NOXIOUS STATEMENTS AGAINST SANATANA DHARMA BY DANGEROUS POLITICIANS
SEPTEMBER 4, 2023
The biggest and most serious problem for the majority of politicians, thinkers, and academicians since independence has been their faulty understanding of Sanatana Dharma as a term and as an idea. The colonial-initiated scholarship, continuing till date, attaches the words Hindu, Hinduism, and Hindutva to us and then goes on explaining what they mean in terms of the good, bad, and ugly. It is thus important to have a defence from our own side to reject noxious statements coming from ill-informed politicians, which, when applauded by people, reflect only ignorance, bias, or both. Sanatana Dharma is a huge conglomerate of ‘traditions’ whose core philosophy is an ‘indifference to differences.’ Tradition says, “I am true, but you are not false”. This is not how religions in the classical sense behave when they say, “I am true and you are false”. Making the traditions of the Sanatana world into religions like ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Jainism’, and ‘Sikhism’ has been the fundamental flaw of intellectuals in the modern world. The Indian solution to harmony has been to make religions that came from alien lands into traditions and make them tolerant in the process. This was always happening at a social and cultural level. However, our great political-academic combine insists on making our traditions into proper religions of the Abrahamic mould and then gets surprised why the country is progressing from tolerance to intolerance.
THE SCARE OF THE HINDU RASHTRA- POOR UNDERSTANDINGS OF SANATANA DHARMA
AUGUST 21, 2023
‘Hindu rashtra’ and the scare of a ‘fascist Hindutva’ state are the shrill notes nationally and internationally. At a fundamental level, ironically, we do not even know the definitions of ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindu religion’, and ‘Hindutva’. ‘Hindu’ was originally a geographical and historical entity for people on the other side of the Indus River. This later became a separate group from Muslims and Christians. The colonials, rooted in their own understanding of the Christian religion, constructed ‘religions’ out of the differently behaving traditions of the country. This led to the formation of ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Sikhism’, and ‘Jainism’, an artificial division of the larger Dharmic framework. As Balagangadhara says, Hinduism in scholarly descriptions is a religion, a culture, an inverted tree, a mathematical empty set, an unnatural creation, a lasagna, a rope, a potpourri, or whatever else the scholar feels like.
Despite all the ambiguities in defining Hindus and Hinduism, even by the Constitution and the judiciary, Hindutva appears to be the clearest manifestation of all evil. However, historically, it has simply been the defence or kinetic component of Sanatana Dharma against a constant stream of attacks on Indian culture. Islamic rule, colonial rule, the missionaries, the Marxists, Indologists in German and American universities, and the colonised Indians after independence have formed one nearly unbroken spectrum of attacks on Indian culture.
The 19th-century defence of the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj against the idolatry criticism of colonials and missionaries was the beginning. Hindus crystallised further into ‘Mahasabhas’, but without political traction, in the early 20th century in the wake of the Montey-Morley reforms, the Khilafat movement, the Moplah riots, and the constant perceived appeasement policies of the Congress as well as the British authorities. After independence, ‘political’ Hindutva evolved as a defence against the unfair shunning of Hindus following Gandhiji’s assassination and a stream of perceived appeasements disfavouring Hindus (secularism, the Shah Bano case, MF Hussain paintings, the Uniform Civil Code delay, selective control of religious places, cow-slaughter issues, and so on). The huge push into political prominence came, of course, with the famous Rath Yatra, but this was perhaps the culmination of centuries of Hindu struggle.
Sanatana Dharma, a conglomerate of traditions, is the solution to harmony for the entire multi-cultural world. Traditions work on the principle of ‘indifference to differences.’ Religions became traditions when they came to India, and socially, there was always harmony and attempted syncretism. Today, a reverse ‘religionization’ of traditions is leading to many intolerances unnatural to the nature of ‘Hinduism.’ Thankfully, it is a minority today. The scare is going to increase in the days to come if the poor understanding persists and power is the sole drive for politics.
We need a radical understanding of what Hindu, Hinduism, and Hindutva even mean. But first, the political, academic, and intellectual elite of the country need to shed their huge colonial baggage. The pontification, “Hinduism is good and Hindutva is bad,” is silly and shallow intellectualism. Sanatana Dharma is the overarching philosophy of Indian culture, which transcends and permeates all religions and traditions into one unifying whole.
THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM IN INDIA
JULY 28, 2023
The arrest of an anaesthetist on alleged terror links in Pune is disturbing, to say the least. What is it that drives even educated people like doctors to indulge in anti-national activities? In the days to come, intolerance in the name of religion is going to increase from all sides, without exception. Religion essentially “others” a person, and it says, “I am true and you are false.” The only way it gets peace is by converting the other or even eliminating him, as in the olden days. This was true of not only Islam but also Christianity. The history of Greco-Roman conversions in the first centuries of the millennium was brutal.
One of the fundamental misunderstandings people have about India is that “Hinduism” or its closest correlate, “Sanatana Dharma ”, is a “religion”. Sanatana Dharma is a conglomerate of a huge number of traditions (sampradayas and paramparas, where ancestral lineages and gurus count equal to, if not more than, individual deities and doctrines). Sanatana Dharma is the “tree” metaphorically from which all the great traditions of India (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and such) branched out.
Sanatana Dharma is finally a great conglomerate of many Vedic, non-Vedic, and so-called ‘tribal cultures’ interacting with each other in a syncretic manner, independent yet dependent. This, across many thousands of years and in a far greater amount of peace than seen anywhere else in the world, has the greatest capacity to absorb and assimilate any number of thoughts without violence. What remains after the branching out of the main trunk is perhaps the “Hinduism” we know today, but it remains hard to define for the best scholars.
The fundamental philosophy of traditional lands is “indifference to differences,” and this is the Indian solution for the world to deal with multiculturalism and its consequent strife. Traditions, in contrast to religions, say, “I am true, but you are not false.” Conversions to another stream and completely giving up the previous faith are alien and violent concepts. India dealt with alien religions when they came to India by “traditionalizing” them and making them tolerant in the process.
There is no problem today for any Indian when Christians and Muslims sing the highest devotional praises to Hindu deities without any fear of losing their own religion. This was always happening at the social level. However, our thinkers at the political and academic levels, instead of continuing this process, started to make our traditions into religions. The efforts to define Hinduism (or Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, or any such “isms”) as a “religion” are causing more harm to society than ever before. The so-called rise of “Hindu fundamentalism” is a consequence of such a faulty understanding. India is one and home to all, but there is an urgent need for us to understand it better and not accept wholly, without reflecting, whatever the colonials said about us. India is the key to world harmony.
SECULARISM AND THE DEBATE ON UCC
JUNE 30, 2023
Secularism, the separation of the public social sphere from the private religious sphere, was a straight import of European intra-Christian ideas battling their religious issues. The debate on the relationship between the state and religion ranged widely in the Nehruvian period. It was a vaguely defined concoction of ‘indifference’ to religion. However, Nehru’s state, claiming all the rights in its relations with the Hindus, took liberties. Nehru objected to the President inaugurating the rejuvenated Somnath temple; objected to Bande Mataram because of religious connotations; allowed the Hindu Code Bill; and insisted on debating religious issues such as the Hindu personal law and cow slaughter in secular terms. But he dared not touch the Muslim personal law, despite his anxiety to have a uniform civil code. In claiming the rights of a Hindu state, Nehru’s government’s refusal to accept the obligations of defending Hinduism incurred charges of inconsistency in applying secularism, says eminent scholar Bhikhu Parekh.
