" We are all Hindus now", was the headline of a column by Lisa Miller in Newsweek (Aug 31,2009) wherein she wrote, " we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity." She mentions " Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names" from Rig Veda and adds " According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that 'many religions can lead to eternal life' including 37 percent of evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone."
"In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So there is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu : 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 208 Harris poll…More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975."
It is a case of Hindu view of life spreading without any missionaries. It is the power of ideas.
"It is already becoming clearer," wrote Arnold Toynbee, the great British philosopher of history, a few decades ago, "that a chapter which has a western beginning will have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in the history the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way." He, of course, is referring to Hindu acceptance, not just tolerance, of different ways worship. If the world accepts it, there will be no religious wars, nor any ideological wars, and peace would reign in the world.
Hindu view of life.
Hindu view of life – ideas, ideals, concepts – have fascinated and influenced some of most creative minds in the West. These thoughts are in the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharat and many other scriptures and sacred books. Some of them are :
'Lead us from darkness to Light' ( tamaso ma jyotirgamaya ) is a well-known invocation from the Upanishad. Hindus are always in search of Truth. As Dr.S.Radhakrishnan, former Indian President and a great interpreter of Hinduism, says in his book, Hindu View of Life, "Hinduism is a movement, not a position; a process, not a result; a growing tradition, not a fixed revelation."
Swami Vivekananda always reminded us that we (human beings) are amritatsya putraha (children of immortality) which means man is a spark of the Divine flame. Man has the Divine touch and has infinite potential. Nothing is impossible for him.
Our sages proclaimed long ago vasudaiva kutumbakam ( world is a family) which means brotherhood of mankind. This is the basis of a humanistic society. Hindus envisaged an inclusive world and this is why Hindus pray, " sarve jana sukhino bhavanto" ( pray for the welfare of all).
Then there is the concept of ahimsa paramo dharma ( non-violence) which is a part of reverence for life, not merely to human beings but to all animate and inanimate beings as well. The modern ecology has its beginning in this concept.
Bhagwad Gita is a guide to live a life of fulfillment. It exhorts human beings to do their duty ( karma). It also asks them to do duty without expecting reward ( nishkama karma). Doing the right thing (duty) is a reward by itself. Man's destiny is his own hands ( udda ret atmanatam ). It is a compendium of wisdom for a life of achievement and contentment.
The Hindu sages formulated a scheme for a full life for man in the form of four purushatras ( aims of life) - Dharma (to do what is right), artha ( material life), kama ( desire), moksha ( liberation from the cycle of birth and death). One has to achieve success in material life and fulfill his desires based on Dharma without forgetting the ultimate aim of moksha.
These and other thoughts were the basis of the Hindu civilization which have been reflected and expressed in art and architecture (which we can see even today in the magnificent temples, palaces and forts), in poetry and literature ( in Sanskrit and other Indian languages), Ayurveda ( a holistic view of health, not merely dealing with ill-health), science ( concept of zero and numbers, geometry, algebra, astronomy). A.L.Basham's Wonder That Was India gives a detailed account of these accomplishments. Many thinkers and writers of the Western world have paid high tribute to Hindu way of life and Hindu civilization.
" If I were asked," Max Muller, the famous Indologist, wrote, " under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of the choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I would point to India."
"India was the motherland," American Historian Will Durant, said, "of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity... of self-government and democracy. Mother India is the mother of us all."
Hindu thoughts during the freedom struggle.
Indian Renaissance started in the 19th century when Christian missionaries questioned basis of Hindu culture and civilization. They questioned idol worship. Hindus said that God has aakar ( God with form) and nirakar ( God without form) just like water in a glass and in an ocean. Brahmo Samaj of Raja Rammoan Roy and Arya Samaj of Swami Dayanand Saraswati were in the forefront of this response. Then we had Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa who could realize God of every faith and Swami Vivekananda who proclaimed that the service to the poor is the service to God (draridra narayan). They were followed by Sri Aurobindo and Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore with their universal religion and universal brotherhood.
Later, Bakimchandra Chnadra Chatterjee gave an inspiring song for the freedom struggle, Vande Mataram ( Salute to Motherland) which became a rallying cry for agitation, even armed agitation, against the British rule. Bal Gangadhar Tilak ( 'Swaraj is my birthright') along with Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai (Lal,Bal,Pal) became the torch-bearers of this movement.
