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HINDUTVA: THE GREAT NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
In the history of the world, the Hindu awakening of the late twentieth century
will go down as one of the most monumental events in the history of the world.
Never before has such demand for change come from so many people. Never before
has Bharat, the ancient word for the motherland of Hindus - India, been
confronted with such an impulse for change. This movement, Hindutva, is
changing the very foundations of Bharat and Hindu society the world over.
Hindu society has an unquestionable and proud history of tolerance for other
faiths and respect for diversity of spiritual experiences. This is reflected in
the many different philosophies, religious sects, and religious leaders. The
very foundation of this lies in the great Hindu heritage that is not based on
any one book, teacher, or doctrine. In fact the pedestal of Hindu society stems
from the great Vedic teachings Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti -- Truth is One,
Sages Call it by Many Names, and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam -- The Whole Universe is
one Family. It is this philosophy which allowed the people of Hindusthan (land
of the Hindus) to shelter the Jews who faced Roman persecution, the
Zoroastrians who fled the Islamic sword and who are the proud Parsi community
today, and the Tibetan Buddhists who today face the communist secularism:
persecution of religion.
During the era of Islamic invasions, what Will Durant called the bloodiest
period in the history of mankind, many Hindus gallantly resisted, knowing full
well that defeat would mean a choice of economic discrimination via the jaziya
tax on non- Muslims, forced conversion, or death. It is no wonder that the
residents of Chittor, and countless other people over the length and breadth of
Bharat, from present-day Afghanistan to present-day Bangladesh, thought it
better to die gloriously rather than face cold-blooded slaughter. Hindus never
forgot the repeated destruction of the Somnath Temple, the massacre of
Buddhists at Nalanda, or the pogroms of the Mughals.
Thus, the seeds of todayUs Hindu Jagriti, awakening, were created the very
instance that an invader threatened the fabric of Hindu society which was
religious tolerance. The vibrancy of Hindu society was noticeable at all times
in that despite such barbarism from the Islamic hordes of central Asia and
Turkey, Hindus never played with the same rules that Muslims did. The communist
and Muslim intelligentsia, led by Nehruvian ideologists who are never short of
distorted history, have been unable to show that any Hindu ruler ever matched
the cruelty of even a RmoderateS Muslim ruler.
It is these characteristics of Hindu society and the Muslim psyche that remain
today. Hindus never lost their tolerance and willingness to change. However
Muslims, led by the Islamic clergy and Islamic societyUs innate unwillingness
to change, did not notice the scars that Hindus felt from the Indian past. It
is admirable that Hindus never took advantage of the debt Muslims owed Hindus
for their tolerance and non-vengefulness.
In modern times, Hindu Jagriti gained momentum when Muslims played the greatest
abuse of Hindu tolerance: the demand for a separate state and the partition of
India, a nation that had had a common history and culture for countless
millenia. Thus, the Muslim minority voted for a separate state and the Hindus
were forced to sub-divide their own land.
After partition in Pakistan, Muslim superiority was quickly asserted and the
non-Muslim minorities were forced to flee due to the immense discrimination in
the political and religious spheres. Again, Hindus did not respond to such an
onslaught. Hindu majority India continued the Hindu ideals by remaining
secular.
India even gave the Muslim minority gifts such as separate personal laws,
special status to the only Muslim majority state -- Kashmir, and other rights
that are even unheard of in the bastion of democracy and freedom, the United
States of America. Islamic law was given precedence over the national law in
instances that came under Muslim personal law. The Constitution was changed
when the courts, in the Shah Bano case, ruled that a secular nation must have
one law, not separate religious laws. Islamic religious and educational
institutions were given a policy of non- interference. The list goes on.
