pervasive colonial co-option of hindu terms and concepts

 
@afi[...]
21 hours ago
Hello csk, please relay this to the guest.
1. Your position that Hinduism is not a religion will backfire as it has has backfired in several places and taken advantage of by dais and evengelecals. In Indonesia xtian missionary used this to make half convert in the 1st generation and full convert in the following generation.

So Hinduism (or Hindutva) has to be called a religion with a definite future vision of the world in terms of food habits, life rituals, economics and technology.

2. Yes it is definitely needed to have a collective identity as i believe you did not properly answer csk's last question because you need an ingroup and outgoing not that I'm saying to hate the outgroup but the distinction is needed heck even in nature there is boundary.

It is needed to protect our unique identity amd pass it down to our children and them to theirs...... This also gives them a sence of identity in the world and will not make them identity less beings

1
@darkprince2490
3 minutes ago (edited)
Just yesterday I saw a believer claim that "izl#% is a way of life". And the day before that i saw some punk "hindu atheist" (oxymoron) confidently claim "his science" is deterministic. Even the old accusation about hinduism being "fatalistic" has been taken from us and turned into a positive for them. All done using specious rhetoric turned against us. They lie and shapeshift and they will not relent.
We need to make a sharp distinction between the heathen and the monotheist/atheist. Just state that we follow dharma. Only on official forms use religion as hindu. By now, even kids understand the difference between the two.
If we use "religion", then they will burden us with the crimes of monotheistic religion over the past 2000 years - that either we brought those crimes upon ourselves or we were the actual 'guilty' ones.
How long will we run and how long will we try to be like them.
They are even now stating that hinduism is colonial and fascistic in nature even though both colonialism and fascism come directly from monotheism. Passing on their crimes to us. And we eagerly comply as if it is some colonial era medal pinned to our chests.We need decolonization. there is no other way.
In older times, we followed dharma. They could lie all they wanted it did not matter to us or our conduct in the world. Now we follow "indology" (those same lies) to "learn about ourselves". And every two-bit lying demagogic pseudointellect gets to push us around.

 

    Managerial ideology, a relatively straightforward descendant of the Enlightenment liberal-modernist project, is a formula that consists of several core beliefs, or what could be called core managerial values. At least in the West, these can be distilled into:

