O Hindus, self-defense does not necessarily mean intolerance !

By Vanamali

O Hindu! Your country is at stake! Your religion is at stake! Your way  of life is at stake! This is the holy land – the land of the Gods – a country whose soil is imprinted with the sacred footprints of countless incarnations and great sages. They were the ones who gave us the rules of our dharma- the Sanatana Dharma. It is the ancient law of righteous living. Today it has been branded under a derogatory name –  Hindutva.

Hindutva is the way of living based on the dictates of the Sanatana Dharma as given in the Vedas which was imparted to us by the rishis. The very foundation of this holy land is Hindutva. Let no one ever make a mistake over this. If it were not for Hindutwa – this country would have shrivelled up and died long ago! Hindustan is the land of the Hindus as the very name would imply. We have no other land. We were born and bred on this soil and will live and die on its bosom.

Unfortunately there is a diabolical scheme afoot amongst the minorities to oust our mother and replace her with theirs. It is a fact that many infidels have tried to do this in the past but none have succeeded even though Hindus paid a bitter price for their land.

The soil of this holy land is drenched with the blood of these countless martyrs who are the unsung heroes and heroines of this land. Our history does not mention them; no one talks of them yet it is due to their “balidan” (self sacrifice) that we Hindus are still living on this land. More Hindus were massacred during the Mogul conquest than in the Jewish Holocaust! But as with anything concerning the Hindus a veil of secrecy has been put over it.

These martyrs were prepared to fight for this land and to sacrifice their lives if necessary to uphold their beliefs. This is our land, our patrimony, our mother, our spiritual and material support. If she is lost we will also be lost and we will have only ourselves to blame. Not only will we be lost but the whole world will have lost something which is extremely precious for the tenets of this religion gives the basis of a holistic life for every human being and for all animals.

 It is only Hinduism that claims that animals are also imbued with the same divine spirit. Thus the human being is the custodian for all animals. We do not believe in slaughtering them in order to fatten our own bodies. Whether it be a cow, pig or buffalo, they are all to be seen as reflections of the Supreme Being. That is why India is the only country in which a huge section of the population gave up eating meat of any type for they recognised the basic divinity in all animals. This belief is the basis of the mistakenly named, “idolatry” of the Hindus.

Everything is divine, everything is imbued with the Holy Spirit thus we have no right to take the life of anything and we can also worship any form of our choice. That formless one which is the Supreme Transcendent Spirit can take on any form it likes. It is blasphemy to limit IT to one form or one concept. How can one poor human brain conceive of the formless infinite? At best we can know only a small portion of that infinity. Therefore one can conceive of any form we like and worship it as the divine – a cow, a rock, a plant, a star or the sun and the moon!!

We are the inheritors of an unparalleled culture which is like an ever flowing river from which everyone can draw and yet never gets dry, always ready and eager for everyone to come and quench their thirst for spirituality. Many cults and religions have come and left their mark on this ancient land and Hinduism has welcomed them with open arms and incorporated them within her ample bosom. No one was ever thrust out or persecuted but now this very tolerance has changed into weakness. We have taken our mother for granted. We have misused her, we have betrayed her and have supported other countries, other cultures, other ways of life not realising that ours always was and always will be the best.

Our peace-loving nature has been mistaken for cowardice.  And we are paying the price for this. Our temples have been broken down; our customs defiled, our children converted, our opinions flouted, our boundaries broken and our media tampered with. Money has replaced nobility as a criterion of worth. The sons of this soil are guilty of betraying their mother for the sake of pelf and position. Our very tolerance and acceptance have now become our weakness and others exploit us for this very reason. We are being taunted with the word “secularism” as if it’s a word about which we know nothing. This is true. We do not know the meaning of secularism just as a person living on the sun does not know the meaning of light! These people who have come from other lands and religions, who have never practiced secularism are the ones who are now ramming it down our unwilling throats. But enough is enough. We have had our fill of this absurd word which we don’t know the meaning of since we have always practiced it from the time we were born. We have found equal pleasure in going to a church or a mosque as to a temple, equal pleasure in reading the bible as the Bhagavat Gita. Can this be said of any other religious practitioner in this country?

