Dr. Vijaya Rajiva

The recent decision by the Madhya Pradesh High Court to reject the Catholic Bishops Council's PIL against teaching the Bhagavad Gita in schools is a welcome one. The High Court's argument was valid. The Bhagavad Gita is not a religious document. It contains philosophical and ethical teachings that are unique to the Indian subcontinent. It also rejected the Council's opposition to the use of Hindu names for projects and the performance of Bhoomi Puja at official functions.

The Council's convoluted argument was that this was opposed to India's ' secularism'.

Let us try to unravel this jigsaw puzzle. It is clear that a minority community is continuing to flex its muscle, as part of its multipronged attack against Hinduism. Once upon a time it was sheer physical force as during the period of the Goa Inquisition of 1560 when Hindus who refused to convert were tortured, murdered,their lands confiscated, their temples destroyed and the survivors were placed under the severest restrictions in social life. To this day the Catholic Church has not apologised for this event. But as Portugal's fortunes declined and as the British Occupation was more concerned with the economic exploitation of the country (with missionary work being only an accompaniment to the major agenda) the methods the Church employed acquired a new face. Inculturation began in earnest, the process by which the missionaries infiltrated Hindu culture and facilitated the process of Conversion. With Macaulay's minutes in 1835, the Hindu educational system was decimated. Neverthless, Hinduism itself could not be defeated. The British Occupation reduced the continent to poverty and misery and changed its 35% contribution to the world's GDP to a mere 3%.

With Independence and most liberal Hindus infected with the virus of a misunderstood/misconceived secularism, the missonary project continued apace. Various parts of the north east were converted. Where, as in Kandamahal, Orissa, a lone Hindu sannyasin put up a 60 year process of resistance, he was eliminated, using frontal agents (supposedly the Maoists). All this made possible by the presence at the Centre of an Italian Catholic who is the president of the Congress Party. Alongside of this is the so called infamous interfaith dialogue (about which the present writer has written) which the Church has initiated to lull Hindus into thinking that all is well. That all is not well can be seen from the fact that 'secular' India has not been able to stop the inroads that the minority religions have been conducting against the majority Hindus. Any resistance to the wholesale theft of temple land or other attacks on Hindu interests have been repelled by the aam admi Hindu, led by the traditional acharyas, gurus and maths, not the beautiful people.


With the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment, the secular brigadiers will no doubt emerge from the woodwork denouncing it as anti secularism. Their indifference to the aam admi Hindu's suffering at the hands of well heeled members of the Church is indicative of how they have become distanced from their Hindu heritage. Time was when in the good old colonial days, preachers could stand at street corners and abuse the Hindu religion and when as in the more distant past, converts to Christianity were encouraged to spit on Hindu murtis and break them and kick them (which happened quite frequently!). At present the Catholic Bishops wants to slyly regain lost territory, lost privileges and rights. The attack now is not frontal, but devious. Whether it is Arundhati Roy or anyone else belonging to that crowd of the beautiful people, the aim is always and forever Hinduism. People like Macaulay and Max Mueller had predicted the downfall of the "mighty fortress of Brahmanism", as they mistakenly misinterpreted the situation . Macaulay was foolish enough to believe that within 35 years the Hindus of India would cease to be pagans ! Alas for Macaulay that did not happen.

Hindu India has continued down the millenia and will so continue into the future on the mighty shoulders of the aam admi Hindu and the traditional acharyas, gurus, and maths. That is the actual fortress. This has been eloquently captured in the words of journalist Sandhya Jain:

" India has hitherto withstood the missionary assault because of the devotion of the ordinary citizen, especially the denizens of villages and tribal hamlets, to their ancestral faith as represented by the grama devatas, kula devatas, and sthana devatas who form a protective shield around their devotees and save them from harm. Then there are the great gods in the larger temples and peeths and pilgrimages which gird the whole country in a protective grid, along with the spiritual strength and leadership of the traditional acharyas, gurus, matham and so on. " ( 'Inter- faith Dialogue : What's in it for Hindus ?', Bharata Bharati, January 12, 2012).

The generic Church as it has been called will not prevail, even though every now and then a liberal voice or a journalist might pop up in their support. Most recently one saw the spectacle of an editor writing rubbish on Sonia Gandhi's extra god (Telhelka magazine). One would like to believe that this was a spoof, the editor merely exercising his literary skills. Hindu India continues apace, because of the aam admi's devotion to the ancestral religion and because of the spiritual strength and leadership of the traditional acharyas, gurus and maths. Also because Hindus have inherited more than 330 million gods and goddesses of the Rig Vedic tradition. The Hindu is a proud polytheist, a proud worshipper of the terrestrial, atmospheric and celestial deities of the Veda, which have been consecrated in the temples. The entire land is dotted with these temples, big, medium and small. These are being protected by Hindus, notwithstanding sly attempts to remove them. There is no need for Hindus to go about in an apologetic manner for their beliefs, as if they were guilty of some deep crime simply because the two proselytising faiths wish to push their monotheism down our throats and are not able to do so in significant numbers.

Hindus will continue to worship Bhoomi Devi the terrestrial Divine Presence. They do not need the ONE god of the monotheistic faiths concoted in distant lands and used as the justification for conquest and violence. What happened to the ancient Greeks since Constantine's wife decided to indulge in the first act of destruction of Greek temples, and the continued destruction of ancient Greece (who shall forget the destruction of Alexandria ?) or the continued destruction of the natives of North America and Africa, will not be repeated in what is deservedly called Hindu Bhumi. Hence, dear Monsignors, kindly stop making a nuisance of yourselves. In short, please shut up !

(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university ).