More painful for the Hindus was forced negation of Hindu history and factors
that gave pride to Hindus. Hindu customs and traditions were mocked as remnants
of a non-modern society, things that would have to go if India was to modernize
like the west. The self proclaimed guardians of India, the politicians of the
Congress Party who called themselves secularists, forgot that it was the Hindu
psyche that believed in secularism, it was the Hindu thought that had inspired
the greatest intellectuals of the world such as Thoreau, Emerson, Tolstoy,
Einstein, and others, and that it was Hindus, because there was no other land
where Hindus were in a significant number to stand up in defence of Hindu
society if and when the need arose, who were the most nationalistic people in
India.
When Hindus realized that pseudo-secularism had reduced them to the role of an
innocent bystander in the game of politics, they demanded a true secularism
where every religious group would be treated the same and a government that
would not take Hindu sentiments for granted. Hindutva awakened the Hindus to
the new world order where nations represented the aspirations of people united
in history, culture, philosophy, and heroes. Hindutva successfully took the
Indian idol of Israel and made Hindus realize that their India could be just as
great and could do the same for them also.
In a new era of global consciousness, Hindus realized that they had something
to offer the world. There was something more than tolerance and universal
unity. The ancient wisdom of sages through eternity also offered systems of
thought, politics, music, language, dance, and education that could benefit the
world.
There have been many changes in the thinking of Hindus, spearheaded over the
course of a century by innumerable groups and leaders who made their own
distinct contribution to Hindu society: Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore,
Gandhiji, Rashatriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Swami Chinmayananda, Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi, International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Muni Susheel Kumarji,
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharatiya Janata Party, and others. Each in their own
way increased pride in being a Hindu and simultaneously showed Hindus their
greatest strengths and their worst weaknesses. This slowly shook the roots of
Hindu society and prompted a rear-guard action by the ingrained interests: the
old politicians, the Nehruvian intellectual community, and the
appeased Muslim leadership.
The old foundation crumbled in the 1980s and 1990s when Hindus respectfully
asked for the return of their most holy religious site, Ayodhya. This demand
promptly put the 40-year old apparatus to work, and press releases were chunked
out that spew the libelous venom which called those who represented the Hindu
aspirations RmilitantS and Rfundamentalist,S stigmas which had heretofore found
their proper place in the movements to establish Islamic law. Hindus were
humble enough to ask for the restoration of an ancient temple built on the
birthplace of Rama, and destroyed by Babar, a foreign invader. The vested
interests were presented with the most secular of propositions: the creation of
a monument to a national hero, a legend whose fame and respect stretched out of
the borders of India into southeast Asia, and even into Muslim Indonesia. A
hero who existed before there was anyone in India who considered himself
separate from Hindu society. The 400-year old structure at one of the holiest
sites of India had been worshipped as a temple by Hindus even though the Muslim
general Mir Baqi had partially built a non-functioning mosque on it. It was
very important that no Muslims, except those who were appeased in Indian
politics, had heard of anything called Babri Masjid before the
pseudo-secularist apparatus started the next to last campaign against the
rising Hindu society. It was also important that no Muslim had offered prayers
at the site for over 40 years.
Hindus hid their true anger, that their most important religious site still
bore the marks of a cruel slavery that occurred so very recently in the time
span of Hindu history. It was naturally expected in 1947 that freedom from the
political and economic chains of Great Britain would mean that the systems and
symbols that had enslaved India and caused its deterioration and poverty would
be obliterated. Forty years after independence, Hindus realized that their
freedom was yet to come.
So long as freedom to Jews meant that symbols of the Holocaust in Europe were
condemned, so long as freedom to African- Americans meant that the symbols of
racial discrimination were wiped out, and so long as freedom from imperialism
to all people meant that they would have control of their own destinies, that
they would have their own heros, their own stories, and their own culture, then
freedom to Hindus meant that they would have to condemn the Holocaust that
Muslims reaped on them, the racial discrimination that the white man brought,
and the economic imperialism that enriched Britain. Freedom for Hindus and
Indians would have to mean that their heros such as Ram, Krishna, Sivaji, the
Cholas, Sankaracharya, and Tulsidas would be respected, that their own stories
such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata would be offered to humanity as
examples of the brilliance of Hindu and Indian thinking, and that their own
culture which included the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, the temples, the gods and
goddesses, the art, the music, and the contributions in various fields, would
be respected. Freedom meant that as the shackles of imperial dominance were
lifted, the newly freed people would not simply absorb foreign ideas, they
would share their own as well.
