MY MOTHERLAND ... 16
A heritage is built over centuries of continuous labour in a specific direction and ours has been built over millenia. We must preserve it. The spiritual endeavour of the race cannot be allowed to slacken or flounder now after all these ages of energetic enterprise.
Let none think that the Sanatan Dharma will die, for it is founded on the imperishable principles of the Vedas. And let none think that the Sanatan Dharma will survive merely because of its inherent truth. Truth will survive but its embodiment in the larger Hindu race may not unless we are vigilant. The pride of our civilisation lies in its manifested spiritual culture in all its glorious diversity but the imposition of a proselytising religion on a large section of the Hindu community can eventually wipe out the last vestiges of the glorious heritage that we are legatees of. Hence, the call for eternal vigilance in defence of the dharma.
The primary threat to the fabric of Indian civilisation with all its glorious diversity of spiritual expression is from the two proselytising Semitic faiths in Christianity and Islam, both of which seek continuous expansion in numbers by way of doctrinaire conviction and inspiration thereof to save the infidel. These faiths are flourishing in India because of the universal acceptance of Hinduism of all streams of spiritual thinking. The population of Muslims in India is ever on the rise and every succeeding census reveals a marginally increased Muslim population in the polity. But the corresponding numbers for the Hindus has been drastically dropping in Pakistan and Bangladesh over decades and the Hindus are persistently persecuted there and converted to Islam. This does not augur well for the Sanatan Dharma which wielded its benign influence once over the whole of Asia and even Greece, the seat and birthplace of European civilisation. Asia was civilised by the Sanatan Dharma and its 'rebel child', Buddhism. Yet, owing to the predatory proselytising by Christianity and Islam, Hinduism barely exists outside truncated India. And the threat is within as well. This is a dangerous trend and ought to be reversed.
The Partition of India was effected on the basis of religion when a large section of Muslims refused to live with the Hindus in an integrated India. The Hindus played no role in dividing India and fought tooth and nail to prevent the dismemberment of the motherland. And, yet, with the connivance of the mischievous British and the dastardly Muslim League, India was torn into two with its horrific consequences in carnage and the concomitant evils of human history's most massive population transfer. Hinduism was wounded like never before.
And Hinduism has been at the receiving end ever since Partition as well, even within India. As appeasement politics played its dastardly role to the fullest, Hinduism hardly got much of a boost in a country where Government-funded schools banned the preaching of the principles of Hinduism. Sanskrit got progressively marginalised in a society where it was slowly removed from the compulsory curriculum of schools. India, striving to make its mark in the world, chose to embark on the western way of capitalist commercialisation after an unsuccessful bid of decades of quasi-socialism. The result of this latest western orientation to an inordinate degree has been the loss of the nationalistic spirit more and more as eminently qualified people, striving for position and the pleasures of life, have increasingly identified with coarse capitalism with its synthetic facade of progress to camouflage its basis founded in raw greed and economic violence. The eminent of the land, thus sold out to the West, have shaped public opinion and policy and have bred a generation of Anglophiles or their corresponding lot across the Atlantic who are destroying the fabric of our rich urban culture that has been for ages rooted to the soil.
The situation now is complex. On one side is the persistent attempt to convert more and more Hindus to Christianity and Islam and on the other side is the reaction to this aggression by way of resurgent Hindu nationalism. Neither of these is wholesome for India in eventual terms, for both are regressive features of human civilisation which cannot find a place in a modern polity for they cannot conduce to the welfare of the emerging nation of commingling cultures. Exclusiveness is a thing of the past and, if it is not so, it must be made so by human effort so that a real renaissance of universal human culture manifests as the field for the fullest play of diverse human tendencies.
Unfinished and expanding ...
Written by Sugata Bose
A heritage is built over centuries of continuous labour in a specific direction and ours has been built over millenia. We must preserve it. The spiritual endeavour of the race cannot be allowed to slacken or flounder now after all these ages of energetic enterprise.
Let none think that the Sanatan Dharma will die, for it is founded on the imperishable principles of the Vedas. And let none think that the Sanatan Dharma will survive merely because of its inherent truth. Truth will survive but its embodiment in the larger Hindu race may not unless we are vigilant. The pride of our civilisation lies in its manifested spiritual culture in all its glorious diversity but the imposition of a proselytising religion on a large section of the Hindu community can eventually wipe out the last vestiges of the glorious heritage that we are legatees of. Hence, the call for eternal vigilance in defence of the dharma.
The primary threat to the fabric of Indian civilisation with all its glorious diversity of spiritual expression is from the two proselytising Semitic faiths in Christianity and Islam, both of which seek continuous expansion in numbers by way of doctrinaire conviction and inspiration thereof to save the infidel. These faiths are flourishing in India because of the universal acceptance of Hinduism of all streams of spiritual thinking. The population of Muslims in India is ever on the rise and every succeeding census reveals a marginally increased Muslim population in the polity. But the corresponding numbers for the Hindus has been drastically dropping in Pakistan and Bangladesh over decades and the Hindus are persistently persecuted there and converted to Islam. This does not augur well for the Sanatan Dharma which wielded its benign influence once over the whole of Asia and even Greece, the seat and birthplace of European civilisation. Asia was civilised by the Sanatan Dharma and its 'rebel child', Buddhism. Yet, owing to the predatory proselytising by Christianity and Islam, Hinduism barely exists outside truncated India. And the threat is within as well. This is a dangerous trend and ought to be reversed.
The Partition of India was effected on the basis of religion when a large section of Muslims refused to live with the Hindus in an integrated India. The Hindus played no role in dividing India and fought tooth and nail to prevent the dismemberment of the motherland. And, yet, with the connivance of the mischievous British and the dastardly Muslim League, India was torn into two with its horrific consequences in carnage and the concomitant evils of human history's most massive population transfer. Hinduism was wounded like never before.
And Hinduism has been at the receiving end ever since Partition as well, even within India. As appeasement politics played its dastardly role to the fullest, Hinduism hardly got much of a boost in a country where Government-funded schools banned the preaching of the principles of Hinduism. Sanskrit got progressively marginalised in a society where it was slowly removed from the compulsory curriculum of schools. India, striving to make its mark in the world, chose to embark on the western way of capitalist commercialisation after an unsuccessful bid of decades of quasi-socialism. The result of this latest western orientation to an inordinate degree has been the loss of the nationalistic spirit more and more as eminently qualified people, striving for position and the pleasures of life, have increasingly identified with coarse capitalism with its synthetic facade of progress to camouflage its basis founded in raw greed and economic violence. The eminent of the land, thus sold out to the West, have shaped public opinion and policy and have bred a generation of Anglophiles or their corresponding lot across the Atlantic who are destroying the fabric of our rich urban culture that has been for ages rooted to the soil.
The situation now is complex. On one side is the persistent attempt to convert more and more Hindus to Christianity and Islam and on the other side is the reaction to this aggression by way of resurgent Hindu nationalism. Neither of these is wholesome for India in eventual terms, for both are regressive features of human civilisation which cannot find a place in a modern polity for they cannot conduce to the welfare of the emerging nation of commingling cultures. Exclusiveness is a thing of the past and, if it is not so, it must be made so by human effort so that a real renaissance of universal human culture manifests as the field for the fullest play of diverse human tendencies.
Unfinished and expanding ...
Written by Sugata Bose
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