It has been observed in the previous book titled ‘Origin of Hindu √ The Name’ that the dictum of going, moving forward became the central tenet of a huge number of human beings who essentially were the residents of India. Those people were termed as Hindu. Even when the root of that concept is logically proven, then also a question crops up and remains unanswered. Why did the act of going, moving forward become so important that a large number of people needed to accept it as the guiding principle of their lives? No tangible evidence has been found of any coercive actions on the part of the propagators of that way of life, not even in the folklores or in the legends. The adherence in all probability was voluntary and self-imposed. For that happening, two broad categories of influences may be credited to: physical and/or cerebral. The physical environment of the land in reference was set by the actions and interactions of the geological forces. Cerebral input must have come from some knowledge base. Structured and recorded knowledge base that is unique to India is found in the Vedas and its annotations. The period, during which the geological timeline shows that that land was becoming ready for human inhabitation, was the time around which the trace of the oldest literature of that land may be found. A little later, the world came to know about the existence of a human settlement in that land, which was more splendorous than anything known to the Greeks, who were the most advanced ones in the known world up to that time. This book finds the relationship between the geological formation of the Ganga Plain and the propagation of a new way of life that would be known as ‘Hindu’ religion in later time. It has been established that the word ‘Arya’ is a Sanskrit word that means ‘the son of the Rishi’ and no large human movement that may be termed as invasion, migration etc. needed to be introduced to explain what have happened in that land duri

Naru embarked on a lifelong cerebral journey to find answers to a few questions that had appeared in his mind very early in his life. It was only in his mid-forties that he got the chance to start organising the thoughts and experiences that he had gathered thus far. A little before that time, he came into contact with the 'Wisp'. That chance encounter had a big impact on the progress of his search. Without being present in tangible format in his world, 'Wisp' guided Naru's quest in an enigmatic way for a long time. Naru crossed one hurdle after another to arrive at his own explanations of the concepts of Bangla, the origin of the term 'Bangal', the naming of 'Banga', etc. He thought that his journey was over and that he had been able to achieve what he intended to. That's when he felt the presence of a spectre in the past of the Bengal Basin. His search convinced him that all the travellers in history who dealt with the Bengal Basin felt its presence. Like all the previous travellers, he also lost his way to reach that phase of Bengal's history that precedes the presence of the spectre. There was a void. He called the simulated form of his 'Wisp' that he had successfully created in his mind to make up the emptiness that the absence of the 'Wisp' caused. The direction from the 'Wisp' was not sufficient to breach the barrier posed by the void. He took the virtual 'Wisp' to the place where they first met a long time ago. This time he tried to use the 'Wisp' as an instrument of his journey instead of an enigmatic direction giver. He achieved success in his effort. 'Wisp' broke the barrier posed by the void and took Naru to the other side of that barrier. The new light that illuminated the distant horizon of the history of the Bengal Basin had the capability to solve a great number of mysteries that are associated with that basin.

This volume offers an overview of Hinduism as found in India and the diaspora. Exploring Hinduism in India in dynamic interaction, rather than in isolation, the volume discusses the relation of Hinduism with other religions of Indian origin and with religions which did not originate in India but have been a major feature of its religious landscape. These latter religions include Islam and Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. The volume also covers Hinduism’s close association with Tribal Religions, sometimes called Primal Religions. As its second main theme, the volume examines the phenomenon of Hinduism in the diaspora. The Indian diaspora is now beginning to make its presence felt, both in India and abroad. In India, the Indian government annually hosts a diaspora event called Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), in recognition of the growing importance of the twenty-million-strong diaspora. Although not all Indians are Hindus, most are, both in India and abroad, and a strong sense of Hindu identity is emerging among diasporic Hindus. This volume fills the need felt by Hindus both in India and the diaspora for more knowledge about modern-day Hinduism, Hindu history and traditions. It takes into account three main aspects of Hinduism: that the active pan-Indian and diasporic language of the Hindus is English; that modern Hindus need a rational rather than a devotional or traditional exposition of the religion; and that they need information about and arguments to address the stereotypes which characterize the presentation of Hinduism in academia and the media, especially in the West.

The capital city of Bangladesh, situated in the eastern part of the geographical entity known as the Bengal Basin, is Dhaka. The word Dhaka, when used as a place name, is a noun, and it is a unique application of that word. That word has not been used anywhere else to name a place. Apart from having its use as a proper noun, the word ‘Dhaka’ finds its place in Bengali language dictionaries as an adjective, and that is the predominant use of that word. Many experts have put forward a number of explanations regarding the evolution of that place name. All those explanations are derived ones, i.e., none of those explanations can relate that name to that place in a directly meaningful manner. With the intervention of his ‘Wisp’ in his cerebral journey, Naru, the main character of this series of books, stumbled upon the idea that, deep in the past, there could have existed an island-mountain at the centre of the place that is currently known as ‘Bengal Basin’. The most famous island-mountain in history is known as 'Atlantis', as described by Greek philosopher Plato. The geological and geographical settings of the Bengal Basin can almost seamlessly fit into the description of Atlantis. The place-name ‘Dhaka’, may be explained satisfactorily and without the application of the idea of being derived, when the concept of a drowned island-mountain is introduced in that geography. In that situation, ‘sonar Bangla’, ‘the golden Bengal’, the other iconic phrase of Bengal, becomes a reflection of reality rather than a metaphor. Naru undertook a cerebral journey to find the validity of this idea in the available facts from various lines of study.

