Hinduism, the world’s oldest and third largest religion (globally 1.2 billion adherents, with 95% living in India) is at crossroads. On one side we are seeing a revival of Hindu pride in its hoary past – people are coming out of their slumber, of their slave mentality after ten centuries of battering by Islam and later Christian colonial powers, to claim what is rightfully theirs – a glorious history! On the other hand, Hindu society is facing a sharp reaction to its awakening – as if Hindu thought and beliefs are a threat to the world, particularly Islam, Christianity, and the ‘left influenced’, self-proclaimed ‘champions’ of liberalism and humanity. We are seeing a very concerted effort by vested interests, particularly in the US academia, to denigrate Hinduism and highlight the cast-related fault lines. These efforts are fanned by some ‘Dalit scholars’ who want their share in the sun by talking only about the negative. This trend is further facilitated by ‘social media platforms’ that blow such incidents out of proportion or give out-of-proportion importance to such ‘news’! The anti-India stance of ‘main frame’ media like the once much-respected newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, news channels like BBC and Al-Jazeera, etc only adds to the negativity.

What Hindu bashers conveniently overlook is that Hindu society is an ancient one and some of these fault lines might have existed for thousands of years. Indian civilization belongs to an era when all good Texans and the Boston Brahmins were still living in caves. Over a 10,000-year journey, society is bound to accumulate some garbage. We have become aware of the stink and the process to remove the garbage has started! Free Indian Society is still a ‘work in progress’ story and it takes years, even centuries of education to erase these scars! History of the US is just 5 centuries old, the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln 160 years old, and the Civil Rights Act of John Kennedy almost six decades old, and yet, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement shook the US (and several parts of the West) as recently as 2020! The racism, discrimination, and inequality experienced by black people in an ‘emancipated’ and ‘free’, ‘progressive’ American society is something our biased academics and ‘self-proclaimed liberals’ fail to talk about or feel ashamed about! Not just African – Americans, but even people of Latin and Asian ethnicity have to bear the brunt of ‘white supremacist groups’ in the US. Our ‘liberals’ are not even talking about the horrendous treatment meted out to the ‘indigenous Native Americans’ or the ‘Red Indians’ (First Nation in Canada) in North America who are still living in ‘reservations’. Unmarked graves of ‘indigenous children’ living in Church administered ‘residential’ schools are being discovered even today (since the 1990s) in Canada. It is a shame that such intellectuals are denigrating India! Talk of double standards!

How to fight this negativity so deliberately being fuelled by vested interests? The best course is to first look within to sort out our own mess before attacking those who criticize us. This approach shall help reduce, if not remove entirely the nidus for such biases and negativity. I wish to put forth a few suggestions for the Hindu intelligentsia:

• Getting Rid of Our Chains: Accepting and acknowledging a fault is the first step towards rectification. Right at the outset, let me acknowledge that even seven decades since we got political independence, Hindu samaj continues to be undermined by gross inequalities within. There is a need for serious introspection and reform in our society to meet contemporary challenges. The fault lines of High Caste-Low Caste, Brahmin-Harijan-Dalit-- Backward castes, and similar inequalities continue to divide us and keep us down. I was shocked to read in a newspaper that the ‘upper’ caste youth in a village objected to a ‘lower’ caste groom riding a horse. In today’s date and time, this is utter nonsense, inconceivable and unforgivable. It is episodes like this that give Hindu bashers like Audrey Truschke a stick to raise the bogey of Brahminical Tyranny by falsifying our history. Unfortunately, our Indian-origin Hindu bashers like Arundhati Roy and the left-oriented ‘historians’ like Romila Thapar and Ram Guha have twisted the narrative of India; it has become ‘chic’ to denigrate Hindus and thereby earn social media brownie points and social media ‘likes’! Nobody is looking at the progress India has made in the last seven decades in overcoming social barriers. While eating in a restaurant or ordering food from a restaurant, does anyone care about the name or caste, or religion of the cook or the waiter serving food or that of the food-delivery person who comes home? In towns and cities, does anyone care which caste/ community his neighbor belongs to? A look at the emerging social fabric tells the story of how these barriers are getting broken by our children. My son married a colleague of Oriya-Telegu origin. Another KP friend’s sons married girls of Tamil and Malayali origin respectively! A proud Maratha Chit Pavan Brahmin friend’s son married a Malayali Orthodox Christian girl. The chains are weakening and losing their relevance. In another few decades, Indian society shall be much more harmonized, with fewer caste/ region/religion-induced biases.
  
