Origin of Hindu Fundamentalism : In search of Montheism

-Biplab Pal :12/3/05
In my recent debate with Mehul Kamdar, I proved the fact that Hindu fundamentalism has grown up from Indian nationalist movement that started during 1870-1900. My argument is simple-there was no such cohesive religion as Hinduism before British. It was merely a paganism of diverse culture with obscured religious texts, divided into thousands of sects, casts and subcasts. Such a dilapidated and dying force, striving for its existence in fanatic forces of Maratha nationalism and thousands of local feudal kings serving under Newabs, could never unite against pan-Islamic and Christian fundamentalism that was threatening the existence of local pagan culture. In those days, it was a mixture of Bramhinical Hinduism with locally rooted deism. By 1830, Christian missionaries with their everlasting zeal of mass conversion caused resentment among conservative Hindues. Along with it, grown a section of Hindu population, educated in Lord Bentinck’s vision of humanism, started a mass reform of Hinduism. Notable among them are Raja RamMohan Roy, VidyaSagar, Keshav Sen, Debendranath Tagore , Dwananda Swaraswati and Bal Gangadhar Tialak, who were increasingly aware of the fact that in order to establish Hindu unity against the threat of monotheism, polytheist deism in Hinduism would be of very little help. Hinduism as a platform boosted virtually every religious philosophy, and therefore, a booming need for monotheism forced the reformed Hindues towards Gita and Adityabad or non-dualism in Vedanta as a primary source of inspiration.
Though Gita was written around 1000BC and Koran was composed roughly about 7th century AD, central message of Gita and Koran are similar:
Both the texts transpire a non-material philosophy based on sacrifice of materialism. Sacrifice and submission of ego as our existence as biological being on the feet of supreme creator is the central theme of both Gita and Koran.
Both the holy texts demand absolute devotion to the lord (Allah) and nothing but the lord (Allah)
Also similar are the facts that both the books demand they are the absolute truth-all other religious texts are adulterated!
And both the books declared war against invaders and tyrannical leaders-holywar is translated as DharmaYudhya in Gita and Jihad in Koran.
Difficulty is, considering the historical timeline of the past, when science didn’t emerge as supreme military power, above mentioned cannons were extremely powerful tactics to unite and strengthen a society. Pure deism is good for a flourishing culture but it can not boost a military unity. The central canons expressed in 1-4, are deadly religious weapon which can be used for both fundamentalism and unification of a society.
I was looking for more information into the subject and found this wonderful article by a professor from University of Utah on the origin of Hindu fundamentalism.
Strangely the article supports and states everything I stated in the debate in connection to political promotion of Monotheism for Hindu fundamentalism. Hope the article will be interesting reading to our audience.
OUTLINES OF HINDU FUNDAMENTALISM
Let me begin with some observations that should give any reasonable person pause. In 1998 Hindu fundamentalists proposed that a new Goddess temple be built at Pokharan, 50 km from the site of the atomic bomb tests that were conducted in April of that year. According to their program this would be the 53rd example of Shaktipeeths (seats of strength, literally Goddess power) of Hindu preeminence. Another power center is the new temple to Rama in Ayodhya, being built on the site of the Babri mosque, destroyed by a Hindu mob in December 1992.) Some suggested that radioactive sand from the test site should be distributed as prasad, the Hindu sacrament, but cooler heads vetoed that idea. Some Hindu fundamentalists also believe that ancient Indians actually possessed atomic weapons, which they call AOm-mad-bombs.
The Indian military helps to fuel this religious enthusiasm by having named its long range missile after the Vedic god of fire Agni. (The Pakistanis countered by appropriating the power of the Hindu Goddess by naming their missile Ghauri, a name for the Goddess in Southern India.) The followers of Shri Shena, a fundamentalist organization in Mumbai, proudly proclaim that, after the bomb tests, Hindus were no longer eunuchs and now could stand up to the world as real men. During 1999 Durga festival in Calcutta celebrants found new figures in the traditional tableau of the Goddess Durga and her attendants. They saw life size figures of brave Indian soldiers who won a victory in the mountains of Kashmir because of Durga’s divine grace. Hundreds of years ago Hindu kings went into battle only after receiving Durga’s blessing by sacrificing dozens of water buffalo to her.
