Book Summary of The Arya Samaj Ceremonial rites and rituals occupy a place of utmost importance in the life of a devout Hindu. Among the innumerable castes and communities in India, only the trivargeas - Brahmanas, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas perform their rites strictly in accrodance with the injuctions ordained by the Vedas.

Swami Dayanand had a vision of Truth through the Vedas. He communicated his experience through Satyarth Prakash. This work can be treated as a comprehensive introduction. It is suggested that after the reading of this work, the conscientious reader should go to the original work of Swamiji for full benefit and appreciation of the light brought out by him from the Vedas and the later scriptures. Nevertheless, if the reader is hard-pressed for time and can feel content with knowing what Satyarth Prakash is like, this work would serve the purpose.

The book investigates in depth the outcomes of the Provincial Legislative Elections held in February 1937 in accordance with the Government of India Act of 1935. In sharp contrast to the dominant, bourgeois-dominated Congress party, Dr. Ambedkar provides a perceptive picture of the absence of political rights enjoyed by Scheduled Caste candidates (during the election). This book also seeks to debunk the misconception that Mahatma Gandhi was the "benefactor" of the Dalit.

Why, Salmond asks, would nineteenth-century Hindus who come from an iconic religious tradition voice a kind of invective one might expect from Hebrew prophets, Muslim iconoclasts, or Calvinists? Rammohun was a wealthy Bengali, intimately associated with the British Raj and familiar with European languages, religion, and currents of thought. Dayananda was an itinerant Gujarati ascetic who did not speak English and was not integrated into the culture of the colonizers. Salmond’s examination of Dayananda after Rammohun complicates the easy assumption that nineteenth-century Hindu iconoclasm is simply a case of borrowing an attitude from Muslim or Protestant traditions. Salmond examines the origins of these reformers’ ideas by considering the process of diffusion and independent invention—that is, whether ideas are borrowed from other cultures, or arise spontaneously and without influence from external sources. Examining their writings from multiple perspectives, Salmond suggests that Hindu iconoclasm was a complex movement whose attitudes may have arisen from independent invention and were then reinforced by diffusion. Although idolatry became the symbolic marker of their reformist programs, Rammohun’s and Dayananda’s agendas were broader than the elimination of image-worship. These Hindu reformers perceived a link between image-rejection in religion and the unification and modernization of society, part of a process that Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world.” Focusing on idolatry in nineteenth-century India, Hindu Iconoclasts investigates the encounter of civilizations, an encounter that continues to resonate today.

Swami Dayananda Sarasvati, 1824-1883, founder of the Arya-Samaj, Hindu reform movement.

This book focuses on the role of U.S. and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, government and human rights groups in fostering separation of the identities of Dravidian and Dalit communities from the rest of India. It is the result of five years of research, and uses information obtained in the West about foreign funding of these Indian-based activities. The research tracked the money trails that start out claiming to be for education, human rights, empowerment training and leadership training, but end up in programs designed to produce angry youths who feel disenfranchised from Indian identity. The book reveals how outdated racial theories continue to provide academic frameworks and fuel the rhetoric that can trigger civil wars and genocides in developing countries. The Dravidian movement's 200-year history has such origins. Its latest manifestation is the Dravidian Christianity - movement that fabricates a political and cultural history to exploit old faultlines. The book explicitly names individuals and institutions, including prominent Western ones and their Indian affiliates. Its goal is to spark an honest debate on the extent to which human rights and other empowerment projects are cover-ups for these nefarious activities.