ARISE ARJUNA

Hinduism and The Modern World

David Frawley
(Vamadeva Shastri)

Voice of India
New Delhi
 Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World

Contents
Preface

SOCIAL ISSUES
1. Arise Arjuna
2. Hinduism In Crisis
3. Misrepresentations of Hinduism in the Press
4. Hindu Fundamentalism : What Is It ?
5. Leftist Scholarship in India
6. India and the Concept of Nation-State
7. Religious Persecution in Pakistan
8. Taking Offense At One's Religion Being Criticized
RELIGIOUS ISSUES
1. Vedanta, Unity and Universality, The Unity of Truth
2. Practical Vedanta, the Real Message of Swami
Vivekananda
3. The Unity of Religion And Unity of Truth
4. The Unity of Religion And Religious Tolerance
5. Swami Rama Tirtha on Islam
6. A Comment on Ram Swarup's
Hindu View of Christianity and Islam
7. Yogic Spirituality And Islam

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 Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World

HISTORICAL ISSUES
1. India And Hinduism in The Mahabharata
2. The Aryan Invasion of India Questioned in the
Western Textbooks
3. The Aryan-Dravidian Divide
4. The Unity of The Vedic And Shaivite Religions
5. The Ancestry Of Ravana

CULTURAL ISSUES
1. East and West, Where is the Boundary?
2. The Value of Hindu Culture for the World
3. An American Discovers the Vedas

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Preface
Over the last few years , I have written a number of
articles and essays on current issues in Hinduism. These
reflect the social, intellectual and historical issues that
are important in Hinduism today. Based upon the
suggestions of Hindu friends, I decided to include a
number of these articles in one volume so that they can
reach a larger audience.
The topics chosen are among the most difficult and
controversial, which therefore many people may not
want to examine so as not to offend anyone. However,
unless we examine these topics I don't think we can
arrive at Truth, particularly in this time of world crisis
which requires that we examine everything.
This book is intended mainly for an Indian audience,
which naturally is going to be more familiar with these
issues. Unfortunately there are very few people in the
West who understand India or Hinduism enough to
understand this book or appreciate its seriousness (I
might add a number of Hindus fall in the same
category). Westerners have taken up certain spiritual
aspects of Indian civilization, like its yogic practices,
which they use mainly for their own personal benefit,
and seldom concern themselves about the state of the
culture and how it has suffered under Western religions,
political and materialistic influences.
I have written a number of books on the spiritual
side of the Hindu tradition including the Vedas, Vedanta

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and Tantra, as well as works on Ayurveda and Vedic

astrology. I have examined Hinduism as a whole in my
book Sanatana Dharma, The Eternal Tradition of
Hinduism, which is the work most relevant to this
current study. From the river of Heaven: Hindu and
Vedic Knowledge for the Modern Age is also relevant to
the present study and outlines the different aspects of
Hinduism.
One might wonder therefore why I would concern
myself with the cultural or apparently mundane side of
Hinduism. Those immersed in Hindu spiritual practices
may see no necessity for concerning themselves with
these outward issues. The ancient sages of India did not
confine themselves to the inner teachings only. They
made their comments about society and about other
religions. They produced various Dharam Sutras or
teachings regarding one's conduct in the world. Modern
teachers who wrote on social issues include Sri
Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Rama Tirtha
and Ganapati Muni who provided the inspiration for
what I have attempted. While I certainly don't wish to
compare myself to such great personages, the point is
that such a tradition is also important and sadly
neglected today.
Knowing Sanskrit, traveling widely in India and
meeting people of all backgrounds, I have seen the
tremendous ignorance and misconceptions many
intentional) that have been created about the role of
Hinduism and various Hindu groups even in India.

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People today rely on second hand information, mainly

through the news media or from academic sources,
which are generally unsympathetic and inaccurate, and
so the picture they get is highly distorted and requires an
alternative. Seeing this I have been compelled to speak
out.
This book is divided into four areas.

1) Social Issues: primarily the misrepresentation of

Hinduism both in India and the West and the need for a
Hindu awakening.
2) Religious Issues: the Hindu view of religion, the
unity of all regions, and Islam and Christianity from a
Hindu perspective. I have devoted more space to Islam
as this religion is more inimical to Hinduism and few
people appear willing to really examine it.
3) Historical Issues: particularly the Aryan Invasion
theory, and the division of India along north-south lines
(the Aryan-Dravidian divide).
4) Cultural Issues: Hinduism relative to the world as
a whole, and the value of Hindu culture.
The book has a wide scope of subjects but all are
important for understanding India today and show the
need for a revival of Hinduism in its true spirit. I have
already examined the ancient history issue in my other
books Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient
Civilization and in The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of
India. For this reason I didn't go much into this topic in
the present volume it is relevant.

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 Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World

For Hindus, they may wonder why a Westerner

would take interest in these issues. Yet do not Hindus
take interest in the affairs of Western culture? Why
should it be surprising if those born in the West take
interest in Hindu culture, which is one of the oldest and
richest in the world ?
For this book I would like to thank Dr.B.L.Vashta,
who first encouraged me to write along these lines, and
to the many other individuals and groups both in India
and the United States who have encouraged me to
continue, particularly the various publications that have
printed my articles, which gave me the confidence to
present them to a broader audience. Most of the essays
in this book have appeared in article form either in India
or in the United States, though a number of them have
been greatly revised for the book. These publications
include, in the United States, Voice of Asia, New-India
Times, India Times, and Fortunes India, and in India,
the Organizer, the Observer and Hindu Vishwa.
India today unfortunately is still asleep to its real
heritage, caught in a deep inertia (tamas), and not yet
functioning according to its soul. Yet even in this state
of sleep it has produced perhaps the greatest spiritual
figures of the twentieth century. For the world to really
develop spiritually, which is critical today, India must
awaken.

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This book is dedicated to the awakening of India,

not for the sake of India but for the sake of all humanity
in this era of global crisis.

David Frawley
Santa Fe New Mexico
U.S.A. December 1994

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Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World

Section I

SOCIAL ISSUES

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 Arise Arjuna: Hinduism And The Modern World

Arise Arjuna

The world, perhaps as usual, is in a state of crisis.

Yet unlike previous crises, which were local in nature,
the fate of the globe itself is now at stake, not only
humanity but all life on Earth is threatened. And in this
extremity no nation has yet arisen as a defender of the
Truth or spokesperson for the spiritual values of
humanity.
The communist nations, after decades of floundering
in confusion and corruption, have recently faded with
the collapse of their economic structures through
perpetual mismanagement. Only the ghost or shadow of
communism lingers, while whatever idealism it might
have had has been traded in for personal gain. The
capitalistic nations strive to maintain their wealth and
affluence by exploiting the planet, selfishly consuming
the future resources of humanity for their present
transient enjoyment. Between new technological
wonders and a growing disillusionment with material
gains, they move at an uneasy pace.
The underdeveloped or third world falters under
exploitation both within and without. Some poor nations
slide backwards and carve up their forests to cover short
term economic debts to the wealthier countries. Others
strain to recover from civil wars fed by arms suppliers
from wealthy nations abroad. Yet others are held back
by ever growing populations. Famine and disease lurk

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behind them and prey on them periodically, threatening

an all out attack on them in the coming years.
The environment of the planet is reeling under all
forms of chemical and industrial pollution and toxic
wastes. The Earth is groaning under the weight of
human greed and a sense of great planetary changes,
climatic and atmospheric appears imminent. Will we be
able to continue as we have without something major
going wrong in the natural world that we have spoiled?
Even if we avoid nuclear war our wastes may prove as
lethal as our bombs. Our very medicine itself, which
attacks nature, may create the new diseases that will
bring down our excessive numbers.
Most of the religions of the world, remnants of worn
medieval mind, struggle between a new secular
modernism and an old retarded fundamentalism. Some
are still trying to impose their selfish will upon the
world and convert the planet to their narrow beliefs -
that theirs is the only true God, prophet or holy book - as
if the acceptance of their religious dogma would
somehow solve our human problems. Other religions
have comprised and are willing to take a corner in the
new material age, bowing down to science as long as
they are given a place to continue ruling over their
diminished flocks. The great spiritual traditions of the
East, Hinduism and Buddhism, do battle with the
economic and ideological forces of the West, and the
continued shadow of proselytizing Western religions
which would still destroy them if they could.

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In this struggle we must ask: Where is India? and

what role does she have to play? India too struggles with
ethnic and religious divisions, with a rapid and often
ugly industrialism, with a plundered land and a
population out of control. She has here leftists and
communists who have twisted her economy and tried to
turn the souls of her people against her spiritual heritage.
She has her new capitalists ready to make quick money
or to ally themselves with the multinational corporations
who see India as a great new land to exploit. Where is
the soul of India today? Where is her will? She tries to
stand for the underdeveloped world, for peace,
tolerance, the unity of humanity and respect for all
religions. But her direction is not clear. It appears that
she can't even discipline herself.
Western secularism, a popular culture caught up in
superficial sensation, marks one line of attack against
her. Western religions, their exclusive belief systems
and their vast resources spent on conversion, attach on
the other side. India would like to please everyone. And
each group, religious, ethnic or political wants their
portion of the country. Separatism reigns, with each
group placing its own interests before that of the country
as a whole. Everyone wants to take and no one appears
willing to give. No one is standing firm to halt this tide
of growing sectarianism, selfishness and materialism.
In this battle the modern Hindu does not want to
fight, or even to speak out. He accepts the growing
secularism and sensationalism coming to his culture

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from the West, as perhaps necessary for economic

growth, or may even see it as progressive, modern and
humanitarian. He tolerates in silence the continuing
assaults on his culture and its spiritual values from
Islamic and Christian forces within his own land. He
doesn't like to criticize anyone's religion even if they
mock his. He seems weak, in disarray, without
confidence or self-esteem. He appears to think that if he
ignores these things they will go away in time, but like
an infection they continue to spread and poison the
country.
The image of the passive Hindu has arisen:
"They do not resist. They do not stand firm. You
can take anything you want from them and they won't
say anything. They retire in fear, though they hold on to
their superstitions. First, they let the Muslims conquer
them, then the British. They seldom fought back. They
often joined hands with their conquerors and took sides
against their own people. Now that they are free they
don't know who they are or what to do. They don't know
how to rule themselves. They are used to being ruled.
They are lucky their country doesn't fall apart. They are
looking for a new conqueror, perhaps the economic
forces of the West."

Such are the ideas about India that one hears today.
But classical India was never passive and resigned,
never gave up without resistance, never gave in without
defending Truth in all possible ways. India was a land of

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great sages and yogis, like Buddha and Shankara, but

they were not merely concerned with the Transcendent,
they tried to raise up the country and unite it toward a
higher goal, turning it into a land where the spiritual life
was honored. India was also the land of Rama and
Krishna, of great kings and warriors who knew how to
rule according to a higher law and protect the spiritual
life. India was not a land contracted in itself but open
and expansive, spreading its culture of yoga and
enlightenment across the seas.
In time the riches of India became the great spoil for
all the kings and peoples of the Middle East and Central
Asia to assault. Some of these forces gradually made
headway into the country. Native dynasties arose in time
and drove the invaders out. They did not compromise
with outsiders who were inimical to their spiritual
heritage. While India's kings gave refuge to the
oppressed, they did not bow down before the forces of
exploitation. Even the Muslims made dozens of
invasions before they ever gained a foothold. The souls
who strove so hard, who gave up everything, including
their lives, to maintain a land where the spiritual life
could flourish should not be forgotten. We must call on
them to return again.
Today India as a whole appears to be in the
dejection of Arjuna, standing between two great armies
before the great and unavoidable battle.
"He has no will to fight. He does not believe in his
cause. He would rather let others win than have to

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challenge or defeat them though he could. It is not

simply cowardice that motivates him. It is sensitive soul
that does not delight in conflict."
This is how the spirit of the country appears.
But life is always Kurukshetra. There is always a
difficult choice that has to be made. There are always
two forces in life, not simply the good and the bad but
the ascending force of spiritual growth and the
descending force of worldly illusion and division. Nor
are the two forces entirely separate. What is one day a
spiritual force may in time become a force of ignorance
and falsehood once its spirit is lost. These forces cut
across humanity and may divide a nation or a family,
not to speak of the world itself. To not be willing to face
opposition, even from those whom we love if necessary,
is to accept the force of decay. This does not mean to be
aggressive or violent but to take a stand for the Truth,
even if the world turns against us.
"Arise Arjuna! Yours is not a battle at one point of
time only. It is for all time. It must be fought over and
over again, even for eternity. Truth cannot compromise
itself with falsehood. Someone has to hold the limit. If
not you, who will it be? And what will you say to your
children? What will you bequeath them having
surrendered your soul without a struggle?
What would Arjuna say in these circumstances:
"I will not give in, even one inch to the forces of
destruction. If I must be sacrificed, so be it. But I will
dedicate my total effort to the fight. Death in the battle is

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preferable to a life without dignity. The Dharma must be

upheld. With adharma there can be no tolerance. We
cannot rest until it is completely removed and first it
must be stripped from our own hearts."
Such is the spirit that India and the entire world need
today. As a Westerner who has followed Hindu spiritual
teachings for over twenty years, returning to the West
from India I find some people who delight in the
problems of India and other who ignore them. I tell them
that to take pleasure in the problems of India is to
delight in the sufferings of one's own mother, as India is
the mother of the world. India is like the heart center of
the planet. That the heart of the globe suffers is not
surprising when the head and the hands of the world
(Western scientific and technological cultures) are
acting without a heart, are living as though their petty
pleasures alone were real, anaesthetized to the suffering
of the majority of humanity. India may have difficulties
by they only reflect those of the world as a whole.
Hence my concern with the fate of India though I am not
an India. The fate of India mirrors the real conditions of
the world.
A force inner strength and spiritual guidance for the
world is unlikely to come from the countries of the
West. The West is too immature, too distorted by the
mass media and its culture of self-indulgence. Its
spirituality is mixed with a seeking of new sensations
and personal achievement, trapped in the body and
intellect, and generally far short of any real renunciation

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or realization. Westerners are more concerned with their

own personal, emotional and family problems, not with
any greater life of service or spiritual practice. Though
there are those in the West who appreciate true
spirituality and their number is growing, they are still
too small to produce the kind of spiritual leadership that
the world needs.
Such a spiritual force is less likely to come from
Islamic countries. They are still caught in a karma of
violence and oppression, in a religion that is more a
political movement to gain worldly power, than any
spiritual search. Their religion is dominated by
fundamentalism and militancy, not with respect for life
and seeking of truth. China, the other great culture of
Asia like India, unfortunately will take decades to
assimilate communism and develop economically before
recovering its more spiritual roots, but it too will arise in
time. Its great Buddhist and Taoist traditions are too
strong to remain suppressed for much longer. India
alone as a country has the potential to take the role of
spiritually guiding the world. But if there is corruption
in India, in its leaders and thinkers, it can have no moral
force in the world or even within its own borders. Or if
India is unwilling to offend any country, group or
religion by challenging the negative and thoughtless
practices of our times, it will have no voice.
To compromise with falsehood is not tolerance or
nonviolence. It is selfdestruction. To turn away in fear
or hesitation, not to stand up for what one believes is

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true, is not modesty but self-betrayal. The world needs a

spiritual and moral force that speaks out, or a Divine
silence that makes us question all that we do. Not only
the leaders of India, Whether political, intellectual or
religious, must arise with the force of Arjuna, they must
defend humanity as a whole, the environment as a
whole, the Earth as our Mother, religion as a force of
universality and peace. This is not merely to tell
everyone that they are right and approve of all cultures
and all religions. It is to be the conscience of the world
and most people will not like to hear its voice, as we
have been ignoring it so much and for so long.
The true leaders and teachers of India-those who are
willing to defend at all costs the religion of Truth and
the culture of universality-must speak out. And if they
do, Vishnu will come again and for the whole world.
However for this to occur India must undergo a
radical change. India today does not represent the soul
of India but only its shadow. It is inexcusable for the
land of the Rishis to be filled with such corruption,
ignorance and servility as pervades the country today.
Those who know the true spiritual greatness of India can
only be shocked and disheartened to see the state of the
country. Yet the rest of the world is no better. The
Western world has only succeeded in greed, materialism
and religious dogma, not in the spiritual life. For this
India, with all its shortcomings, still holds the torch,
however feeble.

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Let India awaken and for this the true spirit of

Arjuna must arise! This is the prayer for the next
millennium and for the world's deliverance.

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Hinduism In Crisis
A new "Quit India Movement" has arisen in recent
years. Unlike the old quit India movement, which was
established by Indian freedom fighters in the early part
of the century to remove the British rule from India, the
recent movement has an opposite intent-to embrace
Western materialist culture and abandon traditional
Hindu culture and spirituality perhaps altogether.
This movement is very strong in India itself, particularly
among so-called modern Hindus, who are largely
Western educated and trained to look at their native
tradition with alien values and suspicious eyes. The
intellectual elite of India takes pride in being in contact
with the latest developments in Western culture, art,
science and technology, while remaining ignorant and
unappreciative of traditional Hindu teachings.

Not all of these Westernized Hindus have actually

studied in the West, nor do they need to. The
educational system of India itself follows primarily
Western standards and values. While the British may
have left India physically, their Hindu emulators still run
much of the country and see it largely like the British
did as a realm to be remade in a Western image.
However it is not merely a British model that they
follow but a Marxist-Socialist model with its atheistic
and anti-nationalistic orientation. The stifling
bureaucracy of India, which is finally beginning to break

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down, is not the product of Hinduism but an imitation of

the Soviet style of administration introduced through
Nehru to thwart the development of capitalism.
Part of this quit India movement has expressed itself in a
number of Hindus emigrating to other countries,
particularly for better job benefits. There are now small
but significant Hindu minorities in many Western
countries including the United State and Great Britain.
Yet Hindu abroad generally appreciate their own
traditional culture better than Westernized Hindus
residing in India.
The reason for this is that Hindus abroad, living apart
from their cultural base, have developed a nostalgia for
it. They have also seen the limitations of Western
culture-its crime, drugs, promiscuity, greed and almost
total lack of spiritual values-which is demonstrated to
them daily, particularly through the mass media. This
makes traditional Hindu values of family, natural living
and spirituality more appealing to them, even if they are
not possible to accomplish.
Modern Hindus in India see the tremendous social
problems of India today, which they tend to blame on
the Hindu religion. This is rather strange because India
over forty years ago and prior to that had the foreign
rule of the British for two hundred years and over five
hundred years of Islamic rule by Afghans and Turks
before that, who all along have been blaming the Hindu
religion for the problem of India under their rule. India
has not been under predominantly Hindu rulers for the

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better part of a millennium. How can such rulers be the

cause of the condition of the country today?
However, a new movement is now developing to
counter to this Westernization phase. A number of
Hindus today are looking to rediscover their Hindu
roots, and this has also become a strong movement
among Hindu emigrants to foreign countries. This
movement is not simply a regressive return to medieval
Hindu values, but a rediscovery of the both the future as
well as the past. It includes discovering the importance
of Hindu Yoga, Vedanta, Ayurveda, Vedic astrology,
classical Indian art and culture, and the Hindu view of
society and government. A number of Hindus in India
are working to make Hinduism more a living presence
in the country, with a social and cultural, as well as
religious influence. This I would call the "new
Hinduism," those who are embracing Hinduism from
both a point of tradition and one of modernity,
recognizing its relevance for the entire world.
For example, the new Hinduism is bringing back
traditional Hindu accounts of history, like the rejection
of the Aryan invasion theory, which recent archeological
in India, like the rediscovery of the Sarasvati river, are
also proving. They are a European perspective, as if
anything good in India only came from the west (which
is the present view). They hold that Hindu values, a
culture of Dharma, has its place in the educational
system of India, which should not merely imitate
Western intellectual or political views, like the Marxist

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views which have dominated most of the universities of

India over the past several decades.
Westernized Hindus generally try to hide their
Hindu roots. They do not like to be seen going to
temples, though they may go to churches and mosques
as a demonstration of their universality in religion. They
ignore Hindu social causes like the mistreatment of
Hindus in Fiji or in Islamic countries like Bangladesh,
Pakistan or Malaysia or the fact that Hindus working in
Arab countries are not allowed to practice their religion
in public. However, they will take a stand for Palestinian
rights in order to show their humanitarianism and global
concerns.
Such Westernized Hindus are suspicious of the new
Hinduism. They label it out hand as fundamentalist,
backward, or fascist, even though Hinduism is the most
liberal, universal, synergetic and diverse of all the
world's main religions with its many Gods, sages,
scriptures and yogic practices. Westernized Hindus
appear to take pride in denigrating Hinduism. On the
other hand, they do not criticize religions like Islam or
Christianity which are generally exclusive, monolithic,
militant and not accepting of other beliefs the way
Hinduism is. They like to paint Hinduism as
fundamentalist and dangerous while promoting a
tolerant adresspectful view of Christianity and Islam,
including their fundamentalist sides. They have little
tolerance for vocal Hindu religions groups like the VHP

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(Vishwa Hindu Parishad) but they have a great

tolerance, for example, for the government of Iran,
which Western countries like the United states, have
labeled a terrorist country, but which the government of
India has been friendly toward, even at one point
considering selling nuclear reactors to the country and
proclaiming a period of national mourning when
Ayatollah Khomeni died.
Contrary to this East to West movement there has
been a smaller but still important movement within
Western culture itself. Many Westerners have developed
an interest in Eastern spirituality including Hindu Yoga,
Vedanta, and Ayurveda following a West to East
movement. There are now ashrams, temples and Yoga
centers throughout the Western world and in much of
Asia as well. Gurus from India have often gained large
followings in the West. Projecting Hindu spirituality not
as backward but as progressive, futuristic and universal
in its orientation, they have found it to be appealing to
people all over the world. This movement, which began
largely in the late sixties, is still increasing on a yearly
basis. Now it is moving to Western Europe as well, with
the collapse of communism. It has even proved at times
popular in Islamic countries, but has been suppressed by
the authorities there.
Westernized Hindus are naturally perplexed by this
movement. It makes them feel perhaps a little guilty that
Westerners find value in their spiritual tradition which
they have probably never studied or taken seriously.

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They would like to believe that such Westerners are

uneducated, misinformed, or merely some fanatic fringe
of progressive Western society and its distrust of any
spiritual or yogic practices, which many other
Westerners, particularly the religious fundamentalists,
would label as cults. However many of the Westerners
studying or practicing Hindu based teachings are well
educated. They include a number of scientists, artists,
doctors and teachers. For example, while modern
Hindus look down Hindu mythology, Joseph Campbell
broadcast its value on American Educational Television
a few years ago. Instead of showing Hindu mythology as
a strange superstition, he showed it as a sophisticated
spiritual and psychological science.
I myself have been a product of this West to East
movement. I discovered Hindu Yoga and Vedanta
teachings at a young age in the late sixties, after having
studied Western science, art, philosophy and religion. I
found in Hindu teachings a science of spirituality that
shows us how to understand ourselves and the vast
universe in which we live, not as an external
phenomenon but as part of the universal consciousness
which transcends time awns space. Such spiritual
knowledge and realization is almost non-existent in
western religions or in Western intellectual culture,
which has not yet understood the deeper layers of
consciousness like the Hindu sages. Compared to Hindu
yogis and spiritual giants, like Ramana Maharshi or
Ramakrishna, the intellectual giants of Western culture,

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like Einstein or Fred, appear like children in intelligence

and in understanding life. Compared to them Western
religious leaders like the Pope, who reflect little
knowledge of higher states of consciousness, appear like
beginners in the spiritual realm.
Later in my life, in my thirties after I had written
books on Hindu spirituality, including some published in
India, I visited India for the first time and had a number
of discussions with modern Westernized Hindus. There I
contracted the quite India for the West movement first
hand. I was appalled at how little so many Hindus either
valued or understood their own tradition. They would
equate Hindu spirituality with a superstition on par with
caste and untouchability. They were found of quoting
Marx or Shakespeare but would certainly not mention
the Bhagavad Gita, which they regarded as regressive.
They used materialists and atheists lie Freuds at all.
While I was interested in visiting temples and ashrams
in India, they wanted to talk about the latest
developments in Western technology. While I was a
vegetarian, they ate meat. While I admired the sculpture
in Hindu temples, they preferred modern Western art.
While I liked Indian classical music, they liked Western
classical music or even rock and roll, if they were
younger in age.
Yet more surprisingly, I discovered that the same
Westernized and anti-Hindu attitudes were common in
the English language press of Indian, which often
appeared more appropriately the press of a foreign or

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no-Hindu country than that of a land where over eighty

percent of the people are Hindus (the vernacular press is
better I might add but still reflects the same trends). The
English language press of India appears merely as an
Indian version of the Western news media, with the
same basic types of news and views, only with a more
leftist political orientation. There was little of anything
in them of Hindu spirituality or little positive said about
Hindu culture.
If we look at the English language press of Indian,
the term Hindu occurs mainly relative to various
negative appellations like fundamentalist, chauvinist or
even fascist-not merely in regard to small or fringe
Hindu groups but relative to some of the largest to small
or fringe Hindu groups but relative to some of 0the
largest Hindu religious groups. Even the Western news
media world rarely, if ever, apply such terms to a
majority religion like Christianity or Islam in their own
countries, particularly to the largest groups representing
the religions. Meanwhile I saw that non-Hindu groups
are seldom so criticized in the Indian press, which would
make it appear that Hinduism is the more intolerant than
other religions, which any real Hindu knows is not the
case at all.
While in India, I also came into contact with the new
Hinduism, which I had gained an appreciation for
through my own studies. Studying the Vedas in the
original Sanskrit I discovered that what the Vedas
themselves said was quite even different than their

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modern interpretations by Western and even some

Indian scholars. The Vedas were twisted by Western
scholars to fit into a Euro centric view of history that
saw how the earlier Western colonial domination of
Asia left that these colonialist views of the Vedas were
still taught in schools in India today and even embraced
by the anti-colonialist Marxists). I decide to take it upon
myself to help correct these wrong views, which I have
attempted to do in various books and articles that I have
written over the past few years.
When I visited I met with representatives of the new
Hinduism, modern Hindus seeking to rediscover their
Hindu spiritual roots. They had a broad view of
Hinduism as part of a movement toward a global culture
and universal spiritual, Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma.
Such individuals were generally highly educated, knew
a number of languages, had travelled to many countries,
and valued Hinduism from a standpoint of intelligence
and modernity, not out of lack of contact with the
greater world. To my surprise and chagrin, I found that
these were often the same people that the English
language press if India would label as fundamentalists.
They were called fundamentalist not for any aggressive
religious conservatism, but for finding real value in
Hinduism and not embracing materialist political values.
These people demonstrated an appreciation of religion,
spirituality and science, such that I found in no
fundamentalist groups in America, or in even the
orthodox among Western religion. As I met these

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representatives of the new Hinduism before I knew of

the social and political polarization of India, I could not
be influenced by the negative portrayals of them in the
press.
Perhaps the greatest irony of this situation is that
Westernized Hindus are looking for a universality,
humanitarianism and enlightened attitude about life,
such as only exists within their own tradition which they
are denigrating without ever having really examined.
True enlightened culture does not reside in liberal or
leftist but in the science of yoga. There is also no
conflict between traditional Hindu or dharmic values
and the most enlightened and global values of humanity.
One can promote traditional Hindu spiritual values and
not only be modern, but super-modern and futuristic, not
only Indian but universal. Traditional Hindu spiritual
vales promote a culture of Dharma, a yogic way of life,
a life in harmony with the universe, through recognizing
the same Self in all beings.
There is certainly much wrong with India today. Yet
it is wrong to think that these problems are simply
caused by Hinduism. Certainly they are not caused by
Hindu spirituality, which is the most comprehensive,
liberal and expansive in the world with the most
comprehensive, liberal and expansive in the world with
its view that all the world is one family and all the
universe is One Self. Some of these problems, like the
caste systems, have their roots in the Hindu social
system. But these are usually not based on a real

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understanding of Hindu cultural forms but on their

misapplication through time, in which they have become
rigid.
There are indeed some Hindu groups which could be
called fanatic, backwards, or superstitious. But these
represent only a small part of Hinduism and very few of
the Hindu groups which have been accused of these
things. Compared to Western religions the percentage of
Hindus who have exclusive and intolerant ideas about
religion is very small. In fact most so called
fundamentalist Hindus have a far more liberal view of
religion than orthodox or even liberal Christians and
Muslims.
Many of the problems of modern India have been
caused by socialism and communism. In this regard the
economic and social problems in India have their roots
in centuries of foreign domination that causes making
efforts to improve themselves. This has been aggravated
by the prevalence of anti-Hindu ideological movements,
like Communism, Christianity and Islam, which still
maintain a strong missionary presence in India.
What the English language news media of India
portrays as a battle between modern secular liberals and
backward Hindu fundamentalists is more commonly a
struggle between a corrupt and rigid communist-socialist
elite and traditional Hindu spiritual groups concerned
with the real welfare of the country. The so-called
militant Hindu fundamentalists are seldom really
militant or fundamentalist, but simply a voice of

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political dissent. The so called secular liberals include

corrupt politicians sustaining themselves by various vote
banks through promoting social Davison along religious
and caste lines the very things they accuse the Hindu
groups of doing.
Each country, like each person, has a soul and a
destiny. India has her soul and its destiny, which is to be
a land of religion freedom and spiritual practices. Unless
a person lives up to their soul value or Dharma, he or
she cannot be successful or happy in life. The same is
true of a country. It is not the soul or Dharma of India to
become another Westernized economic giant, which is
not to say that India needs to remain poor. It is not her
Dharma to become another communist land, and
communism is already a thing of the past. Nor is it her
Dharma to adapt an exclusive religious belief like that of
Islam or Christianity, which claim that order religions
are false, inferior or our of date. Above all, it is not
India's Dharma to slavishly imitate the West in culture,
mind or religion.
India must wake up to her destiny, which is to revive
her spiritual culture and share it for the benefit of all
mankind. This requires that the intellectual elite of the
country cease denigrating the soul of India in hasty and
superficial attempts to be modern and humanitarian. It
requires a new Hinduism that corrects the social evils of
the older Hinduism while maintaining that greater
spiritual basis of the tradition.

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Such a new Hinduism or awakening to Sanatana

Dharma, the Universal Tradition, is essential not only
for India but for the entire world. Without reconnecting
with our older spiritual traditions and their yogic
sciences we will not have the foundation to move
forward to a real enlightened age for humanity.
Fortunately India appears to be beginning this
awakening, however slow, difficult or painful it may be.

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Misrepresentations Of Hinduism
In The Press

Hindus do not have a history of invading other

countries. They have not sent missionaries to other
countries preaching to them that their own religions are
evil and trying to persuade or intimidate them to adopt
Hindus beliefs. They have not economically exploited
other countries as their colonies. They have never said
that Truth or God belongs only to Hindus and those who
believe otherwise are unholy or sinners. Hindus have a
history of tolerance and respect for all religions, which
is almost unparalleled in the rest of the world. Yet we
find that in the news media, including that of India itself,
anti Hindu attitudes are common. Hindus are spoken of
in negative way that is not done relative to religious
groups whose behavior has been more violent, exclusive
or oppressive. Anti-Hindu statements appear to be
acceptable to everyone and no one questions them very
much.
Let us take the Ayodhya incident in December of
1992. Newspapers throughout the world stated that
"Hindu Militants Destroy Mosque," projecting the
image of Hindus both as militants and as mosque
destroyers. But what really took place and what is the
history behind it?
Hindu groups involved did demolish a building that
was built by a Muslim invader from Central Asia some
four centuries ago, and the building had been used as a

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mosque, but not for over fifty years which was the last
time Islamic worship was performed there. In recent
years the so called Ayodhya mosque, Babri Masjid, has
only been used for Hindu worship, and it has contained
Hindu religious statues in it since 1949. The structure
was not originally constructed in the style of a true
mosque, lacking minarets and other architecture of a
typical mosque. Above all, the site was claimed by the
Hindus as the original location of a great Hindu temple
to Lord Rama, one of the Hindu Divine incarnation, that
was first demolished for the building of the mosque or
victory monument by invading Muslim armies. Hindus
(and Sikhs we might add) fought dozens of battles over
the centuries to reclaim the site and succeeded several
times in holding it under their power. The site was not in
any Muslim holy place like Mecca or Media but in one
of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus. Calling the site
a mosque is thus inaccurate. It should have been called a
"disputed structure," which is how newspapers in India
generally designate it.
Yet the press did not say that "Hindus destroy a
disputed structure in their sacred city of Ayodhya, which
Moslems had not used as a mosque for fifty years,"
because this would not have been much of a story. The
result was that the press not only misrepresented what
the Hindus had done but inflamed Islamic sentiments,
which added fuel to the riots that followed, which were
mainly initiated by the Muslim community of India on

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the belief that one of their sacred sites had been wrongly
desecrated by the idolatrous Hindus.
During the Islamic invasions of India-which were
not provoked by any Hindu attack on Islamic lands and
which lasted for over a thousand years tens of thousands
of Hindu temples were destroyed, in fact most that
existed on the subcontinent. The many great temples
that Chinese travelers in the seventh century saw
throughout India, which were not only Hindu, but
Buddhist and Jain, cannot be found today. These
temples were not abandoned suddenly, nor did they
disappear of their own accord. The invading Muslims
willfully destroyed them in an attempt to before Hindus
to convert to their faith, or to steal the jewels that
Hindus temples abound in. The most sacred temples of
the Hindus, like those built on the birthplaces of Rama
and Krishna, were special targets. Not only were
temples destroyed they were often replaced with
mosques, converted into mosques. The temple deities
were often buried at the entrance of such mosques so
that Muslims could trample over them as they entered
into their mosques, thus humiliating the Hindus further.
The cruel history of the Islamic invasion of India
which involved massive genocide and enslavement of
Hindus-is not known by many people, particularly in the
West where the history of Asia is not regarded as very
important. Some would like to pretend that it didn't exist
at all, or that the scale of atrocities was really very
small, that its intentions were not religious conversion

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but military conquest, or that being a thing of the past

we ought to forget about it today in order to protect
communal harmony in the country.
India partitioned itself in 1947 in favor of the
Muslim minority, which claimed that it could not live in
a Hindu majority state. In the process the Hindu temples
left in Pakistan were taken over by the Muslims and
frequently destroyed. Even the governments and armies
of Pakistan and Bangladesh at times have participated in
such Hindu temple destruction activity. The real history
of India is thus one of Hindu temples being routinely
destroyed by Muslims on a massive scale, and yet this is
seldom ignored. On the contrary, the image of Hindus as
mosque destroyers was portrayed, not that of Muslims
as temple-destroyers which is a much more accurate
depiction.
At the same time as the Ayodhya demolition, and in
retaliation for it, dozens of Hindu temples were
destroyed in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Some were
attacked in Great Britain and other countries outside of
India as well. Yet such stories were treated as more
footnotes to the Ayodhya mosque destruction, as if the
Hindus were responsible for them by what they did with
one disputed mosque, and Muslims were not responsible
for their own actions once provoked by Hindus.
If we look at how the news media treated the event it
appears that one Hindu demolition of a disputed
mosqueid more news worthy and an expression of
greater intolerance than Islamic destruction of any

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number of Hindu temples. In this not prejudice and an

anti-Hindu attitude of great proportions? Why is the
destruction of Hindu temples not a newsworthy items,
but the destruction of one disputed mosque worth global
headlines? In fact Muslims also destroy the mosques of
other Muslim sects, like the Ahmadiya mosques which
have been destroyed in Pakistan, and this is not treated
as a news worthy item either.
The real question that should have been asked after
the Ayodhya incident was why did Hindus finally take
to this demolition, when for over a thousand years they
have allowed their temples to be routinely destroyed and
turned into mosques with little retaliation? The question
itself provides the answer. Whether one approves of the
act or not, such a history can create a sense of injustice
for which revindication may be sought, particularly if it
is not addressed through legal means. The news media
also failed to give importance to the fact that the
Ayodhya dispute had been in the court of India for over
forty years, with no decision as to whether the structure
was really a mosque or a temple that had been stolen.
Hindus, like many other oppressed peoples, appear
to be waking up to the history of their oppression. Like
other racial, religious or sexual oppressed groups, this
awakening involves a release of anger or hostility which
can appear extreme and is certainly contrary to what has
been their normal behavior. Yet it can hardly be simply
condemned as the news media appears to be attempting.
It is part of a process of rectification that will eventually

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find its balance. Given the modern age of information,

wherein the facts of history are known, and wherein
oppressed groups of all types are awakening and seeking
to gain equally, we must expect that Hindus will also go
through this process. Westerners may not be accustomed
to regarding Hindus as an oppressed group, but if we
examine the history if India we see that Hindus have
been subject to racial and religious oppression, along
with economic and military aggression since the Muslim
invasions of the eight century, followed by the actions of
the Portuguese and the British in the colonial era. So far
modern India has not yet adequately dealt with its past.
What should really interest us is not why Hindus
took to his demolition but how Hindus could tolerate the
massive destruction of their temples for centuries with
such forbearance. This is an act of tolerance
unprecedented in Western history. That it should now
appear to be coming to an end should not shock anyone.
The real wonder is that it lasted for so long. The issue
should get us to look at the historical grievances of the
Hindus, which they are certainly entitled to claim. Even
if one regards the Ayodhya demolition as wrong, it hard
not to feel some sympathy with Hindus historical
grievances on these issues once the matter has been
studied thoroughly.
To examine the issue of anti-Hindu attitudes in the
press further, let us compare how India is treated with
how two other countries are treated. The first is Saudi
Arabia in which all religions are illegal except for Islam.

