We inhabit an age of unprecedented access to information. We get news about anyone anywhere in the world moments after an elapsed event. We watch closely, and are watched in return. References, analyses, opinions, and revelations are instantly absorbed through the osmotic interaction of fingers and keyboard.
One would think these spectacular advances in communication technology would do wonders for mutual understanding. But the opposite is often true, for one basic reason: Most people want to be transmitters, not receivers.
Misunderstandings escalate with each successive reaction that springs from a rush to judgment and the haste to be heard. Stereotype- and prejudice-driven assumptions grow from self-absorbed dervishes of circular thinking to gale force xenophobia.
Rajiv Malhotra’s article “Why Swami Nithyananda Must Resign” (Medha Journal) was his well-intentioned attempt to mitigate the anticipated fallout from the sanyaasi’s televised bedroom antics. Mr. Malhotra’s article and videotaped interview with the Swami were released before the full extent of Swami Nithyananda’s dissembling, evasiveness, and attempts to manipulate public perceptions became known.
Did Mr. Malhotra’s apologetics involve mistaken assumptions? Does his defense represent flawed reasoning? That’s a matter of opinion. Anyone is free to disagree.
But the commentaries of Sandhya Jain [1] and Radha Rajan [2] take criticism and dissent to an entirely new level. In the process of dismantling Mr. Malhotra’s defense of Swami Nithyananda, they construct a febrile and fanciful narrative about the presumed agenda of the “global Hindu” to hijack and colonize the thought processes of “local Hindus” -- with the goal of installing Swami Dayananda Saraswati as the anointed Pope of Hinduism.
This vision is absurd enough to qualify as satire --except that its proponents are dead serious.
In Ms. Jain’s mind, the brother, sister, aunt, or cousin who left to pursue a life and career overseas, has turned into a creature that is part Manchurian Candidate, part Orwellian Big Brother – just by virtue of stepping outside a geographic boundary.
Ms. Rajan’s essays demonstrate an impressive grasp of the existential threats to Hinduism. Her decoding of Vatican doublespeak and her careful vivisection and diagramming of the Christian agenda in India are both accurate and admirable.
But it is most unfortunate that she applies her considerable intellect to impugning someone who has devoted his energies to combating the plague of proselytism over three decades. In so doing, she seems to manifest the very same “disunity and crustacean tendency to pull our own down” that she alludes to in one of her essays. [3]
Swami Dayananda Saraswati has spoken of, strategized about, mobilized against, and counseled to pre-empt conversion -- since long before he founded a Gurukulam in Pennsylvania and at least a decade before he assumed his current position at the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha (HDAS). In formulating creative strategies or in inspiring ordinary people to shake off their apathy, Swami Dayananda has consistently and tirelessly put the cause above his own personal well- being.
It is mind-bogglingly arrogant for those who lack the capacity to walk a mile in his sandals to judge him inadequate and issue peremptory demands for his resignation. The field for activism is wide open. Let those who know better prove it by doing better!
If it were possible to transform attitudes by attending meetings, signing pious proclamations, persuasion by sound reasoning, or amending laws -- the world would be a much different place. The reality is that anyindividual who sets out to be an agent of change finds out that the desired outcome is not guaranteed by impressive communication skills and a valid argument. It is equally dependent on how the listener processes it.
In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes – “the mind of a bigot is like the pupil of an eye: The more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.” But who among us would admit to bigotry? We recognize it instantly in others, but hold our own opinions to be eminently rational.
The German philosopher Nietzsche said “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Sometimes what we perceive as fact might just be a figment of our assumptions.
Self-righteousness Redux
Sandhya Jain’s implacable resentment of Indians settled in the West surfaces time and againin her writings. In her letter to Swami Joytirmayananda (Divisiveness in the Name of Dharma by Dr. S.Kalyanaraman, Medha Journal) she says:
“Two generations of Indian students were instigated by their own parents to study and work abroad, seek Western citizenship, to enjoy the fruits of life and progress denied by a socialist Nehruvian India…Meanwhile, the rest of us liberated the economy… and continue to live here…”
Now this might come as a revelation to Ms. Jain, but most professional journalists would know that one of the key factors contributing to the well-being of the Indian economy in recent years has been – are you ready? -- Overseas remittances.