After independence, India became a peculiar liberal democracy with uniform criminal but not civil laws. The Indian state thus recognises both individuals and communities as bearers of rights. The criminal law recognises only individuals, whereas the civil law recognises most minority communities as distinct legal subjects. Article 44 of the Constitution mandates that the State endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India. The summary of the arguments against a Uniform Civil Code in all circles is that India is not a homogenous country, and therefore legislative uniformity in personal and family matters cannot be at the expense of diversity as it obliterates the differences. However, this argument has multiple fallacies and inherent contradictions:
- A secular democratic republic under a written Constitution guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the law to all citizens. This argument logically leads to different Constitutions catering to the huge regional differences in not only religions but also languages, cultures, and customs.
- Hindu society itself is not homogenous, with so many languages, cultures, and customs, yet there is a forcibly uniform set of personal laws for all Hindus. This again leads to the logic of repealing the Hindu Marriage Act, the Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act and allowing various segments of Hindu society to follow their own customary personal laws.
In the face of the ridiculous proposition of having multiple Constitutions catering to various segments, the UCC is necessary for the country. As one scholar points out, a Uniform Civil Code covers matters relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, adoption, maintenance, guardianship, and other family and personal matters. It would be prudent to progress gradually through piecemeal legislation by initially taking up the most important issues that are against constitutional principles.
This includes a uniform age of consent for marriage between all citizens, irrespective of both religion and gender, and the banning of polygamy as first steps. Polygamy is illegal for Hindus (section 494 of the IPC), but legal for Muslims and certain tribal populations. A secular country guaranteeing equality before the law, parity between sexes, and gender justice cannot allow polygamy.
Polygamous societies are more prone to violence and instability, as empirically noticed. Polygamy only for select religious groups can lead to the destabilisation of religious demographic balance, causing disturbances and anxieties detrimental to national unity and integrity. It would be great if Muslim intellectuals, without bowing to the pressure of the clergy, engaged in larger debates. The Uniform Civil Code is not an attack on Muslim brethren in the country, but in some places, they should be willing to seek reforms pro-actively for the greater sake of the nation. Goa should be an example here for the nation.
RELIGIONS AND TRADITIONS- THE NEED TO UNDERSTAND INDIA URGENTLY
MAY 22, 2023
The article Grave Faith: Faith-Based Terrorism by DC Pathak (May 22, 2023) was thought-provoking. Muslim intellectuals and Hindu seculars should seriously remove their heads in the sand and address the elephant in the room. There is a need to understand that, despite a significant Muslim population and occasional clashes, Indian society has been far more peaceful at any time in its history since Islam landed than any other part of the world. The indigenous solutions for harmony were different. It is fundamental to appreciate, which our political and academic thinkers failed to do, that India is a land of traditions and not religions. Religions are definitionally intolerant of ‘non-believers’ and ‘others’ easily and do not have the capacity to accept diversity. Traditions are ‘indifferent’ to others, which transcends the concepts of acceptance and tolerance. Islam and Christianity became a part of many traditions in India, and they became a part of the symphony of Indian society. Instead of continuing this process, our thinkers, in reverse, are largely converting our traditions into religions. Sanatana dharma breaks down into many religions (Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism), and it gives rise to the abnormal phenomena of ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘aggression’ termed pejoratively as ‘Hindutva’.
SANATANA DHARMA DEFINES INDIA
FEBRUARY 7, 2023
Harish Rao’s declaration that protection of Sanatana Dharma is a necessity (February 6) and DC Pathak’s article (India security lies in strong nationalism; THI, February 7) are both thought-provoking and intricately linked. Ill-informed Indians follow post-colonial scholars using the modern definition of a nation-state and declare that India was somehow a creation of the west and we were “never a nation.” Standard western theories, mainly Marxist-influenced, trace the origins of nations in transformations which achieve a “cultural homogenization” based on language, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Thus, scholars at JNU believe that India is incoherent, fragmented, and marked by foundational differences.
However, “nation” does not do justice to India’s expression of oneness. India has been an ancient “felt community” for thousands of years because it does not emerge through deliberate systematization. This process manifests itself as “culture” autonomous of the state. Thus people, despite many diversities, could belong to the same set of meanings, symbols, and land (swastika, the lotus, the temples, the pilgrimages, Sanskrit language, and so on) as a great unity. Bharatvarsha exists in the oldest scriptures as the land “south of the Himalayas and north of the oceans.” The Mahabharata, Ramayana, and the Vishnu Purana describe “Bharata” Varsha with clarity in the various travels of its characters across the land. The 12 Jyotirlingas, the 52 Shakti Mahapithas, and the 26 Upapithas spread over the Indian subcontinent became the defining point to draw the boundaries of the country based on pilgrimages. Despite an absent political unity (with few exceptions) in the European definition of nation, a united geo-cultural India existed for thousands of years making India a continuously surviving civilizational state.
The words Hindu, Hindutva, and Hinduism remain undefined in unambiguous terms even today constitutionally, legally, and academically giving rise to many controversies. Whether Hinduism is synonymous with or is a subset of Sanatana Dharma, the only understanding of India can come from within the framework of this Dharmic philosophy defining and permeating the land of India. Only Sanatana Dharma, a huge conglomerate of traditions, has the immense capacity to absorb all faiths, religions, and beliefs if they go on the path of becoming traditions. The key to harmony in a traditional world comes from its fundamental philosophy of an “indifference to differences” which far transcends the classical paradigms of “tolerance, acceptance, and mutual respect of the other.”
Indian culture and traditions are an unbroken continuity for thousands of years, a melting pot of all three purported human groupings (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid); six language families (Indo-European, Dravidian, Austric, Sino-Tibetan, Burushaski, and Andamanese); many traditions (Vedic and non-Vedic interacting in a syncretic mode); and many religions configuring in the traditional mould. We are one people and one land. The solutions for multiculturalism and harmony can only come from us but only if we truly understand the nature of traditional India and not become too fascinated with whatever the west says about us.
THE PROBLEM WITH INDIAN SECULARISM
JANUARY 27, 2023
Subhashini Ali, CPI member, declared that secularism is absolutely essential to keep the people and country together (Midnight’s Children, THI 27th January). Ignoring the historic role of communists in persistently trying to break the country, this view represents a poor political thinking which unfortunately cuts across all ideologies. Has any major discourse even wondered why ‘fundamentalism’ is increasing in the country despite a vigorous implementation of ‘secularism’?
It is wrong to associate the present-day people with crimes of their so-called historical ancestors. One cannot use history to extract revenge. However, Indian brand of secularism did weaponize history. It whitewashed the past wrongdoings done in the name of Christianity (the Goa Inquisition for example) and Islam in a tacit acceptance of the idea that the contemporary Christians and Muslims are somehow related to the past brutalities. The same charity did not apply to Hindus as the social sciences and humanities simply continued with the colonial missionary narratives. A ‘pure’ Vedic religion which degenerated into the present caste and atrocity ridden ‘Hinduism’ through a vile patriarchal ‘Brahmanism’ remained the only understanding across centuries from the earliest traveller reports to present day academia. Secularism in this sense became an abuse of the majority where it told the Hindus that it will ‘never forget and never forgive.’ It became an appeasement when it told Muslims and Christians that it forgets, forgives, and blanks out its history too. That has been a terrible solution for post-independent India.
