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pyare desh vasiyon Since the Gujarat riots, it looks as if a battle between two
radically different Indias is happening right now, under our own eyes; and the
outcome of this battle will decide what kind of India we will have in the 21st
century. India's human rights groups, many of India's finest intellectuals, the
communists, the Congress, many politicians - in fact a major chunk of India's
elite population - assert in the strongest terms that on one side you find an
India which is communal, mistreats, or even kills minorities; tries to impose its majority feelings and way of life on the
others and is generally attempting to create a Hindu state; on the other, they
continue, you have the secular and democratic forces of this country, the
journalists, activists, catholic priests, Muslim liberals, who truly believe
that circumstances have come to such a boil after the Ayodhya episode and the
Gujarat massacre, that India has to be saved from Hindu fundamentalists for its
own good. This is on the surface, because history shows us that what
appears as truthful, is often false and misleading and what popular opinion
holds as false is time and again the truth, which is attacked by dark forces by
decrying it, denying it, or belittling it. Thus, if you examine closely the
theory of the good secular Muslim/ Christian/Marxist, versus the bad/dangerous/
fundamentalist Hindu, you are bound to come-up against several deep
contradictions. First, historically, Hindus have been the least fundamentalist
people in the world: Never trying to impose their creed upon others by the power
of the sword, like Christianity or Islam, or even by the non-violent means of
preaching, like Buddhism. Hinduism has also proved over the ages its infinite
tolerance towards other religions, giving refuge to all persecuted minorities in
the world, whether Parsis, Syrian Christians, Jews, or Tibetans today. Second, Hindus have been particularly targeted in the last 15
centuries: Louis Frederick, one of France's most respected, balanced and
respected historian, called the Muslim invasions of India
"cataclysmic". Indeed, these invasions have left a deep scar of fear
in the Hindu psyche and most of India's modern problems - Ayodhya, Kashmir, or
the dangerous enmity with Pakistan - are a left-over from these murderous
assaults on Hinduism. Moreover, Hindus in India are not only an object of mistrust
and contempt from many, but they are also chased from their own ancestral lands.
There were one million of them in Kashmir in 1900, and 300,000 in 1947 - but
only a few hundred today. Hindus have become refugees in their own land. In
Assam, Tripura, or Nagaland, Hindus are being outnumbered by Bangladeshi illegal
immigrants and terrorised by pro-Christian separatist groups, such as the Bodos
or the Mizos, while local governments often turn a blind eye. Hindus are killed
and raped in Bangladesh, were persecuted under the Taliban and are treated as
second class in Pakistan. It is true that the secular voices in India are often
sincere, talented people who really want to preserve their country against the
forces of communalism. One cannot fault a Shabana Azmi, an Arundhati Roy, a
Medha Patkar, or eminent journalists like Dilip Padgaonkar with frivolity. These
are people who are already famous or rich enough not to have to hog the
limelight. They believe that they are putting their fame, or their pen, at the
service of true secularism. But then, they have to ask themselves the question how it is that they have the freedom to criticize
and to write whatever they please. In China, a country which many of them
admire, they would already be in jail or thrown out of the country; in Pakistan
or Saudi Arabia, they might even get killed. It is time that India's
intellectual elite realised how much they owe to Hinduism, both in terms of the
ethos of tolerance in this country, its immense culture, and its
spirituality. It is also true that one has witnessed in the past few months
a sudden hardening of the secular forces against Hinduism. Not only in India,
but abroad; not only with Indian journalists, but also amongst the Western
correspondents. In France, for example, all the major newspapers have carried
again and again particularly nasty stories against Hindus. Recently, one of the
leading French newspapers asked General Musharraf this pointed question: "Why does the world protest against the
killings of the Palestinians by the Israelis, but stays silent when thousands
of Muslims are killed in India?" And this gave Musharraf his golden cue:
"It is not only Muslims who are targeted in India he answered, but also
Sikhs and Christians...India pretends to be the biggest democracy in the world,
but it is only a bluff..." Why this sudden hardening against what the secular forces
like to call "Hindu fundamentalism"? Throughout their history, Hindus
have had numerous enemies: Arabs, British, Portuguese, and today Marxists,
Muslims and Christians seem to have united against the common enemy. All of
them, today and yesterday, felt that Hinduism was the only stumbling block to a
wholly Islamised India, or a wholly Christianised India, or a wholly Marxist
India. And indeed they were right: It is because of Hinduism that
for seven centuries India endured bloody after bloody invasions and still
remained Hindu in its majority; it is because of Hinduism that India was never
fully Christianised, as so many countries colonised by the British, the
Portuguese or the French were; it is because of Hindus that Marx could never get
a real foothold throughout India: It is because of Hindus that westernisation,
the civilisation of Coca Cola, MTV and MacDonald, is having a tougher time in
India than it has had elsewhere in Asia or the developing world. And, ultimately, India has to decide: Does it want to lose
its soul at the hands of the secularists and become a country like dozens of
others in the developing world: Westernised, globalised, christianised,
standardised? Or does it want to remain unique, special, different, with a
remarkable culture which has survived centuries of invasions and colonisation?
It is thanks to this uniqueness that a Hindu is different from anybody in the
world, or even that an Indian Muslim is different from a Saudi Muslim, or an
Indian Christian different from a European Christian. Yes, there is truly a
battle between two Indias at the moment; but it is not the secular versus the
communal, or the good Muslim versus the fanatical Hindu. It is a battle between
a spiritualised India and de-spiritualised, devitalised, dehumanised
India. The truth is: If India loses its dharma at the hands of
India's enemies, there will disappear the only real spirituality left in the
world. Once upon a time, true spirituality, which is the antithesis of religion,
roamed the wide world: From Egypt to Mesopotamia, from China, to Greece. But
today, the world is peopled by intolerant religions that still decree that their
God is the only true one. Christianity is willing to put up millions of dollars
of "charity " money to convert thousands of innocent tribals in the
North-East of India, thereby cutting them from their roots and culture; Islam
has men and women, who in good faith (look at the beautiful and innocent faces
of some of the Palestinian women suicide bombers) are willing to kill and get
killed to impose Allah's ways on an erring world. If we continue in this manner,
we are going towards self-destruction, pralaya. I can only finish by quoting
what the Mother of Pondicherry once said: "India must be saved for the good
of the world, since India alone can lead the world to peace and a new world
order
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