Religious Freedom

(Adapted from a speech before a Seminar on Religious Freedom, held on July 11, 1978, in New Delhi, at the request of eighty-five Unitarian Christians from the U.S.A. and Europe on a visit to India. The author was requested to present the Hindu point of view)

1. Struggle for Religious Freedom and success in it

Today, religious freedom is threatened in many countries in one form or another. But the most flagrant examples are the communist countries. In these countries, there is a systematic attempt to destroy not only civil and political liberties but religious liberty as well. It is most unfortunate. Let us hope that the rulers of these countries will realize their mistake and reverse the process. Religion is not an opiate of the people; on the contrary, it represents a very important dimension of life and is one of the noblest expressions of the spirit. Religion brings a fulfilment for which there is no other substitute. To suppress religion is to maim the life of a people.

But religious intolerance is no monopoly of communism. It is unfortunate but true that religious intolerance has been practised by some religions themselves. There have been crusades; there have been religious versions of the ‘wars of liberation’ practised by modern communist states; there has been heresy-hunting, bitter and bloody and often accompanied by mob violence and official persecution. In many cases, there was even genocide, a whole people decimated. In other cases, there was a systematic vandalism and a systematic and continuing persecution of local cultures and religions till not even their memory remained. In fact, intolerance has been such a common and important part of some religions that communism too is regarded as a religion on that account by some thinkers.

But thank God, people of Europe and America today have won the battle for religious freedom, and for the right to worship in their own ways. This right, this freedom, this tolerance towards others is a great value and it has been won at a great sacrifice.

2. The Fruits of the Triumph of Religious Freedom

The story of the triumph of religious freedom is an interesting one.

1. One aspect of religious freedom was freedom from religion itself. Certain religions committed such excesses that religion itself lost caste with many thinking people. Religion generated hostility in many people which still subsists in many secular movements including communism.

2. Another feature of this newly-won religious freedom is the triumph of Reason. Faith had denied reason too long; and reason in turn, in its triumphant hour, denied faith.

3. Europe’s Rational Movement became anti-religion; and if we reflect over the problem, we shall understand why.

When a great truth of life is denied, as reason was denied by faith, it sets up an opposite movement. Let us remember that reason came as a great liberating force from the shackles of a narrow faith, though it need no longer deny faith its due place in the new circumstances.

A third feature of the triumph of religious tolerance in Europe was that the scene of religious excesses in Europe shifted to other continents. Whether they were Catholics or Protestants, Jesuits or Calvinists or Methodists, Baptists or Anabaptists, they all turned to the countries of Asia, Africa and America. They might have differed and debated bitterly amongst themselves on subtle points of theology, which to the outsiders made no sense, but they all agreed that the people of these new continents were benighted and they needed Christian enlightenment. In spreading this light, as they saw it, they used all kinds of methods – force, fraud, persuasion, trade, and lately social service. In this self-chosen task, the white man’s burden, the energy of Europe found a new outlet.

3. Religion migrated from Europe

We do not fully comprehend the causes of the rise and fall of Nations and cultures. According to the Hindu way of looking, Nations and cultures, like individuals, have their destinies and appointed time. The European spirit at that time was resurgent. It was making new discoveries and new conquests. It was a spirit which had affected equally the soldier, the trader and the clergyman. They all combined and opened up new continents for Europe. The sword, the ledger, the Gospel were partners for many years and they thrived in unison. They had superior guns, and for quite some time we all, the conquerors as well as the conquered, thought that they had a superior religion too.

In India itself, their work was full of mischief. I have read the records of those times. One would have supposed that the men of God from Europe should have been in a better position to appreciate the working of the Holy Ghost in India. But unfortunately, it was not so. In fact, the European priest or missionary was more contemptuous of Indian religion and culture than the European administrator or trader. St. Xavier, Carey and Wilberforce, all missionaries, saw no good in Hinduism but only darkness and depravity, and they wanted their Governments to use force for the conversion of the heathens in India.

