BY RAJINDAR SACHAR
I have read with chilling apprehension Arun Shourie’s two
articles on Hinduism in The Indian Express (De-
cember 28 and 31) because these are not just his individual views but seem
to represent the BJP’s election strategy. He claims that Hinduism also
includes a fundamentalist face of ferocious response, even violence. He
tells us that the Bhagavad Gita supports the maxim of ‘Wickedness to the
wicked’ – and for these pearls of wisdom Shourie quotes Lokmanya Tilak as
his source (I refuse to attribute this sacrilege to the great Tilak – I
hope more knowledgeable people will scotch this heresy). Naturally,
Shourie ridicules Gandhi for claiming inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita
for his law, ‘Truth even to the wicked’.
Even Hinduism’s opponents have not suggested Shourie’s
view of Hinduism as a religion that includes vengefulness. Most people
accept Dr S. Radhakrishnan’s definition of Hinduism as a way of life. ‘Vasudhaiva
kutumbakam (the world is one family)’ is the proud Hindu dictum of
tolerance. Of course, fair-minded people also accept that the same message
of humanity and common good runs through all religions. Thus the holy
Koran proclaims, "All the created ones belong to the family of god... so
an Arab has no precedence over a non-Arab, a white over a black." And
Christ said succinctly, "All are children of god."
Shourie’s objection to Muslim women wearing headscarves is
not on the grounds of gender discrimination – incidentally, Shourie must
have seen Muslim women in India and more in Lahore and Karachi without
headscarves, as well as Hindu women in villages in Rajasthan and UP
covering their heads and faces. He does not treat this as a cultural
practice separate from religion but as a Muslim ploy to underscore
separateness.
Like Shourie’s family, my family is also from West Punjab
(now in Pakistan). Perhaps he is too young to remember but after
partition, when Hindus came to India, all the older women and some of the
younger ones from rural and even urban areas willingly covered their heads
in public as part of the cultural tradition they had been brought up in
though they were all devout Hindus. Carried to the extreme, the conclusion
would be that men in South India who wear dhotis are trying to announce
their separateness from the north where we wear pyjamas. Hindus and
Muslims in the south wear the dhoti – so how does the communal divide come
in?
Shourie has his pet theory that Islam was spread in India
by the sword. Vivekananda, the greatest exponent of Hinduism, best
repudiates this – "the Mohammedan conquest of India came as a salvation to
the downtrodden, to the poor. That is why one-fifth of our people have
become Mohammedans." He also said it was "the height of madness" to claim
this was achieved by the sword.
Vivekananda, in fact, profusely praised Islam saying,
"Without the help of practical Islam, theories of Vedantism, however fine
and wonderful they may be, are entirely valueless to the vast mass of
mankind. For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems,
Hinduism and Islam – Vedanta brain and Islam body – is the only hope."
Vivekananda was not, as Shourie obliquely claimed, referring to the
‘Islamic body’ as brute strength but to the freshness of approach and
message of equality brought in by Islam.
Vivekananda castigated the orthodoxy, "No man, no nation,
my son, can hate others and live; India’s doom was sealed the very day
they invented the word ‘mlechcha’ (derogatory term meaning
foreigner, barbarian, outcaste) and stopped from communion with others."
Shourie castigates Christians because they oppose idolatry
and refers to Ramakrishna Paramhans’ devotion to the goddess of
Dakshineshwar. The spiritual height of Ramakrishna Paramhans is
undisputed. But then Christians are not the only opponents of idolatry.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati, one of the greatest exponents of the Vedas in
the 19th century (though born in a priestly family and brought up to
worship the idol of Shiva), says, "There is not a single verse in the
Vedas to sanction the invocation of the deity and likewise there is
nothing to indicate that it is right to invoke idols." He also said, "Idol
worship is a sin."
I am firm in my conviction that any attempt to dilute the
composite culture and inclusive democracy of our country can only bring
harm. As Maulana Azad’s soul-stirring speech (1940) put it, "I am a Muslim
and proud of the fact. I am indispensable to this noble edifice. Without
me this splendid structure of India is incomplete. Everything bears the
stamp of our joint endeavour. Our languages were different but we grew to
use a common language. Our manners and customs were different but they
produced a new synthesis... no fantasy or artificial scheming to separate
and divide can break this unity".
(Rajindar Sachar, a former chief justice of the Delhi High
Court, was chairperson of the prime minister’s high-level committee on the
socio-economic and educational status of Muslims in India. This article
was first published in The Indian Express. )
