Nov 22, 2024
Nov 22, 2024
by V. Sundaram
If rejection of 'all things Hindu' and 'all things Indian' can be claimed as a minority right, the majority Hindus in India have the over-riding primacy to claim their inalienable fundamental rights in their own native homeland.
Hindu Religion, Hindu Nation, Hindu Race and Hindu India, all these four terms are synonymous and completely interchangeable in all the writings of Swami Vivekananda. At many places, Swamiji used the words 'Hindu' and 'India' in identical sense in the same sentence. I would like to make this point clear by quoting a very famous paragraph of Swami Vivekananda from his article called 'Modern India' in which he wrote:
Oh India! Forget not that the ideal of thy womanhood is Sita, Savitri, Damayanthi; forget not that the God thou worshippest is the great ascetic of ascetics, the all-renouncing Umanath Shankara; forget not that thy marriage, thy wealth, thy life are not for sense-pleasure, are not for thy individual personal happiness; forget not that thou art born as a sacrifice to the Mother's altar; forget not that thy social order is but the reflex of the infinite Mahamaya, forget not that the lower classes, the ignorant, the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are thy flesh and blood, thy brothers. Thou brave one, be bold, take courage, be proud that thou art an Indian (Bharatvasi), and proudly proclaim, 'I am an Indian, every Indian is my brother. Say, the ignorant Indian, the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the Pariah Indian is my brother'. Thou, too, clad with a rag round thy loins proudly proclaim at the top of thy voice: 'The Indian is my brother, the Indian is my life. India's Gods and Goddesses are my God. India's society is the cradle of my infancy, the pleasure-garden of my youth, the sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age'. Say brother: 'The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good' and repeat and pray day and night, 'Oh! Gaurinath, Oh! Jagadambe, bestow manliness unto me! Oh! Thou mother of strength, take away my weakness, take away my unmanliness, and make me a Man'!
In the above paragraph Swamiji uses the word 'India' (Bharata) five times and Indian (Bharatvasi) eight times. Whom was he addressing by these words? Did he not say that the ideal of thy womanhood is Sita, Savitri and Damayanthi? Which is that India and who are those Indian women who regard Sita, Savitri and Damayanthi to be their ideal? It should be clear that they are not the painted Indians of Nehruvian fantasy but Hindu women only. When Swami Vivekananda said, that the God thou worshippest is Umanath Shankara, he was talking to Hindus only. When he said that thou art born as a sacrifice to the Mother's altar, how could he have been addressing a Muslim or a Christian to whom the very idea of offering a sacrifice to the Mother is utterly repugnant? He said that the lower classes, the ignorant, the poor, the cobbler and the sweeper are your brothers.
He did not say the Hindu and the Muslim, but the cobbler and the sweeper; he was clearly speaking of the two weakest and most helpless segments of Hindu society only. When he was referring to Brahmin Indian and Pariah Indian, he was only addressing the Hindu society at the two ends of which stand the Brahmin and the Pariah. Which is the Muslim or Christian nation that would accept the Gods and Goddesses of India are my God? When he said India's society is my sacred heaven, the Varanasi of my old age, who are the people to whom Varanasi is the Holiest place or abode? Who are the people who consider 'the soil of India my highest heaven', and not a Jahiliyyah or Dar-ul-harb? Who are the Indians that address their prayers to Gaurinath and Jagadambe? Thus, Vivekananda was bold in declaring 'We are a Hindu Nation'.
Jinnah was bold in declaring on behalf of Pakistan 'We are a Muslim Nation'.
Vivekananda was not steeped in conceptual confusion about Hindu Nation, Hindutva, Hindu Rashtra, Hindu Culture and above all Sanatana Dharma. On the other hand, Nehru loved to get into the State of self-chosen conceptual confusion about all things Hindu and brazen certitude about all things Islamic or Christian; Indira Gandhi got into a State of ecstasy in it, Rajiv Gandhi reveled in it and the UPA government under the surrogate stranglehold of Roman Catholicism are boisterously participating in the 'Dance of the Dervishes' today. Thus the devilish dance of pseudo-secularism is circular, complete and total!
