By: Tanmay Patil
There was a question put in an assured tone by an elderly person from the audience in a conference addressed by Sri Rajiv Malhotra, “For the last 700-800 years, we got a lot of onslaught of foreign invasions in India, but we still survived and in the last 20 years we seem to be reviving and coming up”.
Rajiv Malhotra answered his question thus:
Disagree with the question. We commonly like to say that we are invincible because we have survived. Nothing can happen to us, we are 5000 years old civilization. This all is NOT true.
Until 2000 years ago there was no Christianity, there was no Islam, who combined are 50% of the world today. Between Hinduism and Buddhism, there was all of Asia. If you consider even Hinduism alone, from Afghanistan to Bali (end point of Indonesia) was all Hinduism. From Lanka to not just Mount Kailash, but also the Kazakhstan, some part of China also has Shiva temples, Mongolia, Japan.
If you take that space or area, we are currently 15-20% of that area; so we have shrunk 80%. ‘doobe nahi, bus 80 pratishat shrink ho gaye’ (English: Did not drown, but only shrunk by 80%).
If you work in a company and a man comes to you and says ‘Sir, we are still not bankrupt, our market share has gone down by 80%, but good news is we are not bankrupt’, I do not think that you would appreciate that and say it’s good news.
You will have to look that, we (India and Hindus) have lost 80% of their territory. Even, as recently as in 1947, we have lost so much of our territory.
After shrinking so much, we are not safe within India as ‘Hindus’ even today, there may be more partitions. There may be partition about the North-east, which means a lot of Brahmaputra river water. There may be partition about Kashmir, so Indus valley water, which means Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan water gone. Nepal could be going to Maoists (China), which means all the Ganga water.
So, all the main three rivers are in threat because of these insurrections, separatists movements and my book ‘Breaking-India’ writes about these separatist identities like Dravidian vs Aryan.
So, we are hardly safe and secure even within India. We cannot say that ‘humko kuch nahin hua, humko maar pit kar, kisine humaari ek banhh todh di, we are happy that hamari ek banhh to hai. Ek aankh le li, we are happy that en aankh toh hai, hum andhe thode hi na hue’ (English: We have lost nothing. Somebody has beaten us and broke our one arm, we are happy that we have our one arm intact. Our one eye is destroyed but we are happy that we have our one eye intact; we have not been blinded.)
This is NOT a success story, but a story of ‘Slow Death’. I agree that it is not a fast death, as we have not been killed, but certainly we have got setbacks.
And (we have got) setbacks in the ‘Siddhantas’ (in the matter of philosophies), which are not more advanced than our ‘Siddhantas’, which are not of more merit than ours.
So, people often say to me that, ‘Devta ne kaha tha kuch nahin hoga, sab theek ho jayega’ (Diety or God has assured us there is nothing to worry, everything will be fine), but for last 1000 years, Devta or God did not save us. I don’t know, but it is true.
I would like to quote Bhagwat Geeta here. During the war of Mahabharata at Kurukshetra, Krishna told Arjuna that both ‘Dharma and Adharma’ always remain here, and you (Arjuna) have to fight Adharma without any excuse. You cannot say, ‘I will stay at home, everything will be done right on its own’). Arjuna tried to give that argument, but Shri Krishna had to explain to him that things won’t work that way, and that Arjuna had the duty to go out in the battle-field and fight against Adharma.
So, Adharma is still there today, it has NOT gone. The Krukshetra is the ‘Global Intellectual theater’ today. All over the world there is a battle of ideas; ‘Siddhantas’ (Philosophies) and different world views are in contest with each other. Some can be seen in physical wars and other are fought psychologically and intellectually.
So, I see history differently, I see the battles are still going on and we (India and Hindus) have been loosing, more than winning. And we are shrinking even today, even within India.
See the video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkmwHMe7RA