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.

Clash of Civilization: Lesson from Lord Bentinck (1829)

Biplab Pal

Published on 03 April, 2006

[Recently, we are observing a phenomenon among conservative Muslims which has nice parallel in the Indian history during 1820s, the glorious period of Hindu reform brought about by Lord William Bentinck. History is a much better teacher than hypothesis of social science and therefore, I found it amazingly interesting to browse through the writing of Lord Bentinck to understand the nature of problem- whether or not "human rights" are "western" ideals, and not universal!

East India Company had a declared policy of non-intervention into religious matter of its Hindu and Muslim subjects. Hence, when Ram Mohan approached to Lord Bentinck for the abolition of Satidaha and to make it criminally punishable, one of the finest humanist of all time, Bentinck had to fight with the council to get permission on the issue of religious interference.

The year 1828 has traditionally been regarded as demarcating the beginning of a new era in the history of British India. Up to this time attitudes concerning the governance of an alien society varied and were mostly discordant. But the dominant ethos was ' reformist' and it grew in strength and stridency. Initially held at bay, it captured the mind of Parliament first, indoctrinated the bureaucratic class that was trained at Hailey bury to run the new empire, and overwhelmed the objections of orientalists and pragmatists .By 1828 liberals like Macauley and Utilitarian like Mill, Bentinck and Trevelyan had the field to themselves and immediately instituted reformist programmes.

Bentinck was appointed governor general of Bengal in 1827 and was successful in turning the annual deficit of about £1.5 million into a surplus of about the same amount. Consequently, the Charter Act of 1833 renewed the government of East India Company, and Bentinck became the governor general of India in 1833. Strongly influenced by the tradition of Utilitarianism—a political school of thought, influenced by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, which believed in reform through rational administration—he brought about important changes in the administrative structure of India, such as an end to discrimination in public service recruitment, adoption of a liberal attitude toward the press, and the far-reaching measure of making English the official language of India. Although he followed a policy of nonintervention in the day-to-day running of Indian states, he annexed Mysore, Coorg, and central Cachar. He abolished the practice of female infanticide prevalent among some Rajput tribes. Indian reformers such as Raja Rammohan Roy (1772–1833) advocated abolition of the sati system (the custom of burning widows alive with the dead bodies of their husbands). In Regulation of XVII of December 1829, Bentinck declared sati illegal. However, this has not been as easy task and he had to write constantly in the favor of reform.

Here is, one of such golden collections of his writing which has shown light to the Indians and mankind in general. I am adding my notes (blue) for the readers.]

From "Lord William Bentinck on the Suppression of Sati, 8 November 1829," in Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750­1921, ed. Arthur B. Keith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922), vol. 1, pp. 208­226.

Whether the question be to continue or to discontinue the practice of sati, the decision is equally surrounded by an awful responsibility. To consent to the consignment year after year of hundreds of innocent victims to a cruel and untimely end, when the power exists of preventing it, is a predicament which no conscience can contemplate without horror. But, on the other hand, if heretofore received opinions are to be considered of any value, to put to hazard by a contrary course the very safety of the British Empire in India, and to extinguish at once all hopes of those great improvements-affecting the condition not of hundreds and thousands but of millions-which can only be expected from the continuance of our supremacy, is an alternative which even in the light of humanity itself may be considered as a still greater evil It is upon this first and highest consideration alone(Quite interesting analysis of the situation by Lord Bentinck-it is clear that he was influenced by Mills and hence, he considered humanism as the supreme objective. This is also a clear proof that proponents of Muslim personal laws like Ziauddin and Setara Hashem are much behind Lord Bentinck and his ideas in 1829. If not for anybody else, a Ram Mohan or a Lord Bentinck is needed to baptize them with absolute value of humanism -BP)., the good of mankind, that the tolerance of this inhuman and impious rite can in my opinion be justified on the part of the government of a civilized nation. While the solution of this question is appalling from the unparalleled magnitude of its possible results, the considerations belonging to it are such as to make even the stoutest mind distrust its decision. On the one side, Religion, Humanity, under the most appalling form, as well as vanity and ambition-in short, all the most powerful influences over the human heart-are arrayed to bias and mislead the judgment. On the other side, the sanction of countless ages, the example of all the Mussulman conquerors ( Bentinck was of the opinion that Muslim rulers did nothing to stop inhuman practice of Hinduism. This is not true. Empire Akbar also restricted Satidaha and ritual infanticide by the Hindues-BP **) , the unanimous concurrence in the same policy of our own most able rulers, together with the universal veneration of the people, seem authoritatively to forbid, both to feeling and to reason, any interference in the exercise of their natural prerogative. In venturing to be the first to deviate from this practice it becomes me to show that nothing has been yielded to feeling, but that reason, and reason alone, has governed the decision. ( Educated Muslim supporters of Sharia must be felt ashamed to find out Lord Bentinck was ahead of them!-BP )

. . . So far from being chargeable with political rashness, as this departure from an established policy might infer, I hope to be able so completely to prove the safety of the measures as even to render unnecessary any calculation of the degree of risk which for the attainment of so great a benefit might wisely and justly be incurred.... With the firm undoubting conviction entertained upon this question, I should be guilty of little short of the crime of multiplied murder if I could hesitate in the performance of this solemn obligation (This is a classic reasoning why a humanist should be as equal guilty if he does not take action against any kind of inhuman practice without seeing color, race and religion-BP) I have been already stung with this feeling. Every day's delay adds a victim to the dreadful list, which might perhaps have been prevented by a more early submission of the present question. . .