The message of Swami Vivekananda is addressed, word by word, to Hindus and to no one else. But he uses the words 'India' (Bharata) and 'Indian' (Bharatvasi) because for him the three words Hindu, India, Indian are synonymous. In this context, the observations of Abhas Chatterjee in his seminal work 'The Concept of Hindu Nation' are very apt: You would, however, notice that these days huge hoardings are put up by government of India in which it is written 'Proudly Proclaim, I am an Indian and every Indian is my brother', Swami Vivekananda'. This tearing of words from their context is clearly an attempt to spread the false notion among the general public that Swami Vivekananda had also used the word 'Bharatavasi' with the same connotation that Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru later put into the word 'Bharatiya' and the one that is being assiduously promoted by the State media since 1947, viz. a mere geographic Indian. This perniciously false nation perception of Nehru is being publicized today in the name of Swami Vivekananda, although Swamiji's vision of the nation was the very antithesis of Nehru's vision. For Vivekananda we are a Hindu Nation rooted in Sanatana Dharma. For Nehru we are a secular nation having nothing to do with things Hindu or Sanatana Dharma. According to Nehru's own statement, Sanatana Dharma is a destroyer of the nation.
Though we Hindus are a Nation today, yet we are not an independent nation. We are still a subjugated nation. In 1757, after the battle of Plassey, the British became Rulers instead of Muslims. Did that mean we had gained freedom then? Similarly, on 15 August 15, 1947, though the British left India, yet the Hindu nation could not get the ruling power in its hands because the new Rulers who have come to power neither believe that Hindus constitute a nation nor consider themselves as part of the Hindu nation. The harsh fact is that on 15 August, 1947, the 'Muslim Nation' of undivided India, thanks to Jinnah, gained freedom, but not the Hindus. The Muslims got recognition as a separate nation and a separate territory was carved out as their national homeland. They established their own State in that territory called Pakistan and that State is still conducting its affairs by holding aloft the cultural aspirations, honor and interests of the Muslims of Bharatvarsha as its responsibility. But Hindus of India, unfortunately, thanks to the anti-Hindu attitude of Nehru and his family, neither gained recognition as a nation, nor their own State, nor control over their national homeland.
To quote Abhas Chatterjee once again: 'Ideology of Nehruism or Secularism or Anti-Hinduism guides all Secularist, Socialist, Communist and Islamist political parties in India, albeit with shades of variation here and there. Adherents to this ideology have willingly estranged themselves from the Hindu nation. It is clearly foolish and suicidal for Hindus to regard such persons as Hindus and consider themselves to be independent and self-ruling after handing over State power into their hands'.
When I say 'we Hindus are a Nation', we should not forget the fact about the Muslims and Christians of India, namely, that they are our own people. Till they got converted some centuries ago, they were all Hindus. The only wall that stands between them and us Hindus is their alien culture. Demolish this wall of Islam or Christianity and there would be nothing to separate the Indian Muslims and Indian Christians from the rest of us. Our objection is to Islamic and Christian hegemonic ideologies. For example, a Muslim who believes in the theology of Islam about 'Kafirs', can never be a member of the Hindu nation. According to such Muslims, 'Sanatana Dharma' is obnoxious; our Rishis and Sages were followers of the Devil; that all our ancestors will have their places reserved in Hell. Such people believe that all our Hindu Gods and Goddesses and Avataras are false abominations and that we are committing a cardinal sin by worshipping them. According to them, India is a Jahiliyyah waiting to be redeemed, that Allah himself has decreed it an act of great virtue (kar-i-sabab) to slaughter, plunder and torture the Hindus. Such people can by no means be part of the Hindu nation.
In this context I am reminded of a Fatwa issued very recently by some Muslim Moulvis against reciting of Vande Mataram by school children in Hyderabad. Perhaps they may not be aware of the fact that this was the song which inspired all the citizens of India, including the Muslims, during the days of Swadeshi Movement in Bengal in 1905 and even much later till about 1921. If rejection of 'all things Hindu' and 'all things Indian', though inherently sacred and inviolable, can be claimed as a minority right, the majority Hindus have the over-riding primacy to claim their inalienable fundamental rights in their own native homeland. Our objection is not to the modes of worship of minorities or their religion but to their alien ideologies which only believe in total destruction of Sanatana Dharma and Hindu culture, the culture of the majority in the Hindu nation called India.
09-Jul-2006
More by : V. Sundaram