EUROPE UNDER SIEGE? ... 1
There is a tremendous vacuum being created in Europe following the retreat of Christianity post Enlightenment. Islam is apparently making cultural inroads there through mass emigration of Muslims from elsewhere into Europe. This is causing Europeans to worry about their future European identity which they feel is very much threatened and may eventually be erased leaving a confused culture behind that will be uncharacteristic of all that Europe has historically stood for in terms of evolved values and practices.
Over a century ago Swami Vivekananda had planted in the heart of Europe and America (which is but an extension of Europe in terms of civilisation and culture) seeds of the Vedanta which were so very much in keeping with the spirit of scientific enlightenment that had swept Europe in the preceding few centuries in the wake of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Doctrinaire Christianity had been relegated to the background of the emerging European societies which went through a tremendous upheaval of reformation. It took centuries to evolve Europe from its theocratic mindset to its present rational outlook and no mean a price had to be paid for it as the forces of progress battled ceaselessly against the regressive religious order of the day to forge what is modern European society.
But Christianity held on. As its citadels fell one after the other before the canon-fire of logic and reason, it spread its wings to seek fresher pastures in Asia, Africa, America and Australia. This was the great migration of Christianity from Europe to elsewhere where it chose to strike roots afresh.
A similar migration is now taking place as Muslims from across the world are mass-migrating to the West which is leading to a confused mixing in European culture, a clash and a conflict of discordant values and even, as some scholars fear, a potential overpowering of Europe's cultural identity in the foreseeable future by the immigrant culture of Islam. The orthodox Islamic way of exclusive living and a refusal to integrate is posing grave threats to the future of Europe's cultural identity as it creates rifts and fissures in its body politic. The demographic tilt in favour of Islam owing to mass migration and hyper fertility of Muslims is added cause for worry as Europe struggles with her new concepts of pluralism and multiculturalism in practice, and their fallout.
This is a novel situation for Europe since the days of the Islamic expansion, the nights of the Crusades and the Jihads when a titanic struggle for cultural survival had ravaged European life for 150 years. Since then the tension between these Semitic siblings of like roots and unlike shoots has held the world attention ever but never was Europe so threatened by Islamic cultural invasion as now. Europe thought all along that the world was fodder for their cattle to graze on while the Asian, African, Australian and American natives were born inferior to offer them slave labour for free while Europe pillaged and plundered them at will. The colonisation of these continents by dint of superior warfare skills and technology by a single continent was thought to be a divine dispensation for them and a boon for the natives who the Europeans would civilise through their imposed values and religion, Christianity being the single beneficiary of such cultural violence in the name of the Lord who is said to have given his life on the Cross to atone for the sins of His children. And, yet, Christianity spread throughout the world on the shoulders of European global colonisation, the greatest sin ever perpetrated on humanity which no atonement on the Cross may ever absolve it of.
And now the situation has reversed. Christianity is on the defensive as Islam spreads its tentacles across Europe and a clash of civilisation is looming. The destruction of Europe in the Second World War led to massive labour shortages which Europe conveniently filled up by importing labour from the Middle Eastern countries and from elsewhere across Asia. The mass immigration that thus resulted has over the next three generations brought about this demographic crisis that Europe faces today from the presence of tens of millions of Muslims in its heartland. These Muslims when they refuse to integrate into the body of mainstream cultural Europe seemingly cause Europeans discomfort, and now with the rise of radical Islam and the incessant acts of terrorism that frequently disrupt European societal order, Europeans have started deep ruminations on their future in a world of increasingly heterogeneous interactions that go not quite their preferred way anymore. Hence, the worry.
This clash of cultures between the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the West and the Islamic cultural influx from a host of countries of Asia and Africa is throwing Europe into jitters and in this confusion a cultural vacuum is also being created where Europeans, --- atheists, agnostics and disillusioned Christians, --- are seeking a new philosophy of life. It is time for India to ponder this situation deeply and see if the Vedanta may now strike roots deep enough in the psyche of rational Europe that is in the dark and groping for a new light for sheer cultural survival. We must now send real missionaries of the Vedanta to the West and enlighten Europe and America about the divinity of the human soul that seeks no foundation in special revelations of prophets and messiahs but is the fundamental and verifiable truth of human existence.
The Vedanta stands on truth transcendental and requires no prophetic prop to make it stand, no God to lend validity to its principles and no unique experience of a special son or final messenger of an arbitrary heavenly authority to make it an exclusive salvation theory to be thrust on one and all, for the Vedanta is universal in its scope and eternal in existence that can enfold the whole lot of gods and goddesses, prophets and messiahs of all faiths and creeds and, yet, have spaces for more.
Vivekananda laid the foundation of the Vedanta movement more than a century ago in the very America and Europe that are now in their cultural death throes from self-erosion and alien cultural invasion. He left it to future Vedanta workers to build the edifice on the secure foundations he had laid. Now is the chance to do so. Shall India send missionaries to flood the West with the eternal message of the Vedas? Should she do, she will have rendered her greatest act of charity to the world and acquitted herself well in her mission of bringing home to the whole of humanity its essential divinity of being.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Bertrand Russell, British mathematician, philosopher, nuclear pacifist and Nobel laureate.