Mahatma Gandhi, awakened people to struggle peacefully for swaraj with his 'Ram-dhun', invoking Ram-rajjya, selfless service ( nishkama karma) inspired by Bhagawad Gita. He was supported by a galaxy of leaders from all over India such as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabha Bhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C.Rajagopalachari, Subrahmanya Bharati and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. However, Swatantraya Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Shahid Bhgat Singh and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose advocated armed struggle for freedom. Maulana Azad emphasized the fact that Hindus are not kafirs (non-believers) but of 'the book.' Veer Savarkar propounded an inclusive Hindutva.
Hindu thoughts after independence.
Indian constitution is a blend of ancient wisdom of the Hindus ('man is a flame of the Divine') and modern ethos of equality and the rights of man (liberty, equality and fraternity) made famous by the French Revolution, and is the result of European Enlightenment. Freedom of thought (Vedas said ' Let noble thoughts come from everywhere'),diversity and pluralism are part of Hindu ethos. Reforms of society and renewal of faith are integral part of Hindu view of life. This is evident from the flowering of faiths like Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and many others in India.
The founding fathers of the Constitution had a vision of India which can be emulated by the world – casteless and creedless society of equals in freedom. They provided constitutional guarantees for the religious minorities in the Constitution to re-assure about their future in an independent India. Reservations were constitutionally guaranteed to the members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the atrocities and neglect of these sections of our people for centuries. Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel re-constructed Somnath Temple to re-assure Hindus that swaraj means liberation from earlier atrocities heaped upon them in spite of some reservations expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru. Similar effort in Ayodhya is bogged down in party and communal politics.
Liberty, equality and fraternity are the key-notes of the Indian Constitution. However, the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself faltered when he said that majority communalism is worse than the minority communalism and thereby stocking minority communalism. He proposed Hindu civil code rather than a uniform civil code. He also gave a special dispensation for the state of Jammu & Kashmir just because it had a Muslim majority. These policies widened the gap between the communities instead of bringing them together.
Nehru did not believe in religious rituals though he did appreciate the human values which religions preached. He talked about 'scientific temper' but he failed to appreciate the scientific basis of Hindu faith – dharma ( righteousness) and karma ( cause and effect). He failed to highlight why India took to democratic system in spite of a huge illiterate population while all our surrounding counties became autocratic. He did not change the educational system and syllabus introduced during the British rule which did not provide Indian children with a glimpse of Indian heritage in art, architecture, literature, Indian religion & philosophy and science.
Today Indian children do not know anything about India and most of them believe all knowledge came from the West. This distorted the vision of Indians after Independence and they continue to suffer from an inferiority complex. People with this complex cannot achieve great things. Indians continue to copy every thing from the West. One cannot think of anything that India has contributed to the world after Independence.
Indians would appreciate things Indian only after its approval by the West. Indian music, especially Sitar and the Indian dress, and yoga (transcendental meditation) became "in" things after Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr) learnt them from the Indian masters – Pandit Ravi Shnakar and Maharshi Mahesh Yogi.
Gurcharan Das, a corporate leader and a well-known author, recently said that he had to go to the University of Chicago to refer to the Mahabharaata in the original Sanscrit edition and its English translations to write his book, The Difficulty of Being Good, On the Subtle Art of Dharma, ( as revealed in the Mahabharaata) as these are not available in India. He also mentions that he had read Greek classics during his student days but not Indian classics. He then asks if Italian children can read Dante's Divine Comedy in school, English children can read Milton and Greek children can read the Iliad, why should "secularist" Indians be ambivalent about the Mahabharata ? He quotes V.S.Sukhthankar who said that "The Mahabharata is the content of our collective unconscious…it is our past which has prolonged into the present. We are It." And he adds, the Indian children know their heritage through the comic books, Amar Chitra Katha, conceived and edited by Ananth Pai and published by India Book House. Before that Late K.M..Munshi, a foremost freedom fighter, writer and one of the architects of our Constitution, had started his famous institution, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan which has published a number of books on Indian heritage.