Secularism was specifically for Christendom of Europe at a particular time of its history when the multiple denominations were fighting each other on their individual doctrines. Each party knew what God or Christ meant in the background when secularism separated the Church from the state. It was not a solution for non-Western pagan cultures. Even European secularism today faces severe problems with the influx of Islam into its society. Indian traditions are not religions and understanding this as a first step would go a long way in harnessing solutions. Secularism is a disaster for non-Christian cultures which do not have religions in the definitional sense but only various traditions and whose solutions for co-existence are entirely different. We were dealing with our multiculturalism in a far better way but the fascination for the west superseded rational political thinking post-independence. Today, everyone is surprised at the intolerance and the rise of ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ but many serious thinkers have shown that it is precisely the Indian brand of secularism which is the problem. Converting Indian traditions into religions as a first step and then applying secularism as a solution to achieve harmony can never succeed.
CASTE, RELIGION, AND POLITICS IN INDIA
DECEMBER 13, 2022
The Speaker of the Lok Sabha pulled up an MLA for mentioning his caste in the House (THI,13th December). Apparently, people select them on the basis of ‘democratic norms’ and not caste or religion. One can only applaud such a blatant hypocritical statement. It cannot be ignorance or innocence- two qualities impossible to attach to our politicians at any level. Every single political fight starting from the village level divides people in the name of religion and caste. It would be foolish to expect that our all-too-human politicians forget their religious or caste identities once they enter the House. Their survival is precisely on those lines. Ironically, both ‘religion’ and ‘caste’ are alien ideas having no roots in indigenous traditions of India. The Dharmic traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) are everything which do not fit into the definition of a religion and yet they are religions. Caste, a Portuguese word, has no equivalent in Indian scriptures. The superimposition of caste on our varna-jati vyavastha is responsible for the present mess. It was a complete failure of our social sciences after independence to change the colonial narratives. These social sciences lay the basis for the foundational understanding of the country; as a consequence, every single institution-law, politics, bureaucracy, media, or academia permeates with a poor understanding of the country. Collectively and individually these institutions only perpetuate faultlines in the great Indian civilization.
THE TRICKY PROBLEM OF PROSELYTIZATION IN INDIA
NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Conversions and anti-conversion movements are tricky issues all over the world including India. Jakob De Roover and Sarah Claerhout, scholars of the Balagangadhara school at Ghent, Belgium have deeply tackled the problem of religious conversion in their books and articles. At a fundamental level, the clash is on the meaning of ‘freedom of religion.’ For the proselytizing religions, it means a freedom to convert people into their faith; for the non-proselytizing ones, it implies a freedom from interference by outside religions. The root problem is in trying to understand the various indigenous phenomena (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism) as ‘religions’ in the same mould as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Sanatana Dharma lacks all the characteristics that allow us to recognize and differentiates Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as religions: a fixed body of doctrine, an ecclesiastical organization or central authority, a holy book, etc. Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions and the religions of Christianity and Islam are phenomena of different kinds. When religion is a matter of doctrinal truth and different religions are rivals, the freedom to convert becomes of the greatest importance. Since false religion always implies immoral and unjust practices according to the Christian and Islamic viewpoints, conversion entails the escape from immorality and injustice. The secularization of Christian theology translates into the importance of the absolute right to profess, propagate, and change one’s religion.
Where religion means the ancestral tradition of a community, like in India and other pagan traditions of the past and contemporary times, the significance shifts to the freedom to continue one’s tradition without aggressive interference from the outside ripping the social fabric. The dominant liberal principle of religious freedom, even enshrined in the Constitution but which the Courts disagree with, privileges Christianity and Islam, because it involves the freedom to propagate one’s religion and to proselytize. It implicitly endorses the assumption that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims, something unknown in traditional cultures. Neither anti-conversion laws nor the principle of religious freedom will do the job, since both privilege one of the two sides of the controversy.
Historically, Hindu traditions and Indian Islam and Christianity succeeded at living together in a relatively stable manner. India has a far better record of pluralism and multiculturalism in mostly peace than Europe and the western world anytime in their histories. We need urgent research to rediscover and reinvent some of the inherent mechanisms in Indian traditions responsible for this vibrant pluralism of India. Many scholars have pointed out that local Islamic and Christian traditions lost their aggressive proselytizing drive in India. Hindu attempts to impose anti-conversion legislation aggressively also seemed to be absent. The first and most important step would be to revise the understanding of our traditions as religions. The solution then would be in the direction of ‘traditionalising our religions’ rather than ‘religionising our traditions’. Religions say ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true, but you are not false.’ And therein is the difference.
THE ANTI-HINDU POLEMIC OF NEO-BUDDHISM
OCTOBER 11, 2022
It is strange that our political parties (especially the alleged ‘protectors’ of Hindus) choose to ignore neo-Buddhism. The vows for initiation into Buddhism from Hinduism, a farcical understanding of both Buddha and Buddhism, is simply the highest polemic against Hinduism, its deities, and everything which Sanatana Dharma stands for. Buddhism was just another tradition in the Hindu land where new traditions, sects, and gurus evolve all the time showing many paths to the final enlightenment. The concepts of Ignorance, Reincarnation, Karma, Nirvana, the lower knowledge related to the world, and the higher transcendental knowledge show a remarkable similarity in both Advaita and Buddhism. The final state of enlightenment is merging in the ‘Brahman’ (the Supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) for Advaita, whereas Buddhism speaks of ‘Sunyata’- silence and nothingness. Debates yes but violent encounters on such issues are overworked imaginations.
Buddhist texts reveal that the Buddha, contrary to popular narratives, never rejected the varnas. Buddha, putting Kshatriyas at the top, himself considered Rama as his previous incarnation. The conversion of Dr Ambedkar along with thousands of his followers in 1956 strengthened the retrospective anti-Hindu program of Buddha initiated by Western scholars. Conversion, implying a rejection of all previous beliefs, is a typical religious concept prevalent in Christianity and Islam. In traditional cultures devoid of such demands, one can embrace another tradition keeping the old view perfectly intact. Even Buddha would be uncomfortable with this brand of neo-Buddhism. Scholars like Koenraad Elst say simply, ‘Buddha was every inch a Hindu.’
PFI AND THE SILENCE OF THE MUSLIM MODERATE
SEPTEMBER 27, 2022
The internal insurgency by PFI is extremely disturbing. The zeal emanating from the clerics has mostly been in favour of a Pan-Islamic brotherhood transcending nationhood. After the British broke the back of Mughal rule in 1857, it was later an appeasement policy with regards to Muslims to counter the Hindus in a deadly game of divide and rule. Starting with the Khilafat agitation in the early part of the 20th century, Congress, the supposedly Hindu political party took the path of minority appeasement to win favours. Unfortunately, the Congress took the same route of appeasement in the name of secularism for many decades after independence; a policy which finally consolidated the Hindus, further alienated the Muslims, gave BJP its power, and made Congress almost irrelevant. However, the attitude of the clerics did not seem to alter a bit after independence. Political Islam made it a lifelong commitment to project their grouses against the dominant ‘Hindus’ never ever trying for integration, harmony, and upliftment of their community.
