ARE BRAHMINS JEWS ? By Adv.Radharao F.Gracias

The modern history of the Jews begins with their first patriarch Abraham who was married to Sarai, his half sister. The Jews were conquered by the Assyrians in 732 BC. Ten of the twelve tribes were taken captives and exiled. The said tribes disappeared from the face of history and are known in Jewish lore as the “lost tribes”. Attempts have been made down the ages to trace their whereabouts. Modern DNA tests have been done on various peoples including the Afghans and the Kashmiris but with negative results.

There has however been, over a considerable period from colonial times, a theory that the Brahmins in India are the descendants of at least some of the “lost tribes”. There appears to be mounting, and impressive evidence in support of this thesis. Let us have a look.

The “lost tribes” would have to travel around three thousand miles to reach India from Palestine which would take several centuries considering the mode of travel in those early times. Over this considerable distance and time one can easily see “Abraham” mutating to “Brahma” and “Sarai” to “Saraswati”. We all know that the Hindu God ‘Brahma’ is married to ‘Saraswati’. The birth of Saraswati is attributed to Brahma going into meditation and splitting into male and female forms. Brahma then married his other half Saraswati. Abraham it may be noted has married his half sister Sarai.

For the Hindu the demon or anti god is known as ‘asura’. The asuras are shown as harmful persons out to destroy the Hindu and to avoided. This dislike of the ‘asuras’ could be a natural derivative of the fact that the lost tribes of the Jews were captured and exiled by the “Assyrians”. Is it not possible that the ‘asuras’ are the same as the Assyrians who had enslaved the lost tribes ?

The Biblical account of the flood: God gives instructions to Noah to build a waterproof vessel that would house his immediate family, along with a sample of animal life. The vessel is an ark made of gopher wood covered in pitch inside and outside. The ark was to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high, and have an opening for daylight near the top, an entrance on its side, and three decks. God told Noah that he, his sons, his wife, his sons’ wives, and two of each kind of beast — male and female — would survive in the Ark. After the flood, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Puranic Account : “It was then that He (Lord Matsya), revealing Himself, informed the King of an all-destructive deluge which would be coming very soon. The King built a huge boat which housed his family, 9 types of seeds, and animals to repopulate the earth, after the deluge would end and the oceans and seas would recede. At the time of deluge, Vishnu appeared as a horned fish and Shesha appeared as a rope, with which Vaivasvata Manu fastened the boat to horn of the fish. His boat was perched after the deluge on the top of the Malaya Mountains.”

Is it difficult to believe that the Biblical and the Puranic floods are the same events and Noah and Manu are the same persons ?

The Jews are a community that are scattered all over the world. One thing that stands out about them is that no matter what the circumstances, the Jews always prosper and thrive something which is disliked by native communities. The Jewish success in business and intellectual activities is greatly disproportionate to their numerical strength. Consequently, the Jews have come to be hated throughout history and are blamed for various ills. And precisely the same thing happens in respect of the Brahmins in India who attract the same sort of public distaste and for the same reasons.

The Jews are described in the Bible as God’s chosen people and something that the Jews believe strongly and have over several millennium, maintained their separate identity. The Brahmins likewise have always claimed to be God’s chosen people and other Hindus can approach God only through the Brahmins. The similarity cannot be just incidental but indicative of the common descent of the Jews and the Brahmins.

The devotion of the Hindu to the cow is too well known to need elucidation here. However what is not well known is the worship of the cow by the ancient Jews. I quote, {1 Kings 12:28-33 New International Version (NIV)}.

“After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.”

We all know that when Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments he found the Jews worshipping the golden calf. Why should the Jews and the Brahmins who are separated by thousands of miles of land worship the same Gods unless there is a link between them ?

A detailed study of the common links between the Jews and the Brahmins was made by Prof.Madan Mohan Shukla and published in the Vishveshvaranand Indological Journal in 1976.

