Hindu Tolerance
©Prakash John Mascarenhas. This page is Copyright.
2nd Revision 11th May 2002. 3rd Revision 24th October 2003. See the original here.
The Hindus make a song and dance of their tolerance of others. In matter of fact, their record speaks against them.
The history of Hindu India is the history of the invasion of India by the Aryan Hindus, their colonization, enslavement of its native people and their de-humanization. Today, the Hindu Nazis like to pretend that the Aryans were indigenous to India, born as a result of a local, social reform movement. However, their own historical records belie this modern invented history.
The ancient histories of the Aryans, and thus of the Hindus, identify the original homeland of the Aryans as being what is called the
Uttara (or
Northern) Kuru. This land is recognized as being outside of the lands that the Aryans latter settled, what became India and Iran. In both Hinduism and Buddhism, this tradition of Uttara Kuru is taken up, and that country is idealized as a paradisical land, to which the souls of the "virtuous" departed repair in order to enjoy their rewards.
But there is yet another incident recorded in the ancient Aryan histories which also belies this modern invented history - it is the fact that the Aryans, when they invaded the Gangetic plains for the first time, from the Indus, found it populated with sophiticated and civilized Nagas. The record goes on to say that the Aryans did not have the art or technology to build cities as the Nagas had, and so they utilized the services of a captured Naga architect, a Prisoner-of-War, to design the first Aryan city in the Gangetic plains - Hastinapura — the forerunner of the latter city of Dilika, modern Delhi!
The Nagas were overwhelmed by the brutal Aryan invaders. One segment fled eastwards to modern Nagalim, Burma, Yunnan, etc., while remnants survived in the Gangetic plains and made sporadic efforts to regain their lost glory and pre-eminence. The last recorded effort happened during the time of the Mauryan Empire, and the Mauryan emperor (Ajatshatru?) is recorded to have put them down brutally and expelled them to slave colonies in what is now Vidarbha (British Berars), by what is now the Naga river, and where the city of Nagpur (Nagapuram) presently stands. Since then, the Naga remnant in Peninsular India and in the Gangetic plains have been extinguished and never again made an effort to rebel...
The Aryans not only colonized India, they even deliberately degraded the conquered pre-Aryan Indians in order to prevent their recovery of the dominion over India. The Hindu "Scriptures" forbade learning to these enslaved peoples, whom they denigrated as "Shudra" and "Malich" or "Mlechhas", and mandated savage punishments if they did. That is why the Kshatriya, Rama, Prince of Koshal, murdered Tsambuk the Shudra at the Brahmins' urging, for having taken to religion.
Due to the racist, misanthropic and xenophobic attitude of the Aryans, the Nagas, once a sophisticated, urbane people, were degraded and reduced to a savage, barbarous people at the time of the European Contact, subsequent to the landing of Vasco da Gama. The Nagas in Nagalim, divided between the Indian Union's and Burma's possessions, are something like a total of about twenty-four distinct nations, each with its own distinct language. And yet, they are reduced to inhabitating only a small corner of the Patkai Mountains!
The English explorers in the former Thai Kingdom of Asom, which they liberated from the Burmese Empire, found the Nagas a savage, head-hunting people. A far cry from the civilized, city-dwellers that the Aryans first encountered! This is what the impact of the Aryans have done to the Nagas!
The early history of Hinduism is dominated by the rivalry of the two highest castes - the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, vying for supremacy. Thrice, Kshatriya led reforms resulted in schisms from Hinduism and the formation of new religions - Zorastrianism, Jainism and Buddhism. In Iran, the Kshatriyas entirely eliminated the Brahmins. In India, the Brahmins came to dominate society, and, in order to keep it subjugated, guided the Kshatriyas to continously war among themselves, carving India into a thousand petty principalities.
The History of Hinduism is rife with bitter, savage fights, mainly between the rival sects of Vaishnav and Shaiva, with Brahma counting for practically nothing - both parties identifying the later invention of the super god even over the highest triad or
Trimurti of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, the super god called variously the
Param-Atma (Super-Soul) and the
Brahma-Atma (Universal Soul) or in short, the
Brahmaan, with their own favourite of the gods of the triad, Vishnu or Shiva. The adherents of each sect perpetrated horrenduous pogroms against their rivals.
Again, after the restoration of Hinduism, the Hindus were riven into two rival sects of
Advaitwad and
Dvaitwad - Monism and Dualism. The Monists affirm that all souls, even the purported 'souls' of sticks and stones, vehicles, machines, plants and animals, are broken off fragments of the Universal Soul, the latter invented god
Brahmaan, and thus in themselves gods, while the Dualists affirm that these souls are really separate, not part of the Divine Substance but merely creatures.
Again, Hindu Intolerance was not entirely internal. It also found expression in xenophobia.
The Aryan Hindus derided the native Indians - the Negroid
Dravidians of the Indus river basin, and the Mongoloid
Nagas of the Gangetic basin and their religions and rites as demons and snakes (
nagas) and demonic, and ruthlessly conquered, enslaved and massacred them. That attitude still survives today. For e.g., see the article
The Hindu Diaspora In Suriname.
Again, the Hindus brutually persecuted the
Jains and Buddhists, as they also did the Christians when Christianity first came to India, until the spreading Muslim conquest took away from them the power to do so. [I have in my possession a Jain book which recounts how the Hindus, under Sankaracharya, persecuted the Jains, and had Jain literature destroyed. In Brajdesh, boatloads of Jain literature were sunk in the river, in order to destroy the Jain religin...]
It is true that at times, Hindu kings have solicited and permitted Christians to settle in their lands and turned a blind eye to the missionary endeavour. However, this is not due to the mythical Hindu virtue of tolerance, but because of personal pragmaticism.
Kings permitted Christians to settle as part of a general effort to increase and maximise their revenues by opening more land to agriculture and husbandry, and these invitations were not specifically directed to or restricted to Christians.
In other cases, kings permitted missionaries into their kingdoms out of ignorance of the offense that the missionary endeavour would cause to the native pagans. When, however, this became apparent, the kings expelled or forbade entry, where possible, and missionaries had to enter 'illegally' or with the help of the then Christian powers - such as Portugal, Spain, France, etc. in order to fulfil the commandment of God to preach the truth and salvation to souls.
© Prakash John Mascarenhas