Looking at Muslims as a vote bank, the Congress with the left-dominated academia (the latter inherently anti-Hindu) whitewashed the brutal Islamic history and unfortunately associated the present-day Muslims with past Islamic invaders. This was a gross injustice to both Hindus and Muslims. Socio-culturally Muslims and Hindus were integrating at all levels right from the beginning but the politico-religious strategies from all sides never helped the cause of unity. The Muslim moderate simply disappeared from the arena having little say in reforms. All reforms come from within. The Hindu politicians and intellectuals addressed most of the evils of Hindu society. This has been a failure from the Islamic side as the major role of intellectuals and the moderates appears to only defend the more aggressive political-religious stances detrimental to the cause of harmony in the country.
RAHUL GANDHI’S QUERIES AND THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF RELIGIONS
SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
There was a controversy recently when Rahul Gandhi met and raised questions with a Christian pastor on the nature of Christ and God. We can ignore the past anti-Hindu statements of the pastor as representing a fringe phenomenon hardly representative of mainstream Christian thought. Assuming Rahul as an innocent genuine seeker, on a broader perspective, the questions and answers reflect the entire problem of understanding religions and traditions in India. Christianity (also Islam and Judaism) as a religion has a specific concept of ‘one real and true God’ and ‘many false gods’ (commonly existing in pagan traditions). Accordingly, a belief in Jesus as a true God is a fundamental doctrine of Christian thought.
Balagangadhara Rao (Ghent University, Belgium) shows that the branches of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism) are not religions in the definitional sense as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism but are traditions. Traditions typically consist of many devas and devis; they also typically deify nature and the feminine quite unlike the religions. One of the major problems in the intellectual understanding across centuries has been to translate the devas and devis as ‘gods’ in the Christian theological sense. In such a framework, the devas and devis become false and the only way one can attain salvation is to reject the false and turn to the one true God. Thus, the framework of Christian and Islamic theology has to see the devas, devis, shaktis, and other such entities as simply false.
So dominant has been this framework that even Hindu intellectuals fighting against conversions accept this theological framework of ‘multiple gods’ existing in Indian traditions. In a traditional world, which is mainly about paths to moksha, all devas and devis are equally true for the person on that path. This includes Jesus or Allah too and hence a typical Hindu has no qualms in accepting both as equally valid for their believers. There is an incomprehension for a Hindu when someone claims an exclusive status for a single God or a single messenger. That is simply not how traditions function.
The superimposition of Christian theological frameworks to understand Indian traditions is the basis for long-standing confusion and ‘religious’ friction. There cannot be a solution unless there is a radical revision of our understanding. Very briefly, there are traditions in India and not religions. Traditions say, ‘I am true but you are not false’; religions say, ‘I am true and you are false.’ The Indian solution to pluralism and multiculturalism was to ‘traditionalise the religions’ where the latter lost focus on proselytisation and made attempts at genuine cultural syncretism at various levels as is true of a traditional world. This involved accepting ‘gods’ of other traditions and cultures too. Christian evangelists and Islamic madrasas fight against this syncretism precisely.
Instead of continuing this process, we have been converting in reverse, by exclusively relying on western descriptions of India, our traditions into proper religions (by way of specific doctrines, books, temples, and so on). This process is paradoxically increasing the intolerance and the so-called ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ with the passage of time. The present understanding of Indian culture is going to only increase the strife in the future. Secularism was a solution for Christendom at a specific time of European history; making it a solution for India after first making our traditions into religions is a sure recipe to disaster. Our social sciences have a serious task for the future.
RELIGIOUS POLARISATION IN INDIA
AUGUST 20, 2023
The polarisation on religious lines seems to be increasing on a daily basis in India. We have now a sickening spectacle that one community rejoices on the beheading of an ordinary citizen and the other celebrates rapists after release from jail. Pakistan was supposedly a solution to solve the Hindu-Muslim problem in India before independence. Unfortunately, a Pakistan based on religion went down on a spiralling path of failure; fortunately, Indian democracy holds much better. However, religious divisions threaten to rip the social fabric of India. Indian thinkers failed brilliantly when they thought that ‘secularism’, a solution for Christendom of Europe at a certain point of their history, was appropriate for India too. Intellectuals continue to believe the colonial story that India has ‘religions’ in the form of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and so on when they are simply traditions branching from the tree of Sanatana Dharma. Religions in the proper definition are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Religions say that ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true but you are not wrong.’ The proper Indian solution for harmony since centuries was to ‘traditionalise the religions’ so that they integrate into society. However, we are turning our traditions into religions leading to hardening of stances and crystallisation of the so-called ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ too. We need to go back to the drawing board.
HINDUPHOBIA IN THE COUNTRY
AUGUST 7, 2023
Timur (1336-1405), of Turco-Mongol descent, attacked India but went back but not before killing 100,000 Hindu prisoners captured till that point. His soldiers plundered Delhi over three days taking back slaves and immense booty. Yet, our celebrities snook a thumb at the entire majority and proudly name their child Timur. It is an extraordinary privilege which exists amongst some people who can use any narrative to divide the Hindus or insult the majority sentiment by cordially meeting the enemies of the country or depict our sacred symbols with a harshness amounting to almost hatred in their artistic outputs (movies, paintings, or literature). Amazingly, any reaction becomes an occasion to play the victim card or hide under the banner of Freedom of Expression which cannot of course exist for the Hindu community without invoking the rise of ‘Hindu fundamentalism’. It is unfortunate that Hindus have to remain silent at all the potshots taken against them in a grand application of secularism. Agreed, one should delink the ideology of the main actor from the worth of his film; but in his public comments and attitudes, Amir Khan becomes impossible to defend.
DEPICTION OF KALI AND VIOLENCE ON SANATANA DHARMA
JULY 8, 2022
Recently, a poster of the film ‘Kaali’ directed by a Canadian-Indian raised outrage. The poster showed a woman dressed as goddess ‘Kaali’ smoking and holding an LGBTQ community flag. Freedom of expression is all fine but cannot descend into insulting Sanatana Dharma where blasphemy is unknown. When Western Indologists like Wendy Doniger eroticise Hindu gods and scriptures or use Freudian lenses to evaluate Ramakrishna Paramhansa, there is a tremendous intellectual violence on a culture but we are never able to formulate a response.
Distorting and trivializing Tantrik traditions by seeing them as an infringement of moralities is a recurring theme in Western media, film industry, or academia. As Nithin Sridhar points out, depictions like ‘hot’; ‘a monstrous mother with a penis’; ‘representing male transsexual fantasies’; ‘a castrating female’; ‘a prostitute’; ‘having many affairs’, and such, are highly sexual and perverse interpretations of Goddess Kali. These are completely alien to Hindu world-view and iconography. It is unfortunate that many Hindus internalize these descriptions. The iconography of Kali represents many ideas in the Tantric traditions but the underlying theme is moksha by cutting us free from bondage and ignorance. But such iconography and ideas do not mean anything to people who refuse to engage with the traditionalists to further oneself. Rather, they are keen on ‘interpreting’ and distorting our devas and devis with their own frameworks rooted basically in an Abrahamic world-view of One Single True God and many ‘false’ gods.
