Like moral policing, a defender of faith is not a new thing in the religious world. We read about the zealots among the Jews, and similar orthodox groups existed in every religious tradition under different names and forms. In their zeal to protect their own orthodoxy, their first enemies are not the opponents in other faiths but those in their own religion, whom they consider liberals and accuse of diluting their orthodoxy by various compromises. Naturally, they use all kinds of violence to silence them.
I find such kinds of Hindu fundamentalists among the diaspora Hindus. In their struggle to keep their Hindu identity by creating ‘Universal Normative’ Hinduism, they invented their ideology based on Hindu scriptures (which mostly receive lip service back in their home situation in India). Once they failed to implement that ideology among their own family and community in the diaspora, as they are more influenced by the culture of their newfound home, these diaspora Hindu fundamentalists try to ‘export’ their Universal Normative Hindu ideology back to their home.@ Here too, their main opponents re not the people of other faiths but again those Hindus who do not agree with or accept their kind of (fundamentalist) Hinduism.
This reminds me of a story that I read long ago in Tamil. I think it was by Rajam, and the title is *Amma Vandal*, but I am not sure about both the title and the author, though I still remember the story.
An orthodox Brahmin woman fell from her chastity because of lust, and she had a son. But regretting her sin, she tried to raise her son in a strict orthodox manner, following her own ideology. Similarly, these fundamentalist Hindus in the West (or any other part outside India) had to compromise in various ways with their faith and orthodoxy due to their lust for money, comforts, etc. They try to mentally bring up their own idealistic orthodox Hinduism back home, knowing very well that their ideology won’t be successful in their diasporic situation. And they find a threat to their ideology back home too, as present-day India, with its young generation exposed to various values, cultures, and views from around the world, thanks to social media, challenges their rigid views.
But as they cannot prevent these modern generations of young Hindus from falling into various temptations, they turn their attention to opposing their imagined enemies within Hinduism who are not ready to buy into their kind of (fundamentalist) Hinduism. For this, they have to build up several idealistic worldviews based on their own interpretation of Hindu scriptures and tradition. As most Hindus in India simply ignore them, they become more irritated. But no fundamentalist movement can survive without having an enemy to target by creating ‘the Other’. So now the Hindu fundamentalists began to attack the people of other faiths.
Here too, most people of other faiths ignore them, as they don’t have time for them. So they now try to target those groups and people in other faiths, particularly among Christians who attempt to trace their roots back to Indian civilization views and values in their own way. And now the diasporic Hindu invaders have found a new enemy to target. Of course, this attack is on some Christians who try to contextualize their faith/bhakti through a process of inculturation. But such attacks by Hindu fundamentalism are not new, as they began a few decades ago. For example, Sri Sitaram Goel in his book *Catholic Ashrams Adopting and Adapting Hindu Dharma* (with a preface by Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1988) says:
“The Indianisation of Christianity is a serious matter” [p.4], as the mission is “casting covetous glances before mounting a marauding expedition. What causes concern is the future of the Hindu culture once it falls into the hands of the church. The fate of Greek culture after it was taken over by the church is a grim reminder” [p. xv].
Though such attacks never influenced Christians of any group (orthodox and liberals), the rhetoric still continues by the followers of such fundamentalists. These self-appointed guardians of Hindu (or Indian) culture and tradition resemble those people in Tamil Nadu (particularly among the politicians) who launched campaigns from the early 1920s to protect and save Tamil as if Tamil language (or Tamil Thai [mother]) and culture faced a serious threat to its identity and tradition from Hindi and English hegemony. The fact is that Tamil has its own inherent strength and long tradition to face all kinds of onslaughts and manage to survive as a living language to this day. Similarly, Indian culture and tradition, unlike its counterparts like Greek and Roman, managed to survive because of its inherent strength and pluralistic tradition. (See more on this in my next article, *Assimilation, Conversion, Incarnation, Rejection*.) What all these self-appointed guardians/saviors attempt is to protect and promote their own self-interest by creating an imagined enemy to attack. If Indian civilization managed to survive various kinds of attacks in the past, it can continue to survive in the future too without the need for any savior to redeem it. Any civilization that does not have the inner strength to withstand any kind of attack or influence on its own cannot survive for long by receiving any kind of protection—that too from outside.
As I often say, our Indian civilization has its own capacity to survive by keeping its own uniqueness of ‘live and let live’. Of course, sometimes it succumbed to outside pressure for a while, but after paying the initial cost, it resurrected back to its glory with added new strength by assimilating or absorbing outside influences or attacks in its own way. Even in this process of assimilation, instead of ‘converting’ the new views and values to its form, it allowed every view to co-exist without compromising its core values while allowing every view to influence each other. The best example is the Sufi tradition and Hindustani music. Our civilization learned this art of assimilation by allowing various kinds of diffusion from outside its civilization, like Egypt, Assyria, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Thomas McEvilley’s book *The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies* (Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2002, First Indian Edition, 2008) highlights this very clearly.
So the self-appointed guardians of Hinduism or Indian civilization cannot protect our Indian civilization by creating an enemy to attack in order to promote their fundamental idealism. The fact is that Christian fundamentalists, on the other hand, also oppose any attempt by a few Christians to indigenize and contextualize their faith and bhakti based on Indian civilizational values. For them, such attempts by a few Christians are either liberal or compromise the uniqueness of Christianity. In fact, what these Christian fundamentalists try to protect is not Christianity as a religion or Muktivedic (biblical) views/values but Christendom.
The reason for Christian fundamentalists to oppose every attempt to contextualize is the fear of Indian civilization’s capacity to absorb every alien civilization’s values and views as a part of it. As their aim is to ‘convert’ Indian civilization into the image of their Christendom, in which they have miserably failed so far, they cannot see that our Indian civilization, by giving space for these alien values and views to have their own legitimate space without losing their uniqueness and also not allowing the destruction of other faiths and traditions.
Meanwhile, people like us, who follow the Bhakti tradition and have no time or interest in playing the politics of either the Hindu or Christian fundamentalists, are sandwiched between them. We remain neither here nor there. Both groups view us as enemies and threats, which cannot be avoided as long as we refuse to side with one group over the other.
Though I sympathize with the efforts of a few Christians to ‘contextualize’ their faith, I personally do not believe in this so-called ‘contextualization.’ As a Bhakta of the Lord, I find nothing in my Hindu tradition that needs to be contextualized or redeemed for my devotion. The real tragedy is that, for some, this ‘contextualization’ remains more of a mission agenda than a genuine attempt to reconnect with their Hindu roots. It becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Consequently, we Hindu bhaktas find ourselves cornered from every side, struggling to remain true to who we are.
Db. May 15, 2013
@“…Hindu groups, in places like North America, the UK, and Australia, have sought a more prominent voice in civic, political, academic, and cultural life, wishing to shape the perceptions of Hindus and Indians by both those within and outside of the community.” — Shana Sippy, ‘Will the Real Mango Please Stand Up? Reflections on Defending Dharma and Historicising Hinduism.’ In Public Hinduisms, edited by John Zavos, Pralay Kanungo, Deepa S. Reddy, Maya Warrier, and Raymond Brady Williams, New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2012P. 26.
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