Mind alone is the cause of both bondage and liberation.
- Amritabindu Upanishad, Verse 2
Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang) in his "journey to the west" between 629 CE and 645 CE referred to India as 'Yin-tu' which means moon (in Sanskrit). Dharampal in his book 'A Beautiful Tree' describes various British territories like Bengal, Bihar, Madras, Punjab, and others that "there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages more." And the 1830s, the British began the survey of India to implement policies that "established some affinity of outlook and belief between the rules and the rule" whether it was introducing a new "Christian" education policy or opening up India to evangelical missionaries for extending Christian 'light' and 'knowledge' (Page 16, The Beautiful Tree, Dharampal)
Since ancient times travelers, monks, seers, and seekers have traveled to India for knowledge. The rich spiritual tradition of India includes Nyaya, Vaisheshik, Yoga, Vedanta, and other philosophies, within a pluralistic society that facilitated other dharmas like Jainism and Buddhism. The journey of Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang) that started in 629 CE beautifully traverses through the major economic, knowledge & spiritual hubs of ancient India like Taxila, Sakala, Kanauj, Benares, Nalanda, Ujjain, Bodh Gaya, Kanchipuram and others. It was about 600 years later that University at Nalanda was senselessly destroyed by Muhammad Bakthiyar Khalji, a Turko-Afghan military general, that another layer of darkness engulfed the indigenous Hindu mind. One can only imagine the plight of Buddhist and Hindu monks, teachers, and students that were mercilessly butchered and the books that were burnt inside a secular institution of education. However, this wasn't the first (and not the last) of darkness that engulfed the land of 'Yin-tu'.
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| The Travel of Xuanzang (http://www.drben.net/ChinaReport/Sources/China_Maps/China_Empire_History/Tang_Dynasty/Map-Asia-Xuanzhang_Travel_Route-629-645AD-1A.html) |
The absolute plummet of Dharmic ethos began with the middle-eastern imperialism that began with the invasion of Muhammad Bin Qasim (695-715 CE) on north-western India which was then ruled by Raja Dahir Sen of Sindh. Thus began the journey of the Hindu mind that has been enslaved by various bondages for millennia. And continues even today in secular modern India in a new 'avatar'. In 'Flight of Deities' by Meenakshi Jain the true nature of iconoclasm and desecration of temples and images of God across India is revealed. The images were buried in the ground 'on a considerable scale to protect them and 'retrieve them in favorable times. Even today you can find numerous news articles of villagers unearthing Hindu god images (idols) while tilling their land. Our ancestors who took this grave risk to save their deities are an inspiration for courage and resolve during tough times.
But a modern Hindu mind is a pandora's box of corrupted historical knowledge, a giant inferiority complex, a plethora of nonindigenous belief systems, and a desire to ingratiate everyone else by denigrating their own heritage.
A Corrupted Historical Knowledge
As an adult, my grasp of Indian history can be described at best as 'broken' and largely 'incomplete'. Society and individuals strive to be part of a legacy that carries the culture, tradition, knowledge system, and familial bonds forward. We yearn to pass on to the next generation something that will perhaps be worthwhile enough to guide them during tough times. History is one such pearl that we string together for the next generation.
A history of India that showcases the Indic history rooted in dharma is missing from our books. From my own personal recollection of the study of history until the end of my higher secondary education I was never able to come up with a consolidated view of the Indic past. At best my understanding was limited to:
- Indus Valley Civilization, something of an anomaly compared to modern India, with unparalleled urban planning and large-scale building planning (including a public bath, water conversation system, and dockyard)
- Scattered mentions of the Mauryan empire, including Chandragupta Maurya - with no mention of what binds us as a civilizational state (or even the vastness of the Mauryan empire)
- Ashoka (the great) - spread of Buddhism, subtle bashing of Hinduism
- "NCERT history writers then present the foreign invaders, primarily the Muslim Turkic and Mughal regimes, as benevolent and just. Indian kingdoms spread over large areas and periods are reduced to a mere footnote in history. In contrast, smaller foreign kingdoms, sometimes even those limited to a city or a single individual, are presented as empires". (Chapter 5, Brainwashed Republic, Neeraj Atri)
- Caste oppression, Sati, and "evil" practices of Hinduism with Brahmins as oppressors
- And the 20th-century colonialism with a subtle and misleading nature of 'Two Nation Theory' inspirations such as the Khilafat Movement
Although, the list above is not all-encompassing it summarizes the 'feeling' of history that's left within a Hindu mind and the narrative that guides it even today. With no connection to the historical past, one begins to wonder if there was anything great about India and what connects the contemporary Indians to this land.
A Giant Inferiority Complex
"Those who ruled us destroyed our best systems. They knew that they could rule us only if they succeeded in creating an inferiority complex within us because we were ahead of them in every aspect", Amit Shah, Union Home Minister, Government of India, 5th August 2022.
Qutub Minar, in New Delhi, is known for its beautiful gardens, the Minar itself, and other structures like the mosque and the tomb. The ASI signage in the complex so subtly and shamelessly hides the fact that it was built after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples. The name of the mosque itself egregiously states the message that Qutbuddin Aibak wanted to put out - 'Quwwatul-Islam Masjid' or 'Might of Islam'.
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| ASI Signage at Qutub Minar Complex |
One can only imagine the trauma of indigenous Hindus and Jains who lost their places of worship in 1193 CE. Piece by piece of idolatrous architecture was dismantled, a place where the locals perhaps worshipped for thousands of years (a 1200-year-old idol was found inside the mosque in 2022). This perhaps is one of the numerous events that created a trans-generational trauma that eventually transformed into an inferiority complex under the Gora sahibs.