Balagangadhara Rao says that such descriptions trivialize, distort, and deny the experience of another culture towards its saints and gods. Western culture and those taken by it insist on looking at other cultures from their own perspective believing that it is the only experience possible in the world. This is the root of the feeling of wrongness: someone else’s experience of the world makes our experiences inaccessible to us by trivializing, denying, and distorting them. Some protest by various forms (physical almost never) because Indians feel that this situation is morally wrong. But these protests face the ever-present threat of the label of ‘Hindu fundamentalism’. There is a sense of cognitive wrongness too. But the reaction is in the form of complete silence as one simply does not know how to counter-express. Such descriptions not only deny the existence of Indian traditions as alternatives to Western discourses but yields a caricatured, distorted version of the competitor.
At a fundamental level, scholars trying to place Indian traditions into the straitjacket of religion profoundly miss its nature. These traditions exist with the fundamental idea of an ‘indifference to differences’ which transcends the standard secularist discourses for harmony- ‘tolerance’ or ‘mutual respect’. Sanatana Dharma has any number of offshoots and branches- Vaidika and the Tantrika; Buddhist and the Jain; Shaiva and the Vaishnava; Shakta and the Sikh; Arya Samaj and Kabirpanth; worshippers of Ayyappa, Doni-pollo, Sarna; and so on.
Hindu society majorly consists of two parallel religious systems- Vaidikam and Tantrikam. The practices of the latter are clearly Siva-Sakti worship. The Tantric practices range from simple Grama Devata (village deity) practices to more esoteric ones. At the extreme end, there might be practices that can offend one’s sensibilities as they involve uninhibited sex, alcohol, blood, and meat. The interface between the Vaidikam and the Tantric methods has been ranging from indifference, to a mutual give and take, to a complete shunning (as in the extreme Vamachara practices). At no point perhaps, there was a violent suppression of one by the other. This mutual give and take are typical in a traditional pagan land.
The colonial-missionary understanding of the Siva-Sakti traditions finally led to a narrative of Dravidianism, demonolatry, untouchability, and a detachment of many groups from the main body of Hinduism as Sudha Mohan shows in his book Sivasya Kulam. Proving them as oppressed non-Hindus or non-Aryans was a useful strategy for both conversion purposes and creating a huge faultline in the Hindu society. The distortion of non-Vaidik traditions led to many disastrous consequences- Dravidianism being the most glaring, along with pushing traditional medicine into the realm of the ‘primitive.’ Many Buddhist practices were based on Tantrik rituals, demonstrating a clear mutual exchange of practices and an inherent harmony. The colonial enterprise of pitting Buddhism as standing against Hinduism has largely been a successful one. In summary: depiction of the Mother Kali in any way one pleases is a singular attack on our culture and is ‘not OK’. Barring physical violence every other response remains justified. Enough is enough.
TIME TO RETHINK ABOUT RELIGIONS IN INDIA
JUNE 16, 2022
Intellectuals, thinkers, and common people who make the reassuring and feel-good claim that no religion teaches hatred are like the proverbial ostriches. They are ignoring the entire panorama of the violent history of religions in the western and the middle eastern worlds in the last two thousand years. The destruction and conversion of cultures and civilisations was not by individuals who did not understand religion but by people who specifically drew inspiration from their religions.
A troubled India holds on to some very divisive narratives concerning religion thanks to a sustained poor scholarship after independence which did not disband the colonial narratives. Intellectuals like Bankim Chandra had an inkling but it is Dr Balagangadhara Rao (Balu) in recent times who has most clearly articulated a better understanding of India with some real solutions. His claim about religions at the most basic level goes like this: India is a land of traditions and not religions. If Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are religions in their true definition (consisting of A Book, A God, A Doctrine, A Temple), then there are no indigenous religions in India.
The biggest problem of the world, cutting across all ideologies, is the continuous understanding of traditions as religions. Dr Balagangadhara clearly shows that Hinduism was more of an ‘experience’ of the colonials trying to understand an alien culture. In this sense they ‘constructed’ a religion based on their own frameworks and a total belief that there can never be a culture without a religion. The puja, the Sandhyavandanam of the Brahmins, the Sahasranamams, the Purushasukta, our notions of dharma and adharma, all exist. The West did not provide a false or wrong description of the social and cultural reality in India. But problematically, the unity they created by tying these things together is a unity only for them. They could not understand us otherwise.
This different but cognitively superior description of Indian culture perhaps confirms to the lived experience of most people. However, we need to first reject the present framework based completely on Western scholarship. Calling oneself a ‘Hindu’ for the sake of convenience is simply a continuation of ancestral traditions. A traditional land has the characteristic feature of dealing with pluralism and that is an ‘indifference’ to differences. This transcends the classical notions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘mutual respect’ maximally achieved by secularism. While calling oneself a ‘Hindu’ might be convenient, the danger is in trying to develop ‘doctrines’, ‘theologies’, ‘catechisms’ and our own ‘Ten Commandments’ so that we could identify people that follow a religion called ‘Hinduism’. Intellectuals, in India and in the West, are transforming some of the multiple Indian traditions into a single ‘religion’ called ‘Hinduism’. The problem does not lie in trying to unify diversity into a unity. Rather, it lies in trying to fit traditions into the straitjacket of ‘religion’.
Even though we assume that a set of practices from time immemorial transmits; in principle, there is no way of establishing the truth of this belief. Only certain knowledge such as the Vedas and mantras might have faithfully come down in their pristine form. Dr Balu says, today, we are not yet able to make sense of the presence of these two properties: (a) the enormous flexibility in belonging to a tradition and the sharpness with which the boundaries exist between traditions; (b) the possibility that any element could be absent from a tradition and yet it could maintain identity and distinction. Contrary to popular understanding, traditions are neither variants of either religion or philosophies. They are what they are- traditions.
How do we then understand Christianity and Islam in India? Dr Balu says that the simple answer is that when these religions entered India, they met with an already formed culture. These religions adapted to the existing culture to survive. Thus, Indian Christianity and Indian Islam remain Indian irrespective of their religious beliefs and practices which had a space to flourish as one of the many diversities present in Indian culture. In this process, these religions undergo modifications in how the believers live their daily life which does not affect the content of their beliefs or their places of worship. It is exactly this kind of adoption and adaptation to Indian culture that many Madrassa schools and evangelical Christians militate against. Whether such ‘resistance’ has any effect at all or not depends not on their militancy but on the vibrancy of Indian culture.
India’s practical solution since ages, instead of the inappropriate and noxious secularism, was to traditionalise the religions so that they lost focus on proselytization and made some genuine attempts at cultural syncretism. In reverse, our thinkers are trying hard to convert our traditions into religions. As secularism drives Hinduism into a proper religion, we typically see the rise of intolerance and fundamentalism and begets the accusation by others of what they have been guilty of for hundreds of years.
