Hindustan, conceptually is a nation of Hindus and those others in the nation who accept with pride that their ancestors are Hindus. The identity of an “Indian” follows as an easy corollary as one who is a Hindu or one who proudly acknowledges that his ancestors are of Hindu faith. Even today most nations abroad refer to India as Hindustan [e.g., Yindu guo in Chinese, Hind in Arabic]. Only in our country we go by the English garbled variation India of Hindustan…
Fundamentals of Hindutva
and
The Concept of Hindustan
by Dr. Subramanian Swamy
Hindustan, conceptually is a nation of Hindus and those others in the nation who accept with pride that their ancestors are Hindus. The identity of an “Indian” follows as an easy corollary as one who is a Hindu or one who proudly acknowledges that his ancestors are of Hindu faith. Even today most nations abroad refer to India as Hindustan [e.g., Yindu guo in Chinese, Hind in Arabic]. Only in our country we go by the English garbled variation India of Hindustan. Parsis, Jews, Syrian Christians come in a special category of Hindustan’s religious minority, as those who were welcomed by Hindus since they came to Hindustan seeking refuge from persecution in their own lands abroad, and who willingly accepted to abide by, and adopt cultural customs of Hindus. All these minorities however had inter-married with Hindus over the last millennium and a half, and hence have a claim to the nation’s Hindu civilization by ancestry. From the Hindustan identity flows the fundamentals of Hindu-ness or Hindutva as the cultural parameters of the Hindustan society.
Why the need to discuss?
Why is it important after sixty years, since the British imperialists were driven out, that we need to discuss today the concept of our identity and the fundamentals of Hindutva? This need arises because of the misfortune of the almost uninterrupted rule of Jawaharlal Nehru[17 years] and Indira Gandhi[16 years], and their cheap imitators in office since 1947.
The concept of Hindutva and the ancient Hindu foundation of the nation were demeaned during their tenure, and those who dared to advocate it were ostracized by the government. The nation was not allowed by these imposters to find its feet after a thousand years of debasement of, and brutality against Hindu religion, by a vulgarization of Hindustan’s true and glorious history in textbooks that were prescribed by the Congress governments. That debasement continues today under the present government.
Over the last two millenniums, Hindu religion had been subjected to threats several times from other religious groups, but these threats had been met, the challenges faced and overcome sometime actively as by the Vijayanagaram and Mahratta kingdoms or passively as in the Freedom Struggle. Well before the birth of Christianity and Islam, Hindu religion had been once intellectually dethroned by Hinayana Buddhism. But Adi Sankaracharya rethroned Hinduism through his famous shastrathas[religious debate] and caused a renaissance in Buddhism itself, which then came to be known as Mahayana Buddhism, conceptually in complete harmony with, if not indistinguishable from, Hindu theology.
In South India, the azhwars and nayanmars also through shastrathas repositioned Hinduism after absorbing Jainism and Buddhism. Since then the Hindu dharmacharyas have always been looked up to, when Hindu society faced a threat or crisis, for guidance to meet the challenge to the Hindu religion. Today, we again need the revered acharyas to show us the way. Hence the formation of the ‘Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha’ under the guidance of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati of Arsha Vidyalaya and the Tirupati Declaration of July 2006 are of vital importance for the future renaissance of the nation.
Hindu ethos provided for sanctuary and home to those of other faiths fleeing from their countries due to religious persecution. As I stated earlier, Parsis, Jews and Syrian Christians are among those religious groups who had sought refuge in India, and survived because the Hindus looked after them. These three religious communities have had and have today a disproportionate share in power and wealth in Indian society, but Hindus have no resentment about it. These minorities had come to India in search of peace and found safe haven in the midst of Hindu society.
