The ridiculous extremes of pseudo-secularism

Intresting article by by Kalyan Viswanathan, 2/18/2008

http://pseudosecularism.blogspot.com/2008/04/india-and-her-problem-of-secularism.html

…So, we appeal to our secular brothers and sisters – Please think first; study your own scripture first; then study the other’s scripture; then study the history of all the religions; See the correlations and correspondences for yourself. Then let us see if you continue to be secular. You may discover that it is only in the comforting cocoons of ignorance, illiteracy and mindlessness that secularism can flourish. You may find that Secularism cannot stand even the most rudimentary intellectual scrutiny. But please do not defend your Secular value system on the foundation of your unwillingness to study these subjects; Please do not say – I won’t read my scripture; I don’t have time; I won’t read history; I don’t have time for that; I will not attempt to read the scriptures of other religions; I have even less time for that; But I know I am a secular Hindu; and I know I am right and all the rest of you are communal.

…India’s civilizational character, is patently and dominantly Hindu. Whether we call this Hinduism, or call this Sanatana Dharma, or Arya Dharma or the Indic Civilization, or Hindutva, it does not really matter. These days, the word Hindu has become too politically charged with meaning – One can only say that India is not predominantly Hindu by mis-representing what Hinduism is fundamentally; by narrowing down what is meant by the term Hinduism into a creed or religion comparable to Islam and Christianity; There have been endless argument around this

…It is common to hear people say “Hinduism is not a religion – It is a way of life”; Yet even that is inaccurate. Perhaps it would have been better to say “Hinduism is not just a religion – It is much more than that”. Even the best minds have struggled with this question “What is Hinduism ?”. In his “Discovery of India” Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru grapples with this question. “Hinduism, as a faith is vague, amorphous, many sided, all things to all men. It is hardly possible to define it, or indeed to say definitely whether it is a religion or not, in the usual sense of the word. In its present form, and even in the past, it embraces many beliefs and practices from the highest to the lowest, often opposed to or contradicting each other. Its essential spirit seems to be to live and let live”.

And yet we have to recognize right at the very beginning of his thesis, he commits an error – for that Hinduism is not just a faith; It accommodates those who believe and those who do not; and those who believe differently;

…Hinduism is much more like a family of Sampradayas, a family of traditions, and in this family, Buddhism, Sikhism is all “sister” and “daughter” traditions. The daughter may say I have no relationship with my mother – but the mother cannot ever say “she is not my daughter”.

…If independent India had elected to declare itself a Hindu country, (albeit with a few minorities) would it have become suddenly less tolerant of its minorities? When it comes to religious tolerance and acceptance, when it comes to accepting and acknowledging a multitude of paths and means to the one same truth, the record of Hinduism is infinitely superior to other religions especially those that came from the Middle east. Could it be argued, that a Hindu India would have become less tolerant, and thereby endangered its minorities? Yet this was the very “fear” that was at the source of the partition of India into Pakistan and later Bangladesh. One can understand the minorities being thus “afraid” of their future – but the majority Hindus succumbing to that fear, only betrays a poor understanding of Hinduism altogether. Hindu history has been one of being conquered, and brutalized – Never have Hindus brutalized other people, in the name of their religion. Never have Hindus claimed some special status for themselves, simply for being Hindu. And yet we did not assert that truth.

In declaring ourselves a Secular State, we necessarily had to diminish Hinduism, to reduce it to the same status of the other religions of the world. In saying we look upon all religions equally, we necessarily had to betray the religion of India – We necessarily had to take the view that it mattered little to us that the Vedas and Upanisads originated in India; but the Bible and Koran originated outside India.

In embracing this European concept of Secularism, we had to assert that we as a state, owed no special responsibility to the entire body of the creative output of our native civilization – we had to reject Sanskrit, the Bhagvad Gita, Upanisads, Yoga, and all of the different Sampradayas of our tradition. We had to make a distinction between the sacred and the secular, when no such exists in our scripture, where all things animate and inanimate are considered equally a manifestation of the divine.

