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  Various Hindu scriptures including the Bhagwad Geeta talk of caste being based on one’s profession, mental and intellectual inclinations (prakriti) and not based on birth. Scriptures also talk of possibility of vertical movement from one caste to another Sage Valmiki and Ved Vyasa were from so called ‘low castes’ but became highest ranking Rishis. Even the critics of Hinduism agree on it. It is unfortunate that this system got corrupted and ossified into a label by birth. It requires a much more patient approach driven by heart to overcome such divisions and not agitational and vote bank politics which exacerbate the differences and create fissures. The current politicians’ approach has done precisely that. Mandalisation is the most known example, but this game has been played subtly, and at times not so subtly for many years in India since independence by short sighted and cynical politicians. It is ironic that parties based on caste are labelled secular but parties talking for Hindus are communal. Muslim League of partition fame is secular, sharing governance with Congress but BJP is communal. The bitter truth is that any attempt at splintering Hindu society is considered ‘secular’.

  Dr Hedgewar and every chief of RSS have consistently criticised the caste system. There are sterling examples of total absence of caste system in RSS and its associate organisations bereft of big talk or egalitarianism. National leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Ambedkar wondered about this achievement when they visited RSS camps. Only thing is the RSS doesn’t make a song and dance about, reforms it, and carries on silently. Balasaheb Deoras, the then Chief of RSS had, decades back, declared, “If untouchability is not bad then nothing is bad in this world. Untouchability must go – lock, stock and barrel.”

  RSS has been working silently to remove inequalities in Hindu society and bring about a sense of brotherhood. We shall come to the work done by RSS in this aspect in subsequent chapters. The guiding principle of RSS is – concentrate on unifying factors, ignore differences. India and Hindus cannot be subject to constant hammering and sanctimonious lectures on these issues beaten to death by the so called liberals. It is the job of Hindus to solve these problems and also their privilege to celebrate Hindu contribution to civilisation.

  Dharampal on Pre-British India

  Before we proceed further, I would like to digress a little and bring on record certain facts about the all-round deterioration in social, economic and scientific field that Indians suffered with arrival of the British.

  Dharampal, a renowned Gandhian, has done remarkable research work in this field. His research is jaw dropping for the new generation which has been brought up on the staple discourse about India being held back by archaic, backward and caste ridden Hindus before British rescued this country from its downhill journey. His works suggest that the harshness of caste divisions and resulting social deterioration that crept into India were actually the gift of the British.

  S Gurumurthy in his tribute to late Dharampal notes, “Before the British rule in India, over two-thirds, yes two thirds, of the Indian kings belonged to what is today known as the Other Backward Castes (OBCs).” “It is the British,” he said, “who robbed the OBCs – the ruling class running all socio-economic institutions: of their power, wealth and status.” Thus, it was not the upper caste which usurped the OBCs of their due position in the society.

  By meticulous research of the British sources over decades, Dharampal demolished the myth that India was educationally or economically backward when the British entered India. Citing the Christian missionary William Adam’s report on indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar in 1835 and 1838, Dharampal established that at that time there were 100,000 schools in Bengal, one school for about 500 boys!

  Gurumurthy quoting from Dharampal’s works tells us that, during 1822-25 the share of the Brahmin students in the indigenous schools in Tamil-speaking areas accounted for 13 per cent in South Arcot, to some 23 per cent in Madras while the backward castes accounted for 70 per cent in Salem and Tirunelveli and 84 per cent in South Arcot. The situation was almost similar in Malayalam, Oriya and Kannada-speaking areas, with the backward castes dominating the schools in absolute numbers. Only in the Telugu-speaking areas the share of the Brahmins was higher and varied from 24-46 per cent. Dharampal’s work proved Mahatma Gandhi’s statement at Chatham House in London on 20 October 1931 that “India today is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago,” completely right.