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Other religious practices are not allowed except in

private and for foreigners only. Their is no difference
between church, state and police, which is all run
according to traditional Islamic law. By all accounts
Saudi Arabia is an intolerant fundamentalist state. It has
funded various Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist
groups all over the world through the years. However
Saudi Arabia is called a "moderate" Islamic country. If
Hindus were to try to do in India, even a small portion
of what the Saudis have done in their country, the world
community would be appalled and might even take up
arms against them.
Why is Saudi Arabia treated specially? The answer
is very simple, because the world dependency on Saudi
oil. Economic need fashions the global press and
structures global ethics. We can ignore the intolerance
of those whom we want to have good business relations
with. Since the Western world, which dominates the
mass media, has little economic need for India, India is
treated unfairly in the press (though with the economic
liberalization of India and more interest in Indian
economically by the West this may charge in time).
There is no need economically to cater to the Hindus,
and no threat of Hindus retaliation economically or
through terrorism, so they can unfairly condemned or
bullied.
Next let us compare how India is treated relative to
that of China, a communist dictatorship, whereas India
is a democracy. China has long held the most favored

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nation trading status with the United State, in spite of

the Tienanmen massacre in Peking a few years ago.
Anti-Chinese attitudes are seldom found in the press.
Chinese are seldom criticized for militancy and no real
action is taken against them even though they sell
weapons of mass destruction and nuclear technology to
other countries and have had an ongoing campaign of
genocide of the people of Tibet. Why China treated
differently than India? It appears also to be potential
economic gain, as well as fear of China's size and
power. It is curious to note how humanitarian issues
follow economic imperatives and that countries which
are economically valuable can be easily excused for
their violations of human rights, while countries that
have little economic importance can be either ignored or
denigrated.
Next, let us compare how the Hindu minority is
treated in Islamic countries with the treatment of the
Islamic minority in India. Pakistan eliminated its Hindu
minority long ago through forceful conversion or
genocide. There are almost no Hindus left in a land
which before partition had a significant minority of
them. Yet hardly any one even cares to mention this
fact. The Hindu minority in Bangladesh has been
continually oppressed and dispossessed of its property,
and is therefore dwindling in number. Yet the global
press does not mention this either. While it has been
recognized that the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971-72

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was one of the worst in history and numbered over three

million people, the press seldom mentions the fact that
it was mainly who were killed. Hindus in work in
Arabic countries are not allowed to practice their
religion in public and yet no country, including India,
protests this, though non-Hindus working in India are
certainly not prevented from public worship (and would
certainly protest fiercely if this were attempted).
On the other hand, though Muslims may be subject
to some degree of discrimination in India and are
certainly very poor, their numbers have grown, and
many Muslim immigrants have come to India form
Bangladesh, several million. Clearly India has not stifled
Islam the way Pakistan and Bangladesh have stifled
Hinduism. India has allowed Islam to increase within its
borders, while Pakistan has all but eliminated Hinduism
from its. More over India has more Islamic sects than
any Islamic countries, with some, like the Ahmadiya
who have been made illegal in Pakistan taking their
refuge in non-Islamic India! Yet the Ayodhya incident
proclaims Hindu Mistreatment of Muslims and does not
mention the much greater Muslim mistreatment of
Hindus. It appears that Hindu mistreatment of Muslims
is a newsworthy item, while Muslim mistreatment of
Hindus, even on much larger scale, is not.
In countries like Pakistan or Bangladesh Hindu
temples can be destroyed or taken over easily. They
have no government protection like mosques in India.

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Hence it is not an issue if temples are destroyed in the

normal course of things, and cannot possibly provoke
any national crisis, as is the case in India.
Why is there such of disparity of treatment? The
greater number of Islamic countries and the influence of
petrodollars is certainly part of this, as is the clearly of
Islamic terrorist retaliation. India's own lack of concern
of Hindus in other country is another factor. This often
goes back to leftist and Marxist influences in India who
are opposed to the Hindu religion which is their main
political opposition in the country.
The Western press also proclaims Hinduism as
polytheism and idolatry, not as monism and spirituality,
which it really is. Hindu practices of Yoga and
meditation, its seeking of cosmic consciousness and
view of Self-realization as the highest goal of life, and
its many great modern sages like Ramakrishna,
Aurobindo, and Ramana Maharshi are seldom given any
credit. The sophisticated nature of Hindu philosophy,
psychology and cosmology are generally ignored.
Western news media accounts of India generally focus
on such social evils as the caste system, mistreatment of
women and dowry deaths, without showing the deeper
side of Hinduism. This would be like representing
American culture through drug addiction, sexual
promiscuity and divorce courts and ignoring the other
aspects of the culture.
Or if the spiritual teachings of India are mentioned,
they are regarded as "cults," even though they have been

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the fabric of one of the greatest civilization of the world

through history. It appears that any religious teaching
not part of traditional Western culture is liable to be
called a cult in the Western press, particularly if it gains
any following. How would Western people feel if
predominant Western religious were called cults in the
Eastern world? How would Christians feel if the news
media of India called Christianity a cult? Christian
missionaries in India have broken up families and sowed
distention in Hindu society far more effectively than any
so called Hindu cult leaders in the West. The Waco
Texas incident in 1993, in which ninety followers of
Christian cult leader David Koresh were killed, has been
used to attack Hindu and other Eastern religious groups
in America as cults, in spite of the fact that Koresh, like
Jim Jones, the other recent cult leader who led great
numbers of his followers to death, was a Christian !
Some Hindus themselves claim that Hindus must be
subject to a higher standard, that their religions may
accept or even promote. Hence oppression of Hindus
does not bother them as much as Hindus oppressing
non-Hindus. Yet to create a higher standard for Hindus
does not mean to misrepresent their behavior relative to
other groups. We cannot say that temple destroying is
alright for Muslims because it is part of their religion,
but reclaiming mosques built on Hindu sacred sites is
not right for Hindus who should follow a policy of total
religions tolerance. There must be one standard for all
human beings. The higher standard of tolerance in the

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Hindu religion does not mean that anything that suggest

intolerance among Hindus should be broadcast to the
global media as a great evil, while intolerant actions
among other groups, particularly against Hindus, should
be ignored.
There should be a common standard for all humanity
and Hindu groups should not be especially attacked,
while other groups are ignored or excused for what may
be more violent or intolerant behavior. Hindus need not
be given any special favorable treatment, but the special
unfavorable treatment of them which now exists should
come to an end. Hindus should be portrayed not just for
what the Western mind finds wrong with them but as
they are. The full extent of Hindu culture, religion and
spirituality should be made known.
Given all this, it is imperative that anti-Hindu
attitudes are questioned. They are a form of ethnic and
religions discrimination, which should be unacceptable
to any open minded person. As long as such negative
attitudes persist in the press they can only further
misunderstanding and disharmony. Yet the place where
they must be changed first is in the English language
press of India. We cannot expect the global press not to
follow anti-Hindu attitudes that come from India itself.
And India can never rise up as long as it is attacking
itself.
This does not mean that the freedom of the press in
India or elsewhere should be challenged or curtailed.
Freedom is essential in the dissemination of information

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and no religion should have control over that. It means

that Hindus should cease being passive relative to their
own news media and enter into a dialogue with it,
including questioning and criticising it when it
misrepresents their traditions. If media groups do not
respond to such criticism Hindus should cease
supporting them or create their own alternative media
which more accurately represents their views.
Ultimately if Hindus fail to represent their views
adequately, particularly in India, they have no one to
blame but themselves.
As a Westerner who has studied the deeper side of
Hinduism and learned how much Hinduism is
misrepresented and misunderstood. I have been
compelled to speak out on these issues. Greater
communication on these issues would probably go far in
correcting this anti-Hindu prejudice. Given the extent of
the problem it will take time to correct and the vested
interests who are opposed to it will not give in easily.
However there are now those who are presenting the
Truth and the old distortions will no longer go
unchallenged.
In closing, I am not saying that Hindus have not
done anything wrong or that there is nothing
questionable about Hindu political groups or social
practices. Hindus must take it upon themselves to
reform there society, which is badly needed, but this
should be done according to the soul of India, which is

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Dharma, not according to Western political, intellectual

or religious ideologies, which are generally adharmic,
that is unspiritual, however modern or wellfunded they
may be.

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Hindu Fundamentalism : What Is It?

Fundamentalism is an easily discernible phenomenon in

belief-oriented religions like Christianity and Islam
which have a simple and exclusive pattern to their faith.
They generally insist that there is only One God, who
has only one Son or final Prophet, and only one true
scripture, which is literally God's word. They hold that
belief in this One God and his chief representative
brings salvation in an eternal heaven and disbelief
causes condemnation to an eternal hell. Muslims daily
chant "there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his
(last) prophet". Most Christians, whether Catholic or
Protestant, regard belief in Christ as one's personal
savior as the only true way to salvation.
Fundamentalists are literalists in these traditions
who hold rigidly to their beliefs and insist that since
their religion alone is true the other religions should not
be tolerated, particularly in the lands where members of
their religion are in a majority. Fundamentalists
generally hold to their religion's older social customs
and refuse to integrate into the broader stream of
modern society which recognizes freedom of religious
belief.
Fundamentalism can usually be discriminated from
orthodoxy in these traditions, but tends to overlap with
it, particularly in the case of Islam. Most orthodox
Christians and many orthodox Muslims tolerate those of
other religious belief, though they may not agree with

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them, and are not involved in the militancy and social

backwardness of fundamentalist group. They usually
have little trouble functioning in modern society, though
they may keep to themselves in matters of religion and
still regard that theirs is the only true religion. The
strictly orthodox in these religions, however, may not
be very different than the fundamentalists and often
support them.
While the news media of the Western World, and of
India itself, speaks of Hindu fundamentalism, no one
appears to have really defined what it is. Is there a
Hindu fundamentalism comparable to Islamic or
Christian fundamentalism? Using such a term merely
assumes that there is, but what is the evidence for it?
Are there Hindu beliefs of the same order as the absolute
beliefs of fundamentalists Christianity and Islam ? It is
questionable that, whatever problems might exist in
Hinduism, whether fundamentalism like that found in
Christianity or Islam can exist at all in its more open and
diverse tradition which has many names and forms for
God, many great teachers and Divine incarnations, many
scares books, and a pursuit of self-realization that does
not recognize the existence of any eternal heaven or hell.
There is no monolithic faith called Hinduism with a set
system of beliefs that all Hindus must follow which can
be turned into such fundamentalism.
Fundamentalists groups insist that theirs is the only
true God and that all other Gods or names for God are
wrong. Islamic fundamentalists insist that the only God

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is Allah, even though these also refer to a Supreme

Being and Ultimate Spiritual Reality such as Allah is
supposed to be. Christian fundamentalists will not
accept Allah or Brahman a names for God as they
conceive Him to be. Hindus with their many names and
forms for God don't mind accepting the Christian name
God or even Islamic Allah's referring to the same
reality, though they may not use these names in the
same strict or exclusive sense as Christians or Muslims.
A belief in God is not even necessary to be a Hindu, as
such non-theistic Hindu systems as Sankhya reveal. For
those who speak of Hindu fundamentalism, we must ask
the question: What One God do Hindu fundamentalists
groups insist upon is the only true God and which Gods
are they claiming are false except for Him? If Hindus
are not insisting upon the sole reality of the One Hindu
God can they be called fundamentalists like the
Christians and Muslims?
Islamic fundamentalists consider that Islam is the
only true religion, that no true new faith can be
established after Islam and that with the advent of Islam
all previous faiths, even if they were valid up to that
time, became outdated. Christian fundamentalists hold
that Christianity alone is true, and that Islam and
Hinduism are religions of the devil. Even orthodox
people in these traditions may hold these views.
Hindus are not of one faith only. They are divided
into Shaivites (those who worship Shiva), Vaishnavas
(those who worship Vishnu), Shaktas (those who

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worship the Goddess), Ganapatas (those who worship

Ganesh), Smartas and a number of other groups which
are constantly being revised relative to modern reachers
around whom new movements may be founded (like the
Swami Narayan movement, the Ramakrishna-
Vivekananda groups or the followers of Sri Aurobindo).
Those called Hindu fundamentalists are similarly
divided up into these different sets. What common belief
can be found in all these groups which constitutes Hindu
fundamentalism? What common Hindu fundamentalist
platform do the different sets of Hinduism shares? is it a
Shaivite, Vaishnava or other type fundamentalism? How
do such diverse groups maintain their harmony and
identity under the Hindu fundamentalist banner? While
one can make a code of belief for Christian or Islamic
fundamentalism, what code of belief applies to Hindu
fundamentalism of all different sets?
No Hindus-including so called Hindu
fundamentalists insist that there is only one true faith
called Hinduism and that all other faith are false.
Hinduism contains too much plurality to allow for that.
Its tendency is not to coalesce into a fanatic into a
fanatic unit like the fundamentalists of other religions,
but to disperse into various diverse sets and fail to arrive
at any common action, historically even one of self-
defense against foreign invaders.
Fundamentalist groups insist upon belief in the
literal truth of one book as the Word of God, which they
base their behavior on. Muslim fundamentalists insist

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that the Koran is the Word of God and that all necessary
knowledge is contained in it. Christian fundamentalists
say the same thing of the Bible. Again even orthodox or
ordinary Muslims and Christians often believe this.
Hindus have many holy books like the Vedas, Agamas,
Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana and so on, which contain a
great variety of teaching and many different points of
view and no one of these books is required reading for
all Hindus. Hindus generally respect the holy books of
other religions as well. What single holy book do Hindu
fundamentalists hold literally to be the word of God,
which they base their behavior upon? Christian and
Islamic fundamentalists flaunt their holy book and are
ever quoting from it to justify their actions. What Hindu
Bible are the Hindu fundamentalists all crying, quoting
and preaching from and finding justification in?
Fundamentalist groups are often involved in
conversion activity to get other people to adopt their
beliefs. They frequently promote missionary efforts
throughout the world to bring the entire world to their
views. This again is true of ordinary or orthodox
Muslims and Christians. Fundamentalists are merely
more vehement in their practices. What missionary
activities are Hindu fundamentalists promoting
throughout the world? What missions in other countries
have Hindu fundamentalists set up to convert Christians,
Muslims or those of order beliefs to the only true
religion called Hinduism? What Hindus are motivated

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by a missionary spirit to discredit people of other

religious beliefs in order to convert and save them?
Fundamentalist groups not only condemn those of
other beliefs to an eternal hell, they may even make
death threats against those who criticize their beliefs.
The fatwa of the Ayatollah Khomeni against Salman
Rushdie and of some others against Anwar Shaikh (a
name not so well known but not untypical) are examples
of this, which many Muslim groups throughput the
world, perhaps the majority, have accepted. What Hindu
has ever condemned non-Hindus to an eternal hell, or
issued declarations asking for the death of anyone for
merely criticizing Hindu belief? Where have Hindus
ever stated that it is punishable by death to criticize
Krishna, Rama or any other great Hindu leader? There
are certainly plenty of book, including many by
Christians and Muslims, which portray Hinduism in a
negative light. How many of such books are Hindu
fundamentalists trying to ban, and how many of their
authors are they threatening?
Fundamentalists are usually seeking to return to the
social order and customers of some ideal religious era of
a previous age. Fundamentalists often insist upon
returning to some traditional law code like the Islamic
Shariat or Biblical of justice and humanitarianism. What
law code are Hindu fundamentalists seeking to
reestablish? Which Hindu groups are agitating for the
return of the law code of the Manu Samhita, for example
(which incidentally has a far more liberal and spiritual

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law code than the Shariat or the Bible)?

Fundamentalists are usually opposed to modern
science. Many Christian and Islamic fundamentalists
reject the theory of evolution and insist that the world
was created by God some 6000 years age. Even in
America Christian fundamentalists are typing to have
the evolution theory taken out. What scientific theories
are Hindu fundamentalists opposed to and trying to
prevent being taught in schools today ?
Fundamentalism creates various political parties
limited to members of that religion only, which aim at
setting up religions dictatorships. What exclusively
Hindu religious party exists in India or elsewhere in the
world, and what is its common Hindu fundamentalist
platform? Who is asking for a Hindu state that forbids
the practice of other religions, allows only Hindu
religious centers to be built and requires a Hindu
religious figures as the head o the country? This is what
other fundamentalist groups are asking for in terms of
their religions and what they have instituted in a number
of countries that they have taken power, like Iran and
Saudi Arabia.
Fundamentalism is often involved with militancy
and sometimes with terrorism. What Hindu minorities in
the world are violently agitating for their separate state?
What planes have Hindu fundamentalists hijacked, what
hostages have they taken, what bombs have they
planted? What terrorist activities are Hindu
fundamentalists promoting throughout the world? What

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countries are stalking down Hindu fundamentalist

terrorists who are plotting against them? The Ayatollah
Khomeni is regarded in the Western World as a typical
example of an Islamic fundamentalist militant leader.
Many Western people consider him to be a terrorist as
well. What Hindu fundamentalist leader has a similar
record?
Saudi Arabia is usually regarded as a pious or
orthodox Islamic country, and is usually not called
fundamentalist even by the news media of India. No
non-Islamic places of worship are allowed to be built
there. No non-Islamic worship is allowed in public.
American troops in the Gulf War had to hide their
religious practices so as not to offend the Saudis.
Traditional Islamic law, including mutilation for various
offences, is strictly enforced by a special religious police
force. If we apply any standard definition of
fundamentalism, Saudi Arabia is a super-fundamentalist
country. What Hindu community is insisting upon the
same domination of one religious belief, law and social
practices like that of Saudi Arabia? Which Hindus are
more fundamentalist in their beliefs and practices than
the Saudis, whom few are calling fundamentalists?
Hence we must ask: What are Hindus being accused
as fundamentalists for doing? Is it belief in the unique
superiority of their religion, the sole claim of their
scripture as the Word of God, their savior or prophet as
ultimate for all humanity, that those who believe in their

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religion go to an eternal heaven and those who don't go

to an eternal hell, the need to convert the world to their
beliefs? These views are found not only in Christian and
Islamic fundamentalism but even among the orthodox.
There are no Hindu fundamentalist statements of such
nature. Can we imagine any Hindu swearing that there is
no God but Rama and Tulsidas is his only prophet, that
the Ramayana is the only true scripture, that those who
believe differently will be condemned by Rama to
eternal damnation and those who criticize Tulsidas
should be killed?
Hindus are called fundamentalists for wanting to
retake a few of their old holy places, like Ayodhya, of
the many thousands destroyed during centuries of
foreign domination. Several Hindu groups are united
around this cause. This, however, is an issue oriented
movement, not the manifestation of a monolithic
fundamentalism. It is a unification of diverse groups to
achieve a common end, not the product of a uniform
belief system. Even the different groups involved have
often been divided as to how to proceed and have not
spoken with any single voice. Whether one considers the
action to be right or wrong, it is not the assertion of any
single or exclusive religious ideology. If it is
fundamentalism, what is the fundamentalist ideology,
belief and practice behind it? Hindus, along of all
people, have failed to take back their holy sites after the
end of the colonial era. If they are fundamentalists for

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seeking to do so, then what should we call Pakistan or

Bangladesh, who have destroyed many Hindu holy sites
and were not simply taking back Islamic sites that the
Hindus had previously usurped?
Hindus are called fundamentalists for organizing
themselves politically. Yet members of all other
religions have done this, while Hinduism is by all
accounts the most disorganized of all religions. There
are many Christian and Islamic parties throughout the
world, and in all countries where these religions are in a
majority they make sure to exert whatever political
influence they can. Why shouldn't Hindus have a
political voice even in India? The Muslims in India have
their own Muslim party and no can id calling them
fundamentalists for organizing themselves politically.
There are many Islamic states throughout the world and
in these Hindus, if they exist at all, are oppressed. What
Hindu groups are asking for India to be a more strictly
Hindu state than Muslims are doing in Islamic state?
There are those who warn that Hindu rule would
mean the creation of a Hindu theocratic state? Yet what
standard Hindu theology is there, and what Hindu
theocratic state has ever existed? Will it be a Shaivite,
Vaishnava, or Vedantic theocracy? What Hindu
theocratic model will it be based upon? Is there a model
of Hindu kings like the Caliphs of early Islam to go back
to, or like the Christian emperors of the Middle Ages?
What famous Hindu king was a fundamentalist who
tried to eliminate all other beliefs from the land or tried

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to spread Hinduism throughout the world by the sword?

Does Rama or Krishna provide such a model? Does
Shivaji provide such a model ? If no such model exist
what is the fear of a militant Hindu theocratic rule based
upon ?
Traditional Hindus do exist. There are Hindus who
are caught in conservative or regressive social customs,
like untouchability or mistreatment of women, which
should not be underestimated. There are serious
problems in Hindu society that must be addressed, but
these should be examined as per their nature and cause,
which is not some uniform Hindu fundamentalism but
wrong practices that are often contrary to real Hindu
through. To lump them together as problems of Hindu
fundamentalism fails to examine them adequately but,
rather, uses them as a scare tactic to discredit Hinduism
as a whole. There are some Hindus who may believe
that their religion is superior and want to keep it separate
from other religions. In this regard they are no different
than orthodox Christians and Muslims.
The fact is that there is no monolithic fun
damentalism possible among Hinduswho have no
uniform belief structure. A charge of social
backwardness and discriminatory attitudes can be made
against a number of Hindus but this is not the same as
the blanket charge of fundamentalism, which
misinterprets Hinduism as a religion of militancy which
it nowhere is. The charge of fundamentalism is usually
made against various Hindu groups like the VHP

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(Vishwa Hindu Parishad), who do not support the caste

system and other such backward customs anyway.
What is called Hindu fundamentalism is in fact
generally a reaction to Islamic, Christian and
Communist fundamentalism, which are all organized
according to an exclusive belief system and a strategy to
take over the world. These three fundamentalisms are
attacking India from within, as well as threatening it
from without. Islamic terrorist activity continues in
India, particularly in Kashmir. India is now surrounded
by self-proclaimed Islamic states where Hindus have
become second class citizens. Under this circumstance
why should it be so wrong for Hindus in India to
consider creating a state that rights or traditions of
Hindus? Christian and Islamic missionary activity
continues strongly in many parts of India. Do these
missionary groups portray Hinduism as a valid religion
in its own right? They are sometimes not even teaching
respect for India as a nation as the separatist agitation
they create once their members become a majority in a
region reveals.
Hinduism is a super tolerant religion. No other
religion in the world accepts such a diversity of beliefs
and practices or is so ready to acknowledge the validity
of other religions. The idea of the unity of all religions
was practically invented by modern Hindus like
Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Gandhi. As Hinduism is
a super tolerant religion, even a little intolerance among
Hindus is regarded as Hindu fundamentalism. And the

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charge of intolerance can be used to discredit Hindu

groups, who are extremely sensitive to such a negative
portrayal.
Throughout history Islam and Christianity, owing to
the exclusive nature of their beliefs, have been generally
intolerant religions (though there have been notable
exceptions). They have not accepted the validity of other
religious practices, and contain in themselves little
diversity as compared to Hinduism. What Christian or
Muslim leaders proclaim that all religions are one or that
Hindus and Buddhists have as valid a religion as they do
(and therefore do not need to be converted)? As these
religions are generally intolerant, their members have to
be super intolerant to be called fundamentalist.
Hindus often have a double standard in religion that
works against them. They try to tolerate, accept or even
appreciate exclusivism, intolerance and fundamentalism
when practiced by those of other religious beliefs. For
example, which Hindus are criticizing the far more
obvious fundamentalism and exclusivism among
Christians and Muslims? Meanwhile any criticism by
Hindus of other religions, even when justified, may be
regarded by other Hindus as intolerance. In addition,
many Hindus, particularly of the modern socialist-
communist variety, brand even pride in Hinduism as
fundamentalism.
Another related term that we meet with in the Indian
press today is that of "Hinduchauvinism," though terms

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such as "Christian chauvinism" or "Islamic chauvinism"

do not occur in either the Indian or the Western press.
Chauvinists believe in the special superiority of their
particular group. This term is used ainly relative to
white chauvinists, those who think that whites are
generally better than dark-skinned people, or in the case
of male chauvinists or those who think that men are
inherently better than women. Hindus may praise their
religion, and Hindus often use flowery and exaggerated
language to praise things, but few if any Hindus are
claiming that Hindus own the truth and that those of
other backgrounds or beliefs cannot find it. Christians
and Muslims routinely believe that only members of
their religion go to heaven and everyone else,
particularly idol worshiping people like Hindus, go to
hell. Which Hindus chauvinists have similar ideas? The
Vatican recently toad its monks and nuns not to
experiment with Yoga and Eastern forms of religious
practice, which it branded as selfish, false and
misleading. Should we not therefore call the Pope a
Christian chauvinist religious leader? Yet Hindus who
are more tolerant than this may be designated in such a
manner.
Hindus are not only not chauvinistic they are
generally suffering from a lack of self-esteem and an
inferiority complex by which they are afraid to really
express themselves or their religion. They have been
beaten down by centuries of foreign rule and ongoing

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attempts to convert them. The British treated them as

racially inferior and both Christians and Muslims treated
them as religiously perverted. That some Hindus may
express pride in their religion is a good sign and shows a
Hindu awakening. Unfortunately the groups who may be
challenged by this awakening have labeled this pride
chauvinistic. Naturally some Hindu groups may express
this pride in an excessive way, just as happened with the
Black pride idea in America during the civil rights
movement, but this is only an attempt to counter a lack
of pride and selfrespect, it is hardly the assertion of any
enduring cultural militancy and does not have the
history like the fundamentalism of Christianity and
Islam, which goes back to the early eras of these faiths.
Such terms as "fundamentalist" and "chauvinist" are
much less applicable to Hinduism than to other religions
and generally a great exaggeration. They are a form of
name calling, and do not represent any clearly thought
out understanding. It is also interesting to note that many
of the people who brand Hindus in this light are often
themselves members of more exclusivist ideologies,
which have an agenda to gain world-domination and to
take over India.
This does not mean that Hindus should not be
criticized. Certainly they can be criticized for many
things. They have to really look at who they are and
what they are doing because in most cause they are not
living up to their inner potential or their heritage. On a
social level many Hindus are trapped in backward social

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customs, but those who are not backward are usually

caught in the corruption or materialism of modern
society. On an inner level Hindus suffer from lack of
creativity, initiative, and original thinking. They want to
imitate either their own older thinkers, whose teachings
May be entirely relevant today, or, if modern, they
imitate the trends of Western culture which are
unspiritual. As a group Hindus mainly suffer from
passivity, disunity, and a lack of organization, and they
are very poor at communicating who they main problem
is that they fail to study, practice or support it, or to
defend it if Hindu teachings are misrepresented or if
Hindus are oppressed.
These are not the problems of an aggressive or
militant fundamentalism but the opposite, that of people
who lack faith and dedication to themselves and their
traditions. Hindus are not in danger of being overly
active and militant but of remaining so passive,
resigned, and apologetic that they are unable to function
as a coherent group or speak with a common voice about
any issue. They have been very slow even to defend
themselves against unwarranted attack, much less to
assert themselves or attack others. There is no danger of
a monolithic or dictatorial fundamentalism in India, like
in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The danger is of a divided and
passive religion that leaves itself prey to external forces
and thereby gradually disintegrates. A little more
activity among Hindus, almost whatever it might be,
would be a good sign as it shows that they are not

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entirely asleep! To brand such activity, which is bound

to be agitated at first, as fundamentalist because it
causes this sleep to be questioned is a mistake.
In this regard Sri Aurobindo's insight may be helpful
(Indian's Rebirth, p. 177). He said, "The Christians
brought darkness rather than light. That has always been
the case with aggressive religions-they tend to overrun
the Earth. Hinduism on the other hand is passive, and
therein lies its danger.”
It is time Hindus stopped accepting wrong
designations and negative stereotypes of their wonderful
religion. Certainly aspects of Hinduism need to be
reformed, and accept any set religious dogma, but there
is very little in this beautiful religion that warrants such
debasing terms as fundamentalism and chauvinism. If
we look at the aspects which are commonly ascribed to
religious fundamentalism we find little of them even
among so-called Hindu fundamentalists.
Hindus who accuse other Hindus of being
fundamentalists should really question what they are
saying. What is the fundamentalism they see, or is it
merely a reaction to the oppression that Hindus have
passively suffered for so long? Are the people making
the charge of fundamentalism themselves following any
religious or spiritual path, or is it a political statement of
nonreligious people against religion? If Hindus are
becoming intolerant and narrowminded they should be
criticized for being poor Hindus, not for being

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fundamentalist Hindus, as true Hinduism has a universal

spirit.
As long Hinduism is devalued and misrepresented
we must except some Hindus to take a stand against this
in one way or another. Other Hindus should not simply
criticize them if the stand they take may be one-sided.
Hindus must try to defend Hinduism in a real way, not
simply condemn those who may not be defending it in a
way that they think is not correct. This requires
projecting a positive Hindu spirit, the yogic spirit, that
can attract all Hindus and turn their support of the
tradition in a spiritual direction. It requires not
condemning other Hindus who are struggling to uphold
the tradition as they understand it to be, but arousing
them to the true spirit of the religion.
To routinely raise such negative stereotypes as
fundamentalist or even fascist relative to Hindu groups,
who may only be trying to bring some sense of unity or
common cause among wake up and unit, to recognize
their common spiritual heritage and work together to
manifest it in the world today, just as modern teachers
did not speak of Hindu fundamentalism. They
recognized Hindu backwardness but sought to remedy it
by going to the core of Hindu spirituality, the spirit of
unity in recognition of the Divine in all, not by trying to
cast a shadow on Hinduism as a whole.

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Leftist Scholorship In India

How would you expect that Hinduism, the world's

oldest and most complex religion, would appear as seen
through the eyes of Marxists? Naturally it would not
look very good. After all Karl Marx himself declared
that religion was the opiate of the masses. However now
communism has fallen all over the world and religion,
including Hinduism, is still going strong. We have
learned that the real truth has been that Marxism was the
opiate of the intellectuals, as it has been called, not that
religion itself is an illusion.
Unfortunately, the universities of India have been
strongly influenced by Marxists since independence and
their view of Hinduism has often become entrenched in
the educational system. A name which comes to mind
readily is that of Romila Thapar, Emeritus Professor of
History at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which is
itself well known in India as a center of Marxist activity.
Thapar is neither the most important, nor the most
prominent figure of Marxist circles, but she has been
very much in the news lately and represents a wider
phenomenon, and her name has been picked here for no
other reason. She and her colleagues are responsible for
a number of textbooks in India on the history of the
country, which not surprisingly are negative about the
majority religion of the land. Thapar is not unique in her
thought, but she affords us a good example of leftist
scholarship has worked in India.

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If we understand that historians like Thapar are

Marxists the logic behind her studies becomes obvious.
Thapar's historical criticisms of Hinduism are quite
negative, and it is often easier to get more sympathetic
accounts of Hinduism from professors in the West,
particularly those who have practiced some professors in
the West, particularly those who have particularly those
who have practiced some Hindu-based yogic or
meditational teachings. Thapar even doubts whether
Hinduism as a religion really existed until recent times.
She portrays Hinduism not as a comprehensive tradition
going back to the Mahabharata or to the Vedas, but as a
relatively modern appropriation, and therefore
misinterpretation, of older practices and symbols, whose
real meaning we can no longer know as we are not
products of that cultural milieu which produced them in
the first place. This view is called "deconstructionism"
in the West and is the product of French Marxist
thinkers.
By this view Thapar sees Hinduism, and religion in
general, as reinterpreting cultural symbols for purpose of
social and political exploitation. She tries to point out
that Hinduism is mainly a vehicle of social oppression
through the caste system and is not worthy of much
respect for any modern rational or humanistic person.
This is standard deconstructionist thinking about
religion which is based on the assumption that there is
nothing eternal in human beings and therefore there can
be no continuous meaning in religion. In other words

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she interprets Hinduism and religion which are supposed

to deal with the eternal, only in terms of time and
history. Such people have failed to understand the
correct development of reason (buddhi) according to
Hindu sages, whose real purpose is to allow us to
discern the transient from the eternal, not to deny the
eternal in favor of the transient such as is the movement
of the logic of thinkers like Thapar.
In particular, Thapar tries to show that the non-
violence and tolerance generally ascribed to Hinduism
are myths that Hindus or India never really followed.
There are a few historical in stances of Hindus being
violent or oppressive of Buddhists and Jains, which she
emphasizes. There are also historical instances of
Buddhists being oppressive of non-Buddhists. Such is
the egoism inherent in human nature that is difficult to
root out. But these are exceptions. There is no Hindu or
Buddhists tradition of crusades or holy wars like that of
Western religions of Christianity and Islam there is a
tradition of non-violence (ahimsa), which however
imperfectly followed, was honored in India more so than
anywhere else in the world.
What is most interesting about Thapar's studies of
Hinduism is that they are devoid of any spiritual
dimension. She ignores the great Hindu yogis and gurus
and does not discuss the Hindu Philosophy of the
universe or higher states of consciousness, which she
does not give any validity to. She sees the institution of
Sannyasa or monastic renunciation as another source of

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social authority (and therefore oppression of the

masses), not a spiritual institution. Her interpretation of
Hinduism follows purely social and political lines. Yet
as an atheist and Marxist can we expect that she would
understand or appreciate Hindu devotional or yogic
practices? You will certainly never find her quoting the
Upanishads or the Gita in a Favorable light. Previous In
this regard I am reminded of a communist poet of
Maharashtra whom I once met, who described the Gita
as "the greatest mystification the human mind has ever
produced." No doubt Thapar would be inclined to
concur.
To put together Hinduism and Buddhism along with
Christianity and Islam is itself not a very bright idea and
can barely be sustained intellectually, but Indian
Marxists' view of Hinduism is on the same order as Karl
Marx's view of Christianity, or the Chinese communist
view of Buddhism. Going to them to understand
Hinduism is a lot like going to Marx to understand
Christianity or Mao to understand Chinese Buddhism.
Following their Marxist mentors, they accuse Hinduism
of having a political agenda in the guise of religion
(which since there is no God in their view, religion
could never have any real spiritual agenda anyway). For
instance, Thapar's recent historical accounts are clearly
meant as attacks on the Hindu revivalist movement in
India, which the communists have always regarded as
their main enemy. As Hindu revivalists are emphasizing

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the continuity of the religion and the ongoing relevance

of its traditions, Thapar and her associates are looking
for ways to deny it.
Marxists like Thapar like to appear as social liberals
and objective academicians and some intellectuals
trained in the Western tradition may look at them in this
light. Thapar does not parade her Marxism, particularly
in recent years, and her criticism of Hinduism, though
harsh, is presented in an indirect scholarly style, which
makes it less obvious. But we should understand the
background of such thinkers, which is hardly objective
or free of political motives.
I am conscious of the fact that the subject is big and
my treatment of it is sketchy. I am, for example, not
discussing at all the tie-up of Marxists in Indian
universities with Marxists in European and American
universities, how the two stand together and by each
other, how the Indian Marxists have found hospitality in
Western universities, and so on. What I am pointing out
is that simply because a don comes from India does not
mean that he or she is providing an accurate or sensitive
account of Hinduism or the history of India. In fact,
India scholarship often tends to be very second-hand,
and Indian scholars, in the absence of a perspective of
their own, tend to be imitative. I must say that the most
Westernized, antireligious, materialistic intellectuals I
have ever met were in India, not in the West, and they
were often teachers in universities. The same inability to
understand or even appreciate religion can be said of

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many professors in America, who as products of

materialistic Western academia are similarly likely to
analyze religion not as a spiritual phenomenon but as a
purely social-political institution. Leftist scholars in
India look to such Western thinkers for their inspiration
and have little regard for the Hindu spiritual and
philosophical tradition which they neither understand
nor feel any kinship with. If they have any God or guru,
it is Marx, and Hindu system like Vedanta are as foreign
to them as they are to any non-Hindu.
Hindus who are religious and the great majority are
strongly religious should not mistake such Marxist
views for an objective pursuit of truth, whether they
come from India or elsewhere. Fortunately with the
downfall of communism in the world, the influence of
communism in India is on the wane, but just as the old
communists are holding on to their declining power in
the political institutions of China (and Bengal), they are
holding on in the educational institutions of India. It is
unlikely that they will let go of their line of thought.
As a westerner writing on Hinduism in a positive
light it is strange that the main opponents I have run into
are Hindus them selves, that is the Marxist Hindus, who
like many rebels are the most negative about their own
cultural traditions which they have but recently
abandoned. The views of these leftists are often on par
with the anti-Hindu views of Christian fundamentalists
while the latter see Hinduism as a religion of the devil,
the former see it as a personification of social evil, the

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manifestation of caste division which is their devil

(though curiously Marxism works to encourage class
hatred, not to promote social harmony and peace
between the classes).
Hindus today, like followers of other religions,
should no longer accept the Marxist view of their
religion and their history, but to do so they must first
unmask it. This does not mean that Hindus have done no
wrong or that they should not reform their social system
or become more compassionate. The proper social
changes that need to be done in India or anywhere else
in the world do not require rejecting religion in the true
sense, or adapting communist-socialist policies which
are failing every-where. On the contrary, the appropriate
changes follow from a better understanding of the spirit
of universality in Hinduism, which is the essence of its
religious view, its recognition of God as the self of all
beings.
Observing such Marxist thinkers one is reminded of
the Katha Upanishad: "Living in the midst of ignorance,
considering themselves to be wise, the deluded wander
confused, like the blind led by the blind. The way to
truth does not appear to a confused immature mind,
deluded by the illusion of wealth (materialism).
Thinking that this world alone exists and there is
nothing beyond, they ever return again and again to the
net of death." The Upanishads saw long ago that
materialistic thinkers who regard that this world is the
only reality only lead us to ignorance and sorrow. It is

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about time that people in India started to heed the words

of their ancient sages, even if it means questioning
modern professors.

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India And The Concept Of Nation State

India has been criticized for not succeeding in

becoming a unified and disciplined modern nation-state
like Japan and Germany. The ongoing disunity and
separatist movements within the country appear to attest
to this fact. However the problem is not as simple as this
comparison might suggest. India is a subcontinent like
difficulty in maintaining its unity, it has done better than
Europe, which even today is divided into various small
states, much as if as the states of India were independent
countries.
The European concept of nation-state originally
reflected small countries that were homogeneous in
terms of culture and population, like Germany, France,
and England. It was a narrow idea of nationhood with a
short history, creating nations out of countries whose
existence could only be traced back for a few centuries,
and which encompassed small land masses and a limited
group of people, generally those belonging to the same
ethnic group and speaking the same language. Such
narrow nation-states fragmented the subcontinent of
Europe and caused two world wars. This nation-state
idea could never work for a larger region like India,
China or the United States and has long become
regressive in the European context. Europe has had to
work hard to counter the divisions and prejudices this
idea of nationhood has created. Europe is only now
uniting gradually and tentatively on economic grounds.

