WHY IS INDIAN CULTURE THE GREATEST
CULTURE IN THE WORLD? AND WHY IS IT IN MORTAL PERIL?
Shrikant G. Talageri
[This
is not a new article. It is an extract from the Voice of India Volume "India's
Only Communalist" edited by Koenraad Elst, a Commemoration Volume to Sita
Ram Goel who (along with Ram Swaroop) was the true Bhishma Pitamaha of Hindutva
scholarship, published in 2005. My whole article in that volume was entitled
"Sita Ram Goel - Memories and Ideas", and a major portion of
that article was uploaded by me on my blogspot as "Hindutva or Hindu
Nationalism". As that article (or those more complete articles contain
other matter also, I am uploading this extract from that article under the
above title, "chauvinistic" as that might sound to some.
In
parts it may be dated, as for example when I wrote about the twelve families of
snakes, that was based on the research I had done and the notes taken during my
college and later days when my ambition was to produce a complete "Encyclopedia
of Indian Culture" (a task too huge for an individual and therefore
shelved indefinitely although all my notes remained intact. Later research may
have shown a different picture, with perhaps newer families of snakes being
postulated in other parts of the world, but the general picture of the unique
greatness of Indian culture remains unaffected].
Sita
Ram Goel, at the very outset of his “Hindu Society Under Siege”, tells
us: “there are many Hindus who are legitimately proud of Hindu art,
architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature,
linguistics, lexicography and so on. But they seldom take into account the fact
that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage will die
if Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and
perpetuate it” (pp.1-2).
In
my 1993 book “The Aryan Invasion Theory And Indian Nationalism”, I have
pointed out in detail how conversion to Islam and Christianity creates a
process of cultural de-Indianisation. De-Hinduisation of Indian society, therefore,
will inevitably lead to the demise of Indian culture: Hindu society must
survive if Indian culture is to survive.
But
the reverse is also true: Indian culture must survive if Hindu society is to
survive. Hindu society would no more be Hindu society if it lost all
vestiges of Indian culture or if it allowed Indian culture to die out. And
Hindutva without Indian culture as its very basis is a meaningless exercise.
Before
going further, let me clarify what exactly the words “culture” and “Indian
culture” mean in our discussion in this section on Cultural Nationalism:
Culture
does not refer only to “values”, “ethos” and “way of life”, which are really
vague words, which can be made to mean anything. It refers to actual concrete
culture. As I put it in the 1997 VOI volume, “Time for Stock Taking”, it
refers to “every single aspect of India’s matchlessly priceless heritage:
climate and topography; flora and fauna; races and languages; music, dance and
drama; arts and handicrafts; culinary arts; games and physical systems;
architecture; costumes and apparels; literature and sciences…” (p.227).
And
Indian culture refers not just to the “cultural practices springing from
Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources
independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the
(pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanatana in
the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism” (ibid).
Indian
culture is the greatest and richest in the world. India (ie. the Indian
subcontinent) is the only place in the world which is rich in all
the fields of culture: natural (topography, climate, flora and fauna), ethnic
(races and languages), and civilisational (music, dance and drama; lore and
literature; art, sculpture and handicrafts; architecture; costumes, ornaments
and beauty culture; cuisine; games and physical systems; religion; philosophy;
social and material sciences, etc.). Its greatness lies in both factors: the
richness of its range and variety, as well as its contributions to the world,
in every single field of culture.
To
give just a glimpse: in climate, we have the hottest place in the world,
Jacobabad (in present-day Pakistan), but also, as per the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, we have, outside the Polar regions, “the largest area under
permanent ice and snow”. We have dry arid regions in the west, which receive no
rainfall at all, and at the same time, the area, around Cherapunji in the east,
with the highest rainfall in the world. And we have, in different parts of the
land, a wide range of shades of climatic conditions between these extremes. The
topography of India, from the most intriguing and diverse mountain system in
the world, the Himalayas, in the north, through the plains, plateaus, mountains
and valleys of the peninsula down to the Andaman-Nicobar and Lakshadweep island
clusters in the south, also seems to leave no topographical feature
unrepresented.
India’s
forests and vegetation also cover every range and variety from the coniferous
and deciduous types to the monsoon and tropical types to the desert and
scrubland types. And India has been one of the primary contributors to the
world in every kind of plant and forest products; to name only some of
the most prominent ones: rice, a variety of beans, a wide range of vegetables
including eggplants and a number of different types of gourds, fruits like
bananas, mangoes and a range of citrous fruits, oilseeds like sesamum,
important woods including teak, ebony and sandalwood, spices like black pepper,
cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and turmeric, dyes like madder and indigo, important
materials like cotton, jute, shellac and India-rubber, a wide range of
medicinal herbs, etc., etc. Moreover, being strategically situated between, and
sharing in, three different ecological areas, India shares countless other
important plants and products with northern and western Asia on the one hand
and Southeast Asia on the other. And, as a detailed study will show, it has
indigenous equivalents, or potential equivalents, for a wide range of other
non-Indian plants and products.
India’s
fauna is the richest in the world: Robert Wolff, in the introduction to
his book, “Animals of Asia”, tells us that “India has more animal
species than any other region of equal area in the world.” But the richness
is not only in comparison with regions of equal area. For example, India is the
only area in the world which has all seven families of carnivora native
to it, while the whole of Africa has five (no bears or procyonids), the whole
of North and South America together have five (no hyaenas or viverrids), the
whole of Europe has five (no hyaenas or procyonids), and, in Asia, the areas to
the east and north have six (no hyaenas) and the areas to the west have six (no
procyonids). Within the carnivora family of cats, India is the only area to
have all six genera, while the whole of Africa has four (no uncia or
neofelis), North and South America together, and Europe, have three (no
acinonyx, uncia or neofelis), and, in Asia, the areas to the east and north
have five (no acinonyx) and the areas to the west have four (no uncia or
neofelis). In respect of snakes, India is the only area in the world to have all
twelve of the recognised families [as per a classification that I had
studied decades ago, which of course may have been revised now], while the
whole of Africa has eight, and both North and South America together have nine,
and what is significant is that one of the twelve families (Uropeltidae or
shield-tailed snakes) is found only in South India and Sri Lanka, so that India
alone has twelve families, while the whole rest of the world put
together has eleven. Of the three families of crocodilians, two (crocodiles
and gavials) are found in India, one of them (gavials) exclusively in India.
India is the richest area in the world in the variety of bovine species, second
only to Africa in variety of antelope species, and second only to China in
variety of deer species. The list is a long one. And India is not only a
primary wildlife destination, it is also one of the important centres of
domestication of animals, the most important of these being the domestic
buffalo, the domesticated elephant, one of the two races of domestic cattle and
the commercially most important bird in the world, the domestic fowl. The most
ornamental bird in the world, the peacock, is also Indian.
There
are three recognised races in the world (Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid), and
India is the only area in the world which has all three native to it: the
Andaman islanders are the only true Negroids outside Africa. Sometimes, a
fourth race, Australoid, is postulated (otherwise included among Caucasoids),
and we have it among the Veddas of Sri Lanka. Language wise, six of the
nineteen families of languages in the world are found in India, three of them
(Dravidian, Andamanese and Burushaski) only in India. And the numerically and
politically most important family of languages in the world, Indo-European,
originated (as I have shown in my books) in India.
As
a civilisation, Indian civilisation is the oldest continuous civilisation still
in existence. As A.L.Basham puts it, in his “The Wonder That Was
India”: “The
ancient civilisation of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and
Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the
present day. Until the advent of the archaeologist, the peasant of Egypt or
Iraq had no knowledge of the culture of his forefathers, and it is doubtful
whether his Greek counterpart had any but the vaguest ideas about the glory of
Periclean Athens. In each case there had been an almost complete break with the
past. On the other hand…to this day legends known to the humblest Indian recall
the names of shadowy chieftains who lived nearly a thousand years before
Christ, and the orthodox Brahman in his daily worship repeats hymns composed
even earlier. India and China have, in fact, the oldest continuous cultural
traditions in the world.”
India
has been one of the most important centres of civilisation in the world in
practically every age. We need not refer here to Indian traditions of fabled
kingdoms going back into the extremely remote past. Even in the perception of
the world in general, and scholarly perception at present, India was always a
fabled wonderland: in (at least) the third and second millenniums B.C., the
Indus-Sarasvati sites represented a relatively egalitarian and peaceful, highly
organised, standardised and developed civilisation, with many features
unparalleled elsewhere, and covered a far larger area and remained constant and
relatively unchanging for a far longer period (nearly a millennium) than any
other civilisation. In the first millennium B.C., the Arthashastra depicts an
extremely organised civilisation which appears almost modern in many respects, and
India was idealised and mythicised by writers from China to Greece. In the
first millennium A.D., we had the golden period of Indian civilisation during
the reign of the Guptas, at which point of time, according to A.L.Basham,
“India was perhaps the happiest and most civilised region of the world”. And in
the second millennium A.D., India was the desired land of dreams, in the quest
for which half the world had the misfortune to be “discovered” by Europe.
