Author: M V Kamath
Publication: Free Press
Journal
Date: July 27, 2000
It is said that Aadi
Sankara, the great exponent of adwaita (788-820 AD) travelled all the way
from his village Kaladi in Kerala to the four corners of India to spread
the message of monism. By any account it was a tremendous feat.
He was not moving among an alien people. Islam had yet to make its
entry into India and wherever he went he could only have met those who
practised sanaatana dharma. He set up four maths which have survived
to this day, but neither his powerful advocacy of dharma, nor the institutionalising
of his faith united India politically. India was painfully divided
against itself to such an extent that invader after invader, beginning
with Mohammad of Ghazni and ending with Robert Clive could without much
effort establish sovereignty over the country. Religion did not unite
people. Hundreds of temples stood destroyed. A British representative
travelling from Surat to Delhi during the time of Jehangir was to write
that throughout his long journey he did not see a single temple standing.
Communication between one distant part of India and another was non-existent.
Ethnic, logistic and other divisions kept people apart. There was
no possible meeting of minds. It is said that as late as 1761, the
news of the tragic defeat of the Marathas at the third battle of Panipat
reached Kerala six months later and that, too, in a fragmented form.
The British tried to
change the communication scene by establishing Posts & Telegraphs and
still later by laying down railway lines. They did it not to do any
favour to their subjects but to enable movement of troops from one part
of the country to another should people show any incipient signs of rebellion.
That the people indirectly benefited by the new means of communication
was altogether a different matter. But for centuries alien forces
could come to India and indulge in murder and mayhem but those who perforce
had to face alien wrath had to do it on their own strength and with no
aid from anyone else. A Ghazni Mohammad could destroy the temple
of Somnath, Portuguese barbarians could come to Goa, destroy over three
hundred temples and put to the stakes some 130 Hindus and apostates --
and not a dog barked. During the 125 odd years of British rule, Christian
missionaries could indulge in wholesale conversion of tribal people in
the North East, but no Hindu leader thought it affected him. Hindu
indifference to changes around them was monumental. Indifference
was the name of the game. Besides, the missionaries had the tacit,
if not open, support of the ruling power. And who would bare to openly
challenge it? Worse than religious indifference was the manner in
which Hindus allowed their culture to be eroded.
As English education
spread a new class was to come into existence that was to hold Hindu customs
and manner, Hindu rites and rituals in contempt. A notable example
was Jawaharlal Nehru who, in the years following independence, was to turn
secularism into a cult. The British meanwhile had inculcated into
the Hindu ethos a sense of inferiority which made many Indians think lowly
of themselves. The best education -- and this in the land which once
boasted great universities like Nalanda -- was to be had not in India but
at Oxford and Cambridge. The best technology was to be learnt not
in Banaras or Bombay but in Manchester or places equally far away.
The nation which at one time built the finest warships such as one that
Lord Nelson, no less, was to use at the famous naval battle of Trafalgar,
was brought to a point of having to buy British ships for coastal transport.
Culturally, India in the forties and early fifties, was at its nadir.
Running down Hinduism as outdated, caste-oriented and fundamentalist had
become the fashion among the elite in control of the media. But things
are changing. And the worm, to use a cliche, is turning. A
new awakening is to be seen in the country. The elite is finding
it hard to come to term with this new development. One sees it reflected
in the manner in which the BJP and the VHP are under attack in the English
language press. Words like `fundamentalist', `communalist' and `fascist'
are freely used. The sad part of it all is that the elite is not
realising what is happening under its very nose. But a western writer,
Prof. Samuel P. Huntington was quick to note the ongoing changes
as early as in 1995 when he wrote what is now regarded as a classic: The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. As he saw
it, European colonialism is over and American hegemony is receding and
with the erosion of western culture, indigenous, historically rooted mores,
languages, beliefs and institutions are reasserting themselves. As
Prof. Huntington put it: ``The growing power of non-western societies
produced by modernization is generating the revival of non-western cultures
throughout the world''. And he adds: ``As non-western societies enhance
their economic, military and political capacity, they increasingly trumpet
the virtues of their own values, institutions and culture.''
