Why Militant Hinduism? - 2

Arun Shourie on militant Hinduism:

Each of these stemmed much. But over the last 200 years the feeling has also swelled that, invaluable as these responses have been, they have not been enough. They did not prevent the country from being taken over. They did not shield the people from the cruelty of alien rulers. They did not prevent the conversion of millions. They did not prevent the tradition from being calumnised and being thrown on the defensive. They did not in the end save the country from being partitioned – from being partitioned in the name of religion...

There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have been exclusivist – each has insisted that it alone is true – and aggressive. The Indic religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism – have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources – organised missionaries, money, the state – to proselytise and to convert? Nor is this question facing just the Hindus in India today. It is facing the adherents of Indic traditions wherever they are: look at the Hindus in Indonesia and Malaysia; look at the Buddhists in Tibet, now in Thailand too. It is because of this vice, and the realisation born from what had already come to pass that Swami Vivekananda, for instance, while asking the Hindus to retain their Hindu soul, exhorted them to acquire an 'Islamic body'.

We can be certain that his counsel will prevail, our secularists notwithstanding.

Instigating factors:
• The more aggressively the other religions proselytise – look at the fervour with which today the Tablighi Jamaat goes about conversion; look at the organised way in which the missionaries 'harvest' our souls;
• The more they use money to increase the harvest – whether it is Saudi money or that of Rome and the American churches;
• The more any of them uses violence to enlarge its sway;
• The more any of them allies itself with and uses the state – whether that of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan – for aggrandisement.