Buddha battered, dharma grounded
Sandhya Jain
http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\edit3&d=EDITS
The most
distasteful aspect of Taliban's military offensive against the Bamiyan Buddhas
and other pre-Islamic relics in Afghanistan is the ill-disguised
glee of our predatory radical secularists who have worked overtime to
subvert the significance of this civilisational assault and provide an alibi to
its perpetrators.
Delighted at this unexpected exoneration of Islamic
fundamentalism, Muslim intellectuals have jumped on the bandwagon to unjustly
equate Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism. Worst are the puerile jokes about Buddha
smiling.
By
justifying the ballistics at Bamiyan in terms of the reclamation of the Ram
Janmabhoomi by Hindus, secularists have taken unacceptable liberties with truth.
But in their haste to absolve the Taliban, they have ceded valuable ground on
the very issues they seek to fudge. Thus, by linking
Bamiyan with Ayodhya, they have held Hindus responsible for Taliban's
retribution and placed the Sakya muni firmly on the Hindu/Indic firmament,
contradicting their own canard that Buddhism is a faith separate from and
opposed to Hinduism, that was "driven out" of India by scheming
Brahmins. After all, if Buddha statues can be battered in response to Hindu
misdeeds, he must have a contemporary relevance to the community.
The Hindu tradition (scholars prefer the term Indic) reveres Buddha as an avatar
(incarnation) of Vishnu. Buddhism is rooted in India's dharmic tradition and
constitutes an essential part of the invisible yet tangible unity of the Indic
narrative. Dharma is natural (cosmic) law, and has, through the ages, assumed
various forms. It is not a static notion espousing values of a bygone era, but
accepts and adapts to change. Moreover, just as India
is a living nation, so Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism are strands of its living
civilization - the sanatan dharma (Eternal Tradition).
This civilisation is now in peril - in Kashmir, in Kerala, in the environs of
Kabul. It is in acute danger of being cannibalised by marauding hordes armed
with more deadly weapons, and even more lethal intent, than ever in the
blood-splattered past. This is why there is a stark difference in the perception
of Indians and non-Indians to the destruction of the statues. Buddhist countries
have reacted with anguish, viewing it as a humiliation of their creed; they wish
to save and retrieve the icons. The western countries, including the United
Nations, are concerned at the loss of valuable cultural heritage.
Both
have failed to perceive Taliban's action as a new, more vicious chapter in the
old civilisational conflict with India. This is why, even in the absence of a
Buddhist community there, Taliban feels sufficiently deranged by the lingering
sanctity of the images to take up cudgels against them. I hope Taliban's unpaid
envoys will not insult us with the claim that Afghanistan's miniscule Hindu-Sikh
community enjoys full freedom of religion and worship, when even today Indians
working in Gulf countries cannot carry images of their Gods with them for
private worship.
For India,
Bamiyan cuts much deeper. For us, civilisation, culture and religion are a
continuum; a strike against one is violence on the whole. When you dynamite an
icon, you wage war on Dharma itself. At Bamiyan, the wheel of Dharma (dharma
chakra) set in motion by Buddha when he proclaimed his new teaching to the world
has been grounded; the monetary or artistic value of the relics being destroyed
stands belittled before this grim truth. The Taliban and its secular allies can
claim that the desecration is retaliation for the Masjid-i-Janmasthan (Janmabhoomi
Masjid) only because Buddha is inseparable from our living spiritual tradition.
This is a universal tradition; it stands and strives for Consciousness, Truth,
Beauty, Wisdom and Compassion, and is India's true, eternal legacy to mankind.
The West - which takes its religion from Palestine and culture from the Graeco-Roman
world - must learn to appreciate this; it will need India to combat the threat
Islamic fundamentalism poses to the civilised world.
If the West is serious about such an endeavour, it must
prove its credentials by withdrawing funds and patronage to Christian
missionaries and the questionable practice of conversions; these, too, outrage
dharma. Without labouring the point, I would
like the US to introspect about the status of Native Americans living like wild
game on sanctuaries (called reserves), and the situation of Blacks since the
days of Uncle Tom's Cabin. As for European nations, the horrendous destruction
of Latin American civilisations and peoples has few parallels in history.
By the time wisdom dawned, even the most strenuous efforts by the white man
himself could not recollect the lost traditions (not save or revive, mind you),
so complete was the devastation. Octavio Paz has written of the identity crisis
gripping his society, Christianity having failed to compensate for the loss of
the old way of life. The efforts of Carlos Castaneda and his nagual (mystic)
masters do not amount to the recovery of the tradition; it is gone forever. As
for Africa, it does not even bear thinking about.
I may add that Muslim nations and intellectuals who formally condemn Taliban's
action as "un-Islamic" are engaging in subterfuge as they are
addressing an exclusively non-Islamic audience. None of them can dare raise the
issue of the destruction of Gods of another faith within the Islamic world (with
the clergy and civil society), which is where it must be debated and decided if
the world is to be spared such sacrilege again. Scholars of Islam are aware that
the community closed the doors on ijma (consensus) and ijtihad (interpretation)
centuries ago; that no dialogue has taken place in the Islamic world since,
while the clergy has intensified its stranglehold over the faithful. As the
clergy recognises only the reign of the Prophet and the first four pious Caliphs
as valid, it can hardly be persuaded to respect other faiths. Islamic society
has no secular space in which so-called liberals can operate and prevail; their
role is only to deflect attacks on and negotiate space for fundamentalists.
Before the bogey of Hindu fundamentalism is raised, let me state that in the
modern period, there is not a single issue concerning Hindu society that its
leaders have not confronted directly. Even setting aside the centuries-old
tradition of Bhakti saints and their efforts to uplift lower sections of
society, Hindus from the days of Raja Rammohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
have not hesitated to take entrenched orthodoxy head-on - be it sati, widow
re-marriage, child marriage, female infanticide, education and emancipation of
women, or more modern evils such as dowry, bride-burning, and now female
foeticide. In fact, by the time Mahatma Gandhi launched his public crusade
against Untouchability, the orthodox had already lost the capacity to fight
against reforms on the hitherto secure ground of tradition and shastric
(scriptural) sanction.
This is not to say that Hindu society has become perfect. However, all debates
and reforms in Hindu society are internal to itself and consistent with the
demands of dharma, which must renew itself in every age. We also have our share
of obscurantists. But we know how to sideline even Shankaracharyas if they
defend sati or any practice repugnant to modern sensitivities. I do not know of
a single Islamic scholar, religious divine or political leader who can debate
upon modern-day sensibilities with mullahs in Cairo (which has a pro-west benign
despotism that deals harshly with fundamentalism), leave alone Kabul.
This
is what makes the equation of non-existent Hindu fundamentalism with doctrinaire
Islam so obnoxious.
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