These people are actually quite serious, when they inform us of the punishments we are likely to receive for making, viewing, or thinking about the upcoming Mike Myers’ comedy, The Love Guru. One of the groups leading the protests is the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti, which has, based on the trailer, judged the film as offensive to Hindus because it mocks the sanctity of the Guru-Shishya relationship. They have drawn up an open letter of protest to the MPAA, and sent out press releases, generating straight-faced coverage like this (thanks, PremiumSchlock).
Unfortunately, while many news organizations have been attending to the budding protests against The Love Guru, few news stories have been paying attention to other creative documents by the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti relating to the film, such as the following table:
|
Act |
Demerit |
Means |
|
Making the movie, ‘The Love Guru’ |
30 units |
2nd region of Hell for 1000 years |
|
Watching it for entertainment without knowing the spiritual science/significance |
2 units |
Nether region (Bhuvaloka) for 100 yrs |
|
Watching it for entertainment even after knowing the spiritual science/ significance |
5 units |
1st region of Hell for 100 yrs |
|
Being a seeker of God/on the spiritual path, knowing about the Movie, but doing nothing to stop it |
5 units |
1st region of Hell for 100 yrs |
(Source for the above table.) And how many demerits do I get for finding this table hilarious? (I must admit, I am rather curious about this “nether region” idea.)
Their open letter to the MPAA is also unintentionally comic:
The trailer released by Paramount pictures shows utter disrespect for the deep spiritual significance of the Guru. It shows the Guru in a very poor light and encourages the audience to laugh at the Guru. I could not believe my eyes when the trailer revealed Mike Myers playing a Guru through a whole range of denigrating scenes, some of which are quite lurid, such as the Guru wearing a chastity belt, having an erection, involved in bar brawls, accepting money to playing cupid, etc. In the trailer the character Pitka is proclaimed as the second best Guru in India. Was this a calculated statement or was this pulled out of some juvenile script writer’s repertoire? For a country that has produced revered Gurus and Saints such as Swami Vivekanand, Ramkrushna Paramhansa and Yogi Arvind, does Paramount Pictures actually believe that Mike Meyer’s portrayal of a Guru will join the ranks of the most illustrious Saints/Guru’s of India? Was your research team / script writer not aware of the sanctity of the Guru prior to making the movie? Did they even consult leaders in Spirituality (apart from Mr. Deepak Chopra of course) if the script was potentially hurting? (link)
“The script was potentially hurting” — indeed.
The protests to this film might turn out to be funnier than the film itself.
There is a heaven & hell concept in both Hinduism and some forms of Buddhism. The deviation from the Abrahamic religions is that both heaven & hell are not eternal fates in the Indic religions.
I am completely against any restrictions on freedom of speach, but I think the progressive crowd gets unhinged a bit too easily when Hindus voice their grievances peacefully. It’s not the same situation as Christianity in the West where even the liberals (as represented by Labour and Democrats) continuously reaffirm their (Judeo-)Christianity. The only representations of Hinduism in Western popular media are negative and in India, excepting the BJP interregnum, secularism has been perverted to mean that only the majority community can be critiqued
The deviation from the Abrahamic religions is that both heaven & hell are not eternal fates in the Indic religions.
This is a pretty good guide to heaven and hell
Oh Gods, that made me laugh! Nether regions…but I do have a dirty mind :p
51 · louiecypher said
This is true. Most modern Hindus don’t have much exposure to such beliefs, but they were a part of more mainstream forms of Hinduism for a good amount of time, and a close reading of certain texts that are still somewhat mainstream reveals their presence. For example, depending on my karma, I could be reborn as a Deva, maybe even the next Indra (since these Devas have been thought, from a few hundred years BC, to be mortal beings and within Samsara), or in a hell where I’m tortured. Once my related karma is extinguished, I could be born elsewhere and in another form. Also note that many Hindu stories speak of the “3 worlds”, which implies a reference to this belief as well.
