By P. Soma Palan –
P. Soma Palan
I refer to the above headed article in the Colombo Telegraph of 8th December 2025 by M.S. Thambirajah (MST) and would like to respond with my views on few relevant matters referred to therein.
Firstly, by “one’s Social Group” the writer means a racial, religious and /or a nation, which are collectives. Glorification of these collective entities by people composing them is labelled as Narcissism. The distinction between glorification and pride is thin. To glorify or take pride, self-evidencing achievements are a prerequisite. When there are no universally accepted self- evidencing achievements, it amounts to glorification, which is invariably a form of pseudo glorification. When there are universally accepted self-evidencing achievements, there is legitimacy of claim for glorification and pride. The above criterion is the litmus test to differentiate between fake and genuine glorification.
I would have preferred if MST had used the more felicitous word “ego” instead of the psycho-somatic word “narcissism”, which I think is related to his field of Psychiatry. The eastern Sanskrit language refers to ego as “ahamkara”, which is more perfect and commonly understood than the esoteric word narcissism.
On the whole, the subject matter of the essay has neither a thesis nor an anti-thesis. It appears to be a veiled and deceptive purpose to denigrate India and its millennial ancient Hindu civilization, as collective narcissism. As referred hereto before, India or Bharath’s glorification or pride of being the world’s oldest civilization, in terms of chronological infinity, and its universally acknowledged self-evidencing achievements in various fields of knowledge, defies the derogatory description of narcissism.
MST selectively picks two quotations of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi (a) Karma is born in the womb. The concept of Karma in Hinduism is alien to a Christian mind, which I believe, the writer is. Karma is not something created by the womb. Every new birth comes with a load of past life Karma. (b) “the Hindu God Rama flew the first aeroplane (Vimana) and he states that “rather than being evidence of past astronomical technology, the Vimana folklore is a far more impressive testament to some sections of people, like Hindu Warriors, to glorify the past, especially when their contemporary achievements are poor”. In the first place, MST displays no knowledge of Hinduism, when he refers to “Hindu God Rama”. Prince Rama was heir apparent to the kingdom of Ayodaya. He was highest and perfect model of a human being and not a Divine God, but an Avatar of God Vishnu. MST refers to people of India who takes pride in their glorious civilizational past history running to millennia, when the Vedic culture, philosophy and knowledge of the Vedas and the Upanishads reached its acme, as Hindu warriors, even if metaphorically, is deriding it. Whereas, the Christians and Islamists are literally and truly the warriors who colonized and killed people of other religions. The Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, are relatively religions of yesterday, when compared to the undecipherable chronological ancientness of Hinduism. MST ridicules India’s economic status, by using the questionable yardstick of the Human Developmental Index of the UNO, stating that India stands at 130th position. What relevance the Human Development Index has to a population of 1.4 billion? Nations with negligible populations would have higher index rate. So, MST concludes saying that, “hence India has nothing to boast on the economic front, and that is the reason the Hindutwa politicians glorifying the past.” But he is unaware of the GDP and the Growth Rate of the Indian economy, which is now the 4th largest economy of the world, and heading towards to be the 3rd largest economy of the world, in the short term.
Further, during the ancient period of history, India was the richest country in the world, in terms of global output and trade. That is why the Medieval Christian marauders under the call of Papal Bulls, engaged in the so- called euphemism “voyages of discoveries”, to plunder the lands and colonize them and convert native people to Christianity. The Christian nations, the Portuguese, Dutch and the British, with the blessings of their Popes, invaded and conquered India and others, and plundered and raped the riches and resources of the colonized India and reduced its pristine greatness to poverty, over a period of 400 years. So, India was rich and great in the ancient times and had a civilizational grandeur, and self-evidencing achievements, in higher fields of knowledge as Cosmology, Astronomy, Mathematics, Ayurveda Medicine and spiritual Sciences and Metaphysical Sciences, when the so-called Western world were groping in the dark.
