N.S. Rajaram
Nationalism as a threat In following the ideology of the 'White Man's Burden', colonial rulers left behind two major institutions that have come to dominate India in the past fifty years. These are the Maculayite higher education system and the civil service. The impact of the civil service is not germane here, but what Macaulay had to say about education and conversion is illuminating. He firmly believed that the conversion of India to Christianity would make colonial administration easier by making Indians reject their tradition.

He wrote: "Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. It is our belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal in thirty years... I heartily rejoice in the project." His brother-in-law Charles Trevelyan, in 1838, noted this in students of these 'elite' English schools, which he called 'seminaries': "The young men brought up in our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotisms under which their ancestors groaned... Instead of regarding us with dislike, they court our society... The summit of their ambition is, to resemble us."

An elite produced by such alienation, rooted in alien and even hostile values, and coveting foreign symbols and recognition is essentially anti-national in character. It sees the country and its people—especially their nationalistic aspirations—as a threat to its existence. This has given rise to an ideology, based on the 'White Man's Burden' reinforced by missionary education, now joined by Islam, but framed in Marxist language. They are calling it 'secularism'—a gross misnomer. Secular means unrelated to religion, but in India it means accommodation of Christian and Muslim theocracies (under Articles 29 and 30). As Sita Ram Goel has pointed out, their 'secularism' is the amalgam of every imperialist ideology that is hostile to Hinduism. It is natural therefore that its proponents should see Hindutva as a threat to their existence. This is how the British reacted to the rise of nationalism. This exposes Indian 'secularism' as the successor to colonialism. Hindutva, rooted in the soil, is Hinduism in action.

Colonial hangover
This brings us to a great myth, that India owes its education, especially higher education, to the contribution of Christian missionaries. This is emphatically false. If India is recognized today for its education it is because of its technical education, an area in which missionaries have not been active. In the humanities their contribution has had a damaging impact. The 'secularist' humanities programmes in India have contributed nothing of value in the fifty years of their dominance. They are mired in mediocrity and imitation, without a school of thought to call their own. All important work in the humanities has come from scholars outside the establishment.

The reason for this is not hard to seek. Humanities programmes in India are built on the defunct colonial-missionary model that discourages critical analysis of Christian and colonial dogmas. Such an insular education produces men and women of arrested intellectual growth—devoid of critical faculty. They are incapable of independent thinking; all they can do is contribute footnotes to the work of their masters. Schools and colleges in India that produce such people bear no resemblance to the secular humanistic institutions in the West where I studied and taught for over twenty years. If they are to be compared to any Western institutions at all, it is to the various evangelical Christian colleges that dot the American South and the Midwest. Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma is a good example. So is the Louisiana Baptist Junior College.

Humanities programmes in India, whose products pass for 'elite', are living in this colonial hangover. Having internalized the idea of the 'White Man's Burden', they long for some member of that defunct ideology to come and lead them. It is hardly surprising that they should gravitate towards Smt Sonia Gandhi. Neither America nor England—nor even Italy—would accept this Italian born Roman Catholic as a leader, but these people do. Her court is full of products of elite institutions hankering for the return of the 'White Man's Burden'. She is seen as the answer to their prayers.

From Sphinx to Trojan Horse
Now there is an interesting twist with Smt Sonia Gandhi and her followers trying to separate Hinduism from Hindutva. She has begun to quote—or rather misquote—Hindu scriptures and taken to visiting Hindu places of worship. She is of course welcome, but actions always speak louder than words and poses. They leave unanswered questions: why do her foundations sponsor nonentities like Kancha Illiah, Aijaz Ahmad and Rajesh Kochar, who have no qualifications beyond being rabid Hindu-baiters? Why did the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation channel rupees twenty-five lakh to a self-styled 'Gandhian' for work in the North-East? And why did she meet only with Muslims in Suratkal and only Christians in Gujarat, and not any Hindus?