One of the earliest gripes of certain Hindu reformists at about 300 BC, and even the Buddha a few hundred before them, was that many people of the day wanted to get into Brahma’s heaven and chill over there (it was supposedly full of pleasures and only happiness), which these philosophers saw as only a temporary respite from suffering, a distraction from the goal of complete salvation, and a way to generate neg. karma based on your attachments to the pleasures you would enjoy in those realms.
Read some of the comments on the website that this table comes from. Full of rabid right wing nut jobs. they need to be kicked in the nether regions.
Amardeep, are you trying to get me in trouble? The last time I had anything to do with my nether regions while watching a love gurur, I almost went to the jailhouse from the playhouse.
Are the Nether Regions the Nertherlands ? Please don’t throw me into the briar patch…
49 · Manju said
Well if that’s your criteria, Blue Ribbon might be your heaven.
34 · MoorNam said
The DMK/DK and “pro-social justice” “rationalist” punks ran amok a couple of years ago when actress Kushboo expressed her contempt of men who demand that women remain “chaste” etc., And when Suhasini Maniratnam came to Kushboo’s defence one of the punks threatened to throw her Aryan Brahmin wazoo out of the State. Recently when Shreya attended an awards ceremony dressed in a miniskirt (in the presence of Karunanidhi no less) the self-same “social justice” punks raised a huge furore, issuing the usual threats. The DMK/DK alphabet soup are the greatest hypocrites, demanding chastity of their women, when as a rule most of them are pretty adventurous. T.R. Baalu, Karunanidhi’s enforcer/Gauleiter, and now Minister of Petroleum is in trouble because of a squabble between the children of his 1st wife and the ones of his 2nd.
Do you guys read the news or do you simply read the trash dished out by Vijay Prashad, Raju Ramasamy, Balmurli Natraj etc?
59 · jyotsana said
Don’t know why we are discussing these other crazies (does it minimize this in some way?), but I’d mentioned the Tamil ruckus over cheerleaders this morning on that thread.
49 · Manju said
Ha Ha Ha
Atool@45
Movies are for fun. Everybody is equal before the eyes of the movies. If Borat, Harold Kumar escapes from Guatanamo bay and similar movies are acceptable then why not Love Guru ? But an interesting point I am mulling over is if Justin tearing apart Janets’ blouse to expose her breasts is indecent then why is Love Guru and movies of similar kind not ? And once again the controvery of freedom of speech and expression ?
Well glad about the mirth and merrymaking all ’round. Hope you all had a good time. If it had been “The Maulana”, I am sure would things would’ve been different. You see, it is easy to ridicule a random table in an obscure website.Takes no courage at all. No repercussions,smart comments and witty repartee to flout. Get some perspective.Please stop punching soft targets.
I, for one, will definitely be taking my brown azz to see this movie…
to those “offended” desis I say:
“get laid”
I’m glad Hindus put a time limit on Hell, I hate that “your going to burn in Hell forever” Christian thing.
I’ve always wondered how people can be so detailed in descriptions of places which are not on any map, have no travel destinations in the known Universe, and — to be brutally honest — no one ever came back from with snapshots and/or video footage to tell us what it was like.
I’ve heard about this “Hell” all my life and so far nobody has produced so much as a singed eyebrow from it.
64 · stella said
When your unit of reckoning i.e., 1 Brahma life = 311 trillion years = 311,000,000,000,000 years – and not a mere 6,000 years, you tend to develope some sense of proportion about the idea of “eternity”. No one deserves punishment that lasts that long?
these same people are the ones who have despicably threatened others with death and rape, so maybe they want to make their favorite hinduism just like that religion they secretly admire.
i think people like you are just jealous of the “respect” that you think radical muslims get for their faith. well, those who want to go that route shouldn’t at least pretend that they are morally better or inherenly superior in some way.
not clear what this means.
Of course hindus have a hell and heaven. In fact there are several lokas (realms), serpent loka, ocean loka, many different sorts of celestial lokas, and quite a few hellish ones. So the guys who wrote the article probably aren’t making this up. What they’re being foolish about is taking it all so seriously. Just because ancient Indians were creative storytellers there’s no need for twenty-first century twerps to be getting in a twist over it.