Parsis migrated elsewhere in the world too, but disappeared as a community in those countries. Jews have openly acknowledged that India as the only country where they were not persecuted. Syrian Christians too are today completely integrated into India. Even early Arab Muslim travelers who came peacefully to settle in Kerala were taken into Hindu families, and hence called Mapillai[meaning son-inlaw– Moplah in English]. That is a fundamental of Hindutva, the ethos of compassion and co-option that is unparalleled in world history.
However, militant Islam and later crusading Christianity came to India, and aggressively challenged Hinduism. They seized power in sequence and established their own state in India. But despite state patronage to the ensuing onslaught, plunder and victimisation, those of Hindu faith could not be decimated, and Hinduism remained the theology of the vast Indian majority. This was passive resistance of Hindus, much before Mahatma Gandhi came of the scene. Defiant Hindus suffered persecution and economic deprivation during Islamic and Christian reigns, such as through differential taxation[e.g., jezia and zamindari land revenue appropriation] and plain brutality, but Hindus by and large refused to capitulate and convert.
Even after almost a thousand years of such targeting by Muslims and Christian rulers, undivided India in 1947 was more than 75 percent Hindu. This was partly because of the victorious Vijayanagaram, the Sikh reign, and Mahratta kingdoms, and later the Freedom Movement, each inspired by sanyasis such Sringeri Shankaracharya, Swami Ramdas, Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekanada and Sri Aurobindo, who by their preaching about the Hindu identity and Hindutva ensured that the flame of Hindu defiance never dimmed. It was also due to individual defiance of Hindus such as of Rana Pratap, Rani Jhansi, Rani Bennur, Kattaboman and Netaji Subhas Bose.
These icons are admired not because they led us to victory [in fact they were defeated or killed], or had found out a safe compromise[they did not], but because of their courage of conviction in the face of huge odds not to submit to tyranny. That courageous defiance is also is part of Hindutva. But those who capitulated like Raja Man Singh or Jai Chand or Pudukottai Raja in order to live in pomp and grandeur are despised today by the people. Hindutva means: resist by passive non-violent resistance if possible, otherwise by vigorous aggressive action if necessary. Hindutva means never to submit, never to compromise with evil.
In 1947, temporal power was defacto restored to the Hindu majority. But the Indian state formally adopted secularism, which concept however was never properly defined or debated. For example, it left vague what modern Indian’s connection was with the nation’s Hindu past and legacy. In the name of secularism, it was taboo for a public servant even to break a coconut or light a oil lamp to inaugurate an official function on the ground that religious symbols must not invade public life.
Such orthodoxy was promoted by Jawarharlal Nehru and his Leftist advisers. But the government took over supervision of temples, legislated on Hindu personal laws, appropriated temple revenues and regulated religious festivals, but kept aloof from the Muslim and Christian religious affairs. The secularism principle was foisted on the Hindu masses without making him understand why they had to abide by such legislation but not the Muslims and Christians. It made a mockery of Article 14 of the Constitution on equality before law.
As a result, the renaissance that had begun in the late nineteenth century to redefine the Hindu identity [in contemporary terms and on norms valid in a pluralistic society] was aborted by the confusion thus created in Hindu minds by Nehruism. Electoral politics further confounded the issues arising out of secularism, and hence the Indian society became gradually and increasingly fragmented in outlook and of confused perspective. Hindu society became divided by caste that became increasingly mutually antagonistic.
Attempts were made through falsification in history texts adopted for curriculum in the education system to disconnect and disinherit the contemporary Indian from the past glory of Hindu India. The intrinsic Hindu unity has been sought to be undone by legitimizing such bogus concepts as Aryan-Dravidian racial divide theory, or that India as a concept never existed till the British imperialists invented it, or that Indians have always been ruled by invaders from abroad.
There is no such word as Aryan in Sanskrit literature [closest is ‘arya’ meaning honourable person, and not community] or Dravidian [Adi Sankara had in his shasthrath with Mandana Mishra at Varanasi, called himself as a ‘Dravida shishu’ that is a child of where three oceans meet, i.e. south India]. The racial divide theory was a deliberate distortion by British imperialists, and propagated by their witting and unwitting mental Indian slave academicians on the hapless students in educational institutions.