Prof.Shukla notes, the similarities in customs between the two communities:

"It may also be mentioned here that like a devout Jew, a devout Hindu is also required to pray three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening (traikalika-sandhya).
Here it is worthwhile to note: (a) Though turned largely vegetarians now, the Brahmins of India present almost similar scenes of eating hastily in their religious and ritual grand-feasts.
(b) Like Hebrews, the Hindu womenfolk also sit in seclusion to eat their share in their public feasts.
(c) There is a strong case to suspect or speculate that either the Hebrews really belong to a branch of Vedic Aryans, or that they had been in direct touch with the latter at some remote and unrecorded period of their history.

The Gaud Saraswat Brahmins in Goa have always claimed that they are not natives to the soil but arrived here from the banks of the river Saraswati, the actual location of which is a matter of dispute. But the fact remains that the Saraswats are migrants. Were they originally one of the ‘lost tribes’ ? All these questions may be answered with some degree of certainty through DNA testing. And there is a strong case for such a test.

MEDIA AND THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN INVADERS IN GOA by Antonio Da Costa

With all due credit to Aires and Prudent Media, it has to be remembered that both these respective organs are operating within the political confinement of Indian Occupied Goa (IOG) and therefore are obviously restricted to some degree to limits of expression of free speech unlike in the totally press free world outside.  However, they play a vital and helpful role in maintaining a check on the excesses committed by acting as watch-dog and to contribute to and sustain the developing of the diverse Goan society by functioning within the given tight situation.

 

However, it has also to be remembered that at the same time a media can be a dangerous weapon when in wrong hands as has happened in Goa all along the half century history of its Indian rule through state censorship, intimidation and government policy.

 

Besides, Goa’s media that emanated and came to be implemented all along immediately after Indian occupation has been notoriously and maliciously instrumental in playing a partisan role to favour a particular section of Goa’s population, and tipping it against the other, to destabilize the other and forestall itself over the other’s dominant existing status quo and to marginalizing them altogether. This was done explicitly at the behest and connivance of the think tank in New Delhi to ruthlessly rid Goa off any potentially expected dissent or impediment from those quarters.

 

Thus Goa’s media by leaning itself towards occupying force, India, allowed India to tighten its grip over Goa even further. So this is exactly how far a harm a biased press can do to an indigenous population

 

Goans should indeed be mindful and not forget that India has all along used and continues use the press to exploit Goan’s mind through misinformation and suppress the peoples of Goa. Brainwashing and consigning them to the dustbin of ignorance.‘Dirty and evil’ is how the Indian Media can be described towards the Goans. Ironically it had to happen at the very spot and place where media was first born and took its root in all Asia! In fact, besides its gun India found the press an ideal weapon to suppress the Goans

 

Media is no new phenomenon to Goa. In fact Goa is the forerunner of media in all Asia and Americas with the establishment of the first printing press East Suez way back over four centuries ago in 1556, when media first emanated on Goan soil, the first in all Asia, in form of books and other informative literature and matter! Perhaps with the fanatic regime that has been at rampage in Goa, with highly hyped ideological drive to devalue all that is Goan, the children at Pramod Acharya’s school time may have been brainwashed into ignorance and made to believe that the Media made its first ever appearance in the world was in Devanagiri form and not in Romi as Goa’s own history tells!

 

Such idiotic fallacies have kept young generation in Goa away from contemporary modernity into primitive ages.

 

However, with the technological advance and innovation in the Western world and the introduction of colour television in India as late as 1982 it has over ridden and helped Media to make rapid striders to where it is now.

 

Yet so, to whatever heights Aires or Prudential Media strives and attains, they will always be a step lower in their achievement, to gain to express freedom of speech and expression that can allow them to question and challenge India on its illegal presence in Goa.

 

These suchlike Medias like Prudential Media and others, if it is to serve Goa they have to be to be free and universal because of Goa’s nature itself. Goa is not only confined to its part that is held by India. Goa is large and widespread, the best and vibrant half of Goa is in diaspora not just in the Indian Sub-continent, but splintered and spilled and spread all over the world embedded in every Goan you find there, as a result of self-imposed asylum resulting from organized and institutionalized deprivation, and ethnic marginalization by the Indian Occupation of their land..