And
this civilisation has made primary contributions to the world in every single
field of civilisational culture. To begin with, religion: India is one of the
two centres of origin of the major world religions (the other being West Asia):
Buddhism was at one time the dominant religion not only in East and Southeast
Asia, but also in Central Asia and parts of West Asia, and it is increasingly
being accepted as having been one of the major influencing factors
in the initial formative stages of Christianity. Hinduism was the source of
many religious trends (asceticism, monasticism, etc., etc.) in the past, and,
even today, Hindu-Buddhist philosophies are acquiring an ever increasing
following among thinkers and intellectuals all over the world, and Hindu
religio-philosophical concepts and terms (guru, nirvana, karma, etc., etc.) are
basic components in the international spiritual lexicon.
Science
and scientific temperament are one of the defining points of a civilised
society, and India’s contributions to the development of science in the world have
been more fundamental than that of any other civilisation then or since. India,
to begin with, invented the zero-based decimal system, without which no
significant scientific development and advancement beyond certain rudimentary
levels would ever have been possible in human society. This contribution is
so very important, and so well illustrates the level of scientific
thought-processes in India, that it needs to be elaborated in some detail here:
to begin with, the first logical stage in the development of a numeral system
in any primitive society would be the very concept of numbers (one, two, three,
etc.). The second logical stage would be the representation of these numbers in
pictorial form, eg. three pictures or symbolic figures of cows and two of sheep
would represent three cows and two sheep. The third logical stage would be the
shifting of the concept of numbers from concrete objects to abstract ideas: eg.
the use of a simple symbol, usually a vertical line, to represent the number
one. Seven vertical lines followed by the picture or symbol of a cow would
represent seven cows. As the need for using bigger and bigger numbers arose,
attempts would be made to create groups, as in the common method of keeping the
score by drawing upto four vertical lines to represent numbers upto four, and
then a fifth line vertically across the four to represent a full hand. The
fourth logical stage would be the development of a base number; usually ten, on
the basis of the number of fingers on the two hands used for counting. Egyptian
civilisation was at this stage of development in its numeral system, which
invented specific symbols for one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, etc.
So, instead of representing the number 542 with 542 vertical lines, the
Egyptians represented it with five repetitions of the symbol for hundred, four
of the symbol for ten, and two of the symbol for one. [Incidentally, this still
had the drawback of requiring symbols to be repeated as many as nine times; and
the Greeks, who borrowed the Egyptian system, went off at a tangent, off the
logical track, in their attempt to remedy this. They invented halfway symbols:
additional symbols for five, fifty, five hundred, etc. The Romans, who borrowed
the Greek system, went even further off the logical track: they tried to avoid
even four repetitions by employing a minus principle. Thus, four, nine, forty
and ninety were not IIII, VIIII, XXXX and LXXXX, but IV, IX, XL and XC. Going
off at another tangent, the Ionian Greeks, the Arabs, the Hebrews, and others,
assigned numerical values to the letters of their alphabet, the numbers one to
nine represented by the first nine alphabets, the numbers ten to ninety
represented by the next nine, and so on, creating a more concise but extremely
illogical numeral system of limited utility.]
The
fifth logical stage would be the avoidance of repetition of the base symbols by
means of specific symbols to represent each number of repetitions. Chinese
civilisation was at this stage of development in its numeral system, which had
base symbols for one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, etc., as well as
symbols for the numbers from two to nine. Thus, the Chinese represented 542
with the symbols for five, hundred, four, ten and two, in that order. The sixth
and last logical stage would be a numeral system with a rigid place system and
a symbol for zero. Indian civilisation was at this last, and highest, logical
stage in its numeral system, with symbols for the numbers from one to nine and
a symbol for zero, and a rigid place system, which made it possible to
represent any and every number with only ten symbols. [Incidentally, the
Mesopotamians and the Mayas of Central America had also hit upon their own
versions of zero. But, as they had gone off the logical track in the earlier
stages, their systems remained grossly unwieldy and illogical: the Mesopotamian
system had an unwieldy base of sixty, but symbols only for one, ten and zero;
and even a symbol to incorporate a minus principle, as in the Roman system. And
the Maya system had a base of twenty, but symbols only for one, five and zero;
and, to accommodate the calendar, the second base was 360 instead of 400].
India’s
contribution of the zero based decimal system (and, incidentally, also of most
of the basic principles in the different branches of Mathematics) represents a
fundamental revolutionary landmark in the history of world science on par with
the invention of fire, or the invention of the wheel. But this invention was no
accident. The scientific temperament in India was so developed that it was
inevitable that such a fundamental development should have taken place only in
India. As Alain Danielou puts it (in his “Introduction to the Study
of Musical Scales”), “The Hindu theory is not like other systems,
limited to experimental data: it does not consider arbitrarily as natural
certain modes or certain chords, but it takes as its starting point the general
laws common to all the aspects of the world’s creation…” (p.99). Curt
Sachs, on the same subject (in his monumental “The Rise of Music in the
Ancient World - East and West”), refers to the “naïve belief of
historically untrained minds that patterns usual in the person’s own time and
country are ‘natural’…”, and contrasts it with classification in India
which “starts from actual facts, but is thorough in its accomplishment
regardless of practice” (p.171).
It
was this scientific temperament which led the ancient Indians to go deep into
the study of any and every subject, and to produce detailed texts on
everything, whether on religious laws, rituals and customs (the vast Vedic
literature: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Kalpasutras, Dharmasutras, etc.), philosophy
(the Upanishads, and the sutras, commentaries, and other texts of the six Darshanas
and the Buddhist, Jain and heterodox philosophies, etc.), linguistics (Panini,
Yaska, and numerous Vedic and post-Vedic texts on Grammar, Phonetics,
Etymology, etc.), medicine (the Samhitas of Charaka, Sushruta, Vagbhata, etc.),
administration and statecraft (Kautilya’s Arthashastra, etc.), the performing
arts (Bharata’s Natyashastra, etc.), and every other possible art, craft,
technology and science, right down to the art of making love (Vatsyayana’s
Kamasutra). No subject was beyond the detailed investigations of the ancient
Indians. And basic texts, on any subject, themselves the culminations of long
and rich traditions, were followed by detailed commentaries, and by
commentaries on the commentaries. And there were well-established and regulated
systems and forums all over the country for objective debates on controversial
points or subjects. With all this, it is not surprising that Indian
civilisation should have been the source of origin of so many things.
As
an illustration of India’s role on the world stage, take the performing arts
(music, dance and drama). A.C.Scott (in his “The Theatre in Asia”,
p.1), writes: “It will be seen that stage practice in Asia owes a great deal
to India as an ancestral source. Indian influence on dance and theatre which
are one and the same in Asia was like some great subterranean river following a
spreading course and forming new streams on the way”. Curt Sachs (in
his magnum opus “the Rise of Music in the Ancient World - East
and West”), tells us that Indian music “had a decisive part in forming
the musical style of the East, of China, Korea and Japan, and…what today
is called IndoChina and the Malay Archipelago. There was a westward
exportation, too…Indian influence on Islamic music…the system of
melodic and rhythmic patterns, characteristic of the Persian, Turkish, and
Arabian world, had existed in India as the ragas and talas more than a thousand
years before it appeared in the sources of the Mohammedan Orient.”(p.192).
Elsewhere, he goes into more specific details about this fundamental Indian
influence on the music and dance of China and Japan (pp.139, 145), Bali
(p.139), Siam (p.152), Burma (p.153), and Indonesia (pp. 130-132). Alain
Danielou (in his “Introduction to the Study of Musical scales”),
tells us that the Indian “theory of musical modes…seems to have been
the source from which all systems of modal music originated” (p.99), and
goes so far as to suggest that “Greek music, like Egyptian music, most
probably had its roots in Hindu music” (pp.159-160). India was the land of
origin of a wide range of musical concepts and musical instruments, not only in
respect of the musical systems of Asia, but even beyond : as per the “Guinness
Book of Facts and Feats”, bagpipes (so characteristic of Scottish music),
and hourglass drums (the talking drums or message drums of Africa), originated
in India. India first recognised the division of the octave into seven notes,
twelve semi-tones, and twenty-two microtones (the world has still to progress
towards, and Indian music as it is practiced today has even regressed from, the
microtones). The present classification of musical instruments into four
classes (idiophonic, membranophonic, aerophonic and chordophonic) originated in
India.
It
was not only in respect of music, or of religion and sciences, that Indian
influence on Asia, and thereby on the rest of the world, was “like some great
subterranean river following a spreading course and forming new streams on the
way”. This was the case in practically every field of culture. Indian sculpture
and architecture spread eastwards and influenced the development of classical
sculpture and architecture in the East and Southeast: the biggest temple
complex in the world, the Hindu temple complex of Angkor Vat in Cambodia, is
the most eloquent example. Indian lore and literature spread eastwards and
westwards, leading to the development of new genres of literature: the
traditional lore and literature of Southeast Asia are suffused with the spirit,
themes and vocabulary of Sanskrit epic literature, while (apart from the
scientific and technical literature on every subject), Indian literary
techniques and themes, like animal fables and the tale-within-a-tale technique,
among others, spread out westwards, and inspired the writing of classics like
the Arabian Nights and the Greek Aesop’s fables. Indian board games, like chess
and ludo (pachisi), among others, likewise, spread out east and west, the
former becoming the national game of Asia (with local varieties, all of them
with local names derived from the Sanskrit chaturang, in every country from
Arabia to Korea and Vietnam), before acquiring its present international
status. Physical culture of every kind, from systems of physical exercises and
martial arts, to comprehensive systems of health like Ayurveda (including,
apart from its varieties of oral medicines, also the panchakarma techniques,
theories of dietetics, etc.), and Hathayoga (including, besides asanas, a range
of breathing techniques, concentration and meditation techniques, a wide range
of internal and external cleansing techniques, etc.), also spread east and
west, giving rise to similar techniques elsewhere: Greek medicine is
acknowledged by many scholars to owe much to Indian medicine, and the renowned
martial arts of the East acknowledge their Indian origin. Indian cuisine is
generally acknowledged to be one of the great cuisines of the world, and the
greatest when it comes to vegetarian cuisine, and is gaining popularity
worldwide, but what is significant is that food culture all over the world
would have been poor indeed without India’s material contributions to the four
tastes: sweet (sugar), sour (lemons, tamarinds, kokam and amchur), pungent
(black pepper and ginger), and bitter (bitter gourds), as well as a wide
variety of other spices and flavourings. In respect of clothes and ornaments,
again, India’s contributions are of primary importance: cotton, the most
important fabric in the world, originated in India, along with numerous
important techniques, of weaving, dyeing and printing, basic to the textile
industry. The use of diamonds originated in India: till the eighteenth century,
India was the only source of diamonds, and the ornament and jewellery industry
in India was a world pioneer in many ways. Beauty culture, the art of
shringara, as described in great detail in the ancient texts, had developed
very highly in ancient India, and India was the source of a great many kinds of
clothing, ornaments, herbal cosmetics and applications, aromatic oils and
beauty techniques.
