Secularism as a tool for conflict resolution
Hinduism is known to have successfully able to resolve many of its
ancient conflicts amicably by reciprocating favourably to several
social-reforming movements. However, conflict of Hinduism with some
of the recent singular beliefs and religions like Islam and Christian
that came from outside this country are showing no signs of getting
resolved. This is understandable as these religions have been
inherently opposed to the idea of coexistence of multi-faith and have
invariably fallen way short of responding adequately to the one sided
willingness of Hindus to show respect towards their beliefs. To
tackle this deadlock a new 'belief' emerged in the name of
'secularism' and started gaining ground. The idea of 'secularism'
that primarily got spread within Hindus has failed miserably by now
to deliver any satisfactory result in this regard. The failure of
'Indian secularism' thus far can be explained with the realization
that its approach is biased heavily against Hinduism and asks Hindus
to offer a solution by shrugging off their belief in 'multi-faith'.
More than three-quarters of a century has been spent on this effort
that has resulted in building an army of Left-leaning thinkers who
primary focused their attention to somehow force the society to
compromise on its Hindu-identity in order to make way for a one-sided
solution.
Emergence of left-thinkers as new Brahmins
The leftists' prescription for the still unresolved conflict of
Hinduism with the recent singular-beliefs has been to convert the
multi-faith 'Hindu' culture into a community having 'no-faith'
outlook. They are well aware of the fact that there is hardly any
scope of spreading 'atheism' in the hard-liner singular beliefs but
at the same time they were hopeful of a positive result among the
overwhelmingly large section of Hindus who are known to have a
non-rigid attitude towards their faith. At this point the
left-thinkers miscalculated the hidden strength behind the apparently
vulnerable look of Hindus. The left-thinkers had obviously erred in
their expectation that 'atheism' would counter 'Hinduism', which
would in turn create a stage for promotion of 'communism' - as this
strategy has failed to deliver the desired results for them. The
primary reason for the failure was that 'atheism' and 'communism' are
actually akin to narrow singular-beliefs and therefore could not
attract the large-hearted Hindus who could never compromise on their
unwavering faith in the 'multi-religion' Hindu-approach. To get the
Hindus rid of their 'multi-faith' belief the left thinkers tried to
counter the rich haul of ancient Hindu texts by devoting enormous
time in painstaking efforts to develop a huge treasure of anti-Hindu
reading material. With the financial and logistical state support
they engaged themselves in fancy research ideas and developed an
intellectual army to attack Hinduism. They pointed out several
inadequacies, flaws, shortcomings and fished out presence of some
unforgivable derogatory remarks in the ancient Brahminical texts in
particular and then (mis)used them to create an anti-Hindu brand of
'intellectuals'. Texts like 'manusmriti' that had lost all relevance
in modern India were utilized by this brigade of pseudo-intellectuals
to spread anti-Hindu feeling in the name of 'secularism'. In this
immaculately executed exercise they erred in identifying Hinduism
with Brahminism. They also wrongly considered the lower caste Hindus
and Hindu-women to be potentially vulnerable section of Hindu society
and thought that they would be able to evoke an anti-Hindu upsurge
among them. Unfortunately for them those sections were actually the
real strength of Hinduism. Their blunder instead worked as a
favourable catalyst for the nationalist forces who had identified this
strength of Hinduism and had started putting all its attention on
building up a vision to develop Hinduism by spreading the lower caste
vision of Hindus.
Remained oblivious to all these essential aspects of Hinduism,
Left-thinkers emerged as the new Brahmins of modern India. They
overlooked the enormous strength with which the Hindu-mass believed
in their 'multi-faith' approach and tried imposing their 'red' agenda
by attacking 'Brahminism' to denounce 'Hinduism'. Just like Brahmins
the 'Left' with the help of the ruling class thought that with the
power of their acquired knowledge, developed this time with the help
of their 'imported' and 'self-accumulated' left-literature, they
would be able to establish their supremacy. With this they hoped of
dislodging Hindu-thinking out of the Hindu-minds. They hoped that
this would give them a perfect ground to rule the class and mass of
India. The contemporary arrogance of Left-thinkers almost matches
with what once Brahmins exhibited after acquiring knowledge.
Hindu-mass comprising largely of the lower castes could never
identify their Hinduism with Brahminism. While Brahminism probably
remained close only to the fringe upper caste section of Hindus the
lower castes happily kept following their reflexive multi-faith
approach towards life. Hinduism, much to everyone's surprise, has
survived not because of the upper castes but has actually survived
despite them. Historically, all the pluralism and multi-faithism
that Hinduism boasts off are courtesy these large hearted and peace
loving, uncelebrated and semi-discarded lower caste Hindus. Even in
the past, while upper castes kept fighting over narrow faiths and
pseudo-singular beliefs the lower castes kept enforcing peaceful
solutions with their natural instinctive belief in the approach of
'multi-faith'. When upper castes were fighting over supremacy of
Shiva and Vishnu, establishing the validity of Dwait and Adwait
principles, lower caste Hindus provided the solution by worshipping
both the idols and respecting both the contradicting theories. When
there was a war waged for and against spreading beliefs of Buddhism,
Aryasamaj and many other such reformist thoughts they got finally
resolved when only this section of Hindus showed the way of
respecting each others' beliefs with exemplary ease without a sign of
unease or contradiction. Recently the useless furore created by the
same class of Hindus over worshipping Sai-Baba in Hindu temples has
further exposed them in this regard as Sai-Baba has already been
being worshipped in many temples by a reasonable section of the
middle, lower and lower-middle class Hindus. It is remarkable to
notice that the lower caste Hindus have always remained indifferent
to the intellectual debates in which the 'well read' Hindus (read
upper castes and especially Brahmins) engaged themselves and instead
kept on resolving all issues of conflicts successfully using their
inherent pluralistic attitude towards life. The credit for survival
of Hinduism can not be attributed to the so called learned,
intellectual, knowledgeable and enlightened section of Hindus but
only to the lower caste 'experienced' Hindu inhabitants.
Alas, to the utter disappointment of leftists, their mammoth
post-colonial efforts are failing to yield the result as envisaged by
them.
Unfolding the Hindu-puzzle
Just as it is intriguing to find out who are Hindus it is all the
more puzzling to find out the reasons how Hindus survived the
onslaught of invasions and conversions for centuries together. To
uncover the mystery the more you would read the ancient Hindu-texts
chances are that the more you will be left perplexed. Ironically,
after reading many of the ancient Hindu-texts one is left wondering
at the failure to get a valid and understandable reason for the lower
castes Hindu-majority to still identify themselves as Hindus. The
manner in which they have been treated in the past and to an
unreasonable extent are still being treated by the upper castes
Hindus - defies all logic for them to call themselves as Hindus. To
me, it is only because our ancient texts are heavily biased with the
upper castes' viewpoints whereas the puzzle gets unfolded only when
Hinduism is explored from the often overlooked perspective of the
lower caste Hindus.
