Continued from Kali Yuga or The Age of Confusion – Part 1 

Secularism and Tolerance

The “synthesizers,” as the remarkable thinker Ram Swarup * calls them, or adepts of all-out sameness—“God is the same, all religions are the same,” etc.—are in love with big words. They bring in another Western concept, that of “secularism,” and tell us that it means “equal respect for all religions.” This too we are supposed to accept unquestioningly, like a sort of magic wand that is going to solve all our religious and social problems. But what really is secularism, in theory and practice?

I have noticed that the noisiest proponents of secularism in India are always careful not to evoke its historical origin. Secularism was born to challenge theocracy in the Christian and Islamic worlds. In medieval Europe, political power was in almost every country held or at least controlled by one Church or another. It took nearly two centuries, the eighteenth and nineteenth, to curtail that power and establish a complete separation between Church and State—which is what secularism has meant in the West, as any good dictionary will tell us.[1] In France, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church was virtually all-powerful until the French Revolution, and only a century later did it finally lose its control over education. Secularism meant keeping the Church away from political power and from education, it meant a polity free from Christian affiliation. Likewise, when Mustapha Kemal threw out the Sultan in Turkey and established a “secular republic” in 1923, it was because he had abolished the office of the Caliph of the Islamic world; “secularism” to him meant keeping Islam away from political power.

This notion of secularism has no application in India, where theocracy never existed; how could it, in the absence of an organized Church or clergy? Even so conformist a historian as Vincent Smith noted that:

“Hindooism has never produced an exclusive, dominant, orthodox sect, with a formula of faith to be professed or rejected under pain of damnation.” [2]

Political rule was the business of the Kshatriya, not of the priestly class, and although kings often took the advice of a sage or a guru, it was usually in matters of governance. The very notion of a “State religion” is entirely alien to India. We almost never hear of a Vaishnavite or a Saivite raja imposing his creed on his population in the way Catholic or Protestant kings kept doing, and wars between neighbouring kingdoms were never caused by clashes of belief or cult. Quite the contrary, rajas often prided themselves on protecting all sects without partiality. Indians were a practical people, and they knew that political rule calls for expertise—hence the numerous treatises on the art of governance which Sanskrit literature has preserved for us (and from which our modern-day rulers could learn a thing or two if they were at all interested in the welfare of the people).

Moreover, the Indian genius always endeavoured to spiritualize all aspects of life, including the social and political. If spirituality was of any practical value, why should it be kept out of governance? Sri Aurobindo reflects that spirit when he states,

“There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life….”[3]

In such a context, why did we have to hear at all of secularism in India? And why do its loudest champions—apart from opportunistic and largely brainless politicians—happen to belong to the very religions against which Europe had to erect the defence of secularism? Why are self-appointed leaders of Christian and Muslim Indians lecturing Hindus about the virtues of secularism, when their own religions were always dead against it (and would still be, given a chance)? Just the other day, a Sikh leader from Amritsar followed suit, asserting that Sikhism is a “secular religion.” Such thoughtless hurling about of words is the bane of modern India. Not that anyone pays much attention anyway, but I feel sorry that we find so few Indian intellectuals to point out the extreme absurdity of the whole thing—they are probably put off by the wall of accusation of “Hindu fundamentalist” that rises before anyone deviating from the politically correct line. And yet, if secularism means, as it does, the separation of religion and State, why is it that the Indian government controls most Hindu temples while never touching churches and mosques, or can take over Hindu schools while Christian and Islamic schools are free to proliferate? Why is nothing in the shape of Indian culture taught to children born in this land? Why is a text like the Gita, universally praised as the best guide of ethics, kept away from the sight of Indian schoolchildren? Perhaps our secularists would like to enlighten us on these questions?

Another big word the champions of secularism and “minorityism”—for in the end, the two amount to the same thing—never tire of using is that of “tolerance.” A great virtue indeed, one that Christianity and Islam scrupulously steered clear of throughout their history, but which was always so natural in India that there was not even a word for it. What they really mean is that they should have full freedom to prey upon the Hindu masses, with limitless foreign funds to assist them. The harm and disruption they inflict on India’s social fabric is the least of their concern ; tribes which had lived in relative peace and harmony for centuries suddenly find themselves divided into two opposite camps; we have seen in recent years the tensions among the Santhal and Dangs tribes of Orissa and Gujarat, and I could give examples of cultural alienation among tribes of the small Nilgiris district where I live, which has, I am told, over 350 churches, ninety Bible colleges and 300 full-time and well-paid missionaries. More than forty years ago, the famous Niyogi Committee Report [4] provided a massive documented study of such practices, which should be prescribed reading for all those interested in the subject of religious freedom.