  Likewise, abhorrent ‘traditions’ like female infanticide, dowery demands, ostentatious wastage of money during marriages, and insistence on male progeny from the daughter-in-law, these termites are eating into our vitals. I agree much progress has been made in these fields since independence yet a lot more remains to be done. Here, I see the role that can be played by the ‘Sant Samaj’. India has lakhs of Sadhu-Sanyasis who can play a vital role in transforming our society – like what Swami Dayanand Saraswati did in the 19th Century. Our Sant Samaj too shall need to set their personal egos aside and come down from their lofty thrones. We need savants and scholars like the late Jagadguru Sri Jayendra Saraswathi and Shankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham. His pathbreaking efforts at reforming the Hindu Society became a challenge for the political establishment which revels in dividing the society.
   

• Appealing to the rational minds of our children: We need to invite the attention of our younger generation towards scientific Hinduism, its correct history, traditions, and practices. That alone can keep the Hindu thought alive in the coming generations. I am today seeing the impact my late father’s guidance had on my children – he introduced them to the how and why of Hindu practices, to various concepts and science behind those, at an early age. Today, my daughter, living in Canada is a practicing Hindu because of the respect she developed for our culture right from her childhood. My son, an IT professional, and his non-KP wife conducted the Shivratri Pooja on their own since I am away in the US. Such kind of family guidance, sans coercion but based on logic and understanding stays with a child lifelong. I am astounded at the kind of impact an institution called Vivekanand Vidyapith, New Jersey, US had had on hundreds of young minds over the last four decades. It has succeeded in kindling their interest in scientific Hindu thought and practices, living thousands of miles away from India. Every parent needs to take interest in the cultural upbringing of his/ her child! That is the best possible mode of sustaining our way of life – molding the minds of children by exposing the best in Hinduism and its practices!
   

• Temple Reform: Unfortunately, most of the Hindu Temples and religious institutions are under Govt control. It is skewed ‘secularism’ if only revenue from Hindu temples is controlled by the governments while bodies controlling Muslim, Christian, and Sikh institutions function independently. Hindu temples need to be freed from Govt Control for better management. A tough call, given the sheer number of temples we have and the diverse rituals we have across the country. I remember visiting one of Hinduism’s most sacred shrines – Jaganath Puri a few years back and was shocked to see the cavalier, almost high-handed behavior of priests and their thirst for squeezing every penny from the pilgrims. The sacred ‘prasad’ of the temple was being handled in the most unhygienic manner. Similar experiences at Rani Rashmoni’s Temple, just across the Belur Math, Kolkata, and numerous other shrines have almost shattered my belief in ‘rituals and the way they are performed. Here, I wish our authorities would look at the functioning of Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, Katra(J&K). I am a first-hand witness of the miracle wrought by a visionary administrator, the late Sh Jagmohan Malhotra, then the Governor of J&K, who took a bold step in 1986 to revamp the functioning of the Shrine and, in the process, lift the economy of the entire region. The revenue generated from temples, if channeled back, can lift not just the institutions but their entire hinterland. Temple reform obviously shall mean better upkeep and maintenance of the shrine. Nowhere is it illustrated better than at the Vaishno Devi Shrine or, at the Golden Temple, Amritsar. Maharaja Gulab Singh, the first ruler of J&K, had constituted a Dharmarth Trust in 1846 as an endowment for religious charity; to manage and support Hinduism through corrections. For several years, this Trust supported and regulated priests of various Hindu Temples in Kashmir, besides managing the day-to-day affairs of various temples. Kings and rulers across India had set up such endowments with very generous donations in cash, kind, and land – the Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple of Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), arguably the richest religious place in the world, was supported by the erstwhile royal family of Travancore.
   