Anyway, I just try and ignore this sort of stuff now. But I’m more concerned with the karma and reincarnation thing. I’m probably going to land in Sepia Mutiny hell for saying this, but I’ve begun to believe that these concepts too belong in the realm of mythology. They are true in a superficial, obvious sort of way but for some reason people have started taking them a bit too seriously. Belief in reincarnation is perhaps an excellent rule of thumb to elicit good behavior. And maybe that’s all it’s supposed to be. If you read the works of the so-called enlightened beings from the tradition, none of them talk about reincarnation. They talk about maya most of the time. It’s the small-time gurus, who talk about these things all the time. Deepak Chopra probably makes hay with it for all he’s worth. In any case, I spent a great deal of time looking for how reincarnation is supposed to work, and how it is linked to karma, and I did not find a single scrap of paper (I’m talking about original sources). I realize reincarnation is mentioned in the Gita, but the mechanism is not described. All I can make of it at this point is that this is a generic observation that life is cyclic, which it is. The rest is just part of the hindu lore that goes to form a sense of dharma or something. Just speculating, but imo, dogmatic belief in karma and reincaration is just a few notches better than than a dogmatic belief in Hell and Heaven.
68 · Divya said
Karma is really just cause-and-effect. Causality is a law of life; it doesn’t have to be linked to anything metaphysical. Even atheist/materialist Indian philosophy uses the term. I think you can hold on to it without it being a simplistic way to determine whether or not you will be born as a baboon.
i doubt these guys have heard of the Hollywood movie, that came out in 2002 called “The Guru”. I wonder how many demerits Jimi Mistri is going to get for being the star of that movie.
68 · Divya said
Like any concept which has fossilized over generations in hands of few to consolidate power, stripping away all of those trappings, reincarnation becomes conceptually a breaking down of energies and reconstituting of that energy. The universe itself cart-wheeling over time collects these separated energies until it all goes to a collective whole.
However like there are many ways to skin a cat so are there many approaches to karmic and reincarnation interpretations.
The real problem is when people trying to create boundaries, man made religious laws to trap or confine concepts which are universal and infinite such as absolutes like heaven and hell.
Act: Playing your cards right
Means: A nice, long trip to my nether region
Oh get over yourself. First of all, like someone said, this movie is making fun of Westerners and their fascination with gurus. Second, gurus have routinely been exposed as corrupt and even if they’re not, they (from Deepak Chopra on backwards) are known to peddle easy, watered-down, self-absorbed quasi-spiritualism with sleight-of-hand that distracts their followers from actually engaging the world on real terms. I’m constantly harping on issues of race and culture, and yet I don’t find the prospect of this movie offensive. And I did find Borat offensive (another rant entirely). If Myers were playing an actual Indian I would be similarly offended, but he’s playing a white dude which changes the nature of the portrayal entirely.
We Hindus (and South Asians in general) have always had a particular weakness for holy men. I suppose many cultures do, but I find that we’re particularly easily enthralled by them. And a certain breed of white Westerner is also enthralled by them. I think anyone taking offense at the trailer needs to seriously check themselves. Or at least wait until the movie comes out.
45 · Atool said
Dude, this is satire. Lighten up a bit.
Brilliant. I only wish I could make this kind of stuff up. Many of us probably find this far more offensive than the movie itself.
I hope the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti can take time from its busy schedule of being outraged about key issues such as Gandhi’s evilness, the Love Guru, Ram Setu, Obama-Krishna pictures, M. F. Husain paintings, and encouraging rape and death threats against Ramayana animators to declare what they feel about charlatans like these (to name just three examples) who are one of the real taints on any religion: misusing the very basic faith and trust people put in them in the vilest way possible.
Oh! really.. But in the midst of a sarcasmic fit, the author of this article forgot to post the above snippet, may be SM wants to save disk space/bandwidth costs ?.