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Besides such small nation-states Europe did have

empires but these were basically an imperialistic rule of
one nation-state over others, not an integrated culture
encompassing the subcontinent. The great intellectuals
of Europe like Voltaire and Goethe looked to a greater
European identity, but their ideas could not win in the
political arena because of the ascendancy of the nation-
state idea. Europe failed through history in uniting as a
subcontinent, though some attempts in this direction
were made (for example, Napoleon).
The only country of comparable size that has better
succeeded than India through history in maintaining its
unity as a country is China. Yet China has a lesser
diversity of peoples than India, with the Han Chinese
making up 95% of the population, and China has often
resorted to violence and even genocide to maintain its
central rule. For example in recent times, China has
strictly controlled its Islamic population and repopulated
much of its Western Islamic area with Han Chinese
people, so that the Muslims are becoming a minority in
their own region. It is doing the same repopulation with
Tibet. While China may have succeeded better than
India in maintaining the unity of a larger nation-state, it
has succeeded only through the power of brute force,
which most Indians are not likely to emulate or want to
see happen in their country.
Islamic countries have also failed in producing any
large nation-state like India, China or the United states.

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The Islamic world consists of various small states like

Iraq, Iran or Saudi Arabia, Which are generally military
dictatorships or medieval style monarchies, often at war
with one another. The only type of larger state the
Islamic world produced were religious empires, not
states defined by a geographical region or common
culture. Islam has failed in producing any real secular
state or uniting any subcontinent into a country.
The United states has succeeded in maintaining
unity over a wide region mainly because it was
populated by immigrants from distant lands and did not
have to deal with any long established identities of
peoples in its own country. It with massacred or
relocated the indigenous people, the native Americans.
Japan, like Germany, is a small country with a single
ethnic group, which makes unification much easier. We
see therefore that developing a unified but diverse
culture throughout a subcontinent such as India is
attempting, has not really been accomplished anywhere
in the world today.
The main problem India has had in recent times is
with its Islamic minority, which brought about the
partition of the country in the first place. However there
has not been another country which has a significant
Islamic minority that has not had trouble with it either
(for example Israel, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or
China). The problem appears to be more an Islamic
problem than an Indian one. It goes back to the Islamic
rejection of the division of religion and state and the

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Islamic division of humanity into the rule of Islam

(which is thought to be the will of God) and the rule of
non-Islam (which is regarded as unholy and to be
replaced by the rule of Islam).
India has not yet gone through a nationalistic phase
like modern Europe. It has not had a period like modern
Europe wherein the different states within India
functioned as different countries or regarded themselves
as different nations. Foreign rulership helped prevent
this from occurring, but a tendency to ward it still
remains. Part of the fragmentation in modern India has
occurred because parts of the country, like Tamil Nadu
for example, are trying to undergo a nationalistic phase.
It is easy to observe from Europe that such small nation-
states wreak havoc upon a subcontinent and if India
were to divide into them it would have similar wars,
genocides, and relocations of populations followed by a
longer term seeking for reunification along economic
lines as has been the case with Europe. Hopefully India
will not have to go through the European style
nationalistic phase, and the results if it did would be
disastrous.
Such a redefinition of nationalism is not only what
India needs but also the rest of the world. This broader
concept of nationalism leads to internationalism, to a
global approach in which the various geographical
regions of the world can be brought together into the
larger organic unity that includes the entire planet. To
create this is the challenge of all present governments

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but it requires a spiritual view to really develop. Perhaps

India can pioneer this if it can awaken to its inner
potential.

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Religious Percecution In Pakistan

Reuters news agency reported that "Local authorities

in Rawalpindi on Thursday, 15 September 1994, razed
the structures of a place of worship of the banned
Ahmadiya sect of Islam." Local authorities means the
Pakistani government. Rawalpindi is located next to
Islamabad, the national capital, meaning that the
national government must have been aware of the event
and allowed it.
The Ahmadiya mosque had been functioning for over
fifty years. There was no dispute that the place belonged
to the Ahmadiyas. It was not an issue of property. The
issue was that orthodox mullahs are opposed to the
existence of any Ahmadiya mosques in Pakistan, not
that they were disputing the location of one of them. Nor
is this the first Ahmadiya mosque to be destroyed in
Pakistan since the Ahmadiyas were declared illegal by
the Pakistani government of General Zia in 1984. The
destructions have generally been carried out by the
Pakistani police, incited by orthodox mullahs. In
addition, Ahmadiya leaders have fled the country, as
under current Pakistani law they can be imprisoned for
three years, merely for performing Islamic practices or
claiming to be Muslims. Some Ahmadiya leaders who
have stayed in Pakistan have stayed in Pakistan have
been murdered for their beliefs.
The Ahmadiya sect dates back to the nineteenth
century and numbers four million in Pakistan and up to

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ten million through out the world. Ahmadiyas are

accused by orthodox Muslims as being unorthodox for
regarding their founder as a prophet on par with
Mohammed, which is considered heresy for orthodox
Muslims who, though they recognize a variety of
prophets to have existed before Mohammed, regard
Mohammed as the last prophet and do not accept that
any more prophets can come after him.Ahmadiyas deny
this attribution, also honor Mohammed and Koran, and
follow the Sharia or traditional Islamic law. But
Ahmadiyas do recognize their founder, Mirza Ghulam
Ahmed (1835-1908),as the Messiah whom all Muslims
are looking for (who therefore cannot be regarded as
prophet to compete with Mohammed).
The destruction of the Ahmadiya mosque reveals the
fact of religious oppression in Pakistan. While the
oppression of non-Muslilms, particularly Hindus and
Christians, is a normal principle in Islam-especially the
destruction of Hindu temples in Pakistan-this event
shows that even unorthodox Muslims are not tolerated.
The goal of Pakistan appears to be to gradually
eliminate all religious groups but orthodox Sunni
Muslims. Dissent is not allowed within Islam, much less
outside of it.
This event has several important ramifications. First
of all it shows that there is no real religious freedom
even for its own kind in Pakistan, which now resembles
a fundamentalist state wherein only one form of Islam is
accepted. The mullahs appear on the verge of taking

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power as in Iran. Pakistan's appearance as being a

democratic state is shown to have no real validity.
Second it shows that the international community is not
very concerned about religious oppression in Pakistan or
other Islamic countries. We are reminded of Saudi
Arabia in which no religions are allowed except the
Saudi version of Islam and yet no Western country
complains or threatens sanctions against Saudi Arabia to
improve it s dismal human rights record. In fact the
Saudis have sided with Pakistan against the Ahmadiyas
and will not allow them into their country either.
With all the talk of human rights in the world,
particularly by the United States, it is strange that such
events occur without the slightest response by those who
claim to be concerned about the welfare off all people.
Human rights policies are shaped by political and
economic interests, including the power of petro-dollars
and global arms sales. The United States, the self-
proclaimed great champion of human rights, is also the
greatest seller of arms in the world and its best buyers
are Islamic countries.
In addition the demolition draws comparison with
the destruction of Babri Masjid or Babar's mosque by
Hindu groups in India during December 1992. For
demolishing a disputed site that the Hindus looked to as
the birth place of the avatar or Divine incarnation, Lord
Rama-which had not been used as a mosque for over
fifty years but which has been used for regular Hindu

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worship-four of the state governments in India were

dismissed and the largest Hindu organizations in the
country were banned. Protests over the event were
directed at India from most Islamic countries.
However should Muslims destroy the mosque of
another Islamic sect in a far more dramatic way, nothing
happens and no one notices the event, much less
protests. Muslims, it appears, can destroy mosques and
it is alright, but no non-Muslim group can touch a
mosque or the Islamic world will rise in protest against
them.
Had it been Hindus who destroyed such a mosque as
that in Rawalpindi, the response would be similar to that
of Babri Masjid. Yet even the Hindu groups who
demolished Babri Masjid were not expressing a daisy to
eliminate all mosques from the country but only to
reclaim one of their holy sites. Hindus were not opposed
to mosques as such, but with a mosque-placed they
claim by force on a Hindu temple destroyed by Islamic
armies-on what Hindus regard as one of their most holy
sites in one of their sacred cities. The Pakistani move
was not to reclaim any particular place but simply to
eliminate the places of worship of a non-orthodox sect.
The destruction of this Ahmadiya mosque reveals
the pattern of destruction of non-orthodox Islamic and
non-Islamic holy sites in Pakistan. Hindu temples in
Pakistan have been routinely taken over or destroyed
since the partition of the country. In fact some sixty
places of Hindu worship were destroyed or damaged in

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the days that followed the demolition of Babri Masjid

and with no evident remorse by the Pakistani news
media or government. Even in Kashmir it is the Sunni
Muslims who are leading the terrorist action against
India, and it is not only Hindus but Buddhists, Sikhs,
Ahmadiyas and Shia Muslims who are among those
whom they attack and want to eliminate. Should the
Sunnis take over Kashmir, these other religious groups
are bound to disappear ignominiously.
Strangely today India has become home for the
largest number of Islamic sects in the world, more than
any Islamic country. The reason is that most Islamic
countries are enforcing a Sunni type orthodoxy upon the
population, with the exception of Iran, which is
imposing a Shia orthodoxy on its population, and trying
to eliminate all other Islamic groups. Hence Islamic
groups like the Ahmadiyas have taken refuge in India
where there is greater religious freedom. The same is
true of the Bahais, a Shia sect, who originated in Iran, an
Islamic country. If India did not exist as a place of
refuge, these Islamic sects might be in danger of
extermination.
It has to be found out if the fact of their being
persecuted in Islamic countries and finding safety in a
Hindu majority country has made any difference to their
view of Hindus and Hinduism. The Ahmadiyas for
instance are known to have been zealous missionaries of
Islam for converting Hindus, and in the forefront of the
demand for Pakistan. One wonders if their present

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situation in Pakistan on the one hand and India on the

other has occasioned some rethinking on their part. For
all we know, these persecuted sects may repeat the story
of Syrian Christians who has found refuge in India from
persecution at the hands of their co-religionists but who
rallied round the Portuguese persecutors of Hindus after
having enjoyed Hindu hospitality for several centuries.
Hindus have to address themselves to this curious
phenomenon of the persecuted sects retaining the
persecution mentality inculcated by a parental closed
creed.
Hindus meanwhile should recognize by such events
the dangers that exist to members of their religion in
Islamic countries, which have no qualms about
suppressing religious minorities. If Hindus don't learn to
speak out against such oppression, it is going to continue
without question and, therefore, without change,
because clearly the global media does not care very
much either.

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Taking Offense At One's Religion

Being Criticized

Many Muslims are offended should anyone criticize

their religion, particularly if this criticism comes from
those who were born Muslims, as the case of Taslima
Nasreen in Bangladesh once more brings to light.
Nasreen has said that the Koran needs to be thoroughly
revised. Later she added that the Koran should be
regarded as an historical document only and is now out
of date. Nasreen, if convicted for the crime she has been
accused of by the state, will get two years in prison
merely for criticizing Islam. A price has also been put
on her head by Islamic fundamentalist groups in the
country, who are demanding that she be hanged. Not
surprisingly she has fled the country, which obviously
does not appear to be a safe place for her, or anyone
who might question the majority religion of the land.
Muslims throughout the world have asked for the
ban of a number of books, written by both Muslims and
non-Muslims, and have even demanded the execution of
authors like Salman Rushdie who have criticized Islam,
with only a small number of Muslims appearing to take
a stand to the contrary. Laws against criticizing Islam
(anti-blasphemy laws) are found not only in Bangladesh
but in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Countries, in
fact in most Islamic countries, as such laws are part of
traditional Islamic legal codes which these countries

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subscribe to by declaring themselves to be Islamic

republics. Anti-apostasy laws are also found in most of
these countries, which forbid Muslims from becoming
non-Muslims, sometimes at the cost of their lives.
Yet it is interesting to note that non-Islamic
countries have also taken to banning books against
Islam, particularly if these countries contain a significant
Islamic minority, even if such bans go against the
secular nature of their constitutions and their laws of
free speech. India, a country that has historically
suffered from numerous invasions and destruction by
Islamic armies, was the first country in the world to ban
Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses for its criticism of
Islam, and Salman Rushdie was a citizen of India! Nor
has India done anything to help Taslima. Such countries
do not take a similar action against those who criticize
religions other than Islam, including the majority
religions of their lands. They are placating Islamic
fundamentalism either for votes, for economic or
diplomatic reasons, or out of fear of reprisals or Islamic
terrorism.
Many Muslims appear to believe that in seeking
such bans they are only asking what Christians or those
of other religious backgrounds would require in their
countries, should their holy books be criticized.
However if we look into the matter we see that there are
many books which criticize Christianity, Judaism,
Hinduism and in fact all the religions of the world at

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least as vehemently as the books that Muslims feel so

offended about for criticizing Islam.
Many of the most famous intellectuals of Europe
have written scathing remarks on the church, the Bible
or Christ himself. Such figures include great writes and
philosophers of various countries over several centuries
including Voltaire, Goethe, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell,
Sigmund Freud and J.Paul Sartre, to mention but a very
view. They include communist philosophers and
politicians like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao-tse Tung
(though curiously the communists of Bengal have
refused to support Nasreen in her cause) and many of
the founding fathers of the United States, like Thomas
Jefferson and Thomas Paine, who did not consider
themselves to be Christians. Thomas Jefferson writes
that "the Bible God is a being of terrific character, cruel,
vindictive, capricious and unjust." Thomas Paine writes
of the Bible that "it would be more consistent that we
call it the work of a demon than the word of God."
If Christians insisted that books which criticized
their faith or holy book had to be banned, such as
Muslims are doing today, thousands of books would
have to be banned, including many of the most famous
literary and philosophical works in the West. If any one
who says such remarks about Christianity as Rushdie or
Nasreen has said about Islam should be executed,
thousands if not millions of people would have to die. If
anyone who said that the Bible should be thoroughly
revised had to be sent to prison, there would not be

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enough prisons in the world to hold those making such

remarks in one Western country.
The situation is yet more complex. It is not merely
non-religious people who have criticized religions,
different religions have also criticized each other.
Should the Bible be banned, for example, because it
offends the sentiments of Pagans, of whom there are still
existing groups in Europe and America, by branding
them as instruments of the Devil and thereby promoting
social discrimination against them?
You may laugh at this, but are Pagans not also people,
and don't they have their human rights? Hindus are often
lumped together with these so-called Pagans as ungodly
people, and have been historically subject to the same
oppression. In fact during the last thousand years of
Islamic and Christian attacks against them, Hindus have
endured, generally passively, more aggression,
intolerance, and genocide than any other religion in the
world. Are members of these other religions,
particularly Islam, willing to hear the complaints of
Hindus against them?
In this regard we should note that the Koran itself
contains many statements that are offensive to the
sentiments of non-Muslims. The main daily prayer of
Islam-which is broadcast by loud speakers at mosques in
Islamic and non-Islamic countries-that there is no God
but Allah and Mohammed is his final Prophet, is
offensive to non-Muslims. It implies that those who
worship God or Truth other than under the name Allah,

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or those who follow another religious leader than

Mohammed are wrong and evil. It invalidates all
religions founded after the time of Mohammed, like the
Sikh or Bahai. Moreover, like the Bible, the Koran
proclaims that those who use idols in their religious
worships are unholy and implies in many places that
they should be converted by force if necessary. This
offends all those who use images and idols in their
religious worship, like the Hindus, Buddhists, and
Taoists as well as Native American, African, and Pagan
European religious groups, who have often through
history been the target of Islamic and Christian
aggression, for which the justification often given has
been such remarks in these scriptures.
Moreover religions have criticized non-religious
people, and often unfairly. Should religious books
criticizing atheists be banned, because atheists are
offended by them. This should be the case if the
criticism of religion by atheists should be banned. Don't
atheists have equal human rights in a secular
government?
We live in a pluralistic world that contains many
different religious and many people who do not follow
any religion at all. Unless we want to give up social
freedom and humaneness, we have to let people of
different religious views coexist, which means also to
allow them to criticize each other, as long as they don't
try to physically harm others or force their views upon
them. There are secular law codes about slander and

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libel that can be resorted to if criticism is unwarranted or

untruthful, which is the proper channel to deal with
such problems.
If Muslims are going to proclaim it an injustice to
the world when anyone offends them, they must be
willing to respect that other groups may also be
offended, including by what Islam teachers and by what
Muslims say or do. It is not the case that Islam has had a
history of not criticizing or offending those of others
beliefs, and that Islam therefore should expect no
criticism in return. As a conversion-oriented religion
Islam is highly critical of all other beliefs, and trying to
supplant; ant them, sometimes by force. Nor is Islam the
only religion in the world, and there are no other
religious points of view to consider. Islam is only one
religion among many, and it is neither the oldest nor the
newest. If Muslims are going to expect books which
offend Islam to be banned, they should allow books that
offend other religious or even nonreligious groups also
to be banned, even if they are written by Muslims or by
Mohammed himself. Such a process however would be
unending and only promote illiteracy.
We all have our sentiments, nor just those of us who
are Muslims. We all think that our religion or
philosophy is the best or we wouldn't be following it. No
one likes his or her chosen religion, philosophy or
political ideology to be criticized and yet all have been
criticized by somebody and sometimes unfairly or
inaccurately. Some of us are trained not to be self-

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sensitive and to recognize that other people see the

world differently than we do and that we need not try to
impose our views upon them in order for us to feel
secure. We choose to challenge criticism by giving our
own point of view, not by trying to silence it by the use
of force. Religion should encourage broadmindedness
and open-heartedness that can accommodate any
number of points of view and remain unshaken before
any amount of criticism, however unfair. If we all learn
to do this, including in the Islamic world, there will
certainly be more peace and understanding between all
people.
Banning of books and persecution of authors is a
hold over from the dark Middle Ages that is out of place
in the modern world or in any humane society. It is not
part of any truly religious view which requires not only
devotion to God but love of one's fellow human beings.
That an author has to live in fear for his or her life for
criticizing religion-which after all is supposed to bring
us peace and show us a higher way of living than anger,
revenge and violence-is a sad thing for everybody,
particularly for truly religious people regardless of their
belief.

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Section II

RELIGIOUS ISSUES

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Vedanta, Unity And Universality

"Truth is only One:" thus have the sages declared

since the time of the most ancient Rig Veda. If we did
not have any sense of this one Truth why would we seek
to know anything at all? The sense of an underlying
order, harmony or law behind existence is the basis of
all systems of knowledge. Even to speak of falsehood or
unreality is only possible if one recognizes a lasting
truth relative to which it can be compared.
If such a truth or rationale for existence can be found
it cannot be a mere material or unconscious force. The
very fact that the world is intelligible indicates that its
basis is intelligence. An insentient force cannot produce
order, nor can it organize itself, much less perceive
itself. There must be a universal power of consciousness
for there to be any order to the world and to the
movement of the forces which constitutes it.
And if this One Truth is a power of consciousness,
how can it be apart from our own awareness? How can
any cosmic consciousness be separate from the
consciousness of the individual? How could any form of
life or mind be excluded from it? Therefore the one
Truth must reside within us and within all beings. It
cannot be something peripheral or extraneous to who we
are, but must dwell at the core of our beings as the
underlying power of consciousness itself. Truth cannot
be other than our true nature. We can only find peace of

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mind when we have discovered that Truth and come to

live according to it, which is to live in it as our real Self.
The unity of Truth is the fundamental principle of
the Vedantic system of philosophy which has dominated
India since ancient times. A similar intuition of unity
occurs to some degree in the nobler aspirations of all
human beings regardless of time and culture, though it
has not always been proclaimed as clearly and logically
as in Vedanta. Yet the unity of Truth is not merely a
philosophical theory or a religious belief. It reflects the
highest and most direct experience that of our own
consciousness itself divested of all limiting
preconceptions in which we discover all the universe, all
beings to exist within ourselves. If there is only One
Reality can we be other than it?
If we affirm that God or Truth is One and then
proclaim that we or others are apart from it, have we not
contradicted ourselves? To affirm that Truth exists is to
acknowledge that it is part of our own being. Once the
mind is cleared of its conditioning this unity of Reality
shines forth like the sun divested of the clouds. All those
who have purified their minds through the practice of
deep meditation realize this Oneness of the universe. To
discover it we must value the life and teachings of those
who have realized it, and shape our action and behavior
accordingly. It cannot be arrived at through the mind
alone but only through the totality of our life and our
every action.

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The Nature of Truth

What is the ultimate Truth that all human beings

seek? The mind is only satisfied with a Truth that never
fluctuates or creases to be valid. Truth is that which is
eternal, consistent, self-evident and absolute. It cannot
change its nature or it would not be Truth. For example,
the true quality or property of fire is that it burns. Fire
cannot cease top burn without creasing to be fire.
What then is the true quality or property of the
human being? It is not our possessions which are
transient. It is not our titles, which similarly pass away
through time, nor our bodies which are born and die, or
our minds that are constantly changing. Nor is it our
various national, racial, sexual or religious identities,
which are similarly limited within the field of time and
shift according to circumstances. Our true nature resides
in our awareness of Truth, our consciousness of the
Eternal and the Infinite as the fact of existence. That
alone in us has the power to go beyond death and the
power to overcome the forces of division and
destruction that abound in this transient world. Only
what has no form, what transcends materiality and
circumstances, can be ultimately real or true. Yet what
has no form is not any mere emptiness or vacuum but
the immaterial nature of consciousness itself.

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Unity and Universality

The statement that Truth is only one does not mean

that Truth has only one name or name or can be
expressed in a single formulation. It is not a statement of
limitation or qualification on Truth. That Truth is one
also means that it is universal, innate in all beings and
inherent in all existence. Truth is both one and infinite,
which means beyond all boundaries and definitions. It
cannot be circumscribed by any belief, idea or
personality, however great these may be.
That Truth is only one also means Truth has any
number of formulations or expressions and cannot be
reduced to any single one of them. The unity of Truth is
an inclusive unity, not an exclusive singularity which
cannot accept anything but itself. Truth is not one thing
opposed to another but that which transcends and
includes within itself all things. Truth is like the ocean
which can accept all streams without being increased or
decreased. To uphold the unity of Truth correctly we
must affirm its infinity and universality and not limit it
to any human formulation. Truth is not a thing of the
marketplace, nor some form of information, someone's
opinion, or any form of dogma or propaganda. It is
found in the nature of existence, and cannot be reduced
to any external form or expression. It transcends all
organizations and classifications.
Truth is not a mere material thing that can be
possessed by anyone. It cannot be owned by any

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particular group, institution, or culture. No one can

control, dispense, or rule over it. It is beyond all saviors,
prophets, holy books, churches, and temples. Truth is an
internal perception, not an external structure. It is an
individual realization not a collective phenomenon.
Truth therefore resides in our own direct experience
of Reality and not in any external place or person. It
cannot be given to us by another, nor can any other
person, whatever they may do, substitute for our own
contact with the Truth. Though others may guide us to
Truth, and such guidance is usually essential, the
ultimate goal is the freedom of our own Self-awareness,
not subjugation to a particular belief or group. The
ultimate Truth belongs to the individual in his or her
communion with the reality of being both within and
without.
Today people, particularly in the Western world, are
worried about the influence of cults, especially on their
children. Actually whatever teaches us that truth lies
outside ourselves-that truth is not inherent within us but
rests upon some external savior, church or holy book-is
a cult or a mystification. Truth transcends all
externalities and should never be made hostage to any
of them or it is not truth but illusion.

Toward a Spiritual Science

From the scientific point of view, we all live under

the same universal laws. Gravity functions the same for

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all people regardless of age, sex, race, religion or

culture. The rains do not fall according to political or
religious boundaries, nor does the wind stop at the
border. The great forces of Mother Nature do not
function according to human opinions and their various
prejudices of caste and creed. There is only one Truth
governing the entire universe of mind and matter. Yet
most of the time we miss this one Truth, simple though
it may be, and become caught in the various glittering
phenomenon of the external diversity that arise from it.
Just as there is only one science based upon the
unity of physical laws for all human beings, so there
must be only one religion based upon the unity of
spiritual laws for all creatures. There are not difference
sciences for different peoples, races, cultures, or
religions. There is not a Russian science as opposed to
an American science, or a Christian science as a post to
a Buddhist science. There is not one set of physical laws
for people of one religious belief or identity and another
set for those who thing differently. Fire is not wet and
water dry for some people, while fire is hot and water
wet for others. The elements do not change their nature
according to our opinions or speculations. So too real
religion cannot be different, though like science, religion
should remain a diverse phenomenon and an inquiry into
Truth rather than the imposition of a particular dogma.

Based on recognizing the unity of physical laws

governing the universe all scientists share the same

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knowledge and look for a truth that stands on reason and

experiment and does not cater to personal, social, or
cultural biases. In the same way, people of all religions
must examine their beliefs and ideals and find out what
is really valid within them. We must learn to treat the
different religions of the world, whether they have many
adherents or only a few, from the standpoint of the one
religion of Truth. The different religions of the world are
no different than various scientific laws and theories.
They must be subject to the same scrutiny to see how
and if they work. We must examine them objectively,
though with car as in examining a subtle object under a
microscope, and find out to what extent or in what
manner they may be true, not merely in theory but in
practice.
In this way we will discover that some religious
ideas are true for all people and all times, others are
partially true, and yet others are not true at all or, at best,
an inferior truth valid only at a certain level. In science,
Newtonian physics describes ordinary physical laws
well but it breaks down when dealing with elemental
forces, in which quantum mechanics becomes more
significant. Similarly religious beliefs for ordinary levels
of human life break down when we examine the deeper
levels of the mind. Outward moralistic or ritualistic
religious beliefs, with their rewards and punishments,
must be replaced with an inner way meditation to free
the mind from its conditioning and realize our true

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nature. Otherwise our religions remain on a childish

level and we have not yet really addressed the spiritual
potential of humanity.

Vedanta and Religion

Vedanta is such a spiritual science of the highest

order. It aims at connecting us with the universal Truth,
and it does not stop at limited, partial, or preliminary
truths. Vedanta examines all the beliefs and practices of
its own Hindu tradition, and finds that only some of
them represent the highest truth, whereas others are
inferior or partial teachings. Rituals, for example,
Vedanta finds to be mainly of value for people at an
early stage of spiritual development or as practices for
general welfare, while those who can practice
meditation are no longer required to perform them.
Vedanta sees the same levels in all the religions of
the world, which exist not only to link mankind to the
One Truth but also serve various lesser goals of moral
upliftment or merely social control. Vedanta takes us to
the highest level of religion which is a practical path of
Self-realization. This takes us beyond religion, in fact
beyond all externalities to our true Self. From the
standpoint of Vedanta all forms of knowledge are only
aids to Selfknowledge, gaining which we go beyond
them, including all religious beliefs. Religion, properly
employed, should serve to take us to the point of

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Selfinquiry, to direct us to the path of Self-knowledge,

or such religion is deficient in its usefulness.

The Religion of Truth

Just as there is only One Truth, there is only one true

religion, which is the religion of Truth. Everything apart
from Truth is not a religion in the real sense of the
world-that is, not a means of linking with what is Real-
but a form of ignorance or illusion, though it may have
some preliminary value or contain useful practices.
Truth is the only true religion. In this regard Truth is
even greater than God. If one has to choose between
truth and God, one should choose Truth, because even
God has to bow down before Truth. God may only be an
idea, a concept, or sometimes merely a name or
prejudice invented by the human mind, but Truth is the
reality that we cannot ignore. The truth of who we are
something that we cannot escape.
The true religion is Truth, but what we call religion
is not always truth. In this regard all religious teachings
should be put to the test of Truth and only what survives
that test should be concentrated on, with the rest
discarded as inessential. This will allow us to create a
religion for all of humanity that is free from illusion and
exploitation. In this regard, we should hold to the Truth,
even if it requires letting go of what may commonly be
regarded as religion.

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Nor is Truth limited to what we call religion or to

what exists in the predominant religions in the world
today. Truth is found to some degree in all human
pursuits of knowledge including science, art and
philosophy. Many of the tribal beliefs of so-called
primitive people also contain great truths and a living
connection with the real universe that is more real than
many organized religious activities, which often are not
even connected with life, much less with God.
Yet the ultimate Truth is only found when we go
beyond all names and forms, when we remove the veil
of appearances and perceive the underlying Existence-
Consciousness-Bliss (Sacchidananda) at the heart of all
life. This is the message of Vedanta, which is not limited
to any religion, philosophy or science but is the ultimate
goal of all human striving. Religion is not the end but
the means to connecting with our true Reality, which
can only be discovered inwardly through profound
meditation.
Naturally our interpretations of this One reality vary
because each of our minds is different. We each look
upon the world from the unique perspective of our
mind-body complex and its changing conditions. We see
things relative to the limited perspective of out sense.
We interpret things relative to the limited views of our
minds. We ourselves are limited entities, in separate
vestures (body and mind), confined to time and space
and hence trapped in a certain limited perspective that

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causes us to misperceive reality. However, the Reality

itself is not tainted.
Yet in spite of this diversity, and our inability to
formulate Truth according to the unity of Reality, that
Divine unity persists. Without unity there cannot even
be multiplicity. Without the One three cannot be the
many. And however much we are trapped in outer
appearances we can never accept them as truly real, nor
find lasting fulfillment within them. Our soul will search
yet deeper for the Eternal Truth that dwells within us.

The Challenge of the Present Age

All true spiritual teaching aim at the realization of

Truth in our own consciousness, which is the unification
of the individual with the universal Reality. This is the
ultimate goal of both science and religion. This truth is
clearly and directly presented in the teaching of
Vedanta.
All of the problems in the world today arise from an
inability to grasp the underlying oneness of life. The
division of nations, religions, and cultures comes from
this fundamental ignorance, as does our exploitation of
the Earth and her resources. Only if we perceive another
person as fundamentally different from ourselves can we
harm or exploit them. Only if we see the natural world
as mere raw material for our convenience can we
damage it for our own gratification. If we see our Self-
reflected in all beings, which is the real truth, we cannot

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wish any harm to anyone and we treat all things with

respect, finding all life to be sacred.
Without addressing this core problem of the failure
to u nderstand the unity of life, we cannot expect to
solve our other problems. Today it is of utmost necessity
that all those who are consciousness of this underlying
unity act in such a way as to make others aware of it.
This does not necessarily require any overt outer actions
but it does require that we make a statement by how we
live, if not by what we say.
The great Vedantic teachers of the twentieth
century-like Swami Vivekananda, Swami Rama Tirtha,
Ramana Maharshi, and Sri Aurobindo to name a few -
have presented this supreme truth of Oneness not only in
lucid teachings but in the example of their own lives. To
discover how to live in harmony with this truth and how
to realize it in the modern world we can look to them.
We don't have to look to figures who lived many
centuries ago or who spoke a language that we cannot
understand. The example of these great Vedantic
teachers can serve as a beacon for the coming
millennium. Yet it is not enough merely to adulate such
figures, though we must honor them. More importantly
we should follow their teachings in our daily lives,
which is to live a life of peace, permeated by the
practice of meditation. We must similarly give these
great teachers a place of honor in our educational
systems and revere them as our true leaders. If we fail to
give them the recognition they deserve as the voice of

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Truth, then we cannot get beyond the problems that we

have today.
A culture is the outcome of its leaders and the ideals
that they follow in their lives. Let us look to leaders who
have embodied the highest ideal, which is Self-
realization. A culture which does not recognize the
value of Selfrealization cannot endure, not can it create
unity. On the other hand, a culture based on Self-
realization can never be overcome by the forces of time.
To create such a culture one must bring the message of
Vedanta into all of life, which is also to introduce
related aspects of Vedic knowledge like Yoga,
Ayurveda, and the Sanskrit language. This is to revive a
culture of the Dharma, a spiritual field of human is to
revive a culture such a Vedanta that again encompasses
all life and is relevant to the entire world is the key to
the spiritual transformation of humanity that the coming
millennium requires.

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Practical Vedanta,
The real message of Swami Vivekananda

What was the real message that Swami Vivekananda

brought when he came to the West from India in 1893?
Some groups in the Western world have honored the
centenary of Vivekananda's first visit as a hundred years
of Yoga. Those in India are inclined to see
Vivekananda's centenary as an anniversary of the revival
of Hinduism in the modern world. Yet others view
Vivekananda as having started a universal religion
synthesizing all the main religion of the world, based on
the teachings of his guru, Ramakrishna. These groups
have some validity to their points of view, but they do
not completely represent the Swami's great message. In
addition, other groups in India-including Communists
and Christians who appear to have little in common with
Vivekananda and the real scope of his ideas-have tried
to see in him some justification for their points of view,
portraying his as a social reformer, helper of the poor
and oppressed or even as anti-Hindu. These views are
merely an attempt by such groups to use Vivekananda
for their own purposes and cannot be taken seriously.
Vivekananda did frequently speak about Yoga but
for him the term was not the central focus of his
teaching. He talked very little of asana or yogic
postures, which is what Yoga means to most Westerners
today and what most Western Yoga teachers teach He

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was not primarily an exponent of this physical Yoga but

of all different branches of Yoga.
To Vivekananda the most important teaching for
humanity was Vedanta, the summit of Vedic
philosophy, which teaches the unity of the Self and the
Absolute. Vivekananda emphasized the great Vedantic
realization of "I am Brahman" or "I am God" as the
hugest truth for all people. According to Vedanta, the
essence of all science and religion is the knowledge of
oneself in one's deeper nature as pure consciousness
transcending all time' space and material embodiment.
Vivekananda emphasized Jnana Yoga or the Yoga of
knowledge, which is the same as Vedanta, the
meditation path leading to Self-knowledge.
Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of devotion, was also very
important to him and he was proficient in chants to the
different deities of Hinduism like Shiva and Devi. Raja
Yoga, emphasizing the development of the will, was
significant for him as well. He saw that the gaining
control of the will and developing the power of self-
determination was key to the growth of mind and
character. Karma Yoga or service was not neglected by
him either. He emphasized the need to work continually,
not only for our own inner growth but for the upliftment
of all humanity. His whole life is an example of spiritual
work and selfless service. Hatha Yoga, which revolves
around asana (yogic postures) and pranayama (breath
control), was the least mentioned by him, though he did

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see its usefulness as a support for the deeper yogic

disciplines.
Over the last hundred years many Americans have
taken up the physical side of Yoga but few have given
the same attention to the spiritual side of Yoga, which
leads one to Vedanta. Americans frequently talk of
Yoga and exercise. Yoga and health, Yoga and
psychology, Yoga and various New Age therapies and
practice Yoga as sadhana or spiritual practice is seldom
discussed, much less practiced. In this regard it is
important to look back to the teachings of Vivekananda
to help align the Western Yoga movement with the
spiritual impulse at its original root.
For Hindus, Vivekananda was a great patriot and
perhaps the central figure in the modern Hindu
renaissance. He spoke proudly and eloquently as a
Hindu and encouraged Hindu to honor and promote the
traditional spiritual culture of their land. He affirmed the
unity of the entire tradition through the Vedas, Puranas,
Tantras and modern teachers, as one movement of
spiritual culture realization. Unlike many modern
Hindus he did not hide his Hinduism, make excuses for
it, or apologize for it. He felt the superiority of the
spiritual cultures of Asia, particularly India, over the
materialistic cultures of the West. While he recognized
the problems of modern India he looked up to the West
only for practical help, not for spiritual or religious
guidance. He traveled all over the world as a kind of
missionary for Hinduism, promoting Hindu culture and

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values, and regarded its spiritual teachings as valid for

all humanity. He was the greatest missionary of modern
Hinduism and paved the way for Hindu teachers to
travel throughout the world and establish various
centers, in which footsteps many have followed.
Yet for Vivekananda the essence of Hinduism was
Vedanta, the way of Self-realization, not the Hindu
social structure dating from medieval times.
Vivekananda was a great reformer against the rigidity of
caste, the mistreatment of women, and other social ills
that have become associated with Hinduism because of
antiquated social accretions that do not truly represent
its spirit. Vivekananda showed Hindus that what is
wrong with India is not owing to its spiritual and
religious tradition but because this tradition has been
misunderstood and misapplied. However, Vivekananda
was not just a philosophical Hindu, rejecting Hindu
culture and history. He also was a great lover of
Sanskrit, the Vedas, Hindu music and all of Hindu
culture. He did not seek to impose this culture on others
but he was happy to share it with all.
Vivekananda was a universalistic, who taught that
there is only One Truth behind all the religions,
philosophies and sciences of the world. He accepted
what was good or true wherever he saw it, in whatever
religion or culture, from whatever person regardless of
their background. He spoke of the good in many
different religions, including Buddhism, Christianity and

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Islam. He admired what was valuable in Western

science and philosophy, and praised even atheists for
their intellectual contributions, humanism and free
thinking.
Yet this does not mean that Vivekananda merely
approved of all religions or thought that all religious
practices are equal or good. He criticized the dogma and
church bound authoritarianism of Christianity and, for
this reason, a number of Christians sought to discredit
him in the West. In India he worked to counter the
influence of Christian missionaries who were trying to
convert the country and destroy the faith of Hindus in
their own greater culture and spiritual heritage. While
Vivekananda admired the sense of brotherhood found
within the Islamic community, he also questioned the
validity of Mohammed's revelation. He spoke out
against the violence perpetuated in the name of Islam,
particularly the record of Islam in India and its
campaigns of cruelty and mass destruction aimed at
destroying Hinduism. He also criticized the materialism
of modern European thought and its inability to provide
answers to the fundamental questions of human life,
death and immortality.
The universal religion that Vivekananda taught was
a modernized form of Vedanta and Hinduism with its
broad approach to Truth. He did not seek to replace
Hinduism with another religion, nor did he make all
religions the same. He looked beyond the name of
religion to the actual practices and sought the highest

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spiritual practices for all human beings. He saw

Hinduism as the great Mother religion in which all the
others could be integrated. He did not regard it as
another creed like the rest, but an open tradition capable
of harmonizing all creeds.
For Vivekananda Vedanta was not a philosophy to
be thought about or discussed intellectually. It was not a
teaching to be limited to a select group of sadhus who
lived apart from the world. He taught "practical
Vedanta," a way of Self-knowledge in daily life.
Practical Vedanta for him meant bringing the spirit of
Self-realization into all ordinary human affairs and into
society. It means independence, free thinking, nobility
of character, and respect for the Divine in everyone. It
means truthfulness, compassion, integrity, and not
compromising with the forces of ignorance and
injustice.
According to practical Vedanta none of us are
limited or weak. None of us are fallen and in need of
redemption. We are not sick, or in need of comfort or
healing. We are not this little body or limited mind. We
are not even souls, or children of God. We are God. No,
we are greater than God. We are, each one of us, the
Self of all beings. This entire universe of matter and
mind is no more than our shadow. It is beneath our
dignity as the master of the universe to be dominated by
anger, fear or desire, to want anything or to be the slaves
of anyone's opinion. Our true place in life is to manifest
the glory of this Self, not to indulge in pretty

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entertainment, in the hoarding of possessions, the

pursuit of fame and power, or other lesser goals of life
that the breed corruption.
Swami Vivekananda was called "the lion of
Vedanta". This is perhaps the best way to remember
him. He took the teachings of Vedanta and Hinduism
and made them appealing to the modern world not by
compromising them but by boldly and fearlessly
declaring the Supreme Truth they are based on. He took
the knowledge of the ancient seers and rishis and placed
it is a futuristic language, pointing out the way for
humanity to follow in ages to come. To honor
Vivekananda therefore means also to recognize and
honor the great tradition from which he came and to
seek to share that with everyone. But above all it means
to practice Vedanta, which is to be the Self, and nothing
less, to not be dominated by the world but to uplift the
world in all that we do.