Another chilling experience is to read about the recovery of an original Hindu Empire, extending West into Afghanistan and Central Asia encompassing all Buddhist sites; extending North to recover the Tibet, the original land of the Aryans according to Dayananda Saraswati, extending Northwest to Cambodia to recover the Hindu Khmer kingdoms of Angkor Wat and North Vietnam, where Shiva lingas have been found; and extending Southeast to Java, where a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom once flourished, and Bali where three million Hinuds still live. This reminds me of Zionist maps of Greater Israel or plans by some Calvinists for a new Confederate States of America where God-fearing Anglo-Celtic top males will rule their households and their nation of fifteen states.
The origins of Hindu religious nationalism are quite recent considering the long history of advanced cultures in the Indian Sub-Continent. V. D. Savakar’s Hindutva (literally Hinduness ) was published in 1923, but the ideas of this book go back to the beginning of the 19th Century. The supreme irony about Hindu fundamentalism is that its first writers were profoundly influenced by European Orientalism and its archeological and linguistic discoveries. The same Orientalism that gave Europeans the excuse to view Asians as effeminate and impotent, thereby lacking the capacities for self rule, was used by Indian writers to create a view of India as a unified nation that gave birth to not only to the European languages but also to its first civilized peoples and the world’s greatest religion. The idea of India as the cradle of civilization and spirituality is, amazingly enough, found in Voltaire, Herder, Kant, Schegel, Shelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. Some scholars argue that the Indian philosophy that we now know as neo-Vedanta found in Aurobindo, Vivikeananda, and Gandhi, is just as much German idealism and Indian philosophy.
Hindu fundamentalists were flattered by Aldous Huxley’s idea of the Perennial Philosophy and its mystic monism, originally found in the Upanishads and only later, according to their views, spread to other cultures. Thesophists such as Annie Besant turned orientalism on its European creators, claiming that what they perceived as weaknesses-- namely, non-dualism, nonviolence, renunciation, meditation, and tolerance were precisely what was needed for the salvation of Western societies. In the 1870s there was a concerted effort on the part of English theosophists to merge with the Indian Arya Samaj (Society of Aryans) as part of Annie Besant’s vision of a World Federation of Aryans. Ironically, in another move of reverse orientalism, members of Arya Samaj vetoed this idea because they insisted that Indians were the only true Aryans! Interestingly enough, both Indians and Europeans agreed on at least one proposition: Hindu civilization was indeed corrupt and suffering a long decline, but Hindu fundamentalists believed that the solution to that problem was not Christian capitialism; rather, it was the recovery of a glorious Hindu past that Europeans had conveniently rediscovered for them.
Even before Arya Samaj there was the Brahmo Samaj (Society of Brahma, the Hindu Creator God) founded in Calcutta in 1828 by Rammohan Roy, who, although still preserving the idea of Vedic authority, developed a fully modernist, that is rationalist and humanist, approach to Indian identity and nationhood. Debendranath Tagore, father of the more famous Rabindranath Tagore, broke with Roy over the issue of Vedic authority, and another nationalist Keshab Chandra Sen proposed that Hinduism ought to be Christianized. The result of these developments within the Bengal Renaissance was a growing view of Hindu supremacy and exclusivity. One of the most dramatic examples of these views came from Bajnarain Basu, who waxed eloquent as follows:
The noble and puissant Hindu nation rousing herself after sleep, and rushing headlong towards progress with divine prowess. I see this rejuvenated nation again illuminating the world by her knowledge, spirituality and culture, and the glory of the Hindu nation again spreading over the whole world.
