You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
or argued over in this manner. For example, the Sanatana side<br />
of the Hinduism that had sustained the faith for centuries and<br />
had imparted pluralism as a sustaining quality to the society, had<br />
to suffer mutely when it was lampooned. It could just not answer<br />
things in the Billingsgate language!<br />
For example, how could it defend Lord Krishna's dalliance<br />
with the Gopikas? In fact, within Hinduism, the worst sufferer<br />
was Vaishnavism which came to be regarded as a licentious mode<br />
of worship. Not unoften were the Hindus described as the first<br />
phallus-worshippers of the world. And as far inter-religious<br />
discussion, it often came to the breaking of heads. What was<br />
the outcome? It destroyed the basic unity and cohesiveness of<br />
that spiritual experience which had made the Hindus pay respect<br />
to almost every canon of every religion. The spiritual health of<br />
the society was thus tom asunder in the streets. It was an<br />
extremely vulgar exercise, conducted in an equally vulgar way.<br />
At one stroke our rich mythological lore became an utterly<br />
primitive expression of men and women walking on all fours.<br />
The new linear thought was that since the Hindus had no<br />
history, there was nothing worthwhile in India's past. Conversely,<br />
it also began to be said that our past was extremely rich. But<br />
then if we had fallen on lean days it was because of our disunity<br />
and inability to defend ourselves. Both ways, the past became<br />
a subject of ridicule. It was this revivalist thought that also<br />
affected the Muslims no less because they too started to feel that,<br />
had they been true Muslims, God would never have punished<br />
them in this way which means making them hewers of wood<br />
and drawers of water in their own home. The Sikh revivalist<br />
movements also had the same argument to offer. They thought<br />
that their proximity to Hinduism which was passive by nature<br />
had deprived them of the fruits of the great heroism displayed<br />
by the Khalsa. The upshot is that once the process of such<br />
revivalist thinking started, every community began pulling in a<br />
different direction.<br />
Overtime, the same argument went a stage further and these<br />
communities graduated to be nations, always ready to pick up<br />
(45)