'Secular State has to protect every religion including Hinduism'
Aug 6, 2004
http://newstodaynet.com/06aug/ss2.htm
Swami Dayananda Saraswati is in many ways like the Hindu religion
itself of manifold purpose and use. An articulate spokesperson of all
things religion. A profound thinker on issues of human importance. A
sage of wealthy wisdom. A catalyst for social welfare. A global
messenger of peace and prosperity. He is all these plus some more.
It is always edifying and educating to hear him speak on
matters that the nation is faced with. Editor T R Jawahar certainly
found him at his eloquent and acute best during his conversation with
the seasoned seer a few days ago.
Excerpts from the interview
Q: You have initiated and started this Hindu Dharma Acharya
Sabha with high expectations and lofty goals. What has been its track
record and how successful has it been in bringing together the
various disparate sections of the Hindu society?
Ans: Whatever were the objectives of the Hindu Dharma Acharya
Sabha, they have been accomplished. One of the objectives was to
bring all of them (the various leaders of the Hindu society) together
and we brought them together. It has been done. And we wanted to
evolve a common programme for which we will all work together. We
discussed and made certain resolutions. Some of them are long-
reaching resolutions. They are not immediately subject to
fulfillment. The resolutions like getting the Hindu Religious
Endowment Board relieved from the hold of the State Government is a
commitment the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha has and we are working
towards that very vigorously and we will achieve that. Another
resolution is we will stem the erosion of values. That is also a
continuous one. We also resolved to work against conversions and that
too is a long process. And so we are working and the Acharyas are
aware of this. We are going to meet again. We are constantly in
touch. So it is successful.
Q: The Tamilnadu Government has announced the repeal of the
Anti-forcible Conversion Act. But the opposition to the repeal has
been very muted from the Hindu society, particularly from the
Acharyas' side. There have not been many big voices of indignation
against that.
Ans: The repeal of Conversion Act has done more damage than
any good; you know the damage is much more than the damage that was
there before the introduction of the Act. Therefore what I say is
this: Repeal of the Act was a mistake. There may be some reasons but
it has done damage to us. It is a tremendous damage. And I have
written a letter on behalf of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha to the
Chief Minister asking her to take a courageous stand to stem this
aggression of conversion. And I consider, as I said before,
conversion is violence and this violence has to be stopped. And we
have got on even without this Act. Laws were there. Even human rights
act is there. Therefore we don't need a new act. But introducion of
the Act and then repealing it is not good. It was done to stop mass
conversions etc. Fine. But the Act was never acted upon. Lot of cases
were reported but no action was taken. And then, the repeal reads as
though there is a new sanction for everything. This is not true.
Therefore something has to be done by the government to neutralise
that kind of a feeling.
Q: But do you really think, Swamiji, conversions could be
stopped by laws or with the help of the State? Is it not the duty of
the Hindu society at large and the Acharyas to address the problem?
Ans: That is one thing. Hindu religion basically is not a
converting religion. It does not perpetrate aggression towards any
culture, any religion. In fact it has got a certain intrinsic
accommodation for other religions to pursue their own forms of
prayer, worship etc. and it is not aggressive. It is its own genius,
its own culture. It is not aggressive, it won't be aggressive.
Q: So there is no question of getting into any kind
of 'competitive religiosity' to counter this violence you are talking
about?
Ans: No, Hindu Dharma does not allow that that. Therefore,
there is you on one side, with a non-fighting, non-aggressive, non-
violent religious tradition. Then there are two aggressive religious
traditions and they are trying to get this non-fighting religious
people- they are trying to get their share.
Q: Is it an unequal battle...
Ans: In a way, yes. So they are eating into our tradition. We
are only defensive. And what you talk about the Hindu fundamentalism
and all that is not true. There are no Hindu fundamentalists, there
are some Hindus who realize this and therefore they are only
asking 'Hey, come on, leave us alone'. Are they fundamentalist? They
want themselves to be left alone. That is not fundamentalism. You
have got a right to protect yourself. The State is supposed to
protect, being secular, all religions. I want the State to be totally
secular. And if it has got to be secular it needs to protect all
religions, which includes unfortunately Hindu religion also. And the
State doesn't have any right, being secular, to manage the properties
of Hindu temples and spend crores of rupees in administration of the
temple. Therefore, we want everything to be left alone. Be secular.
