Defense of Hindu Society

Presentation based on a book bySita Ram Goel

Sanatan dharma says that the aspiration for Truth(satyam),

Goodness(sivam), Beauty(sundaram), and power(aisvarya) is inherent in every soul, every soul, everywhere

and in all times.

“YATHA PINDE TATHA BRAHMANDE”

(as in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm)

The way to world-discovery is through self-discovery.

But spokesmen of some ideologies are pointing accusing

fingers at Hindu society.

Hindu society must gather sufficient self-confidence to repel

the attack

PRINCIPLES OF DEFENSE

Hindu scholars keep comparing their own shastras in support to find similar

ideas in pretentious ideologies likeChristian claim of “Social Service”

Islamic claim of “Human Brotherhood”Communist claim of “Social Equality”modernistic claim of “Democracy &

Secularism”

The first principle Hindu society has to observe while preparing its defense is that it will stop processing & evaluating its own heritage in

terms of ideas and ideals projected by closed creeds & pretentious ideologies.

On the contrary

Hindu society should process & evaluate the heritage of those creeds & ideologies in terms of its own categories of thought, & find out the real

worth of Christian, Islamic, Communist and Modernist claims.

• Hindu society has yet to proclaim that India has always been & will always remain a Hindu homeland.

• Hindu society has yet to affirm that all spiritual, cultural, philosophical, and scientific heritage is Hindu, and those who are ashamed of being named a Hindu has no right to take pride in it.

• It has yet to point out that the only contribution of Islam been the ruination of this country

HINDUS SHOULD BE PROUD OF THEIR RELIGION

Hindus have become devoid of self-confidence simply because they have ceased to take legitimate, well-informed, and conscious pride in their spiritual, cultural and social heritage.

• Firstly, Hindus have to reawaken to the sublime spirituality of their own Sanatan Dharma.

• Secondly Hindus have to study and scrutinize the sources from which the “only true” creeds derive their inspiration.

That will give Hindus the requisite self-confidence to counter all misinformed or

malicious criticism.

Spiritual freedom versus

religious regimentation

People generally find it difficult to accept the spiritual freedom in

Sanatan Dharma.

And they put some general questions to a student of

Sanatan Dharma

WHO IS YOUR ONLY SAVIOR OR YOUR LAST PROPHET?

•Every one has to be one’s own savior, one’s own prophet. One has to discover the spiritual truths for one’s own self. •Scriptures and teachers can only be the guides and may help in search for the truth.•A truth discovered by someone else is cannot become one’s truth one rediscover it for himself.

WHICH IS THE BOOK IN WHICH YOU BELIEVE, OR YOUR AL-KITAB?

•The whole spiritual truth, every shastra, is secret in human heart.•Many seers and saints have seen it many ways, spoken of it in many languages and my means of as many metaphors. A single book can never describe it all.•A god known through al-kitab always remain external to the world.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU ON THE “DAY OF JUDGMENT”? WHO WILL SAVE YOU FROM GOD’S WRATH AND ETERNAL HELL-FIRE?•Sanatan Dharma is not so mean and miserly in deciding human destiny.•One can start anew from the point where one stopped in one’s previous life & the process does not cease till a creature has achieved Godhood.•The journey is from darkness & bondage to light & freedom, not from the sensual pleasures of this world to the sensual orgies of high heaven.

Sanatan Dharma stands for self-exploration, self-purification and self-transcendence while these

creeds for self-stupefaction, self-righteousness and self-

aggrandizement

Histories of these creeds are full of crusades or jihads, massacres and genocides, inquisitions and witch-

huntings.

It is a sin to regard them as religion in any sense of the term, and to extend sambhava towards their intolerant

dogmas.

Hostility to Hindu Psyche• The missionaries & Mullahs are the

crusades & mujahids who believe that Hindus should either be converted to a true faith or killed & consigned to eternal hell fire.

• Destruction & defilement of the images of Hindu god & goddesses, demolition of Hindu temples & monasteries, destruction of Hindu places of pilgrimage, & burning of Hindu shastras are the fundamental tenets of their faith.

Theology of Monotheism

Cruel, Vindictive, Capricious and Unjust God

• God is extra cosmic. He created the cosmos out of nothing in order to demonstrate his almightiness & consequently kept himself outside & above the Cosmos.

• The elements in nature are devoid of any divinity.

• Birds and animals are mere brutes unless they are domesticated.

• It is only man who is placed on the higher pedestal because man is the best God’s creation, the ashraf-ul-makhluqat.

• Man can exploit the material resources of the earth in whatever way he pleases.

• Man can eat every bird & animal for God has created them for man’s consumption.

• Man can marry and divorce and keep his of concubines any number women.

• But it is an unpardonable sin for man to fancy that he shares even an iota of God’s divinity.

PLACE OF WOMEN IN MONOTHEISTIC THEOLOGIES.

In Islam women is given with the same role in heaven as on earth- to serve man in servile obedience and to provide sexual pleasure to

her male master. The only concession extended to women is

to be spared the pains of maternity and old age. She becomes a hourie

endowed with eternal youth & unfading beauty.

In Christianity, women is essentially a temptress who lead man to hell. Her

role in the hereafter has not been clearly defined.

The monogamy we find in Christianity is not prescribed in the Christian

scripture. It was an institution which it borrowed from the Pagan religion.

