Religion Archive

The greatness of Sanatan Dharma is found in the freedom granted to its adherents. It allows each follower to choose any path, worship method, or god. There are no compulsions to follow any routine, path, or practises that are generally required in other religions. Many Hindu religious leaders and organisations, however, take this freedom for granted.

Many in India have been trying to falsely portray the latest horrific attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh as “isolated incidents” that are aberrations and not reflective of the ‘secular and syncretic’ culture of Bangladesh.

In the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia's founding father and first president, Sukarno's daughter on Tuesday converted into Hinduism from Islam.

‘The basis of the obligation of jihad is the universality of the Muslim revelation. God’s words and God’s message is for all mankind; it is the duty of those who have accepted them to strive (jihada) unceasingly to convert or at least subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.’ [Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam]

The history of Chittor is one of the most stirring chapters in Indian history for it was there that the flower of Rajput chivalry sprang to life and the immense stretch of its sacred walls and ruined palaces relate the saga of innumerable sieges and heroism which has almost become a myth now.

Will talk here of the most revered and tolerant Sufi saints of medieval India. All indications suggest that, instead of taking on a missionary profession for propagating Islam through peaceful means, the Sufis were invariably the spiritual and moral supporter of bloody holy wars that were waged by Muslim rulers. They were even prominent participants in them. In Kashmir, it is the Sufis, who inspired bloody Jihad that involved whole-sale destruction of Hindu temples and idols, slaughter of Hindus and their forced conversion to Islam. The mentality, attitude and actions of these illustrious Sufis saints of medieval India—whether in Ajmer, Bengal, Bijapur, Delhi or Kashmir—differed very little. Hence, the role Sufis played in conversion all over India may not have been very different from the one, they played in Kashmir.

Several videos of pastors miraculously ‘healing’ so-called possessed people or people suffering from ailments have finally got the country to notice the conversion business operating in the name of ‘Yeshu’ (Jesus Christ). While these videos are mostly comical in nature because of the content, effects and background music; they highlight the underlying threat of conversions through deceit. 

One of the more enduring myths…actually a dense blanket of wool, which over the last century, has invaded the minds of and partially blinded the cultural and civilisational vision of Sanatanis is a hoax called sufism and variants thereof. It has been one of the more lasting successes of the Original Hoax: the Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb. As with such cases, it is the Hindus who have, and who continue to gorge on it like it’s some spiritual version of eating copious kilograms of Haleem.

The phenomenon termed ‘Church Planting’ – a concentrated exercise of Evangelical Missionaries from US and UK focusing on spreading the beliefs of the Christian faith in India. Most Christian missionary organisation from US and UK have put the map of India on their mission chart for spreading the Christian faith and bringing the Indian locals into accepting the teachings of the Evangelists.

The word, ‘Hindutva’ an abstract noun formed by appending the Sanskrit masculine ‘tva’ to ‘Hindu’, and loosely translated as ‘Hinduness’ is of relatively recent origin. Although it was popularized in Bengal towards the end of the nineteenth century, its current prevalence must be attributed to the work of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966). While the author of works such as Indian War of Independence 1857 (1908) and Hindu Pad-Padashahi (1925), there is no doubt that Savarkar’s most important and influential work is Hindutva ; Who is a Hindu? Written while Savarkar was jailed in the Andaman Islands and subsequently in Ratnagiri, and published in 1923, Hindutva became the source of the principles that shaped the ideology of Hindu Nationalism in the 1920’s and the term is widely employed today to describe various expressions of the Hindu nationalist movement. The popularization of the word ‘Hindutva’ and its extensive use in current discourse to describe a broad range of ideologies and organizations have resulted in imprecision and obscurity of meaning. It is also true that many of the contemporary movements espousing versions of the doctrine of Hindutva seek legitimacy by claiming continuity with the ideals and teachings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902). In view of the present significance, religious and political, of various versions of Hindutva and the connections made with the life and teachings of Swami Vivekenanda, it is important to clarify the original context and meaning of the term as used by V.D. Savarkar, assess the claims of continuity made with Swami Vivekananda and consider the implications of any differences in understanding. My paper is a preliminary effort to address these tasks.