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The Unity Of Religion And Unity Of Truth

An attitude of tolerance, a kind of ecumenical spirit

has gained favor with a number of groups today,
particularly in India. It states that all religions are one
and therefore worthy of equal respect. It often adds that
a person can find Truth by following with faith the
religious tradition in which he or she is born, whatever it
may be. By this view the great religions of the world
represent various paths founded by God to bring people
to the same realization. The differences between
religions are only differences of name and form that
have arisen to communicate the same Truth to people of
different countries or cultures.
Those who espouse such views may have pictures of
Christ or the Pope, Mecca or some Sufi saint, some
Hindu or Buddhist deities or gurus, or other icons from
different religions. They may honor the holy days of
different religions, like celebrating Christmas, the birth
of Mohammed, or the birth of Krishna. They may built
temples or churches that have sections for all the main
religions of the world-a Hindu window, Christian
window, Islamic, Buddhist sections and so on. They tell
Muslims that it is fine to be a Muslim, Christian that it is
fine to be a Christian, Hindus that it is fine to be a Hindu
and so forth, that all are equally great and valid
religions, almost regardless of whatever sect or branch
of the religion the person may belong to.

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Hindu or Yoga group having this view may tell

people that by following their teachings a Christianwill
become a better Christian, a Muslim a better Muslim,
and so on. They tell people that one need not change
one's religion in order to practice Yoga but that Yoga
will make one better at one's religion, whatever it is.
Sometimes if Christians come to a Hindu espousing this
ecumenical spirit and ask how to find God or Truth, they
will be told to return to their own religion and try to
become better Christians. They will be discouraged from
becoming Hindu or adapting more specific Hindu
practices. Those holding this view try to avoid criticism
of other beliefs and give the impression that all regions,
however diverse and contrary they appear, are right.
They make it seem that whether one visits Kailas,
Mecca or Rome, whether one prays, fasts or practices
meditations, it is all part of the same great and true
human aspiration for the Divine and none of these
approaches are necessarily better than the others.
While much has been said to support this view, it
remains a generalization that is not as specific as its
proponents would like to believe. It reflects a noble
sentiment, a powerful intuition, and a seeking for peace,
but it is often pushed so far that it inhibits clear thinking.
It can end up equating teachings superficially, mixing up
doctrines of different sorts, and discouraging
discrimination. To generally recognize human religious
aspiration in all its forms is not necessarily to equate
these forms or to make them the same. While it is

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crucial that we unify all religions, this cannot be done by

pretending that religions are already one. To discover
the real unity behind religion and behind all life is a
much greater endeavor that requires a tremendous
inquiry and deep examination until we arrive at the core
of Truth hidden behind the veil of forms and dogmas.
Some may argue that, though there are differences
between religions which can be quite major, it is better
to emphasize their common factors, however limited.
This view is more sound but the goal is not merely to
bring religions together but to find Truth. We should not
sacrifice Truth, glossing over the differences between
teachings, in order to make different religions accept
one another, or what they are accepting will only be
some convenient partition of humanity into religious
camps, not the real Truth in which alone is abiding
unity.
That all religions as we know them are one is a
pleasant thought and can succeed in bringing together
the more open or mystical elements in religions to some
extent, but it cannot deal with the deep seated
differences between religions. To really unify religions
requires finding the universal Truth behind religion.
This is as much a matter of transcending religion as we
know it as of affirming it. To proclaim the unity of
religion without establishing the Truth behind religions
can give rise to many wrong perceptions. It can confuse
tolerance with Truth and thereby prevent any deeper

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examination. It can prevent any deeper questioning as to

what religion is and where religion should take us.
We certainly should tolerate all religions and respect
the Truth wherever we find it. However, this does not
mean that we have to put all religious teachings on the
same level in order to do so, or that we have to bow
down before all religious authorities and institutions.
The many differences between religions, like those
between cultures also have their beauty, importance and
uniqueness. Moreover just as all cultures have not
developed all fields of human endeavor to the same
degree, so too all cultures have not developed
spirituality to the same degree.

Different Paths and Truth

What do we really mean when we say that all

religions are one? Have we really gone to the core of
Truth or are we merely making a statement that can be
acceptable to everyone? Is it merely a slogan designed
to cover over the differences between religion so that we
can all live together in social harmony without having to
question our different beliefs? Is it a political strategy
designed to create peace between the conflicting
religious groups in a country or in the world? Is it the
strategy of new spiritual or religious groups to gain
converts for themselves from a place of Truth that can
really unite us.

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Do we mean by such a statement that we accept all

the differing claims of various religions? Obviously
those who truly believe in a unity behind religion cannot
accept the dogmatic claims of any one particular
religion. For example, if religions other than Christianity
are true then Jesus cannot be the only son of God, nor
can the Christian heaven and hell be ultimate realities.
The same case exists with Islam . If other religions are
true then Mohammed cannot be the last prophet or the
Koran the final revelation for all humanity. The limited
dogmas of all religions, whatever they may be, which
reduce truth to a particular name, form, person or
institution would not be acceptable. If we scrutinize the
matter at all, we see that finding validity in many
different religions challenges the claims of religions
which consider that they have the sole or final truth. Yet
this goes against what most people in some religions
believe. If we take the exclusive claims out of many
religions we find that the religion, as commonly
understood by the great majority who believe in it, is not
the Truth.
There is a unity to Truth and to what could be called
the spiritual or mystical experience, but this Truth is not
equally accepted by all religions, particularly in their
commonly understood forms, which may be against
mysticism. All religions as they represent themselves in
the world today do not recognize the same goal of
spiritual enlightenment. Otherwise they would not be

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fighting for converts or trying to maintain their separate

identities.
The unity of religions is an ideal, not a fact, and an
ideal that requires considerable reshaping of the actual
in order to arrive at. The obvious fact, that the news
demonstrates almost daily, is not that all religions are
one but that religions are divided against each another,
trying to maintain and expand their followings
sometimes by whatever means necessary, even of these
are inconsiderate or inhumane.
The fact is that the religions of the world today are
very different and often hostile, just as different
countries are. Like countries they may make alliances
with one another, even targeting a religion that is a
common enemy. Such alliances cannot be looked upon
as unity in the true sense but may be no more than
matters of convenience. While there are common
principles that can be used to gradually unite religions,
just as those to unite countries, or at least promote
tolerance between them, these are rather vaguely defined
and not widely accepted by most of the followers of
different religious activity that is central to certain
religions, which aims at conversion, would be
unnecessary and would be stopped, which is hardly
likely to occur.
Truth indeed is One, like the sun that shines equally
on all people. There is not a different Truth for people of
different religious beliefs any more than there is
different sun or moon. There are also many paths to

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Truth both known and unknown. Truth is infinite and

can be approached through a great diversity of paths and
expressed in innumerable names and forms. It has the
room to accommodate any number of teachings and
embraces all the universe. But because Truth is One and
there are many possible approaches to it does not mean
that all religions must be true to the same degree.
That there is some aspect of Truth in all religions
does not mean that all that is done in the name of
religion is worthy of respect, or that Truth abides only in
religions. There is much falsehood in what we call
religion that it would be a sin against Truth to
accommodate. In addition there are aspects of Truth
which are outside of religion in domains of art, science,
philosophy and so on and the whole world of Nature
reflects the presence of the Divine. What we call
religion in this world neither owns, nor dispenses Truth,
whether by any one religion or by all of them put
together.
We can compare the unity of religion with unity in
other aspects of life. Establishing unity in a field of
knowledge like science does not mean establishing
identity between all scientific theories or removing any
questioning. Because justice is one we cannot say that
all the governments of the world are equally good.
Moreover, while there are many paths to Truth, all
paths do not lead to Truth. There are many paths that
lead to falsehood. Nor do all paths that lead to Truth go
all the way, some stop short. Of the paths that lead to

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Truth some are direct, while others are convoluted and

take many detours. A path can only take us in the
direction that it leads and as far as it goes. This means a
religious teaching that does not recognize the higher
Truth of religion, which is Self-realization, cannot lead
us there but has to be abandoned along the way.
A superficial sense of the unity religions fails to set
up a universal standard of Truth and makes Truth
relative to one's religion, even when religious doctrines
an practices are different or contrary. It gives the
impression that Truth is merely a matter of religious
belief and that whatever is done in the name of religion
is right, however diverse or apparently contradictory
these practices may be.
It also fails to understand the true spirit of Hinduism
or Sanatana Dharma (the Eternal Tradition), which is
not a religion based on belief and cannot be represented
by any one teacher, messiah, deity, book or practice.
There is perhaps a greater diversity of religious practices
within Hinduism than outside of it. Making Hinduism
into one religion among many narrows down the scope
of what Hinduism represents, which is not one religion
as opposed to others but an attempt to sustain an open
tradition of spiritual and religious practice that is not
confined to any belief or dogma.
Appearing to go beyond social prejudices a
superficial ecumenicalism caters to the existing names,
forms and vested interests that use religion for their own
ends. It sanctions organized religion as a way to Truth,

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when in fact organized religion is generally an obstacle

to the pursuit of Truth. It fails to recognize that
throughout much of the world, spiritual practices have
been possible only outside of the official religions of the
land, and that those who have attempted such practices
have sometimes paid with the price of their lives-and in
many regions of the world continue to be oppressed.
We need not give credence to organized religion in
order to appear tolerant and as long as we do so, we may
not be promoting Truth but oppression. If there is any
greatness in Hinduism it is because Hinduism is not an
organized religion, nor is it based on belief. It does not
have a single authority, church, or one place to bow
down to. It does not say that we can be saved by merely
believing in some savior or holy book but that we will
only come to a good end if we live righteously, which is
in harmony with universal Truth, not according to the
dictates of a religious organization and its dogma.
There is a karma for our action that we cannot
escape merely by performing our actions in the name of
religion. If our religious practices are based upon
exploitation we will have to experience the negative
results of that action, whatever our religious leaders may
tell us. Nor should we allow the name of religion to be
used to promote oppression. If someone under the name
of a religion-whether our own or that of other people-is
promoting what is false or causes harm, we need not
passively accept it because it is said to be part of their
religion, merely to appear tolerant.

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One could argue that if one looks deeply one will

find the same Truth of Selfrealization and God-
realization as the inner core of all religions, including
those which appear to oppose these ideas. But when one
gives credence to such religions it is not these spiritual
practices one gives validity to but to the existing
practices and hierarchies within the religions as they are
found today, to the religions such as the great majority
of their believers accept. Hence it is the unity spiritual
practices that should be emphasized not the formal
structures of religions which are frequently opposed to
them, but even this its limits.
Spiritual practices, like any other actions must have
their specific results. If we are seeking to climb a
mountain, several routes are possible, but not all are
equally valid. Moreover following a path that leads
away from the mountain will never take us to the top,
whatever that path may be called. Spiritual practices are
like bullock carts. While all may take us somewhere,
they are hardly all on the same level or all equally
recommended for travel.
For example, while the giving of charity can be good
(it can also be evil if it is based upon an attempt to
convert others), it cannot take us to the ultimate reality,
which requires meditation. Charity and meditation
example, the eating of meat is tamasic or dulling to the
mind. That one's religion may sanction or
encouragement-eating does not stop it from dulling the
mind. To promote universality we should not feel

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impelled to give people the impression that

discrimination in their actions is not required. Otherwise
we are merely encouraging people to follow the religion
that most caters to their prejudices, not the one which
encourages real spiritual growth.

Hindu Dialogue with Other Religions

Following such syncretic views Hindus are apt to

say that they also accept Christianity, Islam and the
other religions of the world. However the acceptance of
spiritual knowledge wherever it may come from-and it
exists to some degree in all people-should not be
confused with accepting the dogmas of all religions. A
Hindu, following an open spiritual tradition can honestly
say that he or she accepts whatever genuine spiritual
knowledge may be found in Christianity, Islam, or
elsewhere, but this does not mean that such doctrines in
these religions as are contrary to the principles
(dharmas) of Hinduism, like an eternal heaven and hell,
the Bible or the Koran as the only Word of God, Christ
as the only son of God or Mohammed as the last prophet
are acceptable to Hindus. Otherwise Hindus will give
those following these religions the impression that such
dogmas are true or that Hinduism sanctions them, when
it clearly does not.
For example, when some years ago I as a follower of
Hindu based Yoga teachings once told a neighbor, who

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followed a Christian fundamentalist belief, that I also

accepted Christianity, he told me then why don't I accept
Jesus as my personal savior and the Bible as the Word
of God and stop doing such unchristian practices? When
I told him that it was my belief that what Christ
originally taught was the same as Hinduism, he said that
he didn't believe it and interprets the Bible differently.
While I attempted to argue some Biblical verses or
statements that suggest mysticism in Christianity, he
could easily refute them to his own satisfaction. He
ultimately said that if the Christianity I accept is the
same as Hinduism then it is not the same Christianity
that he or other Christians believe in, so why should I
call it Christianity at all? This taught me a lesson and
showed me the confusion caused by too simplistically
equating different religions.
I have to admit that Christianity as it has developed,
and as the great majority of Christians believe, is not
something that I, accepting the spiritual teachings of the
Hindu tradition, can believe in. I don't think that it is
necessary to go to Christian church or to follow
common Christian prayers. I can't accept Jesus as my
personal savior; in fact I don't see the need of such a
savior at all. I certainly don't think that it is necessary to
promote conversion of people to Christianity; in fact I
think it is usually harmful. I can't look upon Christian
leaders like the Pope or Billy Grahman as the ideal
religious or spiritual leader or equate them with the great
yogis of India. Though I can admire Christ and some of

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his teachings, I cannot see him as unique, and such

spiritual teaching can be found much more clearly and
completely to try to dig them up out of whatever
fragments Christianity may have.
So rather than create confusion by saying that I am
also a Christian, I merely state what I think is true, even
it goes against what most Christians accept. Let the
members of different religions define their religions as
they like. It is not my place, who am not formally a
member to their religions, to tell them what their
religions really mean. However I must tell them what I
think is the Truth, even if it is not accepted in their
religions, to tell them what I think is the Truth, even if it
is not accepted in their religion as they know it.
Unfortunately Hindus tend to think that people of
rather religious beliefs honor the mysticism that Hindus
see behind all religions, which is rarely the case. Hindus
talk to members of other religions as if it were the
mystical side of the teaching that these people were
following, even though such people may be
fundamentalists trying to convert them. This prevents
Hindus from understanding other religions or from
communicating to them what Hinduism really is. It also
makes Hindus vulnerable to be deceived by members of
other religions who take a liberal appearance to attract
Hindus, not because it represents what they truly
believe. We should note that both Christianity and Islam
in India have taken on many Hindu elements and that
the mysticism Hindus see in these religions generally

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has its roots in India and is much rarer in the countries

wherein these religions predominate.
Hindus don't appear to know how to dialogue with
those of other religious beliefs. They think they must
either agree with whatever members of other religions
propose (interpreted in a Hindu mystical light) or that
they must ignore them and go their own way, keeping to
themselves, and not expressing any contrary opinions
(as if different religions were like sovereign nations).
Hindus appear to think that it is a sin to disagree with
non-Hindus on religious matters, however much non-
Hindus may disagree among themselves, and however
much non-Hindus may criticize Hinduism! This is
curious because classical India was the opposite.
Spiritual and religious teachings of all types were
critically scrutinized, examined in detail, and questioned
an all levels, such as we find in the various systems of
Indian philosophy Hindu, Buddhist and Jain.
Hindus should be capable of having a dialogue with
those of other religious beliefs without either agreeing
with them or having to turn away. It is not wrong for
Hindus to state what they believe is true, even if other
groups may not accept it. Nor is it wrong for Hindus to
criticize the practices of other religions, if they don't
agree with them. In fact the Hindus point of view with
its greater respect for life and Nature us much needed to
bring real spirituality into the world. Hindus should be
friendly and considerate in their communication with
non- Hindus, yet they can do so without having to

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surrender their opinions or to go along with whatever

non-Hindus say. Such debate occurs in all fields of
knowledge and was always promoted by the great
Hindus sages. Hindus sages. Hindus should reinstate it
today, not just bringing different groups together to
agree with one another, but to openly examine religion
and spirituality so that the real Truth behind it can be
known for the benefit of all.
Some Hindus think that it is against Hinduism to
criticize other religions and that all the great modern
teachers of Hinduism taught a complete equality of all
religions. Let them read such teachers as Aurobindo and
Vivekananda more carefully, who were quite critical of
Christianity and Islam. They both tried to resurrect the
ancient Truth of Hinduism and to project it is a modern
way. They were not content for their Western disciples
to merely continue the religious practices they were
already following but inspired them to take on practices
that their own religions considered heretical.
Let them note the example of such great sages as
Ramana Maharshi, who never visited any churches or
mosques, though they existed in the very town wherein
he lived, though he did live and do his practices in the
local temple for some years. Ramana Maharshi stated
that religion in the ordinary sense is only necessary to
take us to a path of Self-realization, after which it can be
set aside. This draws into question religions that do not
direct us to Selfrealization or recognize it as their goal.
These teachers saw a unity of truth in the Self of all, but

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they did not bow down to all the religious institutions

and dogmas in the world. Gandhi also frequently
criticized Christian missionary activity in India and the
Christian dogmas behind it.

The Religion of Truth

The true spirit of universality is the spirit of Truth

and Truth does not bow down to personalities, vested
interests or names and forms. The true spirit of tolerance
is to promote the Truth, not to compromise with
falsehood. According to the Upanishads there are two
forces in the universe-the knowledge and the ignorance-
and these forces move in opposite directions: to the
extent that one is pursued, the other is lost. To sanction
religious beliefs based on ignorance as valid ways to
Truth is a betrayal of Truth.
This does not mean that we should self-righteously
condemn the religious practices of others, or that we
should say that Truth is limited to our point of view. We
must give ourselves and other people the freedom to
discover the Truth. But we must see things as they are,
and in our communication tell what we perceive as the
Truth. Hence if someone asks us what we consider to be
the best way to discover Truth we may be doing them a
disservice if we direct them back to the religion they are
following, if its practices do not lead to Truth or only do
so in a very hesitant manner.

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The Truth is that what we call religion, particularly

in the Western world, is usually opposed to the real
spirit of Truth or Self-realization. In this regard the
organized religions of the world may be more mistakes
than paths to enlightenment, and at best have
preliminary value. Nor should the founding of an
organized religion necessarily be looked upon as a sign
of greatness is a spiritual personage. Many great saints
and sags, including some of the greatest, never founded
any religion and many have been entirely forgotten by
history. Those whom we regard as the founders of
religion, on the other hand, may not have subscribed to
the beliefs and practices of their so-called followers.
If Hinduism has any value it is not as a means of
giving credence to anything that might call itself religion
but to give credence to the individual the real bearer of
the flame of the scared-to pursue his or her path to
enlightenment, without having to bow down to
organized religion and its dogma. Hinduism in its true
sense is the religion of the individual (Atman or
Purusha). It provides tools and practices, like yogic
practices and meditation, so that we can come to our
own direct experience of Truth or the Divine. Hinduism
does not insist upon any particular approach or dogmatic
formulation. In this respect Hinduism or Sanatana
Dharma regards most of what is called religion on this
planet, the setting up of dogma, as fundamentally
irreligious. The openness of Hinduism should not be
used to sanction the dogma of other religious groups,

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though it does not prevent us from respecting the Truth

in whatever form we encounter it.
There is no Dharma or religion higher than Truth.
The truth is not that all religions are one but that, just as
there is only one science, so there is only one religion,
the religion of Truth. This religion of Truth is not an
organization, nor limited to a particular book, person or
name of the Divine. We join it to the extent that we
follow the Truth. We fall from it to the extent that we
follow the ways of ignorance and division. This religion
of Truth transcends all names and numbers and has
nothing to do with converts. When we make different
religion of Truth equally valid, even if they are
contradictory, we are denying the real unity and
university of Truth and making it a slave to human
opinion.
In that religion of Truth all the accepted and most
prominent religions of today may not be equal or have
the same place, nor may they represent the full scope of
Truth. Some may have a minor place and other
teachings not formally religious may have a more
significant value. The temple of Truth cannot be made
by making all religions equal but by ending the hold of
religious and all other dogma on the human mind.
The book of Truth may not consist of equal
selections from the most prominent scriptures of the
world today. It may give more weight to teachings not
recognized as scriptures or perhaps not even regarded as
religious, and regard some of what we consider to be

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scriptures as not significant. Nor may the vision of Truth

interpret the so-called scriptures of the world in the
same way as most of those who believe in those
scriptures. The book of Truth may in fact have little to
do with any set formulation and may be discoverable
only to the extent that we are able to go beyond words,
names and identities.
It is necessary to revive the religion of Truth, not to
sanction religious beliefs of all kinds. This religion of
Truth is Sanatana Dharma or the Eternal Religion,
which is the real name of Hinduism, and the only
foundation upon which any religion possesses validity.
To reestablish it we must set up universal truths, like the
evolution of the soul through the cycles of rebirth, and a
spiritual science, like the practice of Yoga and
meditation. This requires that we go beyond religious
teachings which do not acknowledge such truths.
Whether the fire burns or not, for example, is not a
matter or one's belief. If a person believes that fire
doesn't burn we don't have to give equal weight to that
belief in order to appear socially or intellectually
tolerant. Yet that is the kind of practice we may be doing
in the religious realm if we accept all religious beliefs as
valid or equal. The standard of belief is arbitrary and
places things beyond examination. To cater to it, even in
the guise of tolerance, prevents the process of
examination whereby we are really able to discover
what is true.

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It is necessary to affirm Truth both in religion and

outside of it, not merely to affirm religion as we know it
as Truth. Such is the real spirit of tolerance and
universality but it may require abandoning rather than
upholding the religions that we have in the world today.
All that we call religion requires a reformulation in the
light of universal Truth. Hinduism, as perhaps the most
universal of religions, can provide important keys how
to do this.

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The Unity Of Religion And

Religious Tolerance

Those today who like to proclaim that all religions

are one, seldom define what all religions have in
common. And when they do define these things they
may not really be common to all religions. Generally
those who believe in the unity of religions say that all
religions recognize God and have as their goal the
realization of God. Those who hold this view often
regard the idea of the unity of religions as the basis of
religious tolerance and look at those who do not accept
it as somehow intolerant or narrow-minded. Let us look
at the different religions of the world and see what they
really have in common, starting with the idea of God
itself.
Do all religions recognize God? God is the term
Western monotheistic religions and implies
monotheism-that there is only One God who is the
creator of the universe - which is not the view of reality
that we find in all religions. The Western monotheistic
concept of God is not the same as the Brahman or the
Impersonal Absolute of Hindu though or the Atman or
Supreme Self. It is akin to the Hindu concept of Ishvara
or the Cosmic Lord but not identical to it. While Hindus
may accept God as a term for the Supreme Reality
(which they may not define in a Western monotheistic
sense), it is very rare that followers of Western will use
such terms as Atman, Brahman or Ishvara as equivalent

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to God or Allah (which they would regard as heretical).

Moreover, several religions do not recognize God or
a cosmic creator at all. This includes Buddhism which
has always criticized Hinduism for postulating the
existence of such an entity. Buddhism recognizes a
Spiritual Reality or One Mind, but this is quite removed
from the Biblical or Koranic God who creates the world
out of nothing, as in the case of one Buddhist thinker
recently who called the Biblical God "a primitive idea".
Jainism, Taoism, Shinto and a number of other religions
do not have such a Creator God either but see Karma or
simply Nature as the creative force. Some Hindu groups
like Sankhya are not theistic either.
Many religions, including Hinduism, have a
multiplicity of deities or names and forms for Spiritual
Reality. This is also not accepted by monotheistic
religions, which have branded religions that are not
strictly monotheistic as polytheism and idolatry, and
thereby heretical or sinful.
Rather than saying that all religions are based upon a
recognition of God-which is not at all true-it is more
accurate to state that all religions recognize a Spiritual
Reality, which may be called variously God, Allah,
Buddha, Shiva, Vishnu, Tao, or any number of names
according to the particular system involved. This
Spiritual Reality may be defined according to monism,
monotheism, pantheism, polytheism, or any number of
ideas or made to transcend all ideas. There is hardly any
universality for the term God or the concept of

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monotheism in all religions. To built the unity of

religions around the idea of One God can cater to the
prejudices of monotheistic beliefs, which would like to
regard themselves as the universal factor in religion,
when they are only one religious approach.
All religions stress the need to relate to a Spiritual
Reality but, just as their difference in names and
concepts, they are hardly unanimous what the correct
relationship is. Just as their differences about the nature
of Spiritual Reality all religions do not share the same
foal of their practice. Most religions do not regard union
with God or mergence in Spiritual Reality, which is
generally the Hindu view, as their goal. They do not see
themselves as paths to God but only as ways of better
relating to God, whom they may conceive of as quite
different than we mere creatures that He has created.
Orthodox Christianity and Islam do not aim at union
with God or even consider it to be possible. The
Christian goal is to go to heaven, generally with a
resurrected physical body, and then dwell in the eternal
presence of God and Jesus (who also dwell in a
resurrected physical body). The Muslim goal is similar,
to go to heaven. God-realization or Self-realization in
the Hindu sense is not the goal of these religions and
may be regarded as delusions by them. Even a number
of mystics, including some Hindu Bhakta traditions,
have as their goal not complete union with god but
nearness, proximity or being in the same world with
Him with some sort of subtle or divine body.

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In addition, all religions do not follow the same

practices or subscribe to the same ethics, though they all
generally stress some idea of the good or holy. For
example, the non-violence of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain
thought is not accepted by some religions, which regard
it as a form of cowardice. Many religions classify the
failure to perform particular prayers or rituals, or
subscribe to certain religious beliefs as on par with
moral depravity-like the Catholic view that it is a mortal
sin not to go to church on Sunday, just as theft or
murder are mortal sins, or the general Christian view
that those who don't believe in Jesus, however otherwise
good people they may be, must go to hell. Islamic views
are generally of the same order. Nor do all religions
have the same view as to what constitutes a religious
person or religious order. For example, several religions,
like Judaism, Islam and Protestant Christianity, do not
have monastic orders and have been opposed to them or
regarded them as unholy. While most religions have
some form of prayer or ritual, the yogic and meditation
practices of Hinduism are rarely found in predominant
Western religions, except among mystics who were
generally oppressed or heretics (except in the case of
Judaism wherein mysticism was generally part of the
religion).
The fact is that a person will not get the same
realization through all religions as through Hindu paths
that teach Self-realization. Many religions neither
recognize Self-realization as their goal nor teach

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methods to achieve it. How could they possibly lead

anyone to it, when they don't even recognize it as valid?
This explain why such realization as stressed in
Vedanta, that of Brahman (the Absolute) or Atman (the
Self), is practically unheard of in a number of religions
and why in the last two thousands year there are very
few figures like the great yogis of India and Tibet who
have lived in the Western world, particularly in Western
Europe. Otherwise such Westerners as myself, who was
raised a Catholic, would not have had to turn to teachers
from the East to find teachings that were never given to
them in their own religious training.
The most we can say about the commodity of the
goal of religions is that all religions direct us to a
relationship with a Spiritual Reality as they have
conceived It to be, which can be quite variable. The
relationship stressed may not be a realization at all-
which implies a radical change of consciousness but
conversion to a belief or to a pattern of behavior wherein
we maintain our ordinary human and egoic mentality but
oriented in a different direction. If it is a mystical
experience of the Divine that they seek, it can occur on
many different levels and in many different ways and
may not be conceived as Selfrealization or realization of
the Absolute.
The conflicts between various religions have existed
at least partly because such differences are inherent
within them. Some religions insist upon a personal
Creator God as the Supreme Reality, who may be

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limited to a particular book, savior or prophet. Others

look to an impersonal Reality, to a multiplicity of Gods
and to a variety of spiritual books or teachings. Some
religions are based upon meditation approaches to
realize Truth. Others are against them and consider that
belief or prayer are sufficient. Some religions are
inclusive and try to draw other religions into them.
Others are exclusive and try to stand apart in their
beliefs from other religions.
If these differences did not exist it would be difficult
to explain why religions have had so much trouble with
each other through the course of history and why they
still have problems today in spite of all the
improvements in communication. All the many religious
conflicts must go back to something more fundamental
than semantics, or merely failing to see that they are all
saying the exact same thing in different words, or they
would not be so much of a problem. So too, getting
beyond these conflicts requires much more than an
equation of terminology. It requires looking for a
universal spirituality that takes us beyond the religious
dogmas in the world today, which still serve to divide
humanity into hostile camps.
According to religious synthesizers all religions are
the same thing only in a different garb or according to a
different name. But is this really true? One can perhaps
designate related religions in this manner. For example,
one can call Islam Christianity in another garb, though
this is a generalization that is not entirely accurate. One

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can call Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan form,

Hinduism in another grab and not be too far wrong. But
can one call Buddhism merely Islam in another grab?
Can one call Hinduism merely Christianity in a different
form? This hardly seems accurate and in fact appears
ridiculous. Similarly one cannot honestly call a Hindu
temple merely a mosque in another form, or the Koran
the Upanishads or the Buddhist Sutras in a different
language? Nor can one honestly say that Mohammed is
merely the Buddha in another garb, or Krishna as he
appeared relative to the needs of medieval Arabia. Yet
this is what we are telling people when we say that there
is no difference between these various religious
teachers, books or places of worship.
One can certainly honor and respect many great
human beings but this does not require that we equate
them with the highest sages. One can honor Mohammed
as a mystic, social reformer and political leader but to
thereby put him on the same level with great yogic sages
like Buddha or Shankaracharya may not be appropriate.
One can also honor Einstein, Mozart or Da Vinci and
other human beings who were great in various ways but
this does not require making them into enlightened
yogis. One can honor different religions and
philosophies without having to make them the same or
put them on the same level. Christianity has produced
many good people and some genuine saints and mystics
but it is hardly equal as a religion to Hinduism or
Buddhism, which have much more depth, diversity, and

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wisdom. One can even honor the true idealism behind

communism, but this does no require having to make it
equal to the great religions. Being open to what is true
and good everywhere does not require making all
teachings and practices the same.
This idea that all religions are the same covers over
the differences within religions themselves. If one says
that Christianity can provide a person with spiritual
realization, which Christian group are they referring to?
Are such different sects as Jehovah's Witnesses,
Southern Baptists, and other evangelical and
fundamentalist groups on par with the contemplative
orders of Catholicism in this regard ? Does this mean
that we can place Billy Graham on par with the great
saints of Christianity like Ramana Maharshi or with the
great saints of Christianity like Saint Francis? To some
degree one can equate a number of Sufi doctrines with
Vedanta, but does this mean that we should honor the
Ayatollah Khomeni equally with Vedantic teachers ?
Unfortunately Hindus with a synthetic vision are
inclined to attribute similar teachings to other religions-
not because followers of other religions accept such
teachings-but because Hindus, viewing these religions
through the inner vision of Hinduism, read Hinduism
into them, seeing it where it may only be vaguely
intimated. Those of a mystical bent of mind can read a
yogic spirituality into the Bible or the Koran, claiming
these books reflect an understanding of Karma,
reincarnation or even subtle yogic practices. Even if

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they are right in some instances, this does not change the
fact that the great majority of people in these religions
do not see such teaching there.
A facile synthetic vision can read a deeper
spirituality into the symbols of the Book of Mormon, the
preaching of fundamentalist Christians, or various recent
New Age channeled books, or even works of science
fiction. Those inclined to read spirituality into religious
symbols and doctrines can do so everywhere. Does this
mean that such inner meanings were always intended,
that all these teachings must be equal or that all these
teachers were enlightened? If so why should we stop
merely with the predominant religions of the world?
We can read enlightenment into any of the aspirations of
humanity. Some synthesizers have gone so far as to read
mysticism into Karl Marx, in which case spirituality
loses its meaning altogether and becomes equitable with
any sort of idealism or noble sentiment. Such synthesis
unites everything by blurring any distinction of higher
and lower teachings, which may end up denying the
value of the spiritual path altogether.

Religious Tolerance and Freedom

However, that we cannot simply equate all religions

does not mean we should not tolerate different religions.
Intolerance of other human beings and acts of
inhumanity towards our fellow men and women are
unacceptable regardless of our religious belief and are

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contrary to the real spirit of religion or even common

courtesy. We should and must tolerate all religions-and
also atheism and agnosticism as different approaches o
life that people should be free to follow as long as they
don't try to impose their views upon others. Otherwise
there can be no peace in the world and we will live not
in a free society but in a theocratic police state.
We should be open-minded and large-hearted and
allow people the freedom to find Truth. We should be
friendly and just with those who have different religious
or political views than ourselves, or we are not even
kind people, much less spiritual. We should recognize
the different levels and temperaments of people and
their different views of reality, and that there will always
be a number of different types of religions among
human beings.
Proclaiming that all religions are one, however, fails
to deal with the reality of the differences between them.
It tries to whitewash them, when a number of them
cannot be reconciled. For example, the law of Karma
and the cycle of rebirth is either a fact for all people and
the idea of sin or salvation leading to an eternal heaven
or hell is wrong, or vice versa. Both are not merely
different words for the same truth. Pretending that all
religions are the same does not really eliminate these
differences. It tries to ignore the differences. It tries to
ignore the differences in order to create tolerance. Such
a tolerance will eventually break down when the reality
of the differences is discovered.

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On the other hand, if we recognize that there are

major differences between religions and allow for
freedom in human religious inquiry, then such
differences need not become a problem. The clash of
ideas in the pursuit of Spiritual Truth, like the clash of
ideas in science or philosophy, does not have to become
a factor of social conflict, nor do we have to try to stifle
it is order to maintain social harmony, which is only to
suppress our own intelligence.
What brings about real tolerance is allowing
different views to exist, not pretending that such
differences do not exist. The point is that society should
tolerate all religions even if all religions are not one and
even if some religions are wrong, and that in society we
ourselves should tolerate all regions even if we
individually may not agree with them and may oppose
them intellectually. What cannot be tolerated is violence
used to promote a particular belief, which destroys all
tolerance.
True tolerance is based upon respect for freedom,
not the assumption that everything tolerated must be
good or the same. It allows people the freedom to make
mistakes and discover for themselves what is true. This
same sense of freedom allows us to critically examine
various views and reject them of we wish, and to
communicate freely to society the reasons behind what
we have decided. Criticism of religion, just as critical
examination in other fields of learning like science,
should also be tolerated or religious tolerance itself is

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not real. This is not to encourage everyone to

aggressively criticize the religious of other people but to
prevent the suppression of Truth under the guise of not
offending anyone's religious belief.
We should acknowledge the different religions of
humanity, like the different arts and sciences, taking
from them what we find to be of most value, but this
does not require that we don't recognize any higher or
lower teachings within them or must find them to all be
good. We can also have our personal preferences in
religion, just as we have them in our food, cloths or job,
which we don't have to all make the same.
One may prefer Hinduism, Christianity or some
branch of it over other religions, but one should be
willing to accept that other people may prefer their
religion and yet others may not like any religion at all.
One should be able to be friendly and considerate with
those of different beliefs, neither having to impose one's
views upon them or force such different views into a
single formulation. One should be able to question the
beliefs of others rationally and sincerely in one's effort
to find Truth, just as others should be able to question
our beliefs.
It should not be a problem for anyone if another
person is a Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist
or anything else. That should be the persons own right,
their own affairs which it is not for us individually to
judge. Religion should be an individual matter, not a
state or community enforced belief (which only means

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that it is a form of hypnosis or social control). Each

individual should be free to critically examine all
religious teachings and reject what they don't find to be
true. Insisting that people accept the validity of all
religions, just like insisting that they accept the validity
of one religion, can be a form of social domination, not
furthering the individual in his or her own discovery of
Truth.
This is no different than how the different sects of
Hinduism relate. A Shaivite and Vaishnava, for
example, don't have to agree on all aspects of their
beliefs to have harmony with one another. Each can
think his particularly formulation of Divinity is superior.
Vishnu can be made into the greatest devotee of Shiva
or vice versa. We don't have to insist that we all agree
with one another, which is childish, and much of the
beauty of life is that we do see things differently. But we
do have to learn to be considerate with those who don't
agree with us. And regardless of our personal
preferences we should seek to find out what is true
through spiritual practices, and not merely be content
with a belief or theory, which is always arbitrary.
Hinduism has always regarded freedom or
liberation, Moksha , as the real goal of life. It leaves
people free to discover whether the principles and views
of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma are true and does not
seek to enforce them upon people, even those born as
Hindus. This freedom of inquiry is the basis for real
tolerance. The second factor is non-violence and its

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sister principle of non-interference whereby we allow

others freedom to discover Truth. Through these
principles all the various behavior of human beings can
be brought into harmony.
True religious tolerance does not consist of reducing
all religions to a single mold but of allowing the full
range of human religions experience to flower without
the control of any overriding dogma, hierarchy or
institution in the external world. This allows us to
transcend religion and does not place us under the rule
of any organization. Religion is only an aid in our own
Self-realization and when it becomes an end-in-itself it
loses its validity. We should make human beings subject
neither to one religion not to all religions. Rather we
should make religion subordinate to the Self of all
creatures. We should not seek to make all religions good
when religion itself is not the goal and when some
religions can be harmful. We should see religions for
what they are and discover the truth of what we are, in
which all religions, indeed all worlds, are but our
shadow.

