We, human beings are very fond
of looking at mirrors. It gives us
pleasure and pride. We, i.e. most of us,
look at our faces in the mirror and feel that we are beautiful and great. This
self esteem, if not self glory, is essential for continuing with our lives.
However good we may feel looking at our images in the
mirror, this itself is not guarantee that others who look at our faces will
also feel the same or modify their opinion to suit our perception of our
beauty, both physical and inner.
In India there is a tendency to feel great when some foreigners
praise us for our culture, history, dress, eating habits etc. Yes, we should feel good if others
appreciating us. But that itself does not mean that only we are great or that
we are the greatest. We should feel
comfortable to appreciate all kinds of life and all kinds of opinion about our
life.
We come across many comments that there are so many
Americans or Europeans who have chosen to follow Hinduism or Indian life-styles
and they know that our civilization is great and only many Indians do not
realize this. ON this ground alone we condemn many Indians that it is a shame
that they do not appreciate our own culture. This is also a kind of chauvinism. Those who hold the opinion that because some
people of foreign origin respect and follow Hinduism, we Indians also should
respect and follow Hinduism.
There can be another perspective. There are many countries where Buddhism is
followed by Millions. Some of these are Japan, China, Tibet, Korea, Burma
etc. Their hold Buddha in high esteem
and consider the places connected with Buddhism as Holy. Any person from India reminds them of
Buddha. They sometimes express respect
for Buddha by bowing to Indians they come across only for the fact that we
belong to the land of Buddha.
If the logic and reason of expecting Indians to follow and
respect Hinduism simple because many foreigners follow Hinduism is
correct, it would also be correct to
expect that simply because millions of Buddhists around the world follow
Buddhism, Indians should also respect and follow Buddhism in India. This argument
about foreigners following Hinduism and Indians not following Buddhism is
illiberal. Every citizen of the world is
free to follow any religion of his choice and we all belong to a meta-religion
called Humankind.
There is also another kind of argument. This goes like this:- Millions of Indians follow
a religion which originated in Arab countries.
They are loyal to the culture of Arab countries. They are not loyal to the country in which
they live (i.e. India). They should
accept and live like second class citizens.
This logic is also flawed, if not on the grounds of rights of man, but
only on the grounds of pragmatism.
Remember, there are hundreds of thousands of Indian Hindus who live in
countries where the majority of the citizens follow a different religion. (In fact, if we taken the population of the
world, Hindus may be a minority). If other citizens of the countries in which Indian
Hindus live also insist that Indian Hindus are betraying their National Culture
by following Hinduism, would it be acceptable to particularly those preaching
cultural nationalism in India ?
Recently one Arab country has announced that it would
permit construction of a Hindu Temple in its territory. This in itself is good. This has been facilitated by the efforts of Hindus
living in that country, Govt. of India and even the Prime Minister of India. This negates the concept of cultural
nationalism. There should not be any
hesitation in accepting this. We cannot
live in isolation in this world, particularly want to be a global economic
power. IT comes its own cultural
responsibilities or the goal of global economic power cannot be realized with
the kind of tribal sentiments of religious identity.
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