HIJAB ISSUE AND SECULARISM
FEBRUARY 15, 2022
Secularism was a solution to European Christendom at a specific time in its history to deal with various factions fighting for ‘truth values’ of individual doctrines. It is hardly an ideal or a universal solution as demonstrated by the huge problems creeping up with the influx of Islam into Europe. Transfer of this solution to the plural world of India is even more problematic. Secularism ends up causing more religious friction paradoxically. It badly hits the Hindu traditions converted inappropriately into ‘proper religions’ by an extremely poor understanding on the part of our politicians, academics, and intellectuals. The Churches stress on the Constitution and secularism for allowing conversions, intensely antithetical to a traditional world like India, as a part of religious imperative. Similarly, Islamists talk about the Constitution and secularism for their demands but refuse the Uniform Civil Code to honour the Sharia. Secularism has failed brilliantly in our country and will continue to do so. It is important at this stage to invest some resources on developing alternative models to deal with the cultural diversity in the ever-shrinking world. Across centuries, the Indian solution to diversity and multiculturalism was in ‘traditionalising the religions’ and making them indifferent to each other. Instead, we are insisting on ‘religionising our traditions’ making them hard and increasingly intolerant.
THE TRICKY PROBLEM OF CONVERSIONS IN INDIA: IS THERE A SOLUTION?
DECEMBER 22, 2021
Proselytization seems to be generating controversy in Karnataka presently. Conversion, and its variants, seems to be the core problem of all plural societies across the world and especially India. Conversion is a radical, sudden change of belief, where one discards old associations because of a new theological outlook. How can such models encompass non-Christian religions and cultures where the concepts of belief, practice and membership are profoundly different? Sarah Claerhout and Jakob De Roover, in a brilliant article (Conversion of the World: Proselytization in India and the Universalisation of Christianity) trace the roots of why conversions lead to such heartburn and strife. By consensus, the structure of religious conversion and proselytization is competition regarding the gain and loss of adherents generating inter-religious tension, conflict, and violence. The common solution offered is that all societies should respect the principle of freedom of religion. Each citizen has the right to choose freely between religions and a liberal neutral state ought to safeguard this freedom.
In the entire debate and understanding of conversion three basic assumptions play a most important role: the variety of Indian cultural traditions are religions; these religions are rivals and each wants to increase their respective numbers; and they are rivals because truth predicates apply to them. These assumptions, though appearing as common-sense facts, are problematic. These ‘facts’ are a set of theological claims of Christianity shaping today’s received view of the cultural diversity of humanity. In Indian society, two groups of cultural traditions coexist that seem to be of a very different nature: the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain traditions on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Christians, Muslims, and secularists claim the right to propagate and change one’s religion is part of the freedom of religion. In contrast, most Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain groups claim conversion violates the Indian social fabric at its heart.
Theological assumptions spoke about traditions as false religions in India; the secularized versions drop the word ‘false’ but place traditions as ‘religious rivals’ even as the theology fades in the background. Hinduism lacks all the characteristics that allow us to recognize and differentiates Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as religions: a fixed body of doctrine, an ecclesiastical organization or central authority, a holy book, etc. The diversity in India from the perspective of Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions shows that the assumption of rivalry is alien to them. Hence the Christian and Indian traditional views are mutually exclusive: one looks at the diversity of the Indian society as a rivalry of religions and the other sees it as a co-existence of traditions. The conclusion is inevitable: conversion becomes a vital problem of religious diversity, if and only if one looks at the world the way Christianity and Islam do.
When religion is a matter of rival doctrinal truths, the freedom to convert becomes of the greatest importance to humanity. The secularization of Christian theology translates into the importance of the absolute right to profess, propagate, and change one’s religion. Thus, the dominant principle of religious freedom reproduces theological assumptions about the nature of religion. Where religion means the ancestral tradition of a community, like in India and other pagan traditions of the past and contemporary times, the significance shifts to the freedom to continue one’s tradition without aggressive interference from the outside. Thus, religious conversions disintegrate communities and families by drawing individuals away from ancestral traditions. The dominant principle of religious freedom, then, must necessarily favour one of the two sides of the Indian equation. The liberal principle of religious freedom, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the Indian Constitution, privileges Christianity and Islam, because it involves the freedom to propagate or manifest one’s religion and to proselytize. It implicitly endorses the assumption that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims.
The link between conversion and freedom of religion, then, is a theological legacy from the Christian West. The secular intelligentsia of the subcontinent defending a theological perspective as though it were a neutral scientific truth fail to develop solutions for India. Unfortunately, the Hindutva movement is part of the same development of the narrative when it transforms certain attitudes and practices of these traditions into proper doctrines. The supposed Hindu doctrine, ‘all religions are equal’, would become equivalent to religious suicide for Christianity and Islam. The deadlock is that secularists, Christians, and Muslims insist that religious freedom entails freedom of conversion; the advocates of Hindutva maintain that it grants the freedom from conversion.
Neither anti-conversion laws nor the principle of religious freedom will do the job, since both privilege one of the two sides of the controversy. Without the risk of romanticizing the past, looking into the history of the subcontinent, it is striking that, in several regions, the Hindu traditions and Indian Islam and Christianity succeeded at living together in a relatively stable manner. There must exist some mechanisms in Indian traditions responsible for this. For one, many scholars have pointed out that local Islamic and Christian traditions lost their aggressive proselytizing drive in India. Hindu attempts to impose anti-conversion legislation aggressively also seemed to be absent. We need to re-examine the nature of Indian culture and its traditions, including Indian Islam and Indian Christianity. We require alternative frameworks that will reflect upon India’s experiences of the last five centuries.
The Balagangadhara school maintains that the problem of religion in India arises when we insist on converting our traditions more into religions. As a corollary, the solution lies in making religions more into traditions. Religions can maximally tolerate and accept the other but traditions transcend these with their characteristic indifference to differences. This was the solution of a multicultural and plural India historically and we must apply more study to rediscover these inherent mechanisms in Indian society. Religions say, ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true but you are not false’. And therein lies the difference.
INVITING STALIN TO INAGURATE YADADRI
DECEMBER 15, 2021
It is unfortunate that our respectable Chief Minister chose to invite Stalin to the reopening ceremony of Yadadri. Stalin is a known atheist and his party has a background of not only strict atheism but a definite antipathy to the Hindu traditions which it ‘others’, wrongly and unfortunately, through the prism of a strict Dravidian ideology. Secularism and liberalism in India carry a peculiar flavour amongst the intellectuals and the politicians. It means to appease the minorities and abuse the majority respectively. This large-heartedness was a consistent policy since independence. Nehru’s state claimed all the rights of a ‘Hindu state’ in its relation to the Hindus. He took liberties with the Hindus like objecting to the President inaugurating the rejuvenated Somnath temple; objecting to Bande Mataram because of religious connotations; allowing Hindu Code Bill which included state temple management; insisting on debating religious issues as the Hindu personal law and ban on cow-slaughter in secular terms. But he dared not touch the Muslim personal law despite his anxiety to have a Uniform Civil Code. In claiming the rights of a Hindu state, the Nehru government’s refusal to accept the obligations of defending and promoting their religion incurred charges of inconsistency and disingenuity in applying secularism.
