“Among the major religions, Buddhism and Jainism with their origins in this country had no problem in dealing with Hindu cultural traditions of the time. They also had some convergence with Hindu beliefs and concepts like transmigration of soul, cycle of rebirth, reincarnation, and adherence to ahimsa (non violence).”Composite Indian culture
(November 05, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) India is world’s largest multi-religious, multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic democracy. To the Western mind conditioned by codified Christian ethos, successful practice of democracy in India for half a century and more is a conundrum waiting to be solved. It has made false prophets of doom merchants who predicted anarchy and chaos at the time of Indian independence. It has shown that democracy is not a preserve of the rich Western societies.
Despite its ponderous journey through un-chartered path of participatory democracy, at last it is poised to take its rightful place among nations on its own strength as envisaged by the father of Hindu renaissance Swami Vivekananda: “Can you adduce any reason why India should lie in the ebb-tide of the Aryan nations? Is she inferior in intellect? Is she inferior in dexterity? Can you look at her art, at her mathematics, at her philosophy, and answer ‘yes’? All that is needed is that she should de hypnotise herself and wake up from he age long sleep to her true rank in the hierarchy of nations.” [7]
Historically, others have always found India and Indians baffling and often difficult to understand. As Al-Biruni, who came to India with invading armies of Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century pointed out, foreigners found Indians were different from other people “in everything which other nations have in common.”[8] The reason for India’s survival and success is the evolution of a composite Indian culture in keeping with the dynamics of social change. Any social change is a painful process and the evolution of the composite Indian culture had not been a simple process. But India has been helped in this process by the ethos of Hinduism. India has been the source of two major world religions – Hinduism and Buddhism. It has also received and provided a home for not only other world religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism but also the less known ones like Zoroastrianism and the Bahaism. Foreigners of a wide spectrum – itinerant travellers and traders, refugees escaping religious persecution, invading armies, conquering emperors and evangelists - brought these religions from different continents to India over a thousand years.
Among the major religions, Buddhism and Jainism with their origins in this country had no problem in dealing with Hindu cultural traditions of the time. They also had some convergence with Hindu beliefs and concepts like transmigration of soul, cycle of rebirth, reincarnation, and adherence to ahimsa (non violence). They enriched the cultural scene without the type of conflicts of belief generated by Islam (7th century) and Christianity (15th century on a national scale) when they entered the sub continent. The Abrahamic religions had differed from Hinduism in key beliefs of godhead, polytheism, and allegiance to a single sacred book or a uniform code of conduct. They also differed on issues like idol worship, transmigration of souls, or cycle of birth. However, both Islam and Christianity took root in the country and absorbed part of the Hindu traditional practices to evolve their own Indian traditions. Hindu culture was also influenced by the Islamic and Christian theology and traditions, giving rise to transcendental cults like Kabirpanthis and Brahmo Samaj, and even a religion like Sikhism. All these subtle and not so subtle influences of religions and international linkages have shaped India’s composite culture. With the help of this composite Indian culture majority of Indians irrespective of their religion have been able to evolve a dynamic process of social adjustment to build a core national identity.
The composite Indian culture has certain elements shaped by the Hindu attitude – acceptance and adjustment to change and non-violence as an article of faith. In the course of history Indian people had faced a few tectonic changes – the Muslim invasion and rule, British colonization, and the partition of India to create Pakistan. It’s a tribute to the people and their composite culture that they had managed to absorb these shocks and continued to put their faith in democracy and focus, by and large, on development issues rather than dissipate their energies on religious schism. Currently India is facing the fourth tectonic shock – terrorist operation aided and abetted by Pakistan for over two decades in Jammu and Kashmir State. As a result more than 200,000 Kashmiri Hindus have been driven out of their homes. Despite these gross provocations, shrill anti-Islamic hysteria that one finds in the west after 9/11 is markedly absent in the country. Very few Indian Muslims figure in list of global terrorists though India has the second highest Muslim population in the world. [9]
It is this composite culture that has made successful immigrants of Indians in over 80 countries, contributing to the growth of the host country, while maintaining their distinct, common Indian identity. This is despite the regional, religious, linguistic, and caste differences among them. It is the strength of this culture that even fourth generation descendents of this Diaspora in a number of countries in the continents of Africa, Australasia, America have continued to maintain this identity and at the same time managed to get along with the local societies without major social conflict.
Thus to have an understanding to Hinduism in the current socio-political context, there is a need to study Indian democracy with reference to -
a. Indian democracy’s features that enables it to cope with social confrontations
b. The changes in social equation between communities, particularly Hindus and Muslims in India. This is important because the social adjustment process, evolved after the traumatic change wrought by India’s partition is under threat due to alien inspired Jihadi terrorism, now a global phenomenon. Many sections of Indian society, particularly Hindu right, have questioned the legitimacy of secularism as a national policy. Historical Hindu grievances of excesses by Muslim rulers of the past are being resurrected and made into political issues. Inevitably religious affiliation, which had not been a major issue of Indian politics, is increasingly playing an important political role. The Muslim factor has become an important aspect in the exercise and operation of Indian democracy with its inevitable consequence on national security. Thus an understanding of Hindu-Muslim linkages becomes another important factor in understanding the dimensions of democracy and national security.
(Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90. He is associated with the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai Centre for China Studies. E-mail:colhari@yahoo.com)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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