Silly point
Mother Teresa and All
That
The latest
remark by the RSS chief that Mother Teresa‘s sole motive in the so-called
service of the poor was a desire to convert them to Christianity has sparked
off yet another needless controversy. This is singularly unfortunate,
because such comments tend to project a strangely unfamiliar face of Hinduism
which has had a highly tolerant attitude towards religious debate and
discourse.
One of the
earliest encounters of the Sanatana Dharma was with the Parsis. These adherents
of Zoroastrianism had to run away from their native Persia because of trouble there.
When they arrived by ship in what is modern Gujarat, the ruler welcomed them to
his kingdom. He expressed the hope that
they would sweeten the social dialogue just as sugar sweetens milk. The Parsis
have since been proving his strangely prophetic remark right.
The first happenstance
recorded with Christianity was when Jesus Christ himself appeared before the
King of Kashmir. The story unravelled by Christian scholars themselves alleges
that Jesus survived his crucifixion and his disciples managed to smuggle him to
India. Contemporary records have been
cited to show how the encounter went off. Jesus apparently told the King that
he was Yeeshu and wanted permission to settle down and propagate his teachings.
The King extended a warm welcome to him and said that he was at liberty to spread
his faith.
This story might
be apocryphal, although its proponents have discovered the tomb of Jesus at a
place appropriately named Christabal in Srinagar, Kashmir. But no one can deny
the palpable presence of a sizeable Christian population in Kerala,. They call
themselves Syrian Christians. They trace their origin to the early Christians
who were persecuted in their native Syria and sought shelter in Kerala, coming
in by the sea route long before Vasco da Gama had officially “discovered” the
sea route to India!
The Hindus
have had a singularly relaxed approach to religious debate. We have never given
total primacy to a single book. Even the Vedas which are supposed to be
acceptable to all Hindus have been challenged with impunity. Hindus never gave themselves
a name. The very phrase “Hindu” has not been coined by them. It is supposed to
be a play on the word “Sindhu” and was used to refer to people living beyond
the river Sindhu.
Even “Aryan”
does not refer to the Hindu faith . In Sanskrit texts, the word was used to
refer to persons of dignity and grace. A woman would address her husband as “He Arya!” meaning “O Exalted
One!”
The nearest
anyone came to give Hinduism even a name was when it was referred to as “Sanatana Dharma”, which
was translated by Aldous Huxley as “the Perennial Philosophy”.
Hindus never
let their faith freeze into a mould that could not be broken. Far from denying
people the right to challenge established interpretations of the scriptures, they
invented the hugely popular mode of “Shastrartha”, literally “ deciphering the
meaning of the scriptures”. Debate and discussion was encouraged and the common
people thronged to assemblies where such debates took place.
It is out of
such fertile exchanges of ideas that our ancestors discovered the three major
ways in which a human being could encounter the vast totality that confronted
him. The Dwaita(doctrine of dualism) which saw the divine as the other,
Vishishtadwaita( the doctrine of qualified monism) . And Advaita which saw the
human and the divine as a single unity, the One without a Second.
Hinduism has
had the strangely assimilative power of accepting everything and rejecting
nothing. Brahmo Samaj was a peculiarly Hindu response to the modern encounter
with the faith that accompanied our British rulers. The Hindus were ready to worship
Jesus along with the myriad other gods and goddesses they already boasted of.
Let us not
forget that Swami Vivekananda came to Ramakrishna Paramhamsa after being first
attracted to the Btahmos.
This
assimilative power was demonstrated most dramatically in the case of Buddha.
Buddha gave a strong challenge to the Vedas by saying, “Never accept anything
because the Buddha says so. Never accept something because the ancient
scriptures say so. Nor because your elders say so. Only that which appeals to
your intellect and you find practical on the basis of your own experience,
accept only that.” When asked to sum up the gist of what he taught all his
life, Buddha said, “Be a light unto yourself”
The Hindus
assimilated Buddha on two fronts. On the one hand, Buddha was added to the
Hindu pantheon and became one of the Avatars of Vishnu. On the philosophical
front Shankaracharya stole his thunder by inventing Advaita Vedanta, which is
nothing but Buddhism in Sanskrit!
The response
of the RSS supremo to the challenge posed by Christianity to Hinduism is not in
tune with the traditional defence mechanisms invented by the Sanatana Dharma to
remain in business.
He could learn
something from the following stories which suggest a more interesting response.
A Muslim
claimed that islam had a unique doctrine in the concept of Aakhriyat.That is,
there had been thousands of prophets in the past but Mohammad was the last. A
wag replied that Indians had propounded the doctrine of Aakhriyat thousands of
years before Islam. Look at the theory of Avtars. Vishnu had only ten Avtars.
The tenth , the Kalki was always coming but never actually came! Look at
Buddha. There were millions of Budhisattvas before him. Buddha was the last!
Look at Mahavira. He was the twenty fourth Teerthankara and predictably the
last.
The true unity
of faiths can be seen in their strictly commercial approach. In a village that
boasted of all the three faiths, a Hindu pujari, a Muslim Mullah and a Sikh
Granthi met for their usual gossip session after lunch. The pujari said that he
had kept a donation box in the temple. Whatever the devotees put in the box went
to God, what was thrown on the floor was his. The Mullah said that he spread a green
cloth in the prayer room. What fell on the cloth went to Allah, he took the
rest. The Granthi said that he spread a white chaddar before the Granth Sahib.
After the prayers, he picked up the chaddar and lofted the offerings to Waheguru
in the sky. Whatever was kept by Waheguru was his, what came back to earth was
the Granthi’s.
The RSS
supremo should learn a lesson from this story. We know that there is a
commercial angle to Hindutva. Such statements might be good for the worldly
success of the RSS. But the damage that they cause to the BJP government is
incalculable. Many astute observers claim that it is the shenanigans of the saffron
brigade that catapulted Kejariwal to victory in the recent Delhi polls!
Well might
Narinderbhai sing a couplet from a famous Urdu ghazal:
Dushmanon ke
siitam hamen manzoor
Doston ki wafa se
darte hain
( I can
well accept the torture inflicted by enemies
What I fear most is the loyalty of my friends! )
M.K.Kaw