But
it is not only on the basis of past glories (although, as a civilisation
with the only continuous tradition, the past is not a dead past but is an
intrinsic part of our present identity), or contributions to the world
(considerable, and even unmatchable, as they are), that Indian culture can be
considered the greatest and richest culture in the world. Indian culture is the
greatest and richest culture in the world on the strength of its glorious present
as well: India is a complete cultural world in itself, both in respect of the
fact that it represents every stage of development in culture (from the most
sophisticated, right from ancient times, to the most primitive, even in modern
times or as late as the twentieth century), as well as in respect of the fact
that the richness and variety of its cultural wealth, in every respect, is so
great that it need never look beyond its own cultural frontiers for
inspiration, innovation and development in any field of culture.
To
illustrate the first point: in mathematical science, ancient India conceived
and analysed the mathematical concepts of zero and infinity, achieved a
fundamental revolution by devising a numeral system which can represent any and
every conceivable number with only ten symbols, and coined names for numbers of
incredibly high denominations (a Buddhist work, Lalitavistara, gives the
names for base-numbers up to 10 raised to 421, ie., one followed by 421
zeroes). And, at the same time, we have the Andamanese languages, which have
not developed the concept of numbers beyond two: they have names only for “one”
and “two”, which is in effect “one” and “more than one”, which is no numeral
system at all, and represents the absolutely most primitive stage in any
language in the world. Likewise, in music, our Indian classical music has,
since thousands of years, developed a detailed theory of music, and used the
richest range of notes (twenty-two microtones as compared to the twelve notes
of western classical music), scales (every possible combination of the basic
notes), modes and rhythms (the most unimaginably wide range of
melodies and rhythms, from the simplest to the most complicated and intricate,
with, for example, rhythms having even 11, 13, 17, 19, etc. beats per
cycle, unimaginable outside India), and musical instruments (with the most
intricate playing techniques in the world). And, at the same time, the
absolutely most primitive form of music in the world is found among the Veddas
of Sri Lanka: they possess the most primitive form of singing in the world,
and, along with certain remote Patagonian tribes, are the only people in the
world who “not only do not possess any musical instrument, but do not even
clap their hands or stamp the ground”(Curt Sachs, “The History of
Musical Instruments”, p.26). This is the case in almost every field of
culture: on the one hand, India has the richest traditional cuisine in the
world, one of the most highly developed traditions of architecture in all its
aspects, and an incredibly wide range of costumes and ornaments, all of hoary
antiquity, and, on the other hand, we have tribes who are hunter-gatherers and
subsist only on wild berries, who live in caves, or who live almost in the
nude.
And
a glance at two representative fields of civilisational culture, religion and
music, will suffice to make the second point clear:
The
range of Indian religion, both in respect of philosophy and doctrines, as well
as customs and rituals, is quite a complete one: every shade of thought and
idea (theistic, atheistic and agnostic), from the most materialistic to the
most spiritual, from the most rationalistic to the most irrational, from the
most humane to the most barbaric, and from the most puritanical or orthodox to
the most profane or heterodox, has been explored by the different schools of
philosophy, different sects and different individual writers; and every kind
and level of ritual and custom from the most primitive to the most
sophisticated, from the simplest to the most elaborate, and from the most
humane to the most ruthless, is found in one or the other part of India. The
only common thread is the complete absence of intolerant imperialistic
tendencies: if such ever arose in the history of Hinduism, they died out just
as quickly. Therefore, also, Hindu India, before the rise of modern liberalism
in the west, was the only safe haven in the civilised world for the followers
of religions and sects persecuted elsewhere: Jews, Zoroastrians, Syrian
Christians…in modern times, Bahais and Ahmadiyas. (That this proved costly in
the long run, because of the failure to distinguish between religions and
imperialist ideologies, is a different matter).
Curt
Sachs (“The Rise Of Music in the
Ancient World - East and West”, p.157) writes: “The roots of music are
more exposed in India than anywhere else. The Vedda in Ceylon possess the
earliest stage of singing that we know, and the subsequent strata of primitive
music are represented by the numberless tribes that in valleys and jungles took
shelter from the raids of northern invaders. So far as this primitive music is
concerned, the records are complete or at least could easily be completed if
special attention were paid to the music of the ‘tribes’…hundreds of
tribal styles…”.
Then
there is the folk music, the range and variety of which is mind-boggling: every
single part of India is rich in its own individual range of styles of folk
music, and the folk music of even any one state of India (say Maharashtra,
Rajasthan or Karnataka, for example, or even Sind, Baluchistan, Sri Lanka or Bhutan
for that matter) would merit a lifetime of study.
And,
right on top, we have the great tradition of Indian classical music, which we
have already referred to. Although the oldest living form of classical music in
the world, and although it has evolved and developed over the centuries, losing
and gaining in the process, Curt Sachs points out that “there is no
reason to believe that India’s ancient music differed essentially from her
modern music” (p.157 above). Many western musicologists (Alain Danielou,
M.E. Cousins, Donald Lentz, etc.) have spoken about the superiority of Indian
classical music over western classical music, but it is at least certain that
Indian Classical music is one of the two most classical forms in the world.
Apart
from the classical music, we have the other great tradition, of Vedic chanting
and singing in its many varieties, best preserved in South India, and different
varieties of Sanskrit songs, preserved in temples and maths all over India.
And
in all the varieties of music (classical, folk, popular and tribal), we have
the most unparalleled range of musical instruments in the world, unique in
their range from the most primitive and simple to the most sophisticated and
complicated in respect of techniques of making, artistic appearance, techniques
of playing, and qualities of sound, in every type: idiophonic, membranophonic,
aerophonic and chordophonic; monophonic, pressurephonic, polyphonic and
multiphonic.
All
this music and all these musical instruments were preserved down the ages by
temple traditions, courts, courtesans, great masters and professional castes,
musical institutions, and tribal, caste and community traditions. The twentieth
century saw a consolidation of all this rich musical wealth due, on the one
hand, to the invention of recording devices, and, on the other, to the
enthusiasm natural in a modern India in the atmosphere of an independence
movement. New generations of musicians and scholars, and government bodies like
Films Division, Akashwani and Doordarshan, did a herculean job in studying,
recording and popularising all forms of Indian music. New trends in classical
music (eg. the gharana system, new semi-classical forms, including Marathi
natya sangeet, etc.), new innovations (eg. the “Vadyavrind” orchestration of
Indian melodic music, etc.), and new genres of popular music (eg. new forms of
devotional music, of popular music like the bhavgeet genre in Marathi music,
and Film music) added to India’s incomparable musical wealth.
This
was about music. The same is the case in respect of India’s cultural wealth in
every other field. The same sources: ancient texts, temple traditions, courts,
courtesans, great masters and professional castes, institutions, and tribal,
caste and community traditions, have combined to preserve lore and literature,
dance forms, arts and crafts, architectural forms, cuisine, games and physical
systems, etc. etc., and a detailed study will show that Indian culture is among
the greatest and richest in the world in any and every individual field of
culture, and the greatest and richest in the world in the sum total of
culture.
But
today, this greatest and richest culture in the world, which survived all kinds
of challenges in the past, is being slowly and systematically wiped out or
turned into a caricature of itself. And, if systematic steps are not taken soon
on a war footing, it will soon be a faint and fading memory of the past. And
not only will that be the end of Hindu society as we know it, but it will be a
great tragedy for world culture as well.
It
is necessary first to identify the forces and factors responsible for this.
Tavleen Singh, for example, in her article already referred to, writes: “when
I go to the Vishwanath Mandir in Benares and listen to the most powerful,
magical aarti I hear from the priests that the knowledge of it will probably
die because the temple is now controlled by secular bureaucrats”. To begin
with, secularism is clearly one of the factors responsible for the gross indifference
within Hindu society towards its cultural heritage.
But
secularism, in this context, can be of three kinds: one, the goody-goody
secularism of Mahatma Gandhi, which was based on an extreme and distorted
understanding of certain intrinsic values in Hinduism, and which, although it
succeeded in blinding Hindu society to the true nature of its enemies by
whitewashing them liberally, and thereby weakened Hindu resistance, was
nevertheless based on a deep pride in, and respect for, Hinduism and its culture.
