“Hindu” has become a trigger word for the Hindus.
Particularly for the educated urban population in India. Perhaps it has remained so for many decades. Most of us have lived through the period when separating “Indian Nationalism” from its “Hindu” identity was considered to be a mark of belonging to an intellectually elite class. Actually it still remains so. Largely.
But how did “Hinduism” and “Nationalism” separate, when it was one mantra “Vande Mataram” that had united the freedom fighters across the country irrespective of religion?
—
Indian nationalism, since the early years of the Indian Renaissance, has undergone various mutations.
The first phase came from the SPIRITUALITY in the figure of Sri Ramakrishna. He summed up in his life the whole spiritual history of India and gave birth to Indian nationalism by kindling in the nation a consciousness of its own typical genius. Inspired by him, Swami Vivekananda took Hinduism and India to a global platform. “Vandemataram” too took its birth during this phase.
The second phase of our nationalism was not directly spiritual but charged with indigenous history. The stress now was more on the collective soul of the country as felt in the traditional ideals and institutions, the characteristic customs and festivals. This nationalism was fostered by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
In the third phase, our nationalism became ETHICAL as Mahatma Gandhi set up certain moral DOCTRINES for the patriot’s guidance, chiefly the doctrines of non-violence and what he called Truth.
Out of this came a fourth kind of nationalism. This brought the RATIONALISM of the West and cut the ethical completely off from the spiritual. This was the phase of our nationalism fostered by Jawaharlal Nehru. It was non-religious, wholly “secular” in the Western sense of the term. During the early years of independence under Nehru’s patronage, India became a socialist, secular democracy and an intelligentsia favouring Dialectical Materialism and the Economic View of History entrenched themselves in our universities. Thus what started as a spiritual renaissance ended up as an anti-spiritual establishment controlling the press and the academic institutions.
—
All these developments had brought us to a point when the traditional defences of Indian culture had almost lost their hold over people. Indian cultural identities became vague and shallow for many. “Cognitive dissonance” was rampant. The clash between the “old” and the “new”, was seen as a clash between the “Western” and the “Indian”. The problem was not the new or the West. The problem was that the new or the West was glamourised to such an extent that Indians were ready to give up on their Indian identities. There was a collective sense of inferiority. India, which was always a land of bold reforms, became a land with meek followers of the “rebellious” West.
We imitated the West. But we could never become the West. Because that’s not our truth. We became a poor caricature of the West.
It was only some years after globalisation and internet revolution, we vaguely felt the spread of a single culture – the same wants, the same institutions, the same sets of values everywhere.
Slowly everything got commodified. Our collective memory of post-partition poverty made us easy consumers of the indulgent prosperity that multinationals brought. To a large extent it helped to remove the trauma of colonization-led poverty from the collective Indian psyche. But it also made Indians uncomfortable… restless in their subconscious.
We became followers of a mono-culture. A culture in which raising “living standards” was standardized by the Western multinational corporations. “Progress” had to follow a pre-determined road shaped by “doctrines of individualism” created by these corporations.
Slowly and quite secretly these external developments started devastating our own inner landscape. Today we call it “mental health”.
Technology did play a huge role in making us cognitively identify ourselves with a “modernity” that is heavily western and hyper consumerized. Cinema and television played their roles. Then came the smartphone.
Realities were “constructed”. We don’t see them getting constructed but suddenly have needs that were unknown to us just a few years back.
Media is hypnotic that way. And now we have AI. It can ruthlessly turn us into “humanoids”. Actually not just humanoids but homogenized humanoids.
Perhaps that is the reason why there is an urge amongst us to reclaim everything that reminds us that we are human beings.
The urge to go back to our roots is another such attempt. Roots are not just historical and cultural. Roots are spiritual too.
Without a deeper understanding of our spiritual roots, we will end up arrogantly relying on our intellect. But the intellect is a weak instrument. Especially now. With AI. Our intellect can easily be driven by technology and the ones owning and running those technologies will be our masters. We will be super active but super deficit in our attention and wisdom.
—
Our intellect is highly hackable. Even without technology our colonizers could do it.
They made us believe “religion” is the translation of “dharma”.
But the fact is:
DHARMA IS NOT RELIGION.
Unlike religion, dharma is not a rigid religious creed or set of dogmas, but rather the fundamental laws of life that can even change with time or situation or one’s inner evolution.
Hinduism is not a religion in the Semitic sense but a term descriptive of a spiritual civilisation. Those who were Hindu in their spirit and traditions made this land, built this civilisation which has been wide enough to welcome in terms of equality the Moslem and the Christian, the persecuted Zoroastrians and the Dalai Lama and his followers. Actually a great truth is enshrined in the statement that India is the land of Hinduism. If we forget this truth and seek to create a country with all psychological and metaphysical colour of Hinduism wiped off, we shall seriously thwart India’s growth and make the nation either a mediocrity or a monstrosity.
Hinduism is not even an “ism”… Thus it cannot be authoritarian. It actually entirely focuses on individual experiences. And that is the reason it recognizes each person can choose one’s path to seek the Truth. So Hinduism is inherently secular and plural. Hinduism is Sanatan Dharma (The Eternal Law of Life).
Actually “Hindutva” as a word does represent the Hindu civilization and it’s culture much more than the word “Hinduism”. “Hindutva” can be translated as “Hindu-ness”. It’s a quality to be developed from within. Not an identity to adopt or follow from outside. That is the reason there is no “conversion” to Hindutva.
—
Sanatan Dharma does not separate the spiritual from the material. It gives the freedom of psychological exploration sans any doctrine or dogma. All the deities are external manifestations of deeper realizations of our ancient seers. When we think of Hinduism a lot of us associate it with deities and their temples. Our mind tries to analyze and judge these. Or we reach out to these deities for our own personal wish fulfillment. But our hearts mostly remain closed.
