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exploited every cross-section of the population. Finally, the
European darkness led to two great wars in the twentieth
century. Holocaust, gas chambers, mass graves and such events
in Europe exhibited their hollow foundations. What they did
elsewhere was much more frightening. They wiped out the
entire population in the most barbaric manner from the
geographical areas that are presently called North and South
Americas, Australia and New Zealand. In other continents such
as Asia and Africa where the inhabitants were in very large
number they made colonies. They even treated human beings
as slaves and traded them as a commodity. In so doing, the
atrocities of murder and rape were any white man's birthright.
A New Awakening: When India and the rest of the world was
covered with such dark clouds then a ray of light appeared most
unexpectedly when a child named Mool-Shankar was born in
Rajkot State in the present state of Gujarat in the year 1824.
His father was Karsan Tiwari, a staunch
Saivite
in the tradition
of
Audicya Samavedi Brahmana.
The child learned entire
Yajurveda in his tender age. When he was barely 14 he decided
to keep the fast on
Mahrthivaratri
and remained awake through
the night in the nearby
Sivcilaya
where even grown up people
had gone into sleep one after another. But he was true to the
religious discipline. No sooner that most of the devotees had
gone to sleep one mouse came near the
Sivaliriga
and began to
eat away the offerings made earlier to the idol. The young boy
could not reconcile the great powers that
Siva
was _described
to possess earlier in the evening and the fact that
Siva
could
not protect the offerings from a mouse. He soon woke up his
father who was asleep and described his riddle. His father said
that this is merely an idol and not the real
Siva
who lived on a
Himalayan mountain called Kai lash, and after giving this
explanation to his son, he went again into sleep. The child was
not satisfied with the answer and thought that why should he
go through penance to appease an idol that is not the real God.
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