Incidentally, the Aryan-Dravidian myth has now been exploded by modern research on DNA of Indians conducted by Professor C. Panse of Newton, Mass. USA and other scholars. In light of such new research, the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC] in it’s October 6, 2005 service completely debunked the Aryan—Dravidian race theory in stating that: “The theory was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas” [www.bbc.co.uk, religion & ethics homepage, Thursday, 6/10/05].
Modern India is portrayed by foreign interests through this curriculum, as a discontinuity in history and as a new entity much as are today’s Greece, Egypt or Iraq. That curriculum is largely intact today. On the contrary efforts are afoot to bolster the disparagement of our past in the new dispensation today. A rudderless India, disconnected from her past has, as a consequence, become a fertile field for religious poachers and neo-imperialists from abroad who paint India as a mosaic of immigrants much like a crowd on a platform in a railway junction. That is, it is clandestinely propagated that India has belonged to those who forcibly occupied it. This is the theme around which the Islamic fundamentalists and fraud Christian crusaders are again at work, much as they were a thousand years ago, but of course in new dispensations, sophistication, and media forms.
Thus the concept of Hindustan, and India’s Hindu foundation implicit in Hindutva, are dangerously under challenge by these forces. Tragically most Hindus today are not even cognizant of it. Hindu patriots thus must meet this challenge by propagating the concept of Hindustan and spreading the knowledge among Hindus of the fundamentals of Hindutva. The challenge today confronting Hindus is however much more difficult to meet than was earlier in history because the forces at work to erode and undermine the Hindu foundation of the nation, unlike before, are unseen, clandestine, pernicious, deceptive but most of all sophisticated and media-savvy.
Tragically therefore, a much more educated and larger numbers of Hindus have been unwittingly co-opted in this sinister conspiracy directed by foreigners who have no love for India and who also see, much as Lord Macaulay saw in the nineteenth century, that the hoary Hindu foundation of India is a stumbling block for the furtherance of their nefarious perfidious game for castrating Hindustan. Adherence to Hinduism is also being sought to be diluted in the name of modernity and this dilution is made a norm of secularism.
Religion, it is advocated, is personal. To be a good Hindu today is conceptually being reduced to just praying, piety, visiting temples, and celebrating religious festivals. The need for a collective Hindu mindset, an essential fundamental of Hindutva, is being ridiculed as chauvinist and retrograde, even fundamentalist. The concept of a corporate Hindu unity and identity however is that of a collective mindset that identifies us with a motherland from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean and it’s glorious past, and the concomitant resolve to defend that vision.
However pious a Hindu becomes, however prosperous Hindu temples become from doting devotees’ offerings, when the nation is in danger it is this collective mindset of the people that matters, and not the piety of the individual in that collective. The sacking of Somnath Temple by Ghazni should serve as a reminder of the validity of this dictum. Hindu society today lacking a cohesive corporate identity, is thus in the process of becoming fragmented, and hence increasingly in disarray. This fission process is on simultaneously with the reality of millions of Hindus who go to temples regularly or walk to Sabarimalai or participate in Kumbh Mela.
When I speak of Hindu unity, I am not taking of piety of Hindus as a community. I am instead referring to the Hindu consciousness, which encompasses the willingness and determination to collectively defend the faith from the erosion that is being induced by the disconnection with our glorious past. What Swami Vivekananda, Bankim Chatterjee, Sri Aurobindo, and Subramania Bharati had achieved by raising Hindu consciousness, has now in the name of Nehruvian secularism been distorted and dissipated over the last six decades.