There is a tremendous vacuum being created in Europe following the retreat of Christianity post Enlightenment. Islam is apparently making cultural inroads there through mass emigration of Muslims from elsewhere into Europe. This is causing Europeans to worry about their future European identity which they feel is very much threatened and may eventually be erased leaving a confused culture behind that will be uncharacteristic of all that Europe has historically stood for in terms of evolved values and practices.
Over a century ago Swami Vivekananda had planted in the heart of Europe and America (which is but an extension of Europe in terms of civilisation and culture) seeds of the Vedanta which were so very much in keeping with the spirit of scientific enlightenment that had swept Europe in the preceding few centuries in the wake of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Doctrinaire Christianity had been relegated to the background of the emerging European societies which went through a tremendous upheaval of reformation. It took centuries to evolve Europe from its theocratic mindset to its present rational outlook and no mean a price had to be paid for it as the forces of progress battled ceaselessly against the regressive religious order of the day to forge what is modern European society.
But Christianity held on. As its citadels fell one after the other before the canon-fire of logic and reason, it spread its wings to seek fresher pastures in Asia, Africa, America and Australia. This was the great migration of Christianity from Europe to elsewhere where it chose to strike roots afresh.
A similar migration is now taking place as Muslims from across the world are mass-migrating to the West which is leading to a confused mixing in European culture, a clash and a conflict of discordant values and even, as some scholars fear, a potential overpowering of Europe's cultural identity in the foreseeable future by the immigrant culture of Islam. The orthodox Islamic way of exclusive living and a refusal to integrate is posing grave threats to the future of Europe's cultural identity as it creates rifts and fissures in its body politic. The demographic tilt in favour of Islam owing to mass migration and hyper fertility of Muslims is added cause for worry as Europe struggles with her new concepts of pluralism and multiculturalism in practice, and their fallout.
This is a novel situation for Europe since the days of the Islamic expansion, the nights of the Crusades and the Jihads when a titanic struggle for cultural survival had ravaged European life for 150 years. Since then the tension between these Semitic siblings of like roots and unlike shoots has held the world attention ever but never was Europe so threatened by Islamic cultural invasion as now. Europe thought all along that the world was fodder for their cattle to graze on while the Asian, African, Australian and American natives were born inferior to offer them slave labour for free while Europe pillaged and plundered them at will. The colonisation of these continents by dint of superior warfare skills and technology by a single continent was thought to be a divine dispensation for them and a boon for the natives who the Europeans would civilise through their imposed values and religion, Christianity being the single beneficiary of such cultural violence in the name of the Lord who is said to have given his life on the Cross to atone for the sins of His children. And, yet, Christianity spread throughout the world on the shoulders of European global colonisation, the greatest sin ever perpetrated on humanity which no atonement on the Cross may ever absolve it of.
And now the situation has reversed. Christianity is on the defensive as Islam spreads its tentacles across Europe and a clash of civilisation is looming. The destruction of Europe in the Second World War led to massive labour shortages which Europe conveniently filled up by importing labour from the Middle Eastern countries and from elsewhere across Asia. The mass immigration that thus resulted has over the next three generations brought about this demographic crisis that Europe faces today from the presence of tens of millions of Muslims in its heartland. These Muslims when they refuse to integrate into the body of mainstream cultural Europe seemingly cause Europeans discomfort, and now with the rise of radical Islam and the incessant acts of terrorism that frequently disrupt European societal order, Europeans have started deep ruminations on their future in a world of increasingly heterogeneous interactions that go not quite their preferred way anymore. Hence, the worry.
This clash of cultures between the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the West and the Islamic cultural influx from a host of countries of Asia and Africa is throwing Europe into jitters and in this confusion a cultural vacuum is also being created where Europeans, --- atheists, agnostics and disillusioned Christians, --- are seeking a new philosophy of life. It is time for India to ponder this situation deeply and see if the Vedanta may now strike roots deep enough in the psyche of rational Europe that is in the dark and groping for a new light for sheer cultural survival. We must now send real missionaries of the Vedanta to the West and enlighten Europe and America about the divinity of the human soul that seeks no foundation in special revelations of prophets and messiahs but is the fundamental and verifiable truth of human existence.
The Vedanta stands on truth transcendental and requires no prophetic prop to make it stand, no God to lend validity to its principles and no unique experience of a special son or final messenger of an arbitrary heavenly authority to make it an exclusive salvation theory to be thrust on one and all, for the Vedanta is universal in its scope and eternal in existence that can enfold the whole lot of gods and goddesses, prophets and messiahs of all faiths and creeds and, yet, have spaces for more.
Vivekananda laid the foundation of the Vedanta movement more than a century ago in the very America and Europe that are now in their cultural death throes from self-erosion and alien cultural invasion. He left it to future Vedanta workers to build the edifice on the secure foundations he had laid. Now is the chance to do so. Shall India send missionaries to flood the West with the eternal message of the Vedas? Should she do, she will have rendered her greatest act of charity to the world and acquitted herself well in her mission of bringing home to the whole of humanity its essential divinity of being.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Bertrand Russell, British mathematician, philosopher, nuclear pacifist and Nobel laureate.
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