IN RESPONSE TO SHAON MALIK'S QUERY AS TO THE EFFICACY OF PEACEFUL PREACHING OF THE SANATAN DHARMA WHEN CONFRONTED HISTORICALLY BY VIOLENT PROSELYTISING ISLAM

IN RESPONSE TO SHAON MALIK'S QUERY AS TO THE EFFICACY OF PEACEFUL PREACHING OF THE SANATAN DHARMA WHEN CONFRONTED HISTORICALLY BY VIOLENT PROSELYTISING ISLAM

🕉 Right. There had been a shift in gear among the Hindus during their thousand year slavery to the Mohammedans. The tyrannical Muslim rulers made it hard for the very survival of the Hindus and their dharma which therefore sought this peaceful channel to somehow subsist and avoid a total run-over by Islam ☪️.

The Buddhist and Jain movements were contributory as well to this loss of martial valour among the Hindus and after the demise of Buddhism ☸ in India Hinduism reinvented itself along Buddhistic lines. What followed was a form of neo-Buddhism in the garb of Vaishnavism which was Hinduism 🕉 assimilating Buddhism in its body politic.

Islam ☪️ had already made deep inroads into the body politic of the Hindus and was throttling the life-breath of the latter. The ensuing resolution of sociocultural forces saw the birth of the peaceful Bhakti movements spearheaded by Nanak, Kabir, Dadu, Meera, Chaitanya and a galaxy of spiritual giants, but all with an altered emphasis on peace rather than active and direct armed combat with the Islamic assailants. The dialectical process ever at work could but muster this much force in the decayed body politic of the Hindus 🕉 and no more that could have waged a violent war against the alien aggressors. 

But such peaceful means averted a cataclysmic clash with the despotic master class of Islamic ☪️ conquerors and saved Hinduism and Hindu culture from total extinction. To this effect even Raja Man Singh had argued his case for siding with the Mughals when quizzed on the point by an indignant Maharana Pratap Singh.

Anyhow, the trend continued as Hindus continued to remain subjugated in turns by Muslims ☪️ and later by the Europeans 🇪🇺 till Independence was won. 

Since 2014 with the coming to power of the first Hindutva party the question of reverting to old ways of kshatriya valour and exploits is being much talked about. Doubtlessly the dialectical forces are at work even now and trying to fashion the synthesis of the tradition of the ages in a refurbished Hinduism 🕉 that will incorporate the highest principles of each and every phase of evolution of the Sanatan Dharma and yet fabricate a practical political programme out of it for the survival and sustenance of the Dharma and its wider dissemination in the world 🌎 at large.

Both Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita vouched for aggressive Hinduism as its prospective future model and what we have been seeing since the birth of the Rashtriya Svayam Sevak Sangha in 1925 is in fractured fulfilment of their vision and seer's wish. The cards have changed hands now and the synthesis is on in Hinduism 🕉 which no power on earth can resist.

But what we must not allow in this corrosive age of capitalism is the destruction of economic hopes of the teeming millions to secure heaven on earth for a few fortunate ones. Here the government of the day must side with the masses to ensure the healthy growth of one and all so that the ire of the electorate does not in the fire of the belly overthrow it and in effect savage yet again -- this time from within the Hindu polity -- the fertile cause of efflorescence of the Sanatan Dharma in all its universal beauty and scope. 🕉

Written by Sugata Bose