. . . When we had powerful neighbours and had greater reason to doubt our own security, expediency might recommend an indirect and more cautious proceeding, but now that we are supreme my opinion is decidedly in favour of an open, avowed, and general prohibition, resting altogether. Upon the moral goodness of the act and our power to enforce it; and so decided is my feeling against any half measure that, were I not convinced of the safety of total abolition, I certainly should have advised the cessation of all interference.

Of all those who have given their advice against the abolition of the rite, and have described the ill effects likely to ensue from it, there is no one to whom I am disposed to pay greater deference than Mr. Horace Wilson (This British was a supporter of Sati and rumor goes that he was bribed by conservative Hindues. Readers may find a similarity in recent Sharia debate-BP). I purposely select his opinion because, independently of his vast knowledge of Oriental literature, it has fallen to his lot, as secretary to the Hindu College, and possessing the general esteem both of the parents and of the youths, to have more confidential intercourse with natives of all classes than any man in India. While his opportunity of obtaining information has been great beyond all others, his talents and judgement enable him to form a just estimate of its value. I shall state the most forcible of his reasons, and how far I do and do not agree with him.

1st. Mr. Wilson considers it to be a dangerous evasion of the real difficulties to attempt to prove that satis are not "essentially a part of the Hindu religion." I entirely agree in this opinion. The question is not what the rite is but what it is supposed to be, and I have no doubt that the conscientious belief of every order of Hindus, with few exceptions, regards it as sacred.

2nd. Mr. Wilson thinks that the attempt to put down the practice will inspire extensive dissatisfaction. I agree also in this opinion. He thinks that success will only be partial, which I doubt. He does not imagine that the promulgated prohibition will lead to any immediate and overt act of insubordination, but that affrays and much agitation of the public mind must ensue. But he conceives that, if once they suspect that it is the intention of the British Government to abandon this hitherto inviolate principle of allowing the most complete toleration in matters of religion, there will arise in the minds of all so deep a distrust of our ulterior designs that they will no longer be tractable to any arrangement intended for their improvement, and that principle of a purer morality, as well as of a more virtuous and exalted rule of action, now actively inculcated by European education and knowledge, will receive a fatal check. I must acknowledge that a similar opinion as the probable excitation of a deep distrust of our future intentions was mentioned to me in conversation by that enlightened native, Ram Mohun Roy, a warm advocate for the abolition of sati and of all other superstitions and corruptions engrafted on the Hindu religion, which he considers originally to have been a pure Deism. It was his opinion that the practice might be suppressed quietly and unobservedly by increasing the difficulties and by the indirect agency of the police. He apprehended that any public enactment would give rise to general apprehension, that the reasoning would be, "While the English were contending for power, they deemed it politic to allow universal toleration and to respect our religion, but having obtained the supremacy their first act is a violation ol their profession, and the next will probably be, like the Muhammadan conquerors, to force upon us their own religion.(Hindues were always afraid - like Muslim rulers British would try to convert them as well-BP)"

Admitting, as I am always disposed to do, that much truth is contained in these remarks, but not at all assenting to the conclusions which, though not described, bear the most unfavorable import, I shall now inquire into the evil and the extent of danger which may practically result from this measure.

It must be first observed that of the 463 satis occurring in the whole of the Presidency of Fort William, 420 took place in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, or what is termed the Lower Provinces, and of these latter 287 in the Calcutta Division alone.

It might be very difficult to make a stranger to India understand, much less believe, that in a population of so many millions of people as the Calcutta Division includes, and the same may be said of all the Lower Provinces, so great is the want of courage and of vigour of character, and such the habitual submission of centuries, that insurrection or hostile opposition to the will of the ruling power may be affirmed to be an impossible danger....

If, however, security was wanting against extensive popular tumult or revolution, I should say that the Permanent Settlement, which, though a failure in many other respects and in its most important essentials, has this great advantage at least, of having created a vast body of rich landed proprietors deeply interested in the continuance of the British Dominion and having complete command over the mass of the people....

Were the scene of this sad destruction of human life laid in the Upper instead of the Lower Provinces, in the midst of a bold and manly people, I might speak with less confidence upon the question of safety. In these Provinces the satis amount to forty­three only upon a population of nearly twenty millions. It cannot be expected that any general feeling, where combination of any kind is so unusual, could be excited in defense of a rite in which so few participate, a rite also notoriously made too often subservient to views of personal interest on the part of the other members of the family....

