Publisher's Synopsis
Head of a caste based political party in northern Bharata had often been invoking the term 'Manuvada' and 'Manuvadi' to derogate political opponents from other parties. Too frequent invocation of these two terms ignited a controversy in authors mind as to what is so sinister about Manusmriti that those controversial comments are bandied around. Thus came the decision to scrutinise Manusmriti and ferret out facts and realities entirely unknown to masses hitherto. As multiple versions of Manusmriti are available on shelves, considerable explorations and confabulations with scholars had to be undertaken to select the most appropriate one to proceed with. Finally, it was Manusmriti authored by Dr. Surendra Kumar and published by Arsha Sahitya Prachara Trust, Delhi that came to be selected. Learned author has not only offered most accurate interpretations of Sloka-s but also discriminatively too. He has effectively identified Sloka-s as Praksepa-s on the basis of criteria like relevance, context, diction, repetition, not in harmony with Veda-s and continuity that in all probability had been appended later during foreign domination to distort and disfigure sacrosanct wisdom of Manusmriti in order to realise their dubious goal of 'divide, rule and destroy' Sanatana society to facilitate their occupation of the nation. Out of 2685 Sloka-s, 1471 were identified as Praksipta by the author with 1214 constituting supposedly original version of the Smriti. Since I am convinced with his conclusions after scrutiny, I decided to exclude all those Sloka-s from this title.
Manusmriti is the greatest civil code ever authored on Planet Earth for human society thousands of years ago. During colonial occupation, Euro-authors were mobilised by the intruding British regime to insert Sloka-s to distort the philosophy in their bid to divide and rule Hindu society which was almost neutralised by the august institution of Arya Samaja through their extensive endeavours in this regard. Intensity and depth of the wisdom may be gauged from the fact that quite enigmatically, the philosophy is very much in action in various forms and manifests in all societies, in all countries even today being intrinsic to human psyche. Several Smriti-s came into being during that phase but none of them could survive in presence of the aura of Manusmriti. Antiquity of the Smriti is established by its being mentioned in scriptures like Satpatha, Taittiriya Upanisad etc.