In India, something went wrong. The freedom from Britain was supposed to result
in a two-way thinking that meant that non- Indian ideas would be accepted and
that Indian ideas would be presented to the world. So long as the part of India
giving to the world was suppressed, the freedom was only illusory and the
aspirations of the freedom hungry would continue to rise in temperature.
The freedom could have been achieved if a temple to Rama was built and the
symbol of foreign rule was moved to another site or demolished. The battle was
never really for another temple. Another temple could have been built anywhere
in India.
The humble and fair demand for RamaJanmabhoomi could have resulted in a freedom
for India, freedom from the intellectual slavery that so dominated India. This
freedom would have meant that all Indians regardless of religion, language,
caste, sex, or color would openly show respect for the person that from ancient
times was considered the greatest hero to people of Hindusthan. For the first
time, Hindus had demanded something, and it was justifiable that a reasonable
demand from an undemanding people would be realized. Imagine if the Muslim
leadership had agreed to shift the site and build a temple in Ayodhya. How much
Hindu- Muslim unity there would have been in India? India could then have used
that goodwill to solve the major religious, caste, and economic issues facing
the country.
But some of the vested interests in politics and in the Muslim community saw
that such a change would mean that their work since 1947 would be overturned
and that this new revolution would displace them. Rather than join forces and
accept the rising tide, the oligarchy added fuel to the greatest movement in
Indian history. One that on December 6, 1992 completely shattered the old and
weak roots of Indian society and with it, the old political and intellectual
structure. The destruction by the Kar Sevaks of the dilapidated symbol of
foreign dominance was the last straw in a heightening of tensions by the
government, and the comittant anger of more and more Hindus to rebuffs of their
reasonable demands.
The ruthless last-ditch effort of the powers-that-be was the banning and
suppression of the leaders of the Hindu Jagriti. The effort of the rulers
reminds one of the strategy of all ill-fated rulers. Throughout history, when
monumental upheavals have taken place, the threatened interests have resorted
to drastic measures, which in-turn have hastened their own death.
Hindus are at last free. They control their destiny now and there is no power
that can control them except their own tolerant ethos. India in turn is finally
free. Having ignored its history, it has now come face to face with a repressed
conscience. The destruction of the structure at Ayodhya was the release of the
history that Indians had not fully come to terms with. Thousands of years of
anger and shame, so diligently bottled up by these same interests, was released
when the first piece of the so-called Babri Masjid was torn down.
It is a fundamental concept of Hindu Dharma that has won: righteousness. Truth
won when Hindus, realizing that Truth could not be won through political or
legal means, took the law into their own hands. Hindus have been divided
politically and the laws have not acknowledged the quiet Hindu yearning for
Hindu unity which has until recently taken a back seat to economic development
and Muslim appeasement. Similarly, the freedom movement represented the
supercedence of Indian unity over loyalty to the British Crown. In comparison
to the freedom movement though, Hindutva involves many more people and
represents the mental freedom that 1947 did not bring.
The future of Bharat is set. Hindutva is here to stay. It is up to the Muslims
whether they will be included in the new nationalistic spirit of Bharat. It is
up to the government and the Muslim leadership whether they wish to increase
Hindu furor or work with the Hindu leadership to show that Muslims and the
government will consider Hindu sentiments. The era of one-way compromise of
Hindus is over, for from now on, secularism must mean that all parties must
compromise.
Hindutva will not mean any Hindu theocracy or theology. However, it will mean
that the guiding principles of Bharat will come from two of the great teachings
of the Vedas, the ancient Hindu and Indian scriptures, which so boldly
proclaimed -
TRUTH IS ONE, SAGES CALL IT BY MANY NAMES - and - THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS ONE
FAMILY.
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