The table is from a letter written by an individual to the producers of the film. Congratulations for a nice little hit job vis.a.vis Hindu Janjagruti Samiti.
HJS has a lot more nuttier stuff on their website and seems to preach hate against other faiths!
69 · NYC Akshay said
i’m hoping to reborn as a female bonobo. the real love gurus (or so thought some).
@to the idiot above
Go play your “Al Taqiyya” defence else where.
I’m not really a science type, but how do you separate cause and effect from metaphysics (the way things are)?
81 · Divya said
I’m actually not the science type, either. Metaphysics is usually defined as meta – above + physics – the physical, or in other words, something that transcends the material. Reincarnation is a metaphysical belief, because it involves principles and concepts that are not perceptible to our five senses. By detaching karma from that, you are making it simply a physical process. I throw a ball into the air, and it lands because of because of the causes and conditions of gravity, among other things. I slap a random stranger on the street, and depending on the causes and conditions, they will react in a certain way. That’s what I mean by karma; just plain causality. If you choose to think this way, then we are all products of causes and effects, and since every event is both a cause and an effect, I think one valid way of looking at life is through this lens of karma.
Re 5:
Rahul, weren’t they simply referring to the er, rim of hell?
Re 34:
Rather shortsighted of them, I always thought. Having the cheerleaders around could always provide Dravid & Co. with a ready-made excuse for a bad performance: “It’s not really our fault; it was just hard to focus on the bouncing ball when there were such pretty bouncing cheerleaders on the field.”
Yes, but whose ball?
Anyway, bouncing babes are more entertaining than bouncing babies.
NYC Akshay, laws of causality involve things (or people), and things are made up of substance, so you cannot escape metaphysics. Actually philsophers and scientists no longer talk about metaphysics, it’s just plain physics now (much of matter transcends the senses as well, which your explanation overlooks). As a matter of fact, they no longer talk about causality either and rely instead on theories and predictions. If this is of any interest, you’d like Karl Popper’s autobiography- Unended Quest, or any introductory book on the philosophy of science. I find them useful in understanding the indian intellectual traditions as well as they help figure out the issues that are important and help separate them from the god stuff and other nonsense that has accumulated over the years.
86 · Divya said
You are right; my definition wasn’t a complete one. I should have said that metaphysics deals with unobservables, which is why the aspects of physics that involve any manner of observation can never be part of metaphysics. By this definition, karma as a concept is not metaphysical since causality can be observed. I’m not sure what you mean when you say that things are made up of substance, and must therefore involve metaphysics.
Well, we can just drop the term metaphysics even though some people still use it. I just meant to say that I don’t think you can detach reincarnation from karma like you said in 82, since it is reincarnation of something (a substance to put it in concrete terms) and the same laws would apply to the substance that gets reincarnated as would apply to the substance that the laws of cause and effect operate on (remember the theory is that there’s ultimately just one substance). Anyway, this is just my half-baked opinion. Maybe it’s a whole other world at that level and maybe there’s no reincarnation even.
Just as physical karma, there could be purely physical reincarnation, because all the same atoms, and sub-atomic particles are being used in the universe to form something else (even if it is energy) anyway. It would be interesting to tag an atom in someone and see how it “reincarnates” over the years. We could also perhaps calculate the karma attached to that single atom (or even electron?) and prove/disprove reincarnation/karma attachment.
Well, there is the canonical parlor game of estimating the probability that the breath you just took has a molecule that was in Jesus’s last breath, assuming that the molecules of air have mixed sufficiently well all over the world in the past 2000 years, and that there has been extremely limited absorption or release of these molecules into some permanent repository like the sea or the earth.