Totally secular means, protect Islam, protect Christianity, Protect
Hinduism. PROTECT. All the way, protect all the main traditions-
protect them.
Q: Okay, but is not a fact that many practices in Hinduism lend
themselves as alibis for these kinds of activities, for poaching and
generally criticising Hinduism? As Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha how do
you propose to regulate and reform these?
Ans: See, a converting person can make use of anything. And,
in fact, a responsible religious person should pursue his or her
religion and leave other persons alone. If they have problems and if
you think you can help them, then help them solve. Or else, just
allow them to solve it by themselves. The Acharyas, of course have
looked into some of them. Then among the Acharyas there are very
orthodox ones, there are people who are not orthodox but they are
ready to come out of these orthodoxical big walls and try to do
something. So it is a long way. There is a long way to go. But that
is our internal problem and we are trying to solve it. We will solve
it.
Q: Another bane of the Hindu society, Swamiji, particularly
relevent to Acharayas and Gurus is that we see so many charlatans and
all kinds of dubious characters going around in the garb of sadhus
and vitiating the religious atmosphere. Does not the Acharya sabha
have some kind of a role in keeping the people on their guard, from
being exploited by such fakes ...
Ans: There are people who have difficulties in conforming to
dharma. Rather, they are given to adharma. In the pursuit of adharma
they can use anything. They can use religion; they can use religious
robes. That doesn't mean that religious people are committing crime.
There are people committing crimes and when they commit crimes they
use religion also. So it is going on. So, a seemingly religious
person need not be totally ethical and an ethical person need not be
religious. Again, you can see such persons in all religions, not just
among Hindus.
Q: But is there something in the Hindu psyche that makes people
susceptible to these kind of characters? Is it because of a basic
lack of understanding about religion itself Swamiji? Have benefit-
oriented rituals and blind faith clouded a proper understanding?
Ans: There are lot of real things. Suppose there are certain
rituals that are meant for neutralising certain problems. There is a
discipline called astrology that also can help us in some ways. So we
have a lot of things. We are a very rich and vast culture. And
therefore there will be areas where people are ignorant. In all areas
there are people who are ignorant and therefore in all areas there
can be exploiters of gullibility.
Q: Swamiji, a Christian is not ignorant of the bible, a Muslim
is not ignorant of his Quaran but when you take an average Hindu his
ignorance of his religion and scriptures is very very high . How do
you account for that Swamiji?
Ans: You don't know if every Christian is knowledgeable of
his bible or if every Muslim is knowledgeable of his Quaran but then
they all hear something about them because it is a congregational
religion. So where there is a congregational discipline naturally
there can be somebody who can explain and that advantage we don't
have. But we have some advantage also, because a Hindu imbibes from
his parents in terms of religion and culture and if he wants to know
something more he has to go to a teacher. Again the flow is vertical.
There is no lateral control. Naturally a temple is unlike a place of
assembly, like a church or a mosque where people assemble for prayer.
But here a temple is a place of worship; it is an altar of worship.
An altar of worship is entirely different from an assembly hall.
It is amazing. And being an altar of worship, anybody can
come anytime and offer his or her worship and go away. And certain
other temples may have priests and certain other temples may not have
priests. You will find in many temples in the North there are no
priests. We ourselves are priests; the devotees themselves are
priests. That is because of our concept of Isvara. It is complete, we
say every form is Isvara's form. And the world is a manifestation of
Isvara. Therefore we can invoke Isvara in any form and therefore we
have a ritual of worship. They don't have that advantage because the
world for them is created by God for your consumption and world is
not a manifestation of Isvara. World, for them, is created by God
sitting in heaven and he dropped these planets as doughnuts.