    1. Technocratic Scientism: The belief that everything, including society and human nature, can and should be fully understood and controlled through scientific and technical means. In this view everything consists of systems, which operate, as in a machine, on the basis of scientific laws that can be rationally derived through reason. Humans and their behavior are the product of the systems in which they are embedded.
    2. Utopianism: The belief that a perfect society is possible – in this case through the perfect application of perfect scientific and technical knowledge. The machine can ultimately be tuned to run flawlessly. At that point all will be completely provided for and therefore completely equal, and man himself will be entirely rational, fully free, and perfectly productive.
    This state of perfection is the telos, or pre-destined end point, of human development (through science, physical and social). This creates the idea of progress, or of moving closer to this final end. Consequently history has a teleology: it bends towards utopia. This also means the future is necessarily always better than the past, as it is closer to utopia. History now takes on moral valence; to “go backwards” is immoral. Indeed even actively conserving the status quo is immoral; governance is only moral in so far as it affects change, thus moving us ever forwards, towards utopia.
    3. Meliorism: The belief that all the flaws and conflicts of human society, and of human beings themselves, are problems that can and should be directly ameliorated by sufficient managerial technique. Poverty, war, disease, criminality, ignorance, suffering, unhappiness, death… none are examples of the human condition that will always be with us, but are all problems to be solved.
    It is the role of the managerial elite to identify and solve such problems by applying their expert knowledge to improve human institutions and relationships, as well as the natural world. In the end there are no tradeoffs, only solutions.
    4. Liberationism: The belief that individuals and society are held back from progress by the rules, restraints, relational bonds, historical communities, inherited traditions, and limiting institutions of the past, all of which are the chains of false authority from which we must be liberated so as to move forwards.
    Old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits must all be dismantled in order to ameliorate human problems, as old systems and ways of life are necessarily ignorant, flawed, and oppressive. Newer – and therefore superior – scientific knowledge can re-design, from the ground up, new systems and ways of life that will function more efficiently and morally.
    5. Hedonistic Materialism: The belief that complete human happiness and well-being fundamentally consists of and is achievable through the fulfillment of a sufficient number of material needs and psychological desires. The presence of any unfulfilled desire or discomfort indicates the systemic inefficiency of an un-provided good that can and should be met in order to move the human being closer to a perfected state.
    Scientific management can and should therefore to the greatest extent possible maximize the fulfillment of desires. For the individual, consumption that alleviates desire is a moral act. In contrast, repression (including self-repression) of desires and their fulfillment stands in the way of human progress, and is immoral, signaling a need for managerial liberation.
    6. Homogenizing Cosmopolitan Universalism: The belief that:
    a) all human beings are fundamentally interchangeable and members of a single universal community;
    b) that the systemic “best practices” discovered by scientific management are universally applicable in all places and for all people in all times, and that therefore the same optimal system should rationally prevail everywhere;
    c) that, while perhaps quaint and entertaining, any non-superficial particularity or diversity of place, culture, custom, nation, or government structure anywhere is evidence of an inefficient failure to successfully converge on the ideal system; and
    d) that any form of localism, particularism, or federalism is therefore not only inefficient and backwards but an obstacle to human progress and so is dangerous and immoral. Progress will always naturally entail centralization and homogenization.
    7. Abstraction and Dematerialization: The belief, or more often the instinct, that abstract and virtual things are better than physical things, because the less tied to the messy physical world humans and their activities are, the more liberated and capable of pure intellectual rationality and uninhibited morality they will become.
    Practically, dematerialization, such as through digitalization or financialization, is a potent solvent that can help burn away the repressive barriers created by attachments to the particularities of place and people, replacing them with the fluidity and universality of the cosmopolitan. Dematerialization makes property more easily tradable, and can more effectively produce homogenization and fulfill desires at scale. Indeed in theory dematerialization could allow almost everything to take on and be managed at vastly greater, even infinite, mass and scale, holding out the hope of total efficiency: a state of pure frictionlessness, in which change (progress) will be effortless and limitless. Finally, dematerialization also most broadly represents an ideological belief that it is the world that should conform to abstract theory, not theory that must conform to the world.

Tibetan/Chinese accounts show "carvakas" with Devas.

Ankit Hooda· 3y
At least from chinese or tibetan accounts, we know that charvakas believed in devas which included celestial entities. About charvaks and buddhist more conclusions are drawn than what their writings suggest. If you don't believe in prophets which give The God’s words, u r going to be atheistic, with theistic conclusions being result of bad logic. Except for medieval claims by mimansikas about a-human origins of vedas, we don't find any divine truths. IMO, Truth is that all darshans believed in vedic gods, that would become necessary to operate phenomenon in absence of knowledge of natural laws which can explain phenomenon, atmospheric, terrestial, biological. That we can learn also from buddhists who took vedic gods to east asia. In absence of such explanations one is bound to believe in devas.

Interesting description above regarding the "caravakas" "having" Devas according to tibetan/chinese accounts. This is an obvious reflection of the term carvaka being used for ordinary egoists not interested in Moksha (revelers in sense pleasures using ISKCON terminology), which was secondarily and deceptively remapped onto (western) atheism by missionaries and Enlightenment indologists. To even conceive of a world without Deva-s requires the monotheist category of alienation which, in abrahamism, is applied at the level of cosmos (ie God) as well as at the level of the individual believer (western concept of consciousness refers to this sentiment of alienation, in contrast to indication with the underlying/implicit "Consciousness" of Brahman in Eastern ontology).

A qualification of the above quote: It is likely that in East Asia, the residual element was buddhist after the vedic element had diminished.

no concept of atheism in Hindu civilization

 

@pambashta1980
9 months ago
There was no concept of atheism in Hindu civilization. Naastiks, followers of Charvak philosophy were outcasted and looked down upon. And Charvak is not Hinduism. It's just a philosophical commentry. A faith which entertains atheism is bound to fail at some point of time!
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@darkprince2490
9 months ago (edited)
Exactly. The ancient romans actually had to create some of these new terms like "atheist" to describe the Christians. Also, Christians accused romans of being "atheists" or nonbelievers in their plagiarized Jehovah. Atheism was a category within christianity in the ancient period and was conjured up again during the Enlightenment when Christians contacted heathens in Asia and the New World. Atheism is an extreme form of monotheism.