The process had begun
much earlier but is now catching up with a vengeance. Prof.
Huntington has noted that Marry Lee once described by a British cabinet
Minister as ``the best bloody Englishman east of Suez'' was to change his
name to Lee Kuan Kew and set about learning Mandarin to become ``an articulate
promoter of Confucianism'' in Singapore. Similarly Solomon Bandaranike,
a thoroughly westernised Sri Lankan was to get converted to Buddhism in
an effort to appeal to Sinhala nationalism. As Prof Huntington put
it: ``They reverted to their ancestral cultures and in the process at times
changed identities names, dress and beliefs''.
Power and culture go
together. As long as western power held away in the colonies they
had conquered, local cultures maintained a low profile. But a resurgent
India, politically united, economically growing and socially more coherent
is becoming culturally aggressive. Which other country in the world
has sent 33,000 physicians and surgeons to the United States of America,
literally as a gift? And now about 15,000 Indians (mostly, one may
be certain, Hindus) have been given or are about to be given ``green cards''
by the German Federal Republic which wants their services as engineers.
Fifty years ago this would have been unthinkable. Today it is a reality.
How many American doctors and how many German engineers are there in India?
Prof. Huntington
says that in India ``the prevailing trend is the rejection of Western forms
and values and the `Hinduization' of politics and society''. This
is not entirely correct. Western forms and values are still prevalent
in certain sections of society which will be seen even in a casual glance
at our English media. But the fact remains that India is increasingly
making its presence felt in the West. And within the country itself
the word `Hindutva' is slowly, even if at considerable cost, getting acceptance.
Prof. Huntington quotes George Weigel as saying that ``the unsecularisation
of the world is one of the dominant social facts in the late twentieth
century''.
Anti-western sentiments
are most sharply to be seen in Islamic countries. In India the elite
still hold sway in positions of power but their hold is slowly crumbling.
It is unlikely that Hinduism will turn `fundamentalist' as is generally
considered. This is because `fundamentalism' as is defined in the
West is alien to Hindu thinking. Unlike Judeo-Christian religions,
including Islam, which are linear in approach, Hinduism is circular and
all-embracing which is perhaps one reason it has withstood the terrible
onslaught of both Islam and Christianity down the centuries. To charge
Hinduism or Hindutva as `fundamentalist' is erroneous. Its method
is to absorb, not confront. And it is bound to prevail precisely
because of that distinguishing characteristic. This will partially
explain the recent attacks in Christian institutions and priests.
It is somewhat strange that in Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, those
guilty are members of a strange cult known as the Deendar Channabasaweshwara
Siddique which is Islamic in origin. Plainly, Islam - or at least
one small and insignificant part of it in India - does not want competition
from Christianity. And while it is claimed that Christianity is an
Asian religion and certainly at least in Kerala it has been in existence
for centuries, its main body is seen as alien-supported and one attempting
to usurp majority culture space. And his Holiness the Pope did not
do either himself his religion or his co-religionists any good by saying
that he planned to `harvest' Indian souls to Christianity in the coming
decades.
What is presently happening
in India today is not a law and order problem --which can be handled with
reasonable ease -- but a clash of civilizations and the re-making of a
new world order. Clashes of civilizations do not come in neatly folded
envelopes. They are invariably messy, sometimes irrational and too
often bloody. What needs to be noticed is that the Hindu community
is now organising itself as it had never before. The tribals are
accepted as part of an ancient Hindu (Call it Indian) culture and Christian
inroads in tribal society is being challenged, with increasing ferocity.
A wise Christian community will understand the tectonic changes that are
taking place in India and act accordingly. Confronting Hinduism or
Hindutva through western aid and support can only be described as counter-productive.
