when someone portrays wrong and disrespectful images of their prophets/avatars. This kind of hurt feelings can lead a lot of ordinary followers to get angry, and to want to punish the offender. The better versions of the followers would probably leave the punishment for the offender to God. After all, the prophet/avatar is either the most favorite to God almighty or God almighty himself. Of course, it would be wrong for any kind of followers to vent their hurt feeling and anger on people who did not do the offending.
 
In any case, I do not see any wisdom in insulting God or the prophets/avatars. Distinguish that from fighting hatred and injustice due to the use, misuse or abuse of what the believers think are messages from God via the prophets/avatars.
 
Sukhamaya Bain
 
========================================
From: Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 10:58 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
 
It is universally acknowledged that God has no image; it's a formless entity. However, being formless also means it can take any form in which it is present. For example, liquid has no form of its own. As a result, it can take any form in which it is put in. The question is how far you want to advance your thought, and there is no victory line for those who do not want to go beyond formless God.
Jiten Roy

--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To:
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 7:01 PM

 
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:04:08 +0100Subject: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Hasan Essa <hasniessa@yahoo.com>
Op-Ed Contributors

Fighting Over God's Image

Mark Pernice
By EDWARD J. BLUM and PAUL HARVEY
Published: September 26, 2012
THE murders of four Americans over an amateurish online video about Muhammad, like the attempted murder of a Danish cartoonist who in 2005 had depicted the prophet with a bomb in his turban, have left many Americans confused, angry and fearful about the rage that some Muslims feel about visual representations of their sacred figures.

Related in Opinion

 
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
The confusion stems, in part, from the ubiquity of sacred images in American culture. God, Jesus, Moses, Buddha and other holy figures are displayed in movies, cartoons and churches and on living room walls. We place them on T-shirts and bumper stickers — and even tattoo them on our skin.
 
But Americans have had their own history of conflict, some of it deadly, over displays of the sacred. The path toward civil debate over such representation is neither short nor easy.
 
The United States was settled, in part, by radical Protestant iconoclasts from Britain who considered the creation and use of sacred imagery to be a violation of the Second Commandment against graven images. The anti-Catholic colonists at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay refused to put images of Jesus in their churches and meetinghouses. They scratched out crosses in books. In the early 1740s, English officials even marched on an Indian community in western Connecticut, where they cross-examined Moravian missionaries who reportedly had a book with "the picture of our Saviour in it."
 
The colonists feared Catholic infiltration from British-controlled Canada. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, a Connecticut pastor warned that if the British succeeded, the colonists would have their Bibles taken from them and be compelled to "pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe the doctrine of Purgatory, and the Pope's infallibility."
 
It was not only Protestants who opposed sacred imagery. In the Southwest, Pueblo Indians who waged war against Spanish colonizers not only burned and dismembered some crucifixes, but even defecated on them.
 
In the early Republic, many Americans avoided depicting Jesus or God in any form. The painter Washington Alliston spoke for many artists of the 1810s when he said, "I think his character too holy and sacred to be attempted by the pencil." A visiting Russian diplomat, Pavel Svinin, was amazed at the prevalence of a different image: George Washington's. "Every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home," he wrote, "just as we have images of God's saints."
 
Only in the late 19th century did images of God and Jesus become commonplace in churches, Sunday school books, Bibles and homes. There were many forces at work: steam printing presses; new canals and railroads; and, not least, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Catholics who brought with them an array of crucifixes, Madonnas and busts of saints. Protestants began producing their own images — often, to appeal to children — and gradually became more comfortable with holy images. In the 20th century, the United States began exporting such images, most notably Warner Sallman's 1941 "Head of Christ," which is one of the most reproduced images in world history.
But there was also resistance. When Hollywood first started portraying Jesus in films, one fundamentalist Christian fumed, "The picturing of the life and sufferings of our Savior by these institutions falls nothing short of blasphemy." Vernon E. Jordan Jr., an African-American who was later president of the National Urban League and an adviser to President Bill Clinton, recalled that white audience members gasped when he played Jesus as an undergraduate at DePauw University in Indiana in the 1950s.
 