Two, the arrogant secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru, based on his westernised
upbringing and perspectives, which combined the colonial white man’s contempt
for Hindus and Hinduism with the colonial white man’s grudging admiration for
some aspects of Indian culture. And, three, the secularism of leftist
intellectuals, based on a rabid and pathological hatred for Hinduism and Hindu
civilisation. This third kind of secularism has gradually come to acquire a
monopoly over the term, and today it dictates the definitions and the contours
of what is, and what is not, secular. Many writers, myself included, therefore,
generally club extremist secularists of this kind as leftists, whether or not
the term would be applicable to them in respect of economic beliefs. It
is this secularism which froths at the mouth at the very idea that the Aryans
could be natives of India, or that Indian civilisation is basically Hindu
civilisation and that this civilisation contributed greatly to world
civilisation, or that the Ramayana and Mahabharata are national epics which
should be made familiar to all Indians (ie. to the younger generations), or
that the Gupta period was a golden period in Indian history, or that Vande
Mataram is a patriotic song, or that Savarkar was a great freedom fighter who
deserves due respect, etc., etc.; and which is intrinsically committed to
defend and support any, simply any, ideas derogatory to, or ideologies
or forces inimical to, Hinduism or Hindu civilisation. It is this secularism
which has acquired such a deadly stranglehold over the education system and the
media that it has already produced several generations of a Hindu society which
is largely ignorant of, indifferent to, and lacking in a sense of pride in, and
attachment to, the Hindu roots of its culture and civilisation and the
greatness of Indian culture - a society which is, therefore, very susceptible
to forces out to destroy this culture.
The
very lethal role played by this peculiarly Indian brand of secularism in the
Indian body politic, very like the role played by viruses in the human body or
by computer viruses in computers, has to be recognised as a fundamental factor
in rendering Hindu society, civilisation and culture weak and
defenceless against its enemies. But, at the same time, while this secularism
is undoubtedly inimical to Hindu society and civilisation, it will be
misleading to conclude that secularism is also inimical to Indian culture as
defined in this section, and to rest satisfied with this conclusion:
Secular
governments, from day one, have done a great deal for Indian culture by
establishing institutions and awards, and organising periodic festivals and
other activities, to promote different aspects of Indian culture.
A
survey of eminent people active in different fields of culture - whether actual
participants like dancers, musicians, etc.; or scholars engaged in studying,
recording and filming different aspects of culture; or activists fighting to
preserve our environment, wildlife, forests, cuisine, dances, musical styles
and musical instruments, art forms, handicrafts, architectural styles and
monuments, old manuscripts, etc.; or even lay people who appreciate or support
all such activities - will show a very fair representation, perhaps even a
preponderance, of secularist people. It is, perhaps, just such people
that Sita Ram Goel, quoted at the very beginning of this section, has in mind
when he talks about Hindus who are legitimately proud of different aspects of
Indian culture, but who fail to realise that all this culture “will die if
Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and
perpetuate it”.
In
some fields, indeed, it is not just vaguely secularist people, but even
outright leftists, who are active in the task of preserving aspects of Indian
culture, particularly when it comes to aspects of tribal, folk or regional
culture. This may be simply because much of their support base comes
from the more marginalised, or less westernised, strata of society, or it may
be because they see it as an ideological strategy to promote the “Lesser
Traditions” of Indian culture, perceived to be in opposition, or at
least intended to be propped up as such, to the “Greater Tradition” of Vedic or
Classical Hindu civilisation, which is perceived to be promoted by the elite
classes, or upper castes, or by Hindutva organisations. Similarly, we find
outright leftists engaged in fighting issues of environment, wildlife
conservation and deforestation. This, again, may be merely because of
the issues of socio-economic ideology involved. But, whatever the
reasons, the fact is that they are doing their bit for Indian culture.
We
find leftists even in the fields of classical music and dance, and in the arts.
That the leftist version of secularism is bitter, rabid and vicious in its
hatred of Hinduism and everything connected with it is undeniable, but even,
for example, in the notorious TV serial “Tamas”, which exemplifies these traits
so well (I wrote an unpublished article detailing the many ways in which every
scene in the serial exudes ugly anti-Hinduism and false leftist propaganda), we
find soul-stirring music and songs steeped in authentic traditions of Indian
music -
to be contrasted, for example, with the pedestrian, pop varieties of
Indian music we find in serials like Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayana”, so dear to
the hearts of Hindutva organisations.
Of
course, let us not get carried away by the above facts: rabid hatred for
Hinduism and Hindu civilisation is certainly not a factor likely to foster a
love for Indian culture or a desire to preserve, protect and perpetuate it.
And, there is no dearth of doyens of secularist practice who throw secular
tantrums over even such perfectly innocuous Indian cultural acts such as
lighting a lamp, or waving an aarti, to inaugurate a function. Moreover, the
leftist concern for tribal or folk cultures, referred to above, does not, for
example, prevent most of them from giving their unstinting support to the
activities of the greatest enemies of these cultures, the Christian
missionaries. Indian leftist secularism is an extremely sick and perverted
ideology, which ever takes on newer and more sick and perverted forms, and the
rule is that the sickest and most perverted form sets the standard. As rabid,
and unreasonable, hatred knows no limits, it would be premature to presume
limits to the depths to which secularism could sink, or to give any
certificates to it.
Nevertheless,
all said and done, if the greatest and richest culture in the world is in real
and active danger of being set on the downward path towards extinction, it
would be futile to be satisfied with merely laying the blame at the doors of
secularism. In the particular case quoted by Tavleen Singh, for example, if the
powerful aarti at the Vishwanath temple is in danger of dying out, it is not so
much because the temple is controlled by “secular bureaucrats” - just
“corrupt bureaucrats”, “indifferent bureaucrats”, or even simply “bureaucrats”
would suffice.
In
fact, with due respect to Tavleen Singh (whose thought-provoking articles have
often inspired me with respect, even when I have sharply differed with many of
them, since it is obvious that Tavleen Singh is at least genuine and true to
herself in whatever she writes), it is not secularism (though secularism very
definitely prepares the ground for it) which is responsible for the aarti
at the Vishwanath temple, and literally millions of other cultural treasures,
dying out. The true culprits are the very forces which Tavleen Singh
supports in her articles (the article quoted by us profusely here is part of a
series of articles in defence of the BJP government and its economic policies):
the forces of American “globalisation”.
Ancient
India classified all worldly priorities or activities into three categories:
Dharma, Artha and Kama (a fourth category, Moksha, referred to an other-worldly
priority). Kama, enjoyment of pleasures of all kinds (physical, mental,
physiological, psychological and social) was the first priority of mankind;
Artha, production and acquisition of wealth and possessions of all kinds, was a
second priority necessary for the fulfillment of the first; and Dharma, Duty
(towards any and every conceivable entity) or Righteousness (not in the sense
of a holier-than-thou attitude, as the word is generally used, but in the
original sense of doing what is right), was the guiding principle above both,
regulating the production and acquisition of wealth and the enjoyment of
pleasures, besides setting the standards for all other actions.
American
Imperialism, or “globalisation”, has its three arms, corresponding to the three
priorities (rather like the situation in many mythologies where there is an evil
counterpart corresponding to every good entity), Proselytisation corresponding
to Dharma, Capitalism corresponding to Artha, and Consumerism corresponding to
Kama. It is these three arms of American Imperialism (backed by America’s
economic and military clout) which are responsible for India’s cultural crisis.
Now
Dharma, Duty or Righteousness, does not mean religion, which refers to a belief
system. In that sense, Hinduism is not a religion, but a veritable Parliament
of religions or belief systems. We have already described the range and variety
of belief systems which are included in the Hindu ethos: there is simply no
single belief, ritual or custom, which can be cited as constituting the common
factor between all Hindu groups, the absence of which places any group outside
the Hindu pale. [Some people try to postulate caste as such a common factor,
also because this serves to divide some particular offshoots of Hinduism from
the rest; but this fails to explain many things; for example, whether large
sections of Christians in the South, who still function, after decades or even
centuries of conversion, as brahmin Christians, dalit Christians etc., are to
be treated as Hindus who have never converted to Christianity, or as
Christians.] This raises two questions: how, in the absence of a common factor,
do we decide that some particular religion is outside the Hindu pale? And what,
in the context of our discussion here, do religious conversions have to
do with dharma?
Actually
there is a common factor in that all Hindu groups follow
belief systems originating in India. The Indian constitution, also,
recognises this as the distinguishing point when it puts only those Indians
outside the definition of Hindu, who follow religions which originated outside
India. [There is a further distinction among the Indians who follow religions
originating outside India, not mentioned in the constitution: these Indians
include both non-Hindus (eg. Jews and Zoroastrians, who were never
Hindus; whose ancestors were non-Indians who sought refuge in, or migrated to,
India in the past) and ex-Hindus (eg. Muslims and Christians, who were
originally Hindus; whose ancestors were converted to Islam and Christianity in
the past).]
And
religious conversions have everything to do with Dharma: whatever the meaning
of the word in other contexts, it means religion when used in phrases like
Hindu dharma (“Hindu religion”) and dharma parivartan (“religious conversion”).
