During the Mahabharata war, according to the Bhagvat Gita, Lord Krishna revealed himself to Arjun and asked him to wage “dharma-yuddha”. Do we question the Lord for inciting Arjun into violence? Was Lord calling for revenge or was he merely advocating preservation of Dharma and the path of righteousness that befits Kshatriya Dharma? Arjun rightly feared the destruction but the Lord merely asked for right action guided by Dharma, not action tailored to outcomes of personal gain.

To make a nonviolent interpretation of the Gita, was what perhaps Mahatma Gandhi did, but that does not negate the need for necessary violence, without which we would not have any need for judiciary, police or armed forces. Protection of self is a necessity - all civil societies so agree. Nobody argues that nonviolence is a desirable quality….(but)…A malignant self-destructive nonviolence has been subtly allowed to sprout and mushroom in the collective psyche of the Hindus, and “inaction” has been deceptively euphemized as “tolerance” to destroy our righteous will. Our independence struggle has been almost totally credited to this Gandhian philosophy, which is a huge injustice to the large number of leaders and common people who have given up their lives for our freedom.

Have Hindus always been nonviolent? Don”t we believe that the “virtuous Devtas” always fought the “evil doing Asuras”? Wasn”t it a necessity for Lord Vishnu to incarnate repeatedly in the form of his various “avatars” to save the universe from evil forces? Wasn”t it required of Ram to kill Ravan for a just cause? Didn”t Krishna use his divine power right from childhood to slay the demons and “save the innocents” repeatedly?

It is devious to say that Sanatan Dharma preaches only “nonviolence”? It is equally wrong to claim that tolerance of atrocities and adharma is a virtue. On the contrary acceptance of “adharma” is not merely cowardice, it is also sinful. This is why Swami Vivekananda said, “if there is a sin, it is weakness”.

Does that make Hinduism the same as other religion in its approach to the concept of violence? The answer is no. Unlike the scriptural sanction of violence in propagation of some monotheistic faiths, Sanatan Dharma has no such parallel; it merely exhorts one to righteousness, which does not include propagation of one”s faith as the only true faith. This is a foundational difference which must never be lost sight of.

Hinduism does not promote violence when it is not necessary or against the innocent. Even in war we had our ethos and principles. Harold Wilson (1786-1860), a British Orientalist wrote “The Hindu laws of war are very chivalrous and humane, and prohibit the slaying of the unarmed, of women, of the old, and of the conquered. ”

Megasthenes observed “. among the Indians, . by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides, they never ravage an enemy”s land with fire, nor cut down its trees”

Can we say the same about the invaders of Bharatvarsha over the centuries? Even our whitewashed history, as we read today, will not support that. Whole scale massacres, rape and destruction in the name of religion and God were the rule rather than the exception. Dr.Younis Shaikh, Pakistani and author of “Islam and Women” writes “..eighty million were slaughtered and millions of women were raped…it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males. A large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders. ”

In the words of Alain Danielou (1907-1994), French philosopher and writer, “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of “a holy war” of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races..Mahmoud Ghazni.was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked..Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined. ”

The Western (read Christian) mission on India was no less barbarous. This was Max Mueller”s comment” “India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again. the ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be? ”

…The Goa Inquisition (1560-1812) in India, the idea of St. Francis Xavier (who is glorified by the unknowing Indians, in the form of all the educational institutions that bear his name, in almost every major cities in the country) was described thus by a Christian historian Dr. T. R. de Souza, “At least from 1540 onwards, and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to erect new Christian Churches and chapels. Various vice regal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in Churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion. ”

All in the name of the cross!

…Rizwan Salim, reviewer, New York Tribune, writes, “Given the reality that Hindustan is the longest surviving ancient civilization and Hindus have to their credit so many unaccountable and such astonishing achievements of architecture and painting, music and dance, poetry and drama, epics and narratives, intellectual systems and philosophical doctrines, healing systems and mind-body disciplines, Hindus of every caste and class today should have possessed a well-informed and well-developed, intense and, fully conscious cultural pride. But one of the principal tragedies of contemporary India is that the majority of even the educated and otherwise affluent Hindus does not possess a deep and extensive knowledge of their culture-and do not give evidence of an intensely felt cultural pride. Lacking profound cultural knowledge and intense cultural pride, India”s intellectuals regard the fashionable ideas and ideologies from Europe and America as unquestionably superior to Bharat”s thousands of years old Hindu culture and wisdom. “

We still remain under forces that do not allow us to live our life and practice our religion freely in our own country. Our subjugators prefer the tolerant, docile harmless Gandhian Hindu. We are made to believe that an assertive Hindu is not the “real Hindu”…(and) …It is unfashionable to claim oneself as a Hindu - doing so is equated to “being a fundamentalist”

…Every attempt is made to divide Hindu unity, to disrobe Hindu pride, to denigrate Hindu saints and deities. Our religion is portrayed as superstitious, our tradition as old fashioned, our beliefs as non-progressive. Our history is distorted and our achievements are belittled. Our historical exhibitions are forcefully shut down, our processions are diverted, our celebrations are rescheduled and our meetings are disallowed to avoid “minority displeasure” and to promote “peace and communal harmony”. Ram is abused as a drunkard and Krishna is vilified as a “characterless womanizer”, while an invited Pope openly aspires to change the religion of our land and a resident chief Imam continuously delivers anti-national speech and open threats to the integrity of the country.