  In his celebrated book, Indian Science & Technology in 18th Century, Dharampal notes, based on the documents of East India Company, that the British found the Indian education system of the time far superior to that of Britain.

  Dharampal’s major works were published in 1971. In fact, he started his research on the subject only in 1965-66. I cannot understand why discovery of these achievements and their acceptance took so many decades in independent India. Even now it is difficult to find his books in shops or in academia. It is a tribute to the control that secular-Marxist parivaar has over academics that these facts have been successfully hidden from Indians and have never got a respectable place in official publications or text books on humanities. This kind of information actually would give our youth a great sense of pride in our nationhood, a sense of patriotism based on solid knowledge.

  That India had a grand past; that Indian sages and teachers had done a wonderful job of research and discovery in various sciences and arts is a well established fact now. Many of us would have read that many of the scientific theories named after Western scientists were already known to Indian achaaryas (or teachers) and established by them much earlier. The theories in trigonometry, algebra, physics; highly accurate calculations in astronomy, achievements in chemistry, medical sciences are being brought out with painstaking re-discoveries and proofs from various old texts, and are accepted worldwide. We don’t have to go far back and can talk of scientists like J C Bose who were not given due credit till recently. If India were to raise claims against MNCs and research organisations for various IPRs that rightfully belong to her and damages for their violations, all of them would go bankrupt.

  Dharampal quotes Col Kyd, “It appears that Indian medical men (with whatever names they may be termed at the end of the eighteenth century) made considerable use of surgical techniques in different parts of India. In ‘Chirurgery (in which they are considered by us the least advanced) they often succeed, in removing ulcers and cutaneous irruptions of the worst kind, which have baffled the skill of our surgeons, by the process of inducing inflammation and by means directly opposite to ours, and which they have probably long been in possession of.”

  British spoke in awe of the indigenous medical system that included inoculation against small-pox. They refused to believe the advanced astronomy of the ‘brahmins of Varanasi’ or acknowledge that the algebraic and geometric theorems that they claimed to be their discovery may have found their way from India.

  Contrary to what we have been taught for years, Dharampal’s study indicated existence of a functioning society, extremely competent in the arts and sciences of its day. Indians’ interactive grasp over their immediate natural environment was undisputed and praiseworthy. This was reflected in both agricultural and industrial production. Until around year 1750, together with the Chinese, India was producing some 73 per cent of the total world industrial production, and even till 1830, what both these economies produced still amounted to 60 per cent of world industrial production. Even in a moderately fertile area like that of Chengalpattu (Tamilnadu), India’s paddy production in a substantial area of its lands in 1760-70 amounted to some five to six tonnes per hectare. This is nearly equal to the production of paddy per hectare in present day Japan, the current highly productive region in the world. The critical feature of the set-up was the elaborate fiscal arrangements made for its upkeep in perpetuity, if required. From the gross produce, amounts were allocated by tradition for the upkeep of the system, from the engineers who looked after the irrigation tanks and channels to the police and school teachers. In technology, we produced st
eel that was superior to Sheffield steel. We also produced dyes, ships and hundreds of other commodities.

  Says Dharampal, “By their methods of extortion and other similar means, the British were able to smash Indian rural life and society by about 1820-1830. Around the same period, the extensive Indian manufactures met a similar fate. Because of deliberate British policy, the famed Indian village communities so eloquently described by Thomas Metcalfe around 1830, and by Karl Marx in the 1850s, had mostly ceased to exist.”

  Voltaire considered India ‘famous for its laws and sciences’, and deplored the mounting European preoccupation (both individual and national) of those in India with the amassing of ‘immense fortunes’. This quest for riches intensified the struggles and plunder during his own time, and made him remark: “If the Indians had remained unknown to the Tartars and to us, they would have been the happiest people in the world.”