Moreover, even in the regular sense of Duty or Righteousness, a conversion from
any Indian religion to Islam or Christianity represents a change in Dharma,
since in every case it represents a change to the world-view of an intolerant,
imperialist religion, and amounts to abandonment of basic concepts of Duty
(towards ancestral traditions, religion and culture, etc.).
Conversion
to Islam or Christianity inevitably leads to a process of total cultural
de-Indianisation, which I have described in detail in my book “The Aryan
Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism” (p.29-31), and I will only repeat
the conclusion here: this cultural de-Indianisation “is not only in respect
of names, languages and scripts, music, dance, and architectural styles, but
even in respect of aesthetic and philosophical concepts, and social manners and
styles (from styles of greeting to styles of eating). It must be remembered
that ultimately every religion is rooted in the cultural and environmental
ethos of its land of origin. If Hinduism uses rice, coconuts, bananas and
plantain leaves, arecanuts, tulsileaves, turmeric, etc. as the materials for
its religious rituals, these are all Indian materials….This same rule
applies to the entire range of customs and rituals…”.
Muslim
Proselytisation on any significant scale is a thing of the past (despite some
much publicised incidents like Meenakshipuram, since Arab money alone, in the
absence of other necessary factors, cannot bring about mass conversions; and
conversions, if any, of stray individuals to Islam are, like the conversion of
any stray individual to any belief system, a matter of personal conviction, not
to be confused with organised Proselytisation), but Christian Proselytisation,
backed by unlimited media power and finances from America, is going on at a
more furious pace than ever: large scale conversions are going on all over the
country, not only in new tribal areas like Arunachal Pradesh (till now the only
non-Christian tribal bastion in the North-east, Christians have multiplied from
less than 0.5% in 1961 to nearly 19% in 2001, not including crypto-Christians,
and the figure is rising steadily), but in vulnerable rural and urban poor
areas throughout the country, particularly in Orissa and in the South,
and even in Kashmir: the Indian Express, 6/4/2003, carries a
detailed news report about the large-scale conversions of Muslim youths to
Christianity by American evangelists in Kashmir. It is clear that Christian
Proselytisation is not just as sinister a threat as ever, but a very much more
sinister threat than it ever was before.
Now,
most Muslim communities in India are communities which converted centuries ago.
The same is the case with Christian communities in certain, particularly
coastal, areas. Their culture (de-Indianised or otherwise) is,
therefore, in many ways, an intrinsic part of our modern Indian ethos, and
these communities are an intrinsic part of Indian society. But the same
very definitely cannot be said about the neo-convert Christian communities,
springing up all over the country, who deserve absolutely no quarters.
Proselytisation in this day and age is totally unacceptable and unforgivable,
and deserves to be fought with the same ruthlessness with which it functions: absolutely
nothing is unfair in the war against Proselytisation. And it is for the
traditional Muslim and Christian communities in India to decide whether they
want to reciprocate the Hindu attitude of live and let live, or whether they
want to identify themselves with, and support, the Imperialist forces of
Proselytisation in their offensive against Hinduism.
In
this context, the report in the Indian Express, referred to above,
mentions certain significant facts worth noting: more than 12,000 Muslims have
been converted to Christianity recently, and the report tells us: “Though
conversions have not encountered any resistance from Muslim organisations, it
has led to tensions between Kashmir’s native Christians - a miniscule community
of 650 - and the enthusiastic evangelists. The native Christians are
increasingly getting vocal against the outsiders. ‘This type of conversions
aren’t good for local Christians who have shared a cordial relationship with
Muslims here for centuries…’, says Pastor Leslie Richards, a native protestant
living in Braen, Srinagar…”. This raises certain questions: first, when
Kashmir is supposed to be in the throes of Islamic terrorist activities, and
yet there is no reaction, from either Muslim organisations or the Islamic
terrorists, to the large-scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity, what does
it say about the Islamic nature of the terrorists, their real target, and the
identity of the real bosses who control, and finance, both the missionaries and
the terrorists? Second, when will Christian communities and organisations in
the rest of the country learn to emulate the reactions and attitude of the
native Kashmiri Christians? And, third, when will Hindus learn, from the above
situation, to appreciate the sinister threat posed by Proselytisation in this
country, and the need for Hindus to cultivate an image of themselves which will
motivate these communities and organisations to do so?
Conversion
is one of the main destroyers of native culture: it automatically cuts off
sections of Indians from their cultural roots, and, in the case of Christianity
(and Islam), there are specific ideological doctrines which demonise the
cultural ethos of the converts’ former state, and require that they be
systematically abandoned or drastically modified. But all this applies only to
the converts, not to Indian society in general. The other two ideological arms
of American Imperialism, however, strike at the whole of Indian society.
Ancient
India recognised Artha (pursuit of wealth) and Kama (pursuit of pleasures) as
two of the three priorities in life, but only when regulated by the third
priority: Dharma. The American ideologies of Capitalism and Consumerism,
however, represent the unbridled pursuit of wealth and pleasure respectively.
Dharma, by any definition is passé: neither morals, principles or ethics, nor
sentiment, respect for ancestral traditions, consideration for contemporary
mankind in general, or concern for the heritage of the future, has any value
whatsoever: all are “outdated” concepts which cannot be allowed to stand as
obstacles in the path of the acquisition of wealth or the enjoyment of pleasures.
Capitalism,
or the ideology of the unbridled pursuit of wealth, is destroying culture on an
unbridled scale, on three fronts: at the level of cultural activity, at the
level of actual commercial activity, and at the level of Authority.
At
the level of cultural activity, to begin with, countless cultural activities,
seen to be non-lucrative or less lucrative, are being abandoned all over the
country. Others are being severely compromised in order to keep, or make, them
lucrative: compromise in materials or techniques used, shoddiness in
workmanship or performance, short-cut methods, etc., which are resulting in
loss of natural spontaneity, cultural authenticity, technological expertise and
performance satisfaction, which, in turn, gradually leads to the degeneration
and further abandonment of cultural activities. All this is affecting various
fields of culture: musical forms and styles, musical instruments, dance forms,
architectural styles, art forms, handicrafts, traditional crops, culinary items,
etc.
At
the level of actual commercial activity - businessmen, industrialists, traders,
etc. at all scales and levels - the destruction of culture for profit is more
to be expected: large-scale exploitation and destruction of forests;
large-scale driving of India’s faunal species to extinction by the destruction
of their natural habitats as well as by poaching and killing for commercial
gain; pollution of rivers, environment, etc.; destruction of beaches for sand
quarrying and mountain systems for stone quarrying; destruction of
architecturally important heritage structures, sites and areas for commercial
construction, etc.
But
it is at the level of Authority (ie. the elected representatives of the people
from local to national level, the bureaucrats from top to bottom, the police,
the judiciary, etc.), where major decisions, and action, can be taken both for
the preservation and development of culture as well as for the prevention of
its destruction, that the evils of capitalism - or Money as God - have taken on
the most destructive forms. Today, if big business, industrialists and traders,
can lay the country to waste for profit, it is because those in authority, at
every single level, have become completely purchasable. For the appropriate
price, not only are blatantly destructive illegal activities winked at, but
laws are even changed to accommodate these activities: reserved forest areas
are dereserved, restrictions on construction activities in specific areas
(coastal areas, wooded areas, ecologically sensitive areas, urban areas
reserved for cultural activities, urban heritage areas, etc.) are officially
withdrawn, and so on. In fact, governments also function as big business, in
the name of Development, or in the name of increasing `government revenues, by
way of big hydro-electric or other projects (like the Tehri and Narmada
projects at the moment, or the much publicised, and fortunately aborted, Silent
Valley project in Kerala in the past) or outright commercial activities (like
Mayavati’s aborted Taj Corridor project, or the Mufti government’s amusement
park project in Pahalgam), and India’s flora, fauna, ecological and
environmental ethos, and architectural heritage, continue to be wiped out with
(as the Times of India report, 10/10/2003, on the amusement park in Pahalgam,
puts it) “Terminator-like efficiency”.
Moreover,
those in authority have always been responsible for the protection and
preservation of culture: this was the role played by kings and rulers in ancient
India, who patronised and encouraged cultural activities of all kinds. Even
after the advent of Islam, and all that it entailed in matters of the ruthless
destruction of infidel cultures, many Muslim rulers, including most of the
Mughals, did a great deal in preserving and perpetuating many aspects of Indian
culture, for which they often received the flak of Islamic theologians. In many
cases, in fact, they developed such a deep respect and attachment for some
aspects, that they even tried to appropriate credit for them: in respect of
Indian music, for example, Alain Danielou (“The Ragas of North Indian
Music”, p.5) points out that “Amir Khusrau (AD 1253-1319)…wrote
that Indian music was so difficult and so refined that no foreigner could
totally master it even after twenty years of practice”; and the Muslim
attachment to Indian music grew to such an extent that it led to the invention
of stories about “how the various styles of Northern Indian music were
developed by musicians of the Mohammedan period…Under Moslem rule,
age-old stories were retold as if they had happened at the court of Akbar…Such
transfer of legends is frequent everywhere. We…find ancient musical
forms and musical instruments being given Persian-sounding names and starting a
new career as the innovations of the Moghul court”. The sum of it is that
many Muslim rulers also contributed in the preservation and perpetuation, and
even the enriching, of many aspects of Indian culture.
