HINDUTVA

HINDUTVA

Sri Ramakrishna came for the regeneration of the Sanatan Dharma and with it the whole of humanity. Let us extend the frontiers of the Ramakrishna Movement to the remotest corners of the world. There is a great thirst for spirituality in many across the world where religion is a stifling institution and these souls are panting for freedom from such stranglehold. It is these who are our future Hindus as we keep extending the frontiers of our Dharma as in the days of yore when its influence stretched over the whole of Asia and parts of Europe as well. The known world was then inspired much by Hindu ideals which shaped the destiny of nations.

Historical evolution is complex as DNA plays its part in the evolution of races. Their consequent resolution leads to political upheavals which create newer grooves along which society is made to function. As such the old is replaced by the new, old systems of thought and action are supplanted, very often violently, by new systems and ancient culture is often obliterated by modern barbarism of newfangled sects. Thus, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism all got marginalised by violent Christianity and Islam which spread by fire and sword throughout the world.

This has been the sad fate of humanity that it has attempted to destroy the Hindus and their grand religion which could have ushered peace on earth ages ago were it not for these proselytising Semitic cults, Christianity and Islam, and their murderous political variants. They have oppressed the Hindus, converted hundreds of millions to their fold by force or fraud and through plunder and persecution reduced the gentlest of races to being ashamed of their very existence as a distinct civilisation that needs assertive preservation, if nowhere else, at least in dismembered India.

But Hinduism like science is eternal and has its evolutionary role to play in this drama of earthly existence. Hence, like the Himalayas it is indestructible and regains vigour and strength periodically to inundate the world with its spiritual energy. This has been its history and this shall be its future course as well. The prophecy and promise of the Lord in the Geeta has been fulfilling itself ever since and the future will yet see greater fulfilment.

Since the advent of Shankaracharya Hindu civilisation has been on the upswing once again. The birth of intolerant Islam -- perhaps as an antidote to practising persecuting Christianity then and thereafter by way of settlement of the global balance of political forces -- had set up the scene for the potential capitulation of the Hindu civilisation to marauding, murderous, invading Islam. Perhaps, by way of resistance to such a threat of annihilation of the eternal spiritual culture of Bharatvarsha, the God of India assumed human incarceration in the wonder boy in Kaladi.

Buddhism by then had converted two-thirds of India to its fold and the religion of the Vedas faced threats both from within and without. The conquest of Sindh in 712 CE by Muhammad Bin Qasim and the forced Islamisation of the state posed a terrible threat to the future existence of the Sanatan Dharma on the soil of the subcontinent. The decadence of India under Buddhism in tantric decline and the vulnerability of India to political Islam caused as if the birth of this prophet of Hindu India's resurgence.

This time the resurgence came from the south of the Vindhyas and the Acharyas arose in waves tom resuscitate the Sanatan Dharma in its practising mode, for the philosophical strength of the system lay unshaken in all its truth despite the vicissitudes which its practical form suffered. Northern India had suffered repeated invasions despite its Himalayan insulation but the ancient spiritual culture of the race was largely untouched in southern India on account of its peninsular protection by the seas. Thus, when the call came to recover India's hindered heritage it was South India that responded and revived the faltering and fainting culture of the Hindus in its practical aspects. To do so, fresh additions to the rich repertoire of philosophical wisdom were made by these luminous personalities who have come to be honoured in our tradition as the Acharyas. Thus, rose Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaitadvaita and Shuddhadvaita systems of philosophical thought which sought to interpret the Vedas in their specific ways. Their were wide divergences in their reasoning and approach to the Eternal Truth but they all owed allegiance to the Vedas which they held as inviolable and absolute in terms of articulation of the Truth. The fact that there were so many sects seeking to interpret the Truth in so many ways, yet deriving their sustenance from the Vedas, kept the stream of spirituality vibrant and the river of God life-giving with fresh water free of stagnant pollution. India regained her spiritual vigour from her South and the message spread slowly across the whole country as these Acharyas in their wanderjahre carried the teachings to every hut and palace of India. India once more was ready to assert herself spiritually. But was she? There were distant clouds rumbling from across the Himalayan passes.