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Swami Rama Tirtha On Islam

Swami Rama Tirtha (1873-1906) was one of the

greatest spiritual figures of modern India. He also
visited the United States from 1902-1904 and was one
of the first great Swamis to bring the Vedantic teaching
to the West, following in the footsteps of Vivekananda.
Though his teachings are on par with Vivekananda-
indeed often more poetic and inspiring-since he formed
no organization they are not as well known. Rama did
not even care to collect his own writings. He was such a
God intoxicated person that the entire manifest universe
did not count for anything more than straw for him. His
greatness has been recognized by many great people
including Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Shivananda,
Paramahansa Yogananda, and Anandamayi Ma. He is
lauded in yogic circles as a Jnani or man of spiritual
knowledge.
Mahatma Gandhi himself said, "Swami Rama's
teachings have got to be propagated. He was one of the
greatest souls, not only of India but of the whole world".
Rama was a very learned man, a great poet and
scholar. He knew many languages including Hindi,
Urdu, English, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, French and
German. He was not only a great Vedantin, he was also
a Sufi, studies the Persian Sufi works and the Koran,
which works he often quoted in his talks and writings.
He spoke in Arabic to Islamic groups in Egypt during
his world travels. As he was a child of the Punjab and

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knew the Hindu and Islamic religions intimately, his

statements about Islam are worthy of note.
In 1905 he had several conversations with the
Muslims in Lucknow, which has always been one of the
more liberal centers of Islamic thought, largely owing to
the influence of Shia Muslims, who until recently tended
to be less militant and more tolerant than the main Sunni
Islamic groups. These talks are recorded in the sixth
volume of Rama's works, In Woods of God Realization.
Though they are nearly a century old, they remain quite
relevant today as Hindu-Muslim conflicts still prevail
throughout India. The following is only a partial excerpt
from these conversations which were meant to explain
the validity of the Hindu religion to Indian Muslims.
Rama does not criticise or condemn Mohammed or
the original teaching of Islam, though he does not equate
Mohammed’s realization with that of the great yogis of
India either. However, he does not cover over the
violence that has been done in the name of Islam,
particularly in India. In the course of these conversations
the word “Kafir”, which is the Islamic word for infidel,
came up. This is a key word for the Islamic world. A
non-Muslim is called a Kafir or heretic, which is a
derogatory term. The Muslims asked him his opinion
this word, as they knew of Rama’s vast learning and
spiritual knowledge.
Rama replied, "It would have been better if you had
not put this question to Rama, because, whatever he says
will be according to his own notions. Rama likes neither

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to flatter anybody, nor injure the feelings of anyone.

Truth cannot be crushed. There is some Truth in every
religion. Rama is, therefore, not only a Hindu, but also a
Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist. In answer to your
question Rama will speak politely and with love, but he
may also have to indulge in some plain speaking,
without the least intention to injure your feeling. Rama
loves you all like his own self. As such, there should be
nothing to hide form his own self".
"The truth is that the followers of Islam have very
wrongly interpreted the words Kufr and Kafir (the first
meaning heresy and the second meaning heretic or
infidel) and they have also made a very wrong use of
these words. As you know, the heart of a man is the seat
of God. It is a great virtue to be kind to others".
"But, unfortunately, on account of superficial
knowledge or ignorance, the so-called leaders of Islam
injected hatred, alienation, prejudice and violence into
the hearts of ignorant Muslims, instead of preaching
love for God or brotherhood of man".
"The history written by the Muslims themselves will
testify and corroborate the fact that lakhs (hundreds of
thousands) of non-Muslims have been butchered in
whole-sale massacres, in the name of Islam. Thousands
of villages were burnt to ashes by the invading Muslim
armies. What brutal tyranny, intolerable harshness,
absolute despotism and ruthless oppression did they no
inflict on the non-Muslims in the name of Islam, due to
the misinterpretation of the words, Kufr and Kafir.”

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“They burnt the non-Muslims alive. They did not

spare even the women and the children. History says
that they buried in a brick wall even the young sons of
Guru Govind Singh of only eight and ten years of age,
when they resolutely refused to accept Islam. They rode
rough shod over all those who ever dared challenge the
autocratic and dictatorial bigotry of the Muslims. With
only a few noble exceptions, a very great majority of
Muslims treated the non-Muslims as Kafirs (heretics).
This is against the very tenets of Islam which literally
means the 'Religion of peace'."
"Yet in the very name of God and His peaceful
religion, Islam, His own creation has been annihilated
and mercilessly cut down, under the sword of bigotry
and fanaticism of ignorant Muslims. Lakhs of non-
Muslims were taken prisoners and made to say goodbye
to their hearths and homes, to be sold in Muslim
countries as slaves to serve their masters for their whole
life. Lakhs of helpless were made into widows. They
were raped and used to satisfy the lust of the guardians
of Islam. By the misuse of the words Kufr and Kafir,
millions of innocent children were rendered orphans and
forced to lead a life of immorality by the soldiers of
Islam.
"What is all this for? Is this your Islam which you
call the Religion of peace? Is terrorism the only way to
make people accept Islam? This is what your own
history says. This is what the world has seen of Islam.

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This is what the Indians have experienced. And this is

what the Muslims are even today practicing in India on
the smallest pretext, during the communal riots, said to
be engendered at the behest of our alien rulers. But no.
This is not the teaching of Islam, the Religion of peace.
It is due to the wrong interpretation of the words Kufra
and Kafir."
"Rama has no ill will against any one of you,
because he knows that the Muslim masses are
misinformed and that, taking advantage of their
ignorance of the Arabic language in which the holy
Koran has been written, they are still being misled by
their fanatic and selfish leaders."
"Rama's heart aches when he sees all this in the
name of Islam and against the Farman of the Prophet
who was a true and sincere devotee of God. He could
not have allowed his followers unjustly and ruthlessly to
butcher the innocent creation of his own God in his very
name and in that of Islam, the religion which is said to
establish peace on earth. But alas, after his death, not
only non-Muslims but his own son-in-law, Hazrat Ali,
and his (Prophet's) grandsons were mercilessly and
unjustly, under the abominable intoxication of their false
pride and prestige."
"Rama has great respect and regard for Islam. But he
is extremely pained to see its fall to such a depth of
degeneration that its followers, the Muslims, especially
in India, have not only misused the words, Kufr and
Kafir in the name of their peaceful religion. But have

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also indulged in all sorts of sins, murders, butchery,

bloodshed, rape, hatred, jealousy, spite, prejudice, etc.
against the non-Muslims, their own fellow beings and
the creation of their own God or Allah."
"It is not the non-Muslims but the so-called Muslims
themselves, who have defamed and vilified their own
simple, veracious and unfeigned religion which is said
to be preaching peace on earth. They have themselves
presented an ugly image of their God-fearing and simple
religion before the world."
"According to the Indian Muslims in general, Kafir
is one who is not a Muslim. But this interpretation is
absolutely wrong. It is for this reason that wherever they
went, they, in their zeal to spread their religion,
perpetrated tyranny, bloodshed and oppression. All this
is against the fundamental principles of Islam, peace and
total resignation to the all-pervading God."
"The person, who asserts his ego or selfishness, as
against Truth is a Kafir. And what is this Truth? Truth is
that which remains the same yesterday, today forever.
But Truth or Reality is only one. It is only God who is
immortal, eternal, and imperishable."
"According to the Muslims, a non-Muslim is a Kafir,
however God-intoxicated or truly religious-minded he
may be. As such, it is said that a so-called Muslim has
every right to do away with a non-Muslim, if the latter
does not believe in the Prophet Mohammed, or in the
Koran, as if he, the non-Muslim, has not been created by
the same God. It is also said that a Muslim will be

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forgiven by God for his sins just because he is a formal

Muslim. This is a popular belief among the Muslim
masses. All this misbelief or blind faith is against the
fundamental principles of Islam. From the point of view
of Rama, cruelty due to narrow mindedness, does not
become those who profess that Islam is the religion of
peace."
"It is now for you to say, how reasonable, just and
fair it is to preach to the ignorant Muslim masses,
segregation in the name of Islam, which is obviously for
political reasons with vested interests. The entire
universe is one due to direct connection with God, the
universal creator. If your own God has made people take
birth into non-Muslim families, who are you to shed
their blood, annihilate them or hate them after taking
them to be Kafirs? How do you justify yourself in
finding fault with God's doing? How dare you interfere
with his planning."
"Oh dear friends, according to your own Koran, all
are equal in the eyes of God who is the Rabbul-Almin,
the Lord of all the worlds. We all emanate from Him.
We all are His sons. Will God be ever pleased with you
to see His sons being massacred by you in His very
name? No father can be happy to see this cruelty of
yours. Who are you, then, to create differences and
disunity in the so-called Kafirs and the Muslims, when
God is common to all? Please reflect and say honestly, if
you yourself are a real Muslim? Are you not a Kafir
yourself, when you deny God, by acting practically all

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the time with selfish motives? This is certainly not the

teaching of Islam, the religion of peace."
"Rama regrets very much to have to say all this. But
since Rama has great respect and regard for Islam, due
to its simplicity and direct faith in God and, since he
takes the Muslims as his own self, he does not feel any
hesitation in speaking frankly and fearlessly to his own
self. Rama says with love and good intentions only what
he thinks to be right from his own experience and
observation, because it is sin to hide anything from his
own dear ones. If he is wrong he may be corrected,
Rama will not have the least objection to this."
Swami Ram Tirtha does not criticize Islam, not its
prophet nor its book. In this he follows in the wake of
other Hindu religious teachers and thinkers. What is
exceptional about him is that he knows so much about
Islamic history and speaks about it with such frankness,
exercising no negationism about it. And that is the most
significant part of this essay. His knowledge of Islamic
history does not however make him change his views of
Islam as a religion. He thinks that all that the best of
Muslim heroes did and Muslim teachers taught was
"against the fundamental principles of Islam." And in
this way, he is able to retain his "respect and regard for
Islam." In this respect too he follows in the wake of
other Hindu savants and students of Islam who think
they know Islam better than the best of Muslim
theologians, and cannot resist the temptation of speaking

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"not only as a Hindu, but also as a Muslim and as a

Christian."
But if a truthful account of Indian history is made,
we need not accuse those who give such accounts as
being prejudiced against Muslims because such history
does not show Islam in a Positive light. If we do we will
have to throw the likes of Swami Rama Tirtha into such
a category.
Rama also stated to the Indians: "Please study your
own history with care and attention, you will please
mark that, so long as we were strictly following the
basic tenets of our Sanatana Dharma, which is based on
mutual love, unity and selfless discharge of our moral
duty, with faith in God, no outside power could dare
look at us with evil designs." Hindus today need to look
at their history in that light of dharma. Only then will
emerge the true way to develop the country for the
future.

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A Comment on Ram Swarup's

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam

There are many books available in the world today

that provide critiques of different religions from both
religious and non-religious standpoint. Most religions
have their own books stating their position relative to
the others and pointing out the unique validity of their
faith. Strangely, however, it is difficult to find any real
Hindu critique of predominant Western religions,
though much criticism of Hinduism, generally
inaccurate, is easy to discover from their point of view.
However, now there is at least one important Hindu
critique of Western religions, Ram Swarup's Hindu
View of Christianity and Islam, which examines these
religions from the standpoint of yogic spirituality and
points out the difference between religion as an internal
quest in the Eastern world and religion as an external
conversion oriented social movement in the West.
There are several reasons for the lack of books
explaining the Hindu point of view on different
religions. In the Western world authentic accounts of
Hinduism are difficult to get. The literature generally
comes from two sources. The first is a rather dry
academic Western scholarship on Hinduism, coming
from non-Hindus or even people who have no real
sympathy for the religion. These scholars are largely
either Christian theologians of Marxists in their views.
They represent a critique of Hinduism from a non-Hindu

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point of view, though ironically their books are looked

to by those seeking to find out what Hinduism is. The
second source in the work of various Swamis and Gurus
who have come to the West. Their groups largely
promote the particular approach of their teacher and,
with a few notable exceptions, seldom examine
Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma) as a whole. Hence there
are many books in the West on Yoga, particularly
asanas, various works on meditation, or general books of
wisdom by teachers from India, but it is difficult to find
any real explication of Hinduism within them.
In India there is a reluctance to provide a Hindu
critique of other religions but for different reasons. India
as a Hindu majority country has a policy of not
offending minorities in matters of religion. As India's
minorities are Christian and Islamic little critical is
allowed of these religions not merely by the government
but by anyone. Even an accurate account of how these
groups have functioned historically in India, which has
included persecution or, in the case of Islam, genocide,
has been suppressed in the name of communal harmony.
Tam Swarup has challenged this attitude of suppressing
Truth for political reasons, and examined the actual
teachings and historical record of these religions for
good or ill.
This reluctance to allow Hindus in India their
perspective on other religions is also rather strange
because in Christian or Islamic countries, Hinduism, if it
is tolerated at, is generally explained in a very negative

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manner as a religion of strange cults, idol worship,

widow burning, and dowry deaths. I am speaking as a
writer on Hinduism in the United States and have to
frequently deal with these negative stereotypes. Even in
academic circles in this country there is a reluctance to
accept that Hinduism is a religion at all but merely a
collection of cults. One university here recently
published the view of a prominent American professor
of Asian Studies that Hinduism is a modern political
expropriation of various unrelated cults for nationalist
ambitions and that prior to the last century there was no
such thing as Hinduism in India, and no such thing as
India as a country!
More liberally religious minded people in the West
are not informed about the situation in India and Asia.
They don't realize that the fundamentalist groups which
they often criticize of even ridicule in America are
engaged in massive conversion efforts in India, openly
spreading various distortions about such religions as
Hinduism and Buddhism in their own countries with
little being done to counter them. Most people in the
West think that the days of missionary activity ended
with the colonial era. The result is that people in the
West are remarkably misinformed about Hinduism, even
those who may be practicing some Hindu based Yoga or
meditation approaches. Few people in the West can give
an accurate idea of what Hinduism is. And many people
in the West, even those who may be sympathetic, are

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inclined to accept distorted views of Hinduism because

they do not find any other point of view presented.
A Hindu critique of Western religion, such as Ram
Swarup provides in his book, is therefore essential to
provide a balanced view on the subject. The main
modern Hindu critique of other religions that can be
found today is not a critique at all but a statement that all
religions are good, that all are the same, their beliefs and
practices are equal, and if they merely respected one
another then all would be well in the world. Non-Hindu
groups regard this as a form of emotionalism or
confused thinking, and would never equate their
religions with Hinduism and its guru or deity cults.
Hindus under this view may never study other religions
and find out what their teachings really say, which in
many cases is very different than what Hinduism
teaches. This synthetic Hindu view thereby often serves
only to inhibit any deep inquiry or profound study.
All religions are not merely the same and equally
good, as Ram Swarup points out. All water is also one
but not all water is fit to drink. Though all water is one
we must still be careful with the particular water that we
actually drink. Ramakrishna, one of the Hindu saints
who is looked to for this all religions are the same
doctrine, practiced Islam for three days and in a highly
unorthodox manner, visualized Christ but never really
practiced Christianity, while practicing various Hindu
teachings on a daily basis for over thirty years. His point
was not that all religions are the same and equal ways to

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Selfrealization, which is not even true of all the branches

of Hinduism, but that there is something good in all
religions, just as there is in all people.
Nor do the other religions simply say what
Hinduism states but with different words. Hinduism has
its metaphysics of karma and rebirth, which is quite
unlike the heaven-hell doctrines of Christianity and
Islam. Hinduism views liberation, Self-realization or
communion with God as the highest goal, not merely
salvation from sin which is the Christian view.
Hinduism emphasizes spiritual experience, gained
through self-discipline, Yoga and meditation. It does not
look to prayer, good works or conversion of others as
the answer to the human problem, or mere belief in a
particular religion and its dogma as being capable of
changing our consciousness. While it is true that there
have been Christian and Islamic mystics who have
views or practices akin to the Hindu and engaged in the
inner quest, these individuals have been exceptions,
were generally persecuted and rejected, and represent
very little of what goes on in the name of these religions
today.
I will give an example of the distortion caused by
this Hindu view that all religions are the same. Talking
before a group of people in Delhi during a visit to India
last year I spoke of the difference between karma and
rebirth oriented religions like Hinduism and Buddhism
and those like Christianity and Islam which teach that
we have only one life. A Hindu in the audience objected

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and said that the Bible also teaches karma and rebirth
under the statement "as you sow so shall you reap." I
told the person that this was his Hindu interpretation of
the Bible and that almost every single Christian church
of every denomination in the United States would throw
him out if he tried to teach such things to their
congregations. He was shocked to find this out.
Hinduism begins with the statement from its oldest
Rig Veda "that which is the One Truth, the sages call by
many different names.” This is quite a different
statements then "There is no God but Allah, and
Mohammed is his final prophet," or "Jesus is the only
Son of God," which the great majority of Muslims and
Christians believe. For this reason Hinduism has
maintained a broad and comprehensive spiritual
approach and has not become a proselytizing ideology.
While Hinduism states that there is good in all religions
as in all people, this does not mean that it has no
conscience that the rest of the world needs to hear. Its
critique of missionary movements, materialist ideologies
(including communism), its defense of indigenous
peoples and their cultures, its defense of the Earth and of
animals, provides Hinduism a crucial voice today when
our planet is being overrun by economic and ideological
interests which are threatening its very life. Ram Swarup
has found this Hindu conscience and is willing to
proclaim it to the world, which is sadly in need of its
message.

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Ram Swarup is perhaps the foremost living thinker

in the field of Hinduism. He is leading the most
significant and thorough Hindu examination of Western
religions to date. He presents a logical and profound
critique of Christianity and Islam showing their
shortcomings from the standpoint of Hindu spirituality.
He clearly discriminates between yogic spirituality
which is the essence of Eastern Dharmic traditions and
exclusive belief systems such as Christianity and Islam
have presented themselves. His chapter on Semitic
Religions and Yogic Spirituality is a classic in the
regard. His views are always clear, compassionate but
straightforward, not hiding the facts but revealing the
Truth for the benefit of all.
Ram Swarup copiously quotes from Christian and
Islamic sources. Much of what he has done is merely
presenting what these religions have said about
themselves, so that those who have interpreted these
religions from a Hindu point of view can see how such
groups actually see themselves. His work is not a mere
traditional Hindu reaction against the West or the
modern world Ram Swarup has a global and futuristic
vision that is examining the spiritual problems of
humanity, which Hinduism offers an important, if not
crucial, perspective on.
Unfortunately there has been a call by minority
interests in India to ban Ram Swarup's book, the same
group that has brought about the banning of a number of
books in the country like Salman Rushdie's Satanic

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Verses. While it is alright for non-Hindu religions to

criticize Hinduism, it appears that it is not right for
Hindus to express their own point of view, even in India.
If it is not acceptable for Hinduism in India to defend
itself in the current information (or disinformation) war,
where is it to be given a voice?
The banning of books is the greatest statement of
both intolerance and stupidly. A country which does this
is just giving a lobotomy to itself. In the Western world
there is a freedom of speech. No books are banned. One
can find numerous book criticizing Christianity and
Jesus, for example, including some by great Western
thinkers like Voltaire and Nietzsche. Both the Bible and
the Koran themselves contain much criticism of Pagan
religions and their cultures. Why can't Pagan religions
give their critique of the religions which have been
attacking them for centuries? It is the sign of a mature
culture that it can accept criticism and tolerate various
points of view. We don't all see things the same way and
intelligence grows through the examination of different
points of view, not through insisting that one point of
view alone is true. A culture that has to pass laws
banning books or anti-blasphemy laws preventing a
particular religious group from being criticized (but
usually accepting or encouraging the denigration of
other religious groups), is an immature culture. To
appease those who require books banned is only to
appease this form of immaturity, which destroys
intelligence.

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Traditional Hindu book contain much dialogue,

questioning discussion and various critiques. The Hindu
and Buddhist philosophical traditions have a lively
tradition of debate, critiquing not only different religions
but different branches of their same religion. In
Vedantic books, like those of Shankaracharya, there are
critiques of other systems of Hinduism like Sankhya and
the different Buddhist systems like Vijnanavada or
Madhyamika. In Buddhist philosophical works there are
critiques of different broaches of Buddhism and other
Hindu systems like Sankhya and Vedanta. Such
religious thinkers did not have the idea that it was good
not to have any critique of different systems, as someone
might get offended in the process of having their views
questioned. There was an open pursuit of Truth and
everything was to be questioned.
The same thing is true in science today. While there
is only one science this does not mean that all scientists
are good, that all scientific theories are correct, or that
minority scientists should be given special treatment as
regards their theories, which non-minorities should not
be allowed to question. Such thinking does not lead us
to Truth but confuses free intellectual inquiry with
political concerns and vote banks.
India needs to get out of the intellectual morass it
has gotten itself into through such intellectual
appeasement. Ram Swarup shows how to reserve this
process. How his books are accepted is a good measure
of how India is willing to honesty deal with its

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conscience. Hinduism is a voice of Truth that needs to

be shared with all of humanity. Apologists of Hinduism
and Hindu appeasers of non-Hindus have missed the
spiritual essence of the tradition, which is that Truth is
greater than all beliefs, authorities, books and
institutions.

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Yogic Spirituality and Islam

A number of those who proclaim that all religions

are one like to carry this principle further and make the
founders of all religions into Divine incarnations
(avatars). They would equate such figures as Krishna,
Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, and Moses as if there were
no fundamental difference between them and their
teachings. Such people are generally influenced by
yogic spirituality that perceives a unity of Truth behind
all religions and regards religion as a means to Self-
realization or union with God.
They would see a common yogic spiritual
experience behind all religions and proclaim that the
founders of all important religious movements were
great yogis and Self-realized sages as if that were the
only model of religion possible. They may lump
together belief-oriented religions-like Christianity and
Islamalong with meditation traditions-like Hinduism and
Buddhism-which can be very different, and leave out
religious traditions that have no organized approach like
Native American and African traditions. To explain the
evident differences between yogic spirituality and other
religions, they propose that the teachings of the founders
of the religions-like Christ or Mohammed-were
misinterpreted and that what was originally a path to
God-realization based on a yogic model in time became
reduced to a dogma, church or ritual by followers who
lost track of the internal dimension of the teaching.

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They would claim the same for Hinduism to explain the

difference between its yogic and ritualistic approaches.
There are clearly common factors between all
religions, particularly ethical principles of leading a
good life, though there are differences on this level as
well. The religious or mystical experience has yet more
similarities, though it is not all of the same type either,
as the different levels and stages of spiritual growth
reveal. Above all, there is only One Truth that all
spiritual aspiration is moving toward. But this does not
mean that all religions have understood this Truth in the
same manner or to the same degree, or that their
founders must have done so. While it may be better to
emphasize the similarities between religions than the
differences, when we overly exaggerate their
similarities, we create a misunderstanding of another
order that also does not serve the purpose of discovering
the Truth. We may give everyone the impression that
their religion, whatever it is, is sufficient, when for the
full flowering of the spiritual life it may be necessary for
them to go beyond it.
The point of this article is that some of the religions
of the world and their founders-and one in particular,
Islam and Mohammed, which is perhaps the most
evident exampledo not follow the model of yogic
spirituality, if we really look at what they have to say
about themselves. They reflect a very different view of
religion. To try to turn all religions, and all forms of

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mysticism, into versions of yogic spirituality is not

intellectually accurate, nor is it sensitive to what these
religions themselves say, nor is it based on a real study
of them. On the country, it usually represents the view
of those who have not really looked into what non-yogic
religions are all about. Those trained in the unity
tradition are inclined to read a yogic type spirituality
between the lines of all religious teachings, even though
the great majority of those who follow these religions
including their leaders and mystics who have arisen
within them-may not accept important yogic principles
and practices as valid.
There are obviously other models of religion than
yogic spirituality as the various religious teachings in
the world clearly reveal. Many religious groups do not
emphasize a yogic type purity of body and mind, nor do
they teach yogic-like meditation practice, or have a
yogic goal like liberation from rebirth and realization of
unity with God. They may not look to non-violent or
meditative figures as their guides but to people of active
or militant dispositions. They may not emphasize an
internal yogic-like quest but promote external actions,
even war to spread their faith. As this is the case, there is
no reason to insist that at least some of the founders of
different religions could not have had the same views as
their proponents today.
Whether the yogic model of spirituality is not the
only approach, is not entirely valid, or whether some
religions are deficient depends upon if one considers the

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principles of yogic spirituality to be universal. But to

pretend that all religions derive, at least originally, from
a model of yogic spirituality and therefore are all
equally true and must lead to the same goal, though they
may not recognize it as their aim, cannot stand scrutiny.
It is neither fair to yogic spirituality or to other religions
to assume they are simply the same thing in a different
guise or misinterpreted.

Mohammed According to Vivekananda

As the founder of one of the world's predominant

religions, Mohammed is regarded by some following
this ecumenical view as a Divine incarnation, great yogi,
or Self-realized sage. Most people who make this
judgment have not studied the life of Mohammed or
understood the Islamic view of Mohammed, which does
not view him in this light. They merely assume it is the
case because Islam is a widely believed religion or
because various mystics, like the Sufis, have arisen in
the course of its history.
As a holy book or scripture, such people may regard
the Koran as the World of God-like the Bible or the Gita
or other so called scriptures-and may say that they
believe in the Koran and consider that it has the same
teaching as other scriptures. Again such people usually
have not studies the Koran and may not really believe in
or follow much of what it actually says. Nor are they

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giving credence to traditional Islamic interpretations of

the Koran.
Who was Mohammed? Swami Vivekananda, who is
often regarded as one of the main figures behind this
new ecumenicalism, critiqued Mohammed from the
standpoint of yogic spirituality. According to him
Mohammed was a man who stumbled upon a spiritual
experience without the proper training. To quote the
Swami from his book on Raja Yoga:
"The Yogi says there is a great danger in stumbling
upon this state. In a good many cases there is the danger
of the brain being deranged, and, as a rule, you will find
that all those man, however great they were, who
stumbled upon this super conscious state without
understanding it, groped in the dark, and generally had,
along with their knowledge, some quaint superstitions.
They opened themselves to hallucinations. Mohammed
claimed that the Angel Gabriel came to him in a cave
one say and took him on the heavenly horse, Harak, and
he visited the heavens. But with all that, Mohammed
spoke some most wonderful truths mixed with
superstitions. How will you explain it? That man was
inspired, no doubt, but was not a trained Yogi, and did
not know the reason of what he was doing. Think of the
good Mohammed did to the world, and think of the great
evil that has been done through his teachings, mothers
bereft of their children, children made orphans, whole
countries destroyed, millions upon millions of people
killed."

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According to Vivekananda, Mohammed, like many

untrained people in the spiritual life, upon having a
spiritual experience jumped to the conclusion that he
had the Word of God, and that the world should follow
the religion God had revealed to him. Whether one
agrees with Vivekananda or not, he is simply applying
the principles of yogic spirituality to the commonly
known life and teachings of Mohammed, thinking that
these yogic principles are universally valid.
The idea of a final prophet, such as Mohammed is
claimed to be, is contrary to the idea of yogic spirituality
that spiritual knowledge is a human capacity, like art,
science, or mechanical skills, albeit of higher nature. As
a capacity of all human beings, it cannot exclusively or
finally belongs to any one person. There cannot be any
final painter, for example, beyond whom no real painters
can ever be born, or any final scientist, beyond whom no
important new scientific discoveries can be made. Any
insistence upon a final or exclusive revelation of God
for a certain person is contrary to the universality of the
yogic view.

The Life and Teaching of Mohammed

If we examine his life from Islamic traditional

sources we see that Mohammed did not follow a number
of yogic principles in his daily life. Nor was he taught
yogic practices like mantra, Pranayama or meditation by
a living master trained in such a tradition though he did

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not come into contact with various religious influences

in the caravan world around him. He did not experience
a situation like that found among the Himalayan yogis
or in the great temples and monasteries of the Hindus
and Buddhists where a complete yogic type training
could be gained.
Mohammed knew little or nothing about Hinduism
or Buddhism and their approaches, which he does not
mention, and used the Biblical model to represent
spirituality as a whole. Mohammed came into contact
with a number of Jews and Christians, and with the
Bible through them. His teaching was most influenced
by the Old Testament and he appears to have styled
himself after the Old Testament prophets and their
struggles against the Pagan Philistines and Canaanites,
in whose image his enemies and non-Muslims in general
were portrayed, curiously including the Jews
themselves. While Christ reformed the Old Testament
Law of an eye and a tooth for a tooth and instituted the
idea of turning one's cheek a concept of non-violence
that may have come from a yogic influence-Mohammed
reintroduced the harsher law of the earlier era.
Mohammed began to receive his revelations after
the late age of forty, before which he lived a fairly
ordinary life. His revelations appeared as a trace that he
went into periodically. He accepted these experiences as
a direct communion with God that no other human being
could have. He claimed to talk with the angel Gabriel
and with God (Allah) himself, who he states appointed

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him as His final Prophet. Mohammed spoke of the

Koran as the Word of God, given to him for all
humanity for the rest of history until the Day of the
Final Judgment.
Mohammed always referred to himself as the
Prophet and servant of God. At his death he spoke of
going to Heaven, not of merging into the formless
Divine. Mohammed does not speak of the Self or Atman
or make statements like "I am God (aham Brahmasmi),"
the hallmark of Self-realized sages. According to
orthodox Islam no individual should proclaim "I am
God," which is a delusion. God and the individual are
different and the individual should never arrogate
realization of God to himself. For saying this the ninth
century Sufi Al-Hallaj was cut into pieces and thrown
into a river by other Muslims. The reason is because
Mohammed, the greatest and final Prophet, did not say
this and for a Muslim to claim even what Mohammed
did not, would be blasphemy of the greatest order.
Mohammed does speak of various mystical
experiences, including communication with spirits,
fighting with devils, and the descent of Divine grace and
power. He speaks of effacement into Allah, but God or
Allah as the Creator is the supreme term. There is
neither Atman, the Self, nor Brahman, the formless
Absolute, nor does he mention the law of karma or the
cycle of rebirth and the need to transcend it. Mohammed
appears to have been a dualist, or one who thinks that
God and the soul are different, though related, and he

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does not speak of non-duality. Orthodox Islam follows a

dualistic philosophy based on his example.
Mohammed's God was beyond all images and
commanded Mohammed to convert or conquer those
who use images and icons (idols) in their worship. Yet it
is wrong to consider that Mohammed's Allah is the same
as the Absolute of Vedantic thought. Mohammed's God
possesses emotions like anger and jealousy. He talks to
his chosen people and his special Prophet and directs
them to specific actions that may involve violence
against people of other beliefs.His God is concerned
with political events and aids Mohammed in various
personal struggles and military battles. Allah has
prepared heaven for those who believe in Him and hell
for those who don't. He is not a detached Transcendent
Reality like the Brahman of Vedanta or the Dharmakaya
of Buddhism, though Himself places Himself beyond all
representation.
It is clear therefore that Mohammed does not
represent the state of Godconsciousness from birth that
Divine incarnations (avatars) are supposed to have from
the standpoint of yogic spirituality. Nor does he show an
ongoing state of Samadhi in the yogic sense beginning
at any time in his life, which is experienced as an
unbroken continuity of awareness of the Supreme Self.
He had mystical experiences but these came at various
intervals. Not surprisingly therefore orthodox Islam does
not believe in avatars or Selfrealization, as Mohammed,
their greatest Prophet, does not reflect such awareness.

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Nor are prophet hood and avatar hood the same

thing as religious syncretists would have us believe. A
prophet has a special message from God that is said to
be valid for all people and which establishes an external
code of belief that everyone is supposed to follow. An
avatar is one whose consciousness from birth is that of
the Divine Itself and sets forth a path of Self-realization
based on yogic practices. Islam does not accept Divine
incarnations and this is one important difference it has
always had with Christianity. It does not accept the
Christian concept of Jesus as the Son of God but only as
a previous prophet. To try to make Mohammed into an
avatar in the Hindu sense shows neither an
understanding of what a prophet or an avatar is.

The Character of Mohammed and Yogic Principles

Mohammed was a pious and disciplined person, had

a high standard of cleanliness, and gave up drinking
alcohol. He reality took poor people and slaves,
including blacks, into his congregation and was very
loving and broadminded with his followers. He regarded
all of his followers like members of his own family, as
one great brotherhood, and was not attached to race,
class or learning. He never accumulated money or
possessions for himself, even when they were freely
available. He did not build expensive mosques but
preferred simple dwellings and plain places of worship.
He did not try to create a priestly order to rule over

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people and mediate between them and God but tried to

create a religion in which each person could
communicate to God directly through prayer. He spent
his life working tirelessly according to the dictates of his
mission. Yet Mohammed demonstrated at least two
significant traits that are incompatible with the idea of
him as a sage in the yogic sense.
First he was prone to violence with those who
criticized Allah, Mohammed's role as the Prophet, or
Mohammed's followers. He saw the value of promoting
his religion by force, if necessary, during the more than
eighty battles that he fought. After his exile from Mecca,
Mohammed organized numerous raids on caravans to
Mecca. He fought as the leader of his army, in both
offensive and defensive conflicts, and was once severely
wounded. He took and ransomed hostages. He had a
group of seven hundred Jews of the Banu Quraiza tribe
massacred after they surrendered to him and became his
prisoners, when he determined that he could not trust
them. He at times approved of his followers performing
assassinations to eliminate enemies of the faith (for
example Asma, a woman poet of Mecca, who was killed
by Omeir, one of Mohammed's followers for criticizing
Mohammed). He even burned down the date orchards of
his enemies, not even sparing the trees. This is at least
what traditional Islamic records of him relate.
Mohammed is credited with introducing Islamic law
codes which like most medieval law codes contain much
that the modern world regards as unnecessary cruelty,

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including cutting off of the hands and feet of criminals

for certain offenses. Orthodox Muslims today say that
Islamic law cannot be changed because to do so would
be to alter what the Prophet has said. We do not see in
Mohammed the practice of non-violence emphasized in
Yoga traditions or found in the life of Christ.
Mohammed forgave all those who embraced Islam and
tried hard to promote non-violence among Muslims but
his record with non-Muslims was quite different. No
doubt some of the violence found in the life of
Mohammed was part of his time and culture.
Mohammed was often oppressed and attacked, nut the
higher degree of compassion for all people-regardless of
their beliefs-cannot be attributed to him.
According to the Sufis, Mohammed emphasized that
there was an inner holy war and an outer holy war, the
former being work on oneself and the latter being
fighting for the religion, and that the inner holy war was
more important. Yet he never gave up the need for outer
holy war, which became a war of world conquest for his
successors according to the intention Mohammed
himself set forth to spread his faith to the Greek and
Persian empires and conquer them if necessary.
Mohammed's second character trait that is not part
of the yogic spiritual approach was his approach to
sexuality. Mohammed at twenty-five married a woman
of forth and was married to her until her death twenty-
five years later. He was a good husband (though not a
yogi who had transcended sexual desire). After the age

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of fifty, when his first wife has passed away,

Mohammed in time married eight additional women
who were young and beautiful. He married Aisha, the
daughter of his friend and companion Abu Bakr, when
she was six and consummated the marriage when she
nine. In other words he married and had conjugal
relations with a minor, though he himself was an elderly
man. Another one of his marriages that appears quite
unusual was that to a woman named Zainab, who was
originally the wife of his adopted son Zaid, who
divorced her to allow Mohammed to marry her, and then
ceased calling himself the son of Mohammed.
Brahmacharya or transcendence of the sexual urge is
thus not represented in the life of the prophet. Not
surprisingly, Islam forbids monasticism and is against
celibacy, and in its holy wars Islamic militants have at
times marked our monks and monasteries for
destruction, regarding them as unholy. Mohammed did
give each of his wives her own house and stayed with
each on alternate days, engaging in regular sexual
relations with them up to the time of his death, and
appears to have treated all his wives kindly. He made
Islam forbid sex outside of marriage, particularly
premarital sex, though it does allow a man to have up to
four wives.
Following Mohammed, Islam promotes the having
of children as part of one's religious duty and as part of
its strategy to spread itself in the world. It does not
accept the renunciateascetic view as found in the life of

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the Buddha, and such as colors even the householder life

in India. It therefore does not have the respect for
monks, swamis and yogis that goes along with such a
view.

Mohammed's Companions

If we look at Mohammed's companions and

successors we see men who had similar life-styles as
Mohammed, though like Mohammed they may have
been mystics and were pious in their religious beliefs.
They do not include monks or yogis, or people who
talked of or sought Self-realization, but became generals
who led armies trying to conquer the world, something
we cannot imagine any yogi attempting to do. The first
Caliph Abu Bakr was a merchant turned general. Like
Mohammed he had the successive Caliphs (heads of
Islam) were simultaneously the leader of the army, the
political leader and chief judge, as well as the leader of
the religion. In addition Islamic generals and soldiers,
starting with Mohammed's successors, took personally
from the wealth of the lands they conquered and set up
hereditary pensions for themselves and their families.
They turned themselves not into ascetics but into the
new ruling class.
Some Muslims, particularly members of the Shia
branch claim that Mohammed was not militaristic, but
that the Caliphs starting with Abu Bakr, misinterpreted
his teaching that what was a defensive struggle in the

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life of Mohammed trying to preserve Islam in the face of

unfair attack, because an offensive battle after he died,
an attempt to promote their version of Islam through
force. In time conflict arose among the followers of
Mohammed, between the party of Ali, his son-in-law,
and the party of the Caliphs. Ali and his sons, the
grandsons of Mohammed, were killed in battle with
other Muslims and with them Mohammed's blood line
perished. Ali is regarded by the Shias and some Sufis as
the true representative of Mohammed's teaching who
was not tainted by the violence and luxury that the
Caliphs assumed.
However, in support of the Sunni view (those who
accept the Caliphs), we should note that all three early
Caliphs-Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman, whom the Shias
do not accept and who promoted the Islamic invasion
and conquest of Africa and the Middle East-were among
the closest living disciples of Mohammed. Mohammed
took daughters of the first two among his wives and
married two of his daughters to the third. If anyone
would have known Mohammed and been in a position to
continue his work, it would have been them. The
Caliphs were not like Saint Paul of Christianity, who
never knew Christ personally, but the direct disciples of
the Prophet. What they did, they felt, through their own
experience of the Prophet, was fulfilling his will.

