SHALL WE, HINDUS, PERISH ? -- PERSPECTIVES, ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN, AND A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE ... 4

SHALL WE, HINDUS, PERISH ? -- PERSPECTIVES, ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN, AND A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE ... 4

SPREAD OR SHRINK TO BEING WIPED OUT

There is a need for more aggressive propagation of the Sanatan Dharma. For this we need erudite scholars and brilliant speakers of sterling strength of character and courage of conviction devoid of the slightest trace of cowardice that has come to characterise the average devotee. Zealous propagators of the Truth are necessary and they must first flood the nation with the life-giving message of the Vedanta before spreading out in all directions to inundate the world. Training centres for such speakers will have to be developed everywhere on individual initiative to begin with for the work cannot wait.

Hinduism is in danger on three counts : (a) apathy of the Hindus towards its study, practice and propagation (b) the demographic threat of Islam (c) the loss of character among the so-called spiritual personalities and organisations in India barring the rare exceptional ones, and rarer by the day they are becoming.

HINDU APATHY

The first problem stems from a mixture of motives. After a thousand year tyranny of Islamic and Euro-Christian colonial rule in India when India got freedom in 1947, the Hindus used the opportunity to make way in their material life. This led to their economic uplift and their consequent cultural decline as a community in pure religious terms as they neither had time nor inclination to cater to the study of Sanskrit or their sacred scriptures. The brahmans who were the repositories of classical Hindu culture became, by dint of their intellectual merit, the biggest recipients of the opportunities that arose out of this change. Thus, the guardians of religion moved out of their citadels and the fortress fell, not for good but for the time being, as a new tradition supplanted the old one, that of secular learning replacing the sacred. The new departure, while it allowed the brahmans a quick rise through the ranks of the new nation, also made them by a peculiar reaction, vociferous enemies of everything that their forefathers had for ages stood for, the defence of the dharma. The brahmans, now armed in leftist learning, -- again a reaction to the plight of the world from the corruption of the capital -- began preaching socialist principles in the polity and by dint of their intellectual prowess and by clever manoeuvring took control of academia to press on with their socialist agenda. This came as a body blow to the intellectual culture of Hinduism and, defenceless, the Hindus got disoriented and debilitated even as its Semitic adversaries sharpened their claws for the deathly strike at them.

This capitulation of the brahmans had actually begun earlier than Independence with the rise of English education at the onset of the Bengal Renaissance. And it continues to this day with brahmans busying themselves with material success or strengthening the citadels of socialism at the expense of the Sanatan Dharma which they are supposed to defend. The Sanatan Dharma, thus, lies unguarded against the attacks of enemies and is made to retreat every day with the active support of crossover politicians who help the Islamists, the Christians and the Communists to bring about its demise. Hindus en masse suffer in consequence as their elite leadership have turned their back on them and made common cause with the adversarial coalition of Islam, Christianity and Communism for political reasons.

Written by Sugata Bose