ADVAITA is not for grihasth ashram but for the SANYAS ashram

 

@iit-jeeadv[...]
6 months ago
 @MrP[...]  ADVAITA is not for grihasth ashram but for the SANYAS ashram AND acharya shankar has formulated rules of it so don;t be coward in the name of spirituality and stop liking boots and gand of abrahimic cancers.

Western origin of atheism - aristotelian rigidity of a single paradigm

@arunjetli7909
23 hours ago
My dad wrote a book called “ ethical philosophies of India” his name is Dr I C Sharma . His book was even a popular text book in USA My PhD is in western philosophy “ the role of the critic and the logic of criticism in Hegel, Bruno Bauer and the Frankfurt School” Purely a study of Phenomenology and Adorno. I finally read my dad’ book after he passed away and felt so guilty that I had never bothered to study indic schools of thought. He had explained to me the nastiest and astir schools Yes the Astic schools believe in tha Vedas , but you are not accurate as in even in astir schools the vedas can be denied, and this is crucial they believe the correctness of vedas not absolutely as the Abrahamics do.. Check my dad’ s book The atheists are basically Abrahamics , the only thing they reject is Abrahamic mythology , not its teachings, not it’s dogmatism , not it’s Aristotelian rigidity of a single paradigm

@darkprince2490
0 seconds ago
Good to see a real PHD in Philosophy take a certain JNU product/grifter-opportunist/colonial collaborator to task.