Indians are the most generous expatriate community in the world. They sent home US$ 52 Billion in 2008.[4]An article in the Indian Economic Times[5] as quoted by a British website named India as the largest recipient of remittances from overseas workers of Indian origin. It added: “India has been enjoying the top position in home remittances for more than a decade and recorded 7% increase last year compared with the previous year.”
According to a Wikipedia entry [6] : “Although India is still a net importer, since 1996–97, its overall balance of payments (i.e., including the capital account balance), has been positive, largely on account of increased foreign direct investment and deposits from non-resident Indians…”
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI ) inflow increased markedly in the last few years.[7] It more than doubled from an average of US $5-6 billion over 2003-2005 to around US $19 billion in 2006-07.
In short, overseas Indians, or “Jai Chands” ( traitors) as Sandhya Jain terms them, have shown themselves to be more capable of generosity in action than she appears capable of with words. President Pratibha Patil certainly seems to think so. Welcoming expatriates to the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas,[8]in 2010, she invited them to “share in India’s growth story.”
But Ms. Jain does not just stop at reducing overseas Indians to a hedonistic, self-serving caricature. In the letter referred to above, she scoffs at their efforts to address the anti-Hindu bias in the West, questioning their integrity and their motivations. According to her, “they were asked to pretend to be concerned about Hindu dharma” butthey “proved ill-equipped for the task.” They are “running scared on the issue of the California textbook battle” no doubtbecause she believes they undertook it in the first place only to “establish their credentials and also acquire some self-esteem.”
Clearly where this issue is concerned, Ms. Jain sees no virtue in objectivity and fact-driven analysis.
Misguided Malice
Anyone who accepts a position of leadership, who takes a stand, starts an initiative, puts one foot in front of the other, is a person who is not afraid to be wrong. If that person makes occasional missteps along the way, those errors only fuel the impetus to start over and move farther along.
Such persons reject the secure quagmire of blaming, second-guessing and hand-wringing. They are able to catalyze change by appealing to the best in human nature, not by excoriating those who represent the worst.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati is the epitome of such an individual. He began expressing his opposition to the well-funded soul-harvesting operations of the international missionary combine as far back as the 1980s. He recognized that promoting knowledge of one’s faith traditions, taking education and economic self-sufficiency to rural areas, and facilitating the empowerment of women would provide a strong bulwark against homogenizing forces and predatory ideologies.
Among the many courses he taught and inspired over the years, the Vedic Heritage Series for children and young adults was a breakthrough in making knowledge of the Hindu cultural and religious framework accessible. It has given many contemporary teenagers in the west a firm grounding in Hindu narratives and culture unavailable to many in even my generation.
Swami Dayananda inspired Indians on both sides of the Atlantic who grew up thinking of problems as someone else’s job to solve, to harness their resources to an India-wide initiative named AIM for Sewa. The movement is quietly transforming the lives of children in remote rural areas. It provides education and health care without manipulating recipients into changing their views of God and their modes of worship.
Above all, considering the scope of his knowledge, his mastery of the message, and the devotion of innumerable people helped by his compassionate insight, Swami Dayananda has never actively pursued his own personal elevation or sought cult status. He claims no messianic qualities, performs no feats of magic or supraliminal transformation. He simply illuminates a path which leads not to him, but back into a higher goal within oneself.
To accuse such a person of abetting conversions in the name of interfaith dialogue is nothing short of grotesque. To ask for Swami Dayananda’s resignation from HDAS without any substantiated proof of wrongdoing is outrageous. To demand that he be answerable for the actions of Swami Nithyananda is practically unhinged. Pontificators of Hindu Dharma should not have to be reminded that respect for a Guru of Swami Dayananda’s stature is a fundamental Hindu value.
Whether or not Swami Dayananda associated with Swami Nithyananda in the past or continues to do so now is neither of consequence nor relevance. The only person that should be held answerable is Swami Nithyananda. Unlike the Christian model, ours is not a tradition that passes the Karmic buck.
In July 1999, a Seminar titled “Violence to Hindu Heritage” was held in Chennai. Swami Dayananda delivered the keynote address at the Narada Gana Sabha. The talk was titled “Religious Conversion is an Act of Violence.” An appendix to this article features excerpts from that speech. It is left to the reader to judge whether the speaker sounds like a person bent on opening the back door to conversions.
So What Really Ails Us?
