Tattva

If there has been a word which can cause a lot of discomfort among many Indians, irrespective of their religious affiliations, it is the word Hindu. What an irony that many Hindus wriggle in discomfort when they hear or have to speak that word. When I became part of a student chapter whose name had the “discomforting” word, one of my room mates asked “Why Hindu? Why not Indian? As people may not feel comfortable with ‘Hindu’ and moreover the term ‘Indian’ attracts more people.”

This made me think of what deserves more importance - is it either being Hindu or Indian? I am putting on paper all that has churned in me for the past few days. If you are thinking whether there wasn’t anything better for me to do, the answer is yes, because I am here at work on a Monday afternoon with nothing to keep me busy except for those occasional customers. Now you know, I am not at fault for writing this, blame my boss for keeping me idle!

The first thing I needed to know was who is this Hindu? I said, “anyone following Hindu Dharma.” Wow, I just answered the question with the question lingering in my answer. If you think I am out of my mind, you may be true but let me explain. There is again this word Hindu, I am trying to define, in my answer “anyone following Hindu Dharma”. Now, you get it? That’s my point of pondering.

I came across Savarkar Ji’s “Essentials of Hindutva”. He explains a Hindu as a person to whom India is his/her Motherland and Holy Land. That is those who are Indians and who follow a religion of Indian origin namely, Sikha Dharma, Jaina Dharma, Buddha Dharma, Arya Samaji, Vaidika Dharma, etc. Though this definition does have a few missing links, we can stick to this as of now.

That actually satisfied me. If you think now that since I am satisfied, I will stop here, sorry I would have, if you had prayed that Koenrad Elst’s “Who is a Hindu?” shouldn’t meet my eye. In one of the chapters, he says “The values of Sanatana Dharma are not tied up with this piece of land, and the Vedas or the Gita, though obviously situated in India, are not bothered with notions of “fatherland” and “holyland”. He quotes Dr. Pukh Raj Sharma, a teacher of Ayurveda and Bhakti-Yoga from Jodhpur saying: “The country India is not important. One day, India too will go.” He continues “So, we may question the wisdom of defining a religious tradition by an external characteristic such as its geographical location, even if the domain of this definition admirably coincides with the actual referent of the term Hindu in its common usage.”

This lead me to the question as to what’s the relation between Hindu dharma and Bhaarat. Let’s think that Bhaarat is now “Dar-ul-Islam”, i.e. it is now Islamic Republic of India. Hindus in other parts of the world will still be following the Hindu way of life, will go to temples, perform pujas, speak of “Vasudaiva Kutumbakam” and our favorite “Ekam Sat, Vipra Bahuda Vadanti”, boast of our rich and varied heritage and carry on our life though missing our beautiful temples (now which would have become mosques) and calling many of our relatives with Arabicised names. Doesn’t it look like we can continue to lead a Hindu way of life, independent of the state of Bharat?

At the same time, let’s say you have a 8 year old daughter living here in the US. She comes and says “Appa, my friends make fun of me saying I am a animal worshiping Hindu. Why should I be a Hindu?” You are a proud Hindu father and hence you start off explaining to that little girl of those highest concepts mentioned in the previous paragraph and say our way of life has given the world the greatest thoughts in all spheres ranging from Ayurveda to Architecture, Science to Spirituality, Management to Martial Arts, Politics to Philosophy, etc, etc. If your daughter now asks “Appa, if our way of life has given the world so much, why was our way of life not able to protect Bharat Mata from becoming Islamic?” What could be your reply? No reply is going to convince your daughter. No one in the world wants to be part of a lost side. The future generations will not want to be Hindu if that way of life is not able to protect one’s Mother and this is the exact reason why I feel that no definition of Hindu will never be complete without including devotion to Bhaarat. In the long run, the absence of Bhaarat will definitely affect its adherents in other parts of the world.

Now, that we know who a Hindu is, comes the second part of Hindu or Indian? When we say “I am proud of being an Indian”. Can we stop for a minute and think why are we proud to being Indian or why do we love this nation? Is it just because we were born in that land? Is it because we have some great rivers like Ganga or because we have great flora and fauna, or is it because of the great mineral resources? All these are present in other countries in equal measure, if not more. So, all these cannot be the reasons. As Savarkar Ji says “India is dear to us because it is the land which has been the cradle of our prophets and heroes and gods and godmen.”

This covers the entire gamut of not just religious people but our heroes like Aryabhatta who discovered the shape of the earth, Bhaskaracharya who discovered gravity 1000 years before Newton, Charaka who was the first to perform plastic surgery, Baudhayana who found what Pythagoras found 300 years later, Patanjali’s yogasutra, Shivaji who defended his motherland from aggressors, the Cholas who spread our way of life in South East Asia, Guru Tegh Bahadur who gave his life for Dharma and scores of others.

It is not just these heroes but the global thoughts of our land which drew the apt attention of the whole world, that we are proud of. We may say we are proud of Bharat because we are a “secular” nation respecting the rights of any person to follow a religion of his choice. Now, what among all the above is un-Hindu? Those great men, those thoughts and our culture are all Hindu. Thus, we are proud of India because of its Hinduness. Hinduness covers everything ranging from our culture, religion, languages, society, thoughts, etc. As Aurobindo says “When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists.” It is thus very clear that Bharat and Hindu dharma are inter-twined and none can exist without the other. We cannot differentiate between the two and it is for this reason that I am proud to say I am a Hindu YUVA. Yes, a YUVA whose first devotion is to Bhaarat, my Motherland and my Holy Land.

The author is a graduate student at San Jose State University in Northern California.

 Email This Post

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 12:08 am and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.