Rajnarain was insistent that the Hindu Motherland could have no place for Muslims because their religion was alien to India. India’s religion should be a cultural Hinduism based on the Upanishads but allowing for the mediation of the one true God by means of the traditional idols. The Brahmo Samaj proposed gradual but sure reform on the elements that had tarnished the image of Hinduism word wide: caste problems, widow remarriage, untouchability, and child marriage.
Arya Samaj was founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875 in Bombay, now renamed Mumbai because of Hindutva. (Madras is now called Chennai and Hindu nationalists want to change all English street names to Hindi and do not want their children to attend English medium schools.) Dayananda’s philosophy is sometimes called neo-Hinduism or Semitized Hinduism, what I would call an Abrahamic Hinduism. Dayananda claimed that the Aryans originated in Tibet, a hypothesis that the Nazis tested by sending Ernst Schaefer and Bruno Beger on two expeditions there in the 1930s. (The Nazis were also captivated by an alternative bizarre idea that the Arctic was the home of Aryans, an idea promoted by Hindu nationalist B. G. Tilak.) While in Tibet the Aryans, according to Dayananda, purged themselves of inferior people (identified as the dasyus in the Rigveda) and then spread to the rest of the world. In India they established the Hindu Golden Age described in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. This great age came to an end with the Kurukhetra War, the beginning of which is dramatically described in the Bhagavad-gita and the result, according to the text, was over a million deaths. Hindu civilization then descended into a long decline that was exacerbated by the pacificism and nihilism of Buddhism and Jainism, which were seen as failed off shoots of Hinduism and not separated religiously from Hinduism. During the Second Millennium CE a weakened Hindusim was easy prey for first the Mughal invaders and second British imperialism.
Dayananda saw the Aryans as paragons of virtue and the world’s first monotheists. Even though he uses the Hindu epics as proof of the Golden Age, he argued that only the Vedas and the Upanishads have religious authority. (Oddly enough, the members of the Ayra Samaj retained the Vedic fire ritual for their services.) He rejected the authority of the priests to interpret scripture and set himself up, in a way very similar to some preachers in the Abrahamic religion, as the only one that could interpret the Vedas correctly. He saw the Vedas and Upanishads as the literal Word of God and as the infallible text of the one true Hindu church, a concept alien to the Indian religious tradition, but one again very similar to the Abrahmanic religions. Setting the stage for 20th Century Hindutva, Dayananda lauched systematic attacks on traditional Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists.
On the plus side, Dayananda believed that the subjugation of women came with the decline of Hinduism and declared that this was a social ill that needed correction. He also spoke out against the thousand plus subcastes (jati) that divide Indians according to specific vocations and prevent lateral movement in Indian society. With regard to the four main castes Dayananda thought that it was a mistake to think of them as hereditary, a position that was an advance over Gandhi, who, while rejecting the oppression of the Dalits, still maintained the hereditary nature of the four main castes.
After Dayananda’s death there was a campaign to reconvert Dalits whose families had gone over to Christianity and syncretistic Muslims who, because they so fully participated in Hindu celebrations, ought, according to Arya Samaj, to return to the fold of the true faith. This campaign of reconversion is still at the forefront of Hindu fundamentalist efforts today, especially among the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
A key figure in the transition from the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj is Chandranath Basu who is the author that coined the term Hindutva (Hinduness) and he turned Hindu nationalism in a decidedly conservative and reactionary direction. In 1892 he published Hindutva: An Authentic History of the Hindus in which he defended traditional views Hindu ritual, caste, restriction of women’s education and civil rights, and the maintenance of male authority. Chandranath was firmly committed to demonstrating the superiority of Hinduism over Christianity, especially after the wide spread concern that conversions to Christianity were increasing in the latter half of the century.
