I think we are in danger of dissipating our energy in endless debate without any resolution. We need to bring more order than exists.

The way I see it is that the orthadox Hindus want to rely solely on the Vedas as the source, whereas most of the nation goes by the Bhagavid Gita. The Bhagavid Gita should be the single authority for all Hindus and the Vedas relegated to the postion of the old testabment. The old testament is very important as I no doubt believe the Vedas to be too. So instead of the Brahmins fighting this, why cannot they join the rest of the Hindus in this unifying process?

Thank you for agreeing that the position of priests should be open to people who are brahmins by temperament and training and not soley by caste. Even the VHP does not practice this.

I agree that that there has been a Hindu cultural and religious ethos identified with the land mass of India. Equally, the betrayel of Bharat by Hindu leaders is an unescapble fact of today. I have every right to be agrieved by the brahmins as a caste who in the last election voted to return the Congress Pary to power. Lets not quible about words, they may have ceased to be brahmins or are now mere Hindus because their conduct is unbecoming of them. Neither do I want to spare the rest of the Hindus who did likewise. There is no doubt that the BJP has serious faults as indeed their associated organisations but everyone voting with their feets has been the greatest of Hindu failings.

It was right to complain about the designs and and wrongs of the British and their Christians when they were ruling but in this election, India reinstated them no less in the person of Sonia Gandhi and her followers. It is a fatal mistake to ignore the reasons why Hindus did this and not to escape from it as if it is some sort of British conspiracy. The British did indeed make an assault on Hindu practices and customs such as sutee and they were bound to do so as rulers and how else were they to do it than by making comparison of their own.

What Ram Mohan Roy did was to incorporate Christian rationalism into Hinduism because Hinduism to this day is unable to bring rationale discourse into how it should be governed. I am not persuaded that that made him crypto Christian. I think the problem started when Ramakrishna and others went beyond stating the glaringly obvious that religions have some commonality to the conclusion that they are different ways to reach the same God.

The problem for most Hindus is prayer’s are not offered to a God but to any one of the many deities, call them murthy idols if you will. The diversity of practices might seemingly unite the prayer with the absolute, but as is evident, the nation needs to sing from a single hymn sheet. That is impossible if there is no end to debate and a settlement of doctrines. We need to as Hindu community do somethings together regularly and systematically without the intrusion of others on our space. That is by the adoption of the Bhagavid Gita as the common prayer book of all Hindus.

Part of the Neo-Hindu identity is the desire to mold Hinduism into categories that are acceptable to the West. This has actually been a long process, dating back to the Arya Samaj of Swami Dayananda, who thought that Hinduism should be the strictly the Vedic religion of fire sacrifices and not the murthy worshipping bhakthi movement of later years. Here too, you find an individual who has internalized the concept that murthy (idol) worship is wrong. The funniest thing is that no Hindu actually worships the idol as the limited stone sculpture that it is–it is a symbol of something greater –yet most Neo Hindus will call their murthis idols, demeaning their own tradition.

The twin charges that there was never a Hindu nation and that Hindu kings of the past were never fighting for the Hindu nation, usually levelled by Neo Hindus is again a product of ignorance. A more careful reading both the Ramayana and Mahabharata will reveal that though there were many princely states, these all understood the common dharma that united them, as well as a common beliefs. That is why both Rama and Ravana offer prayers to the same Lord Shiva and why both these epics were celebrated all over India in all the regional languages and cultures. It is also the reason why Adi Shankara was able to go from his home state in Kerala all the way to Kashmir and set up his Mathas.

The charge that Hindu Kings were not fighting for the Hindu dharma and it was merely the desire to protect their kingdom is again a Neo Hindu reading of history. We are constantly told by them that all the Mughal rulers were also Indian and should be thought of as such and not as outsiders. Actually, the Mughals, and other Islamic invaders and rulers considered themselves as outsiders, and of a superior culture than the Hindus. They never thought of the locals as their own people. Hence, the desire to constantly subjugate them by destroying their places of worship etc. So present day Hindus considering these rulers as outsiders is the correct reading of history. Shivaji also knew this–hence fighting the outsiders to protect ones nation (state)a is in fact fighting for dharma.

“Brahmins…acting to undermine the Hindus of India” Before levelling such a charge you better have some proof. In fact, much of the impetus to preserve the traditional Hinduism seems to be from the Brahmin community, whether it is the desire to preserve the ancient texts on palm leaves which are now being put online, or the number of people from the Brahmin commmunity who serve as gurus, tranmitting the teachings of the scriptures so that it is available to the masses. Even the Rama Sethu was stalled because a “Brahmin” in the form of Subramaniam Swamy decided to file a court case.

Look into every pro-Hindu movement or organization and I bet you’ll find a person of the brahmin community.

There is an important message here–the rest of Hindu community cannot just exclude the Brahmins as some villainous creature, and then expect them to actually do something for Hinduism.

Brahmins invariably face bad PR no matter what they do: if they serve to preserve the Hindu dharma and samaj they are accused of wanting to hold onto the inequalities of the past; and if they don’t do anything, they are accused of betraying the Hindu society.