Our founding fathers concluding for a secular India remained muddled on the meaning of secularism. The Indian state wanted to deny the dominant and distinct Hindu ethos from the beginning. No government has fully explained why India should be a secular state in its current sense; the arguments are unimaginative and derived from Western history. Most leaders have argued falsely for secularism as necessary for religious tolerance and harmony. A secular state is not necessarily tolerant (Soviet Union during the Communist rule) and a religious state is not necessarily discriminatory against minority religions (traditional Hindu kingdoms in India, Muslim kingdoms in the Middle East and most of the time even in India). Secularism, with no Indian vernacular equivalents, does not even make sense in the Indian context where the private and public life clothes in many rituals and traditions on a constant basis.
Even pure atheism is not bothersome in Indian traditions unless it indulges in iconoclasm. Atheism, making sense only in a theistic ‘religious’ world, can be a route to enlightenment too in a traditional India. Materialism and atheism were known in Indian traditions since ancient times as Charvakism or Lokayata. Jains, Buddhists, and even some orthodox traditions either reject God or do not demand a belief in God for enlightenment. Most of Indian traditions are not even ‘theistic’ the way Judaism, Christianity and Islam are. Indian ‘atheisms’, ‘asuras’, or the ‘immorality’ of the devas do not rob Indians of their traditions the way atheism robs a believer in the West.
However, the Dravidian antipathy is difficult to understand. It is the racial Aryan-Dravidian theory, proposed first by the colonial and German Indologists, which caused havoc with Indian social and political life including the nonsensical North-South divide we see in our country. The evidence for Aryan invasion or migration is weak from literary, archaeological, anthropological, or genetic disciplines. The persistent conflation between race, language and culture is misleading and dangerous. Political uses of the Aryan scenario, wholly illegitimate and unnecessarily divisive, are an extension of the colonial agenda. As scholar Koenraad Elst says, the many social-political applications of the racially interpreted Aryan theory, which needs dismantling at the earliest, include the ‘caste-system’ (Aryans upper castes; Dravidians as tribals as lower castes); anti-Brahminism; Dravidianism; and Ambedkarism (lower castes as the aboriginals subdued by the Aryan invaders though Ambedkar himself strongly opposed the Aryan theory).
Indic culture is an amorphous mixture of Vedic/Sanskritic culture, Sangam culture of the south, and the rich ethnic (mainly tribal) strands of culture. Alien religions entered and absorbed into this culture creating a unique multicultural world, a solution for the world to deal with pluralism which it seems to be distinctly incapable of. Indian culture is a melting pot of six language families (Indo-European, Dravidian, Austric, Sino-Tibetan, Burushaski, and Andamanese). Over millennia, the unique Indian cultural unit has been a rich and complicated mixture of many elements. It is unfortunate, senseless, and even dangerous to try and separate the individual elements but our politicians are creating havoc using these dangerous theories to divide the country and pit one against the other. It is perhaps with good intentions that the Telangana CM has politely invited a neighbouring counterpart to inaugurate a Hindu temple but in the background of the strict beliefs of the person and the party behind him, it is another great example of taking the Hindu believers in the country for granted.
HINDU, HINDUISM, HINDUTVA
NOVEMBER 12, 2021
Salman Khurshid compares Hindutva to radical Islam in his latest book on Ayodhya and has generated the expected controversy. It is a sad fact that our understanding of the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hinduism’, and ‘Hindutva’ remain feeble and ambiguous even after many decades of independence. The proponents of Hindutva see it as a component of Hinduism which defends or is simply the kinetic component of Hindu Dharma. The opponents see Hindutva as a disturbing force extending to even ‘fascism’, a word to beat any opposition into silence. The proponents look at Hindutva to preserve self-respect; and the opponents pontificate, ‘Hinduism is good; Hindutva bad.’
‘Hindu’ originally started as a geographical and historical entity for people on the other side of the Indus or Sindhu River by the Persians, or Arabs, or the Greeks. This later assumed the identity of a group of people standing separate from Muslims and Christians. ‘Hindus’ crystallised in the face of the Islamic invaders, colonial rulers, and the local population to identify a group standing separate from Muslims and Christians. Then, the colonials constructed a certain framework to understand the multiple Indian traditions rooted in their own Christian religious framework. This led to the formation of ‘religions’ called ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Sikhism’, ‘Jainism’, and so on, with even internal fights like the Catholic-Protestant encounters. As a manifestation of colonial consciousness, the country has collectively believed the idea that religions exist in India when, in fact, they do not, as the Balagangadhara school strongly propagates.
Through the early Brahmo and Arya Samaj movements, the pre-independence Congress policies of Muslim appeasement (especially acute in the Khilafat agitation), the perceived extra-territorial loyalties of Muslims in pre-independent India, Savarkar’s writings, the fallout after Gandhi’s assassination, the political rise of the Hindu movement after independence with several issues cropping up (Uniform Civil Code, Shah Bano case, MF Hussain nude paintings , Temple control and so on), Hindutva was primarily a defence mechanism of the Hindus against what they thought were an attack (cultural. physical, and political) on themselves. Equating it with the radical religious ideas of either killing or converting by force is a gross injustice either by intent or ignorance on the part of the scholars. It betrays a poor understanding of Indian culture and the historical contexts of such movements.
The confusion on semantics has been severe which even our Supreme Courts have not been able to address. In an indirect manner, through some related acts, the Constitution does try to define the Hindus, but leaves gaping holes in the interpretations. As all legal entities, Constitutional, and academic scholarship act in concert to make traditions into religions, friction rises in society as an outcome. The words- ‘Hindu’, ‘Hinduism’, and ‘Hindutva’, themselves are capable of a wide variety of interpretations from extremely positive to extremely negative. Each word now means religion, philosophy, culture, tradition, heritage, practices, or simply a word of abuse depending on the context and the user. They may all mean the same thing too.
We have simply traditional systems in the country with multiple ways of going about in life. Traditions go beyond the standard ‘acceptances’ and ‘tolerances’ which the ill-suited secularism can maximally achieve and have the important characteristic of an indifference to differences. This has been our greatest strength in dealing with multiculturalism. A superimposed narrative of Hinduism as a religion and a later Hindutva, by force of circumstances, is responsible for the friction, anger, and debate on all sides today. The biggest strength of Indian pluralism is the acceptance of others without feeling threatened about one’s own. The Abrahamic religions in India also become a part of the hundreds of such sampradayas. We should relook at all our social sciences and all our textbooks to first decolonize ourselves. Sanatana Dharma is the overarching philosophy of Indic culture which transcends and permeates Hindu, Hinduism, and Hindutva and can even accommodate the other conventional religious systems of India. The Indian solution to deal with Abrahamic religions was to traditionalise them; we however are insisting to turn our traditions into religions making them hard and intolerant. Understanding the genesis of Hinduism, Hindutva, and other related terms, we should realize that our great country is in the trap of false semantics. Hinduism (as a religious phenomenon) and Hindutva are the same; both exist and dissolve together.