The Hindu certainly needs no lesson in tolerance, especially from such ill-qualified zealots. He is always ready to tolerate and will never object to any Christian or Muslim practising his faith. But true tolerance can only be between mutually respectful faiths or societies or nations.

“How is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is ‘I will not tolerate you’?” [5]

asked Sri Aurobindo. That is why Hindus are growing increasingly restless at devious practises that target the most vulnerable among them with a well-oiled propaganda machine and the lure of monetary or other gain. The growth in tension is palpable year after year, and if we have not had any large-scale conflict as yet (on the level of what we see in Ireland or Indonesia, for instance), it is again thanks to the ever-patient nature of the Hindu. But Christian leaders do not realize that they are aggravating matters by raising the bogey of a “Hindu persecution of Indian minorities” for consumption by the so-called secular press in India and abroad, making up incidents when possible,[6] and hastening to accuse Hindus even when it is plain that others are involved.[7] Once again, note how followers of the two most brutal religions in world history, which stamped out all “Pagans” and minorities wherever and whenever they could, try to paint Hindus with the black brush of their very own past! Strange that we never hear them utter one word of protest against the horrific treatment of Hindu minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, or also in Kashmir.

The net result in the Indian context is that, helped by sections of the English-language media, those two Semitic religions have managed to project themselves as tolerant, secular, equalitarian, progressive—an image almost perfectly opposite to what they were in their countries of origin at the peak of their strength. On the other hand, Hinduism is portrayed as retrograde, medieval, superstitious, increasingly intolerant. Oxymorons such as “Hindu fundamentalism” or even “Hindu fanaticism” are used day in and day out, forgetting that Hinduism has no identifiable “fundamentals,” no self-declared mission to convert anyone, no wish even to impose itself on anyone, and cannot therefore give rise to any fanaticism of the Christian or Islamic kind. Of course, Hinduism is also equated to the caste system—as though it were nothing else—whose abuses are blown out of proportion. The far worse abuses perpetrated in the names of Jesus or Mahomet are glossed over, as is the fact that caste discrimination very much persists unchanged among converts to Christianity and Islam.

Such distortions have been steadily gaining ground in recent years; they are “politically correct,” in modern parlance, but essentially untrue. They will throw in other catchwords of the day for good measure, such as the imposing “human rights” (which, again, Semitic religions never advocated or practised). It is common to see some of our “secular” politicians share a dais with an equally “secular” bishop or imam, while they would shudder to be seen with anyone in a Hindu garb. The Pope’s brazen call to “a great harvest of faith from Asia,” made during a visit to India, is a clear sign that the Hindus are simply not expected to protest—or if anyone does, his voice is drowned in the “secular” din. Money pours in from America and Europe to finance extensive missionary plans flaunted on the Internet, to build more churches and Bible colleges, or from Arab countries to build more mosques, madrasas and Koranic institutes.

More than ninety years ago, the famous art critic Ananda K. Coomaraswamy gave this word of warning with reference to the methods of Christian missionaries in India:

“All that money, social influence, educational bribery and misrepresentation can effect, is treated as legitimate…. But even Hindu tolerance may some day be overstrained. If it be intolerance to force one’s way into the house of another, it by no means necessarily follows that it would be intolerance on the owner’s part to drive out the intruder.” [8]

India’s Heritage in Question

The intellectual climate in India is so perverted that it would be tempting to go on and expose the workings of the perversion in exhaustive detail. Others have done it better than I could.[9] I will give just one rather minor topical example, some time back, Tamil Nadu’s education minister, a proud “Dravidian” (whatever the word means), declared that Sanskrit was an “artificial language born in an old ware shop” and clearly inferior to Tamil; he added (probably referring to himself), “No fool will believe that Tamil was born only after the birth of Sanskrit.”[10] Such unprovoked abuse of Sanskrit (as if the Tamil language could not stand on its own greatness) would not matter much if this were just rhetoric, but we find it reflected in practice, with Sanskrit virtually banned from temple rituals in Tamil Nadu, its teaching curtailed and discouraged at all levels (in fact all over India) and Urdu, for instance, receiving much more favour.

The point I wish to draw your attention to is how catchwords are hypnotically brandished, with no intelligent debate permitted on their real meaning. Indian scholars and thinkers must develop the courage to grapple with the central issues hidden behind those words. If they do not, they in effect abandon the field to the kind of perversion that has been growing in recent years, increasingly eclipsing India’s heritage and its contribution to world civilization, portraying it as retrograde and responsible for all of India’s ills. This school of thought, based on a freak hybrid of Marxist dialectics, psychoanalysis and Christian revivalism, has been steadily invading Western and Indian universities, textbooks, media, public opinion, erasing the last traces of Indian culture from Indian education and uprooting younger Indian generations from a culture which should be theirs by birthright.