We are happy to let them practice or read or live as they like. We have no quarrel with that. All we ask is for our rights as the inheritors of this land. Why should the majority be slighted at the cost of the minorities who are living here only because of our good will. Why should Hindus be given step motherly treatment in their own house by their own mother? We should be given all privileges, our children given first choices and our wishes foremost preference. Instead of which we are the downtrodden and the mis-understood. We are made into scapegoats for every crime in this country regardless of who has committed it.

All such crimes have been laid at the foot of the Hindu fundamentalist. Fundamentalists are those who believe that only their religion and only their God is the right one and who try to ram this belief down the unwilling throats of everyone who is prepared or un-prepared to swallow it. When has the Hindu ever done this? Not only have we not tried to ram our beliefs but in our innocence we have even opened our mouths wide so that other unscrupulous sects could ram their beliefs down our throats. Today if we are being put on the stake and fired upon by the minorities who are supported by the rulers, we have no one to blame but ourselves for we have forgotten that the same hot blood which flows in their veins flows in ours also. We have forgotten the clarion call of Lord Krishna to Arjuna, the flower of Hindu manhood, to take up arms against his very kith and kin if necessary, in order to save his dharma, the Sanathana Dharma, which is his birthright, from perishing.

We have practiced the Christian virtue of turning the other cheek long enough. In fact we are the only ones who have ever practiced it. No self-respecting Christian nation has ever practiced it! All the world wars, the conquests of other nations, all the invasions have been by the Christian nations but now the time has come for us to start practicing some Hindu instead of Christian virtues.

Unless we have the guts to stand up for our own rights we will be  moved down by these belligerent and intolerant sects who have been welcomed and given an asylum in our land but who are now trying to take over the very land which has sheltered them with love for so many centuries. This is indeed like the camel in the Arab’s tent. Are we to look on with a tolerant eye when our temples are looted in order to give free passage to the Muslim pilgrims going for Haj while our Hindu pilgrims going to Sabarimala (Kerala) are forced to pay a stiff price for a much shorter bus ride to the base camp of the temple? Are we to turn a deaf ear to the pleas of our people whose donations to the temples are being used to erect mosques and churches? Are we to look on indifferently when Christians are elected as the chairman of our temple boards?

Non-violence may be our creed but remember that only the one who has the power and strength to fight for his rights is capable of being truly non-violent. Our non-violence should stem from strength and not from our weakness to defend ourselves. Only then will it have some power. It is high time that the Hindus show the world that we too have fangs and if we do not bite it’s not because our teeth have dropped out but because we prefer to practice non-violence. In this context, I’m reminded of a story from the Puranas.

There was once a poisonous cobra which lived with his family in a deserted temple not far from a village. The villagers were all frightened of him and no one dared to go near the temple. One day a sage was passing that way and the cobra came spitting venom at him. The sage remained unmoved and this puzzled the snake. He recognised the greatness of the sage and asked him to accept him as his disciple. The sage gave him some advice and also told him that it was wrong on his part to bite and kill people. The sage went on his way and returned a year later to find the snake almost on the verge of death. He had become so meek and mild that the villagers used to torment him and throw stones at him. He was practicing non-violence and hence refused to catch any mice that now ran all over him and infested the temple he lived in and destroyed its sanctity. With almost his last breath the cobra laid his head on his Guru’s feet and asked him to bless him.

The sage replied, “My son! I told you not to bite but I certainly did not tell you not to hiss! You have a duty to protect your family and territory. If out of some mistaken idea of non-violence and tolerance you fail to do your duty, you will have to face the consequences which might even mean death for you and your family and the end of your territory!”

The snake was much relieved to hear this and started once again to assert his rights. Even though he did not bite he would hiss in a very terrifying manner and soon the villagers started respecting him once again and the mice which used to run all over his temple and make fun of him now started to run off when he appeared. Once again all of them lived in perfect harmony with respect for each other’s rights and territories.

I need not tell my Hindu brothers and sisters the moral of this story. Let us not forget that we have a right to hiss and we have a duty to this ancient land to protect its culture and tradition.

Hari Aum Tat Sat