Church killed thousands of innocent women calling it

“witch hunt”

THE PLIGHT OF THE ALLAH OF ISLAM PORTRAYED BY SHYKH MUHAMMED IQBAL, SHIKWA

“Tujhko malum hai leta tha kui nam tira/ Quwwat-i-bazu-i-muslim ne kiya kam tira.”(do you know of anyone who bothered about you before we came forward? It was the muscle-power of the Muslim which came to your rescue)

SHYKH MUHAMMED IQBAL,

“par tire nam pe talwas ythai kisne? Kat kar rakh diye kuffar ke lashkar kisne”(But who did draw their swords in defense of your name & fame? Who was it that slaughtered the armies of infidels for your sake?)

SHYKH MUHAMMED IQBAL,

“qahar to yeh hai ke kafri ko mile hur-o-qusur/ aur bechare musalman ko faqat wada-i hur.”(The terrible tragedy is that the infidels live in the palaces and make love to houris in this life, while the poor Muslim has to remain content only with the promise of houris hereafter.)

This is the highest aspiration Christianity and Islam speaks

about.

Psyche of Christianity and Islam hides vulgar materialism and imperialist ambition under a

welter of high-sounding verbiage.

Vedic Approach:Unity without sacrificing Diversity

• If there is sincerity, truth and self-giving in worship, that worship goes true by whatever way we may conceive.

• If it has ego, falsehood, conceit and deceit in it, it is of no use though it may be offered to the most true god

The distinction is not between a true One God and false Many Gods. It is between a true

way of worship and a false way of worship.

• If monotheism represents man’s intuition for unity, polytheism represents his urge for differentiation.

• Spiritual life is one but is very vast and rich. So the human mind also conceives it differently.

• If all human had same mind, the same imagination, the same needs, in short, if human all were the same, then perhaps one god would do.

So only some form of polytheism can do justice to

this variety and richness.

Problem of One or many Gods is born of a theological mind, not of

a mystic consciousness.

All Ancient Nations Worshiped Many Gods

The Gods of Greeks and Romans are well known in spite of the large scale destruction by the

vandals of Christianity.

The Roman god Jupiter’s bird

There was a time when the ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans,

and Egyptians worshipped a multiplicity of Gods in the form of

icon installed in temples.

The ancient Iranians paid homage to Fire God in their shrines.

Coin of Emperor Shapur II, circa 240 A.D., showing fire-altar

Historical FireTemple of Atashkuh, Mahalla, Markazi State, Iran

The Britons, the Celts, the Franks, the Germans, the Scandinavians

& the Salvs also sensed their Gods as residing in many

mountains, rivers and forests.

Pre-Islamic Arabs had many Gods & worshipped them in many sacred

shrines before the prophet of Islam presided over their destruction.

Pre-IslamicPalmyrene deities Aglibôl (Moon God), Beelshamên

(Supreme God), Malakbêl (Sun God)

Dusares was a deity in the ancient

Middle East

Ishtar is the Assyrian & Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate northwest

Semitic goddess Astarte.

All these Polytheistic cultures were relatively free from

religious wars (They had their full quota of wars

otherwise.)

Monstrosities of Monotheism• Monotheism was not always a spiritual idea. In

many cases, it was an ideology which caused wars.• It has manufactured a number of hate-filled words-

infidel, kãfir, unbeliever, munkir, mushrik, heathen, heretic, hypocrite, polytheist, pantheist, pagan- which divide the one human family into a number of warring camps.

• These malicious words have motivated many crusades, jihãds, inquisitions, genocides, imperialist aggressions, and campaigns for pillage and rapine.

The Mughals under Akbar had to abandon the experiment in order to save and extend their

empire.

The Islamic state met the fate it deserved when Aurangzeb tried

to reverse the trend.

Modern West made a worthwhile progress in science,

technology, and a culture of general human welfare only

when it rejected the dogmas of Christianity, and returned to the

humanism of ancient Greece and Rome.

Muslim rule in India

The Rising Tide of Muslim Revivalism• Muslim society in India looked at the freedom

movement with suspicion.• They frequently denounced it as a Hindu conspiracy

to capture power to the detriment of Islam.• They started throwing up one revivalist movement

after another throughout the period of British rule.• The British had to intervene against the mullahs not

to protect Hindus so much as to restore law & order• Some of the Muslim fanatics got killed in these

encounters & were hailed as martyrs(shahids)

• The Moplah Muslims of Malabar started another jihad against their Hindus neighbors.

• The British had to send some armed forces before the Muslim butchery of innocent Hindus could be brought under control.

• The Moplah violence was the opening scene of unprecedented riots staged by Muslims all over India.

The Muslims could always slaughter a cow in the presence of Hindus, or abduct and molest

a Hindu girl in keeping with the behest of Islam, or take out a rowdy tajia procession

through a thoroughfare thickly populated by Hindus.

The Hindu-states under the Rajputs, the Marathas, the Sikhs

& the Jats never molested Muslims in spite of Hindu

memories of Islam.

Hindu society have to discard the mindless slogan of sarva-

dharma-sambhava

Hindu society has been sustained by its spiritual center throughout the

ages, particularly in the face of Islamic and Christian barbarism. Hindu

society will be revived and revitalized only by recovering its spiritual centre

which is Sanatana Dharma.

Universal Spirituality

“Tamso ma jyotirgamaya,asato ma sadgamaya,

mrityoma amritam gamaya.”

(From darkness to light,from unreal to real,

from death to immortality.)

• The starting point of Hindu sages & seers was not God but man.

• Their conclusions were based on the direct perception not fanatical faith.

• Man is neither an a priori assumption nor an abstract concept like God.

• On the contrary, man is a concrete reality accessible to direct (pratyaksa) perception which is the only valid evidence (pramãna) recognized by Hindu spirituality.

Hindu society has to realize that Christianity and Islam are

not religions but political ideologies.