Pride in Hinduism

Dr Koenraad Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium into a Flemish Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at Leuven. During a stay at the Benares Hindu University, he discovered India’s communal problem and wrote his first book about the budding Ayodhya conflict.

It may be remarked that the term integral humanism itself does not mention its Hindu roots. Perhaps that is good. The term Hindu is merely a geographical indication, while integral humanism briefly says what it stands for. And it does no injustice to the essence of Hindu social thought. After all manavadharma doesn’t contain the word Hindu either. On the other hand, should we not suspect that the coining of this term shows the pressure on the Hindutva movement to portray itself as secular ?

“Say it with pride : We are Hindus”, is what Swami Vivekananda taught his fellow Hindus. Some anti-Hindu people insinuate that this slogan implies a doctrine that Hindus are superior. In that case, ‘Black is beautiful’ would mean that white is not beautiful; it would therefore be a racist slogan and quite reprehensible. In fact, every colour is beautiful in its own way, and it is quite alright to express pride in the long-despised black colour. And everyone is entitled to have and to express pride in his identity. Expressing pride is not a matter of superiority, but being denied the right to express pride, is very certainly a proof of an imposed inferiority.

Who is in a position to heap scorn on Hindus for being Hindus ? What are these Babarwadis themselves, that they arrogate the right to look down on Hindus ? What is the record of parties, systems and ideologies to which they pledge allegiance ? The record of the two main ideologies of the secularists, Marxism and Islam, is well-known. Whenever they heap scorn on Hinduism, they should be reminded of their own heritage.

For instance, Inder Kumar Gujral declared in Parliament in late December 1990, that ‘a colour is being seen these days which was also seen at the time of the Mahatma’s murder. I don’t need to give the name of the colour’. What about Gujral’s own colour, red ? It was very much in evidence when Stalin killed millions of farmers, when he killed political opponents, when he exterminated the elites of occupied Poland and the Baltic states, when Mao killed his millions, when Tibet was overrun, when Pol Pot cleared Cambodia to make way for the new communist humanity. Even when India was invaded in 1962, that colour was there. Who is this Gujral to be so derogatory about saffron ?

In order to instill a proper and well-founded pride in Hindus, it is (once more) most important to restore the truth about Hindu history, especially about Hindu society’s glorious achievements. In technology, it cannot match China, which was the world leader until a mere three, four centuries ago. But in abstract sciences like linguistics, logic, mathematics, Hindu culture has been the chief pioneer. In psychology, it is still unsurpassed, though this is not yet fully recognized in the West, the part of the world that still arbitrates on what can count as rational and scientific.

Much of India’s backwardness has been created by the foreign occupiers

This is not just a convenient allegation. In other countries too, we see the destructive impact of foreign occupation on the flourishing of arts and sciences. Thus, in China mathematics was taken to new heights in the 11th-12th Century. The works expounding these insights were preserved until after the Mongol occupation. But when we read comments from the post-Mongol period on these works, we find that they had lost the correct understanding of these advanced theorems and algorithms. The flourishing of science needs a safe political as well as economic cradle.

In India too, we see total stagnation in the sciences during the entire Muslim period, and a mere passive adoption of Western science under the British rule. Mani Shankar Aiyar, rejecting the proposition that India was a battleground between two civilizations since the advent of the Muslim hordes, states that Indian civilization has an unbroken civilizational history thanks to its ‘utterly unique capacity to synthesize and move forward’. But the striking fact about the Muslim period is that knowledge in India has not moved forward at all.

The Bhakti poets gave a new expression of old ideas, belonging to the spiritual domain which deals with the unchanging and eternal. They were part of Hinduism’s answer to the challenge of this narrow-minded anti-universalist culture of the new rulers. But this Bhakti poetry is not proof of a really flourishing culture. As long as there are human subjects and things happening, there will be literature : That is not a sign of moving forward (in fact, times of disaster may be more fruitful in literature, than times of prosperity). But in astronomy, mathematics, logic, linguistics and philosophy, Hindu society hardly managed to save its old knowledge from oblivion (often just preserving it rather than keeping it alive). This stagnation and ossification of the sciences in India is yet another proof that the synthesis of Hinduism and Islam is a mere myth, for a synthesis would have been very fruitful and India would have moved forward with enthusiasm.