Even the writings of Dr. Ambedkar, and his oration in the Constituent Assembly for a strong united country have been vulgarized by the Nehruites. In his scholarly paper presented in a 1916 Columbia University seminar [and published in Indian Antiquary, vol. XLI, May 1917 p.81-95] Dr. Ambedkar stated: “ It is the unity of culture that is the basis of homogeneity. Taking this for granted, I venture to say that there is no country that can rival the Indian Peninsula with respect to the unity of its culture. It has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and much more fundamental unity – the indubitable cultural unity that covers the land from end to end”. Ambedkar wrote several such brilliant books, but alas, Nehru and his cohorts so thoroughly frustrated him and isolated him that in the end, bitterness drove him to Buddhism.
Thus, if this degeneration and disconnect are not rectified and repaired by a resolve to unite Hindustanis [Hindus and those others who proudly identify with India’s Hindu past], the Hindu civilization may go into a tail spin and ultimately fade away like other civilizations have for much the same reason. Today the sacrilege of Hindu concepts and hoary institutions, is being carried out not with the crude brutality of a Ghazni or Ghori, but with the sophistication of the constitutional instruments of law.
The desecration of Hindu icons, for example the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt, is being made to look legal, thereby completely confusing the Hindu people, and thus making them unable to recognize the danger, or to realize that Hindus have to unite to defend against the threats to their legacy. We Hindus are under siege today, and we do not know it! That is, what is truly alarming is that Hindu society could be dissembled today without much protest since we have been lulled or lost the capacity to think collectively as Hindus. To resist this siege we first need Hindu unity based on the fundamentals of Hindutva. Let us remember that numbers [of those claiming to be adherents to Hinduism] do not matter in today’s information society. It is the durability and clarity of the Hindu mindset of those who unite that matters in the forging of an instrument to fight this creeping danger.
We Hindus cannot fight against looming and creeping danger, unless we first identify what we have to fight. We cannot effectively respond unless we understand the nature and complexity of the challenge. What makes the task of defending Hinduism much more difficult today is that the oppressors are not obvious marauding entities as were Ghazni, Ghori, or Clive. The means of communication and the supply of funds in the hands of our enemies for camouflaging their evil purposes are multiples of that available in the past.
My contention here today is that Hindus are facing a four dimensional siege and this siege is pernicious, clandestine, deceptive and sophisticated. It requires an enlightened Hindu unity to combat the threats and get the siege lifted. We have to begin by first understanding the content and scope of the four-dimensional siege before we Hindus can unite to battle it.
The clandestine defamation of Hindu symbols and institutions
Making Hindus to lose their self-esteem by disparaging their tradition, which also had been the strategy of British imperialists for the conquest of India, as Lord Macauley made clear on February 2, 1835 in the British Parliament.
“I do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which [backbone] is her spiritual and cultural heritage. And therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”.
That basic strategy of those who want to see a weak and pliant India remains. Only the tactics have changed. Now the target is the Hindu institutions and Hindu icons, and the route is not the creation of a comprador class to subdue the nation, but fostering a psychological milieu to denigrate the heritage and to debunk Hindutva, thereby causing a loss of self esteem and a pride in the nation’s past.
Demographic restructuring of Indian society
People of India who declare in the Census that they are adherents of religions born on Indian soil, that is Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains constituted 84.21 percent of the total Indian population in 2001. In 1941, the proportion adjusted for Partition was 84.44 percent. This figure hides the fact that Hindus resident in undivided Pakistan have migrated to post- Partition India, which is why the share of Hindus and co-religionists have barely reduced since 1941. In the area now called Bangladesh, Hindus were 30 percent in 1941. In 2001 they are less than 8 percent. In Pakistan of today, Hindus were 20 percent in 1941, and less than 2 percent in 2001.
Such religious cleansing has not been noticed by anybody. If the figures are adjusted for this migration, then in the five decades 1951-2001, Hindus have lost more 3 percent points in share of Indian population, while Muslims have increased their share by about 3 percent. What is even more significant is that Hindus have lost 12 percent points since 1881, and the loss in share has begun to accelerate since 1971 partly due to illegal migration from Bangladesh. The continued rise in the share of Muslims and Christians in the total population is a threat to the Hindu foundation of the nation.
