Swami Karpatri

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Swami Karpatri (Swāmi Karpātrī; 1907–1982; born as Har Narayan Ojha in a village called Bhatni of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India) so called because he would eat only what would come in his palm kara, as the bowl pātra, was a monk in the Hindu dashanami monastic tradition.[1]

Life

He was a disciple of Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath Swami Brahmananda Saraswati.[2] He was also the founder of Dharma Sangha in Varanasi where he spent most of his life. He was a teacher in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hindu philosophy.According to French indologist, Alain Daniélou, Karpatri initiated him into Shaivite Hinduism.[3] Swami Nishchalanand Saraswati, the 145th Govardhan Peeth Shankaracharya of Puri, Odisha, is an eminent disciple of Swami Karpatri.[4]

Politics

In 1948, Swami Karpatri founded the Ram Rajya Parishad, a traditionalist Hindu party.

Hindu Code Bill

In the late 1940s, the Government of India had introduced a draft Hindu Code Bill in the constituent assembly. The proposed law aimed to provide Hindu women the right to divorce.[5] RSS and other ideologically similar organisation had opposed the law. In March 1949 an All-India Anti Hindu Code Bill Committee was formed with the support of the conservative clerics and lawyers. The committee held the view that Constituent Assembly has 'no right to interfere with the personal laws of Hindus which are based on Dharma Shastras '.[5] Swami Karpatri led a movement against the Hindu Code Bill. He had stated that a former untouchable (referring to law minister Ambedkar's caste) had no business meddling in matters that were normally handled by the Brahmins.[6] RSS mobilized its volunteers to New Delhi, for demonstrations against the law. Swami Karpatri was usually the main speaker at these RSS-organized events.[6] Kapatri was ultimately unsuccessful in blocking the Hindu code bill.[7]

Swami Karpatri called the proposed law against the Dharma Shastras and specifically attacked several provisions of the law. Ambedkar had claimed that Shastras "did not really favour polygamy". During his speeches, Swami Karpatri challenged this view and claimed that polygamy was allowed under certain conditions quoted from Yagnavalkya smriti : "if the wife is a habitual drunkard, a confirmed invalid, a cunning, a barren or a spendthrift woman, if she is bitter-tongued, if she has got only daughters and no son, if she hates her husband, [then] the husband can marry a second wife even while the first is living."[6]

According to Karpatri, divorce was prohibited in the Hindu tradition. He believed that "to allow adoption of a boy of any caste is to defy the Shastras and to defy property". Through the new law Ambedkar sought to provide the women with an equal inheritance of the ancestral property, while Karpatri claimed that even by most liberal interpretations of Hindu scriptures, the woman's inheritence was limited to one-eighth, and not half as was proposed in the new law.[6]

Anti Cow Slaughter Movement

Swami Karpatri was also a prominent agitator in 1966 anti-cow slaughter agitation.[8]


Books

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  • Kaal Mimamsa: Dating of all events related to Ramayana and Mahabharata.
  • The Linga And The Great Goddess: Two articles on the meaning of the Linga and the nature of the Great Goddess. Besides doctrinal and mythological clarifications, it presents a sophisticated debate about the nature of Sakti between two traditional schools: Nyaya and Mimamsa, which could be compared with those held in the times of Adi Sankara.
  • Marxvad aur Ramrajya (Marxism and Ramrajya): A detailed biography and critique of Western philosophers and politicians from the eye of traditional Indian philosophy published by Gita Press in 1957[9][10]; their time, opinions and comparison with Indian sages; the corollary of theism, the opposition of Marxism in the strong classical light and the principle of 'Nyaya' and 'Vedanta'. An encyclopedia of politics and philosophy.
  • Gaay Ek Samgra Chintan and Kya Sambhog Se Smadhi.


Other works

On 18 April 1948, he founded the newspaper Sanmarg which promoted Sanatan Dharma and also advocated the Hindu Code Bill and voiced opposition on cow slaughters.[11]

Further reading

Life history of Swami Karpatri of Banaras

Lutgendorf, Philip. 1991. The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 384–387.

References

  1. ↑ Swami Karpatri The Linga and the great goddess Indica bolls, ISBN 818656988X
  2. ↑ Rama, Swami (1999) Himalayan Institute, Living With the Himalayan Masters, page 247
  3. ↑ Unknown author, Portrait of Alain Danielou Official web site of Alain Danielou, retrieved Sept 8, 2012
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Hindu code bill and Dr.B.R.Ambedkar by Sohanlal Shastri
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ https://www.amarujala.com/amp/columns/opinion/marxwad-and-ramrajya-book-review
  10. ↑ https://archive.org/details/MarxvadAurRamarajyaKarpatriji/mode/2up
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.


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