Siva and Vishnu

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>The Bible is replete with contrasts between light and darkness, beginning
>with Genesis 1, in which God created the light, found that it was "good,"
>and set it to rule over the darkness.  Genesis is usually attributed
I would imagine that contrasting light and darkness is pretty
standard religious imagery used by almost everybody.

And as you note, the religious imagery was employed to justify
slavery in the Americas, not too long ago.

>The RV references seem much more racially focused,

In response, there is the argument that this impression is
based on a serious, perhaps deliberate, mistranslation of RV
passages, by people who projected their own racial prejudices
into the Indian text. For example, the academic understanding
of the words anaasa and daasyu has gone through a major change.
The problem of skin color needs clearing up, independently of
whether "Aryans" came into or went out of India. One looks for,
dare I say it, some light to be shed on this dark issue.

Vidyasankar
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