We have to find ways and means to meet this threat. Kerala is a state where the Hindu population declined from 69 percent in 1901 to 56 percent in 2001. Muslims are now 25 percent and Christians 19 percent. But Hindus share in agricultural activities has fallen to 24 percent; while for Christians the share has risen to 40 percent. For Muslims it is 33 percent. In commerce and industry too the same proportions obtain, while in foreign employment, Hindus share is just 19 percent, Muslims 49.5 percent and Christians 31.5 percent.
In the land fertile districts of Western UP, from Rampur to Saharanpur, Muslims due to a much higher population growth rate are now 40 percent of the population. Six of the 14 districts of Assam in the northeast are already Muslim majority, and by 2031, all fourteen will be Muslim majority if present trends of differential population growth rate and illegal migration from Bangladesh continue. In northeast India, minus Assam, 45.5 percent of the population is already Christian. Every one of the seven sisters states has a galloping Christian population. Arunachal, which had zero Christian population in 1971, now has over 7 percent.
These two communities today fiercely safeguard their control of institutions spawned on public money besides receiving funds from abroad. Take for example the educational institutions. ‘Jamia Millia Islamia University’ has been reorganized as a central university with liberal government grants. But 88 percent of the faculty is Muslim. American College, Madurai’s faculty is 66 percent Christian. Its junior faculty is 95 percent Christian. Union Christian College at Aluva, Kerala has 83 percent Christian faculty. There are no exceptions. All institutions run by Muslims and Christians have grossly disproportionate share of their religionists.
Differential application of family planning, non-uniform civil code, illegal migration, and induced religious conversion have together created a serious looming crisis for the Hindu character of the nation. We see what Muslim majority will mean to Hindus when we look at the situation in Kashmir. Even if Muslims are in a majority at the municipality level, they begin to oppress the Hindu minority. We can witness this in Thondi in Ramanathapuram and Rasathipuram in Vellore districts, in Mau and Meerut in U.P., and in the Northeast.
We can learn from witnessing how Muslim majority treats minorities or even women of Muslim faith when we look around the world and study Islamic nations. Muslims believe the world is divided as Dar-ul-Islam where Muslims are in a majority and are rulers, and Dar-ul-Harb in which Muslims are in a minority and are entitled by the Koran and Shariat, by hook or crook to transform these countries to Muslim ruled and/or Muslim majority. At present India is viewed as Darul Harab, and unless the Hindu majority compels or persuades the Muslim minority to enter into a contract to live in peace, whence India becomes Dar-ul-Ahad, the Muslim population will always play host to fanatics bent upon creating upheaval in India. That is why I am emphasizing that Muslims in India must declare that their origin and ancestors are Hindus, and that Hindustan is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi.
Christians too have their view of the world as divided between heathens who have to be ‘saved’ by conversion and followers of Jesus Christ. Now with the publication of Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ and revelations about Opus Dei organization, Hindus have to go on high alert about Christian missionaries from abroad. Moreover, patriots concerned with the safeguarding of the Hindu foundation of the nation have to take note that religious entrepreneurs have put conversion to Christian faith on a war footing. In Dallas, Texas, USA, the Global Pastors Network [GPN] held a conference and resolved that over the next fifteen years, the organization will support financially worldwide the construction of five million churches and conversion of one billion persons to Christianity. From India alone, according the Evangelist Pat Robertson the target is 100 million persons. Hence, Hindus are not only under siege, but face a terrible pincer of Islamic fast population growth and illegal migration, in conjunction with Christian money-induced conversion activities.