The
British rule in India, which did introduce many negative factors (such as a
system of education, which, in the words of A.C.Scott in “The Theatre
in Asia”, p.51, led to “the rise of a class of young prigs for whom it
became the done thing to denigrate everything Indian in an attempt at blind
imitation of the customs and attitudes of western people”, whose effects on
Indian society have only deepened and multiplied with the passage of time),
also consciously did a great deal in preserving arts and crafts, monuments, old
manuscripts, etc., and encouraging scholars engaged in the detailed study and
meticulous recording of different aspects of Indian culture. Official British
records, and the works of western scholars from the colonial period, are even
today an incredible source of information in diverse fields.
The
dawning of independence from British rule in 1947, and the accession to power
of “secular” rulers eager to demonstrate their distance from anything
“communal” (ie. Hindu) did not change the picture very greatly, since many of
these rulers did have some pride in Indian culture, or at least those aspects
of Indian culture which were perceived as not likely to attract the “communal”
label, and consequently did quite a bit for those aspects of Indian culture,
eg. they established institutions and academies for the study, recording,
preservation and popularisation of those aspects, instituted awards to honour
eminent people and scholars in different fields, organised festivals, etc., to
encourage and popularise those aspects, etc. That many of these facilities
became the preserve of leftists, and became hotbeds of politics rather than of
cultural activity, is a different matter; but institutions such as Akashwani,
Doordarshan and Films Division did a truly wonderful, Herculean job in
recording and popularising India’s immeasurable wealth of music, dance, etc.
However,
the concept of Money as God has now changed all this: for perhaps the first
time in India’s long history, there is now no real official support for
Indian culture. In the last decade or so, perhaps coinciding with the
advocacy and adoption of new policies of economic “reforms”, it is now passé
for governments to do anything concrete to protect, preserve, record or
perpetuate India’s traditional culture, or even to aid and encourage
individuals or organisations doing so. Institutions established in the post-
Independence era are being literally starved for funds, or funds are being used
for any purpose but to achieve the original aims and objectives, or,
simply, the very aims and objectives of these institutions are being changed;
in any case no new activities, except occasional pedestrian “cultural” projects
of a political nature, are being undertaken: the institutions are being slowly
transformed from cultural to commercial institutions, in line with the
“changing times”. What is infinitely worse is what is happening to the detailed
records of the research, documentation and collection undertaken by these
institutions, in the not so distant past, to preserve, popularise and perpetuate
different aspects of Indian culture: these archival records - print, tape, or
film; or actual physical objects - are suddenly becoming an eyesore or an
embarrassment, or simply a financial burden, to a cash-conscious leadership
with a “reformist” eye on the “globe”. A standard sequence now is as follows:
state-funded museums, libraries and archives - or at least the records in
them - slowly become rare or inaccessible, in different ways, to the (lay or
scholarly) public eye; often “constraints of space” force the authorities to
remove these records from their protected environments and dump them in
ill-maintained godowns, to rot and decay, unseen and forgotten; and,
occasionally, mysterious fires break out in the places which house these
archives, destroying invaluable and irreplaceable records (including those
pertaining to the golden age of Indian movies), then to be forgotten forever -
all these events, incidentally, make available valuable land and funds for more
lucrative commercial purposes. The persons in authority are too busy saving, or
making, money - for themselves, or, if they are to be believed, for the public
coffers - to care.
Capitalism,
or the ideology of the unbridled pursuit of wealth, would be only half as
effective in destroying Indian culture down to its roots, without its sister
ideology, Consumerism, or the ideology of the unbridled pursuit of pleasure:
Consumerism
is, in a sense, an anti-ideological ideology. The very essence of this ideology
is that ideologies, principles, morals, ethics, sentiments, etc. don’t matter:
pleasure is the only thing that matters. But pleasure can mean many things. The
Bhagawad Gita classifies most things into three basic categories: satvik,
rajasik and tamasik. Satvik pleasure is the pleasure a person gets by doing
good things which give pleasure to, or relieve the pain of, other people, or
which are for the general betterment of the world. Rajasik pleasure is the
pleasure a person gets by doing things, good or bad, which give him
pleasure or relieve his pain, without reference to its effect on other people
or on the world in general. And tamasik pleasure is the pleasure a person gets
by doing bad things which give pain to, or destroy the pleasure of, other
people, or which are to the general detriment of the world.
Here,
at the moment, we are concerned with the effects of the pursuit of pleasure on
culture. There appears to be no particular way in which the pursuit of satvik
pleasure can pose a threat to Indian culture. The pursuit of tamasik pleasure
can pose a threat to anything and everything: in respect of culture, it takes
the form of vandalism, of any kind or description, of monuments, heritage
sites, the environment, manuscripts or other records, etc., or deliberate
sabotage of cultural activities, or of attempts to protect those cultural
activities, purely for the perverted pleasure it gives. This is clearly
perverted or criminal activity, and has little to do directly with the ideology
of Consumerism.
Consumerism
is the unbridled pursuit of rajasic pleasure. The ideology closest to it, in
the annals of Indian history, is the philosophy or ideology of Charvaka, the
ancient Indian sage, whose philosophy can be summed up in his principle rinam
kritva ghritam pibeta, “borrow money and drink ghee” (somewhat similar in
sense to the English saying, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die”),
and who believed that the main purpose in life should be to maximise pleasure
and minimise pain (a view shared by the mainstream philosophies, as well, which
considered Kama to be one of the main priorities in life), without the
constraints of Dharma (which were required by the other philosophies). He
rejected the idea of any afterlife, heaven and hell, or rebirth, and held that
existence began and ended with this one single life on earth. [Of course, it is
possible to reject the idea of any kind of afterlife, and yet to believe in the
need for some kind of constraints, if for no other reason than for the smooth
working of the material world].
Consumerism
is even more of an opium of the people than religion. And it is much more
powerful than Charvaka’s philosophy could ever have been, since it is being
propagated by media, more immensely powerful than anyone could ever possibly
have imagined in the past, which can enter right into the homes of people in
the most remote corner of the world (shades of Orwell’s “Nineteen
Eighty-four”), and dazzle them with visions of pleasures to be enjoyed in the
form of sensual entertainment and material possessions of every possible kind.
The brainwashing potential of this psychological bombardment is total: today,
increasing numbers of Indians, in their millions, are becoming so increasingly
obsessed with the pursuit of - and addicted to the unceasing enjoyment of -
forms of sensual entertainment and material possessions which (their minds have
been conditioned to believe) provide pleasure, that they are as likely to have
the time, energy and inclination to bother about what is going on all around
them, as a drug-addict would. Consumerism, in the first instance, is
therefore a powerful tool of Capitalism in the destruction of culture: while
money can only buy outward allegiance, psychological brainwashing can sap
resistance and demotivate opposition more fundamentally and effectively.
But,
Consumerism is not merely a neutraliser of resistance and opposition to the
Capitalist destruction of culture. As an arm of American Imperialism,
Consumerism in its own right is as powerful as, or perhaps even more
powerful than, Capitalism, as a destroyer of culture: the forms of
entertainment to which Indians, from the most tender and impressionable age,
are becoming addicted, and the material possessions which are becoming objects
of obsession, are not just characterised by their sensual and material nature
or their ability to obsess, they are characterised by the fact that they
represent American culture and ideas of culture.
Today,
American music and dance; American clothes, styles and fashions; American food
and food culture; American lifestyles and work-culture; American ideas of art,
humour, morals, etiquette and entertainment; and all things American (or Indian
clones of all these aspects of American culture, or Americanised caricatures of
aspects of Indian culture), are being marketed, or brainwashed into the brains
of Indians, all over India - and not just among elite sections of urban
society, as in the past, but among all classes of people in every remote corner
of India, due to the ever-increasing reach of the all-pervasive media. [American
culture here means western in general, but American in particular; and includes
anything and everything, whatever its origin, which is accepted as an approved
part of American culture, or becomes the fashion there: whether African musical
instruments and styles; Chinese, Mexican or Lebanese cuisine; or Spanish pop
songs. Even Indian personalities, ideas or things become respectable when they
acquire the stamp of approval of America: as Tavleen Singh puts it in her
oft-quoted article, “Young Indians have taken to yoga because it has come back
to us from the West and because Madonna swears by it.”]
The
lethal effects of this brain-washing are evident everywhere. To take the
popular and influential field of Indian film music: films in Hindi, as well as
in regional languages, at least till the late sixties (though very rarely after
that), produced great and immortal music directors, singers, and poets, who did
great work in tapping all kinds of musical sources to produce a beautiful and
vibrant new genre of Indian music. However, there has literally been a
Dr.-Jekyll-to-Mr.Hyde transformation in this field. Now, not only are poetry
and melody a thing of the past, and vulgarity, hype and noise the order of the
day, but there is a determined trend of westernisation in every respect:
western tunes are lifted or copied almost note for note; western, and
electronic, musical instruments have almost edged out the Indian instruments
from the race; western forms and styles of music, and methods of voice production,
dominate the landscape; and natural voices (and even the falsettos which had
become the bane of Indian film, and light, music in earlier decades) are being
replaced by voices with artificially cultivated, blatantly western accents.
And even classic songs from the Golden Age of Indian Film Music are not spared:
“remix albums” present versions of old hits, so grossly westernised and
vulgarised as to be blasphemous.
