Title: Hinduism is India's
defining religion
Author: Meenakshi Jain
Publication: The Weekend
Observer
Date: March 18, 2000
The recent Hindu assertiveness
as witnessed in the resistance to conversions, the challenge to left attempts
to re-write the history of the freedom movement, and the scuttling of shooting
of the film, Water, has deeply alarmed secular intellectuals. Unable to
question the intrinsic merits of the Hindu case, they are now trying to
fudge issues by insisting that as forbearance is the essence of Hinduism,
it ill-becomes Hindus to engage in contests with other faiths. They are
emphasising that India has been a haven for persecuted creeds throughout
its history, in addition to being the birthplace of countless faiths. As
a consequence of this dual heritage, they argue, a strong multi-religious
and multi-cultural tradition has undergrid Indian civilization since its
inception, and this legacy is now being endangered by saffron zealots.
The time has now come
to confront these untruths, and acknowledge that Indian civilization, centred
around Hinduism, was well and truly developed and had attained its greatest
heights long before non-Indian faiths entered the land. The debate on the
apparent differences between Hinduism, Vedism, Sanatana Dharma, Buddhism
and Jainism, does not concern us here, for our purposes, what is relevant
is that it was the religions of this soil - to the exclusion of all other
- that determined the contours of its culture.
Even Nirad Chaudhari
recognised, the Hindu religion created "what must be regarded as the true
nationalism of the country. It is this which gives appropriateness to the
name of Hinduism..." He added since the inhabitants could never in any
aspect of their life be separated from their religion, the word 'Hindu'
became religious, and the national identity became the same as adherence
to a religion. The fusion is the only real guarantee behind the national
identity of Indians."
What also needs to be
admitted in this context, is that it was the predominance of Hinduism that
made India a libertarian paradise, and not the presence in it of assorted
foreign faiths. Hinduism's breadth of vision and liberal disposition ensured
that India became the world sanctuary of the beaten and hounded. But that
in no way implied a two way exchange between the refugees and their protectors.
Indian, i.e. Hindu civilization, evolved wholly as a result of the interaction
between its own people. Foreign dynasties that participated in this enterprise
in the pre-Muslim period did so as players of this soil. The Indo-Greeks,
Shakas, Indo-Parthians and Kushans were either staunch Buddhists or devotees
of the great gods of the Hindu pantheon. India's first rock inscription
in Sanskrit, for example, was the handiwork of the 'foreigner' Rudradaman
Shaka.
Hindu theology was so
comprehensive and encompassing that there is no record of it over having
in any way modified itself as a result of non-Indian influence. All schools
of Indian philosophy also developed from debates within Hindu tradition,
without external stimulation, Hinduism's first serious and sustained encounter
with another faith was with Islam, beginning around the seventh century
AD. It should be noted that by this time 'Hindu India' had already attained
world renown for its accomplishments in the realms of art, literature and
philosophy, and it is surely nobody's case that its achievements under
the Muslim rulers outdid its previous performance.
Hindus, in fact, had
always exhibited a remarkable disinclination to engage in dialogues with
other faiths, a trait adversely commented upon by many foreigners who wished
to understand or experience Hinduism : The Muslim scholar al-Biruni complained
bitterly of the self-contained world-view of the Hindus in the tenth century.
It is hard to find instances of shastris and pandits in the medieval period
having undertaken detailed study of Muslim religious scriptures with a
view to making the necessary correctives in their own faith. They may have
been down and out, but that, they felt, was no reason to dilute their inheritance.
It is misleading to represent
the bhakti movement as a meeting ground between Hinduism and Islam. In
the Hindu tradition, bhakti, i.e. devotion, was an essential constituent
of sadhana, i.e. religious pursuit, and was mentioned as far back as in
the Svetasvatara Upanishad. The Bhagavad Gita was also a paean to bhakti.
And several centuries before Meera and Kabir, the Alvars and Nayananars
in the South had been fervent practitioners of the yoga of devotion.
The Hindu neglect of
outsiders was not directed at Muslims alone. Hindus displayed equal reluctance
to comprehend Christianity, the Jewish tradition, and the Parsi creed.
The adherents of these faiths were free to reside in this country and follow
their distinctive ways, but Hindus and Hinduism had simply no interest
in, or interaction with them.
Several Europeans attested
to this attitude as late as the twentieth century. The Austrian citizen
and later monk of the Dashnami sanyasi order, Agehananda Bharti, and the
French monk, Fr H le Saux, better known as Swami Abhishiktananda, wrote
on the basis of their personal experience that Hindus did not feel the
need to reach out to other faiths as they considered that their own tradition
provided everything necessary for the highest spiritual attainment. To
nevertheless insist that religions external to India played a role equal
to that of Hinduism in the civilizational process is to ignore and distort
the overwhelming evidence from history.
Ironically, it was the
non-persecution of foreign faiths, coupled with the total absence of Hindu
attempts to convert their adherents, that allowed the propagation of the
false notion that India was a multi-religious entity. It was multi-religious
only in the sense that a number of outside religions settled here of their
own volition. Also, Hinduism never displayed any arrogance vis-a-vis the
foreign faiths or claimed that they were in any way inferior or wrong.
But generosity of spirit does not alter the fundamental fact that Hinduism
was always the defining religion of this land, its culture and ethos, the
claims of secular intellectuals notwithstanding.
This primacy of Hinduism,
indeed, even the Hindu lineage of Indian nationalism, is now being accepted
by some western scholars. A study recently published by the Cambridge University
Press, that re-examines the origins of nationality in South Asia, concedes
the role played by ancient identities, memories, and aspirations in the
formation of the modern Indian identity. Undoubtedly, Hinduism has been
pivotal to the creation of the Indian identity in the past and remains
so today, no matter the strenuous attempts being made to deny this.
(The author is a Reader,
Delhi University)