It is our closed heart that allows the intellect to become quite weak. Spirituality gets projected as exotic.
It is here fundamentalism takes its birth. Spirituality is replaced by hatred.
On the other hand, projections of exotic spirituality make it easy to commodify it. It becomes a way to attract people looking for quick fixes of life troubles and easy paths to acquire happiness.
And then we have mythologists and scholars who reduce Hindu texts to entertaining stories and ppt-like chapters. They study mythology using Western social models and attempt at freeing Hindus from Hinduism.
They make the Hindu society appear inherently misogynistic and exploitatively hierarchical. They are unable to go beyond their rationalistic and reductionist interpretation and mostly end up distorting the essence of Hinduism. Their books are massively marketed by their publishers and occupy prominent shelves in the popular bookstores. Pattanaik comes up as the best representative of this clan. People like him become the subject-matter experts for the masses who are unable to spend time and energy on deeper understanding of Hinduism.
This is the lens through which we were made to watch innumerable movies and television shows. They carried subtle but unmistakable suggestions to portray that a “sanskari” (Hindu) upbringing automatically makes people rigid in their world-view.
Educational institutions mostly made Western knowledge systems aspirational. Convent schools has remained the benchmark for school education. Academia has largely been under the magical influence of socialist intellectuals whose knowledge of Hinduism seems to end with Manusmriti…
The result is that much of intelligentsia wants to remain at a safe distance from anything to do with the word “Hindu”.
—
We freed our land but we didn’t free our minds.
We divided our land and closed our hearts.
Our colonizers left our land. But didn’t leave us alone. The process of colonization was always on and still continues .
There are many tools. Language, Education, Cinema, Social Media.
They continue to tarnish the word “Hindu”…
Most of the elite intellectual Hindus had firmly come to accept all things “Hindu” are to be avoided in public. The shame and guilt had been masterfully injected.
“Images of Hegemonic Hinduism” had been cleverly weaved into popular narratives so that Hindus actively and increasingly withdrew from Hindutva.
While the intellect accepted this toxic vilification of Hindutva, the truth didn’t vanish from the collective psyche of the Hindus. It remained suppressed.
The soul of India is not separate from Hindutva or Sanatan Dharma. It has been ever present in the collective psyche of millions of Indians. The soul of India has the spirit of Hindutva.
A political regime change is the result of the soul’s effort to bring forth its aspiration. An aspiration to rise without any guilt and shame.
—
Ruthless persecution of Hindus for several centuries during the Islamic rule, did leave the Hindu psyche wounded. And partition made way for more violence and terrorism. This civilizational trauma has given rise to tendencies of fundamentalism.
But the solution to this is not blindly clinging to the Gandhian understanding of dogmatic non-violence.
Moralistic dogma of non-violence does not make us truly non-violent. All it can do is to perpetuate repression and self deception. Pretty much like religious dogmas.
“Moralistic” dogma of non-violence makes us hold on to an utopian image of peace. It makes us complacent to work on ourselves.
Dogmas do not purity us. Dogmas of non-violence can never really change our hatred to love. It is only through our own inner transformation that we can find non-violence. Sanatana Dharma is this too.
It is true that a political change can help us come out from being a “closet sanatani”. But it cannot do the work of changing ourselves. To become a true sanatani, one has to find a deeper love within. And to become a true santani, one can follow any religion.
So the whole point is to seek this deeper love. “Coming out” will be the natural consequence. Everyone then becomes Sanatani – identified with the Love that is Eternal. This is an identity to be celebrated all the time. Whole life can become a walk of sanatani “pride”.
—
Sanatan Dharma is nothing but the Eternal Laws of life.
Eternal law of life is seeking progress. Both within us and outside us. In whatever way life allows us.
It is trying to find love deeply, no matter how hard the path gets. It is the courage to strip off falsehood even when it is uncomfortable or painful.
Eternal law of life is to fight the darkness not just within but in the world too.
Eternal law of life is the One manifesting in the Many.
Unity in diversity is a manifestation of a deeper spiritual truth. India has always carried the wisdom and knowledge systems that made this truth a living reality.
So the choice is now between whole-heartedly owning our own fractured culture and infusing fresh creative energy into it OR gladly becoming psychological colonies of an artificial culture that is not just foreign but endlessly manipulative.
We too can now use all the tools – Language, Education, Cinema, Social Media.
In the upcoming new world culture, India can offer a lot. Particularly on psychological growth and wellbeing…
For that we need to own and strengthen our roots. A tree that provides shed to others, needs to have strong roots. We, collectively and individually, need to truly heal.
As true Indians we need to learn to shed off all the trappings of “intellectualism” that gets supplied relentlessly from outside. A true Indian mind deeply connects to the heart. An Indian mind is not distant from the spiritual.
Only when we learn to accept the spiritual with its full vigour, only when we consciously move closer to our spiritual origin, will we shine bright enough for the world.
The greatest psychological healing and growth comes with acceptance of truth and owning it sincerely.
We cannot deny that we live with many lies. Many of these lies are linked to the shame and guilt present in our conscious and subconscious. Our inner world has become dark and gloomy filled with self-deceptions and many denials. Only truth has the power to lit up the world within us. It is the light of truth that has the strongest affinity towards healing. Lies always break us from within.
When we truly heal, we become Whole. We know freedom, by becoming free. We stop all mad rush to follow trends and grabbing positions of importance. Life stops being a thing to be carried by our “self”. We allow our “self” to bloom within life. In love’s own beauty and power we find our roots. Our inner rootedness then controls all our doings.
Healing is not an easy journey. Neither is the path of truth. But at some point, healing and truth always meet.