Week 38: 9/6/2020

Sep 06, 2020

Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a weekly newsletter for the modern and curious Hindu, featuring highlights around: religious texts, practice, history, politics, people, and ways to better our engagement and personal progress.

This issue features: a highlight on building and an aesthetic!

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Current Events Highlight: It’s Time To Build!

One of the most thought-provoking essays of 2020 was Marc Andressen’s essay “It’s Time To Build” (link) - an essay focused on diagnosing the inertia and languor of America’s current state with the solution of having Americans build to solve our problems. Build things, institutions, communities. A powerful quote from the essay is below:

“Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems. “

Tanner Greer, in his commentary on Andressen’s piece (link here) contrasts the building power of China and its people with the declining institutions in America, noting that:

“the baseline assumption of the American people of that time was that free associations of Americans working towards a common goal could get hard things done—and that it was their responsibility to get those people associating.”

If you’ve gotten this far, you are likely asking: “what does this have to do with Hinduism?” A lot. What we have perceived, and part of the inspiration of this newsletter itself is to spark “building” among Hindus. American Hindus have built hundreds of big temples, but the 2nd and 3rd generation at best largely turn out ambivalent to Hinduism, and at worst become brown vessels for Hinduphobic bigotry. To solve this requires building, and building across many dimensions. We try to highlight groups active in building in real life; such as Kinchitkaram Trust (Week 17), or in the media space from: our Instagram (Week 9 issue), YouTube (Week 13 issue), and Upword highlights (Week 1).

We specify some areas to think about below. Those in temples or community organizations can think of how to touch these areas, those who are not can think about ways to be an individual contributor.

Knowledge Transmission - What are you/community doing to teach Hinduism? Do you have certain artistic, strategic, linguistic, or managerial skills that can help in educating people both internally and externally about your specific sampradaya and Hinduism at large? Can the average attendee at your temple speak for 2 minutes on the basics of Hinduism without resorting to fake new-age cliches like “All paths are one” and “Hinduism has no rules”?
Community Building - Alongside teaching Hinduism, think about the actual people that practice the religion. While most applicable for temples, think about what steps it would take to cultivate a community (doesn’t matter whether 5 people or 5000 people) of mutual support, personal development, and exploration of Hinduism are the norms of the group.
Cultural Content - Linked to (1), there is an absolute universe of Hindu knowledge and Hindu viewpoints that needs effective communication and communicators. There has been a veritable explosion since our Instagram highlight of Hindu-focused pages on Instagram and Twitter and even Hindu TikTok has emerged in small form. However, we are swimming against the tide. Its important as a counter-cultural force in an age of nihilist secularism and individualism to develop content across media that binds people to our culture and communicates it. Amar Chitra Katha is probably the best example of something that needs to be occurring at larger scale and in a decentralized fashion.

The idea of building institutions and building communities to help Hindus make incremental progress in living, communicating, and furthering our traditions is a lifetime undertaking. Make sure to do your part for your ancestors, for your community, and for the Gods.

Aesthetic: Madhya Pradesh Temple

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Teli ka Mandir, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India

Teli ka Mandir, also known as Telika Temple, is a Hindu temple located within the Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh, India. Dedicated to Vishnu, Shiva and Matrikas, it has been variously dated between the early 8th and early 9th century CE.

It is an unusual Hindu temple, as it has a rectangular sanctum instead of the typical square. It integrates the architectural elements of the Nagara style and the Valabhi prasada that looks like the Dravidian wagon-vault topped gopuram superstructure. The temple is based on a Pratihara-Gopagiri style North Indian architecture.

The Telika Mandir is generally dated to between 8th and 9th century based on paleography, art-style, architectural design and small inscriptions found within the temple premises. According to Michael Meister, an art historian and a professor specializing in Indian temple architecture, the temple was built by 750 CE, per the most recently discovered inscriptions in Gwalior. George Michell, another art historian and a professor specializing in Indian temples, the temple was complete by the 9th century. Bharne and Krusche place the temple between 700 and 750 CE, while Allen places it in the 8th century.According to Allen, some local literature states it to be from the 11th century, but the evidence suggests that this late chronology is inaccurate. According to Bajpai, the temple may have been built during the reign of the Gurjara-Pratihara Mihira Bhoja.

The temple shows signs of extensive damage and change. It was badly damaged in the plunder raids by Muslim army of Qutb-ud-din Aibak and his successor Iltutmish in 1232 CE along with other temples in the fort following a jauhar, parts of the ruins were then used to apparently build a mosque nearby. The mosque was in turn apparently destroyed by Hindu Maratha army centuries later. The temple was restored by the Hindus after the desecration by Iltutmish forces, which speculated Cunningham, may explain some of the features that appear from a later era. The temple has icons and inscriptions related to all three major traditions of Hinduism: Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism.

Credit @mukulbanerjee

September 3, 2020

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