In the novels and commentaries of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya, we see again the profound influence that European philosophy had on the rise of Indian nationalism. Particularly important was the work of Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and Auguste Comte. Interestingly enough, Bankim early support for women’s equality, presumably under Mill’s influence, disappeared in his later works, which also contain stronger claims to Hindu supremacy and more stringent anti-Muslim comments. He criticized Mill and Comte for their atheism and substituted Krishna’s religion of love as the key to human spiritual cultivation and progress. Nineteenth Century Indian nationalists were fully caught up in the idea of evolution and Bankim proposed that Hinduism was the perfect candidate for Comte’s idea of Apositive religion, the final stage of human perfection. Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy finds a new Indo-European home, but it has a new humanistic twist. Bankim rejects both the abstract monotheism he finds in Abrahamic religions and the impersonal monism of his own Brahmo Samaj in favor of the divine incarnation of Krishna as a human being.
At the turn of the century one of the most important Indian nationalist figure is B. G. Tilak, whose importance and standing in the Congress Party was second only to Gandhi. For purposes of our study of Hindu fundamentalism, Tilak was instrumental in inventing a powerful new form of devotionalism centered on the elephant god Ganesha. Tilak’s strategy was calculated and very effective: the new Ganesha festival (first celebrated in 1893) would compete with the Muslim festival of Muharram, which Hindus had always attended. Hindu nationalists in the state of Maharastra were successful in creating a new division between Muslims and Hindus that would intensify decade by decade into the new century. The Ganesha festival in Bombay is now so huge that it is common to see pictures and stories of it in the international press.
Tilak also resurrected King Shivaji, who, by the grace of his patron goddess Bhawani, was by far the most successful Hindu warrior king against the Mughal Empire during the 17th Century. Hindu fundamentalists admire Shivaji’s courage and excuse his ruthlessness against the Muslims he defeated. Tilak also instigated celebrations honoring Shivaji but many of them in the 1890s turned violent, the beginnings of the communal conflict that was to increase in the next century but was an uncommon occurrence in earlier times. Tilak used the Bhagavad-gita to justify Shivaji’s campaigns against the Mughals but also the violence that may be necessary to keep the Muslims of his day in line. Shivaji has become a hero and a model for a militant leader who will bring back the glory of all things Hindu. It is significant, however, in terms of the historical Shivaji that while Muslims repeatedly declared jihad against him, Shivaji principal motivations were Maratha nationalism rather than a broader Hindu nationalism based on the concept of the Indian Sub-Continent as one nation and the idea of Hinduism as a universal religion. Tilak also ignored the fact that Shivaji not only had Muslim allies but employed Muslims in his army and administration, demonstrating that his concept of a Martha nation included non-Hindus as well. Nonetheless, the revival and revision of Shivaji’s reign resulted in a number of Shivaji societies that believed that violence against British rule was a religious duty.
Tilak was also involved in researching and writing about the origins of Hinduism and the Hindu nation. I have already mentioned his wacky thesis, defended in a book entitled The Arctic Home of the Vedas, that Aryan culture actually goes all the way back to the last Ice Age. Drawing on astronomical allusions in the Vedas, Tilak takes Vedic history back 8,000 years and argues that the Vedic gods were polar deities worshiped by arctic Aryans. From all of his research he drew the same conclusion that many other 19th Century Indian nationalists did, and I will conclude with this illustrative but problematic passage:
During Vedic times, India was a self-contained country. It was united as great nation. That unity has disappeared bringing great degradation and it becomes the duty of the leaders to revive that union. A Hindu of this place [Varanasi] is as much a Hindu as one from Madras or Bombay. The study of the Gita, Ramayana, and Mahabharata produce the same ideas throughout the country. Are not these. . . our common heritage? If we lay stress on forgetting all the minor differences that exist between the different sects, then by the grace of Providence we shall long be able to consolidate all the different sects into a mighty Hindu nation. This ought to be the ambition of every Hindu.
The sects of which Tilak speaks the Sikhs, the Jains, and the Buddhists. Not at all included, unless they pledge allegiance to Hindutva (conversion itself is not mandatory), are India’s 40 million Christians and 120 million Muslims.
Needless to say, seeds sowed by Tilak, Bankim and Dawananda have grown up as today’s RSS, Bishwa Hindu Parishad and Shiva Sena. That will be another story.