In reality, Muslim rule stifled Hindu creativity and disturbed its social and economic life, thus impoverishing it both culturally and materially.

Of the British occupiers, it is known that they destroyed the existing system of education, that they dismantled industries and disturbed agriculture in order to integrate India into the colonial trade system. They also obliterated quite a chunk of Ayurvedic medical knowledge, by discouraging and sometimes even forbidding its practice and teaching. Earlier, the Muslims had destroyed many universities, and if Hindu Pandits are such an obscurantist lot, it is largely because the academic framework that gave life to their scholarship, has been destroyed.

Hindusthan was always a proverbially rich country

Now, Mother Theresa has made it something of a synonym with poverty. But this poverty cannot be blamed on Hindu culture. After the Muslims had blindly plundered large parts of the country and destroyed so much, the British made an even more systematic and profound attack on India’s natural prosperity. They reorganized its economy to suit their own ends, integrating it in their colonial trade system, again to the country’s detriment. When the British arrived, India was one of the most industrialized countries in the world, and one of its top exporters. The British economic policies, coupled with the world-wide impact of modern industry on the pre-modern economies, destroyed much of India’s prosperity and economic self-reliance.

Finally, this process of impoverishment was completed when Jawaharlal Nehru imposed socialism on India. I am not an economist, but my experiences with state-run enterprises like the State Bank of India and Indian Airlines have made me quite aware of the damage done to this country by socialism. The so-called Hindu growth rate is in fact the Nehru growth rate. If you look at Hindus’ achievements abroad, it is quite clear that Hinduism instils enough of a work ethic for professional and economic success.

But this natural dynamism of Hindu culture, which in the past made the country fabulously rich, has been stifled by this misguided policy of a state-run economy.

Even that part of the English-educated elite which is no party to the detrimental Nehruvian policies, but has on the contrary actively contributed to the amount of prosperity that India still enjoys, has also added to the Hindu inferiority complex. Both those who bring Western modernity in business and technology and those who brought Soviet modernity in the form of the Nehruvian establishment, regardless of their merits and demerits, look down on the traditional culture of this country. The strongest expression of their superiority over the natives is of course the English language.

Another very conspicuous example is dress. Both communists and liberals are extremely scornful about dhoti, kurta, pajama, pagari, and about rural patriarch Devi Lal who wears those things even in Parliament (not to speak of Mahatma Gandhi). Colonial sahib Mani Shankar Aiyar calls them ethnic fancy dress. A friend and compatriot of mine once travelled in a bus in Kerala, wearing a dhoti. Someone asked him : What are you wearing there ? My friend replied : I think you know well enough that this is a dhoti. The man said : “But a dhoti is Brahminical ! This is the age of communism !”

In fact, those people who think a three-piece suit is modern, while a dhoti, etc. is rustic, are the really superstitious savages : They think they participate in modern culture, with its benefit of science, by imitating the dress of the people who brought this scientific culture to this backward land. This is a typically primitive and magical way of reasoning. In reality, all this ethnic dress is far more scientific and rational, in the sense of : Adapted to reality. It is also far more modern, in the sense of : Liberating what is human from oppressive forms imposed by convention. Compared with dresses, trousers and suits, the native sari, dhoti and kurta-pajama are far more economical (need no tailoring), hygienical (especially in this hot climate) and comfortable, and generally also more elegant : All quite humanistic and rational values.

(Courtesy : Excerpts from the Book ‘Ayodhya and After’ published in 1991; and an article on VoiceOfDharma.org/books/ayodhya/ch15.htm)

(To be continued)

If you look at achievements abroad, it is clear that Hinduism instils a work ethic for professional and economic success !