4. Mutual benefits from European contacts with India

But we should not complain. In spite of several negative features there was also a good deal for us to learn from this new contact. Imperialism had its bad side but it was not established by men of straw. Many of the new rulers were men of great qualities. They had intelligence, dedication, organizing skill, and capacity for sustained and purposive work. They were men of great tapas from which we in India could learn.

Secondly, the initial contacts between Nations and cultures are not always fraternal, though sometimes a fraternity is created out of those unhappy contacts in due course of time. God fulfils Himself in many ways. Europeans came as conquerors and as teachers. In the beginning, the relationship was unequal. But time has corrected some of the old imbalances and we can all now be brothers in a world that has become physically one. The Western conquest opened up Asia to the Europeans but, by the same token, Europe too was opened up to Asia. The old self-sufficiency of Europe is now broken and only the very narrow-minded and self-assured Europeans feel comfortable in the role of world teachers. The best minds of America and of Europe have a humbler view of themselves and they feel they can also learn a few things from the spiritual heritage of the East and especially of India.

5. A quality of Hinduism which attracted Many

Hindus have their full quota of faults; they have their own pride and prejudices. But there is one quality of Hinduism which has attracted the attention of many outsiders and thinkers, that is, the spirit of tolerance in Hinduism, its pluralistic view of religion, the absence of crusades and organized missions to convert people. Take the Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics. Most of it is written by Christian theologians and has a pronounced Christian bias.

In fact, the whole work could be considered a part and parcel of the Christian Apologetics. Not only are the Hindu Gods false and the Hindu theology fanciful, the Hindu morals are even worse. The Encyclopedia discusses concepts like charity, love, chastity, pity, truth, purity. In all, Christianity comes out at the top and Hinduism is not even a poor second.

But when it comes to the discussion of religious persecution, Hinduism scores over other religions by the absence of this phenomenon. This is a point which is of utmost interest to a Seminar which stands for promoting religious freedom.

This is a vast subject and a proper discussion of it will involve going into the whole ethos of Hinduism. This cannot obviously be done here. I shall, therefore, here refer to only one or two basic points.

6. Tolerance comes from, ‘many symbols for God’

The absence of religious intolerance in Hinduism is not accidental. It has grown out of the way in which Hinduism has viewed the world and looked at fellow-men and intuited the Divine.

What is this view which may be called the theological base of Hindu tolerance, if I may use this expression in this context ? Expressed simply, it means that to Hinduism different symbols signify the same Reality. This is an insight which the Hindus have stressed again and again from ancient times.

The Vedas, the most ancient scriptures of the Aryan race, declare that it is the ‘same Reality which the wise call by many names’. The Atharva Veda says : ‘He is Aryama; He is Yaruna; He is Rudra; He is the Great God; He is Agni; He is Surya; He is the great Yama’.

This approach means that the world is a symbol, an image, a manifestation of a hidden Godhead. By worshipping any chosen symbol, we worship the same divinity. In its more practical aspect, the approach stands for religious tolerance.

It says that the difference of symbols is unreal; that they do not call for all the slaughter and persecution that have been perpetrated in their name by certain narrow-based religions.

7. Where seeking is There God is

The Hindu approach further believes that in every man there is a soul; and in all souls there is a seeking; and that wherever there is a true seeking and a sincere worship, there is God. God cares for sincere seekers, not for privileged sects, or favourite fraternities, churches or ummas. One can easily see that this insight is against those exclusive claims which some religions make of knowing the ‘One and the only true God’. Why should you know the true God and not your neighbour ? Are you better than him in the qualities of your mind and heart ? Is your worship truer and more sincere than his ?

In this approach, what matters is not how you define your God, but rather what truth, sincerity and intensity you bring to your search and worship. One’s God cannot be greater than one’s seeking. God comes to those who seek Him sincerely. He is no respecter of persons and denominations. In this approach, as one can see for oneself, there is no room for exclusive revelations, or the only Son, or the Last Prophet. The Hindu approach has a universal quality. There is no lawlessness or arbitrariness here .

(Courtesy : Excerpts from an Article by Shri. Sita Ram Goel ji posted on voibooks.bitbucket.io)

What matters is not how you define your God, but rather what truth, sincerity and intensity you bring to your search and worship !