Where ancient India saw the divine in all things; modern India had to reject that idea completely, and diminish all thought pertaining to the divine into the narrow realm of religion. We had to say that the future generations of our children will grow up not even having a basic grasp of their Hindu Dharma; For that knowledge they will have to go elsewhere outside the realm of their secular minded schools. Is this not a colossal betrayal of our own past? In our hurry to modernize, and integrate with the world, we have committed a grievous injury to our society.

This is what rankles most about India”s “Secularism” – It has no respect for itself; for its own past; it has no capacity for self-reference. Everything it stands for is borrowed from elsewhere, from Europe, from Karl Marx, from the west – from sand castles that cannot even last a couple of centuries.

Jawaharlal Nehru continues in his Discovery of India – “It is therefore incorrect and undesirable to use “Hindu” or “Hinduism” for Indian Culture”. And that was his great discovery! That there is an India distinct from its Hindu past! That India”s legendary tolerance and acceptance of others, is somehow not Hindu. That India”s capacity to assimilate and synthesize many diverse cultures and traditions, even attempt such a synthesis with inassimilable religions foreign to it is somehow not Hindu.

Thus, the modern secular state of India began with an error, a lack of understanding, and ended with a betrayal. For those who truly understand the nature of Hinduism, its Upanisads, its Bhagvad Gita and Vedanta, its vast philosophic framework, its capacity to synthesize different paths and sampradayas into a harmonious whole, its emphasis on the life of the spirit, and its legendary pluralistic view of this world – this error remains a historic betrayal that needs to be addressed.

For we have in our midst generations of Hindus growing up, into a new ethos of capitalism, consumerism, and Bollywoodism – They have not even the basic knowledge of their extra-ordinary Dharma.

Hindus can be blamed for being too divided; too fragile; too soft; too gullible; too pacific and too fatalistic – but to say that India is not Hindu, is to betray even a basic understanding of Hinduism or of India”s past.

India needs to be Rediscovered, by Hindus, on their own terms; for their own people – not as the Chinese saw us, or the Islamic invaders and scholars saw us; or the British imperialists saw us, or even the alienated westernized Indians. This is the unfinished work of our time – India must reclaim its Hinduness fully even as we modernize; for the full measure of what India may contribute to the world at large, does not lie in our secular institutions, nor our industries, nor our new found prosperity or in our Information Technology accomplishments, nor in Bollywood – The full measure of what India has to contribute to the world cannot be measured in economic terms at all – For that we will have to return to our core, to our spirituality, to our scriptures, to our native “Shakti”.

Hindus (including Jains and Budhists) who are tired of pseudo-secular governments and media are invited to join Swabhimaan – a movement launched to unite Hindus of India and protect their interests. For more details please visit
http://swabhimaan2008.blogspot.com/2008/11/om-ganseshay-namah-om-shivay-om-durgay.html

STRENGTHEN US WITH YOUR PARTICIPATION

http://narendramodi.in/news

Have a look at Sanskrit version of N. Modi’s website. It is in four languages now. English, Hindi, Gujarati and Sanskrit.

Hope I have placed the link at right category.

Jai Hind!

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“I wonder, what motivates the pseudo-secularists? “
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1. Shame at the “evils” of Hinduism (caste system, idol worship) – which of course, stems from their own ignorance of Hinduism, or by looking at Hinduism through a western prism.

2. Coconut-like behavior – trying to appear more “liberal” than their liberal friends in the west where they live, by becoming anti-religion (but never anti-Islam).

3. Brought up in an environment where they actually indulged in blind faith as a kid, and then rebelling against their childhood “stupidity” after having certain epiphanies as adults, by pouring their vitriol on everything related to Hinduism.

4. Scant knowledge of other faiths (Abrahamic) and believing that all religions are the same (equally bad).

5. Equating RSS/Bajrang Dal et al with Hinduism.

6. Reading Dawkins et al and blindly superimposing those ideas on to India/Hinduism without any meaningful analysis and without checking the validity of those ideas.

7. Swallowing what media feed them without any critical analysis.