Muhammad arose with his own interpretation of religious truth which came to be known as Islam and he and his followers thereafter spread the message across Asia and Europe with a vehemence seldom seen in the history of the world. Fire and sword carried the day as heads rolled wherever resistance to the new faith came about. Internal wars of succession to the Prophet's position post his demise and external territorial wars waged to spread the faith caused inhuman suffering and it was not long after that India also fell in its way and came to pay a price so heavy that she has as yet not recovered from the assault a thousand years and more since the tumultuous first days of Islamic conquest of her holy land.

India had long been invaded by foreigners but none so far had posed a danger to her civilisation so much as this Islamic invasion was about to do. The Greeks could only for a while conquer pockets of India and then their political influence vanished from the subcontinent and all that remained was their cultural impact on India which was wholly positive and rather enriched India in art and architecture. The Greeks also likewise benefited from contact with India as they eager absorbers of knowledge which came their way thus. The Huns and the Kushans got absorbed in the body politic of India and accepted India's culture as their own. Christian missionaries from the first century of the common era proselytised in India but never assumed vicious form till the Europeans colonised India post Vasco De Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498. But the Muslims were a different kettle of fish altogether. They had not come to merge but had come to impose on India the Muhammaden way and this they pursue till date on the subcontinent as in the rest of the world wherever they gain numeral ascendancy of sorts.

This refusal to wholesale assimilate into the body politic of a nation is characteristic of exclusive cults and more so of this hyper-exclusive faith, Islam. It is a doctrinaire binding on Muslims not to associate in affable terms with the infidel till they convert to the only true faith which it arbitrarily affirms itself to be. This and many other like injunctions keep Muslims apart from the rest of the general mass of humanity in a nation except where it suits them to associate for political or practical exigencies. When Islam came to India, it came with the sword. So, it was easier for them to remain so as they became the political masters of India in due course. However, Muslims, despite the enormous persecution they perpetrated on the Hindus and their spiritual and social culture, could not avoid getting to a great extent culturally absorbed in India because of the tremendous absorbing power of Hinduism which creatively fused the invading culture with the indigenous culture to give rise to Indian Islamic sects in the form of an enlightened version of Sufism which was hardly distinguishable from the Vedanta in many respects. Islam, as it spread by force and circumstance in India, claimed Indian converts by the tens of millions, converts who carried with them their Hindu customs and precepts which penetrated Islam and humanised it.

But despite all this seeming assimilation, the fundamental tenets of Islam being antithetical to Hinduism, it ever remained in India as a potent and actual threat to the survival of the Sanatan Dharma in its practical aspects. There remained in the body politic of this spiritual motherland of ours this alien element that was fundamentally opposed to the very survival of any faith or system other than itself. And, thus, Hinduism, under alien occupation, was hindered and harmed and could barely continue to survive passively and never could freely flourish as in the days of old. That resistance arose from within Hinduism and led to reform movements like the Bhakti Movement which saw the rise of neo-Vaishnavism, must not be interpreted as Hindus having now had free rein in the governance of their lives. Rather, these were movements springing by way of reaction to Islamic tyranny to save Hindus from utter annihilation in mass conversion to the proselytising Semitic cult.

Comments :

Sharmistha Chatterjee : Thank you so much for such a beautiful post!

Sugata Bose @ 

Sharmistha Chatterjee

 : The essay expands evermore as evolution seeks its way downward the timeline and India expresses her original intent in a heightened reversal to roots amidst almost insurmountable odds. But she sticks to her anointed task, that of regeneration of the whole of humanity along the true spiritual path, that of the awakening divinity of mortal man much deluded by the trappings of Maya masquerading as deliverance in the shape of Semitic religious superstition.