There was no such thing as atheism in ancient Bharata. Atheism is a product of the western Enlightenment, a result of secularization of christianity. Indologists/missionaries etc have been falsely projecting it back into ancient Bharata since it much easier to project a generic secularized christianity, than actual localized christianity. For example the term nirishwar refers to nirguna aspect of brahman and has nothing to with atheism. A lot of the evidence for "carvaka" is projection and much of it also colonial fabrication. Recently, this gang also discovered verses against "infidels" in the context of veda ninda in Hindu texts, predictably ascribed to ancient atheists, by citing translations of the missionary scholar Oliveille! It does not even make sense from everything we know about the type of culture/civilization that bharata was.
Nastik referred only to Jaina-s and Bauddha-s. And even this is a later usage referring not so much to anti-vedic but rather to post- or extra- vedic paths where the line of teachers/gurus is given precedence: eg boddhisattvas, buddhas, tirthankaras, etc. Neither of these were against Deities and indeed they both have Devas. They also tend to depict Deities in the form of a teacher or mendicant, changing rupa or bhesha of devas is also found in Sanatan.
In older literature nastika refers to the Aghori sect, as does the term chandala (Bhagavan Shiva as an ascetic with four dogs ie Vedas, implyng Knower of Vedas; Chhanda-la means protected or reared up by Chhandas, just as Shakunta-la refers to raised by birds; here the brits tried to remap the term to outcast tribe, a forerunner of "Dalit" construction by american academics). It is the aghori sect which is also discussed in Srimad Bhagavad Gita, certainly not buddhists or others.
Similarly, Sramana referred originally to Saiva wandering Sadhus as opposed to Brahmanas who were grihastha. We see these sadhus even today. When the carvaka supposedly states, there is no dharma or the like, this is quite obviously a remapping of the aghori's abandoning of vyaktigat dharma. When it supposedly states that there is only this world, this in fact is the hindu position of there being nothing outside the cosmos.
The verse regarding living on borrowed money is quite obvious a BEIC fabrication. Colonizers promote hedonistic views among their subjects to this day.
The earlier usage of nastika was for "extreme" left handed practices by ascetic orders like the aghori and possibly sakta (extreme in terms of accessibility to the grihastha). In both cases, it had nothing to do with atheism which is a western enlightenment product.
Carvaka is a completely fabricated category where the ordinary egoism discussed throught our texts is compelexed into a philosophical belief system. The phenomenological and its experiential transcendance is transformed into an ideological category in the usual monotheist fashion (referred in your post as 'doxa').
The inclusion of carvaka as nastik by Sri Ramanujam in his survey is only to emphasize that enlightenment is possible even among the mundane, which has always been the hindu view eg, Sisupala killed by Shri Vishnu and attaining moksha.
Carvaka also meant a conman in ancient India. A sophist. A contrarian. A degenerate. Something more degenerate than ordinary sansarik folk. Of course the sepoys will start making an ideology and religion out it. It just goes with the colonial trend projecting heinousness onto ancient bharata. It's done using native materials/texts using strained reinterpretation. Just like the distortionist/contortionist Devdutt.
Ajita Kesamkambali, the supposed atheist, is quite ibvioulsy a fabrication with specific refernce to the "hair shirt" worn by medieval christian monks! Just another colonial fabrication!
The Ramayana episode with the supposed carvak is another fabrication/interpolation as widely acknowldged. This just underlines that there was colonial intent in this case of fabrication of the carvaka as a "philosophical school"
The recounts of Makkhali Gosala make it quite clear that his "determinism" was simply a restating of the common hindu sentiment of sabh bhagwan ki dena or iccha hai. It was certainly not atheism.
Hedonism in ancient greece was associated with the dionysian which is for all practical purproses Shaiva-like. This again emphasizes that construction of hedonist philosophical school in ancient greece associated with the Gods was also very likely a monotheist colonial project. Also tied in here is 19th century recycling of greek terms into sociopolitical tracts eg the dionysian, the oedipal.
Brits and their sepoys tried to tamper with vedic traditions. Manu smriti is another such case. We know this happens. In fact they fabricated an ENTIRE false history for us.
@darkprince2490
0 seconds ago
The truth is that nothing survives of carvaka because it was never a real school or teaching, etc. We have plenty of jain and buddhist texts. they need to posit "brahmin conspiracy" to explain everything away - a clear indication of the colonial/monotheist origin. Same applies to the contention that ancient india was a hotbed of anti-ritual and anti-idolatry "revolutionary activity".
The entire "rational" vs "irrational" dichotomy emerged in Enlightenment Europe as a part of orientalist colonial discourse. The natives are deemed as irrational, needing to be saved and liberated by the colonizer. In this colonial discourse, the native is irrational just like women supposedly are. At some point this orientalist social discourse also appropriate material methods, likely as a guise. I am not at all convinced on the positivist origins of science. rather it seems an attempt to appropriate material methods, much as "Islamic science" or "Christian science". The primary doamin of postivism is the social, socail engineering, etc.
Cultural marxism is just the latest permutation of enlightenment postivism.
Carvaka was just a description of certain tendencies in ancient people. It was not demagoguery, much more like psychopathy. Leave it to Indians to fall for a fabricated belief system out of this.
The book was reviewed by someone on social media. it was unfavorable.
Most of the stuff being bandied around here as carvaka is just repackaged J Peterson and other fringe american political opinions. Even Westerners are not fully onboard the westerm cult of rationalism, as indicated by authors and trends like Dostoevsky.
There was no category of religion or even ideology in ancient Bharata. This itself indicates that this entire thesis is just another exercise in colonial anachronism. The "carvakas" are colonially constructed much like the "aryans" are constructed, as bringers of logic and civilization. To lend it credence as a genuine grouping is like saying there was race of fools and buffoons in ancient bharata.
Look at how a conman can be described - he uses deductive (or specious) logic and denies that he is using inference! Same as the carvaka.
Logic is not a property of persons. It is a property of normative linguistic statements which can be useful in colonial discourse and indeed engender such. Mathematical logic is another animal altogether, different than social language. There is in fact no singular logic reflected by the fact that is no universal grammar (Chomsky). Even basic term are unknown in certain cultures. In psychological systems, there is a category for subjective logic, with objective logic simply being a subjective logic mutually agreed upon.
Car-bak literally means "sweet talker" ie a deceptive person, a "smooth operator" or swindler. The Hindi term 'achaar' referring to pickles (ie "not sweet") is of the same derivation! In traditional texts where car-bak is used, it refers to this connotation of fool/buffoon/criminal/swindler.
Savakar was not atheist. He wrote poems to the goddesses in his own blood. neither was bhagat singh- his book on the subject is a forgery with no known manuscript, unlike his other writings. Just speaks to the fact that these atheists are acting like typical monotheists, trying to politically subvert and tamper with the culture and timeline. Both monotheists and atheists also try to coopt native terms for themselves. Inculturation. Cultural appropriation.
The claim that the Vedas show scepticism is plainly colonial projection. Not knowing is stated in the sense of being the opposite of Knowing, just as the gita discuses both acting and not acting as an attribute of the Stithpragna (or Deity).
This entire indian atheist gang is bad faith and unscrupulous and disingenuous. And they are widely known to be deracinated (their atheism is a consequence of their deracination). DMK rationalists are typologically the same as this gang and DMK is known to be of colonial genesis. Pseudointellects.
Lastly, the development of atheism in the west started since the enlightenment and can be traced in minute detail as an outgrowth of christianity. Indian atheists are just a branch of the same. This ideology comes prepackaged with a bunch of plainly christian tropes: anti-ritualism, anti-idolatry, anti-"priest", pro-colonial history, and millenarian pretensions to "reorganize society". all this signifies its cohesion as an ideology.
===============
Refer to:
[For more on atheism: At the Modern origins of Modern Atheism: Father Michael J Buckley.
Christians were called atheists, Even though they believe in Lord God. For more:
Porphyry among the Early Christians, In Romanitas et Christianitas, by Grant R.M., 1973.
Pagan criticism of Christianity during the first 2 centuries A.D., In Aufsteig and Niedergang der Rominschen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der Neuren Forscgung, pp1055-1118., by Benko Stephen, 1980.
Pagan Rome and the Early Christians: Batsford Ltd, London, by Benko Stephen.
Recent Book on Christian understanding Roman pagans:
Literature and Religion at Rome : Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs by Denis Feeney. In this book, the author argues that then pagans never had belief system, even though they held beliefs.]