India, despite conspiracies of the western Christian and Islamic political and religious forces, demonstrated resilience, and has reclaimed its position in the contemporary world and is awakening. It will be a great global power in the foreseeable future. Yet, once again, the global dark forces of obscurantism, both Christianity and Islam, which are veritably two sides of same coin, are hell-bent to destabilize and break India. These dark and sinister global forces are once again flexing their muscles to break India. A knowledge and civilizational based India, is a great discomfort to nations of One Book and One absolute God.
MST also refers to the geological cataclysm in ancient past, “a myth that has been widespread among Tamils of South India, is the Kumarikkandam legend”. This is not a myth, but a universally recognized geological fact. World Geological studies confirm the existence of a Continent connected to South India and its geological name is “Lemuria”. During the period before the Epic Ramayana in 12000 B.C. this Continent submerged and disintegrated caused by tectonic activity. The existence of myriad islands in the Indian Ocean is self- evidencing of this fact, which only the purblind cannot see. Sri Lanka, Andaman, Nicobar, Maldives, Madagascar, Mauritious, and the multiple islands of Indonesia are all residual drifted territorial parts of the lost continent. Even Australia is believed to be part of this continental drift. Further MST asserts that the first two Tamil Sangams were held in the Kumarikkandam. Tamil Sangams took place in the city of Madura in the Pandyan Kingdom, around 3000 BC. At the time of Ramayana, Lanka was already separated from India by sea. Kumarikkandam precedes Ramayana.
MST refers to the Mahavamsa historical claim of the arrival of prince Vijaya and his followers form India around 500 BC, as a myth to glorify the Sinhala race being connected to the Aryans of North India, which has some truth. But in the pre- Kumarikkandam period of history, Lanka did not exist at all as a separate island. So, the original inhabitants of the disconnected Lanka, are South Indian mix of Dravidians. According to Valmiki’s story of Ramayana ,12,000 BC, the king of Lanka was Ravanan, and his lineage is traced to king Pulasthi. Were they Sinhala? No, Tamils. Ravanan was known to be a great Shiva Baktha, including other Dravidian races. But the founder of the Sinhala race is claimed to be Vijaya, who arrived only around 500 BC. No races of the world claim individuals as the founders of their races. Races evolve organically. Kings from Ravanan to Devanambiya Thesan, were Tamil and Hindu kings. The latter was converted to Buddhism by Emperor Asoka’s son Mahendra of India in 247 BC. To be converted means, the king obviously had a different religion, which is Hinduism. This led to large scale conversion of his subjects too. Hence, they became Tamil Buddhists. These Tamil Buddhists were the foundation of the evolution of the Sinhala race later, with the founding of the Sinhala as a language of the people, by assimilation of Tamil, Sanskrit, Pali origin languages, in the 7th century CE. Even it has adaptation of English and Portuguese words. The claim that Sinhala race is of Indian Aryan origin is the fabrication of the Mahavamsa, to disconnect the link to the Tamils. The Aryan race is the invention of the Western Colonizers who propounded the infamous Aryan Invasion Theory and later modified to Aryan Migration theory, both of which now stands debunked and invalidated by modern historians. The word “ Arya” in Vedic parlance means one of higher human quality and conduct and of Satva Guna. It has no racial connotation at all. The creation of Aryan and Dravidian dichotomy, is of Western Christian origin, to denote a superior and inferior race, aligned with the “oppressor and the oppressed class, to exploit same for converting the oppressed Dravidians to Christianity. The north Indian Indus Valley Civilization of Mohenjodaro and Harrapa, were the South Indian people and by no means the so-called Aryans. The word Dravidian means the territory bound by the confluence of the three Oceans, the Arabian, Indian and the Bay of Bengal. Due to invasions, both from the west and the East, these people of North migrated to the southern Decan region of India and settled down. Moreover, the DNA genetics of the Tamils and later Sinhala people are the same. Humans can lie, but not their genetics.
Conclusion
I have clarified and stated the correct Indian and Hindu perspective on relevant matters referred to by the writer. Rest of the essay on the analysis of Narcissism is outside the scope of my interest.