Even today, any celebration or even a slight acknowledgment of Indic civilizational milestones is mocked by Indians themselves. And the person stating such is tagged as right-wing to dismiss such discussions as nonsensical. It's not surprising that centuries of propaganda have flushed out any sense of pride and narratives have reduced India to a land of poor, cow-herding illiterates (which perhaps is a step forward as it's no longer snake charmers as stereotypes).
Nonindigenous Belief Systems
Let me begin by saying that ancient India welcomed belief systems that were different from their own Dharmic system. Whether it was the Parsi (Persians) or the Jews who settled in India to escape religious persecution. In fact, within Indic philosophy, there is sufficient room for atheism (you'll have to remove the western lens to understand nāstika philosophy in the Dharmic realm). Even within the āstika philosophies, there is pluralism that doesn't draw a hostile line of otherization between the various point of view. In other words, there is no "otherization" in Dharmic indigenous belief system.
Yet, the Hindu mind of today is marred with nonindigenous belief systems that go contrary to Dharmic values. Aryan Invasion Theory was one such replica of colonial Indologists who always viewed India as a land of 'heathens'. William Wilberforce even went on to say "a monstrous system of follies and superstitions as that under the yoke of which the natives of Hindostan (sic) now groan." (Page 4, Substances of the Speeches of William Wilberforce, On the clause in the East-India Bill for promoting religious instructions and moral improvement of the natives of British dominion in India, sic) This perspective continues to foliate our minds even today. Generations of Indians have slugged through the works of great Greek philosophers yet are unaware of Indic works on ontology and epistemology of Vaiśeṣika (Sanskrit: वैशेषिक) and Nyāya (Sanskrit: न्याय) respectively.
We view Yoga (sic) through a nonindigenous lens and reduce it to exercise (nothing wrong with that but as Indians we owe it to our heritage of Yog to go back to its roots). So much of today's Indian conversation is rooted in colonial prejudices. And we continue to adopt (in some cases unknowingly) western concepts of Wokeism and Critical Race Theory "where the end game is to dismantle all structures of the Vedic/Hindu heritage, its texts, deities, symbols, rituals, festivals, customs, gurus and institutions" (Chapter 2, The Americanization of Caste, Critical Race Theory's Passage to India). The "otherization" has already begun with no critical analysis of the historical context. The dismantling of an entire spiritual philosophy (and a way of life) is openly called out in forums under the garb of liberal thinking.
Denigrating Our Own Heritage
Audrey Truschke in her monologue used some strawman arguments to portray any Hindu who has voted for the current government under Narendra Modi as a far-right conspiracy theorist. Her strawman arguments included Savarkar, "holy cow", Akhand Bharat', Aryan Migration Theory, and so much as to give a blanket clean chit to Middle-eastern Imperialism as something that only Hindutva followers "see as hundreds of years of oppression". We also fall for such lazy arguments to make fun of the 'other side and throw away any Indic concept that may have Hindu origins into the basket of 'nonsense' and 'not modern'.
We can argue in detail on each of the above aspects but here is a short version for each. Vikram Sampath has written a couple of books on Savarkar and explained what 'Hindutva' meant for him. Hindutva is a spectrum of thoughts not just Savarkar, yet Truschke blankets them in one basket for a convenient bashing of the current political dispensation and drawing comparisons to "fascism" for fear-mongering. 'Akhand Bharat' is the notion that's pointing to a civilizational state where a cultural continuity exists; whether that's the use of the swastika in the Indus-Sarasvati Valley Civilization or significance given to the concept of Dharma or Karma or even temples that are spread across now modern Afghanistan. Pakistan and Bangladesh. For example, there are 51 Shakti Pitha (a denomination of Hinduism where the Goddess is worshipped); most of these historic places of goddess worship are in India, but there are seven in Bangladesh, three in Pakistan, three in Nepal, and one each in Tibet and Sri Lanka. Coming to the topic of 'Cow', it's a multifaceted topic that has become a political animal of its own. But the reverence of cows in Hinduism can be attributed to the fact that middle-eastern invaders from Turkey, Afghanistan, etc. did use cow meat as a tactic to desecrate Hindu temples and humiliate the indigenous population. A more detailed analysis can be found here, and you can go further from there on your own.
Unfortunately, the modern Hindu mind is either lazy or indifferent about scholastic research but is blown away like a twig in the popular opinion which is laced with a leftist bias. And denigration of cultural heritage is a topic that is easier to spit out on Twitter or in front of Gora to sound more "modern".
Conclusion
On a personal note, I'm not a historian or a philosopher but I use reading to reach my own conclusions based on multiple points of analysis. At the same time, I don't like blanket statements that try to put a single narrative on each topic without any room for the other. As Vikram Sampath says that any historical personality cannot be reduced to a unit (except perhaps in a spiritual sense) because every one of them (including us) is a product of one's past and present. So broad brushing Hinduism, Hindutva, and other concepts will be unfair, lazy, and hypocritical.
The enslavement of the Hindu mind will continue to plague India until we start broadening it with multiple points of view and make rational judgments.
History shouldn't be used for modern populism but that doesn't mean truth should be trimmed for political correctness and sensitivity.
And the "otherization" i.e. segregating humanity by demonizing the other side is a pattern that should end for the betterment of our future.
I've my own journey to take and so do you.
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