These are the moves of a Trojan Horse, not a sincere seeker. It is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to create a Hindu vote-bank by reviving the hoary colonial policy of divide- and-rule. It shows them in their true colours as successors not of national leaders but colonial rulers. And the Vatican is trying to jump on its bandwagon—just as it did in the time of Columbus.

The real debate
All these strategic moves and countermoves evade the real question. To begin with, the five thousand year old spiritual tradition known as Hinduism does not need a certificate from someone who seems to have just begun her own Discovery of India. The question is not whether Hinduism is tolerant and pluralistic; this has been answered a thousand times both in theory and practice. The Hindu scriptures—unlike the Christian and the Islamic—do not proclaim that theirs is the only true path. It was after all Jesus of the Gospels who said, "He that is not with me is against me"; Krishna on the other hand said: "Those who worship other gods with devotion, worship me."

Perhaps, some day, Smt Sonia Gandhi will also discover that in quoting from the Rigveda: "ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti—Cosmic reality is one, the wise express it many ways"—she has negated the central claim of Christianity that there can be no salvation without Jesus. She will discover too that Krishna in the Gita rejects any claim of a special intermediary of God like a prophet or the Only Son of God. "All creatures great and small, I am equal to all; I hate none nor have I any favourites," he says. I bring these up only to highlight the fact that pluralism is firmly established in Hinduism both in scripture and in practice. (This does not mean it should give up its right to defend itself from attacks by theocratic forces in the name of 'conversion'.) It is Christianity and Islam that do not tolerate pluralism. They have waged an incessant battle against pluralism in the name of being 'universal faiths'. On this let us hear Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Father of secularism in government:

"Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned—yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, the other half hypocrites."

And James Madison, Jefferson's successor as President of the United States wrote: "What have been Christianity's fruits?—Superstition, bigotry and persecution." What is the cause of all this? Jefferson himself provided the answer. "But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before its principles were departed by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and state..." Jefferson saw Christianity as a theocratic instrument derived from Judaism; so is Islam. The centrepiece of their creed is enforcement of uniformity of thought and behaviour as the 'only true way'. As the late Ram Swarup put it: "In short, the two Revelations (Christianity and Islam) reduced the concept of religion itself. Religion was no longer truth of the spirit; it became a hegemonic ideology, a creed to be imposed by jehad and salesmanship. Man's prayer took the form of a dogma, of beliefs, of articles of faith, which could be numbered, catechized, labelled and exported."

In other words, they became a commercial and political enterprise in the name of God. Christianity today is engaged in a Crusade against pluralistic Hindu Civilization—just as it was against the pluralistic Greece. Let us recall the words of Father Monanchin: "Christianization of Indian civilization is to all intents and purposes an historical undertaking comparable to the Christianization of Greece." We know what happened to Greece—once home to a great pluralistic civilization—now a cultural wasteland in an obscure corner of Christendom.

This should tell us what the debate should be about: not whether Hinduism is tolerant and pluralistic, but whether Christianity and Islam can live at peace in a pluralistic society like India. History—and their scriptures—suggests that they cannot. Otherwise there would be no need for the rise of secular humanism in the West. Secularization was the antidote to the anti-humanism inherent in Christianity. In India, anti-humanism is safeguarded in the name of 'secularism'—by protecting the powers of the Christian and Muslim clergy under Articles 29 and 30. The Shah Bano disgrace and the fact that Christian clergy in places like Kerala can decide cases of divorce and inheritance, leading to deprivation of basic rights of Catholic women, bear eloquent testimony to the inhumanity of Indian 'secularism'. This is what needs to be debated.

So the rules of the debate are clear: debate the issues that will enable Christianity and Islam to give up their exclusivist and expansionist claims, to live at peace with themselves and with others in a pluralistic society. Begin the debate by examining the conditions that have led to theocratic states within the state—protected by Articles 29 and 30—operating behind a mask of 'secularism'. There will be no religious peace in India until theocracy in every guise is rooted out. This point was debated and settled in the West two hundred years ago, but theocrats and their friends in India—calling themselves 'secularists'—want to run away from any such debate.