A Diwali of Awakening!

 

A Diwali of Awakening!

This is the first Diwali that I am taking stock of Diwali as a Hindu/Sanatani festival and tying it to the state of well being of Hindu/Sanatani people (followers of Sanatan Dharma, a spiritual and philosophical construct that came to be known as Hinduism because it was practiced by people on the far side of river Sindhu). Sanatan means the ever moving wheel of time and Dharma is loosely translated to living dutifully, as a seeker, according to one’s grain)

It is with some chagrin that I have arrived at this state of tying Diwali to being a festival to celebrate the Hindu Identity. All my life it has been a Bhartiya festival, even one that belongs to entire humanity because indeed it does. A commemoration of victory of good over evil, what can be more universal than that. But good has been on it’s heels for far too long in many parts of the world. We need to have victories of good in the now also, to be able to celebrate those that happened in the past. Remember there is none or barely any Diwali in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afganistan any more. It is not allowed or severely restrained. Compare that to Eid in India, which is celebrated by more people than in all of Pakistan. 

So where do Hindu people of the world find themselves as of this moment. It’s a mix bag at best. Thankfully India has a strong leadership at the centre that can affect positive change for the populace not only economically, which they have, but also socially which they are continuing to do. In the region there is extreme persecution of various dimensions that is meted out to Bangladeshi and Pakistani Hindus in the form of rape, murder, usurpation of economic rights and opportunities and desecration of anything revered by by them including their temples. There is gross malfeasance by the “minority” majority in India which I will highlight with specific examples, in the face of which Hindus seem to be waking up from their centuries old “Kumbhkaran Nidra”. So in that there are small signs of hope. There are green shoots of a renaissance of the Hindu Mind, something that I have not seen in my adult life. A dawning of a realization that unless the “body” of Hindu Identity is protected socially and politically, it’s spiritual body will perish like it has in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Afganistan. I can almost hear the labored breathing of an oppressed being who has the knee being pushed away from it’s neck, finally. And with each breath, the being, Hindu Identity, is becoming stronger and more powerful, enough to perhaps remove the knee from it’s neck entirely one day.

I grew up in a Hindu family, was not particularly religious, but perhaps somewhat spiritual. Having gone to a school run by missionaries, with a mission, the pride and joy of being Hindu was slowly and methodically scraped away, although covertly and not overtly. We were paraded through the Chapel when in preschool every morning and Lord’s prayer was recited. It all seemed benign. The curriculum carried repeated mentions of all the Superstitions that Hindus indulged in, how Brahmins had eroded the fabric of the society by their cunning and nefarious means and Bharat that is India was merely a haphazard clubbing of different tribes which got a national identity even, thanks to British, without whom India would still be a mess of fighting princely states. Mughals were heroic and Mohammad Ghazni was persistent in attacking the 18th time and finally winning and oh what heroism. 

I mention the prior paragraph because it relates to why we Hindus are on our heels even now after 75 years of independence and also after India got partitioned due to Islamist’s religious intolerance, which has been sheathed behind many false narratives.

Why is there a Muslim personal law board in India, so only Muslims can have multiple wives, dozens of children and progressively change the demographics. Why are there entities such as WAKF board which have been occupying government and adivasi land in collusion with corrupt politicians, to a point that it now lays claim to 9,00,000 acres of land which they call “Muslim” land, which cumulatively is bigger than many states in India. Why do muslim people in India vote en-bloc only for Muslim causes and not for any progress, education or healthcare. Why is there Illegal immigration from Bangladesh to the extent of hundreds of millions only from one select religious group, for the express purpose of changing religious demographics. All these including my “schooling” has and is being done to progressively choke out the Hindu Identity since certain religious doctrines only have room for one, their own kind.

Even in face of this persistent challenge, Hindu Identity has not only survived, it has managed to prosper and now it is organizing itself and fighting back. 

Globally, the Indian diaspora has established it’s mettle. It has earned premium spots in business primarily and is now making in-roads into politics. It is also a majority a Hindu phenomena with a substantial minority of very capable people of other faiths and belief systems also contributing, of course. The diaspora has started facing backlash in some pockets due to those who can’t stand progress of any kind except the religious kind of one religion. There are organized attempts to take the shine off of the diaspora. We need to get organized and push back. Organizations and initiatives such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Cohna, Hindu Pact and and others are doing the ground work of outreach on college campuses and other institutions such as media and are making a difference. They are engaging with political leaders through representations and organizing outreaches into the community to build awareness. 

So this Diwali, out of the many Diyas we light, let us light one for our Hindu Identity, one that allows the seeker to reach higher realms of self realization by following their own chosen path without judgement. A system that has integrated ideals such as free speech into it’s core beliefs thousands of years before “free speech” was codified in the first constitution of it’s kind, the US constitution. Many other religious doctrines have not caught up to that even now, because of which they have got ossified in medieval thinking. Sanatan Dharm, a system of thought that glorifies the spiritual quest and encourages questions. One that accommodates for different path to the truth and celebrates the climb up to the mountain top in whatever way one has travelled. One that personifies ideals in Idols and worships them so as to draw them out of oneself. One that is kind and compassionate to other forms of life, like animals and trees. One that has days dedicated to Gurus(teachers) and weeks of worship dedicated to the feminine force of nature and nurture. One that made Bharat the cradle of civilisation. One that built marvels of architectures in Temples thousands of years ago, one that celebrated our sexual energies, built the Yogic system, had astronomical advances thousands of years before the West did, that too after copying many of those from ancinet texts of Hindu India. All of those remarkable achievements did not come from a piece of land, called Bharat or India… but from people that inhabited it, and those people carried the Hindu Mind, Hindu heart, Hindu sensitivities and Hindu way of life. A benign but unfettered force of inquiry and compassion that has been all accepting and all welcoming, many a times at it’s own peril. 

So let us all reflect on the value of Hindu Identity, reassert the virtues of an unfettered Mind and with equal rigor push back politically, legally and socially against those that mean it harm. I would like to restate this in clear terms again. Hindu Identity is not a religious belief. It is borne out of an ultimate spirit of inquiry, of compassion and of a wish for welfare of the entire world, not just a particular people. The genesis of this belief in the plurality of human experience and respect for it in a spiritual tradition is uniquely Bhartiya or Indian though… of a people that prospered on the far side on river Sindhu, the Hindus. This sits in direct contrast to Abrahamic thought of reward and punishment meted out on basis of a belief and it’s acceptance thereof.

Let this Diwali be a Diwali of awakening, of the Hindu Identity in us. An Identity of pluralism, of acceptance regardless of one’s chosen method of worship.