Hindu Pride or Vainglory?
Vainglory is not the same as pride
Hindu Pride or Vainglory?
(Gujarati version at ભારતીય સંસ્કૃતિની મહાનતા (?) and હિંદુ ગૌરવ કે મિથ્યાભિમાન?)
"One should never love America uncritically, because it is not worthy of America to be accepted uncritically," wrote editor Henry Grunwald. "The insistence on improving the U.S. is perhaps the deepest gift of love."
Henry Grunwald was the editor-in-chief of 'TIME' magazine. I would replace the words 'America' and 'U.S.' with our grand-children, our religion, culture, country etc. I would also delete the word 'perhaps'. This is why I wrote the following even though I do love Hinduiasm.
There is a lot of talk about people being pro-Hindu or anti-Hindu and objections to other people’s views or comments. We Hindus are unnecessarily very sensitive about any thing that is even remotely critical about us. This is because we are unable to distinguish between vanity, vainglory (mithya-abhiman) and pride (gaurav).
Vainglory makes us justify every thing about our culture without regard to truth and justice. True pride does not prevent us from introspection, learning from past mistakes and making changes necessary to prevent them so that we can enhance our greatness. Praising ourselves (Aho rupam aho dhvanihi) and stopping others from criticizing us does not help us in any way.
A very vivid example of the difference between vainglory and pride was provided by two US Senators. One said, “My country; right or wrong.” Another said, “My country; to be supported when right, to be corrected when wrong.”
As stated in Ishavasya Upanishad, truth is covered up by a lid, which is golden (and therefore appears to be valuable). To be able to see the truth, we must first identify the lid and discard it. The worst of all the lids that cover the truth is our mamatva, our attachment to what we consider ‘mine’ or ‘ours’ as in ‘our culture’. For an unbiased view, we must abandon this attachment and review the facts impartially.
Our great philosophy is like a diamond set in a golden ring. Unfortunately, we keep praising the rings (stories like those of Ramayana and Mahabharat) and overlook the diamond (philosophy).
We are also unable to see the truth clearly when we see it through the lenses of one ism or the other such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, capitalism, socialism etc. The seeker of truth must be willing to give up these spectacles to insure that hse can have an unobstructed view of the truth.
There are many shortcomings in the other religions which is why this writer did not convert to any of them. (Why I did not convert) There are also many good features in Hinduism and more than them there are people to boast about them. But there are very few who would care and dare to bring to our attention our own shortcomings. The greatest culture can be made even greater if at all we can give up our complacency.
Any social system, whether based on religion, economics, politics or some other consideration, must uphold truth and justice for all. It must also prevent any exploitation of the physically, intellectually, spiritually or financially weak by the strong. These are the criteria for evaluating our own successes and failures.
We Hindus claim that we are the best and then by exercising our right to be as bad as some others we forfeit that claim of being the best.
We have a great philosophy but fail to live up to it. We are supposed to see God in everybody and everybody in God and therefore not hate anybody. But in practice, we do hate and exploit not only others but even our own. We talk of angels playing where women are worshiped but then we also treat women as our property. Most, if not all, of the words we have for ‘husband’ mean ‘owner.’ Some of us even kill, without fear of social stigma, their daughters before or immediately after they are born. We say that women, along with drums, chamaars, and animals (except cows), deserve to be beaten up.
The other religions that we Hindus love to criticize, if not to hate, came into existence because we failed to spread Hinduism (or Sanaatan Dharma, as some like to call it) to the people of the Middle East. We did not care to take the Dharma to them and just brushed them off as Malechchaa or Yavana because we were too busy and happy exploiting our own Shudra and Adivasi populations. We keep boasting, ‘Hindus are born, not made.’
For centuries before McCauley introduced the British education system in our country, we had an education system that was far worse than his. It denied education to masses, stifled geniuses like Ekalavya, discouraged sincere students like Karna and made it all but impossible to preserve and develop our knowledge and skills. Our ‘great’ teachers waited all their lives for a ‘deserving’ (supatra) disciple to pass on their knowledge but did not attempt to train any young man to make him deserve the ‘vidya’. The vidya was then lost forever. We could not preserve their accomplishments let alone enhance them. As a result we ended up being ignorant descendents of knowledgeable ancestors.
India produced more great people like Gandhiji, Lokamaanya Tilak, Ravindranath Tagore, Saradar Patel, Subhashchandra Bose and countless others. between 1857 and 1947 than the all those she did before and after that period combined. Was it the fault or fruit of McCauley? We should think before we lay blame on others for our own shortcomings.
From Sahstraarjuna to Karna was a period of about 2000 years during which our ‘great’ culture could not produce even one deserving Brahmin disciple to whom Parshuram could impart his martial skills. (That vidya could have been useful for our defense against the Muslim invaders had it been available.) And Parshuram was so narrow minded that he would not teach it to a non-Brahmin student. From Ikshvaku to Arjun the longer duration made us forget the great ‘indestructible’ (avyayam) yoga. (Gita Chapter 4 verses 1 and 2). These and similar lapses cannot even be blamed on McCauley or other religions because they did not exist then.
Justice would not be served if a person likely to have been a victim of a crime were made to prove that the crime did not take place. Yet Sita was made to submit to the fire-test (Agnipariksha) jeopardizing her life. Had Ravana raped her, she would have been burnt to death for no fault of hers. But the exclusive importance we attach to a woman’s chastity overrides our sense of justice. Then again she, along with her unborn child (not knowing that she had twins), was sentenced to exile even after proving her innocence. This we justify as having been needed to set a good example on the public. How childish (naadaan) must our people have been to need punishing an innocent person for having a good role model?
We also had a system in which the eldest brother owned the other brothers and had a right to place them on bet in gambling. And this person is considered Dharmaraaj. What a shame?
These are just a few examples showing that we do need to stop boasting about our greatness, do serious introspection, identify mistakes of the past and make suitable changes to insure that they are not repeated. Justifying our mistakes and shortcomings will only prevent us from becoming greater.
Why did the outside aggressors succeed against us? The root cause lies in our caste system. In the words of the Spartan king quoted by Thucydides: “The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and fighting done by fools.” The caste system did make such a great distinction. In mythological times, its ill effects were not so devastating but in historical times they were. The defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan and destruction of Somanth temple are just two vivid examples of this disadvantage. It is high time that we realize this and abandon the caste system without further delay.