When you go to sleep, grandpa, where does your beard rest, outside your shawl or under it?” queried the kid curious. And that was the end of grandpa’s peaceful sleep. He had never bothered about it. Where indeed did he leave the beard—above or under the shawl? And where he ought to, ideally, now that he had no escape from consciously deciding it?
For more than a year the would-be mothers in the labour rooms of several hospitals in Rajasthan felt a calm relief from their pain listening to a certain recorded chanting synthesised with tender music played exclusively for them. They did not bother about its identity. But the poise ended a few days ago. Some non-Hindu “activists” suddenly identified that chanting to be Gayatri, a Hindu mantra. They are up against that non-secular practice. I am afraid the would-be mothers from the complaining community will now begin to suspect their own peace: Was that real or legitimate?
Years ago, during a meeting in Kolkata organised by the Sahitya Akademi to celebrate the centenary of the epoch-making song “Bande Mataram”, this author in his inaugural address paid a warm tribute to Maulvi Liaquat Hossain, a leader who inspired hundreds of Hindu and Muslim youths to follow him singing that song in a daily ritual of processions during the Swadeshi era. A noted non-Hindu leader on the dais applauded enthusiastically at my observation that there were occasions when a term could be the symbol of a great cause and that vibrant and living term must not be vivisected later and divested of its historic glory.
A little later a well-known professor, a “secular Hindu”, questioned, in the course of his speech, how can we expect the people of a particular religion to look upon the land as the mother—today! I did not mind the aforesaid leader applauding this time too—and with a broad smile to boot—but what pained me was the professor’s emphasis on “today”. We are the makers of today. And if we decided to destroy something noble that was achieved yesterday, are we justified simply because we did so “today”?
How practical and how wise it will be if the non-Hindus and the “secular Hindus” did not confuse the treasures of our heritage with Hindu religion as they understand or interpret it today.
The mantra is a synthesis of sound, word and a certain occult power that had been infused into that combination in a remote past when intuitive wisdom and sublime inspiration, not rational mind, ruled our consciousness. We may dismiss the element of occult power. But can we dispute that every sound and word had its effect on us— and the difference in effect due to the intensity of emotion behind the word uttered? The only question that awaits a subjective experience is whether a certain word or sound could be permanently charged with a certain power. But why bother about that if the chanting of Gayatri produced the expected result? We all know that the Vedic mantras were articulated by the legendary Rishis long before the people were called Hindus. Today’s Hindus cannot—and surely they do not —claim monopoly over them any more than they could claim over Yoga or meditation. These are our nation’s, rather humanity’s heritage. Ayurveda cannot be shunned by the non-Hindus because of its Hindu origin nor the Unani can be dismissed by the Hindus because the medieval Muslim physicians brought the system from Byzantine Greece.
The irony is, the “secular” Hindu politicians, suffering from some strange complex, alienate the others from this heritage through their bizarre self-righteous conduct. An example: This happened on 22 October 1998. The then Education Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, convened a conference of the education ministers of all the states. But the moment the hymn to Saraswati was sung to give the programme a solemn start, all the ministers belonging to parties except the one that was at the Centre stood up and demonstrating most ill-educated gestures as the newspapers showed, walked away aborting the event. Had these gentlemen been educated they would have realised that a brief traditional invocation in vogue for centuries was least likely to demolish their secularism. Obviously their sole intention was to proclaim an artificial idealism and embarrass the convenor. This they did by projecting their ignorance on a majestic aspirational prayer. Alas, these guardians of education were ignorant of the pre-religious, spiritual significance of the Saraswati concept.
True, the Hindus worship Saraswati. But the Hindus also worship the sun in the Gayatri and in so many other hymns. Does the sun thereby become an exclusive Hindu heritage, to be shunned by the rest of humanity? The Hindus continue proving with a vengeance that the Ganga is their deity, offering her homage every evening at Varanasi and Haridwar. Had that prevented varieties of non-Hindus from using and, like the Hindus too, polluting its waters as they pleased? Well, the Himalaya too is a deity for the Hindus.
If the “secular Hindu” intellectuals were serious in their idealism, let them try broadening the outlook of our non-Hindu brothers and sisters so that they do not disown their national heritage by looking at them through over-sensitive glasses. The secular intellectuals should also divert their zeal to try lift the orthodox Hindu society from the pit of casteism where it tends to dwell perpetually, thanks to the
current leaders of all ideological hues.
Manoj Das
Eminent author and recipient of several awards including the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship
Email: prof.manojdas@gmail.com