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Mohammed and the Koran

If we examine the life of Mohammed it could be

argued that we do see a great man in a number of ways.
But we cannot regard Mohammed as a yogi or avatar in
the traditional Hindu or Buddhist sense unless we are
willing to rewrite the facts of his life and teaching. Even
most Muslims would not portray him in this light.
Mohammed was a poet, mystic, religious reformer,
political leader and victorious general, but he did not
follow the life of a yogi or give his teachings in
harmony with the yogic approach, nor did he have the
behavior of what Christians would call a saint.
The Koran, one could similarly argue, is a great
book with much poetry, mysticism, history and
theology, but not the Word of God or Absolute Truth. If
it is the Word of God that God is very different than the
Divine Reality of yogic traditions, who is not a personal
God involved in the affairs of the world, like Allah. The
Koran cannot honestly be said to be a yogic teaching
like the Bhagavad Gita, for example, and does not speak
of meditation, Karma or liberation. Not surprisingly,
Muslims see in the Koran a very different view of the
Divine than in yogic texts like the Gita.
A case for religious tolerance is made in the Koranic
statement that there should be no compulsion in religion.
This statement of non-compulsion merely means that in
religion we (Muslims) will go our way and those who
don't agree with us can go their way, which way we do

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not approve of. This we will go our way and you can go
yours is not a statement of mutual sympathy or respect.
It is the potentially hostile tolerance of those who have
different views but are unable to change one another.
many Islamic thinkers consider that this statement of
tolerance is abrogated by the verse on Jihad which
encourages Muslims to actively strive to convert non-
Muslims, using force if necessary.
We find in the Koran no such statement that all
religions are true that Christianity, Judaism,
Zoroastrianism, and the indigenous religions of Arabia
are as good as or equal to Islam. All other religions and
their followers are frequently criticized. According to
the Koran, whatever value they may have had has
ceased with Islam, which is meant to replace them.
We should note that orthodox Muslims regard such
non yogic traits of Mohammed as laudable. Nor do they
see they see the necessity for yogic practices, since
Mohammed himself did not do them. They do not
dispute these facts but interpret them differently. They
regard non-violence as a character weakness or lack of
conviction and are proud of the conquests that Islam has
made in its invasion of other countries. Orthodox
Muslims see Islam as a superior path to yogic teachings
because it can led a person to God without requiring
such disciplines as the yogic which, after all, very few
people are able to really do. They regard Islam as a
direct connection to God, which takes one beyond the
need to perform yogic practices, should these be of any

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value at all. Yet the connection with God they seek is

going to heaven or paradise, much like the Christians. It
is not the Nirvana or liberation from the cycle of birth
and death of yogic paths, which orthodox Muslims
would regard as a delusion.

Sufism, Orthodox Islam, and Yoga

As there has been a notable Sufi mystical tradition in

Islam, a number of people have used this to regard
Mohammed as an illumined sage. Sufis like Rumi
appear to have been great mystics, if not God-realized
sages on par with the great yogis, and some would
assume that Mohammed, whom most Sufis revere, must
have been of the same understanding. This view is
enhanced by the fact that today, particularly in the West
or in India, there are Sufis who proclaim the unity of all
religions, and some who believe in Karma and rebirth,
practice vegetarianism, and otherwise appear more as
part of the yogic tradition than what most people,
including Muslims, would consider to be representative
of Islam.
The view assumes two points that are questionable,
even by Muslims. The first is that a Sufi-type mysticism
was represented by Mohammed himself. The second is
that Sufi mysticism is of the same nature as yogic
traditions. Most Muslims do not accept that Mohammed,
or Islam based upon him, is in harmony with Sufism. In
fact, orthodox Islam generally opposes the Sufies. They

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accept the Mohammed had experience of God as His

Prophet, but consider that it is heresy and arrogance for
others to attempt to gain such experiences. They often
regard the Sufis not as true Muslims but as proponents
of pre-or non-Islamic, and therefore heretical traditions
like Vedanta.
Sufis have been frequently attacked or even
massacred under Islamic regimes from Morocco to
India, including in this century. Sufis are oppressed in
fundamentalist Islamic countries today and are in danger
of losing their lives should they openly proclaim what
they are doing. Sufism is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and if
there are any in Iran, they are in hiding. Even in India
the Sufis were sometimes killed by Islamic rulers.
Aurangzeb, the fundamentalist Islamic Mogul ruler of
the seventeenth century included among those he killed
his own brother Dara, who was a Sufi, and the Sufi
Sarmad, who sought peace with the Hindus and honored
yogic spirituality.
Moreover, there are two main groups of Sufis, who
are a highly complex phenomenon containing many
different points of view. We should note that the term
Sufi can stand for intellectuals, artists, occultists, and
mystics in Islamic society whether orthodox or
unorthodox and sometimes even is used as a family
name.
One group of Sufis, who could be called "liberal
Sufies," are rebels from orthodox Islam, and often look
for the origins of their teachings in earlier Christian and

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Persian mysticism or in Hinduism and Buddhism,

criticizing orthodox Islam. The other and more
numerous group of Sufis, who could be called "orthodox
Sufis," speaks highly of Mohammed and the secrets of
the Koran and appears as orthodox Muslims, accepting
the Sharia or traditional Islamic law. While liberal Sufis
share their spiritual teachings with members of other
religions and do not actively promote conversion,
orthodox Sufis require that people first become orthodox
Muslims before receiving Sufis teachings and work
strongly at converting people to Islam.
The liberal Sufis are more in harmony with the
yogic tradition and at times have had a common cause
with it against militant and anti-mystical Islam. The
yogic tradition has had much sympathy for these Sufis
and has always tried to help them. This group is more
common among Sufis in India and in the West (though it
appears to be in the minority everywhere), who are
generally not so grounded in orthodox Islam, and also
among the Shias who are the main Islamic sect in Persia
(which retained much of its pre-Islamic culture). Most
of the great mystical Sufis belong to this line. Such Sufis
are promoted as models of tolerance but it would be
wrong to attribute their tolerance to Islam, which is
rarely tolerant. Their tolerance derives more from pre-
Islamic traditions, and in the case of Indian Sufis derives
from their Hindu roots (particularly Indian Sufis who
follow Hindu musical and related mystical traditions).

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The orthodox Sufis seldom accept yogic teachings

and disciplines, though they may be mystics. They
generally support militant Islam and may be among its
leading proponents (even if this requires disguising the
fact that they are Sufis in order not to offend the
orthodox). This group is more common in traditional
Islamic regions like Africa and the Near East, though it
appears predominant everywhere, even in India, and has
often supplanted the more liberal Sufis. It relates
primarily to the Sunni branch of Islam, which is the
majority Islamic sect everywhere except Iran, including
India, Central Asia and Indonesia.
In the West these two lines of Sufis may criticize
each other. Liberal Sufis, who may use teachings from
all regions, regard the orthodox Sufis as narrow minded.
Orthodox Sufis may style themselves "Islamic Sufis" to
distinguish themselves from liberal Sufis, whom they
regard as unorthodox and impure for mixing other
religions with Islam in their Sufism. Such Islamic Sufis
see themselves as the spiritual power behind Islam and
are promoting the Islamization of the world. However it
is not always possible to distinguish between these two
groups of Sufis, who may be mixed together in various
ways.
Sometimes orthodox Sufis appear as liberal Sufis in
non-Islamic countries, promoting harmony and
communication between spiritual traditions, which
allows them to gain a foothold. Once established they
reveal their more orthodox nature by their support of the

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Sharia, burka (veiling of women), and their attempt to

convert people to Islam. Some Sufi groups coming into
the West today have employed this strategy.
The more orthodox Sufis participated in holy wars
and led military expeditions in India, Central Asia and
Europe. They were not universally mystics, nor was
their mysticism always of a non-violent variety. They
used force to promote Islam, which they perpetrated
against the yogis and monks of India. Many Sufis today
have the same opinions. As one Turkish Sufi who spoke
recently in America remarked, "Islam has no place for
pacifist vegetarians. Mohammed fought wars and ate
meat."
Even famous medieval Persian Sufi poets like Attar,
Omar Khayyam (for example, Rubaiyat 44) and Sanai,
in their poems praised the Afghan King Mahmud of
Ghazni as the ideal king and Islamic ruler for defeating
the dark infidels and smashing their idols. These dark
infidels were the Hindus and their great idol was the
magnificent Somnath Shiva temple in Gujarat, one of
their most scared sites, which Mahmud plundered as
part of his devastation of the country and massacre of
thousands of Hindus. Islamic writes saw Mahmud as a
second Mohammed for his victory over the infidels and
smashing their temples. To such Sufi poets, Mahmud
was only another example of a pious Muslim destroying
idolaters, such as the Koran approved. While perhaps
they didn't know the real barbarism of what Mahumd
did, they don't seem to have questioned such activity.

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Few Sufis appear to have made and real efforts to stop

the Islamic kings sometimes targeted them along with
the infields. Sufi poets usually glorified the Islamic
conquests of Hindu and Buddhist lands and did not see
much value in their pre-Islamic cultures.
Hence it is wrong to interpret all Sufi mysticism as
another version of the yogic model, though liberal Sufi
groups can appear in this light, and a few Sufis can be
placed on par with the great yogis. Most Sufis do not
accept Karma and rebirth as true. Most don't ascribe to
several of the ethical principles of yogic approaches
(particularly non-violence or monastic vows), though
they may perform meditation or devotional practices.
Sufis who recognize that one can find God through
yogic paths may regard such yogic disciplines as
complicated and indirect only necessary because one is
unwilling to take the direct route of Islam, the surrender
to Allah that Mohammed taught which they claim can
lead even ordinary people to spiritual realization without
the need of yogic methods of disciplines. This at least is
what one Western Sufi trained in Morocco told me.
Sufis who talk of the unity of all religions may consider
that this unity lies only in Islam, which in their view
synthesized all previous religions and went beyond
them, and they may still be promoting conversion to
Islam.
Most Sufi mysticism is not of the non-dualistic
variety like Vedanta or Buddhism, but emphasizes
nearness to God. This I gathered from an American who

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studied with some of the leading Sufis in North Africa

and Europe, particularly the followers of Sheikh Al-
Allawi. The highest stage of Sufism called fana, has
sometimes been equated with Nirvana of the Buddhists
or realization of Brahman of the Hindus because it
means annihilation. Yet to most Sufis it means
annihilation of any separate will apart from Allah. It
does not mean complete mergence into Allah or the
experience "I am Allah". It means becoming wholly
dependent upon Allah and recognizing oneself to be a
servant of God. Sufi attainment usually consists of going
to the higher regions of Heaven or Paradise and being
close to God. They seldom recognize the Self (Atman)
as the ultimate spiritual Reality and when they do it may
be owing to a Vedantic influence.
Some Sufis, particularly in India, have freely
mingled with yogis but they are exceptional. Most Sufis
themselves like to discriminate their approach from
yogic spirituality, which they see as too otherworldly.
Sufi spirituality is more practically oriented, more in the
world, and done by householders. It tries to use the
forces of the world for spiritual purposes rather than to
renounce them for the spiritual life. Islam was originally
a revolt against the rule of priests and monks, a sort of
religion of ordinary people, and Sufi mysticism follows
this trend. Sufis usually have families and work in the
world. Great Sufis have been perfumers, poets,
calligraphers, merchants, and even generals, but seldom
ascetics and not monks.

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One common Sufi quote is that Mohammed said that

there will be no mockery in Islam. While Islam and
Sufism have glorified the conquests of generals and
taken soldiers into their ranks, they have criticized the
practices of monks. Built into Islam and to Sufism based
upon it is a spiritual approach active in the world and
seeking to convert the world to its views. Hence Sufi
mysticism has often turned into militancy or missionary
activity. In this regard it may emphasize social activity
and group work over individual spiritual practice.
However, that Sufism is not usually another form of
yogic spirituality does not mean that it has no value. The
Sufis possess a great and beautiful literature and much
occult and spiritual knowledge, including much they
have retained from the pre-Islamic period. The liberal
Sufis have been perhaps the most important spiritual
tradition in the greater Western world. They have been
the main caretakers of the older mystical traditions of
the Western world and for the West to awaken
spiritually it must rediscover this tradition. Yet the
orientation, methodology and goal of the Sufis,
particularly orthodox Sufis, is different from yogic
approaches, and from the yogic perspective it would
appear that the ultimate goal of Selfrealization is not
understood by many Sufis.
While some Sufis appear to have tried to spiritualize
Islam, linking it up with other religions and older forms
of mysticism in order to move it away from its militant
and fundamentalist orthodoxy, it appears more often that

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orthodox Islam succeeded in either silencing the Sufis or

turning them into its own instruments of conversion.
Sometimes yogic like spiritual attainments were
attainments were attributed to Sufis as propaganda to
promote conversion to Islam. Sufis were portrayed as
yogis in India to make Islam appear attractive to Hindus,
not because the Sufis had achieved such inner
realization or were even seeking it. Often the grave of a
Sufi was placed on a Hindu temple and the power of the
place was attributed to the Sufi in order to convert
Hindus. Such manufactured saints were really militant
people, glorified afterwards in stories for propaganda
purposes.
We shouldn't be surprised by this either. Militant
Sufi orders were the equivalent of priests and Jesuits in
Christianity. They were very devoted to their religion
and went ahead to other lands, much like spies, to learn
the ways of their peoples in order to find out how better
to convert them. While liberal Sufi groups appear to
have opposed Islamic militancy, they do not seem to
have had much affect upon it. They may never have
been strong enough to really challenge it. They may
have had enough work merely to protect themselves and
their communities, much less to protect those of other
religious beliefs even if they sympathized with them.
However much those in the yogic tradition may wish
to sympathize with the Sufis and see a common
spirituality in their tradition, they should not ignore the
different orientation and foal of most of Sufism, or the

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fact that the more Sufism comes to resemble yogic

spirituality, the less it appears to be part of Islam. They
can take what is good in Sufism without having to
uncritically accept anything that calls itself Sufi. In fact
the truly mystical Sufis in India have generally been
more honored by Hindus than by orthodox Muslims.
Yet ever recognizing the differences that exist
between yogic and Sufi spirituality Hindus would be
much happier if Sufism, particularly of the liberal
variety, were more influential in Islam, as with the Sufis
there is ground for dialogue. They wish the Sufis well in
their struggles with the militant Muslims who oppose
them.

The Islamic and the Yogic Model

If we study the life of Mohammed and the teachings

of the Koran, it is clear that his religious approach is
different than the yogic model and should not be
reduced to it. While Mohammed and the Koran may not
fare entirely well if examined from the standpoint of
yogic spiritually, it could also be said that yogic
spirituality may not fare well if examined from the
standpoint of Islam and Mohammed, who would
probably consider it to be timid and overly introverted.
The Islamic model of spirituality through
Mohammed is not passive, nonviolent, pacifistic,
otherworldly, monistic, renunciate, monastic, and
inclusive like yogic traditions. It is assertive, militant,

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political, this worldly, monotheistic, non-monastic, and

generally exclusive, though it does have its devotional,
mystical and contemplative side. However we may want
to interpret these differences, we cannot ignore them or
reduce one to the other.
Mohammed remains one of the most important
figures not only in religion but in politics and world
history, but we must look at him as he presents himself,
and not put him in a mold that he does not reflect.
Though we can respect Mohammed as a great social
leader and religious reformer, even as a mystic, it is
inaccurate to interpret Mohammed as a yogi or sage in
the Hindu-Buddhist sense. Whether one believes that
Mohammed had a different or better way to
Godrealization than yogic traditions (which some Sufis
say), that he had a different goal altogether and God-
realization is a delusion (which most orthodox Muslims
believe), or that Mohammed failed to achieve the
highest realization as taught in the yogic tradition,
though he may have had various mystical experiences
(which appears to be the case if we apply yogic
principles to his life and experience as Vivekananda
did), depends upon one's point view.

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Section III

HISTORICAL ISSUES

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India And Hinduism In The Mahabharata

One not uncommonly comes across the opinion

today that India was never really a nation but that its
nationhood was only recently invented by the British
through their definition of the region as part of their
empire. Similarly we are told that Hinduism was up to
recently not a religion at all but merely various local
cults and that Hinduism as a single religion was an idea
developed along with the idea of India as a nation that as
a religion Hinduism is basically a creation of modern
political interests. These ideas are often used to discredit
India as a real country or Hinduism as a valid religion.
They are used by Marxist and leftist elements or by non-
Hindus to draw Hindus into their fold. However, such
ideas are clearly refuted by the most important work of
literature that we have from India, the Mahabharata.
The Mahabharata of 1000,000 verses dates from at
least two thousand years ago, though portions of it are
much older, and its story goes back perhaps more than
thirty-five hundred years. A version of it was noted in
the Tamil Nadu region of South India as early as the
first century BC. Mahabharata literally means "Great
India" as Bharata is the traditional name for India.
The Mahabharata presents peoples from the entire
subcontinent of India. The story centers on the conflict
between the Kauravas and Pandavas, who were
members of the same ruling family of the Kuru-
Panchala kingdom which extended through the Ganges-

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Yamuna region. The mother of the Kauravas was

Gandhari of Gandhara, which is now Pakistan and
northeast Afghanistan. The mother of the Pandavas was
Kunti of the Yadava line of what would now be Madhya
Pradesh. The Pandavas were allied with Krishna who
was originally a king of Mathura on the Yamuna south
of Delhi, but moved his capital to Dwaraka in the
southern part of his kingdom in Gujarat. Krishna's main
enemy Jarasandha, King of Magadha (Bihar). Kings of
all India participated in the Mahabharata war including
from Pragjyotish (Assam) and Sind. In their pilgrimages
(tirthayatras) And victory marches (digvijayas) the
Pandavas traveled all over India from Afghanistan in the
west, to Tibet in the north, Assam in the east, to Kanya
Kumari in the south. Sri Lanka is also mentioned.
Whether the Mahabharata is an historical account or
a mere story makes no difference in this issue. The
existence of such a story factually or on a literary level
proves the same thing-that the idea of the subcontinent
of India as a cultural unit clearly existed at a time
contemporaneous with the Roman empire-long before
any of the modern nation-states had come into being and
long before most of Europe was even populated. The
Mahabharata reflects that India as a cultural unit already
formed some two thousand years ago. In this regard no
nation, subcontinent or religion has an epic of such
proportion or which reflects the integration of such a
large region as India through the Mahabharata. There is
no such epic as Great Europe or Great China. There is

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no great epic of Christianity or Islam that encompasses

such a clearly defined cultural region which still exists
today. Based on the evidence of the Mahabharata it
could be argued that India is perhaps the oldest nation in
the world.
It is the same case with Hinduism as a religion.
Hinduism as we know it today is basically the same
religion taught in the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata
presents a synthesis of the worship of the great Hindu
Gods of Shiva, Vishnu and the Goddess (Devil), as well
as the lesser figures of Ganesh, Skanda, and Surya.
Their worship is integrated on an earlier Brahman cal
basis and a respect for the Vedas, the Vedic Rishis and
the Upanishads, which includes the great truths of
Vedanta. The Mahabharata makes Krishna into a great
teacher and avatars as well as recognizes Rama and the
other avatars of Vishnu. The Mahabharata presents a
synthesis of the teachings of Vedanta, Sankhya and
Yoga. It contains teaching on the duties of kings, classes
and stages of life, medicine and astrology. In fact it
compasses all the domains of knowledge and all the
issues of human life and culture. It is not just a religious
book but the document for an entire civilization.
Interestingly the Mahabharata does not present itself
as a new religion or cultural document but as a
development of the older Vedic tradition. Even in the
order Upanishads and the Brahmanas kings and sages
are mentioned from such diverse regions as Gandhara
(Afghanistan), Videha (eastern Bihar and Nepal) and

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Vidarbha (Maharashtra). This is a considerably larger

region than the Bible which reflects mainly the people
of the small country of Palestine or the Koran which
reflects and Arabs of Mecca and Medina. The Vedas
also present a much great diversity of personages, with
many great sages and yogis, rather than a few prophets
only.
We must note that when the Mahabharata was
televised in India a few years ago, the entire country was
mesmerized. Trains stopped. Government offices were
closed to allow people to watch the program. A
comparable phenomenon has never occurred in the West
when films of the Bible were shown on television, not
has any other national epic so gripped the attention of
any country. This shows that the Mahabharata still
unites the country and is indeed a national epic.
Those who would deny any real history to India as a
nation or Hinduism as a religion have only to look at the
Mahabharata to see the absurdity of their views. Even
the title of the book challenges their view.

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The Aryan Invasion Of India Questioned

In TheWestern Textbooks

According to the Aryan Invasion Theory -which is

the basis of interpreting the ancient history of India
found in most books today the Vedic people were
barbarian hordes who overran North India after 1500
BC. They destroyed the more advanced Dravidian
civilization of the subcontinent, which is evidenced by
the ruins of the Harappan or Indus civilization. This
theory is diametrically opposed to the traditional Hindu
view of Vedic culture which regards it as indigenous
from India, arising on the Sarasvati river west of Delhi,
and sees it as a culture of great spirituality ruled by seers
and yogis.
The invasion idea was invented by nineteenth
century European thinkers, and was mixed with colonial
and missionary policies. It was always questioned by
Hindus, including great thinkers like Sri Aurobindo,
Vivekananda. B.G.Tilak and Dayananda Sarasvati. It
had no basis in the extensive. Vedic and Puranic
literature which speaks of no outside origin for the
Vedic people. Yet owing to the European intellectual
domination of the world, which followed its political
domination, this idea became regarded as the truth. It
reduced the ancient history of India to a brutal invasion
and cover up, with the perpetrators given the mantle of
sages by the ignorance of later generations!

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Recently, however, this idea has been challenged

again by a number of scholars east and west. Its
opponents are becoming increasingly more numerous,
raising more and more objections, showing new
astronomical, archeological, skeletal and geological
evidence in favor of dismissing the theory. Meanwhile
there has been no substantial evidence to support the
theory apart from the uncertainty of linguistic
speculation. Everything that has been proposed to
support it has been found not to have really occurred or
to have other causes.
For example, the Harappan cities were found to have
been abandoned by climate and river changes, not
destroyed by outside invaders, and the horse, thought to
have been first brought by the invading Aryans has been
now been found to have existed already in many
Harappan sites. Contrary to the theory, the picture has
emerged of an indigenous and organic development of
civilization in ancient India going back to 6500 BC (the
Mehrgarh site in Pakistan) with no break in continuity
and no significant outside invasions or migrations.
Indeed it appears that in the coming years the Aryan
invasion theory will soon be discarded all over the
world.
Recently the monthly newspaper Hinduism Today
(Dec. 1994) has come out against the Aryan Invasion
Theory in its Time Line edition. Hinduism Today is
largest circulating Hindu monthly in the world

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Hinduism Today is published in the United States,

though distributed world wide, including in India.
In defense of the theory, however, people point to
the fact that it is still found in textbooks throughout the
world, including in India, so that such new data against
it does not appear to have been accepted. Opponents of
the theory have claimed that much of the data
disproving it is new and has not yet had time to reach
textbooks, which usually represent information some
decades old. Yet now the demise of the Aryan invasion
theory is entering into the textbooks.
It is strange to see, however, that the first major
university textbook to seriously question the theory has
not come from India but from the West. In his recent
edition of Survey of Hinduism (Sunny, State University
of New York Press 1994), Professor Klaus Klostermaier
has noted important objections to this theory. He
suggests that the weight of evidence is against it and that
it should no longer be regarded as the main model of
interpreting ancient India. Survey of Hinduism is
perhaps the main textbook used in North America for
university courses on the study of Hinduism.
Klostermaier is not a Hindu, in fact he is a Catholic
priest. He is not speaking relative to any Hindu agenda
but as a scholar and academician. Though as a teacher of
Hinduism he appears to have some sympathy with the
tradition, he cannot be regarded as promoting Hinduism.
He is critical of Hindu beliefs and practices in different

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parts of his book. But the Aryan Invasion Theory is

something he questions on the evidence.
He states (pg.34): "Both the spatial and the temporal
extent of the Indus civilization has expanded
dramatically on the basis of new excavations and the
dating of the Vedic age as well as the theory of an Aryan
invasion of India has been shaken. We are required to
completely reconsider not only certain aspects of Vedic
India, but the entire relationship between Indus
civilization and Vedic culture." Later he adds (pg.38):
"The certainty seems to be growing that the Indus
civilization was carried by the Vedic Indians, who were
not invaders from Southern Russia but indigenous for an
unknown period of time in the lower Central Himalayan
regions."
He questions the difference proposed between Vedic
and Indus culture and shows a continuity or possibility
of identity between the two. He mentions the data on the
Sarasvati river, which according to scientific studies
dried up around 1900 BC. As the Sarasvati is the main
river of the Vedas, he states (pg.36): "If, As Muller
suggested, the Aryan invasion took place around 1500
BC, it does not make much sense to locate villages
along the banks of the by then dried up Sarasvati."
He notes skeletal information that shows a
continuity of the same racial and ethnic groups in
ancient India as today, thus refuting the idea that India
was populated by an outside race in the ancient period.
He notes the discovery of the ancient city of Dwaraka in

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Gujarat, the reputed city of Krishna, and its date to 1500

BC. He notes astronomical evidence in Vedic texts that
suggest early calendars contemporaneous with the Indus
era.
He has been most influenced by the work of
Subhash Kak and quotes him in several places,
including Kak's decoding of what he calls "the
astronomical code of the Vedas." He also mentions from
my work on the subject, as presented in my book Gods,
Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization.
He quote one long passage of Kak (pg.38): by the
middle of the fourth millennium BCE the Indo-
European and the Dravidian words had already
interacted and met across Northwest India and the
plateau of Iran....The Indo-European world at this time
must already have stretched from Europe to North India
and just below it lay the Dravidian people. The
interaction for centuries between these two powerful
peoples gave rise to the Vedic language, which though
structurally Indo-European, was greatly influenced by
the Dravidian language. The Vedic civilization of these
two peoples as was the Harappan civilization.
These arguments represent the new data coming
from various archaeologists and Vedic scholars. They do
not come from Klostermaier, but clearly they are strong
enough to produce a case that ever Western
academicians now have to listen to. They have caused
Klostermaier to question the whole Western reading of
the Vedas, "We can be certain that these first efforts to

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get away from a historicist-humanistic Western reading

of the Vedas will be followed by more detailed analyses
and probably quite startling discovers about the
character and content of Vedic civilization. (pg. 38)"
The same arguments have been raised in India by
many writers, archaeologists, scientists and spiritual
leaders, but still have not yet entered into the textbooks.
Now the question arises, if textbooks in the West can be
changed in regard to the Aryan Invasion Theory, why
cannot textbooks in India be changed, particularly as the
theory has frequently been used to discredit the culture
of India and the Hindu religion? We would expect that
textbooks in India would be the first to change on this
matter and not have to follow those in the West. Surely
if new data arose in a Western country and literature, the
entire country would be quick to proclaim the new
information.
Unfortunately India does not appear to want to
acknowledge its past, particularly if it gives credence to
its spiritual tradition which a number of groups oppose.
They Aryan Invasion Theory has become a matter of
political importance in the country, and politics is
always willing to twist things for its electoral needs.
The British rulers of colonial India, Marxists
scholars and politicians, Dravidian nationalists, Caste
Reform advocates of various types, Christian
missionaries and Muslim groups have used the invasion
theory to discredit or divide Hindu culture, particularly
to attack its Brahmanical side. Even today one can see

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"Brahmins go home (to Central Asia)," painted on walls

as political propaganda in south India. Dravidians, the
lower castes, and Muslims have all at times identified
themselves with the pre-Aryan indigenous people of
India whom the invading Aryans were supposed to have
conquered and enslaved. Clearly several groups have
part of their identify invested in the invasion theory that
would be disconcerting to lose. On the other hand, many
of the founders of the Indian independence movement
like Tilak and Aurobindo wrote against the theory. It
appeared important to them in restoring Indian identity
to reestablish the credibility of ancient Indian
civilization and its continuity.
Yet whatever one's social views, history should not
be subject to them but should be examined according to
the facts. Now the facts severely question the Aryan
Invasion Theory, so that it should no longer be portrayed
as the truth. The events in a country today should not
be made hostage to its history of over four thousand
years ago, whatever it might have been. Only in India
does this occur. Yet India must now look at its ancient
history anew, in the light of the collapse of the invasion
theory. A greater continuity to Indian civilization is
revealed that hopefully can bring more wholeness to the
country.
If the Aryan Invasion Theory is not true it means
that India is the oldest most continuous civilization in
the world, with the oldest and most extensive literature
(the Vedas), and is therefore one of the great centers of

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world civilization rivalling those of Egypt and

Babylonia. It is a heritage to be proud of, however one
may wish to interpret it.

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The Aryan Dravidian Divide

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a

divide and conquer strategy. They promoted religious,
ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to
keep them under control. Unfortunately these policies
entered into the intellectual and religious realms. The
same simplistic ideas that were used for political
domination were applied for interpreting the culture and
history of India, as dividing a culture intellectually is the
key to controlling it in the political realm. Regrettably
many Hindus have come to believe these foreign ideas,
even though a deeper examination reveals they have no
real objective or scientific basis.
One of the most important of these European-
invented ideas is that India is a land of two races the
lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned
Dravidians and that the Dravidians were the original
inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans
conquered and dominated. From this came the idea that
what is called Hindu culture was originally Dravidian,
and only latter was borrowed by the Aryans who,
however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it.
This idea has been used to turn the people of South India
against the people of North India-as if the southerners
were a different and maligned race-and has been used to
create resentment between them.
Modern Dravidian politicians have unfortunately
taken up this European idea and used it for the purposes

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of Dravidian nationalism, placing the Dravidians against

the North Indians or Aryans, and trying to recreate the
purity of Dravidian culture by eliminating so-called
Aryan influences, like the Vedas, which are regarded as
foreign. In this process they don't realize that they are
only promoting a modern European idea of who they
are, not any original heritage. They are basing their
Dravidian nationalism not on their own culture or
history but on a recent invention of colonial thought.

The Aryan Dravidian Divide Racial Theories

The nineteenth century was the era of European

imperialism. Many Europeans believed that they
belonged to a superior race and that their religion.
Christianity, was a superior religion compared to which
all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion
like Hinduism which used many idols. The Europeans
felt that it was their duty to covert non-Christians,
sometimes even it required intimidation, force or bribery
(we might add that this mentality and its effects are still
in operation in a number of missionary efforts in India
today). They saw non-Christians like children who had
to be disciplined in order to become really civilized (that
is, to become like the Europeans).
European thinkers of the era were dominated by a
racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in
terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a
superior "white" or Caucasian race. They had enslaved

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the Negroid or "black" race. As Hindus were also dark

or "colored", they were similarly deemed inferior. The
British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of
India in a similar way as having been a land of a lighter-
skinned or Aryan race (the North Indians), ruling a dark
or Dravidian race (the South Indians).
About this time in history similarities between Indo-
European languages became evident. Sanskrit and the
languages of North India were found to be relatives of
the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages
of South India appeared to be of another language
family. By the racial theory, Europeans language must
have been "white", as they were not prepared to
recognize that their languages could have been derived
from darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark
compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the
original white Indo-European invaders of India must
have been assimilated by the dark indigenous
population, and they left their mark more on north India
where people have a lighter complexion.
The Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan
superior race to its extreme of brutality, but they did not
invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for
purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common
idea of nineteenth century European though. They
perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was
already the basis of much exploitation and
misunderstanding.

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The Racial Interpretation of the Vedas

European Vedic interpreters used the racial idea to

explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between
light and darkness, between the Sun God and his
manifestations and the demons of darkness. This was
turned into a war between light-skinned Aryans and
dark-skinned Dravidians. Such scholars did not bother to
examine the fact that most religions and mythologies
including those of the Ancient American Indians,
Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have such an idea of a
battle between the forces of light and darkness (which is
the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but
we do not interpret their statements racially. In short,
Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and
accused the Hindus of the very racism that they them-
selves were using to dominate the Hindus.
European scholars pointed out that caste in India
was originally defined by color, which is how they
translated the Sanskrit them varna, the basis of caste. In
vedic thought Brahmins are said to be white, Kshatriyas
(warriors) red, Vaishyas (merchants) yellow, the
Shudras (servants) black. Hence the Brahmins were
deemed to have been originally the white Aryans and
the Dravidians the dark Shudras, whom the Aryans
enslaved. However, the colors of the different classes
refers only to the gunas or qualities of each class, which
represent different energetic types of human being.
White is the color of purity (sattva guna), dark that of

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impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna),

and yellow the color of trade ( also rajoguna). To turn
this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the
red race and where is the red race and where is the
yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas
been a red race and the Vaishyas a yellow race?
The Racial Idea Reached Yet More Ridiculous
Proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies
(mainly demons) as without nose (anasa), were
interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed
Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low-
nosed people, and many Dravidians have as prominent
noses as anyone in the North of India. The same Vedic
demons are also described as footless (apada). Where is
such a footless and nose less race and what does it have
to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic Gods like
Agni (fire), who are called Aryans, are described as
footless and headless (apada, ashirsha). Where are such
headless and footless Aryans? Yet such"scholarship"
can be found in prominent Western books on the history
of India, some published in India, some published in
India and used in schools in India and used in schools in
India to the present day.
This idea was taken further and Hindu Gods like
Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is
portrayed as dark in complexion, were said to have
originally been Dravidian Gods taken over by the
invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that
Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have

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worshipped dark colored Gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva

are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue
race? Moreover the different Hindu Gods, like the
different classes, have different colors relative to their
qualities. The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous
proportions. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saraswati as
white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death,
as green. Where have such races been in India or
elsewhere?
In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that
Vedic Gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden
skin, showing blond and fair-skinned people living in
ancient India . However, Savitar is a Sun God and Sun
Gods are usually gold in color, as has been the case of
the ancient Egyptian, Mayan and Inca and other Sun
Gods. Who has a black or blue Sun God? This is from
the simple fact that the Sun has a golden color. What
does this have to do with race? And why should it be a
racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?

The Term Aryan

A number of European scholars of the nineteenth

century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not
a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so
used in the Vedas, but their views on this matter were
ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in
Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated
with a race or with a particular set of physical

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characteristics. The term Arya means "noble" a

"spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhist, Jains and
Zoroastrians as well as Hindus Religions that have
called themselves Aryan have had members of many
different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining
some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble
people.
Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit
word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with
the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of
men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages
and dominated the common people who were a different
race, because most of the people in power in the country
were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that has
been superimposed upon the history of India.

New Evidence on the Indus Culture

The Indus civilization-the ancient urban culture of

north India in the third millennium BC-has been
interpreted as a Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though
this has never been proved, it has been taken by many
people to be a fact. However, new archeological
evidence shows that the so called Indus culture was a
Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the
banks of the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame (the culture
should be renamed not the Indus but the "Sarasvati
culture"), and that its language was also related to
Sanskrit. The ancient Sarasvati dried up around 1900

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BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speak to eloquently of

this river must predate this period.
The racial types found in the Indus civilization are
now found to have been generally the same as those of
north India today, and that there is no evidence of any
significant intrusive populations into India in the Indus
or post-Indus era. This new information tends to either
dismiss the Aryan invasion theory or to place it back at
such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even
6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as
the culture of India.

Aryan and Dravidian Races

The idea of Aryan and Dravidians races is the

product of an unscientific culturally biased form of
thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are,
scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or
Dravidian races. The three primary races are the
Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid. Both the
Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the
Caucasian race, generally placed in the same
Mediterranean subbranch. The difference between the
so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the
south is a difference in skin color, but this is not a racial
division. Biologically both the North and South Indians
are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the
equator the skin becomes darker, and under the
influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to

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become a little smaller. While we can speak of some

ethnic differences between North and South Indian
peoples, they are only secondary.
For example, if we take a typical person from
Punjab, another from Maharashtra, and a third from
Tamil Nadu we will find that the Maharashtrians
generally fall in between the other two in terms of build
and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics
form north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan
and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north
and a south European race. Those who use such terms
are misusing language. We would just as well place the
blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the
darker haired and browner skinned person on southern
Italy.
Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race.
Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to
almost pure black, with every shade of brown in
between. The predominant Caucasian type found in the
world is the blond-blue-eyed northern European but the
black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean
type such as we find from southern Europe to north
India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many
Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called
Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the
most variable in its skin color. Yet many of the
identification forms that people fill out in the world
today still define race in term of color.

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North and South Indian Religions

Scholars dominated by the Aryan-Dravidian radical

idea have tried to make some Hindu Gods Dravidian
(Non-Aryan) and other Hindu Gods Aryan (Vedic), even
though there is no such division within Hinduism. This
is based upon a superficial identification of deities with
color, Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which
we have already shown the incorrectness of (to think
that sages or deities were named only after the color of
their racial stock). In the Mahabharata, Krishna traces
his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a
famous Aryan people of the south and west of India, and
there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers
whose name meant dark (like Krishna Angirasa or
Shyava Atreya).
Early investigators thought they saw a Shaivite
element in the so-called Dravidian Indus Valley
civilization, with the existence of Shiva linga like sacred
objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However further
examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like
fire-altars replete with all the traditional offers as found
in the Hindus literature known as the Brahmanas, again
refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the
Indus (Sarasvati) culture appears to include many Vedic
as well as Puranic elements (note also the article on the
Unity of the Vedic and Shaivite Religions).

