Let me sum up what I wish to say.
Firstly, Hindus having spread all across the globe, Hinduism is no longer fused with the Indian landmass. It exists outside India as well, even though Hindus not of an Indian race are yet to constitute a vast number. For the foreseeable future, a large majority of the world’s Indians will probably be Hindus, and a large majority of the world’s Hindus will probably be Indian. That will still mean a great many Indians who are not Hindu and possibly a significant number of non-Indian Hindus.
My second point was more of a question than a statement. Will Hindu values come to the fore in the world’s mind? With time, will Hindu values be distinguished more plainly from the Hindu race, enabling all of humanity to access the values with a clear mind? We should, in particular, ask if non-Indian spouses or partners of Hindu Indians will find more precise notions of Hindu values.
Thirdly, we should recognise that Indians and Hindus are being observed and studied by others. Is the world watching the Hindu race’s growth with curiosity? With gladness? With hope? Or with concern, fear, or even hostility? In part, the answer is connected to how we Hindus conduct ourselves in India and outside, and on how the Hindu majority and government agencies treat India’s religious minorities.
On this last question, the state of affairs is widely known. It is not pretty. Incident upon incident induces sadness and more than sadness. Including shock, disgust, anger, and shame. At times, the treatment is inhuman. Usually, and most troublingly, there is only silence in response. No rebuke, dissociation, or corrective is voiced from a governmental platform. Or on behalf of the ruling party. Just as disappointingly, leaders of Hindu religious organisations choose to remain quiet.
For sincere Hindus, this double whammy of assault followed by silence is shattering. For non-Hindus curious about Hinduism, the incidents are disillusioning and off-putting.
We have become familiar with the pattern. Mobilised by WhatsApp, a mob attacks a Muslim for allegedly storing beef or for hurting Hindu sentiments in some other way. The police pursue not the attackers but the victim’s relatives to check if the mob’s accusations are valid. Courts are slow or reluctant to intervene. Exceptions apart, the media suppresses, downplays, or twists an attack. Political and religious leaders find ways to justify it.
Livelihoods may be snatched from humble Muslim tailors or vendors of street food. Or a mosque or a dargah may be rendered vulnerable by claims that it conceals a Hindu shrine. No punishment or even condemnation follows. Protests by victims or their sympathisers can invite their arrest.
Because they protested, a large number of Muslims are in fact behind bars across India. Many have remained there for years, without trial or bail.
Because such sequences have been continually repeated, India’s Muslims are frightened and deeply insecure. The state of Christians is not much better either.
Many will remember the video that surfaced in August 2023 in which a woman teaching in a school in western UP’s Muzaffarnagar district asked schoolboys to hit their seven-year-old Muslim classmate for “not memorising his lessons”. According to the boy’s father, the teacher “asked the [classmates] to slap my son one by one”, which the children proceeded to do. The teacher also declared that Muslim children should not have been admitted into the school. The boy went home crying.
It seems that this teacher may have apologised later to the boy’s parents, although in remarks to others she defended her behaviour. Sections of the media reported the incident, but no public chastisement emerged from any UP minister or any member of the Union cabinet. No one representing the schools of UP or connected with organised teaching in India’s most populous state spoke up.
In short, millions saw a seven-year-old boy being humiliated in his class by his teacher, who enlisted the boy’s classmates in the humiliation. In response, the Indian establishment’s leaders and elders remained silent!
Long ago, in his Experiments with Truth, Gandhi recalled an incident from the year 1894, when he was a 24-year-old lawyer in Durban, South Africa. After being beaten roughly by his white master, a Tamil-speaking indentured labourer named Balasundaram had sought young Gandhi’s help. The latter was able to obtain Balasundaram’s transfer to another master. After relating the story, Gandhi wrote:
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
It is a fact that noticeable numbers of vocal Hindus in contemporary India feel themselves temporarily elated and energised by the humiliation of helpless Muslims. Hindus who feel let down and embarrassed are more numerous. However, most of us remain silent, for speaking out can invite trouble.
Hindus, therefore, have work to do. Not coming to the aid of the weak or the endangered is not a value that Hindus were taught to prize.
On the night of November 28, 2023, relief was felt across India when, one by one, 41 men, who were trapped in a tunnel in Uttarakhand, came out alive after seventeen days of suspense.
What were the names of the 12 toilers who, after giant machines failed, had dug with their hands, fingers, and nails the hole through which the trapped men surfaced? Monu, Naseer, Ankur, Jatin, Saurabh, Feroz, Munna Quereshi, Rashid, Irshad, Naseem, Wakeel Hassan, and Devender. Some of them Hindus, some of them Muslims, all humble diggers and labourers.
Bound together by the precariousness of their lives.
And by their Hindu value, the Muslim value, the human value of insaniyat.
Perhaps the question is of where our minds travel. We can climb vertically into our imagined past, and savour the presumed glory there. Or we can enter horizontally into the lives of our compatriots, our neighbours of different castes and creeds, and see if we can lower the pain we may find there.
To both exercises we seem to give the name Hinduism. May we choose the benevolent one.
Excerpted with permission from Do You Know Your Hinduism?: Notes For Modern-Day Hindus, Rajmohan Gandhi, Aleph Book Company.