Ram Swarup’s warning needs to be heard:

“Hindus are disorganized, self-alienated, morally and ideologically disarmed. They lack leadership; the Hindu elites have become illiterate about their spiritual heritage and history and indifferent and even hostile towards their religion…. India has been asleep for too long, and it needed all these knocks and probably it would get more.” [11]

In 1926 Sri Aurobindo put it very simply:

“Aggressive religions tend to overrun the earth. Hinduism on the other hand is passive and therein lies the danger.” [12]

This renewed aggressive, conquering effort on the part of Christianity and Islam, hiding behind their misbegotten child of false secularism, must be resisted by the Indian intelligentsia for two reasons. One, of immediate urgency, to limit and hopefully reverse the harm done to India’s social fabric by artificial conversions, induced ninety-nine times out of a hundred by pecuniary allurements, not by any genuine religious feeling. Unless the tide is stemmed, the infinite complexity that is Indian society may become irretrievably fragmented into thousands of conflicting groups, with the kind of consequences we can already see in the North-East and many tribal regions of India.

The second reason, more essential, is to pursue and renew India’s perennial search for the Truth. If we unquestioningly accept the falsehoods that are now bandied about, we shall in the end cripple our ability to discern the Truth. “It is Truth that conquers and not falsehood,”[13] says the Upanishad, and to work out that conquest for the world has always been at the core of India’s preoccupation. This is no ideological question, it is a matter of saving or losing our intellectual independence and ultimately our spiritual freedom—the only one left to the common Indian.

As early as 1910, Sri Aurobindo asserted :

“Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think,—to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima.” [14]

Were Indian civilization, ever in quest of new realms of reality, to surrender its independence of mind and spirit, the loss would be grave not only for India but for the world, for between moribund religious obscurantism trying to revive and grab the earth once more, and the new market fundamentalism that has well nigh grabbed it, humanity’s future appears rather bleak. We must work to see that India fulfils her role and opens a new path. We must make up for lost time.References* The late Ram Swarup’s penetrating analysis of Christianity and Islam from a Hindu perspective (see References) has inspired many in India and beyond. I am indebted to his study in the above discussion on God.

[1] E.g., Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1997 : “The belief that religion and ecclesiastical affairs should not enter into the functions of the state, esp. into public education.”

[2] Vincent Smith, Asoka, quoted by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in Essays in National Idealism (Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1981), p. 131.[3] Sri Aurobindo, India’s Rebirth, p. 149. [4] Originally published in 1956 and republished as Vindicated by Time—The Niyogi Committee Report on Christian Missionary Activities (Voice of India, New Delhi, 1998). See also Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India – Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas, and Harvesting Our Souls – Missionaries, Their Designs, Their Claims (ASA, New Delhi, 1994 & 2000). [5] Sri Aurobindo, India’s Rebirth, p. 165. [6] For example the case of the imaginary rape of a nun in Orissa in February 1999. After the usual outcry against “fundamentalist Hindus,” the complaint turned out to be false and the case was quietly dropped. [7] As, for instance, in Madhya Pradesh where several nuns were indeed raped ; it turned out that half of the tribals responsible for the crime were Christians. Or the recent case of serial bomb blasts at churches in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, promptly blamed on Hindu organizations, until the culprit was found to be an extremist Muslim organization helped by Pakistan, the Deendar Anjuman (outlawed in May 2001). Of course not one of the Christian leaders and “secular” journalists who had promptly accused Hindus even thought of apologizing for their false statements. Even in the case of the January 1999 murder of the Australian missionary Graham Staines in Orissa, the Wadhwa Commission of inquiry ruled out in its report the involvement of any Hindu organization, and in fact complained that with such incidents, “the press indulged in speculation and did not exercise restraint in their reporting.” Similarly, in February 2001, India’s National Commission for Minorities exonerated any “organization or religious [i.e., Hindu] body” in recent attacks on Christians and blamed the media for overplaying such incidents. [8] Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Essays in National Idealism, p. 131. [9] I have in mind scholars such as Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, David Frawley, Koenraad Elst, N. S. Rajaram among others. [10] K. Anbazhagan, as reported in The New Indian Express, Coimbatore edition, 27 July 2000. [11] Ram Swarup, Hindu View of Christianity and Islam, p. 113. [12] Sri Aurobindo, India’s Rebirth, p. 181. [13] Mundaka Upanishad, III.I.6. [14] Sri Aurobindo, India’s Rebirth, p. 87-88.