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Aryan and Dravidian Languages

The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do

have important differences. Their ways of developing
words and grammar and different. However, it is a
misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan.
The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European
languages, which are materialistic in orientation,
because Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the
term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the
term is being used in a Western or European sense that
we should remember is quite apart from its traditional
Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the
Sanskrit term does not have.
We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian
languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan
and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion.
The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different
language group than the other Europeans, but we do not
speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being
non-Europeans, not do we consider that their religious
beliefs must therefore by unrelated to those of the rest of
Europe.
Even though Dravidian languages are based on a
different model than Sanskrit, there are thirty to seventy
percent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like
Telugu and Tamil, which is a much higher percentage
than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both
North and South Indian languages have a similar

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construction and phraseology which links them close

together, that European languages do not share. This has
caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a
Dravidian language. In short, the language
compartments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as
has been thought.
In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we
find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral
letters, for example), which are not present in other
Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there
already were Dravidians in the same region as the Vedic
people, and part of the same culture with them, or that
Dravidian languages could also have been early
offshoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the
modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional
inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have
been Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the
Rid Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text. The oldest forms of
Dravidian languages are written in Brahmi, the script for
Sanskrit, and contain much influence of Sanskrit as well.

The Dravidians in Vedic and Puranic Lore

Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana of

Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people
who have fallen from Vedic values and practices.
However, they do not look at them as indigenous or
different people but as descendants of Vedic kings,
notably Vishvamitra, who have taken upon unorthodox

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practices, these same texts look unfavorably upon

certain peoples of North India, like the Mahabharata
criticizing peoples of Sind and Sauvira or west India as
unaryan, as deviating from Vedic culture, even though
such people were obviously Indo-European in language.
Other texts like the Ramayana portray the
Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern
Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. Hence
there appears to have been periods in history when the
Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on
with favor by some followers of Vedic culture, but this
was only temporary. If we look through the history of
India, there has been a time when almost every part of
India has been dominated by unorthodox traditions like
the Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to
mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or
dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks,
Scythians (Shakas) or Huns. That Gujarat was a once
suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain
domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into
another race or religion. That something similar
happened to the Dravidians at a point in history does not
require making them permanently non-Aryan. In the
history of Europe, for example, that Austria once went
through a Protestant phase, does not cause modern
Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.
The kings of South India, like the Chola and Pandya
dynasties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The
Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of

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all the Aryas, originally a South Indian king, Satyavrata.

Therefore there are not only traditions that make the
Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but
those that make the Aryans of North India descendants
of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately
related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any
differences between them appear to be secondary, and
nothing exists like the great racial divide that the Aryan-
Dravidian idea has promoted.

The Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic culture

Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India,

South India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture,
and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The
best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are
preserved in South India. It is ironic therefore that the
best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been
branded as non-Aryan.
Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is
any more foreign to them than it is to the people of
North India. They need not feel that they are racially
different than the people of the north. They need not feel
that they are losing their original culture by using
Sanskrit. Nor need nor they feel that they have to assert
themselves against north India or Vedic culture to
protect their real heritage.
Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous
cultures or been opposed to cultural variations, as have

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the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and

Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the
development of local traditions. They established sacred
places in all the regions in which their culture spread.
They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy
place like Mecca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find
local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as
heathen or pagan. They respected the common human
aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and
encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to
it.
The people of North India also need not take this
north/south division as something fundamental. It is not
a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians
darker but merely the effect of climate. Any racial group
living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia
would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a
person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true
nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or
Atman in all.
Nor is it necessary to turn various Vedic Gods into
Dravidian Gods to give the Dravidians equality with the
so called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of
their Gods. This only gives credence to what is a
superficial distinction in the first place. What is
necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture
of India, North or South, which is high on spiritual
values in character and action. These occur not only in

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the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures of

the greater tradition.
The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the same
culture and we need not speak of them as separate.
Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other
serves the interests of neither but only damages their
common culture (which is what those who propound
these ideas are often seeking). It is time, therefore, to
look beyond the Aryan-Dravidian difference, which is
much smaller than believed, and look to the greater
commonality of Hindu culture.

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The Unity of The Vedic and

Shaivite Religion

There has been an effort to divide the Hindu religion

into two hostile camps by opposing Shaivism, the
worship of Lord Shiva, versus Brahmanism or the Vedic
tradition, as two separate and conflicting religions in
India. This has arisen as part of a general tendency to
interpret the diversity of Hinduism not as a universality
approach which is the Hindu view-but as a collection of
contrary cults artificially put together.
Shaivism has been regarded by many, particularly
Western scholars, as Dravidian; that is, as an ethnic
religion of South Indians, while the Vedic tradition has
been labeled as Aryan or the ethnic religion of North
Indians (meaning Aryan race, though Aryan is nowhere
a racial term in Sanskrit). According to the Aryan
invasion theory the North Indians were invaders and the
South Indians or Dravidians were the original people of
the subcontinent. Shaivism thereby has been regarded as
the indigenous religion, while Brahmanism has been
turned into a product of the invading Aryans. This
reduction of religions to ethnic cults is highly
questionable in itself and appears more as a political
manipulation than any spiritual inquiry. Such scholars,
moreover, have failed to really examine the Vedic and
Shaivite teachings. What they propose as major
differences between the two are only variations of name
and form.

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Dravidian Shaivism has been called the religion of

South India as opposed to the Vedic Aryan religion of
North India. While there are cultural variations between
North and South India, this division is simplistic and
misleading. The idea of "Dravidian Shaivism" implies
two points; first that Dravidians are primarily Shaivites,
and second that Shaivites are primarily Dravidians. The
truth is that neither position is valid. Shaivism is an
important tradition in South India, but to oppose it to
other traditions in India is totally unnecessary and very
misleading.
Dravidians have as commonly been Vaishnavas or
worshippers of Lord Vishnu, as they have been
Shaivites, or worshippers of Lord Shiva. There are long
lineages of Dravidian Vaishnava saints and kings going
back into ancient history. Other religious teachings from
India, both orthodox and non-orthodox, have also been
popular in South India through history. Both Buddhism
and Jainism, which also styled themselves Aryan
religions, had large followings in South India during the
historical period. Kanchipuram, the main sacred city of
South India, was divided into four quarters: a Vaishnava
quarter, a Shaiva quarter, a Buddhist quarter, and a Jain
quarter. In addition many Brahmanical traditions have
flourished in South India and South India remains today
the chief site of Brahmanical learning and Vedic
chanting. There is nothing to suggest that Dravidians
have been exclusively Shaivities or that Shaivism in
South India was opposed to other Hindu teachings, or is

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fundamentally different from them. On the contrary,

South Indian Shaivism appears as an integral part of the
greater Shaivite and Hindu traditions of all India and
beyond.
Relative to the second point, the worship of Shiva
has been popular throughout India and wherever Indian
culture and spiritual traditions have traveled, like
Indonesia and Indochina. In fact, the most famous sites
of Shiva worship are, as is commonly known, in North
India. These include Kashmir in the far north-west,
Kailas in what is now Tibet, Gangotri and Kedarnath in
the central Himalayan region, and Kashi or Varanasi
(Benares) on the Ganges. When have these ever been
known as primarily Dravidian holy sites? Shiva is
portrayed as a Himalayan Deity with the Ganges river
descending on his head. Therefore the idea that
Shaivism is uniquely Dravidian also has little
foundation.
Shaivism in South India may differ a little from that
of North India, but in all Hindu teachings there are
always many local variations as part of the richness of
the tradition. Vaishnavism is little different in Gujarat
than in Bengal. Shaivism in Kashmir is a little different
than Shaivism in Varanasi. Devi worship in South India
is a little different from that of Bengal or Kashmir. Must
these all be turned into different races or religions.
Archeological evidence over the last ten years has
disproved the idea of an invasion of Indo-European
peoples (Aryans) into India in ancient times. The

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civilization of ancient India, of the Indus Valley, has

now been proved to have been centered on the Sarasvati
river of Vedic fame, which went dry around 1900 BC.
Hence the Vedas must be earlier than the drying up of
this river and must be indigenous to India as the image
of the Sarasvati pervades all of the Vedas back to the
oldest parts of the Rig Veda. In addition, from the
Mehrgarh site of 6500 BC to the civilization of the
Ganges area after 900 BC can be traced a continuity of
people and customs, and no evidence of any major
intrusive new populations. Such finds confirm Vedic
astronomical symbolism that mentions equinoctial and
solstice positions going back to 2500 BC (the Krittika,
Pleiades or Taurus vernal equinox) and earlier. In light
of this new evidence we should examine the proposed
differences between the Vedic and Shaivite religions,
which have been based upon the invasion theory,
particularly the difference between Shiva and Indra, the
main Vedic God.
Those who divide Shaivism from the Vedas like to
compare the deity Shiva in the Puranas with the
diminished role of Indra, the greatest of the Vedic Gods,
in these texts. As Shiva is the great deity of Puranas and
Indra is no more than the Lord of Heaven, some scholars
have concluded that the Vedic religion was demoted and
reduced in favor of an indigenous Shaivite tradition.
This idea has been a source of much error. However if
we compare the role of Indra in the Vedas with that of
Shiva in the Puranas, a much different story emerges.

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While Shiva and Indra in the Puranas are very different,

we find a remarkable similarity between Vedic Indra
and Puranic Shiva. Vedic Indra and Puranic Shivas
share many of the same names and functions, so much
so that the two figures cannot be divided from one
another. Much of the following information comes from
Ganapati Muni, the chief disciple of the great South
Indian guru Ramana Maharshi, who wrote a small
treatise in Sanskrit on the identity of Indira and Shiva
(Indreshvarabheda Sutra).
Indra means the Lord or ruler, so does Ishvara, an
important name for Shiva. In many Vedic hymns the
term Indra is used as general zerm for Lord, just as
Ishvara is used in many Puranic hymns. Both Indra and
Shiva are lauded as the supreme deity and the ruler of all
the other Gods. Shiva is the great God, Mahadeva. Indra
is the king of the Gods, Devaraja.
Shiva is the destroyer among the trinity of Puranic
deities, which includes Brahma, the Creator, and
Vishnu, the Preserver. Indra in the Vedas is a destructive
God, a destroyer of obstructions (Vritra, the enemy of
Indra, literally means obstruction). Indra is the destroyer
of cities, Purandara: Shiva is the destroyer of the three
cities, Tripurahara. We should note that because of
Indra's role as destroyer of cities, there has been an
attempt to make him into a deity of invading nomadic
people, smashing the cities of the indigenous Dravidians
(current evidence, however, does not show the
destruction of any city in the Harappan civilization by

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outside invaders). In any case by the same logic Shiva

must also be a deity of invading nomadic people, not of
indigenous city dwellers. In fact in Puranic literature
Shiva destroys the cities for the benefit of Indra.
Indra and Shiva both have a consort named power
(Shakti in the case of Shiva, Shachi in the case of Indra),
who herself is a fierce Goddess. Indra's consort Indrani
is in fact the Goddess of the army in the Vedic tradition.
The martial role of Shiva's consort as Durga of Chandi,
the destroyer of all enemies and opposition, and the
leader of the Divine army is well known. Indra and
Shiva are both renowned as destroyers of demons and
have terrible or wrathful forms. Indra in the Vedas is
frequently called Ugra, Ghora, and Bhima which are
common names for Shiva in later times, which mean
fierce or terrible.
Shiva is said to be a non-Vedic God because he
fights with Vedic Gods like Bhaga and Pushan and
destroys the sacrifice of Daksha, who is the son of
Brahma or Prajapati, from which he is excluded. Yet
this Puranic myth is not entirely new. A similar story
occurs in the Brahmanas as Rudra slaying Prajapati or
Brahma with his arrow, which story is echoed in some
hymns of the Rig Veda as well.
Indra similarly kills the son of Tvasta, who
symbolizes the sacrifice. Tvasta is identified with
Prajapati of Brahma in Vedic and Puranic thought. After
slaying of the son Tvashtar, Tvashtar tries to exclude
Indra from the drinking of the Soma, much like Shiva's

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being excluded from getting any share of the sacrifice.

Indra elsewhere destroys his own father (who is
Tvashtar) and fights against the Gods. Ultimately all the
Gods abandon Indra and he has to slay the dragon
(Vritra) alone. By Brahmanical and Puranic accounts
Vritra is a Brahmin and Indra commits the great sin of
slaying a Brahmin by slaying Vritra, for which he must
seek atonement.
Indra like Shiva is a fierce God who transcends good
and evil, including all social customs, and does what is
forbidden. Indra does things like eating meat and
drinking Soma (in enormous quantities), and goes into
various states of intoxication and ecstasy. Indra is born
as an outcast and in some hymns in the Vedas grants
favour to outcasts. Shiva similarly is a deity of ecstasy
(Soma) and transcends all social customs, often going
against caste and custom.
Yet if we pursue the same logic with Indra as
Western scholars have with Shiva, as fighting with the
Gods, slaying Tvashtar (the deity of the sacrifice) or his
son, being excluded from drinking the Soma, slaying a
Brahmin, being an outcast and doing what is forbidden,
Indra must also be a non-Vedic or non-Aryan God.
While there has been a tendency to make Shiva into
non-Vedic for having such fierce, unusual traits and
unorthodox actions, Indra has the same traits. However
we cannot make Indra non-Vedic because he has the
largest number of hymns in the Vedas. Hence there is no
reason why Shiva should be non-Vedic for having such

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traits either. These bizarre metaphors merely express the

nature of the higher Self or Atman which transcends all
the dualities and limitations of the manifest world, even
that of good and evil.
Shiva has been criticized by some Hindus as
unaryan. Western scholars, caught in a superficial racial
view of the term Aryan, have taken this to mean that
Shiva is the deity of a different race or religion. If we
look to the original meaning of Aryan, which is pure or
noble, calling Shiva unaryan merely refers to his fierce
or terrible traits like his matted hair, his garland of
snakes, and his retinue of ghosts. Shiva is not the form
of God who represents ideal or noble traits, which is
usually the role of Vishnu, but the form of God who
represents transcendence of all dualities. Yet Indra is
also to be viewed in this same light.
Indra and Shiva share yet many other traits. Indra
and Shiva are both called the dancer and are associated
with music and song. The letter of the Sanskrit alphabet
come forth from Shiva's drum. Indra in the Vedas is
called the bull of the chants, and all songs go to him like
rivers to the sea. Shiva is identified in Tantric though
with the vowels of the alphabet. Indra in the Chandogya
Upanishad is identified with the vowels among the
letters of the alphabet. Shiva is identified with the
mantra OM. Indra in the Vedas and Upanishads is also
identified with the OM.
Shiva is a mountain God, so is Indra a God of the
mountains. Shiva allows the heavenly Ganges river to

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descend on his head. Indra's main action is destroying

the clouds (mountains, glaciers) to allow the rivers to
flow from the mountains into the sea. Both deities are
interwoven with the myth of the descent of the heavenly
waters. As Shiva is identified with the Ganges river,
Indra is also identified with rivers, particularly the
Sarasvati.
Shiva is worshipped by the linga or standing stone.
Indra and other Vedic Gods are worshipped by a pillar
(stambha). The pillar and linga are the same, symbols of
the cosmic masculine force. Both Shiva and Indra
represent the cosmic masculine force. Shiva's vehicle is
a bull. Indra in the Vedas is frequently called a bull
(vrisha, vrishabha). Shiva's bull is also identified with
the rain cloud. Indra as the bull is lauded in the Vedas as
the bringer of rain. The bull is also a symbol of the
cosmic masculine force. OM, which is identified with
both Indra and Shiva, is identified with a bull.
Shiva is identified with the Vedic deity Rudra, and
most of the sacred chants to Shiva, like the Rudram
from the Yajur Veda, are Vedic chants to Rudra. Vedic
Rudra is identified in the Vedas with Indra. Both Indra
and Rudra are deities of the middle region or the
atmosphere (Antariksha). Indra is the wielder of the
thunderbolt, so is Rudra. The Vedic sons of Rudra are
called the Maruts. The Marutsre the companions of
Indra, who is their leader. Shiva travels with his host of
Bhutas or ghosts. The Maruts are also spirits or Bhutas
and in the Vedas they travel with Indra. Indra is the

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main deity of the Vedic rishis. Shiva is the main deity of

the yogis. They yogis are usually rishis and vice versa.
In fact, the Maruts, the sons of Rudra and the
companions of Indra, are sometimes lauded as
Brahmins, rishis or yogis.
Rudra-Shiva is propitiated to overcome death:so is
Indra in the Vedas. There are Vedic prayers to protect us
not only from the wrath of Rudra but also from the
wrath of Indra. Both Rudra and Indra are propitiated to
grant us fearlessness (abhayam) and for defeat of our
enemies.
The early Upanishads identify Indra with
Paramatman, the Supreme Self, just as the later
Upanishads identify Shiva with Paramatman. Indra is
called Prana or the life-force in the Upanishads. Shiva is
also identified with Parana. The Maruts, the sons of
Rudra-Shiva and the companions of Indra, are identified
with the Paranas.
Shiva is a God of time, Kala. Indra is also a deity of
time and eternity and rules the year in Vedic thought.
Both Indra's and Shiva's role of destroying Prajapati or
his son relate to their role as eternity (absolute time)
destroying time or the year (relative time) represented
by Prajapati and the sacrifice.
Indra is the deity who both rules and transcends the
sacrifice, so is Shiva, like Indra, is worshipped through
the sacred fire. Shiva corresponds to the bhasma or the
ashes left over from the sacred fire. Shaivite ascetics
carefully attend their dhunis or sacred fires, which are

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built and tended to following Vedic practices. Hence

Shaivism continues many Vedic rituals.
While Indra is predominant in the Rig Veda, in the
Atharva and Yajur Vedas (which are also very old
texts), Rudra is more prominent. Much of the symbolism
of the Vedic sacrifice and the building of the fire altar
relates to Rudra as well as to Indra. In the Shatapatha
Brahmana for building up of the fire altar there are nine
forms of Agni. Eight are names of Shiva ad one is
Kumar, the son of Shiva. Rudra like Indra is commonly
identified with or associated with Agni, the deity of fire
and the fire sacrifice.
The members of Shiva's family also have Vedic
equivalents, which is a topic in itself, which will be
mentioned only briefly. Skanda the son of Shiva, is born
of Agni or fire and is clearly identified with Agni. Agni
in the Vedas is also called Kumara and Guha, which are
names of Skanda. Ganesh is commonly lauded by a
chant to Brihaspati from the Rig Veda (Gananam tva
ganapatim), which correlates these deities.

Puranic Shiva and Vedic Indra share many common

names and functions. A majority of the names and
functions of one figure can be found in the other. Indra
in the Vedas is called Shiva a number of times. Indra is
also one of the names for Shiva in the thousand names
of Shiva. The conclusion that we must draw from all this
is that Indra and Shiva are essentially the same deity,
according to a shift of language. The two deities are so

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close in function that they must have arisen from a

common source and are part of a common tradition.
This does not mean that Indra and Shiva are
identical. Vedic Indra and Puranic Shiva do not have the
same appearance or identical stories. However,
difference of forms do arise through time and do not
require inventing a different tradition. The language of
the Rudram, the most important chant to Shiva in the
Vedas, is rather different than that of Puranic chants to
Shiva, for example, but that does not mean that there are
two different traditions, a Rudra tradition as opposed to
a Shiva tradition.
The Hindu tradition has never been attached to mere
names. Both Indra and Shiva have many names, as do
other Vedic and Puranic deities. We moderns, however,
are attached to names. We think that two different
names must indicate two radically different thing. This
is only materialistic thinking and cannot comprehend the
spiritual vision of the Vedas and Puranas. This type of
name-oriented thinking is part of exclusivist religions
which insist that there is only one true name for God,
one true holy book and one true prophet or savior. Such
thinking is contrary to the universalist Hindu vision
which says that the Divine transcends all names and also
contains all names and can never be limited to a single
approach. Hence a name-oriented approach to Hindus
traditions like the Vedic and the Shaivite has failed to
understand the most basic principle of these teachings.

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Only one basic and universal teaching can be found

in India from early ancient times and characterized the
essence of the tradition. Vedic deities like Indra, Agni,
Soma and Rudra are as freely identified with each other
as are Puranic deities like Shiva, Vishnu and Devi (the
Goddess). It shows no real understanding or
appreciation of the tradition or of any of these deities to
make them opposed to one another or to try to make one
into the only true deity.
The Hindu approach has always allowed devotees to
regard their form of the Divine as the supreme-whether
Shiva, Vishnu, Devi or anything else. Yet at the same
time it insists that devotees of one form allow devotees
of another form to have the same freedom of view. The
idea that there is only one God and his true name is
Shiva, Vishnu, Allah, Christ or anything else, reflects
exclusivist patterns of though imported from non-Hindu
religious beliefs and should not be applied to the Hindu
tradition.
In truth there is no single deity called Indra or Shiva,
or anything else. There is only the One Divine with
innumerable names, forms and functions. The Indian
spiritual tradition has generally formulated the supreme
Divine as a deity of power, transcendence, independence
and transformation. That is the basis of both Indra and
Shiva.
Given the basic identity of Indra an Shiva there is no
reason to propose a preor non-Vedic Shaivite religion in
India. Shiva is present in Indra, as Indra takes another

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form through Shiva. There may have been other related

teachings in ancient India that vary in details from what
we know of in the few Vedic texts which have been
preserved, like a Dravidian tradition of Shiva, Rudra or
Indra worship. However, such teachings would be part
of a greater tradition and not contrary traditions.
If Shiva and Indra are not two significantly different
deities than all the ideas of a Vedic versus Shaivite, and
Dravidian versus Aryan religions and cultures in India
have no foundation to stand on, and much of modern
scholarship on the Vedas and Puranas has to be revised.
On the other hand, the basic identity of Indra and Shiva
eliminates many problems in interpreting the Indian
spiritual tradition. There is no need to invent other
traditions and outside influences, or mysterious and
forgotten cultures, to explain the developments within
Hinduism. All the main factors for such a development
are found within the Vedic tradition itself.
An important point that should be emphasized is that
Indra is the supreme deity of the Sarasvati culture as
revealed in the Vedas. Shiva is the supreme deity of the
Gangetic culture as revealed in the Puranas. Relative to
the remain of ancient civilization in India, the Sarasvati
sites (the Indus Valley sites) are definitely older. Hence
the idea that Vedic Indra developed into Puranic Shiva
appears to reflect the shift of culture in India when the
Sarasvati went dry and the center of civilization shifted
east to the Ganges.

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Such changes in name and form must occur during

the course of human history, particularly when there are
great social and geological changes. Such a shift of
culture in ancient India brought about the shift from
Indra to Shiva. It was an organic transformation of the
Vedic religion into the Puranic, not a radical break.
If we look deeply we see that the same basic spirit is
present in both Indra and Shiva. Hence good devotes of
Shiva should also be devotees of Indra and vice versa, or
they may not understand the inner truth of their deity.
Indra-Shiva is the basic deity of the Vedas and Puranas
and of the Hindu tradition as a whole, which is not to
exclude other important formulations of the Divine like
Vishnu and the Devi but to show the continuity,
creativity and universality of the tradition.
Hinduism and its branches like Shaivism are not
ethnic teachings, they are universal. Nor is Shaivism a
religion apart from Hinduism. Nor is Hinduism a
composite of different religions including Shaivism. The
Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva form an
integral teaching and none of these deities excludes or
denigrates the others. The Hindu tradition is a teaching
not given relative to Dravidians only but for all
humanity. The attempt to ethinicize Hinduism and
divide it up into opposing doctrines has been part of an
attempt of outside influences to dominate or convert the
Hindus.
Dravidians have long been important contributors
and supporters of all aspects of Hinduism or Sanatana

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Dharma. They have added many unique teachings of

their own. But to think that Hinduism must be divided
up into Dravidian and Aryan religions, which are
fundamentally different from each other ,in order to give
the Dravidians credit for their accomplishments is an
idea that only serves to divide up the tradition along
questionable ethnic lines which serves no real purpose
other than to destroy the universality of the teaching.

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The Ancestry Of Ravana

A close study of the Ramayana, particularly the last

book or Uttara Kanda, reveals that Ravana, the enemy of
Lord Rama, was not a Dravidian, as many people have
thought, but related to the Sri Lanka, who are considered
to be Aryans-that Ravana was a migrant to Sri Lanka
from the Vedic family of the Yadus, perhaps deriving
originally from the city of Mathura south of Delhi. The
first wave of migrants to Sri Lanka from the north was
from Gujarat and of the Yadu family, which dominated
the southwest of India and from the region of Gujarat
had access to the sea on which they travelled far in their
trading and colonizing ventures.
The Ramayana tells the Ravana, the king of Sri
Lanka, had close connections with region of the Yadus,
which included Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra and
Rajasthan up to Mathura south of Delhi. Ravan was
related to Lavana, also regarded as a Rakshasa, of
Madhupura (Mathura) in the region of the Surasenas,
who was conquered by Rama's brother Shatrughana.
After worshipping a Shiva Linga on the banks of the
Narmada, in the more central Yadu region, Ravana was
captured and held under the control of King Kartavirya
Arjuna, one of the greatest Yadu kings. Later Ravana
abducted Sita nearby on the banks of the Godavari, also
in the south-eastern region of the Yadus. It appears that
Ravana had territory in this Yadu region of India,
reflecting his ancestral connections. In this same region

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Rama encountered Ravana's sister, who perhaps lived in

this region, and that Ravana abducted Sita after Rama
and Sita wandered unknowingly into his territory.
Ravan was known to be a Brahmin, a descendant of
the Rishi Pulastya. Ravana was a great chanter of the
Sama Veda, and a great devotee of Lord Shiva who had
visited Mount Kailash, which he could have very well
done from northern Yadu regions like Mathura. Ravana
was well versed in Sanskrit and the composer of the
famous Shiva Tandava Stotra. While one may argue that
such a composition was of a later time than Ravana, it
still shows a tradition that connects him with Sanskrit.
His native tongue does not appear to have been
Dravidian. He is portrayed as a migrant to Sri Lanka
from Kubera.
The Rama-Ravana story has similarities to the Deva-
Asura conflict in ancient Hindu literature. In the original
story fond in the Puranas and Mahabharata there was a
conflict between these two groups. The Devas or Suras
had Brihaspati of the Angirasas as a guru, the Asuras,
Daituas or Rakshasas had Shukra of the Bhrigus as their
teacher. In other words both groups followed the Vedic
religion, as the Angirasas and Bhrigus are the two main
families of Vedic seers. The Devic culture, as described
in the Manu Samhita, was centered on the Sarasvati
region in north India. The Daitya (Asura) culture was
located nearby in the religion of the Bhrigus which was
the southwest of India by the Arabian sea, as evidenced
by the Bhrigu city Bhrigu-kaccha or Baruch, near

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modern Baroda. Varuna, the God of the sea, was the

father of the Bhrigus, as the original Bhrigu was called
Bhrigu Varuni. Gujarat was also the region of Sharyata
Manava, one of the early sons of Manu, who founded
the city of Kushasthali later (Dwarka), who was
similarly allied with the Bhrigus as his guru was
Chyavana Bhargava, but whose kingdom was destroyed
by the Asuras, who were perhaps these same Daityas.
After a period of conflict the Deva and Asura groups
forged an alliance. Yayati, the king in the line of Manu,
had two wives. The first was Devayani, daughter of
Shukra of the Bhrigus, the guru of the Daityas. The
second was Sharmishtha, daughter of Vrisha Pavan,
king of the Daityas. Thereby Yayati allied himself both
with the Daitya kings and their gurus, bringing the blood
lines of both Devas and Asuras and their gurus together.
Yayati's youngest son Puru, born of Sharmishtha of the
Asuras, inherited his central Sarasvati kingdom, which
became the basis for many of the dynasties of later India
including the Kurus, under whose patronage the Vedas
were compiled, who therefore had Asuric blood in their
veins. Yayati's oldest son Yadu, took over the region of
the Daityas. The Yadus then became a very powerful
military people, perhaps reflecting their Daitya
connections. The Dravidians were regarded as
descendants of Yayati's second son Turvasha, who was
also a son of Devayani and in the line of the Bhrigus.
In this regard Rama's defect of Ravana reflects other
battles to subdue the Yadus, which are the main

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conflicts mentioned in Vedic and Puranic literature.

These include Parashurama's defeat of the Yadus
(Kartavirya Arjuna), Sagara of Ayodhya's defeat of the
Yadus (the Haihayas), and Divodasa of Kahi's defeat of
the Yadus (Vitihavya). The Yadus had the greatest and
largest Kingdoms of the Vedic people, and required
keeping their prowess in check. Ravana was probably
another militant Yadu similar to Kansa, the Yadu king
of Mathura, who oppressed Krishna and family. Yet the
Yadus also produced many great sages, like Krishna and
Ravana's own brother Vibhishana, and the other Aryan
groups produced their share of evil men as well, like
Duryodhana, the enemy of Arjuna, who was of the
Kuru-Puru line.
The Dravidians, to the extent that we might be able
to see the portrayal of different countries in the
Ramayana, can be identified with Rama's companions
like Hanuman and the region of Kishkindha
(Karnataka), who at the time of Rama were under the
domination of Ravana, though his alliance with their
king Bali.
Previously scholars have not placed Aryan migrants
into Sri Lanka before 600 BC. However the most recent
scholarship reveals that Harappan and pre-Harappan
cultures going back to 6000 BC in India were Vedic
(note my book Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of
Ancient Civilization: Motilal Banarsidass 1993), as they
were based on the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame. Hence
the date of their arrival into Sri Lanka may be pushed

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back much further. Harappan port cities like Lothal or

Dholavira in Gujarat and Kutch have been found in the
regions of the Yadus going back to the third millennium
BC. These were probably the basis for the Yadu
migration to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka Buddhists, such as predominate in the
country today, traditionally held Ravana in respect,
perhaps knowing he was one of their own ancestors. The
famous Buddhist Sutra, the Lankavatara, looks to Sri
Lanka as a holy land and the Sutra is given in honor of
Ravana himself, who is styled as the king of the
Yakshas, much like Kubera in Hindu thought.
Hence the recent tendency of South Indian
politicians to look up to Ravana as a Dravidian hero may
be misplaced. Ravana more properly belongs to the
peoples of Sri Lanka, whose ancestry derives from the
north, as does his brother Vibhishana who was an ally of
Rama. Hanuman, who was Rama's best devotee, better
represents the ancient Dravidians (who incidentally were
also Aryans, in that they have always been portrayed in
Vedic and puranic literature as descendants of Vedic
people, including the seers Agastya and Vishvamitra,
and traditionally called themselves Aryans).
Unfortunately various groups have tried to use the
Ramayana for political gain without ever really
examining the details of the story! Rama was not the
first northerner to come to the south of India. The Yadus
and Daityas had long before migrated to Sri Lanka.
Rama came not as an intruder but as a liberator, freeing

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the south from the rule of Ravana and returning it to the

rule of its own native peoples. Rama did not impose the
rule of the north upon the south. For this reason he has
always been traditionally worshipped in the south as a
great hero. Such information requires a rewriting of
Indian history, which is necessary on a number of
accounts.

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Section IV

CULTURAL ISSUES

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East And West Where Is The Boundary?

The human mind has invented innumerable

divisions, some of which help explain things in the
world, others which create barriers that inhibit
understanding. One of the most common divisions in
culture is that of humanity into East and West. While
this can be a convenient way to designate different types
of cultures, particularly as the more materialistic or
outward oriented West relative to the more spiritual and
inward oriented East it is not a rigid barrier. Taking it as
a real boundary it can reinforce cultural prejudices and
emphasize what may be only a temporary or partial
distinction. We have often heard "East is east and West
is west and never the twain shall meet." What does this
division mean and how real is it?
We are all essentially human beings. Geographical,
religious, political, cultural, and intellectual distinctions
are secondary to the basic unity of human nature. We all
have the same basic desires and fears, seeking of
happiness, knowledge and security, and a mysterious
longing for immortality. There is no human being who
has ever lived who is not at the core, fundamentally akin
to us.
Today we are entering into a global age and the
barriers which have traditionally existed between people
are gradually coming down all over the world. This we
can observe as Western materialistic culture is moving
to the East, and while Eastern spiritual culture is

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moving, at least to some degree, to the West. Even on a

purely physical level we note that Asians are relocating
to the West and constitute how a significant minority in
Europe and America. Similarly a number of Europeans
live or travel in Asia, and this trend is likely to grow in
the future. The division of East and West to the extent
that it has been real, is disappearing and many
eventually become a thing of the past.
We can observe that all the things Westerners have
done, Easterners can do and, at least in individual cases,
have done. Similarly all that Easterners have done,
Westerners can do and, at least in individual cases, have
also done. Easterners can be great scientists or
technocrats. Indeed India is producing many of the best
doctors, engineers and computer experts in the world.
Westerner can take up the practice of Eastern yogic and
meditation disciplines. As time goes on with the world-
wide diffusion of ideas such phenomena will become
more common.
The East-West division as we know it today was
originally invented by so-called Westerners, the
Europeans, particularly Western Europeans, as an
expression of cultural superiority, particularly in the
realm of science and technology. Everything to the East
of them became the realm of the backward Easterners,
whether it was such diverse groups as the Arabs, Hindus
or Chinese. Eastern culture was defined in several ways.
Generally it was regarded as mystical, unscientific,
otherworldly, traditional, group oriented, and autocratic.

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This definition was relative to Western culture which

defined itself as practical, scientific, this worldly, non-
traditional, individual oriented, and democratic. Today
the division has often been simplified with the
materialistic West versus the spiritual East (though it
would be more appropriate to regard all of the cultures
of the world today as materialistic with the spiritual East
being more the East of the past than the present).
What is Western culture and what constitutes it?
Western or European culture has a base of Judeo-
Christian religious and Greco-Roman intellectual values,
on a diversity of predominately Indo-European
languages, peoples and their native beliefs. Out of this
arose European art and culture, and the developments of
modern science and technology. Western culture
therefore is a polyglot affair, put together from different
sources over time, and hardly a pure breed of any type.
The Western world looks back on two primary
cultural eras, ancient Greece and the Renaissance. Both
of these eras were creative because of an interchange of
ideas with many outside sources. Renaissance thinkers
studied Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern and sometimes
Indian sources. The ancient Greeks and Romans took
much from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and India.
These interchanges were not signs of the poverty of their
culture but its openness. Yet besides these two great
cultural eras the religious era of the early Christianity
overshadows them in the Western mind. The religious
movement of Christianity was exclusive, not synthetic,

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and covers over the otherwise more synthetic nature of

Western culture.
Western culture is generally defined in two ways,
which are usually combined, though they are
contradictory. First it is regarded as scientific and
rational, as opposed to oriental culture which is
unscientific and mystical. Second by its Christian
religion (with which Judaism and Islam may be
combined), it is regarded as humanitarian and
monotheistic, while Eastern religions are viewed as
otherworldly and polytheistic or monistic.
That the Christian religious tradition is not
necessarily scientific or rational is well known to
everyone. The ongoing battle between science and
religion, or church and state in the West, cannot be
missed by any thoughtful person. The rejection of the
authority of the Church was necessary for the
development of science in the first place. Many Western
religious groups today still promote a literal Biblical
idea of creation that the world is only six thousand year
old, which is a total denial of the evidence of science.
On the other hand, the Hindu and Buddhist account of
the origin of the universe, with multi-billion year cycles
of creation and destruction, is much more in harmony
with modern science, though these Eastern religions
were not originally looked to as anything rational by the
Western mind.
The Western scientific background moreover
originates from the pre-Christian Greeks. Yet in terms of

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religion the ancient Greeks-as all the pre-Christian

peoples of Europe-had a religion like the oriental or the
Hindu and were Pagans. They used images, practiced
temple worship, maintained a sacred fire and often had
Gods of the same name and function as the Hindu.
Similarly the accusations of polytheism and idolatry
made against oriental religions like Hinduism and
Buddhism, are the same as those made against the Pagan
Europeans from whom science and rationality first
arose. In time Christianity (and Islam as well) adapted
the Pagan philosophies of the Greeks (Plato and
Aristotle), along with Greek medicine, science and other
cultural factors, as it had no real philosophy or science,
no real intellectual culture of its own.
On the other hand, Oriental cultures, like India, have
had their own traditional of rational philosophy much
like the Greek, as we can see in the Upanishads,
Sankhya, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and the Buddhist schools,
which similarly emphasize reason and dialectic but
combined with ethical and meditation disciplines. In fact
Greek philosophy like Plato or Parmenides has many
affinities with the Hindu. Similarly Greek medicine and
astronomy has much in common with Ayurvedic
medicine and the astronomical systems of India.
The philosophical and religious background from
which science emerged via the Greeks therefore has
more in common with the original religions and with the
Hindu and the Buddhist that the Judeo-Christian
tradition. We can see this today wherein many scientists

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have found a common chord in different strands of

original mysticism. Therefore there is no reason to
associate Western science with predominant Western
religions. The basis for Western science lies in the free
inquiry of the Greeks, which was also represented by
their religion that has much depth yet to explored, as
Greek mythology so clearly indicates. The Hindus have
a similar mythic tradition that is yet more profound than
the Greek as it is more concerned with the yogic quest.
Moreover, oriental mysticism is not necessarily
unscientific or irrational. It is part of an entire science of
Yoga that is laid out as systematically as any modern
science. Hindu and Buddhist spiritual teachings are not
filled with dogma and superstition, but with various
methods of inquiry and experiments in consciousness.
This has attracted many Westerners to them, not in
denial of rationally, but often as an extension of it to a
spiritual level. Hence the Oriental and the Pagan is the
mother not only of mysticism but of science and
philosophy. What later Western religions brought was
mainly dogma and fundamentalisms, not any internal
science of mysticism or any external physical science.
Therefore to say that scientific Westerners should
not adapt Eastern spirituality does not make any sense.
The criticism of Eastern spirituality as being unsuitable
for Westerners are more appropriate for Christianity and
related religions, which tend to be anti-rational, than for
Hinduism and Buddhism, which are rational approaches
to the spiritual life. If we are mean that as rational

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people we need a rational system of spirituality, that

would align us with the so-called Eastern religions, as
well as the mysticism of the ancient Greeks and
Romans. If we are saying that as rational people all
religion should be rejected as irrational, we should
recognize that Eastern religions like Hinduism and
Buddhism are not irrational or emotional belief systems,
but ways of clearing the mind of preconception and
prejudice for the direct perception of Truth.
Other people say that since Western culture is
individualistic Westerners should not follow Eastern
culture because it is traditional and authoritarian and
denies the freedom that is the real spirit of Western
culture. However Hindu though is the most
individualistic in the world. It teaches that the
individual, that you yourself are God or the Divine
power behind the universe. It does not subordinate the
conscious individual to any authority or belief but
emphasizes that we must be true to our own deepest
nature, that the highest truth is to be who we really are
apart from all external conditioning influences. Freedom
or Moksha is the very goal of Hindu though, but this is
not freedom within the field of time (which being
limited is the realm of bondage) but freedom to
transcend time.
Western tends to mean modern, as Eastern tends to
mean ancient. However in a hundred years, India or
China could be at the forefront of technology or what we
now call Western civilization. In the thirteenth century

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the Chinese had gunpowder and the compass, the basis

of modern technology, and the Europeans were
technologically primitive. Such temporal distinctions are
seldom enduring.
Yet by Western culture today neither Western
religions nor Western intellectual culture is usually
meant. It is Western popular or commercial culture: rock
music, movies, television, fast food, and so on. Western
pop culture is more of an anti-culture than a true culture.
It not only destroys the culture of the countries it
invades, it has already undermined whatever culture of
the countries it invades, it has already undermined
whatever culture (that is, ethical or aesthetic refinement)
that was in Western culture to begin with. Most of so-
called Western art is a thing of the past, with little great
art added since the advent of modern mass technological
culture which occurred after the first World War.
Hence when Westerners insist upon maintaining the
purity of Western culture what do they mean? Do they
mean upholding Christianity? Do they mean upholding
Greco-Roman or European intellectual values? Do they
mean upholding modern Western pop culture or
Western business interests? Is there a cultural purity of
homogeneity in any of this? And what do so called
progressive Easterners mean when they speak of
bringing in the benefits of Western culture? Apart from
technological expertise, the West has very little culture
to offer.