Another news item which appeared in India Abroad (New York, April 30,2010) is also revealing. Rohan Murthy, son of Narayan Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys, donated $5.2 million (about Rs.20 crore) to Harvard University Press to make Indian classical heritage accessible to the world. Rohan was inspired to do this after reading the book, Closing of the Western Mind : The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman. He says, " In India we thought the Western mind was always open," He later enrolled in philosophy classes under Harvard philosophy Professor Parimal Patil, who gave up medical studies half-way to learn philosophy. "I was fascinated in particular by the debate by Hindu and Buddhist philosophers", says Rohan. He discovered Indian heritage in USA.
If Indians today are not aware of Indian epics and Indian heritage, one has to point to the distorted secularism we have been practicing since Independence. When Indians discover their heritage of knowledge, it could trigger a knowledge revolution and renew the creativity of our people.
Our politicians, without vision and attuned only to winning elections, not likely to bring about changes in our educational system and we have to use our own resources bring about a Renaissance in our country. One our big source strength is in our temples which our ancestors have left us as their legacy. Temples which are centres of worship could be transformed into centres of culture and knowledge.
Temples as centres of culture & knowledge.
Temples have been the centres of culture for centuries and they have withstood the ravages of time and invasions. Over a period of time they have become just the centres of devotion. They should be the centres of Hindu Thoughts and Indian Renaissance.
The people who worship should know the thoughts and ideas behind the worship.Temples should be the repositories of our culture – classical music, classical dance, Vedas and Upanishads, our epics and puranas, and the ideals which animate them. Temples should be centres of debate and discussions on Hindu ideals and Hindu beliefs.
Every believing Hindu including the so-called untouchables should be allowed to pray to God. The untouchability is an aberration and is opposed to the ideas and ideals of Hinduism. "Some of the great rsis worshipped by the Brahmins are half-caste and hybrids. Vasistha was born of a prostitute, Vyasa of a fisher-woman, Parasara of a Candala girl.Conduct counts and not birth", writes Dr.S.Radhakrishnan
Temple administration has now passed on to the politicians. It all started with the British when they took over the properties of Puri Jagnnatha temple in 1878. After Independence, through Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1951, many temples all over India are being managed by the state governments. It is truly the most 'unsecular' act of the secular government. It is an infringement of the Articles 25, 26 and 27 of our Constitution which guarantee freedom of religion. When the government takes over the administration of the temple trust it is against the Article 26 which proclaims' Freedom to manage religious affairs".
It is a sad that Sri Ramakrishna Ashram, Sri Aurobindo Society amd Sri Ramansharm had to escape the above act by declaring that they are not Hindu. One wishes they had challenged the act itself as an encroachment on the religious freedom.
Some years ago the administration of the famous Sri Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Mumbai was taken over by the Maharashtra government. The politicians of the state used the donations made to the deity for their own institutions and the High Court had to intervene and formulate guidelines for the utilization of the temple funds. In Kerala, temples are being managed, rather mis-managed, by the Marxists who believe religion is the opium of the people and in Tamil Nadu, it is the DMK, which claims to be atheist. And in Karnataka, temple funds are used to repair churches and mosques. Thousands of acre land belonging to temples have been encroached upon in Andhra Pradesh. It is alleged that the Venkateshwara University funded by Sri Tirumala Tirupati Temple Trust is dominated by Christians.
Temples of India should be liberated from the clutches of politicians and the 'secular' government. The temples belong to the devotees of the deity. The temples should be administered by a committee elected by devotees registered in the temple on the lines of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhaka Committee (SGPC).
The time has come for Hindus to challenge various acts which allow the state governments to take over the administration of the temples in the Supreme Court. A signature campaign should be initiated if the acts were upheld by the Supreme Court. It should be made an election issue. The issue is clear: state has no right to abridge religious freedom of Hindus. The funds of temples should be used for the maintenance of temples, welfare of the devotees, dissemination of Hindu faith among he believers and those who want to understand Hindu faith. The rich temples should be encouraged to help in the maintenance of temples in dis-repair, and to educate less fortunate brethren of the country.
Enlightenment of Western civilization started with renaissance and reformation which became possible after Europe discovered their ancient Greek heritage after a dark age. India too should re-discover its heritage and continue our renaissance and reformation halted after Independence due to political myopia. It is a challenge and an opportunity to our youth and intellectuals.
July 26,2010.
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