Therefore, Hindus will have to hang together or ultimately be hanged separately. This is no inflamed psychosis. Not long ago, despite being the overwhelming majority, Hindus had to pay discriminatory taxes to the Muslim and Christian emperors who were ruling India. Lack of unity was the reason, and not poverty. In fact when the onslaught and enslavement took place, India was the richest country in the world. Within 150 years thereafter we were reduced to the poorest in the world. Now if the demographic restructuring described herein goes on unchecked, then the danger becomes several fold than before.
The Rise of Terrorism Directed at Hindus
If one were to study the terrorism in Kashmir, Manipur, and elsewhere it is apparent that only Hindus are the target. The driving away of the Hindu population from the Kashmir valley by targeted terrorism of Islamic jihadis is the single biggest human rights atrocity since Nazi Germany pogroms against the Jews. Yet it has hardly received noticed in international fora. Why?
Hindu population in Bangladesh has declined from 30 percent to less than 8 percent of the total population by deliberate targeted ethnic cleansing by Islamic fanatics aided and abetted by their government [see Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India’s State of Jammu& Kashmir: A Survey of Human Rights, June 17, 2005; hinduamericanfoundation. Org], and yet there is no outcry. Why?
This is because of the lack of Hindu mindset to retaliate against atrocities against Hindus. When in 1949, anti-Hindu riots took place in East Pakistan, Sardar Patel had declared that if the government there could not control it, then India was quite capable of putting it down for them. Soon after then the riots stopped. Terrorist attacks against India and Hindus in particular are growing because we seem today incapable of retaliating in a manner that it deters future attacks.
According to the well known National Counter terrorism Center, a US government body, in it’s report titled A Chronology of International Terrorism for 2004 states that: “India suffered more significant acts of terrorism than any other country in 2004”, a damning comment. India is suffering on an average about 25 incidents of terrorism a month. India’s Home Ministry in its 2004-05 Annual report to Parliament acknowledges that 29 of the 35 states and union territories are affected by terrorism. Moreover, all India’s neighbours have become hotbeds for anti-Hindu terrorists training.
Because of a lack of Hindu unity and a mindset for deterrent retaliation, terrorists have become encouraged. In 1989, the Indian government released five dreaded terrorists to get back the kidnapped daughter, Rubaiyya, of the then Home Minister. Kashmir terrorists got a huge boost by this capitulation. When the Indian Airlines plane with 339 passengers was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, the government again capitulated and released three of the most dangerous terrorists. Today these three freed terrorists direct the three most murderous terrorist organizations in Kashmir. And yet there is chorus today to give clemency to the terrorist Mohammed Afzal who masterminded the attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001.
Then there is the case of the LTTE, which murdered Rajiv Gandhi. We have made no effort to apprehend the leader of the LTTE who had ordered the assassination. On the contrary, those MPs [of PMK, MDMK, and DMK] who publicly praise that terrorist, and hold the assassination as justified, have become Union Ministers in a coalition led by the widow of Rajiv Gandhi! During the NDA rule on Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s plea, one of the LTTE conspirators ordered to be hanged by the Supreme Court viz., Nalini was given clemency!
Terrorism cannot be fought by appeasement. But that precisely is what the government is doing today. Tragically, innocent Hindus have invariably been the victims of this capitulation. To combat terrorism, there has to be a determination to never to negotiate a settlement with terrorists. Citizens of a country have to be educated that there will be hazards when faced with acts of terrorism, but that the goal of the government will always have to be to hunt down the terrorists and fix them. Only under such a zero tolerance policy towards terrorism, will the ultimate good emerge.
For example in the Indian Airlines hijack case in order not to risk 339 passengers’ lives the government released Mohammed Azhar from jail. But Azhar went to Pakistan after his release and formed the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has since then killed nearly a thousand innocent Hindus and is still continuing to do so. How has the nation gained by the Kandahar capitulation then? Hence the Hindu political leadership must treat the fight against terrorism as a dharmayudh, as a fight to the finish and a religious duty not to negotiate, compromise or capitulate to terrorists. The government must safeguard the nation by adopting a policy of “hot pursuit” of terrorists by chasing them to their sanctuaries no matter in which country they are located.