Therefore this concept being defective, they are the losers. And
therefore we should never compare Hindu religious forms to any other
form.
Q: The last two decades, politically and socially,has been
dominated by debates on Hindutva, communalism, secularism, pseudo
secularism and all these kind of jargons. Now, has this debate
reached the dead end with the fall of the BJP government at the
Centre or do you see it taking a different tone?
Ans: They were not really (the BJP) doing the propaganda of
Hindutva perhaps properly. Hindutvam also is not understood by the
one who propagates or by the one who listens to the propaganda. The
emphasis has to be recast and redone properly. There is a national
culture and it is from this land. It is our bharatiya culture and
people need to respect it. And the one who respects this culture is
the one who is a bharatiya. Therefore, we need to really talk about
our bharatiya culture, bharatiya religion and Bharat as a nation. Not
this partial secularism of not protecting the Hindu religion. We need
to protect Hindu religion, we need to protect Islam, we need to
protect Christianity and for which we should practice real
secularism. And therefore the Bharatiya Janata Party should address
itself to that secularism.
Every media, every means of propaganda, we need to make use
of to tell exactly what is secularism. And every Indian should know
this. They need to protect all religions. That means no erosion of
Hindu religion. Hindus have to be preserved, Hinduism has to be
preserved, and Hindu culture is to be preserved. It will protect him.
So allow it to thrive.
Q: All political parties eye what is called the minority vote
bank. Is the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank, the dream of many
people, is it a pipe dream or a possibility?
Ans: Why should we consolidate any one's bank? They are
consolidating their own banks. We need not consolidate but we NEED TO
KNOW that others are consolidating their votes. And the votes
consolidated are used against the people who love their religion,
their tradition, their native culture. Therefore, this is the
problem.
Q: But BJP during the last two decades rose to political power
only because of the so called Hindu consolidation on the Ayodhya
issue and various other issues and then...
Ans: Not at all. There was no Hindu consolidation at all.
They had given us certain hopes. And those hopes we want to realise.
It is a Bharatiya party. It has Nationalism. Bharatiya means it has a
certain nationalistic heart, which is having a deep reverence,
respect for our native culture, which does not mean it is against any
other religion. Love for my religion does not amount to hatred for
others. Love for your children does not mean you have hatred for
other children. But here it is interpreted like that. Love for my
religion means hatred for other religion and that is how it is
interpreted. Therefore, we need to emphasise. The Bharatiya Janata
party gave us a hope that it may represent the cause of native
cutlure, native religious protection over promotion.
Q: There have been, when the BJP was in power and even now,
so much talk about the word saffronisation of education... of
everything. Now as a person wearing saffron clothes what do you think
about the way the word is being used or misused or bandied about?
Ans: I wish they saffronise everything. They didn't
saffronise anything.(laughs) This is just a slogan, a JNU slogan and
they always make slogans, thrive on slogans and they live on slogans.
What do you mean by saffronisation? If I chant or people chant their
prayers in Sanskrit, is it safronised? Are non-saffronised people not
chanting? WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? This is all usual humbug.
Q: And finally, Swamiji, on the Kumbakonam tragedy. There are
lot of negligence theories and there are lot of conspiracy theories
too doing the rounds, but as a spiritual person how do you explain
this monumental agony from a religious perspective? Do not such
happenings make people lose faith in life itself?
Ans: See, this is a tragedy due to neglect ....
Q: That is on one side but from a spiritual and religious
angle, there is talk of karma and all those things, but that is no
comfort ...
Ans: No I don't accept karma in this thing. This is abuse of
one's free will. Karma is there because of free will. If you have no
free will there is no karma and when you abuse your free will you
can't quote karma. Only when you have used all your free will and in
spite of that if you find something happening then you say karma.
That is why it is abuse of free will and any human being can abuse
his free will, it can be negligence, it can be over confidence. It is
negligence of a lot of people, not one person. All are responsible,
there is no escaping that.
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