THE TALIBAN, RELIGIONS, TRADITIONS, AND SOLUTIONS
AUGUST 19, 2021
With the Taliban coming into power, the issue of religion takes a prominent place. However, there is always a hesitancy in intellectuals and a silence in political circles to discuss the issue of religion and fundamentalism. The Taliban philosophy, clearly taking the Sharia for inspiration, is a threat not only to Afghanistan but to the entire world. It will be hard times for us especially since India borders two hostile states friendly to Taliban. In a deadlock situation, the only hope for the world comes from India. Dr SN Balagangadhara’s thesis on religions and understanding the phenomenon in India would be a major input to achieve peace in the country (and in the world too). Most debates about religions in the country seem to degenerate into a verbal exchange of words. History and its ‘facts’ are inconvenient debating techniques and are hardly helping.
As Dr Balu says, there were never any religions in India but only traditions (sampradayas and paramparas in its widest form). The conversion of traditions to religions was a colonial exercise. It was not from any malicious intent at a larger level but they were trying to make sense of an alien culture from the ruler’s perspective. They saw a variety of phenomena, practices, and philosophies across the country and constructed the religions of ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Jainism’, ‘Sikhism’, and so on. There were even religious encounters too between a Buddhism of 2000 years and a Hinduism of 200 years! The framework of all these experiential constructions were their own European internal debates between the Protestant, Catholic, and the Enlightenment thinkers. It is a long story but one of the basic driving forces in creating religions by the colonials was their own culture (rooted in religion) which believed that religion is a cultural universal. It was inconceivable to them that there could be cultures without religions.
Our Indian intellectuals swallowed the whole story which Dr Balu terms as ‘colonial consciousness.’ Only a few intellectuals questioned whether religions in the classic definitional mould of a single book, a single temple, a single doctrine, or a single messenger ever existed in India. Fertile intellectual minds sitting in the best libraries of Europe converted our traditions into religions with even ‘inter-religious’ encounters. Hinduism versus Buddhism was their legacy; Hinduism versus Sikhism today is a continuation of that legacy. These were like those which happened in the Middle East and the European world of medieval times.
Fundamentally, religions can never be a reason for peace. It divides the world into ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers.’ Under the impact of secularism, the maximum a religion can achieve are ‘tolerances and acceptances.’ Traditions thrive on multiplicity of practices, rituals, philosophies with the fundamental idea of ‘an indifference to differences.’ The concept of truth is as robust as in religions but traditions say, ‘I am true, but you are not false.’ Religion, in contrast, is clear when it says, ‘I am true and you are false.’
How did India deal with religions? They became traditions with a gradual indifference to other beliefs and yet pursuing their own paths. As is usual for traditional cultures, religions had cultural syncretism with the mainstream traditions and they lost their focus on an aggressive proselytizing drive too. Muslims and Christians singing the highest devotional songs to Indian deities without fear of losing their personal faith or persecution from the hard-core elements are some examples. The Hindus also were never strong into implementing anti-conversion laws because essentially the idea of conversion with rejection of all previous beliefs does not make sense in a traditional culture. One can very well be a Hindu even if one does not believe in God and goes to the temple ‘purely for its architecture.’
It is another matter that the words ‘Hindu’, Hinduism’, and ‘Hindutva’ remain ill-defined in both our Constitution and Law manuals even after so many decades. Using the words as a matter of convenience, the indifference to differences is the Indian solution to multiculturalism and not the ill-baked and inappropriate idea of secularism, a solution for the Christian European world at a specific time in its history. India’s distorted political secularism became only ‘appeasement’ of ‘minorities’ rather than encouraging inclusiveness.
Unfortunately, as our traditions become more of religions, the capacity to absorb pluralism diminishes and fundamentalism arises. The so-called Hindutva and Hindu ‘fundamentalism’ is an outcome of such attempts to define traditions as religions with even core doctrines (like the supposed Hinduism claim that all religions are equal). The problem of India has been to convert traditions into religions by a continuous effort of our intellectuals, academia, and the politicians. This conversion takes us from tolerance to intolerance, from an indifference to hate, from an acceptance to rejection. The Indian solution to the world is to make religions into traditions. We should be pursuing this path. This is not ‘diluting’ a religion as some might want to believe. It would be surprising if the Taliban can ever bring peace to anyone in the world.
DR BHARAT JHUNJHUNWALA’S ARTICLE
JUNE 21, 2021
Bharat Jhunjhunwala’s article on 21st June dealing with the fleeing of the rich and the educated from the country puts a critical word about religions. Typically, he holds explicitly or implicitly mainly Hinduism as the culprit. A profound ignorance exists amongst Indian intellectuals right from independence which understands our traditions as religions. Going by the definition of A Book, A Church, A God, and A Messenger, all of which speak the only Truth, then only Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are religions. India is a land of traditions and not religions and the nature of both the phenomenon has mysteriously evaded most intellectuals of the country.
Religions historically have been a cause of strife and wars. The truth claims involving My True God versus Your False Gods leads to division and violence of both physical and intellectual types. The colonial understanding and literature based on Protestant frameworks converted a huge mass of Indian sampradayas, paramparas, and traditions into many religions like Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism without understanding the nature of the phenomenon of both religions and traditions.
India successfully dealt with multiculturalism and pluralism far better than any western society anytime in its history. Traditions base themselves on rituals which bring people together. The hallmark of a traditional culture is an indifference to differences which transcends the standard tolerances and acceptances maximally achieved by religions under the impact of secularism. Unfortunately, the post-independent academics, politicians, and intellectuals continued to understand Indian traditions as religions despite a huge number of contradictions. The colonial violence on Indian minds never left us and this is even more painful in contemporary times.
Indian culture absorbed alien religions and made them into traditions so that they could retain their identity and yet be flexible enough to give and take from other traditions. This is how traditional cultures evolve. This was the greatness of Indian culture. Instead of exploring how this might have happened by further research, we are insisting on converting our traditions into religions and making them more intolerant and rigid in the process.
These constructions also lead to the imagined religious rivalry based on truth values between Hindus and Buddhists or Hindus and Sikhs today. In traditions, the truth value is not a premium. Shankara’s followers may say Shankara was preaching the truth but Madhava was not preaching falsehood. Heresy is unknown in Indian traditions. Our intellectuals have completely failed us in giving us an Indian viewpoint of our own culture. Orthodox Islam does not allow music and other fine arts to a great extent and yet some of the greatest Indian music and fine art exponents are Muslims who do so without a threat of a loss to their identity. This is the strength and hallmark of Indian culture which a standard application of religious paradigm can never achieve.
The more we turn our traditions into religions and start discovering books, central organisations, and messengers, the more trouble we are in. Secularism was a solution for a Christian world in the European middle ages. Universalizing it as a solution to all cultures across space and time is simply a collective intellectual failure. It is an irony that a culture where the phrase ‘Sarve Jana Sukhino Bhavantu’ (let all people be happy) is almost second nature gets secularism as the solution for its problems. Indian brand of secularism, by converting traditions into religions, paradoxically increases fundamentalism. It is the poorest solution for India replacing an already rich solution existing in our culture historically.
Thus, we come up with rather strange solutions like Indian Institute of Religions as suggested by Bharat Jhunjhunwala in his article. If only he could look at the history of religion in the Middle East and European world, he would not be writing many things in his article. The explanation of migration to other countries from India because of religious violence is intellectual laziness in making biases and assumptions as solid reasonings.
RANDOM MUSINGS 