 

It is the total Goans in Goa and around the world put together who make their land Goa as one, that lies hanging outside in balance politically denied its right to its original space or sloth in Peninsular Indian Sub-continent with its territorial right to its location that predates the later establishment of India’s own territorial right. sought and awarded to itself to its portion of Peninsular Indian Sub-continent, as established itself in conjunction with Pakistan, and endorsed within the confinement of its territorial sovereignty by International Law, when it first came to its reasoning of its presence as a nation in 1947.

 

Therefore, the all Goan total-ness and to-gather-ness constitutes one single component Goa, all amalgamated as one Goa, and not divided in parts as the one colonially held at ransom by India, and to tell the Goans in diaspora that they are no longer the owners of Goa, when the ownership to their land precedes that of India’s own to its land portion, and yet all above the Goans be told they are but foreigners.

 

By holding Goa at ransom, India is answerable to withholding at stake the freedom and future of all Goans including around the world and not just those ones held in Goa under its gun in the Sub-continent, and to hinder progress of their generations towards the developing their motherland Goa. Therefore India’s action on Goa has International repercussions and it is time for Goans to counter India’s action. Whether India recognizes all Goans to be citizen of their land or not is India’s own problem not Goan’s.

 

To begin with Goan people did not give India a mandate to be in Goa by way plebiscite or referendums as per status quo 1961, for India to decide who is a Goan and who is not. Also, because after all it would not be a problem for Goa if it was free, since all Goans anywhere would be Goan citizens with their own nationality, including those in India.

 

They would not be separated as India separates them, as Goans or foreigners. This is institutionalised eviction and therefore institutionalized genocide to decimated Goans from their own soil and falls short of the crime of Nazis eliminating Jews from their soil. Again India by denying Goans in diaspora to be part of their country Goa violates Goans’ Universal Human Right to be, what and who they are. Besides, by holding their land and imposing their citizenship on them by force or coercion is total colonialism that is unacceptable under UN convection.

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We can now gauge the shortfall Aires and Prudential Media inherits in their expression of the ultimate treasured freedom of speech and expression, if they are to address fully the issues that pertains to Goa wholly in all dimensions, and the constraints felt in their full free expression, unlike the Goan Media in diaspora, Niz Goenkar, that enjoys full unhindered freedom of speech and expression in a fully democratic world, that also allows me to pen this piece!

 

It can be a shining beacon that can guide Goa to its freedom if both Medias, in Goa and in Diaspora can act in consort to achieve at last that long waited freedom and independence that Goa rightly deserves!!

INDIA AS AN IMPERIALIST COUNTRY By Robert Lindsay, California

I thought US imperialism was bad until I heard about Indian imperialism. India is obviously one of the imperialist countries. Even worse, like the early United Snakes, Zionist Israel, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it has been conquering and annexing land since the day of its birth. I suppose one could argue that many new nations engage in a “Nation-Building Project” that involves some sort of conquering of other people’s land to annex their lands into the new nation.

However, if we look around the world, we do not see a lot of examples of new imperialist countries engaging in nationalist conquests upon independence.

In the modern era, the examples are not many:

Nazi Germany: Program of conquest, Annexation and Colonization in World War 2.

Imperial Japan: Program of conquest, Annexation and Colonization in World War 2.

Fascist Italy: Program of conquest, Annexation and Colonization in World War 2.

Indonesia (Independence in 1949): Program of conquest and annexation of Aceh, East Timor and part of New Guinea now called Irian Jaya. There was also a project of settling colonized lands with settlers in order to subdue the natives. A number of genocides ensued. This project was led by an openly fascist political party pushing a fascist project called Pangasinan.

Pakistan (Independence in 1947): Attempted to annex Kashmir by force (uncertain if Kashmiris wanted to be annexed by Pakistan). Annexed Balochistan by violence soon afterwards after Balochis voted not to join Pakistan.

Israel (Independence in 1949): Its very birth was created by invasion, conquest, ethnic cleansing and displacement of natives. Colonization of new land by settlers followed. The following years, more and more land was conquered, more natives were thrown off the land, and more settlers were moved onto new conquered land. The project continues to this day.