We Hindus wrote the manual on self-flagellation, so I will not overstate the obvious here. Let me just propose some points for introspection.
Are we saying the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha is the sole make or break agent in securing Hindu interests? Are the remaining organizations, intellectuals, opinion-makers and social activists really powerless to do anything except to follow HDAS around and throw a tantrum whenever this organization disappoints them? Should dissent necessarily be negative, always seeking to bring down or destroy individuals and institutions? Could we instead step forward and constructively supplement that which we find inadequate?
I’m not suggesting that HDAS be held above scrutiny. However, I believe in heeding the Chinese proverb that says: “Do not use a hammer to remove a fly from a friend’s forehead.” It is one thing to criticize, and quite another to verbally assassinate – particularly if one’s target happens to be on the same side.
At the other extreme stand those whose apathy and lack of engagement at critical junctures sends a message to outsiders that many Hindus lack conviction and a strong sense of ownership of their beliefs and heritage. I’ll illustrate this with a personal example.
In 2004, Dr. C. Alex Alexander, a phenomenally erudite retired US Army physician created a petition to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) urging them to amend Article 18 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I had the honor, along with three other individuals, of collaborating in this initiative.
Dr. Alexander is a Christian of Indian origin from the ancient Orthodox Church of Kerala, which does not practice proselytization. In the cover letter that I circulated with the petition, he asked to be introduced as “a naturalized American who immigrated to this country in 1962” who was “immensely proud of (his) roots in Indic traditions and its pluralism as exemplified by Sanatana Dharma."
The language of Dr. Alexander’s proposed amendment read as follows:
…we are hereby appealing to the United Nations as a whole and the UN Commission for Human Rights in particular to adopt an amendment to Article 18 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights by expanding it through the addition of a second sentence (capitalized):
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. NO INDIVIDUAL OR ORGANIZATION MAY SEEK TO CONVERT AN INDIVIDUAL OR A GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS, INCLUDING MINORS OR INDIVIDUALS OF LIMITED COGNITIVE ABILITIES, FORMALLY OR INFORMALLY, FROM ONE RELIGION TO ANOTHER THROUGH OFFERING FINANCIAL OR OTHER MATERIAL INCENTIVES; THROUGH PHYSICAL, MENTAL, OR EMOTIONAL COERCION; OR THROUGH THREATS OR INTIMIDATION OF ANY KIND.”
Our goal was to gather 100,000 signatures in the shortest possible time. I drafted a cover letter that explained why this petition was important. I provided available annual statistics on the funds pouring into Christian organizations from overseas. Anticipating the objections of Muslims and Christians, I wrote:
The petition will likely evoke some defensiveness and reserve even from moderate Christians and Muslims. There will be those who view the petition as an attempt to infringe upon their "freedoms." They will ask how one defines objectionable proselytization. A Christian friend asked me how you would curb proselytization except by means of force or manipulation -- the very thing that the petition is out to condemn.
I responded by saying that the petition suggests a mandate not against \preaching\ but against \coercion.\ What I understand by preaching is explaining the virtues of one's religion to the willingly curious. What I define as coercion is the public defamation and ridicule of another's beliefs, or the use of bargaining or bullying tactics to recruit people to one's faith.
I said that after watching some of the local televangelism channels, and listening to the terms they use in reference to Hindus, or reading some of the guidelines for the stratagems to employed by evangelicals, I had reason to question who exactly is at risk for "force and manipulation."
Finally, I included reviews of a book by a western historian who plots the future trajectory of Christian expansionism. Reviews of the book from amazon.com are included in Appendiix
- I introduced it as follows:
Please note (Jenkins’) predictions for the shifting center of gravity of Christianity. Please also note that in predicting the net outcome of Christianity's expansion into the Southern Hemisphere, the author does not exactly foresee universal love and brotherhood.
We worked diligently to promote the petition. As the signatures crawled forward, we were initially encouraged to find a number of Orthodox Christian and Muslim signatories on board. But I was mystified by the tepid response from Hindus. A staff member from the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam of Swami Dayananda in Pennsylvania wrote:
Pujya Swamiji had all campers come to the AIM office and sign this past week. Of course that was great, nonetheless, we must contact everyone we know, every Temple, all study groups, all Hindus all over the world to augment the paltry numbers thus far generated.