In fact, race has been a constant source of conflict over American depictions of Jesus. In Philadelphia in the 1930s, the black street preacher F. S. Cherry stormed into African-American churches and pointed at paintings or prints of white Christs, shouting, as one observer recounted, "Who in the hell is this? Nobody knows! They say it is Jesus. That's a damned lie!"
 
During the civil rights era, black-power advocates and liberation theologians excoriated white images of the sacred. A 1967 "Declaration of Black Churchmen" demanded "the removal of all images which suggest that God is white." As racial violence enveloped Detroit that year, African-American residents painted the white faces of Catholic icons black.
 
More recently, there have been uproars over the Nigerian-British painter Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" and the New York artist and photographer Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." Mr. Serrano's image of Jesus on the crucifix, submerged in the artist's own urine, roused a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s. Mr. Ofili's painting of a dark-skinned Madonna with photographs of vaginas surrounding her enraged Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The mayor, who mistakenly claimed that elephant dung was smeared on the image when it in fact was used at the base to hold the painting up, tried to ban it from being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in 1999. (One upset Christian smeared white paint over it.)
 
Images of the sacred haven't caused mass violence in the United States, but they have generated intense conflict. Our ability to sustain a culture supersaturated with visual displays of the divine, largely without violence, came only after massive technological change, centuries of immigration and social movements that forced Americans to reckon with differences of race, ethnicity and religion.
Edward J. Blum, an associate professor of history at San Diego State University, and Paul Harvey, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, are the authors of "The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America."
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 27, 2012, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Fighting Over God's Image. 
Hasni EssaPeace & Pluralism




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               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE



"It is universally acknowledged that God has no image"


- On the sixth day, God created man in his own image(Genesis 1:26)  Thus, God has no image is not universally acknowledged and if he has no image, man has neither.  To prevent desecration by his disillusioned followers, God might have discarded his image long after the creation of humankind.



On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

It is universally acknowledged that God has no image; it's a formless entity. However, being formless also means it can take any form in which it is present. For example, liquid has no form of its own. As a result, it can take any form in which it is put in. The question is how far you want to advance your thought, and there is no victory line for those who do not want to go beyond formless God.

Jiten Roy

--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To:
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 7:01 PM


 



Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:04:08 +0100
Subject: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hasan Essa <hasniessa@yahoo.com>

Op-Ed Contributors

Fighting Over God's Image

Mark Pernice
By EDWARD J. BLUM and PAUL HARVEY
Published: September 26, 2012
THE murders of four Americans over an amateurish online video about Muhammad, like the attempted murder of a Danish cartoonist who in 2005 had depicted the prophet with a bomb in his turban, have left many Americans confused, angry and fearful about the rage that some Muslims feel about visual representations of their sacred figures.

Related in Opinion

 
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
The confusion stems, in part, from the ubiquity of sacred images in American culture. God, Jesus, Moses, Buddha and other holy figures are displayed in movies, cartoons and churches and on living room walls. We place them on T-shirts and bumper stickers — and even tattoo them on our skin.
 
But Americans have had their own history of conflict, some of it deadly, over displays of the sacred. The path toward civil debate over such representation is neither short nor easy.
 
The United States was settled, in part, by radical Protestant iconoclasts from Britain who considered the creation and use of sacred imagery to be a violation of the Second Commandment against graven images. The anti-Catholic colonists at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay refused to put images of Jesus in their churches and meetinghouses. They scratched out crosses in books. In the early 1740s, English officials even marched on an Indian community in western Connecticut, where they cross-examined Moravian missionaries who reportedly had a book with "the picture of our Saviour in it."
 
The colonists feared Catholic infiltration from British-controlled Canada. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, a Connecticut pastor warned that if the British succeeded, the colonists would have their Bibles taken from them and be compelled to "pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe the doctrine of Purgatory, and the Pope's infallibility."
 
It was not only Protestants who opposed sacred imagery. In the Southwest, Pueblo Indians who waged war against Spanish colonizers not only burned and dismembered some crucifixes, but even defecated on them.
 
In the early Republic, many Americans avoided depicting Jesus or God in any form. The painter Washington Alliston spoke for many artists of the 1810s when he said, "I think his character too holy and sacred to be attempted by the pencil." A visiting Russian diplomat, Pavel Svinin, was amazed at the prevalence of a different image: George Washington's. "Every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home," he wrote, "just as we have images of God's saints."
 
