L - Gurmat Veechar

or argued over in this manner. For example, the Sanatana side
of the Hinduism that had sustained the faith for centuries and
had imparted pluralism as a sustaining quality to the society, had
to suffer mutely when it was lampooned. It could just not answer
things in the Billingsgate language!
For example, how could it defend Lord Krishna's dalliance
with the Gopikas? In fact, within Hinduism, the worst sufferer
was Vaishnavism which came to be regarded as a licentious mode
of worship. Not unoften were the Hindus described as the first
phallus-worshippers of the world. And as far inter-religious
discussion, it often came to the breaking of heads. What was
the outcome? It destroyed the basic unity and cohesiveness of
that spiritual experience which had made the Hindus pay respect
to almost every canon of every religion. The spiritual health of
the society was thus tom asunder in the streets. It was an
extremely vulgar exercise, conducted in an equally vulgar way.
At one stroke our rich mythological lore became an utterly
primitive expression of men and women walking on all fours.
The new linear thought was that since the Hindus had no
history, there was nothing worthwhile in India's past. Conversely,
it also began to be said that our past was extremely rich. But
then if we had fallen on lean days it was because of our disunity
and inability to defend ourselves. Both ways, the past became
a subject of ridicule. It was this revivalist thought that also
affected the Muslims no less because they too started to feel that,
had they been true Muslims, God would never have punished
them in this way which means making them hewers of wood
and drawers of water in their own home. The Sikh revivalist
movements also had the same argument to offer. They thought
that their proximity to Hinduism which was passive by nature
had deprived them of the fruits of the great heroism displayed
by the Khalsa. The upshot is that once the process of such
revivalist thinking started, every community began pulling in a
different direction.
Overtime, the same argument went a stage further and these
communities graduated to be nations, always ready to pick up
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