  Imagine our economists demeaning Indians by talking of ‘Hindu rate of growth’ for a country that suffered worst economic slowdown and exploitation after British overran India and later when our government chose half-baked Nehruvian Socialist policies. We have witnessed how the Indian economy has boomed once Hindu genius was unshackled. Thus, what was derided by economists as ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was actually ‘Nehruvian socialist rate of growth’ and what you see now is the real ‘Hindu rate of growth.’ Poverty in India is a legacy of the British rule and the earlier phase of tangled socialism grossly undermined, as also suppressed the innate genius of India.

  Even if we go by only the available data, about 2800 years back Indians had overcome the basic issues of hunger, day-to-day rules of social behaviour as articulated in the Ten Commandments; and, were discussing metaphysical issues like purpose of life. Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavir were amongst us to further refine thoughts on living and liberation from the cycle of life and death. At that moment in history Christianity and Islam were not yet born, and Western civilisation was comparatively primitive. It is awe-inspiring when one thinks of the antiquity and maturity of this civilisation. Osho reminds us that a society leans towards spirituality only when its basic economic and social requirements are met. Then, the members of that society ask, “What next?” We can see these words in practice in West which seeks its soul through spirituality.

  When I state this, I am not assessing either superiority or inferiority of either civilisations. I am preparing my quarry for an informed debate. Shri Dattopant Thengdi was one of the most respected ideologue of RSS and founder of many mass organizations like Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. He termed these historical cycles in different civilisations as ‘kaal chakra’ (wheel of time). We also need to acknowledge that due to various historical reasons, some of which arise out of the pacifism of Hindu culture, the same West took lead in the next cycle of economic progress and geographical dominance while India was left behind.

  To paraphrase Claude Alvares, “All histories are elaborate efforts at myth-making. Therefore, when we submit to histories about us written by others, we submit to their myths about us as well. Myth-making, like naming, is a token of having power. Submitting to others’ myths about us is a sign that we are without power. After the historical work of Dharampal, the scope for myth-making about the past of Indian society is now considerably reduced. If we must continue to live by myths, however, it is far better we choose to live by those of our own making rather than by those invented by others for their own purposes, whether English or Japanese. That much at least we owe ourselves as an independent society and nation.”

  RSS does not talk of going back in times, but wishes our society to move ahead with confidence. This society born of the knowledge that we belong to a civilisation and a country that should lead the world not in negative connotation of domination, but with positive power of knowledge and spirit of ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ (whole world is one family). It has been famously said that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

  “We have to discard the status quo mentality and usher in a new era. There is no need to cling to past institutions and traditions which have outlived their utility,” Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, the foremost ideologue of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, forerunner of Bharatiya Janata Party, wrote in his exposition of ‘Integral Humanism’.

  IV

  Need to Organise Hindus

  Critics of RSS and others in India who have developed a great sense of comfort with existing status quo, feel there is no reason to organise, unite or consolidate Hindu society. If this society has survived eons of material and spiritual plunder and still exists due to its innate strength, it will survive and thrive in future too. They claim that RSS is only creating fissures in society with its agenda.

  Hindu society has a fatal disease of collective amnesia, which has been aided and abetted by the secular-Marxist axis of historians and sociologists. There has been a systematic, sometimes, brazen attempt to castrate history to such an extent that facts become myths and new myths are created. In West Bengal, even the school history books have been sanitised to cover up history of pillaging of Hindu temples by earlier marauders and Mughals like Aurangzeb. To make history palatable, their textbooks project Jaichand, who allied with foreign invader Mohammed Ghori to defeat Prithviraj Chauhan, in a better light.

  What our present generation reads is a neutered, amoral if not immoral version of history. The effect of all the moral posturing of the dominant intellectual elite is that our people seem to treat the Partition as a bad dream of our own making. They fail to note that whenever Hindus become a minority in a territory, that territory cedes from India; and, thus we see an India which has shrunk considerably over centuries. I, for one, would not like to see Hindus and Hinduism reduced to museum pieces like aborigines of Australia, Red Indians of US or ancient pagan communities of Europe, Canada or Latin America – to be dusted and brought out on special occasions in all their fineries.