After months of intense effort to mobilize support, including publicity by the Hindu Council of UK, what do you think the final signature count was? Our dream of 100,000 vanished early -- we knew we wouldn’t manage to get to 10,000. We didn’t even make it to 5,000. The final count was a pathetic 3499 signatures.[9]
The petition would send a message all right – just not the one we intended. It would show the majority of Hindus as being indifferent to anything that does not directly affect them.
So we abandoned it.
Consider this: When word leaked out that some soldier on Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet, the Muslim world exploded in a conflagration of rage. The very next day, the President of the United States called a press conference to publicly apologize to the Muslim world.
If Indians demonstrated anything close to that sense of global fellowship, no power could undermine our shared legacy.
A good beginning in that direction would be to end the manufactured paranoia. There is no conspiracy being hatched by overseas Hindus to make Hindus in India subservient to “Western interests.” Meanwhile, our real adversary benefits from our intolerance of each other. While we argue about who has the right to speak on behalf of the punyabhumi, we would all do well to remember that before Kurukshetra was won on the battlefield, it was first won in Arjuna’s mind.
POSTSCRIPT
Since the time this article was written, Ms. Jain has unleashed a new poison spill upon the internet. The article titled Semitic Graft on a Sanatana Tree [10] gives readers the opportunity to view, in one place, all the streams that feed her cauldron of suspicion and vitriolic hatred.
Ms. Jain shares that she has received a number of angry and spiteful comments in retaliation to her earlier writings. While she may accuse her anonymous critics of cravenness, she should know that faceless foes are par for the course for anyone who writes on the Internet. She need not feel particularly singled out by this treatment.
On her part, she doesn’t seem concerned that the magma of malevolence that she has unleashed might cut an indiscriminately destructive path through the landscape of civil debate.
Ms. Jain's letters to Swami Dayananda are not respectful inquiries to an elder and a teacher who possesses more enlightened knowledge of scripture than most of us can hope to assimilate in our lifetimes. They are couched in the language of an inquisitor who has already placed her opinions and mind in the steel-lined vault of absolute conviction. Whether she received a response or not is really of no consequence – because she already has all the answers.
This conflict seems to be taking on the proportions of a Shakespearian tragedy – only there are no villains here, only good people intent on mutual destruction. Ms. Jain and Ms. Rajan are both tremendously intelligent, passionately patriotic and culturally invested women whose ferocity should properly be directed at our real adversaries.
All of us engage with issues and crises from our unique perspectives. The panorama of choices visible to us might not be readily apparent to someone from a different vantage point, and vice versa. To engage in samvad (reasoned debate), one must proceed by first acknowledging the other's perspective as real from their vantage point. If you destroy the other person just for the crime of having a different vantage point, then all you are left with is a corpse. You have not convinced the other person that your vantage point is better, and must therefore be preferred.
The outcome of this debate will therefore depend on how the opponents define victory.
Is victory seen, to use Ms. Jain's words, in an outcome where "two women could huff and puff and blow it all down”? Or, should it be defined by what two women could apply themselves to building?
APPENDIX
Keynote Address by Swami Dayananda Saraswati
Narada Gana Sabha, July 17th 1999
Excerpts
“For me, aggression is not just a physical one. It need not be the Kargil type…. You can emotionally be aggressive….Verbally you can be aggressive…Economically you can be very aggressive… And the worst aggression, which I consider more than physical aggression, is cultural aggression or religious aggression.”
“ A religious sentiment has got to be respected by every one, whether he believes in any religion or not. Just because I don’t believe your ideas, you can’t stand on my toes! If you don’t like my nose, it is your problem… If my ideas and my belief systems are not acceptable to you, I give you the freedom not to accept it. In fact I will fight for your freedom to think differently. You must be free enough to differ from me.….this is the attitude of the non-aggressive traditions. On the other hand, the second category of religions, by their theologies, is committed to convert ... what is the basis for that person to come and convert me? If you are convinced of something, you can try to convince me and not convert me. Did you ever notice a physics professor knocking at your door, asking for your time so he can talk to you about particles? Never! If you want to learn physics, you go to him. But here, every day, I am bothered. At the airport I am bothered, in the street corners I am bothered. At home, I am bothered. They want to save my soul!
