Are Hindus helpless refugees in their own ancestral HOMELAND? It is my inalienable, indivisible, inexorable and immutable birth right to demand the creation of a Hindu Nation. I am not ashamed or afraid of declaring from the housetop that I am a political Hindu, a cultural Hindu, a spiritual Hindu, an economic Hindu, a nationalist Hindu, an internationalist Hindu and above all a cosmopolitan Hindu. I am forced to assert on these lines because Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Religion, Hindu Society, Hindu culture and Hindu ethos are under the siege of certain lethal international(!) forces today. The whole of India is getting converted into a ‘Nazi Land’ of pseudo-secularism with a clearly defined and declared agenda for the decimation and destruction of Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Society and Hindu culture. In Nazi Germany, there was only one criminal gang consisting of one ‘Herr’ Hitler, one Goebbels, one Goering, one Ribbentrop, one Von Papen, and one Himmler. But in the wretched India of today, we have more than half a dozen similar gangsters in each political party, all united in their resolve to destroy all remnants of Sanatana Dharma and Hindu culture.
I am in full agreement with Sita Ram Goel when he says that Hindu society is the only significant society in the world today which presents a continuity of cultural existence, consciousness and functioning since times immemorial. Most of the other societies known to human history ?East and West, North and South ? have suffered a sudden interruption and undergone a traumatic transformation due to the invasion and victory of latter day ideologists ? Christianity, Islam, Communism. The pre-Christian, pre-Islamic and pre-Communist cultural creations and artefacts of these societies are now to be seen or met with only in Libraries and Museums, thanks to the labours of archaeologists and antiquarian scholars. Hindu culture can meet the same frightful fate if there were no Hindu society to sustain it. This is the point which is not always remembered even by those who take pride in Hindu culture.
There are many Hindus who cherish the great spiritual traditions of Hinduism and its scriptures like the Gita and Upanishads in which this glorious tradition is enshrined. But they do not cherish with an equal conviction, much less enthusiasm, the Hindu society which has honoured and preserved these traditions and scriptures against the onslaughts of external invaders and influences down the Ages.
Again, there are many Hindus who proclaim with great confidence that Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism can never die. In this context the sharp words of Sita Ram Goel are very relevant: ‘This is true in a sense. There will always be individuals in ‘Non-Hindu Societies’ who will recover the mystique of Sanatana Dharma through their efforts at self-discovery. But ‘Sanatana Dharma’ will surely suffer an eclipse and no more inform mankind at large with its message, if there is no Hindu society to sustain it.’
Finally there are many Hindus who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography and so on. But all of them fail to notice the fact that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage will die if Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it.
The sudden death of Hindu society is no longer a theoretical eventuality which is either remote or cannot be envisaged. This great society is now besieged by the same dark and deadly forces which have overwhelmed and obliterated many ancient societies. Suffering from a loss of its ‘鬡n’, Hindu society has become a house divided within itself. Its beneficiaries seem to be impotent in taking necessary steps for ensuring its survival because they themselves have fallen victims to hostile propaganda from the wicked forces of Islam, Christianity, Nehruvian Secularism, menacing Marxism, and above all Hindu-baiting Macaulayism. Presiding over all these forces with a determined agenda for destroying all things Hindu, we have the Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating UPA Government in New Delhi under the triangular stranglehold of Roman Catholicism, Pan-Islamism and Communism in the name of ‘pseudo-secularism’.
Hindu society which has survived the onslaught of Islamic marauders and Western freebooters for centuries should indeed be regarded as one of the great wonders of world history. In the normal course Hindus should have come into their own after 1947 and created a new era of social and cultural renaissance in free India. Thanks to the politically motivated policy of Nehruvian Secularism, Hindus have become third class citizens in our own country. They are no longer the honoured citizens of our land. Like leprosy in British India, a permanent stigma seems to have stuck to the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ in today’s India. They have become terms of abuse in the mouth of that very elite which the dumb Hindu millions have raised to the pinnacle of power and prestige with their blood, toil, sweat and tears.
I cannot help coming to the conclusion that the Muslim and British invasions of India, though defeated and dispersed, have yet managed to ‘crystallize’ certain ‘residues’ ?psychological and intellectual, which a battered Hindu society is finding it very difficult to digest. It is suspected that these residues in the monopoly control of the Congress party are now in active alliance with powerful international forces and are being aided and abetted on a scale which an impoverished Hindu society cannot match. Although at loggerheads among themselves till 2004, these residues have forged a ‘United Front’ which is holding Hindu society under a siege today. This grave mortal danger is as much promoted ‘from within’ as ‘from without’.
It is against this background it has become necessary for all the Hindus of India, living in India and abroad, to become resolved in their collective declaration to the world: ‘We Hindus are a nation’. In 1946 when the Muslim League’s demand for partition of India and creation of a separate State of Pakistan was being seriously debated, someone asked M.A. Jinnah: ‘You keep taking of Pakistan. Could you explain what is your concept of this Pakistan? What do you really mean by it?’ Jinnah replied: ‘Of course. In just five words’. Then Jinnah uttered those five famous words: ‘We Muslims are a Nation’ and he went on to elaborate his thesis of cultural difference, incompatibility and impossibility of co-existence with Hindus, and so on.
An outstanding intellectual and brilliant scholar who paid a heavy price for his unimpeachable integrity in the Indian Administrative Service to which belonged, Abhas Chatterjee, wrote a seminal book ‘The Concept of Hindu Nation’ in 1995, a few years before his death. If his name had been Christopher Chatterjee or if he had converted to Islam and called himself Abayathulla Killji, the mafia of pseudo-secular mass media would have highlighted the importance of this work for promoting the hegemony of religious minorities in India.
According to Abhas Chatterjee, our misconception regarding Hindu Nation, Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra has arisen from the fact that we have not tried to comprehend the definition of a nation. We normally take a nation to stand for a country, a land mass, a specific portion of the globe. But a nation never means a land as such. A nation indicates a group or community of people which has been traditionally living in a particular land, which has its own distinctive culture, and which has an identity separate from other peoples of the world by virtue of the distinctiveness of its culture. The cultural distinctiveness of a nation may be based on its race, or religion, or language, or a combination of some or all of these factors, but all-in-all there has to be a distinct culture which will mark the nation out from peoples belonging to other lands. There may be internal differences in several respects among the people belonging to its culture, but in spite of these differences there will be an overall sense of harmony born out of the fundamental elements of their culture and a sense of pride which inspires in them a desire to maintain their separate identity from the rest of the world. Finally, as a result of these factors, this group of people has its own outlook towards the history of its traditional homeland; it has its own heroes and villains, its own view of glory and shame, success and failure, victory and defeat.
According to Abhas Chatterjee, with which all right thinking Hindus will wholly concur, once we start looking at things from this point of view, we immediately see not only we Hindus are a ‘Nation unto ourselves, but also we are the oldest surviving nation on earth’.
We Hindus are not just a religious community like the Muslims and the Christians, but a NATION unto ourselves. The term ‘Hindu’ is the name of our nationality. We Hindus are a Nation ?this is a basic, simple and undisputable truth. Unfortunately, even the simple truth we are unable to appreciate and that fatal failure lies at the root of all our misconceptions and miseries today.
(To be continued…)
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at [email protected]
http://www.newstodaynet.com/2006sud/06jun/2306ss1.htm
