Travails of traditional culture

Indian culture has a long tradition and heritage, and its waves are still visible. The Indian knowledge system is widely acclaimed across the world. Hinduism and Buddhism spread in Southeast Asia and the Far East. Indian culture reached Southeast Asia in many waves over the centuries as it was spontaneously welcomed and accepted by the region’s people. The syncretic character of Indian culture is said to have been successful in striking roots in Southeast Asia. Hinduism deeply influenced kingdoms like Champa, Srivijaya, Sailendra, and Mataram. Hinduism is the essence of Indian traditional culture.

It is not a religion, but is identified with the culture of a particular geographical area. It is the Sanatani cultural tradition of Bharatvarsha. The word ‘Hindu’ was first used by the ancient Persians to refer to the people living beyond the Indus River, and later used by Arab and Greek travelers. The sixth-century BCE inscriptions from Darius I refer to ‘Hindu’ as a Persian variation of the Sanskrit word ‘Sindhu’, used as a geographical term, not a religious one. It does not appear in ancient Indian texts. It evolved into a religious identifier much later, particularly during the medieval and colonial periods, to distinguish local traditions from Islam. Hinduism contains the spirit of humanism, liberalism and religious tolerance.

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Besides the theology enshrined in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the great Hindu philosophies ~ the Vedanta, the Samkhya and the Yoga ~ have a strong influence on Hindu culture and civilisation. Hinduism continued to play a significant cultural role in the lives of diverse sections of Indian society. Pluralism is a unique feature of Indian society and culture. India became the meeting place of various cultures, such as the Saka, Huna, Greek, Muslim, and British, which were incorporated into the expanding civilisation of India. Each culture contains its own tradition of dissent and protest, and each challenges the conventional order in its own way.

The Hindus protested and raised their voice time and again when others were eating into the vitality of Hinduism. The spirit of Hinduism is the disinterested pursuit of truth, which was lost by some evil excrescences. Unarguably, conservative ideas and evil practices were ingrained in Hinduism, but the reformers attempted to purify and protect it time and again. Ramananda, Chaitanya, Rammohan, Dayananda, Ramakrishna, and Vivekananda sought to preserve the heritage of Hinduism through their reformative ideas. In Bengal, the intellectual mood had been changing under a variety of influences from the 1870s. A great change was noticed in the Hindu spirit. Religiously, the change manifested itself in a disposition to proclaim Hinduism one of the greatest religions.

Defence of Hindu traditions became more respectable. Hindu intellectuals started re-examining the hidden significance of Hinduism; subsequently, Hinduism received greater attention and wider acceptance. The nineteenth- century reform movements greatly stirred the Hindus. A small but influential group headed in the 1880s and 90s by Jogendra Chandra Ghosh attempted to project India’s traditional image. Bankimchandra represented the sophisticated and intellectualised movement, interpreting Krishna as an ideal man, cultural hero and nation- builder. At a more obscurantist level, this trend was represented by Sasadhar Trakachudamani and Krishnaprasanna Sen, who claimed shastric precedents for all the discoveries of modern Western science.

This reawakening of Hinduism has been considered by many as ‘revivalism’, though the bhakti movement of the sixth-seventh century AD did not get such appreciation. The debate is still on about this term because of the implied meaning. Hinduism was never found to be weak in the pre-modern period, not even in nineteenth-century India. No Hindu sects voluntarily rejected Hinduism and embraced another religion. The Christian missionaries did not achieve great success in proselytising Hindus. Sri Aurobindo said that the main work of the people of India was ‘the resurrection of Hinduism’.

By Hinduism, he meant the Sanatan Dharma or ‘eternal religion’, which could serve as the framework of a new world outlook, a religion that embraces science and faith, transcending all sectarian definitions. He said, “Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself … It is to give this religion that India is rising … India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not herself that she must be great.” This is the fundamental truth of Hinduism, and the Hindus must understand it.

Vivekananda raised the prestige of India and Hinduism very high through the Parliament of Religions in America. One major effect of his work was to increase people’s faith in Vedantic philosophy. He had combined the passionate evocation of the glories of the Aryan tradition and Hinduism, particularly before Western audiences, with bitter attacks on contemporary degeneration. He stressed unflinching faith in the Hindu religion but did not take it in a limited sense. It is in the context of ‘revivalism’ that the revival of Hindu society or community must be considered. There was discord in Hindu society; differences among the Hindus existed on many issues, including varna and caste.

A generally accepted definition of ‘ Hindutva’ seemed to have been required for the unity of the Hindu society. The context reminds us of what V D Savarkar wrote in 1923 under the title ‘Who is a Hindu’. To him, a Hindu is a “person who regards the land of Bharatvarsa from the Indus to the seas as his Fatherland, as well as his Holy land that is the cradle of religion”. Hindu organisations such as Hindu Mela, Arya Samaj, Abhinava Bharat, and Hindu Mahasabha emerged. These were dominated mainly by the upper-caste educated Hindus. Of these, the Hindu Mahasabha is known as a political organisation. For a political movement in the interests of the Hindus, a distinct Hindu theory was seemingly necessary. Savarkar seemed to have propagated this kind of theory, i.e. the theory of Hindutva.

At a conference of the Hindu Mahasabha (Varanasi, 1923), Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and other Hindu leaders advocated for Hindu unity, seeking to erase differences between the high and low castes. Unfortunately, the reactionary leaders could not come out of their orthodox boundaries. Differences prevailed between the liberals and conservatives in almost all the Hindu organisations. The only commonality among them was that no Hindu leader supported the Muslims’ attempt to attain autonomy. Thus circumstanced, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was established (1925) by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, a physician by profession, who initially became a member of the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta. Though a follower of Gandhiji, he was deeply influenced by Savarkar’s theory of Hindutva, and subsequently distanced himself from Gandhiji.

Gandhiji dubbed RSS as a ‘communal body with a totalitarian outlook’, but Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, appreciated it as ‘the one silver lining in the cloudy sky of India’. Repeated attacks on Hinduism during British rule seemed to have made the conscious and educated Hindus aware of the status of their religion. They felt Hindu awakening was essential to keep India’s glory alive. Their struggle against British imperialism made them understand that they could acquire political power only through a political fight. For this purpose, the Jan Sangh was launched as a political party (1951) under the leadership of Shyama Prasad Mookherjee.

The Jan Sangh, over time, supported a mixed economy, zamindari abolition, land ceilings and land to the tiller, and declared itself to be non-communal and secular, focusing on national unity by ‘nationalising all non-Hindus by inculcating in them the ideal of Bharatiya Culture’. But these are said to be formal declarations, and the party leaders are blamed for spreading communal distrust and hatred. Though conservatism persists in Hinduism, Bengal’s Hindu society hardly supports communalism.

There is hardly any space for religious intolerance in Hinduism in the real sense of the term. India is the land of Buddha, Shankaracharya, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Gandhi and Tagore, who spread the message across the world that the main objective of humanity should be to alleviate the sufferings of the populace through moral and spiritual remedies. It implies that the community’s moral and spiritual health should be improved. When humanity and humility disappear, knowledge becomes narrow, and unrighteousness prevails, cultural decline begins.

(The writer is a retired Professor of History, the University of Burdwan)