Russia (newly Independent in 1991): Invaded and conquered Chechnya which declared independence from the new Russian nation. Later invaded other Caucasus republics attempting to break away from the new nation.Annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Armenia: Invaded and conquered part of Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabagh on an uncertain moral basis but strategically because it was full of Armenians. Later conquered “buffer zones” of Azeri territory similar to Israeli “security buffers.”

Georgia: Invaded South Ossetia when South Ossetia refused to join the new country called Georgia.

Morocco: Invaded and conquered Spanish Sahara after the region was decolonized. It then settled the area with 200,000 settlers.

Sudan: Upon independence in 1954, launched a war against South Sudan that continued for decades and killed 2 million people.

Eritrea: Soon after achieving independence in 1991, Eritrea attacked Ethiopia and tried to annex border land. It also attacked Djibouti and tried to annex part of that country.

Ethiopia: After independence, Ethiopia immediately annexed Eritrea. This led to a 30 year war which Eritrea finally won and achieved independence from Ethiopia.

Somalia: The new nation of Somalia attacked Ethiopia in 1977 and attempted to conquer the Ogaden region and annex it to Somalia.

Libya: In 1978, Libya attacked Chad and attempted to annex a strip of land called the Aouzou Strip.

However, India seemingly takes the cake. Soon after independence in 1947, India quickly invaded Hyderabad, Diu, Daman, Goa, Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Sikkim, Manipur, Nagaland and Kashmir. All of these places had decided that they did not want to be part of India, but India invaded them anyway. Sikkim was actually a separate country, but India invaded it anyway and annexed the place. Many people died because of India’s imperial conquests. The Manipur and Naga conflict lasted many years and the Kashmiri conflict continues to this day. Many other areas in the Northeast also refused to join India in the beginning and all were attacked sooner or later.

In the midst of this wild imperial conquest spree, apparently India received 100% support from US imperialism. When India attacked China in 1962 for no good reason, US imperialism supported them 100%, apparently as an anti-Communist move against China. India was even supplied with weapons with which to attack the Chinese people.

When you talk to Indians (generally high-caste Indians) one thing you will note is the fanatical nationalism many of them have. Many don’t know their country’s history, but if you recite it to those who know about it, almost 100% of them will support Indian imperialism to the hilt. The average Indian is an ultra-nationalist, a nationalist fanatic. In part this is because the media and the government has been pushing fascist like ultra-nationalism from the early days of the Republic. The number of Indians opposed to this fascist ultra-nationalist and imperialist project must be very small, because you never hear of them.

Of late, radical Indian ultra-nationalism has been married to Hindu fanaticism in the form of Hindutva ideology. This is a marriage of fascist ultra-nationalism and with radical religious fundamentalism. The result has been a potent movement that looks fascist in many respects. This nascent fascist movement has taken high caste and middle class Indians by storm. We should not sit idly by and watch this fascist movement form while we twiddle our toes. Instead we should watch this dangerous movement very closely. It threatens not only India itself but parts of the rest of the world too.

DO JUSTICE TO OVERSEAS GOANS By Jose Maria Miranda, Margão

I read with great dismay that people of Goan origin, born in Pakistan and now holding Canadian nationality, are being denied visas by the Indian High Commission to visit their homeland for the Exposition of the Relics of St Francis Xavier.This is not only unfair but an insult to Goans. Many Goans and their families migrated to various countries during the Portuguese regime in search of jobs. Some of them members may have been born in Pakistan even a few during the British rule. Their origin does not change and surely they are proud of being Goans and hence are keen in visiting their native place. The NRI Commission in Goa did well in intervening and writing to the Indian High Commission that the Goans’ request be granted. However, what is required from both the NRI Commission as well as the Goa government is that the central government be taught and told about the history of Goa, which they surely know but choose to ignore. Goans are not beggars seeking favours or mercy from the central government or their embassies and high commissions, whether it is for special status or visas. Goa was taken over by military force and despite promises by the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Goans were never given the right to choose their status or privileges. Both the Portuguese and the Indian governments connived to deprive the Goans even of their legitimate rights that needed to be safeguarded to avoid the situation we are in today. It is time the local government impresses upon the central government the need to look at Goa differently from what they presently perceive, since Goa’s history is totally different from other states of India. Let us not create situations that are best avoided.