And
it is not just film music (or similar modern genres of popular music like the
bhavgeet genre in Marathi music): today, the westernising trend is evident
everywhere. The literally thousands of varieties of traditional ensembles of
musical instruments, all over India, used for accompanying processions and to
grace festive occasions, are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, replaced by
western or electronic bands. The traditional dandiya-ras programs, with which
the whole of Gujarat, and Gujarati-present areas all over India, reverberated
during the Navratri festival, are being replaced everywhere by “disco-dandiya”
programs; and the Bhangra of the Punjab is giving way to “Bhangra-rap”. Vande
Mataram is known, not in the solemn Akashwani version, or the stirring version
in the old Hindi film Anand Math, but in the ghastly, westernised version composed
by AR Rahman; and we find similar ghastly westernised versions of many other
national or regional patriotic songs, and even of bhajans and devotional songs
(especially among elitist classes, and among the followers of the many young,
westernised, modern swamis and babas mushrooming everywhere). The list is a
long one.
Today,
an ever-increasing number of Indian children are becoming more familiar with
the latest western, or Indian “remix”, hit or “album”, than with their own
traditional music and dance: a glance into any house, almost anywhere in the
country, will very likely show the smallest child avidly watching, and
imitating, the gyrations, gestures and expressions of the performers in some
“remix number” or the other. The effect is depressing: to narrate a personal
experience, my sister is a teacher in an English medium school in South Mumbai
managed by a Gujarati trust, and with a predominance of Gujarati students. When
she joined the school around eleven years ago, she was fascinated by the way in
which even the smallest Gujarati children were capable of performing the most
complicated and intricate group dandiya-ras performances, almost like
professionals, as a matter of course and at the shortest notice. Rejoining the
school again after a gap of a few years recently, she finds a sea change in the
present stock of Gujarati students, who seem as unfamiliar with the art as any
normal group of non-Gujarati students anywhere else.
And
it is not just music and dance: an ever-increasing number of children and
youth, all over the country, are becoming more familiar with the different
aspects of American, or western, culture, than with those of the traditional
culture of India, or even of their own particular communities: pizzas, Chinese
food, tacos and McDonald’s burgers; the latest American slang, the latest
western mannerisms and expressions, styles of eating and greeting, and of
expressing emotions and sentiments (“yessss” with clenched fist upraised,
special “days” of the year for different categories of loved ones, bouquets and
cards for every occasion, etc.); the latest western clothing, fashions and
styles; the latest Barbie-dolls and western toys; the latest western trends in
cars, films, TV serials, cartoons, partying, sports, hobbies, destinations, and
anything else; and the latest, or even the traditional, heroes and icons of the
western worlds of music, sports, films, fashion, business, history, politics,
etc. If some of these aspects are current only among elite classes, they have
produced Indian clones which cater to the other classes.
All
this progressive westernisation (or Americanisation) and de-Indianisation of
greater and greater numbers of Indians, and particularly of the younger generations,
is slowly leading to the demise of more and more aspects of India’s culture.
Several people, including western scholars, have repeatedly expressed their
acute distress at the fatal neglect of their rich culture by Indians. For
example, Dr. James O’Barnhill, retired Professor of Theatre Arts, Brown
University, USA, in an interview to the Organiser (5/3/1989), lamented:
“I am sad to note that Indians know very little about their folk arts or the
artistes…using this medium (TV) to destroy one’s own originality and to
spread foreign culture is dangerous…the intellectuals…should
recognise the fact that their own culture is dissolving like delta in the sea”.
[This, it may be noted, was in the days of Doordarshan, when private and
foreign TV channels had not yet arrived on the scene]. When he had visited
Gujarat some years earlier, he had met a Bhavai folk drama artiste who knew 200
plays. But, this time, the oldest Bhavai artiste knew only 65 plays: “Between
two generations, 135 Bhavais were lost! Nobody bothered to record them. They
were lost forever”. This was in 1989. What must be the fate of the
traditional Bhavais today, in 2004? And what will be their fate in, say, 2014?
And it is not just a question of one particular form of traditional folk theatre,
it is a question of literally millions of aspects of Indian culture which are
being allowed to die out, or being systematically decimated, at a break-neck
pace.
The
question may be asked: does all this really matter? After all, change is
in the nature of things, so why bother about what may be part of a natural
process of change? And there are many more important things to achieve, and
problems to solve, in this world; so why interfere with what may be part of the
process of progress and development?
Well,
the facts of the case have been set out, in short but (I hope) comprehensively,
in the above pages. To sum up, we have two basic facts: one, Indian
culture is the greatest and richest culture in the world, and also the
culture which represents the oldest continuous civilisation; and, two,
this culture is being systematically decimated, or callously allowed to die
out. So, the answer to the first question is: yes, it matters. It
matters very much, and it matters almost more than anything else in the world.
On a personal level, of course, it is natural, and perfectly right, for
every individual to be more concerned with problems that beset him personally.
But, on a larger level, this matters more than anything else.
As
to the second point, it is true that change is a part of nature, and this
applies to culture as well. No-one lives his life, in every way, exactly in the
same manner that his grandfather lived before him - and,
nor must his grandfather have done so before him. But such natural cultural
changes (apart from purely technological changes) take place in the
culture of a society over the course of time, during which (apart from
desirable changes wrought by internal processes of evolution and refinement)
the natural influences of other cultures are assimilated into the native ethos.
Culture everywhere has been, and should be, a process of give and take;
and even as Indian culture has contributed more to the world than any other
culture, it has received a great deal from the world as well: to take just a single
example, consider the extremely important position of potatoes and chillies,
natives of the American continent, in Indian cuisine. [But even in these
natural circumstances, a conscious and self-respecting society, with a rich
culture of its own, should see to it that this leads to the enrichment, and
not to the replacement, abandonment or pollution, of any aspect of its
culture. And where, for some reason or the other, some aspect of culture dies
out, it should be recorded in detail for future reference and use. The tragedy
of Indian culture is that, in spite of the fact that the aspects of its
culture, which are being callously allowed to die out, are so rich and
beautiful, no efforts are made to record them for posterity.]
But,
what we are seeing here is not a natural process of change as described above.
We are seeing the most powerful forces of Imperialism that the world has ever
seen, the forces of American Imperialism, out to transform the world in its own
image, and in the process destroying all other cultures with the help of its
powerful ideological weapons (Proselytisation, Capitalism and Consumerism), and
the world is too overwhelmed, by the psychological force of these weapons, to
resist, or even to care. There is nothing “natural” about it.
As
to the final point, there are many very important (as distinct
from more important) things to be achieved, and problems to be solved,
in this world; but surely it cannot be anyone’s contention that they will be
achieved, or solved, by destroying rich cultural traditions, or allowing them
to be destroyed? And why should the destruction, of rich, and beautiful,
cultural traditions, be, in any possible way, a part of the process of progress
and development? Or, again, why should cultural westernisation, or
Americanisation, be equated with the process of progress and development?
In
the past, much evil, injustice and damage has been done in the name of
religion; but even more evil, injustice and damage has been done, and is being
done even now on an ever-increasing scale, in the name of progress and
development. As a result of many of the half-baked, ill-thought of, or plainly
mercenary, things which take place in the name of progress and development, the
world not only becomes vastly poorer of large parts of its rich heritage, which
is lost forever, but it often has to pay a heavy price for it (the lethal
effects of deforestation, industrial pollution, and mega-urbanisation, for
example, are already apparent; and will become so clear in the days to come,
that even the most determined opponent of social and environmental concerns
will be compelled to note them; by when, of course, it will be too late, since
some things become irreversible after a point of time), and the results, even
otherwise, are often pathetic, tragic and depressing:
An
article by Soutik Biswas, “Modern Cultural Clashes” (Asiaweek,
5/3/1999), details the results of a decade of efforts, by governmental
agencies, at “improving the lot” of the Andamanese tribals, by way of social and
welfare policies and programs. The government, in the initial days, had
followed a more or less “hands-off”policy: regular contacts with the, till then
practically isolated, tribes began in 1974, but they were sporadic and primary.
After 1990, the contact expeditions became a regular affair: “In one case,
Indian politician BP Singhal led a parliamentary committee to the tribal
heartland, met some people wandering on the trunk road, offered them toffees,
suggested giving them raincoats, and asked them to pose for photographs”.
In 1997, “officials brought a young tribe member to the capital of Port
Blair for medical treatment. He spent three months convalescing in the
hospital, where he was put up in a separate cabin outfitted with a TV. Doctors
and authorities lavished him with attention and gifts, they took him on drives,
gave him special food.” This boy “carried back the tales of the good
life in the city to other tribe members”. The article describes the
results: within one year, from October 1997, more than 2000 tribals had
migrated out from their habitats, lured by the fairy tales; and a sordid
sequence of events, described in the article, took place over the next
one-and-a-half years, as the tribals stepped out from backwardness into the
modern age. The article, published in March 1999 (already more than five
years ago), concludes: “Now it may be too late to ensure the tribe
members live in a protected environment. Recently, those who landed in Shantanu
village were wearing dirty donated clothes, eating fried snacks and rice, and
singing popular Hindi ditties they had learned from watching television. On the
trunk road that cuts through their heartland, others were stopping vehicles to
ask for food. ‘At this rate’, says Acharya [head of the Port Blair-based
Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology], ‘they will turn up as beggars and
servants and prostitutes.’ That would surely be a sorry epitaph for one of the
world’s proudest hunter-gatherer tribes.”