  We just have to look around us in very recent history how once avowedly secular countries Malaysia, Libya, Iran, Bangladesh and Sudan have become Islamic theocratic countries once Islamists have become a majority there or have come to control the ruling apparatus. How the liberal secular laws have been given a silent burial and Sharia resurrected that treats ‘non-believers’ as second class citizens with very limited rights. The disappearance of Hindus in large pockets in Bangladesh and Pakistan from 20-30 per cent to mere one to three per cent over the past fifty years is an indication that should not be viewed casually. Let’s not forget either, the pogrom against the Kashmiri Pandits and their cleansing from Kashmir valley.

  If we prize our heritage then we need to nurture and preserve it and see it flourish to offer the world a truly universal thought. This requires some organised efforts. Nurturing one’s heritage can, in no way, mean destroying somebody else’s. This thinking does not fit into the Hindu ethos, as we have noted.

  Uncomfortable Questions that Seek Answers

  Some uncomfortable questions always bother me, being a Hindu lectured about secularism and tolerance. Whenever I feel a little distant from jingoism of Bajrang Dal types, I am driven back to a firm reaffirmation of my Hindu faith by ruckus raised by secular fundamentalists over some supposedly communal issue and their barely camouflaged hatred for assertive Hinduism -A friend of mine in Chennai told me that he was grateful to ‘Communist card carrying’ N Ram of ‘The Hindu’ (what an irony of name calling!) for berating and condemning Hindus to such an extent that a typically carefree ‘secular’ Hindu has become a conscious and insecure Hindu!

  I raise just an illustrative list of questions below and I would like to remind readers that RSS was born only in 1925 and was strong only in select pockets of India even till 1947, while VHP was born in 1964.

  What factors led to India’s partition and who led this move? Should we subscribe to the new theory being subtly promoted through various fora of Marxist-Islamic historians that Congress was perceived to be a Hindu party and Muslims felt t
hat they will never get justice from it; so they chose partition of the motherland rather than live under Hindu hegemony of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel? It is well known that Communists gave strong theoretical and political support to Muslim League in its quest for an independent nation for Muslims. This separatist movement had started even before RSS was born. Clearly, RSS didn’t influence this politics.

  Gandhiji supported Khilaafat (1919-1924) movement in India to restore Caliphate in Turkey, presumably to promote Hindu Muslim unity. Hindus participated enthusiastically in this movement. But, when the movement fizzled out with some clever handling by British, why did Moplah Muslims turn against Hindus and perpetrate indescribable atrocities on their Hindu brethren including murder, rapes and forced conversions of nearly 200,00 Hindus? There was no RSS to foment this so called ‘revolt’. (Marxist-secularists don’t call it a communal pogrom).

  Direct Action of Muslim league to force the partition of India on 16 August 1946 that led to thousands of deaths in Bengal had no element of Hindu provocation. Why did it happen? Did Congress of that time force it upon the hapless Muslim League supporters?

  Kashmir was a virtual paradise for centuries and a centre for sages and saints, fountainhead of Hindu knowledge With aggression from Central Asia, it slowly converted to Islam. But, there is still enough history to connect it deeply to India and Hinduism. Revival of separatist forces with violent vengeance has led to Hindu and Sikh exodus from their own homeland. There was no provocation from them, they were a peaceful minority. The RSS had a weak presence in Kashmir when this tragedy overtook Hindus. Who provoked this exodus? It is alleged by separatists, ably supported by secularists, that the then governor of J&K, Jagmohan is the culprit. Did he send threatening messages over loudspeakers, through newspapers, posters and pamphlets to Hindus to vacate the homes of their forefathers? (One can read Jagmohan’s side of the story in his book ‘Kashmir: My Frozen Turbulence’ on the subject for better insight.)