Only in the late 19th century did images of God and Jesus become commonplace in churches, Sunday school books, Bibles and homes. There were many forces at work: steam printing presses; new canals and railroads; and, not least, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Catholics who brought with them an array of crucifixes, Madonnas and busts of saints. Protestants began producing their own images — often, to appeal to children — and gradually became more comfortable with holy images. In the 20th century, the United States began exporting such images, most notably Warner Sallman's 1941 "Head of Christ," which is one of the most reproduced images in world history.
But there was also resistance. When Hollywood first started portraying Jesus in films, one fundamentalist Christian fumed, "The picturing of the life and sufferings of our Savior by these institutions falls nothing short of blasphemy." Vernon E. Jordan Jr., an African-American who was later president of the National Urban League and an adviser to President Bill Clinton, recalled that white audience members gasped when he played Jesus as an undergraduate at DePauw University in Indiana in the 1950s.
 
In fact, race has been a constant source of conflict over American depictions of Jesus. In Philadelphia in the 1930s, the black street preacher F. S. Cherry stormed into African-American churches and pointed at paintings or prints of white Christs, shouting, as one observer recounted, "Who in the hell is this? Nobody knows! They say it is Jesus. That's a damned lie!"
 
During the civil rights era, black-power advocates and liberation theologians excoriated white images of the sacred. A 1967 "Declaration of Black Churchmen" demanded "the removal of all images which suggest that God is white." As racial violence enveloped Detroit that year, African-American residents painted the white faces of Catholic icons black.
 
More recently, there have been uproars over the Nigerian-British painter Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" and the New York artist and photographer Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." Mr. Serrano's image of Jesus on the crucifix, submerged in the artist's own urine, roused a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s. Mr. Ofili's painting of a dark-skinned Madonna with photographs of vaginas surrounding her enraged Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The mayor, who mistakenly claimed that elephant dung was smeared on the image when it in fact was used at the base to hold the painting up, tried to ban it from being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in 1999. (One upset Christian smeared white paint over it.)
 
Images of the sacred haven't caused mass violence in the United States, but they have generated intense conflict. Our ability to sustain a culture supersaturated with visual displays of the divine, largely without violence, came only after massive technological change, centuries of immigration and social movements that forced Americans to reckon with differences of race, ethnicity and religion.
Edward J. Blum, an associate professor of history at San Diego State University, and Paul Harvey, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, are the authors of "The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America."
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 27, 2012, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Fighting Over God's Image. 
Hasni Essa
Peace & Pluralism




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Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE




Only when someone wants to think beyond formless God can make sense out of this logic. The existence of someone does not die as they die. In fact, deceased individual becomes formless entity, and merges with God thereafter. Although an individual attains formless state, its presence is always felt by its loved ones. Communication with God is something like this also, in which people communicate with an invisible entity.

 

Formless entity can assume any imaginary form. That's how the idea of numerous images of God came into being. Hinduism gives liberty to everyone to define his/her own image of the God; that includes not defining any image at all also.

 

When I said that - the idea of formless God is universally accepted, I meant - among the knowledgeable believers, not the ignorant ones. Non-believers have no reason to think about God. 

 

Jiten Roy

 
--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 11:40 PM

 
That God exists is itself a refutable hypothesis. Hypotheses about different forms of God are based on a hypothesis that is still up in the air. Given these facts, the phrase "universally accepted" does not make any sense. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 27, 2012, at 9:58 PM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:

 

It is universally acknowledged that God has no image; it's a formless entity. However, being formless also means it can take any form in which it is present. For example, liquid has no form of its own. As a result, it can take any form in which it is put in. The question is how far you want to advance your thought, and there is no victory line for those who do not want to go beyond formless God.

Jiten Roy

--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To:
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 7:01 PM

 



Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:04:08 +0100
Subject: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hasan Essa <hasniessa@yahoo.com>

Op-Ed Contributors

Fighting Over God's Image

Mark Pernice
By EDWARD J. BLUM and PAUL HARVEY
Published: September 26, 2012
THE murders of four Americans over an amateurish online video about Muhammad, like the attempted murder of a Danish cartoonist who in 2005 had depicted the prophet with a bomb in his turban, have left many Americans confused, angry and fearful about the rage that some Muslims feel about visual representations of their sacred figures.