The
tragedy, described above is so great that no words can even begin to describe
it. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the day on which the last of the
Andamanese tribals breathes his last breath will be one of the blackest days in
our modern human history, in more ways than one. Indian culture will be very
much the poorer, by one of its three native races and by one of its six native
language families, apart from the different other aspects, most of them
probably unrecorded, of Andamanese culture (although I recall seeing a Films
Division documentary, “Man in Search of Man”, long ago on Doordarshan,
which provided some glimpses of Andamanese culture, including some strains of
their music). But, apart from that, it will show how “progress and development”
can be as ruthless as “religion”: if the natives of Tasmania were ruthlessly
wiped out from the face of this earth, in mediaeval times, in the fanatical
name of religion, the natives of the Andaman islands will have been ruthlessly
wiped out from the face of this earth, in modern times, in the mindless name of
progress and development. Moreover, it will also show how far the world has
progressed since those mediaeval times: the world, today, is just as blissfully
ignorant of, or (even if it were to be brought to their notice) callously
indifferent to, the fate of the Andamanese, as it was, then, to the fate of the
Tasmanians.
The
tragedy in the Andaman islands is a pointer to what is happening to India’s
tribal and folk cultures, and even to the tributaries of the mainstream
classical cultures of India. Even if the analogy may not be an exact one for
many reasons, the sight of millions of Indians abandoning their glorious
culture, and striving to become pathetic clones of the west, is not very
different, in principle and substance, from the pathetic sight of the
Andamanese tribals “wearing dirty donated clothes, eating fried snacks and
rice, and singing popular Hindi ditties they had learned from watching
television”.
If
Indian culture faces the same fate as the culture of the Andamanese tribes, it
will be a historical tragedy of indescribable proportions. The only thing which
can avert this tragedy is Indian society in general waking up to a
consciousness of its roots, and deciding that the survival of Indian culture,
in all its richness, really matters more than anything else. Even the
survival of Indian society as Hindu society, in my opinion, is incidental to
the survival of Indian culture in all its richness: if Hindu society is
willing to let it die out, or be polluted or decimated, and prefers to itself
survive, howsoever richly and prosperously, as a cultural clone, even
a “proudly Hindu” one (whatever that may mean under those circumstances),
of whichever society (currently it is western society in general, and American
in particular) is dominating the world at the moment, then Hindu society itself
deserves to perish “unwept, unhonoured and unsung”.
What
India requires is a Nationalist ideology in which the need to protect, preserve
and perpetuate Indian culture, in all its richness, is a central point of faith
and action. As pointed out in the very beginning of this section, Hindutva
without Indian culture as its very basis is a meaningless exercise. As I
pointed out even earlier, in the Voice of India volume, “Time for Stock
Taking” (1997, pp.227-8), a true Hindutvavadi should feel deep pain and
impelled to take strong action, not only when he hears of issues of
conventional Hindutva discourse, but also “when he hears that the Andamanese
races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions
of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu
architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that
priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that
innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and
animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming
extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted
and destroyed…..”. [Incidentally, even as I was typing this out, I noticed
a truly, and incredibly, macabre coincidence: the above volume was published in
October 1997; the introduction is dated 16 October 1997. The Asiaweek article
(dt. March 5, 1999) quoted earlier, relates that the very first incident in
which the Andamanese tribals started migrating out of their isolated habitats,
to their eternal doom, took place on 21 October 1997.]
Hindutva
is not a narrow ideology. As I clarified in an interview to the Free Press
Journal, 5/5/2002: “Indian culture being the greatest and richest is not
a narrow or chauvinistic idea; it is a demonstrable fact. It would be
chauvinistic if it acquired an imperialist tinge: that other cultures are inferior
and Indian culture must dominate over or replace them. In fact, I am opposed to
even internal cultural imperialism. The idea that Vedic or Sanskrit culture
represents Indian culture and that other cultures within India are its
subcultures and must be incorporated into it, is wrong…..all other
cultures native to this land: the culture of the Andaman islanders, the Nagas,
the Mundas, the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, etc. are all Indian in their own
right. They don’t have to be - and should not be - Sanskritised to make
them Indian”. Vedic and Classical Sanskrit culture, is, of course,
the pan-Indian representative face of India’s ancient civilisation, and that
fact is not negated by the equally valid fact that all other native
Indian cultures must be given their due. [I will go further here. In my 1993
book, “the Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism” (p.33), I have,
rightly in that context, criticised the secularist media for the “calculated
glorification of Urdu, of Lucknowi tehzib, of the Mughals, of gazals
and qawwalis, etc.”. But the truth is that all this is also a part,
and a rich part, of our modern Indian ethos. In fact, it is old classics, which
depict this culture, that I most look forward to when old Hindi film classics
are shown on TV channels!].
And
it is not only in the negative sense - of not being cultural
imperialist - that Hindutva stands out against cultural imperialism. In the
above volume (“Time for Stock Taking”, p.227), I put it as follows: “Hinduism
is the name for the Indian territorial form of worldwide Sanatanism
(call it Paganism in English). The ideology of Hindutva should therefore be a
Universal ideology:…[it] should spearhead a worldwide revival,
rejuvenation and resurgence of spiritualism, and of all the religions and
cultures which existed all over the world before the advent of imperialist
ideologies…”. Perhaps a rather ambitious idea, when the going is
increasingly getting tougher, by the day, in India itself - but, nevertheless,
that must be the ultimate dream of Hindutva.
Finally,
Hindutva is not opposed to any other particular culture as such: it is opposed
to cultural imperialism which leads to the imposition of one culture to
the detriment of others; it is opposed to the destruction and extinction of
rich, diverse and beautiful aspects of the rich cultural heritage of mankind.
Western, or even American, culture, are not, in themselves, enemies of
Hindutva: they have assumed that position today because (religious and
cultural) Proselytisation, Capitalism and Consumerism are, today, the weapons
of American Imperialism; and the havoc and the destruction they are causing, to
the cultural heritage of India and the rest of the world, is lethal and
irreversible.
The
true cultural spirit of Hinduism is encapsulated in the following words of
Mahatma Gandhi: “I don’t want my house to be walled in on all sides and my
windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my
house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”.
The tragedy today is that the culture of only one land is being allowed
to blow about; and it is not a wind, but a whirlwind; and it is being allowed
to blow everyone off their feet, never to stand up again. The aim of
Hindutva should, therefore, be to see to it that India remains firmly and
proudly rooted in its own richly diverse culture, even as the cultures of all
lands (including America as much as every other) blow freely about in
the true Hindu spirit:
Hindu
individuals, thinkers and activists, should: (1) take up the task of
identifying the different fields of culture, and (2) set up well-funded and
systematically organised apex institutions, one in every single field
(eg. music, dance, cuisine, architecture, wildlife, environment, games, etc.),
(3) which will draw up detailed action-plans to gather, classify, record, and
document in detail everything concerning that particular field of culture, from
every part of India and every possible period, (4) take measures, and
conduct campaigns to arouse the conscience, and culture-consciousness, of
Indians everywhere, (5) and take steps to see to it that every single aspect of
the culture of every single part of India is protected, preserved, popularised
and perpetuated as part of a living heritage (and where that is not
possible, at least documented and recorded in detail, and kept alive in the
national memory), and that, in every field of culture, ample scope is made
available for inspiration and further development from within India’s diverse
sources.
But,
while the inspiration and ideology behind the above exercise should be
Hindutva, the apex institutions should function not on the basis of
vote-bank politics or pedestrian jingoism, but on the basis of a purely
objective and academic outlook. For example, in all the activities connected
with the field of music, politicians and political considerations of any
kind, should be severely kept at arms length, and only
musicians, musicologists, passionate music lovers, and considerations of Music
as an end in itself, should have the first as well as the final say in every
matter.
As
pointed out earlier, there are countless committed activists in the fields of
ecology and environment, wildlife preservation, folk or tribal culture, music
and dance, handicrafts, etc. who may be ideologically indifferent, or even
hostile, to Hindutva. There are also numerous scholars, Indian and foreign,
who do serious academic research, or film-makers who make documentary films, on
different aspects of Indian culture (in their personal capacity, or for
different organisations, or for Films Division, or even for foreign TV channels
like Discovery or National Geographic). There are many people, in their
individual capacity, doing wonderful work in diverse fields: eg. Sunderlal
Bahuguna, who initiated the Chipko movement, Avinash Patwardhan, who has
invented a flute which plays the 22 shrutis of ancient Indian music (Indian
Express, 16/5/1999), Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, who has taken up the mammoth project
of preparing a complete Encyclopaedia of Indian classical music (The Times of
India, 18/12/1990), Dr. Jayant Narlikar, the well-known scientist, who has
taken initiatives in encouraging scientific studies on the engineering marvels
incorporated in Indian architecture, etc.
Any
person, who, in effect, does anything to genuinely protect, preserve or
perpetuate any aspect of Indian culture, deserves respect and gratitude for it
(at least to the extent called for by the extent of his contribution); and,
at least to that extent, that person must be regarded as a benefactor of
Hinduism and Indian culture, and therefore also of Hindutva - regardless
of his ideological leanings, or his attitude towards aspects of culture other
than the one he is interested in, or his attitude towards Hinduism or the
Indian ethos as a whole; and even if he is a bitter opponent of Hindutva - more
than any avowed supporter of Hindutva whose ideas of Hindutva are restricted to
the world of vote-bank politics.
But it is
time for genuine Indians, who are proud to call themselves Indian, to take up
the task. And it is even more imperative for genuine Hindus, who are proud to
call themselves Hindus, to take up the task on a war-footing.