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Most interestingly, we note that the division between

East and West is often made into a one way street. In
America we are told, particularly by our religious
leaders, that we should not adopt Eastern spiritual or
religious teachings because they are foreign and
"Eastern" and not appropriate for we "Westerners"' who
should follow a Western religion or spiritual path.
However Western religious groups don't hesitate to try
to convert the people of Asia, which has always been
one of their primary goals. Western missionaries don't
tell Easterners that their "Western" Christian religion is
not appropriate for the people of Asia who should
follow an "Eastern" religion more in harmony with their
culture background, like Hinduism or Buddhism.
Western religious leaders treat their Western religions as
of global relevance, but they do not like it if people of
Eastern religious background consider that their
religions also possess a global significance. This is an
obvious cultural prejudice. Is not religion meant to deal
with what is universal anyway?
If Western religious groups really believe in the
division of East and West, the first thing for them to do
would be to stop trying to convert the people of Asia.
What they believe in is not that there is a rigid division
between East and West, but that the East should be
Westernized. In fact Western religions in Asia are
usually not promoting the scientific, rational or
progressive side of Western culture, but imposing on the

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East the irrational, unscientific and unspiritual part of

Western religions that is being rejected in the Western
world, and which will only serve to keep the people of
Asia backward and bound by medieval superstitions.
Japan has become a modern Asian culture that can
compete with the West in terms of science and business
by adapting its own Buddhist and Shinto traditions to
the conditions of the modern world, not by becoming
Christian or Islamic. The Philippines, on the other hand,
perhaps the most staunch Christian nation of Asia,
remains among the most backward. Hence it is not
Western religion that is benefiting Asia, but the
confidence of the people of Asia in themselves and their
own traditions and their ability to adapt them to the
changed circumstances of the modern world.
While Western culture is exporting itself to Asia, the
division of East and West is used to prevent Eastern
culture from being imported in to the West. However,
if Western culture is going to be exported to Asia,
Eastern culture must come to the West. The trade of
ideas and culture can no more be a one way street than
the trade of merchandise. If the East can benefit from
Western culture, then certainly the division between
East and West is not real. Then the West can benefit
from Eastern culture without people losing their real
nature, which after all is a matter of the heart, not of
geographical divisions.
And we should ask, where is this mythical boundary
between East and West located? Is Eastern Europe of

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the East because it is "Eastern" or the West because it is

European? Is the so-called Near East part of the Eastern
culture or of the West because much of it is equivalent
in longitude with parts of Europe? What about Africa or
South America, which are on the same longitude with
Europe and North America, the bastions of the so-called
West? They have older cultures which resemble the
Eastern or Asiatic more so than the Western or
European. Are the American Indians Easterners or
Westerners? Thee culture and racial is more of the
Asiatic, yet they are the native people of a region
regarded as Western.
On what basic do we make the distinction of East
and West? If it is by race, we must remember that many
of the people of Asia-like those of India and the Middle
East-are of the same Caucasian race as the people of
Europe. If it is by color of skin we should note that the
northern Chinese have a white skin color like the
Europeans. If it is by language, we must note that most
of the languages of India and Iran are of the same Indo-
European family as those of Europe, whereas those of
Near East are of different families like the Semitic. By
the logic of language India would belong to the West
and Saudi Arabia to the East. If it is by religion, there
are a number of Christians and Muslims in Southeast
Asia. Are they Easterners or Westerners? Muslims share
the same general Biblical religious background as the
Christians. Are they therefore Westerners? Would we
therefore call Cairo in Egypt a Western city? And what

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of the many Americans and Europeans who are

embracing Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist practices? Are
they thereby ceasing to be Westerners?
If the division of East and West is by technological
advance, then Japan belongs to the West and as various
Asian countries develop economically then we would
have to say that they have joined the Western world,
even if they may have preserved their older Eastern
religious practices. Similarly Mexico and other Latin
American countries as well as Eastern Europe by their
poverty would have to be Eastern. If economic affluence
makes the division between East and West then in
medieval times when China and India were affluent and
Europe was poor, was Europe then of the East and Asia
of the West?
The Chinese were originally suspicious of Buddhism
because coming from India to the West, it was
considered to be a Western religion. In embracing
Buddhism did they become Westerners? The Romans
regarded Christianity as an Eastern religion and were
similarly suspicious of it. Did Christianity turn them into
Easterners? On the other hand, the pre-Christian Greek,
Roman and European religions had deities and practices
and a social culture very close to the ancient Hindu
Vedic, as is evident from abundant similarities of
language and customs. Would we say therefore that the
ancient Europeans were originally Easterners like the
Hindus but because Westerners through the adaptation
of Christianity, another Eastern religion?

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Westerners have designated the majority of the

world to be Eastern. It appears that whatever seems
different than the North American and Western
European can fall under the label Eastern. Yet such
cultures as India and China--which are lumped together
as Eastern--are as distinct from one another as each is
from the culture of Europe. All these so-called
Easterners are not alike. They are a far more
heterogeneous group than so-called Westerners. The
Muslims are said to be Easterners, yet they come from
the same religious background as Western culture and
their Koran is based upon the Bible. They also use
Greek philosophy and medicine as have the Christians.
We could argue from their cultural and religious forms
that the Muslims and Europeans are both Westerners.
Certainly the Hindus see their religions in the same
light. Westerners should stop lumping India, China and
the Middle East in this negative category of the East,
which is mainly a way of dismissing what happens in
these countries as irrelevant. Westerners must learn to
deal with each of these cultures as they are, which is
quite different, not just generically Eastern.
The division of East and West is generally a one-
sided affair, a barrier protecting Europe and North
American from outside influences, particularly those of
religion, while they spread their culture all over the
world. However, we don't reject a peach because its
original home in China makes it an Eastern fruit. So too,
knowledge and culture are things that are universal. And

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many aspects of our culture today have come from quite

diverse places throughout the world. Just as Europe and
America are having a strong cultural and religious effect
on Asia, so India, Japan, China and other Asiatic
countries are affecting Western cultural and religious
views in ways the West may not yet suspect. In fact the
essence of culture lies in broadening one's cultural base
to include as much of human culture as possible. This is
what is regarded as being cosmopolitan rather than
provincial.
Just as we all use different food items that have been
developed throughout different parts of the world, so
have different cultures and science developed in various
lands. We should use each of these for its objective
worth and not be disturbed by differences of names. Nor
will we find that only our culture is valuable. We will
discover something of value in each culture. We are all
human beings and all human culture belongs to each of
us. Whatever any human culture has produced is part of
our own humanity. The racial, linguistic, religious and
cultural divisions between people should not be taken
rigidly. They are the different facets of the same gem of
our common humanity. Like the different petals of a
flower each has its unique place and beauty but this need
not serve to make them hostile or alien to each other.
This does not mean that all cultures are simply the same
or equal, but that they are all part of a greater human
culture which we all must discover.

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What does the East have to offer the West? It is

obviously a much older, better developed, wiser and
more tolerant, as well as more scientific approach tot he
spiritual life. Similarly the West has to offer the East a
more scientific, and often more humane and practical
way to organize the outer life. Those of us who are
Westerners may have to humble ourselves a little to
recognize what the East has to offer, but we must face
the facts. If we really want to grow as a planet we must
take the best from all cultures. When Westerners refuse
to examine Eastern spiritual teachings because it may
cause them to lose their assumed Western identify, they
are only cutting off a part of their greater and deeper
humanity.
If Westerners really want to help the people of Asia
they should teach them practical and humanitarian ways
to organize their societies. When they try to convert
them to Western religions they are doing both them and
themselves a disservice because religion is what the East
already has, and what the West needs to seek from it.
Such Asian cultures as India and Tibet did develop a
greater knowledge of consciousness or the internal
world, just as Europe and America developed a greater
consciousness of the external world. Westerners need
not feel culturally denigrated by benefiting from the
wisdom of India any more than Hindus have to feel
debased by taking on the benefits of technology from
Europe and America. Just as the people of Asia must
adapt technology to their own environment, so must

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those in America must adapt this oriental science of

consciousness to their own lives. It is an issue of human
growth, not of the advancement of one geographical
region only.
Naturally it is hard to understand foreign cultures,
just as the sounds of a foreign language will not at first
make sense. It is easier to see the faults rather than the
merits in one's neighbors. If we look to the difference
we will find them but if we look to the unity that is also
there. It depends on where we place our attention and
what we value in life.
Our real goal as a species should be to create a
common spiritual and sacred culture which is beyond
mere geographical divisions, whatever they me be. "All
the world is one family," is a great statement from the
Vedic tradition, which tradition therefore belongs to all
of us. The challenge today is to create a global culture.
This is to recognize our common human heritage in all
culture and to anchor that culture to spiritual values, the
pursuit of Selfrealization as the real goal of humanity.

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The Value Of Hindu Culture For The World

To find truth, all the great sages have told us that

one must go beyond all outer divisions of race, creed,
caste, nationality or culture. Only those who can step
beyond the outer identities that divide human beings can
arrive at the one source of all things-- the true Self of all
beyond time, space and circumstance.
This, however, does not mean that culture has no
purpose or value in the spiritual life. Many of the same
sages were also great founders, upholders or reformers
of culture. Many left not only works on spiritual
knowledge but those on the arts and sciences, and social
and political issues. This in fact was the tradition of the
Vedic seers, who first established Hindu culture in
ancient times. They were said to be "bhutakrit," world-
makers or establishers of culture and custom.
If we look at humanity through history we can obs
Zerve that men and women of spiritual realization have
not come equally from all cultures, which would be the
case if culture were merely a neutral factor in the
spiritual life. Some cultures, particularly India, have
created an environment that has better allowed for great
spiritual personages to arise. There has been an ongoing
stream of great spiritual figures in India since the
ancient Vedic sages to modern times. Even the modern
teacher who has gone furthest to negate cultural and
religious identities as relevant to the spiritual life, J.

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Krishnamurti, not surprisingly came from the Brahmin

culture of India.
Other cultures, particularly those of the European
and the Islamic world, have rarely produced comparable
spiritual figures and have not given them much value,
when they have arisen within their ranks. They still
trumpet their one son of God or one prophet as if only
one great religious figure were possible, which becomes
the sad epitaph on the spirituality of their culture.
Emphasizing only one such figure prevents others from
developing or from being recognized should they arise.
The concept of a person of spiritual realization a human
being who has realized the Divine or Truth in his or her
own consciousness and has thereby transcended all time
and space is not formally recognized by their cultures at
all; in fact it is regarded as heresy or delusion.
The Indic traditions recognize that Truth can be
found through many different sages, and must ultimately
be realized by each individual in his or her own right,
while these exclusivist approaches recognize only one
great being who existed at one time, and require that all
other people look to that one person and his
authoritative revelation for establishing their relation-
ship with God. Such a negative attitude about the human
capacity for spiritual knowledge must have an effect in
stultifying the spiritual potential of the culture itself.
Even the Buddhist cultures of the East, though they
have the concept of an enlightened sage, have not
produced the great stream of sages that has come out of

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India, though they have produced a number of such

remarkable figures. This is perhaps because their
cultures as a whole are less spiritually oriented and more
practically minded than the Hindu. Therefore we must
conclude that culture can be important and that the
culture of India, even with its many inadequacies, has
given the world a better basis for the spiritual life than
those of other countries. While the deficiencies in Indian
culture today are more visible to the outward eye, like
the overpopulation or lack of sanitation, this should not
detract us from appreciating India's inner and
historically more enduring qualities. Nor should it
prevent us from extracting the higher values of India
culture from its lower forms and implementing them in
our own lives, using them to fill the growing spiritual
deficiencies in cultures throughout the world.
If we look at India over the last hundred years we
see a stream of great spiritual personages including
Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Rama Tirtha, Aurobindo,
Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, Shivananda, Neem
Karoli Baba, and Nityananda to mention a few and all
great individuals, not the products of any school or
organization, and not clones of one another. If we look
at the West or the Islamic world over the last thousand
years, it is difficult to find such a number of people of
spiritual realization. Without a cultural support such a
great assembly could not arise or would not be
appreciated. While these sages are the fruit, the culture

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is the field that nourishes the trees (teachings) on which

they grow.
However, Hindu teachers in the West have brought
with them very little of Hindu culture. They have not
wanted to impose their culture on Westerners, who
might not appreciate it. They have been under the
impression that some Hindu practices, like the worship
of images, would be looked at unfavorably by
Westerners with their aniconic religious backgrounds,
and therefore used as a pretext for rejecting the rest of
their teaching. Hence they have stressed yogic and
meditation practices and have even encouraged
Westerners to maintain their own cultural and religious
identities, though these might be opposed to the deeper
practices they are teaching.
The worship of the Gods and Goddesses, Hindu
devotional meditations, pujas and rituals are little known
or understood in the West. Many Western followers of
Hindu Yoga have never entered a Hindu temple or seen
a puja performed, except as a curiosity. Ayurveda, the
Vedic medical system, is only now getting some
recognition in the West. Vedic astrology is just
beginning to surface and looks like it also will become
quite popular, at least in astrological circles. Hindu
music has made a mark of its own. Sanskrit poetry,
drama and aesthetics, the most extensive, intricate,
profound and spiritual in the world, is little known or
appreciated. Even the poets of the Western world who
aim at a symbolic or mystical approach do not have an

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idea as to how extensively this realm has already been

explored in India with such figures as Kalidas. The
Vedas and Upanishads, the great source teaching behind
these numerous currents, are largely unknown, even by
name, by those who practice or teach Yoga!
Perhaps this hiding of Hindu cultural forms, which
occurred among the educated in India as well, was
necessary at the turn of the last century when the West
was still dominated by Christianity, but it is no longer
true and is becoming counter-productive as Westerners
are looking for new religious forms, for example, a
religion of the Divine Mother such as Hinduism has
much more clearly articulated than the predominant
Western religions. Other spiritual traditions have not
kept their cultures so much in the background in their
coming to the West. Chinese and far Eastern culture,
Chinese medicine, Chinese astrology (I Ching), martial
arts, Japanese poetry (haiku), and Chinese and Japanese
painting are as well known as the meditation tradition
(Chan or Zen). Much of the popularity of Tibetan
Buddhism has come from the pujas, visualizations and
devotional meditations they teach their followers, along
with Tibetan chants.
An American Yoga teacher and friend of mine, who
also studies Tibetan Buddhism, told me once that he was
given a great new secret and powerful meditation
teaching from a Lama, unlike anything he had gotten
from his Yoga teacher, who stressed Hatha Yoga,

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though he had lived and studied with him four years in

India. This practice was meditating on a Tibetan deity
and doing a puja to it. When I told him that such puja
and devotional meditation was the main practice of
Hinduism and was much more developed in the Hindu
tradition than the Buddhist. Which had largely adopted
it from the Hindu, he was shocked. Why had he not
heard of this from his own teacher? When he had asked
for religious instruction from his Hindu teacher, he was
told to stick to Christian approaches, which was
particularly disturbing to him as his own religious
background was Jewish!
The point of all this is that culture is not necessarily
a detriment to the spread of spiritual knowledge, any
more than it is a detriment to its arising. Nor is Indian
culture anything to hide or be ashamed of. It is not
something contrary to or apart from yogic spirituality
but the unfoldment of meditative values in the outer life.
It is not something inferior to Western culture that one
should be ashamed of, but a vastly superior system and a
potential means of uplifting Western culture. Though
perhaps technologically deficient compared to that of
the West, in the spiritual, philosophical and aesthetic
realms Hindu culture goes far beyond it.
Modern Hindus in India tend to be apologetic about
their culture, and its many temples, rituals, chants,
festivals, form and images. If they have a spiritual side
they are more ikely to connect with Vedantic ideas or
with modern teachers like Krishnamurti or Rajneesh,

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where there appears to be little concern or even a disdain

for this plethora of forms. They may prefer Western
intellectual culture, which appears more sophisticated.
They are also suffering from a misunderstanding of the
beauty and importance of their culture, though it must be
admitted that much of Hindu culture today is in decay.
This, however, should not be a pretext for abandoning it
in favor of a spiritually interior culture, but for reviving
it. Once we understand the importance of culture in the
spiritual life, we begin to appreciate what Hinduism has
been all about. The spiritual path is Rama but a spiritual
culture is Sita. Rama must win and save Sita or he
cannot fulfill his destiny.
Hindus need to awaken to the importance of their
spiritual tradition including not only is great formless
teaching like Vedanta, but its beauty of spiritual culture,
particularly its culture of devotion (bhakti), which is one
of the most sublime and exalted cultures the world has
ever produced. They need to recognize the importance
of their spiritual culture for all humanity, which is
spiritually starved and generally deprived of any deeper
cultural nourishment. Individuals in the West who have
true spiritual aspiration often fail to go far because there
is nothing in their culture that supports them. Most of
the rest of the world is confined in the sterility of a
materialistic and intellectual culture, or that of dogmatic
and exclusive religions, either of which is a desert for
the soul. Without the waters of a true spiritual culture
the soul of humanity is likely to remain barren.

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Hindus need to stop dividing their culture from its

higher spiritual traditions. There is no conflict between
Vedantic philosophy and Hindu ritualistic and
devotional forms. In fact it is the latter that have
provided the ground in which the former is able to grow.
Hindus should no longer deny the integrality of yogic
spirituality and Hindu culture, but rather show it as a
model for the integration of Yoga into other cultures.
This does not mean that Hindus should try to impose
their cultural forms on others, which is not their
tendency anyway, but they should share them and allow
others to use them. For this Hindus must uphold the
value of Hindu culture in their own lives and in India
itself. This is not to encourage a mere superficial Hindu
pride or Hindu cultural elitism. It is to stop the process
of devaluing this great culture, which alone of the
world's cultures appears to really support the complete
unfoldment of the spirit or inner Self.
While spiritually advanced individuals may have
little need for any culture or outward forms, the world as
a whole needs a broad creative and spiritual culture to
nourish the diversity of human temperaments. It is not
enough to teach people the value of meditation and
otherwise educate them along scientific, intellectual or
technological lines, or place them back in their own
religious and cultural backgrounds which are inimical to
the spiritual quest. This is not transcendence of culture.
It is an acquiescence to non-spiritual or materialistic

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cultural values which prevent the spiritual life from truly

flowering.
The majority of people find an easier access to the
spiritual life if they first are exposed to a spiritual
culture : for example, a spiritualized philosophy, poetry,
art, music, medicine or astrology. We need a broad field
(Prakriti) of cultural growth in order to allow the widest
and most diverse set of approaches to the spirit
(Purusha). Individuals are so different that the example
of any one teacher or spiritual path is not enough. Hence
the linking of the spiritual life to all aspects of life and
culture is essential. While a rare individual can go
directly to Truth (pure consciousness), cultures need to
explore the domains of the mind : art, philosophy,
medicine, and science. While the evolution of the
individual can follow a vertical ascent, culture moves
more slowly, expanding horizontally before being able
to rise to a new level vertically.
The forms of Hindu culture are among the most
spiritually oriented in the world. They can serve as a
basis for the forms of a new spiritual world culture.
Such domains of culture directed toward the spiritual
quest as poetry, philosophy and mythology have had
their greatest development in India. It is not just Yoga,
meditation and renunciation of the world that India has
to offer but the abundant forms of a spiritual culture.
Naturally these cultural forms will have to be modified,
adapted and purified to some degree relative to time and
place. There are aspects of them that have become rigid

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or corrupt. Most of the aspects of Hindu culture that are

objected to in the West, like the hereditary caste system,
are not in harmony with their original meaning anyway.
To defend Hindu culture is to return to its purer and
more spiritual form. It does not require hiding its present
inadequacies. All the world's cultures need such reform
and renovation. It is not denying one's culture to do this
but affirming its creative capacity.
Naturally those who have other cultural preferences
may object to any apparent glorification of Hindu
culture. They would prefer if Hindu culture would stay
hidden and lacking in confidence so that they can spread
their own cultural forms upon the world without
competition from India. Western culture, whether
atheist, Christian or Islamic, is still trying to impose its
cultural forms as superior in India itself. And Hindu
culture does not make an adequate effort to defend itself
from such assaults. The point is not to simply defend
India or Hindu culture but to uphold the higher spiritual
values which are more present within it than other
cultures, particularly that of the unspiritual West. It is
not a national or cultural but ultimately spiritual issue,
concerning not just India but all humanity.
There are those who do not like the term "Hindu
culture" and would prefer the more general term "Indian
culture". To them the term Hindu connotes a religious
limitation but Indian is more embracing of the diverse
culture of the subcontinent. However the culture of India

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is primarily Hindu and Sanskritic. Even the Buddhists,

Jains and Sikhs, and to some extent the Muslims and
Christians of India, have followed a Hindu or Sanskritic
type culture.
The music of India is Hindustani, based upon Hindu
and Sanskrit works going back to the Sama Veda. The
dance is based upon Hindu temple dance. The native
medicine, Ayurveda, is rooted in the Vedas themselves,
as is the astrology, Jyotish. The poetry and drama
traditions revolves around Hindu mythology. The
exercise tradition of Hatha Yoga is rooted in the
religious sadhana tradition. The literature and
philosophy all looks back to Sanskrit, which derives
from the Vedas. The spirit and forms of the religion
permeate all aspects of Indian culture, far more than
Christianity permeates the culture of Europe which
contains considerable pre-Christian Greco-Roman and
post-Christian Western intellectual influences.
Unfortunately many modern Hindus are rushing to
embrace a superficial Western culture, imitating its more
mundane forms of thought and expression. This may be
a great loss not only for India but for the whole world.
There are enough people in the world exploring mass
media culture, writing superficially about political
affairs or common human emotions. There are enough
students studying Western philosophy and art. How
many educated Hindus know Shakespeare and how
many know Kalidas and Bhartrihari, Indian poets and
men of spiritual realization whose knowledge of

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consciousness dwarfed not only that of Shakespeare but

that of Einstein ? Why aren't there Kalidas festivals in
India comparable to the Shakespeare festivals in
England and other English speaking countries ?
Why should the youth of India focus their studies on
Western thinkers while much greater figures in the
culture of India are ignored throughout the world ? Why
should they emulate such thinkers as Marx, Kant or
Freud, when they have those from Shankara to Sri
Aurobindo, who could contain the entire minds of all
these Western thinkers in one corner of their much
vaster awareness ? India's place is to pour forth the glory
of the spirit through every cultural form. It should not
merely conserve but also renew and expand its great
spiritual cultural heritage, and allow the rest of the world
to benefit from it. For this Hindus must show their
dedication to Hindu culture, not as a form of national
cultural but as a form of world culture. To do this they
must be willing to express their culture to the world, not
as cultural propaganda but as the gift of the heart. This
does not mean that Hindus should not use computers or
other technological advances but that they should use
them to develop their own spiritual culture, not to adapt
a less evolved Western civilization.
Today there is little real culture left in the world
any-where. Modern pop consumer culture is taking over
in every country, except where fundamentalist religion
holds on with its rigid and sterile forms. Western
intellectual and artistic culture has been in decline for

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several decades. Yet this cultural vacuum is a great

opportunity for a spiritual culture, such as that of India,
to move in. However for this to occur Hindus must
awaken to their mission and look at their heritage in its
universal relevance. This is one of the most important
endeavors of the coming century. Perhaps as Westerners
like myself come to appreciate Hindu culture, which is
like the grace of the Divine Mother, Hindus themselves
will begin to recognize their heritage and once more use
it in a creative and beneficial way for all.

An American Discovers The Vedas

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Why would an American dedicate himself to

studying the ancient Vedas of India ? And how could an
American, coming from a totally different cultural
background, find deep affinity with the Vedic teachings,
which most Hindus today themselves can't even relate to
? How did such a person get started in studying the
Vedas ? In the modern world everyone, including
Hindus, appears to be trying to adopt Western culture
with its scientific and technological advances and
economic affluence. Why would a person go in the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was
not a matter of academic study, nor did it promise any
material reward ?
As I have written many books and articles on the
Vedas and travelled through America and India over the
past few years promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often
asked such questions, particularly by Hindus in India
or Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own
tradition. Confronted with an American dedicated to the
Vedas, Hindus find me not only to be an anomaly but
also a question mark on what they themselves are doing.
Sometimes they find it an inspiration to re-examine their
own roots.
This is a difficult query for me to answer. I will
begin by relating something of my life. There is really
nothing in my family or educational background that
would explain my connection with the Vedas or even

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India. I was the second in a family of ten children, born

in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds,
my father of Irish ancestry and my mother German, and
both were raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles was a
priest and a missionary to South America (which
example my mother wanted me to follow). My parents
did not have any extensive education. My mother did
not even attend high school. My father served in the
army during World War II. Though both my parents
were open minded they never oriented me in the
direction of India or anything mystical. Yest my mother
in particular did encourage religious attitude in me
according to her Catholic background.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade
(age ten). We were taught to look on Protestants with
suspicion. Asia was like another world, a land of
backwad, primitive people needing conversion, and we
were taught that Asian religions like Hinduism and
Buddhism were pagan, if not demonic. After much
moving of our residence from city to city, and from state
to state, as my father was a realtor, we finally settled
down in Denver, Colorado in the Rocky Mountain
region. There, owing to the financial burden of so many
children, we switched to public school which brought us
out of the shell of Catholic beliefs, and first exposed me
seriously to the realm of science, which I found much
more appealing and expansive to my mind than the
church. Yet public schools had no real mention of India,

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except as a big country in Asia suffering from poverty,

overpopulation, and social backwardness.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began
developing my own studies outside of school. I had an
interest in Geography since seven or eight years of age
and became aware that there was much more to the
world than America. Foreign lands of all types
fascinated me, particularly Europe. I began reading
various books with science and history around the age of
eleven, which broadened my view of life and caused me
to question my Catholic upgringing. I found the ideas of
modern astronomy, like the vastness of the universe and
the relativity of time and space, to be much more
intriguing than Catholic views of creation that seemed
rather artificial and stultified.
I left the Catholic church of my own accord about
the age of fourteen. This came not only from the clash
between the church and science, but from having read
history and discovering that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything
truly holy. I studied the history of the popes and began
to see that religious institutions were more political
establishments than real spiritual centres. I felt that if
there was a God, it was an impersonal reality, not a
personal God with his own whims, judgements and
partialities, his chosen people and his special church
such as I was taught. Yet though I left the church, I still
felt that there was a spiritual reality in life, which I
found in nature, particularly in the high mountains

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which I loved. This spiritual reality I felt was an inner

experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of
more interest to me than the classes I was taking in
school. I had an intellectual awakening about the age of
sixteen which caused me to study European literature,
particularly symbolic poets, existential philosophers and
psychologists like Freud and Jung. I felt that American
culture was very superficial compared to the European.
Yet examining the mystical and poetic sides of the
European mind, I also eventually found them to be
lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest
human types, were still plagued with doubt, depression
and uncertainty, often took drugs, or even went insane,
or committed suicide. They obviously had not found any
lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time I began examining European
thought, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and
Taoism. Some of this came as part of the late sixties
counterculture movement, which included a fascination
with Eastern Gurus, but most of it was the product of my
own independent and more philosophical search.
Between these different Eastern teaching I found a
common truth–consciousness as the supreme reality and
meditation as the way to realize it. Yet it was among the
teachings of Yoga and Vedanta that I found the views
which most resonated with my being, particularly the

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sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure Existence

(Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I
remember walking home from high school one day and
looking up at the blue sky and realizing that it was the
presence of Krishna, who represented the cosmic power
of bliss. This experience occurred before I encountered
the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by
any evident outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly,
in which I found little to interest to me. I remember
taking a class on Cosmology and Metaphysics, which
was actually in the graduate studies department though I
was a freshman. I thought the class might have
something mystical in it. Instead I discovered that it was
mainly a science class, with a few cosmological
speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there
was any God or spiritual reality to the universe or not.
This caused me to feel that the academic world had no
capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence I
abandoned college after completing less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local
spiritual teachers and Yoga groups in Denver, through
which I learned of various gurus and practices, including
Yoga and meditation, which I began to do on a regular
basis. A couple of years later I travelled to California
and visited many spiritual groups there. However I
never really connected with the spiritual groups based in
America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings

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that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind

and did not feel satisfied with American groups which
were largely social movements or cults centred around
one person, in which one’s spiritual relationship with the
teacher generally outweighed any real interest in
spiritual studies, which often did not go very far. I have
always distrusted mass movements and fads of all types,
including the pop spirituality that has developed in the
West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modern
Hindu gurus of India most notably Ramakrishna,
Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and Sri Aurobindo.
In these teachers and their teachings I felt something
truly solid and real. As several of these figures had
passed away, I wrote to their centres in India and
developed contact with some of their living disciples.
Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more
so than any particular teacher the Vedantaic teaching
interested me, particularly the Upanishads, which
appeared as the ideal combination of spiritual
philosophy and mystical poetry. I felt in them the core
teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the
great commentator on the Upanishads according to the
system of Advaita Vedanta. The Advaitic view of the
pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of the world,
agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early

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seventies. Yet I was also drawn towards the earlier

Vedas and their mysterious mantras, with which most
Vedantic teachers have little concern. I had a sense of
things ancient and wanted to know the earliest teachings
of humanity. The idea of the ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of
a mystical and symbolic type sine the time I was sixteen.
I used images of the dawn and the night, fire, the wind,
and the sun, along with gods and goddesses, with the
forces of nature appearing as powers of both the human
and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas
themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the
greatest poet, and so naturally his work had an appeal to
me. Te beginning of the chapters in his book The Life
Divine contained various Vedic quotes, particularly
from the Rig Veda, which I found to be particularly
inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that he had
several books on the Vedas themselves. This aroused
my interest in the Vedas and I ordered these books and
studied them with great interest, meditating carefully
upon them, including Secret of the Vedas and the Mystic
Fire.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books
were not mere intellectual experiences. They
represented a contact with the Divine Word, Vak or the
Divine Speech, the Goddess Saraswati. I felt the

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presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of

humanity, the beginning of creation, and the building of
a new world for the Divine. This began my study of the
Vedas, which was rooted in poetry with a background of
Vedanta.
Yet I was not completely satisfied in simply
following Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation. I wanted to
know what the Vedic rishis themselves saw and felt. A
few years later when I was twenty-seven, having gone
through most of what was available in English on the
Vedas, I decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in
original Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to
me, as I was then living in a remote town in Northern
California, I started with the Sanskrit texts and a
Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to figure out
the language myself, starting with the Rig Veda itself. It
was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part
of the language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning
through a study of the images, sounds and roots upon
which teh language was based. I felt an inner affinity
with the teaching so that I did not find the texts to be
difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome. I
soon discovered that the interpretations generally
accepted for the older Vedas–not only those done by
modern Western scholars but the traditional school of
Sayana–as Aurobindo noted, were indeed limited if not
erroneous. The result of this research was that I

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produced a book on the Upanishads and the Vedas

called the Creative Vision of the Early Upanishads. It
traced back the Vedantic teaching of the universal Self
found in the Upanishads to an origin in an earlier and
more powerful Vedic vision. This was opposite the way
it is usually explained, which is to view the Upanishads
as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a
disciple of M. P. Pandit, a noted yogi, author and
secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended
that I visit Pandit during an upcoming trip of his to the
United States. I knew that if anyone would understand
what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar
idea. I explained my views to him the Vedas contained a
science of Self-realization hidden in their teaching, from
their very first mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was
happy to know of my work and told me that he would
help publish it in India. He encouraged me to follow out
my studies, which he explained was a kind of Divine
mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor
had I yet studied in India, and that my work was merely
personal and never intended for publication. I said that I
did not feel qualified to comment on the Vedas in a
public way. He replied that it was good that I wasn’t
academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely

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repeat the same errors as other scholars. He told me to

trust my vision. If I had such insights and had produced
such work it was for a greater purpose and should not be
limited to my own private study.
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work
with more effort and dedication. I worked on the Rig
Veda itself and in four months had produced a five
hundred page book serializing it in World Union and
later other publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in
1980.
I began sending articles out to other publications in
India as well, including the ashram publications of
Ramana Maharshi and Anandamayi Ma, as well as to
Motilal Banarsidass, the main publisher of indological
books. These articles were almost invariably published,
which additionally encouraged me to go further. Thus
my Vedic work began and developed spontaneously and
independently. I sort of naturally fell into it. I never had
a plan to do so. And in retrospect it would appear to be a
ludicrous thing to attempt, particularly by someone at
my age and background working largely on his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many
contacts and much support for my work throughout the
world, though it took over ten years to get it recognised
in a broader way. I have since taken many trips to India
and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require a number of separate
stories to relate. I have worked with Ayurveda and
Vedic astrology as well, expanding the range of my

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original Vedic research. Later I found many of the same

ideas and inspirations of my studies in the works of
Ganapati Muni, who was perhaps the chief disciple of
Ramana Maharshi. But the basic core of my Vedic
views has not changed. In India I experience the Vedic
vision not only in the people but in the temples and the
landscape of both the North and South of the country. I
also learned traditional Vedic chanting which opened up
another level of the teaching to me. I came into contact
with a number of great teachers both known and
unknown in the West.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What
made the Vedas more important to me than the other
spiritual or intellectual teachings? It was not just
philosophy or poetry alone, the Upanishds that drew my
interest but also the most ancient Rig Veda itself and its
wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for is the
doorway to the mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind
itself, the very heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a
universal mantirc knowledge that integrates all aspects
of human knowledge including yoga, philosophy,
poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The Vedas
are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort
of color and form, merging ultimately into a pure
lightning illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the
Vedic rishis are living teaches. There is no gap of time
or culture between those of us who live today and the
Vedas of many thousands of years past. The Vedas

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transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as merely Indian

or Hindu, they are heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we
must return. The Vedas are part of each one of us by the
very fact that we are human beings. The Vedas are part
of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of the Vedas.
They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence that
works inside us and in all the universe upholding the
great beauty and harmony of life.
The Vedas exist at the core of all real seeking to
connect with Truth through the great forces of nature
and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, ancient Greek, Egyptian, or even modern
scientific approaches. In that connecting to the universal
Being and its powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas
must eventually be found. Vedas are not merely
particular books–though the Vedic texts we do have are
authentic–but are the very vibrations of the Divine word,
the Primal Sound, the voice of original Reality.
I didn’t find that most of the Vedic mantras are hard
to understand, though some of them remain obscure to
me today. What could be more obvious than the dawn
and sun that rises every day? Yet the dawn and the sun
are not mere outer realities, they are outer symbols,
intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the
language of Nature not as outer phenomena but as a
poetry of the spirit, which is the real meaning and
beauty of creation. To me what is hard to understand is

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not the Vedas but the modern world with its technology
that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations that
keep us ever restless and disturbed, its artificial dogmas
and ideologies which cloud our perception and divide us
up into hostile camps, compared to which the Vedic
world is indeed paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the
Vedas perhaps goes back to the truth of karma and
rebirth. There is really no reason why a person of my
background would take to this Vedic work and be able
to get anywhere with it. The only answer is the
samskaras, the impressions from previous births. This
was a knowledge that came with me, that I was born
with, the result of previous life which I have since come
to remember in various aspects. For example, when I
received my first copies of the Vedas in Sanskrit it was
not something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old
friend and companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or
even personal perspective. To approach the Vedas I first
put my mind into a silent state and let the teaching
unfold itself without the interference of my own
thoughts. This is not done through mental effort, though
there is the effort of concentration. It is like opening an
irrigation channel to a great river and letting the water
come in. It occurs through turning the mind within.
The great beauty of the Hindu religion is that the
impressions it creates within us remain with us life after

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life. It is not a religion limited to one life only, and its

benefit carries through all of our lives to the final
liberation of the soul. In this regard the impressions of
the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don’t
think what I have experienced with the Vedas is unique.
I think that many more people, East and West, will come
to it in time. The Vedas are not only our most ancient
past but the key to our global future as well. We are
once more moving back towards the Vedic vision as our
culture moves once more in a global and cosmic
direction.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to
modern Hindu is this: Your spiritual tradition is perhaps
the greatest treasure of all humanity. Please cherish it,
practice it and share it with all. Whatever deficiencies
may be in India or Hindu culture economically or
politically, should not get a person to forget the power
of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through
which all problems, individual or collective, can be
solved. Let us not forget our Vedic heritage and those
who have access to Vedic knowledge, please study it
and strive to preserve it.

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