Related in Opinion

 
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
The confusion stems, in part, from the ubiquity of sacred images in American culture. God, Jesus, Moses, Buddha and other holy figures are displayed in movies, cartoons and churches and on living room walls. We place them on T-shirts and bumper stickers — and even tattoo them on our skin.
 
But Americans have had their own history of conflict, some of it deadly, over displays of the sacred. The path toward civil debate over such representation is neither short nor easy.
 
The United States was settled, in part, by radical Protestant iconoclasts from Britain who considered the creation and use of sacred imagery to be a violation of the Second Commandment against graven images. The anti-Catholic colonists at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay refused to put images of Jesus in their churches and meetinghouses. They scratched out crosses in books. In the early 1740s, English officials even marched on an Indian community in western Connecticut, where they cross-examined Moravian missionaries who reportedly had a book with "the picture of our Saviour in it."
 
The colonists feared Catholic infiltration from British-controlled Canada. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, a Connecticut pastor warned that if the British succeeded, the colonists would have their Bibles taken from them and be compelled to "pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe the doctrine of Purgatory, and the Pope's infallibility."
 
It was not only Protestants who opposed sacred imagery. In the Southwest, Pueblo Indians who waged war against Spanish colonizers not only burned and dismembered some crucifixes, but even defecated on them.
 
In the early Republic, many Americans avoided depicting Jesus or God in any form. The painter Washington Alliston spoke for many artists of the 1810s when he said, "I think his character too holy and sacred to be attempted by the pencil." A visiting Russian diplomat, Pavel Svinin, was amazed at the prevalence of a different image: George Washington's. "Every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home," he wrote, "just as we have images of God's saints."
 
Only in the late 19th century did images of God and Jesus become commonplace in churches, Sunday school books, Bibles and homes. There were many forces at work: steam printing presses; new canals and railroads; and, not least, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Catholics who brought with them an array of crucifixes, Madonnas and busts of saints. Protestants began producing their own images — often, to appeal to children — and gradually became more comfortable with holy images. In the 20th century, the United States began exporting such images, most notably Warner Sallman's 1941 "Head of Christ," which is one of the most reproduced images in world history.
But there was also resistance. When Hollywood first started portraying Jesus in films, one fundamentalist Christian fumed, "The picturing of the life and sufferings of our Savior by these institutions falls nothing short of blasphemy." Vernon E. Jordan Jr., an African-American who was later president of the National Urban League and an adviser to President Bill Clinton, recalled that white audience members gasped when he played Jesus as an undergraduate at DePauw University in Indiana in the 1950s.
 
In fact, race has been a constant source of conflict over American depictions of Jesus. In Philadelphia in the 1930s, the black street preacher F. S. Cherry stormed into African-American churches and pointed at paintings or prints of white Christs, shouting, as one observer recounted, "Who in the hell is this? Nobody knows! They say it is Jesus. That's a damned lie!"
 
During the civil rights era, black-power advocates and liberation theologians excoriated white images of the sacred. A 1967 "Declaration of Black Churchmen" demanded "the removal of all images which suggest that God is white." As racial violence enveloped Detroit that year, African-American residents painted the white faces of Catholic icons black.
 
More recently, there have been uproars over the Nigerian-British painter Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" and the New York artist and photographer Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." Mr. Serrano's image of Jesus on the crucifix, submerged in the artist's own urine, roused a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s. Mr. Ofili's painting of a dark-skinned Madonna with photographs of vaginas surrounding her enraged Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The mayor, who mistakenly claimed that elephant dung was smeared on the image when it in fact was used at the base to hold the painting up, tried to ban it from being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in 1999. (One upset Christian smeared white paint over it.)
 
Images of the sacred haven't caused mass violence in the United States, but they have generated intense conflict. Our ability to sustain a culture supersaturated with visual displays of the divine, largely without violence, came only after massive technological change, centuries of immigration and social movements that forced Americans to reckon with differences of race, ethnicity and religion.
Edward J. Blum, an associate professor of history at San Diego State University, and Paul Harvey, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, are the authors of "The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America."
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 27, 2012, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Fighting Over God's Image. 
Hasni Essa
Peace & Pluralism


__._,_.___


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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