The Erosion of Moral Authority of Governance
The well-known organization Transparency International has graded about 140 countries according to the corruption levels from least to the most. India appears near the bottom of the list as among the most corrupt. Recently The Mitrokhin Archives II has been published wherein KGB documents have been relied on to conclude that shamefully “India was on sale for KGB bribes”. If India is the one of the most corrupt countries today and purchasable, it is because the core Hindu values of simplicity, sacrifice and abstinence have been systematically downgraded over the years. Wealth obtained by any means has become the criteria for social status.
There was a time in India when persons of learning and simplicity enjoyed the moral authority in society to make even kings bow before them. Not long ago, Mahatma Gandhi and later Jayaprakash Narayan without holding office were here exercising the same moral authority over political leaders. In a very short period, that Hindutva value has evaporated. India is fast becoming “a banana republic” in which everything, a person or policy is available to anyone for a price.
The proposal, now implemented in some states, to have reservation in government employment for Muslims and “Dalit” Christians is one such sell-out. Reservation quotas are strictly for those whom the Hindu society due to degeneration had suppressed or had isolated from the mainstream. But those who were ruling classes in our nation, such as Muslims and Christians, and that too for a total of 1000 years, cannot claim this facility. But some political parties in reckless disregard for equity and history have sold out for bloc votes the national interest by advocating for such a reservation proposal.
In such a situation the nation’s independence and sovereignty slides into danger of being subverted and then rendered impotent. This has happened before in our history, not when the nation was poor but was the richest country in the world. India then was ahead in science, mathematics, art and architecture. And yet because the moral fibre weakened, all was lost. We had to struggle hard to recover our freedom. But by the time we did, we had lost all our wealth and dropped to the bottom of the list of countries in poverty.
In this time of creeping darkness in our society, there are still venerated souls who draw crowds of people who come on their own expense to hear such evolved souls and follow them. These are our Dharmacharyas, many of whom are members of the newly formed Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha. With the RSS and VHP, this Sabha must, just as Rshi Vishwamitra picked his archers and hunters to put an end to asuras and rakshasas, pick a political instrument to cleanse the body politic of the nation.
This however cannot be done without Hindu unity in our democracy, and hence formulating a code of ethics and moral principles is essential for creating a meaningful and purposeful Hindu unity. This code and principles together constitute the fundamentals of Hindutva. The nation looks to this spiritual force today, for guidance in this hour of need. Therefore my call today is first and foremost for the unity of Hindus, a unity based on a mindset that is nurtured and fostered on the fundamentals of Hindutva. This also requires an action plan to fight and lift the siege [see my Hindus Under Siege—The Way Out, Haranand Publishers 2006, for a detailed elaboration]. Only then Hindus can meet the challenge of Christian missionaries and Islamic fundamentalists. I can do no better here than quote Swami Dayananda Sarasvati:
“Faced with militant missionaries,
Hinduism has to show that its plurality and all-encompassing acceptance
are not signs of disparateness or disunity.
For that, a collective voice is needed.”
Non-Hindus can join this Hindustani unity, but first they must agree to adhere to the minimum requirement of recognizing and accepting that their cultural legacy is Hindu, and revere their Hindu origins, that they are as equal before law as any other but no more, and that they will make sacrifices to defend their Hindu legacy just as any good Hindu would his own. In turn then, the Hindu will defend such non-Hindus as they have protected the Parsis and Jews, and take them all as part of the Hindustani parivar.
India can be only for those who swear that Hindustan is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi. Since the task to defeat the nefarious forces ranged today against Hindu society is not going to be easy, we cannot therefore trust those amongst in our midst whose commitment to the motherland is ambivalent or ad hoc, or those who feel no kinship to the Hindu past of the nation. We have partitioned a quarter of Hindustan to enable a homeland for those Muslims, who could not live with Hindus in a democratic framework of equality and fraternity. Hence only those are true children of Bharatmata today who accept that India is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi.