…Hindus watch silently in the case of “Rama Sethu” and “Amaranth shrine” that their own leaders pamper all except the Hindus and crush the Hindu”s just rights with arrogant impunity. They see and realize that non-Hindu religions get their demands fulfilled and things done because they are much more organized, more forceful, more connected, more political, more aggressive and more threatening. On the other hand, there is a conscious effort of multiple forces to prevent Hindus from organizing.

Hindus have seen their land divided, their people uprooted before and they see again the shadow of infiltration by the same perpetrators, encroaching their country, with the support of their own leaders and government.

Hindu religious institutions are being governed by people, including non Hindus, contemptuous of their faith. The sacred donations they put at their deity”s feet are used, not for temple upkeep, but to fund mosques or for religious pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem.

…Hindus see that their government, lead by their Human Resource Minister, Arjun Singh, has no hesitation in allotting funds for development of Madrassas and Mosque but wants to throttle the Ekal Vidyalaya movement, the single teacher schools that are the only hope of remote, tribal area children, because they teach “the Indian way (A for Arjun rather than A for Apple)” and because they are “communal” since they are run by Hindu organizations…The is the same Arjun Singh who, without hesitation, approves the decision of Jamia Millia Islamia University to fund legal aid to two of its students accused in the Delhi serial blasts.

…Hindus worry when the Shahi Imam Bukhari of Jama Masjid aspires “We were rulers here for 800 years. Inshaallah, we shall return to power here once again”" and threatens “this country is in for another partition, so let us be prepared for nation wide riots and violence. ”

…Christianity has grown phenomenally in the Northeast India. According to 2001 Census the percentage of Christian population in Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland are 34, 70, 86 and 89 percent respectively. Practicing Hinduism is forbidden in some areas and several Hindu saints have been killed….Hindus have been turned into minority in the Northeast but, not surprisingly, without any “minority right”. Many of the North-East separatist organizations like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB),the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), are not only Christian dominated, but enjoy overt or covert backing of the missionaries. A BBC report in 2000 states that the NLFT was involved in forcing Tripura”s indigenous tribes to become Christians and give up Hindu forms of worship in areas under their control. The government of Tripura had proof that the state”s Baptist Church was involved in backing separatist rebels. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar was quoted to testify the arrest of Mr Nagmanlal Halam, secretary of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, with a large quantity of explosives.

…Despite all these, Hindus have been largely tolerant to Christian aggression. The growth of Christianity by itself is not so much the reason for Hindu resentment, but it is the methods employed, from simple allurement of the poor, to the lies and deception to mislead, the staging of miracle healings to persuade, the “trading of soul” in exchange of medical, vocational and educational help, the defamation of Hindu traditions and scriptures and above all the vilification of Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Deities that has been far below any level of decency and respect. In the current conflict of Mangalore, which had no prior history of clashes between Christians and Hindus, not only the local residents, but even the Mangalore Diocesan agreed that the violence had broken out against forcible conversions. (Mangalore residents blame forcible conversions for violence)

…Hindus have seen the Christian propaganda at full throttle in the Jabhua, Madhya Pradesh case, in Sept 1998, when a group of people raped 4 nuns and the obvious suspects were workers of Hindu organization. Hell was raised for days but when the criminals were arrested, it was found to be mostly Christians themselves, without any member of any Hindu organization being incriminated. Not a word of apology or a statement of correction was offered to the Hindu organizations.

The same was the case of the hugely publicized, death of the evangelist, missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Manoharpur, Orissa. The sympathy factor created by the unfortunate death of the two children made international news and Hindu groups were lambasted. Following investigations, it was found that no Hindu group was involved. The chief accused Dara Singh himself also denied any association with any Hindu group.

…The recent violence in Assam that killed at least 50 people and injured more than 100 is hardly getting any importance in the news media. It was initially reported as clashes between Bodos and illegal Bangladeshi migrants (Assam violence toll rises to 40) and is now suspected a systematic ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), a Christian affiliated rebel group, fighting for an independent tribal homeland. ( Assam violence was systematic ethnic cleansing, says minister) against a predominant Muslim crowd of Bangladeshi infiltrators. One does not hear any major uproar from secular political leaders or any stunting gimmicks from human right activists in this clash of the “peaceful religions”, since there is no “Hindu extremist, involved.

…When was the last time we saw an article praising the work of Ramakrishna Mission or Bharat Sevashram Sanga? Is it because they are Hindu, Indian organization, not as filthy rich as World vision International or Caritas India, Delhi, that their effort and spirit is not worth mentioning?

…But things have started to change. The silent, united resolve of the Jammu people should serve as a warning. The restlessness in Orissa and Karnataka are early signs. Hindus are rising! …Bharatvarsha and Hindus have been around since ancient time and have survived assaults after assaults. Yes, we are peace loving, tolerant and non-interfering. We had sheltered the Jews and the Parsees during their difficult times. We are broadminded enough to accept people of all religious faith including the Muslims and Christians. We consider the Indian Muslim and Christians as sons of the soil and admit their equal right and freedom. But Hindus want reciprocity. Hindus want coexistence with respect and honor. We want non Hindus to respect our temples and our deities if they desire that we will respect theirs.

…Koenraad Elst, in his book, “Negationism in India”, writes, “Consider the situation in Africa: in 1900, 50 % of all Africans practiced pagan religion; today Christian and Islamic missionaries have reduced this number to less than 10 %…..That is the kind of threat Hinduism is up against.”

…What is our role going to be? Look to the inner Krishna forever guiding us through the Gita at every battle where Dharma stares upon the face of Adharma. The battle is eternal as is the call for righteous action, irrespective of consequences…

http://satyameva-jayate.org/