VANDE MATARAM ... 7

VANDE MATARAM ... 7

However much you may aver that India is a secular country, its fundamental feature remains preeminently Hindu, the Sanatan Dharma and its derivative in cultural terms permeating even today its mass consciousness. Despite India housing well over 20 crore Muslims and approximately 3 crore Christians, she remains a Hindu country for all practical purposes. The Hindu civilisation is central to India's history. It is its core character, its essential spirit and its destiny in future development. 

Islamic and Christian influences have been aberrations in its spiritual polity on account of invasion and savage domination consequent on internal weakness, and cannot be counted as quintessential Indian  culture. Hence, they remain in the Indian polity like loosely joined elements in its compound structure, somewhat peripheral to her preeminent philosophical mood.

But much of Hinduism that has been in vogue for well over two thousand years has been reactionary Hinduism, the very name 'Hinduism', an aberration in geographical-racial-linguistic terms substituting for the 'Sanatan Dharma', being evidence of that. The original Vedic religion has been largely supplanted in mass consciousness by this brand of neo-Hinduism arising out of resistive reaction to invasive forces that threatened to extinguish it. The pristine principles of philosophy enshrined in the Upanishads have been comprehensively covered up by proliferating common accretions and newfangled practices and thoughts thereof.

Islamic invasion eventually led to the Partition of the motherland and what lies in store for the civilisation of the Vedas in the decades and centuries ahead is not only a matter of conjecture but that of concern as well. Will Hinduism survive to reconquer its converted population and bring them back to the fold of the Mother Religion or will it pass into numerical minority eventually and be brutally destroyed by its Semitic adversary unto oblivion? The final fate of Hinduism depends on the will of the Hindus themselves, their determination to survive as a civilisation and conquer the rest of humanity with its liberating ideas. Om Tat Sat ! Vande Mataram !

Written by Sugata Bose