I have tried summarizing the above stated concept of Hindustan and the fundamentals of Hindutva in the following axioms of Hindu renaissance:
1. A Hindu, and those others who are proud of their Hindu past and origins, must know the correct history of India. That history which records that Hindus have always been, and are one; that caste is not birth-based and nor immutable. India is a continuum, Sanatana. That ancient Hindus and their descendents have always lived in this area from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, an area called ‘Akhand Hindustan’, and did not come from outside; and that there is no truth in the Aryan-Dravidian race theory. Instead, Hindus went abroad to spread learning and spiritual knowledge.
2. Hindus believe that all religions equally lead to God, but not that all religions are equal in the richness of it’s theological content. Respecting all religions, Hindus expect from others that respect is two-way. If Hindus are to defend the right of others to adhere to one’s own religion, then other religionists have to stand up for Hindus too. Thus, by this criterion, secular attitude as defined till date is a one-way obligation for Hindus, and hence Hindus must reject such a concept because of its implied appeasement. At the same time enlightened Hindus must defend and protect vigorously those non-Hindus who identify with the concept of Hindustan. That is, a nation of Hindus and those whose who accept that their ancestors are Hindus. A vibrant Bharatvarsh of course cannot be home to bigotry and obscurantism since that has never been Hindu tradition or history. But Muslims and Christians shall be part of the Hindustan parivar or family if they accept this truth and revere it.
3. Hindus must prefer to lose everything they possess rather than submit to tyranny or to terrorism. Today those in India who submit to terrorists and hijackers must be vehemently despised as anti-Hindus. They cannot be good Hindus merely because they are pious or go regularly to the temple or good Hindustanis just because they are citizens of India.
4. The Hindu’s must have a mindset to retaliate when attacked. The retaliation must be massive enough to deter future attacks. If terrorists come from training camps in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, Hindus must seek to carpet bomb those training camps, no matter the consequences. Today’s so-called self proclaimed “good” Hindus have failed to avenge or retaliate for the attack on Parliament, Akshardham Mandir, Ayodhya, and even a former Prime Minister’s [Rajiv Gandhi’s] assassination. On the other hand those who defend these assassins and praise the terrorist organization behind them are permitted to be central government Ministers today.
5. All Hindus to qualify as true Hindus must make effort to learn Sanskrit and the Devanagari script in addition to the mother tongue, and pledge that one day in the future, Sanskrit will be India’s link language since all the main Indian languages have large percentage of their vocabulary common with Sanskrit already.
These five axioms if followed will constitute the virat Hindu unity, a bonding that Hindus need to be in a position to confront the challenge that Hindu civilization is facing from Islamic terrorists and fraud Christian missionaries from abroad, who are also aided and abetted from confused Hindus within the country. Without such a virat Hindu unity and the implied mindset, we will be unable to nullify and root out the subversion and erosion that undermine today the Hindu foundation of India. This foundation is what makes India distinctive in the world, and hence we must safeguard this legacy with all the might and moral fibre that we can muster.
In this we can get great moral support from Hindus resident abroad because of their sheer commitment to the motherland. Free from economic constraints, aching for an identity, and well educated, I have seen them organize effectively to challenge the attempts to slander Hindu religious symbols and icon. Overseas Hindustanis have contributed during our Freedom Struggle, the Emergency and in enabling our acharyas to spread the message of the Hindu religion abroad. This has been done without demeaning other religions.
I urge and implore the Acharya Sabha, that since in a democracy the battle is in fighting elections, therefore to resolve to foster a Hindu consciousness that leads to a cohesive vigorous Hindu unity and mindset, so that the Hindustani voter will cast his ballot only for those candidates in an election who will be loyal to a Hindu Agenda drawn up by the Dharmacharyas. The Tirupati Declaration of July 2006 adopted by the acharyas must be electorally translated.