The importance of the word Kalapani in historical and political perspectives with respect to Bengal is immense. For a large part of the history of India’s struggle for independence, this word has a very significant presence. Persons who were considered to be revolutionary by the British rulers of India used to be sent to ‘condemned cells’ of a jail that was named as ‘Cellular Jail’ by the British. Many of such rebellious souls were from Bengal. The construction of that jail was completed at the beginning of the twentieth century, and within no time it became synonymous with ‘Kalapani’. Every citizen of India learns about the country’s freedom struggle; it is an integral part of the Indian education system. Through that process, the word Kalapani becomes acquainted with every Indian. Any inquisitive mind thinks at least once in life about the origin of the word Kalapani, as that word hardly has any other use in the Indian languages. Through his quest, spanning almost his entire active lifespan, Naru has found an explanation of the origin of that word. Through this book he has brought that unique understanding to the readers.

Nationalist and Revolutionary While a high school student, I actively participated in the Mahatma Gandhis 1942 movement Quit India. I felt disappointed because only a few prominent leaders like Gandhi and Nehru were imprisoned. On Sept. 9, 1945, under the patronage of the Dadu District British Collector, the town dignitaries including my grand father and Mr. Tuljaram Nagrani, the principal of the town High school, along with the matriculate students had assembled at the Hindu temple to celebrate the victory of the Allies at the WW II. Sweets were distributed. I threw the sweets on the floor. The reason I did this was not because I sided with the Axis powers. But because Indian soldiers were fighting for Britain, as India was not a free country. Next morning, the Principal got me in his office and whipped me several times on my palms and ordered me to leave the school and come back with my parent. The principal told my father that Jagat to pay a fine of Rs. 5 and threatened that in case of denial I will be rusticketed (expelled from school as a bad character student) and no school would admit me. I am proud of my father that he said that only Jagat to decide. I said that paying fine means admission of the guilt. In my opinion it was not a guilt. I, with recommendation of my class teacher Mr. Chandnani, got admission in the P. H. High School, Dadu, only about 50 miles away from my home town. In 1947 on the eve of partition, there was an accidently bomb explosion in Karachi, suspected of an RSS activity. Several RSS leaders were arrested. A Khalsa police officer secretly alerted my grand father to hide me to avoid arrest. I, along with a few RSS pracharaks, secretly reached Karachi to take a ship for Okha, Gujarat, then train to Baroda. In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. Because Godse was an RSS member, the whole RSS all over India was banned. I participated in the collective protest against the injustice of punishing the whole RSS organization because of the crime by its only one RSS member. Whole family can not be punished because of the crime of its one member. I was imprisoned in Baroda jail for four months. Thousands of RSS members all over India were imprisoned. Dr. Jagat K. Motwani

Naru embarked on a lifelong cerebral journey to find answers to a few questions that had appeared in his mind very early in his life. Those questions were related to his birthplace, Bengal. At present, officially, a place known as ‘Bengal’ has become extinct, but the people of that geography still use that term to describe their motherland. In the last few centuries, huge efforts have been undertaken to understand and document the past of that land. The Europeans, particularly the British, the then-occupying force, put enormous effort into rediscovering the prehistoric literature of India. The effort they put into that front was probably unparalleled throughout the worldwide empire that they were running during that time. An army of Indian intellectuals, many of whom were Bengalis, sprang up in no time to contribute to that effort. Myriads of works of literature came to the forefront, the presence of which was unknown until that time. Not much progress could be made in the area of writing the history of Bengal to the perceived time when it is believed that prehistoric Indian literature was created. References to the geography known as ‘Bengal’ today may be found in those literatures. Sketchy historical accounts for that land are available up to a period of 3000 years before the present from some secondary sources. Some archaeological evidence has been discovered that dates the historical period of Bengal up to a period of 5000 years before the present. Through the application of unexplainable capabilities, Naru was shown some events that had happened inside the Bengal Basin by his ‘Wisp’. He managed to recognise that those events bore resemblance to the tale of Atlantis, a submerged land. As he could not be sure about his conjecture, he requested his ‘Wisp’ for a repetition of that journey. What he saw on the second journey had the capability to bridge many gaps that are present in the present understanding of human history.