Zoroastrianism is nonrevelatory

The Indian Origin Of Zoroastrianism & The Parsees | #AskAbhijit E15Q11 | Abhijit Chavda 

@darkprince2490
2 years ago (edited)
This idea that Zoroastrianism is monotheist/revelatory is a colonial Indological fantasy - it traces to the instance in the Bible where "Daniel" secures the obeisance of the Persian King to the monotheist "God". That is typical colonial monotheist history falsification (foreshadowing / predestination / "prophecy") and divide and rule tactics. Asura is, in fact, a name for Vedic Deities in the Veda - it is not used often but important nonetheless. Plus,there is no basis for stating that there was religious conflict between Zoroastrianism and Vedics. It was just fighting between kingdoms as we usually see. It's common to see alternate heroes taken up in Hinduism. There are, for example, temples to Duryodhana and Ravana. Even entire lexicons can be interchanged: Vaishnavas refer to Lord Vishnu as Supreme while Shaivas refer to Lord Shiva as Supreme. Each has their Sahasranama, many of which overlap. Lord Shiva is shown at the feet of Kali. All these "conflicts" are usually taken in the vein of Lila. Same applied to "Zoroastrianism". Hinduism is deep enough and varied enough and ancient enough that this is to be expected and entirely normal.
By default, we should always expect colonial mischief-making and projection in these situations

@aparn[...]
2 years ago
I agree all these separate religion can be easily categorised under an common umbrella Hinduism.
2
@anant[...]
2 years ago
Exact

@darkprince2490
2 years ago
​ @sid7161  You are just projecting the same colonial narrative that has infested itself in every "reading" of Hinduism. How can Zoroaster be against ritual when he uses the Vedic Fire ritual. How can be against the right shouldered Hindu thread when he uses a shawl in the same manner . It is just local variation in custom, which the Colonialists have predictably infused with ideological intent. There are many idols of Zoroastrian Deities including those of Goddesses such as Anahita, so again there is no anti idolatry. By such twisted logic even Hinduism is anti idolatry since the Vedic Yagna is central to much worship.
No one is falling for this colonial mischief making,