There are roughly m = 10^44 molecules of air, and roughly n = 210^22 molecules in a breath. So, the probability that any one molecule was in Jesus’ breath is p = n/m = 210^(-22). The probability that any one molecule was not in Jesus’ breath is q = 1-p = 1-(210^(-22)). Hence, assuming independence as a result of all the mixing in the past 2 millenia, the probability that none of the molecules in your previous breath was in Jesus’ breath, P = probability that molecule 1 was not in J’s breath * probability that molecule 2 was not in J’s breath *… * probability that molecule n=210^22 was not in J’s breath = q^n = (1-210^(-22))^(210^(22)). Now, 1-x is roughly e^(-x) for small x, so P is roughly e^[(-210^(-22))(2*10^(-22))] = e^(-4) which comes to about 0.018. So, there’s a 1-P probability = 0.982 = 98.2% chance that you just inhaled a molecule that was in Jesus’ breath. Counting all the breaths you take in a day, it’s extremely likely that you inhale something from J’s last exhalation every day.
That’s reincarnation for you 🙂
Also, what is the Hindu explanation for parking karma?
Funniest comment on this post :).
That is one of the earlier recensions by the Buddhist thinkers of earlier classical ideas on karma. While the Mimamsakas did away with all god, heaven, hell etc., and said just follow regularity for happiness (the simplest basics according to ability), the Buddhist thinkers (by which term I mean the many thinkers that Siddartha Gautama and his followers elaborated upon), decided to revisit the classical ideas once again. The ancient thinkers were wary of deducing natural laws of any kind, because a centerpiece of the Indian intellectual tradition holds that any description of the universe that attempts to be complete leads to a logical paradox. And that is hard to resolve because verification by its very nature is incomplete and requires being open always to new data. Which is where the atomists (post-Vaisheshikas) the early Jains (Kanadaa chiefly) made a brilliant breakthru with the idea of the paramaanu, describing as many as twentyfour different properties of the atome, taste, touch etc! If things are composed of discrete parts they can be combined, broken up, and put back together at will. Buddhist thinkers worked with this idea to explain what is desire, and what is the momentary state of existence. While what we could call today “Hindu thinkers” took the idea of the atom and instead decided to do natural studies, building the rudiments of chemistry thru metallurgy and medicine.
Everything comes from India! ‘Tis a real pity Hilbert wasn’t paying attention to GGM.
Table provided in the article is absolutely true.. If you ignore it u are bound to have it…
Calling oneself a Hindu while having no real understanding of Vedanta and not possessing the requisite sense of humor: One solid bitchslap
This is like certain members of the Catholic Church getting all riled up about the alternative concepts presented in a fraking work of fiction called The Golden Compass. Threatened stupids.
93 · Rahul said
’tis a pity you don’t read up on Indian philosophy. The trajectory of philosophy is very different from that of the sciences or mathematics. It is one thing to derive a conclusion through speculation, vaada, vitanda, jalpa, tarka, avyaya, and another to develop axioms, laws, and proofs.
I’m not sure why you say this. What difference does it make how you derive your conclusion, as long as it is a valid conclusion? Perhaps you mean to say that science and math cannot do for you what philosophy can? Also, even though I attempt to study Sanskrit off and on (witout making too much progress), I cannot fully respect any knowledge that cannot be communicated in modern 21st century language, even that which is ultimately experiential. The ancient sages were able to communicate their knowledge in the language of their day, and if hindus go about claiming that there is some sort of eternal knowledge to be found, then they should be able to communicate it in modern terminology.
59 · jyotsana said
Anti-Tamil prejudice flares up again. Tamils interpreted Kushboo’s remarks as a slander against Tamil womanhood and engaged in democratic protest.
i do not see how these modes of argument are inconsistent with deploying ‘axioms, laws, and proofs’ to derive a conclusion.
for instance, i could derive a conclusion based on whatever axioms (develop a proof) — and my opponents could engage with me, using any modes of arguments you mention. it may be that i am not understanding you right, but developing critiques of an opponent’s conclusions (in even mathematical and natural sciences besides philosophy and the social sciences) follow the trajectories you mention on a conceptual level. of course, i am commenting with only a superficial knowledge of the modes of argument you mention, but they don’t seem unique to indian epistemology.
A somewhat related post, based on a true story, from a (tired) mother’s point-of-view here. Apparently I am not technical enough to figure out how all this T.r.a.c.k.b.a.c.k address thing works.