THE RAPID EROSION of almost all edifices of the Hindu society has been enabled by generations of ideologues and politicians born as Hindus. Add to this the chilling role played by influential sections of an anti-Hindu, anti-India academia and a venal media, and we get the full dastardly picture of a once-virile society rushing towards civilisational suicide. To invoke Sita Ram Goel again,
The Marxist-Muslim combine launched a two-pronged campaign. On the one hand, they proclaimed that Muslims had destroyed no Hindu temples… and that Islam as a religion was never involved in iconoclasm. On the other hand, they accused the Hindus of destroying any number of Buddhist, Jain and Animist shrines in the pre-Islamic days… I could see quite clearly that they were playing the Goebbelsian game of the Big Lie. But they could not be countered because they had come to dominate the academia and control the mass media during the heyday of the Nehru dynasty. Most of the prestigious press was owned by Hindu moneybags. But they had placed their papers in the hands of the most brazen-faced Hindu-baiters.
Not to leave this picture incomplete, Sri Goel also mentions the scary power that the Christian lobby wields in the media.
It may be noted that some of the Christian correspondents objected to Ram Swarup’s article being published in The Times of India. The plea sounds strange, to say the least. The Christians in this country own and control a large-sized press which includes several daily newspapers and many periodicals. The language which is used in this media vis-a-vis Hindu Dharma is not always decorous; quite often, it is intemperate. Besides, the Christians get ample space in the press which is supposed to be owned and controlled by the Hindus.
To reiterate the same question: how did we get here?
Or, to ask a couple of tangential questions: were we always like this? Was there something inherent in the Hindu civilisation and society that set it up for an eventual doomsday prospect?
The historical answer to both questions is an emphatic no. Starting with Kautilya’s time, the Hindu society had erected robust safeguards and rejuvenation mechanisms that ensured internal and external defence and maintained social harmony. Kautilya had indeed discovered a near-perfect formula that ensured that an Alexander-like invasion would not recur; or if such a threat did arise again, there was a powerful antidote to ward it off. As Shatavadhani Dr. Ganesh exposits in his Bharatiya Kshatra Parampare (Tradition of Kshatra in India), Kautilya realised the innate weaknesses in the Ganatantra (independent republics) system, and advocated the creation of a Herculean, centralised monarchy, which would not disrupt localised social orders. Thus, India remained stable, safe and unchallengeable as long it adhered to this Chanakyan dictum. As we shall see, this situation persisted from the third century BCE up to the downfall of the Gupta Empire.
During this long interval, a whole galaxy of brilliant minds — Rishis, sadhus, savants and scholars devised and implemented an impressive range of innovative and timely measures to protect Sanatana Dharma by continuously strengthening its society. Several of these measures have endured up to this day and continue to act as shock-absorbers despite the predatory forces of Abrahamism that threaten to fully overwhelm and engulf Sanatana Dharma.
One such measure is today known as the Ghar-Wapsi of Hindus forcibly or fraudulently converted to Islam or Christianity. More than 1300 years ago, our ancients had accurately diagnosed the core threat posed by Islamic conversions, which transformed the convert into an enemy of his former Dharma.
Ghar-Wapsi or spiritual homecoming is thus the earliest and the most durable solution to the fatal malady of a Hindu becoming a Mleccha.
This essay examines the brief and multi-dimensional history of Ghar-Wapsi from the eighth century CE up to our own time. In this exposition, I claim neither originality nor innovativeness. I have merely sprinkled upon my head the sacred dust left behind by the feet of our Rishis, Sadhus and Sanyasins.
AT ITS CIVILISATIONAL PEAK, Sanatana Dharma had been a proselytising Dharma. However, the nature of its proselytising was the polar opposite of Christianity and Islam which are imbued with unsustainable claims of infallibility which can only be spread through fraud, fire, force, and sword.
Copious historical evidence dating back to 2500 years shows the proselytising spirit of our ancestors transcending Varnas. This spirit is best couched in the renowned Rg Vedic declaration:
kṛṇvanto viśvaṃ āryaṃ
Make the whole world Noble
In fact, the Vedic corpus is proliferated by the same spirit. Within the context of this essay, one can refer to three excellent scholarly studies by Sri D.R. Bhandarkar, one of the pioneering archeologists and history scholars of late 20th century.
1. The first is an exhaustive treatise titled Foreign Elements in the Hindu Population (1911).
2. Is reconversion to Hinduism permissible? (1933)
3. Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Culture (1940)
The ubiquitous component in all three papers is a detailed exposition of the remarkable power and extensive successes of the proselytising spirit of Sanatana Dharma both within India and abroad.
In the first treatise, Dr. Bhandarkar gives an extensive list of alien tribes who either invaded or visited Bharatavarsha in the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic era and eventually embraced Sanatana Dharma and then became its most vocal champions and defenders. This formidable list includes the Greeks, Kushanas, Hunas, Shakas, Abhiras, Pahlavas, Parasikas, Gurjaras, Maitrakas and Pratiharas to name just the most notable ones.
In later years, they led some of the fiercest wars against Islamic aggressions. The Pratiharas for instance, stood as the strongest bulwark that prevented Arab Muslim incursions from the Sindh region. To quote Dr. Bhandarkar’s vivid description of the extraordinary power of Hindu proselytisation and absorption,
If the cultured and civilised Greeks could not but succumb to one Indian faith or another, it is a matter of no wonder at all that the semi-barbarian hordes that later poured into India yielded to the charm of Indian culture and religion. Such were the Sakas, Abhiras, Kushanas and so forth.
In the next episode, we will survey the success of the Sanatana proselytising spirit in faraway lands outside Bharatavarsha.
To be continued
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