@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
Supreme God of Zoroastrianism i.e. Ahura Mazda is none but Lord Vishnu lol.
32
@gouravdey497
2 years ago
Probably it was Varuna
2
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago (edited)
 @gouravdey497  Varuna on a Bird...with a chakra ?? That too called as the "Wise Lord" ??
12
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
 Badass guy  Yes .
@gouravdey497
2 years ago
 @shakyajitmaulik5579  Varuna is known in RV as an Asura, And moreover Mithra is an attendant of Ahura Mazda, And in RV both Mitra-varuna pair is found.
1
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
 @gouravdey497  But the depiction is nowhere close. Varuna has got nothing to do with Vishnu.
And infact...Vishnu is mentioned along with  Mitra in Rig Ved 1.156.1(bhavā mitro na śevyo ghṛtāsutirvibhūtadyumna evayā u saprathāḥ).
Also Vishnu and Varuna are being hailed together(or Vishnu is hailed as Varuna) in Atharva Veda 7.25.
5
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
 @darkprince2490  Who ?

@darkprince2490
2 years ago
​ @shakyajitmaulik5579  it was a compliment for you. The truth is always striking in its simplicity. You just reversed a few centuries of western indological dogma with one line of striking commentary.
Everything makes sense now. In India, the "reform" of Zoroaster would correspond to the rise of Vishnu, eg of Lord Krishna over Indra. That is, at least in popular perception since Lord Vishnu was indeed celebrated in the Vedas since early times.
There is also the mural of Lord Rama and Hanuman in Silemania, Iraq. And of course dozens of other correspondences between Persia/Mideast and ancient hinduism.

@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago (edited)
 @darkprince2490  Oh thanks
Actually there was never dominance of Indra over Vishnu. Infact Indra in vedas often refers to Vishnu only.
For eg...
"Indra art thou, Mahendra thou, thou art the world, the Lord of Life. To thee is sacrifice performed: worshippers offer gifts to thee. Manifold are thy great deeds, thine, O Vishnu." (Atharva Veda 17.1.18)
Here Vishnu is directly called as Indra and Mahendra.

Again...throughout RigVed we see that Indra is called the Lord of Maruts...whom they follow.
But suddenly we see this....

"To Viṣṇu, to the Mighty whom the Maruts follow let your hymns born in song go forth, Evayamarut" (Rig Ved 5.87.1)
4
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
 @darkprince2490  Vishnu was never a minor deity in Vedas. The greeks favoured Indra more bcoz of his association with soma...and greeks loved every drinkable lol .
So they made Indra specifically famous.
Infact India got its name from Indra.
That Hindu to India with removal of "H" and adding "ia" at end is straight up illogical bullshit.
5
@gouravdey497
2 years ago
 @shakyajitmaulik5579  first of all the context of vishnu in Vedas is slightly doubtful, Vishnu also represent a solar deity in RV.

The supreme god Vishnu probably the Purusha of Vedas

Even Varuna is one of the 101  names of Ahura Mazda
1
@shakyajitmaulik5579
2 years ago
 @gouravdey497  Believe me brother...Vishnu is NOWHERE  a solar deity. How will he be the sun ??
As per Rv 7.99.4 He is the Father of Agni and Sun.
Just like Purusha is called father of Agni and Sun.
Here itself Vishnu is proved to be Veda Purusha.
Again....I've seen repeated claims by ppl that Vishnu in vedas is an aditya....but...Where has he been called an aditya ??
Not even a single veda out of 4 calls him aditya.
Infact...rig veda 1.156.2 calls him to be the "ancient and the last"...the uncreated creator.
Why should the vedas call him aditya ??
After all...the Goddess Aditi is called Vishnu Patni in Yajur veda.
In Taiitiriya Aranyaka Aditi is called as the Mother of all beings(gods humans gandharvas asuras..all)...so as she is VishnuPatni...Vishnu automatically becomes the Father of All.

positivism as an earlier stage of marxism

@darkprince2490
0 seconds ago
You are describing western positivism which is the older version of current cultural marxism. It is basically a "modernist" death cult that pictures humans as automatons ie, to re-fit neatly into the colonial system [1]. Christian muslim ummahs were older versions of this same death cult sentiment. Humans are not robots. Only weak minded people like these indian modernists fall for this kind of stuff.
Nastika referred to Jains and Buddhist, the left handed paths. It did not refer to atheists who are a product of the western enlightenment. "Carvakas" were fabricated by missionary/indologists much like they fabricated "aryans"[2].

