Hindus who criticise Hindus unduly do a disservice to the community through their shallow assertions that proselytising religions make good use of. We have been reduced to a fraction of what we were through our own negligence of our masses, our self-defeating status in supposed liberalism and our ever-thriving self-annihilation through internal squabbles and siding with the Semitic adversary when our cultural imperative calls us to unite in defence of the dharma.
The breakdown of the Varnashrama system has had two negative impacts. The Brahman has been reduced in learning on account of lack of patronage and the kshatriya community has been wiped out of existence by invaders and colonisers who disarmed them to keep the Hindus in subjugation.
The broad Varna system was replaced by the caste system which divided Hindu society so much that India in consequence became weakened to abject submission to foreign rule. Even after independence society continues to be case-ridden and Hindus suffer in consequence. A divided house ever totters, for division weakens the structural base that holds the integrated body. Hence, the enlightened principles of the Varna system ought to be practised today by all in the measure they can and this will lead to a regeneration of Hindu society. Caste exclusiveness in principle has gone after the promulgation of the Constitution of India on 26 January, 1950 but it continues very much in practice. Education of the masses will deal it the death blow and, so, education of the poor Hindus is the key to solving this problem.
The intellectual aggression of westernised Hindus against the Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism) ought to be countered by the proliferation of the Sanskrit language in the country. This is not a short term problem that a short term solution may be sought to tackle it. We must take a long view of our cultural requirements, looking deep into the past for guidance and trying to envision the future in that light streaming from Vedic times when we as a race had reached cultural heights that no civilisation on earth till date has come close to in attainment.
Mass education in Sanskrit will largely solve India's problems as Hindus, freshly grounded in their cultural roots, will veer away from imitation of the West and will strike out their own distinctive path of material and spiritual evolution. Knowledge bestows power and an empowered polity will rise through the turbidity of the times to regain its pristine position of spiritual preeminence in the comity of nations and act as the spiritual preceptor to the rest of humanity.
Times are desperate and their claims on Hindu wisdom are impelled by sheer survival necessities. Must the Hindus fail to deliver the message of their forefathers at this calamitous hour when the seeds sown ages ago in their consciousness have ripened for their harvest to be shared with the rest of humanity who have lost direction and destiny barring that which will lead to their eventual annihilation in arrogant self-infliction? Upon the stance taken by Hindus today depends largely the course the world will take in the coming decades and upon it depends the fate of the Hindus as a civilisation as well.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Bijoy Krishna Goswami, famous Brahmo leader, then Vaishnav saint popular as Jatiya Baba in Puri. Follower initially of Keshab Chandra Sen before the grand schism of the Brahmo Samaj in 1878 following the Cooch Bihar Marriage episode involving Keshab's daughter, Bijoy had been blessed by Sri Ramakrishna with vision of his holy self in Dhaka and was much loved by the Master. He was an Acharya of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj but later left the dispensation following theological differences with the Sadharan Brahmos whereupon he settled in Jagannathkshetra Puri where he breathed his last.
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