But I have taken up too much time in giving my own opinion when those of the greatest experience and highest official authority are upon our records. In the report of the Nizamat Adalat for 1828, four out of five of the Judges recommended to the Governor­General in Council the immediate abolition of the practice, and attest its safety. The fifth Judge, though not opposed to the opinions of the rest of the Bench, did not feel then prepared to give his entire assent. In the report of this year the measure has come up with the unanimous recommendation of the Court.... No documents exist to show the opinions of the public functionaires in the interior, but I am informed that nine­tenths are in favour of the abolition....

Having made inquiries, also, how far satis are permitted in the European foreign settlements, I find from Dr. Carey that at Chinsurah no such sacrifices had ever been permitted by the Dutch Government. That within the limits of Chandarnagar itself they were also prevented, but allowed to be performed in the British territories. The Danish Government of Serampur has not forbidden the rite, in conformity to the example of the British Government.

It is a very important fact that, though representations have been made by the disappointed party to superior authority, it does not appear that a single instance of direct opposition to the execution of the prohibitory orders of our civil functionaries has ever occurred. How, then, can it be reasonably feared that to the Government itself, from whom all authority is derived, and whose power is now universally considered to be irresistible, anything bearing the semblance of` resistance can be manifested? Mr. Wilson also is of opinion that no immediate overt act of insubordination would follow the publication of the edict. The Regulation of Government may be evaded, the police may be corrupted, but even here the price paid as hush money will operate as a penalty, indirectly forwarding the object of Government.

I venture, then, to think it completely proved that from the native population nothing of extensive combination, or even of partial opposition, may be expected from the abolition....

I have now to submit for the consideration of Council the draft of a regulation enacting the abolition of satis.... It is only in the previous processes, or during the actual performance of the rite, when the feelings of all may be more or less roused to a high degree of excitement, that I apprehend the possibility of affray or of acts of violence through an indiscreet and injudicious exercise of authority. It seemed to me prudent, therefore, that the police, in the first instance, should warn and advise, but not forcibly prohibit, and if the sati, in defiance of this notice, were performed, that a report should be made to the magistrate, who would summon the parties and proceed as in any other case of crime....

The first and primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindus. I know nothing so important to the improvement of their future condition as the establishment of a purer morality, whatever their belief, and a more just conception of the will of God. The first step to this better understanding will be dissociation of religious belief and practice from blood and murder (Isn’t it amazing, how he was ahead of his time “dissociation of belief and practice from blood and murder”. No religion or religious practice which is inhuman in universal standard be tolerated in the name of religious freedom-BP). They will then, when no longer under this brutalizing excitement, view with more calmness acknowledged truths. They will see that there can be no inconsistency in the ways of Providence, that to the command received as divine by all races of` men, "No innocent blood shall be spilt," there can be no exception; and when they shall have been convinced of the error of this first and most criminal of their customs, may it not be hoped that others, which stand in the way of their improvement, may likewise pass away, and that, thus emancipated from those chains and shackles upon their minds and actions, they may no longer continue, as they have done, the slaves of every foreign conqueror, but that they may assume their first places among the great families of mankind? I disown in these remarks, or in this measure, any view whatever to conversion to our own faith. I write and feel as a legislator for the Hindus, and as I believe many enlightened Hindus think and feel (A humanist, as warm as Lord Bentinck, must feel compassionate enough to identify him with the very cause!-BP ).

Descending from these higher considerations, it cannot be a dishonest ambition that the Government of which I form a part should have the credit of an act which is to wash out a foul stain upon British rule, and to stay the sacrifice of humanity and justice to a doubtful expediency; and finally, as a branch of the general administration of the Empire, I may be permitted to feel deeply anxious that our course shall be in accordance with the noble example set to us by the British Government at home, and that the adaptation, when practicable to the circumstances of this vast Indian population, of the same enlightened principles, may promote here as well as there the general prosperity, and may exalt the character of our nation.

Foot note:

** Empire Akbar also reformed Hinduism, as instructed by his beloved principal wife JodhaBi. He restricted Sati system and made it legal only if the window would volunteer before the Mufti. He also stopped infanticide in GangaSagar Fair, for obtaining more children. His religion Din-hi-Elahi was an atheist religion with no God and no prophet (1575) and as a consequence, Mullahs declared it to be blasphemy..

The whole write up actually shocked me to the core-almost two centuries have passed and religious people of our subcontinents made no progress as it can bee seen that only a handful among us, the so called educated can think like Lord Bentinck. Rest are either indifferent or advocating the religious values over universal codes of humanism. Worst, some people are trying to justify their religious line of thinking in covert form of pseudo-science and socialism.

Humanism is a fundamental trait and above all the reasons and hypothesis. That was the summery of Lord Bentinck which remained unchanged in last two hundred years.

California 10/15/05