 

[1] broken down according to "rational" factors or "traits" for reorganization.  Eastern ethny formation happens along the lines of a relational while western ethny formation happens along the lines of a static factor like color, language, etc. The latter are static entities and noninteractive in an essential sense except as determined or regulated by one of the three normative ethical theories; the moral is only accessible in western culture in terms of these artificially constructed theories ie, in terms of artifice.
[2]  earlier Aryans were fabricated as an extension of an aggrandizing trait (Nietezchean overman, reflective of a larger Nietzschean tribe/people). Here carvakas are fabricated as an extension of the rational trait, a construction of the European enlightenment.

Nastika as left handed paths (not atheism) of approach to devas.

As stated below, the term Nastika referred to left handed methods, commonly associated with Tantra. It did not and does not refer to atheism which is a local western phenomenon, an ideological phenomenon tied to christianity. It is likely that Nastika referred originally to rather extreme ascetic practices like Aghori which were not considered unnecessary for the grihastha (4 varnas). The term abstract below should be understood in the sense of experiential since the Devas are definitely central to the Astika Darshanas.

The Bauddha and Jaina traditions also fall under the ambit of nastika, concentrating and delving on certain aspects of the Astika, namely Karuna and Ahimsa (respectively). While Carvaka is a colonial fabrication and a back-projection by colonial interests intent on furthering an hedonistic iconoclastic worldview in order to abate the native resistance.

Can a person be nāstika and still have a dharma?
Ranjiv Kurup

Author of The History and Philosophy of the Hindu2y

So you’re confused about what nastika means?

That’s not surprising, as many Hindu too don’t understand its real meaning and think nastika means “atheism” and dharma is “religion”. Both are wrong.

The term derives from the root “asti”, which mean “bones”, the “skeleton”, or preferably, the “scaffolding” of knowledge on which the Hindu darshana are based. Skeleton is of course from knowledge of the construct of the human body, because you cannot see the skeleton (at least not normally), as it is fleshed out and then covered by skin. Does it make sense?

So astika is the abstract science or scaffolding, the shruti used to construct the knowledge traditions, which is then fleshed out with smriti folklore, itihasa, the shastras and so on. The key word here is that it is “abstract knowledge or science” and there is a process of validating abstract knowledge, the subject of nyaya/vaisheshika, mimamsa, yoga/samkhya et al.

Therefore, na-astika implies that it “does not use abstract science” to construct the darshana, even though the master/teacher knows the abstract science. The objective of nastika philosophy is the same as the Agama Tantra philosophy, which is to bring abstract knowledge of the Veda to the common citizens who are not trained in the Veda/Purana - the foundations and scaffolding of the philosophy.

There will be some bastards who take “nastika” to mean a “rejection of the Veda”, which is just as good as killing the Guru/Maharshi who brought the darshana to you. If the Guru does not understand the purpose foundation/scaffolding used to construct the building, how can they build any darshana?

Astika darshana go to the spiritual roots of dharma, which is an abstract. So how do the nastika darshana overcome the problem of not confusing people that are not trained?

By prescription! So nastika darshana will, instead of merely teaching principles, will enumerate how you can seek the divine using some simple practices, each of which can be defined as a sequence of steps.

So whether you adopt the astika or nastika darshana, you will, through training or through prescribed practices, be dharmic.

Astika traditions are for the master builders of Indian traditions, and Nastika traditions are for those who just want a house to live in.

No atheism in ancient Bharata - 2

There was no such thing as atheism in ancient Bharata. atheism is a product of the western Enlightenment, a result of secularization of christianity. Indologists/missionaries etc have been falsely projecting it back into ancient Bharata since it much easier to project a generic secularized christianity, than actual christianity. For example the term nirishwar refers to nirguna aspect of brahman - it has nothing to with atheism. A lot of the evidence for "carvaka" is projection and much of it also colonial fabrication. Recently, these guys also discovered verses against infidels in Hindu texts! It does not even make sense from everything we know about the type of culture/civilization that bharata was.  

