India is the land where Sanatana Dharma originated from primordial times and its people practiced Dharmic religions viz. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and in recent times Sikhism. Since the forced entry of Islam at the beginning of the middle ages, there is now a large population of Muslims also in India. The Islamic invaders looted the wealth of India and pierced its cultural soul. After the arrival of St. Thomas and other Christian missionaries, Christianity has also a presence here. Apart from political and economic subjugation, one of the major aims of British colonial rulers was the conversion of Indians into Christianity. As was the case during the Islamic rule, the British too compelled Indians to learn their language and culture. They achieved this aim by enforcing their own model of education, administrative as well as the judicial system, replacing the age-old native social institutions, an important one of which was the Gurukula system of education. The British thus succeeded to tear away the Indian social system. But there were also some positive changes in the Indian society by the British rule. After the golden period of Buddhist India, there was a general degeneration in all fields - science, technology, art, and culture and India had relapsed into a primitive superstitious society. Modernity came to India through the British. Caste laws and other harmful customs and traditions such as Sati lost their legal sanction.
The Muslims of India opted for a theocratic nation (Pakistan) exclusively for Muslims, rejecting democracy, after gaining independence from the British. A great population of Muslims went to Pakistan. However, a small population of Muslims wanted to remain in India. Their population steadily increased under the favorable constitution of India which promotes the interests of minorities. India is a democratic state which guarantees equal rights for all religions. This is in line with the vision of Indian rishis who treated all religions with sympathy and granted freedom of thought as well as the right to choose their own path for salvation. However, while enjoying special privileges for themselves in the name of minorities using the constitutional provisions, the minorities, especially Muslim religious leaders oppose the rituals and customs of Hindus and their right to identify their motherland with Hinduism.
By their opposition to a Uniform Civil Code, Triple Talaq, singing of Vande Mataram, Cow Slaughter, the practice of Yoga (now the protest against CAA, NRC), etc. the Muslim leadership has sent the message that they cannot tolerate any un-Islamic practices and can go by only sharia, even though it violates the rights and freedom of Hindus. It means that India has to remain without a soul, cut off from its spiritual and cultural roots in the name of a secular democratic constitution. There are several predominantly Christian democratic nations in other parts of the world, in Europe and America. They never suppress Christian values and aspirations. They take pride that the provision of democratic-secular rule springs from Christian values. The values of people spring from their spiritual and cultural world views. Can it be otherwise in the case of Hindus? The Muslim religious leaders want to take advantage of the liberal secular democratic rule but refuse to respect the spiritual and cultural world views of Indian religions.
It creates a perpetual fear among Hindus that once the Muslims become the majority in any part of India, they would no longer opt for democracy but will force others to accept Islamic laws under sharia. Already, a struggle is on in Kashmir for cessation driven by strong Islamic fundamentalism. In the background of a rising Muslim population in India, many Muslim leaders have begun to openly challenge the majority community on many sensitive issues. Their confrontational attitude has fueled the growth of an equally belligerent form of Hindutva. Hindus take it as a battle for religious sovereignty in their motherland and the right to preserve their age-old culture and spiritual tradition, whether good or bad, novel or outdated in others’ views.
It is an unfortunate instance of a negative and unhealthy interpretation of secularism. A nation and its people have the right to identify their motherland with the culture and religion of their own. Only that gives them a national identity and the freedom to express, nurture and fulfill their spiritual and cultural aspirations. Only that gives a nation the soul-strength to forge ahead. The concept of secular democracy can only help to create soulless societies and soulless people detached from its culture and worldview. The spiritual and cultural edifice of India is built upon the vision of great rishis and Mahatmas like Sri Krishna, Sri Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, and innumerable other sages. India cannot advance in the world forsaking its own identity.
All religions should be able to coexist peacefully in India. For thousands of years, India has been the motherland of all isms and thoughts, where one can freely go on with their beliefs and cultural practices. However, the trouble started with the arrival of Islam and Christianity. Both these religions claim that theirs is the only path that can save mankind. Therefore, they constantly try to impose their worldviews on other people and try to convert them by choice or force. Millions of people were butchered and continue to be butchered because of this bigoted view of religion. Despite several centuries of cruel massacre and persecution of millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, Islam could not triumph over the dharmic religions of India. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism still flourish in India as before, which shows the strength, resilience, and relevance of these ancient spiritual paths for God-realization. They would continue to exist so long as the creation exists because they provide rational answers to the mysteries of life and death with incomparable depth and insight.
However, over the long ages Hinduism has worn out and reform is essential if Hinduism is to survive. Many distortions have taken place in the original concept of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma. These distortions make Hinduism easy prey for criticism and ridicule by others. Although Hindus constitute eighty percent of the population, their voices are not heard. It is difficult for them to have a common goal because they are divided by sects, castes, regions, and language identities. Their object of worship also differs from caste groups to caste groups. Even the worship of demonic spirits (matan, maruta, mantramuti, yakshi, chathan, etc.) and associated rituals and festivals are celebrated with pomp and show. The Hinduism practiced by the Hindu masses is mainly based on the mythical stories in the Puranas. Some of these myths have no scriptural sanctity. Such distortions generate aversion among the believers of one God, inside Hinduism and outside of it.
Hinduism, therefore, should be reinterpreted because no archaic spiritual culture can reinvigorate the people in this new era of Kali. Unfortunately, the Hindutva leadership has accepted the flawed foundation of Hinduism for the revival of Hinduism. This would not have happened had they started from the reformatory path initiated by the great mahatmas beginning from Sri Krishna, Sri Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Maharshi Dayanand, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Narayana Guru, Chattambi Swamikal, and several others who stressed the belief in One God and One People concept of rishis. The heart of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma is to be found in the Vedas and Upanishads, which have upheld monotheism, the worshiping of Supreme Brahman, the One God. The Hindus in general glue to the poetical tales in the Puranas depicting the glory and valor of several gods and kings. The rishis were the most rational thinkers. They believed only in the Supreme Brahman, the One God without a Second.
One can find the heart of Hinduism in the following verses of Rig Veda:
‘Who knows the secret?
Who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The gods themselves came later into being –
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
Then,
“He who gives breath,
He who gives strength;
Who commands all the bright gods revere,
Whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death; -
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?...
He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm-
He through whom the heaven was stabilized,
Nay the highest heaven –
He who measured out space in the sky? –
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
He who by His might looked even over the waters,
Which held power and generated the sacrificial fire,
He who alone is God above all gods;
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
(Rig Veda, X.129, translated by Max Muller)