“I say this is not merely an intrusion; this is an aggression…You come and tell me that I have got to save my soul. But I don’t look upon myself as condemned for you to come and save. We really don’t have a word in Sanskrit for ‘salvation.’ Because ‘salvation’ means you are condemned. Unless you are condemned, you need not be saved.”
“ It is pure violence. And what does it do? It wipes out cultures.”
“Somebody says we must have ecumenical dialogue…I stopped attending them. Because I don’t see any use in it. On one such occasion, I said ‘I can have a dialogue with a Christian, if he is ready to change after the dialogue.’ Is he going to change his stand? Is he going to stop conversion? Don’t ask me to have a dialogue with you when you are standing on my toes. You just move away. Then we can have a dialogue.”
‘The world religious conferences that are held are only meant to neutralize any protest against conversion… Because they don’t want to stop conversion. So what is the use of saying ‘We are all the same. We are all going to the same God.’ It is something like saying, you know, your property is my property, my property is your property. Your money is my money, my money is your money. Therefore, let my money be with me and let your money also be with me.”
APPENDIX 2
THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM: THE COMING OF GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY
By Philip Jenkins
Book Description
… Jenkins asserts that by the year 2050 only one Christian in five will be a non-Latino white person and that the center of gravity of the Christian world will have shifted firmly to the Southern hemisphere….Moreover, Jenkins shows that the churches that have grown most rapidly in the global south are far more traditional, morally conservative, evangelical, and apocalyptic than their northern counterparts. Mysticism, puritanism, belief in prophecy, faith-healing, exorcism, and dream-visions--concepts which more liberal western churches have traded in for progressive political and social concerns--are basic to the newer churches in the south. And the effects of such beliefs on global politics, Jenkins argues, will be enormous, as religious identification begins to take precedence over allegiance to secular nation-states. Indeed, as Christianity grows in regions where Islam is also expected to increase--as recent conflicts in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines reveal--we may see a return to the religious wars of the past, fought out with renewed intensity and high-tech weapons far surpassing the swords and spears of the middle ages.
Editorial Reviews from www.amazon.com :
From Library Journal
Jenkins (history and religious studies, Pennsylvania State Univ.) believes that we are on the verge of a transformational religious shift. As he explains it, Christianity, the religion of the West, is rapidly expanding south into Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and he predicts that by the year 2050, only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasian. By numbers alone, they will be able to overwhelm the present political secular nation- and city-states and replace them with theocracies, similar to the Islamic Arab nations. He ends with a warning: with the rise of Islam and Christianity in the heavily populated areas of the Southern Hemisphere, we could see a wave of religious struggles, a new age of Christian crusades and Muslim jihads. These dire prognostications could be seen as just another rant from a xenophobic pseudo-prophet; however, the author is a noted historian, and his statements are well formed, well supported by empirical evidence, and compellingly argued. The only criticism is the brevity of the book. One hopes that The Next Christendom is only an introduction to a deeper analysis of a fascinating topic. Recommended for all libraries. Glenn Masuchika, Rockwell Collins Information Ctr., Cedar Rapids, IA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
\Starred Review\ Fear of Islam is peaking, fueled by reports that the religion is burgeoning in numbers as well as militancy. Jenkins grants that Islam is indeed booming but marshals the evidence that today's largest religion, Christianity, will grow exponentially too, and will remain the faith of the largest proportion of humanity. But the Christianity of 2050 will be very different from that molded by the 1,300 years during which Christianity was the faith of a rapidly developing Europe. The new Christianity will be liturgically anarchistic compared with the staid services of white, upper-middle-class people today. It will be overwhelmingly the faith of poor nonwhites living south of Europe, the U.S., and present-day Russia, and it won't reflect the values of the wealthy global north. It will revive Christianity's root emphases on healing and prophecy because its adherents will resemble the poor and oppressed who first embraced the redemption, the healing, and the blessing that Jesus promised. As he makes his case, Jenkins dispels some fashionable myths about historic Christianity; about historic Christian-Islamic relations; and about the nature of presumably pacific Hinduism when it is politicized. He also speculates trenchantly on how the problems of the Islamic and Christian global south will affect the global north, requiring genuine charity of the rich and genuine discernment of their leaders. A book everyone concerned about humanity's immediate future ought to read.
Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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NOTES
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[2]
[3]
[4] Indian Express article
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9] Here’s the link to the fossilized anti-conversion petition to the UNHCR
[10]
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