Carvaka meant a conman in ancient India. A sophist. A contrarian. A degenerate. Something more degenerate than ordinary sansarik folk. leave it to sepoys to start making an ideology and religion out of that. It just goes with the colonial trend projecting heinousness onto ancient bharata. It's done using native materials/texts using strained reinterpretation. Just like the distortionist/contortionist Devdutt.  

Nastika only referred to Jain and buddhist who are para vedic, not anti vedic. They both have Devas,  But  they give more prominence to their Tirthankaras and Buddhas/Boddhisattvas. In older literature nastika refers to the Aghori sect[1], as does the term chandala. It is the aghori sect which is discussed in Srimad Bhagvad Gita. Sraman referred originally to Saiva wandering Sadhus as opposed to Brahmanas who were grihastha. We see these sadhus even today. 

Ajita Kesamkambali, the supposed atheist, refers to the "hair shirt" worn by medieval christian monks! Another fabrication! The Ramayana episode with the supposed carvak is another fabrication.

Brits and their sepoys tried to tamper with vedic traditions. Manu smriti is another such case. We know this happens. In fact they fabricated an ENTIRE false history for us. 

The truth is that nothing survives of carvaka because it was never a real school or teaching, etc. We have plenty of jain and buddhist texts. they need to posit "brahmin conspiracy" to explain everything away - a clear indication of the colonial/monotheist origin. Same applies to the contention that ancient india was a hotbed of anti-ritual and anti-idolatry "revolutionary activity". 

The entire "rational" vs "irrational" dichotomy emerged in Enlightenment Europe as a part of orientalist colonial discourse. The natives are deemed as irrational, needing to be saved and liberated by the colonizer. In this colonial discourse, the native is irrational just like women supposedly are.

Carvaka was just a description of certain tendencies in ancient people. It was not demagoguery, much more like psychopathy. Leave it to Indians to fall for a fabricated belief system out of this. 

The book was reviewed by someone on social media. it was unfavorable.

Most of the stuff being bandied around here as carvaka is just repackaged J Peterson and other fringe american political opinions. Even Westerners are not fully onboard the westerm cult of rationalism, as indicated by authors like Dostoevsky.

there was no category of religion or even ideology in ancient Bharata - that itself indicates that this entire thesis is just another exercise in anachronism. The "carvakas" are colonially constructed much like the "aryans" are constructed, as bringers of logic and civilization. It is like saying there was race of fools and buffoons in ancient india. 

Look at how a conman can be described - he uses deductive (or specious) logic and denies that he is using inference! Same as the carvaka. 

Logic is not a property of persons. It is a property of normative linguistic statements useful in colonial discourse. Mathematical logic is another animal altogether, different than social language. There is in fact no singular logic reflected by the fact that is no universal grammar. Even the term "No" is unknown in certain cultures. In psychological systems, there is a category for subjective logic, with objective logic simply being a subjective logic mutually agreed upon.

Car-bak literally means "sweet talker" ie a deceptive person, a "smooth operator" or swindler. The Hindi term 'achaar' referring to pickles (ie "not sweet") is of the same derivation! In traditional texts where carbak is used, it refers to this connotation of fool/buffoon/criminal/swindler.
Savakar was not atheist - he wrote poems to the goddesses in his own blood. neither was bhagat singh- his book on the subject is a forgery with no known manuscript, unlike his other writings. Just speaks to the fact that these atheists are acting like typical monotheists, trying to politically subvert and tamper with the culture and timeline. Both monotheists and atheists also try to coopt native terms for themselves. Inculturation. Cultural appropriation. 

This entire indian atheist gang is bad faith and unscrupulous and disingenuous. And they are widely known to be deracinated (their atheism is a consequence of their deracination). DMK rationalist are the same as these guys and DMK is known to be of colonial genesis. Pseudointellects.

Lastly, the development of atheism in the west started since the enlightenment and can be traced in minute detail as an outgrowth of christianity. Indian atheists are just a branch of the same. This ideology comes prepackaged with a bunch of plainly christian tropes: anti-ritual, anti-idolatry, anti-"priest", pro-colonial history, and millenarian pretensions to "reorganize society". all this signifies its cohesion as an ideology.

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[1] When the carvaka supposedly states, there is no dharma or the like, this is quite obviously a remapping of the aghori's abandoning of vyaktigat dharma.