• Reforms in Priesthood: Traditionally, priesthood used to be a hereditary responsibility; technical qualification/ skill was more experience based. Means of earning were uncertain. We need to evolve the concept of priests on salary, and give them proper education and training so that they can perform their role as per society’s requirements! Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, conducts proper courses for Pandits with a well-defined curriculum, like any other job-oriented course. I am sure there can be other institutions conducting similar courses across the country. These can be brought under some kind of UGC control for uniformity. It can also open up the field for entry of women and people from the ‘non-priestly classes’ including from neglected communities of Hindu Society. If an All-India Dharmasthan Board is constituted, it can ensure regular salaries and other perks for priests to help them sustain themselves. I have seen the number of Guru Ji’s (Gour) amongst KPs dwindle due to the reluctance of children to follow in the footsteps of their fathers.
   

• Standardize Pooja Vidhi: This obviously is part of the overall reforms. Pooja not only needs to be standardized but also simplified to meet current socio-economic requirements. For example, if a person in the KP community passes away, his son is expected to be ‘off duty’ for a minimum of 13-15 days post-death. He has to perform major rituals on the 10th, 11th, and 12th day. In current job situations (and work postings), getting such long leave may or might not be possible. Most of our rituals involve the liberal use of fresh water, pooja material, and flowers which, after the pooja are supposed to be immersed in flowing waters. I performed the ‘shraad’ (Vehervaer – first death anniversary) ceremony of my late mother at Vadodara and since the pandit ji insisted that all the material, including ‘nermaal’ or water used during pooja be immersed in flowing water, I had to arrange a vehicle to ferry the material to a river about 40 km from my residence. After every pooja, visarjan of the flowers becomes a problem – in Vadodara, we had a few ponds and an artificial lake but, in the last two years, due to a cleansing campaign, visarjan of used flowers in those ponds is being discouraged. This, naturally, has a restraining effect on the entire pooja. There is a need for a serious re-look at our religious rituals, and the way those are performed and observed. Hinduism has a very flexible outlook termed,” Desh, Kal Anusar” meaning that everything is subject to the country/ place you are in and the time constraints – meaning thereby that rituals are subject to change. Our scholars need to work out new methods to suit new environmental requirements. I recall one of my relatives had to perform the wedding of her daughter in Vancouver, Canada; owing to a fire alarm in the entire province of British Columbia, they were not allowed to light a fire for the pooja – they had to make do with a symbolic gesture! Such difficulties are likely in several forms and formats in the coming times too!
   

• Changing the Mindset from LCM to HCF: One of the most unfortunate tragedies of Hindu Samaj is its fractured structure. We are a highly divided society, influenced by our caste, sub-caste, sub-sub caste, community (Brahmin, Yadav/Jaat/Baniya/Thakur, etc), region (Shimla vs Kangra, Sambhalpur vs Cuttack and similar), our state (South vs North, Tamil vs all others, Punjabi vs Bengali, etc). Being a society with a very ancient history and roots, some the fault-lines are expected. These fissures have further been widened and deepened by our unscrupulous politicians over the last 70 years. They thrive by dividing society to eke out an electoral victory. Yet time has come for the Hindu Samaj to look at the Highest Common Factor (HCF) instead of the Lowest Common Multiple (LCM). Our sheer numbers are our strength and commonality of interest shall make the venomous politicians perform acrobatics as though hit by a Cruciatus Curse or an Imperious Curse!
   

• Encouraging Ghar Wapsi: This is one of the priorities that need planning, skill, and patience. Bringing back Hindus who got converted to Islam or Christianity due to various inducements needs a team of very efficient, well-trained, and dedicated volunteers who can, with reason and without fear bring back those who fell astray. Tribals, North East populace, and backward and economically weaker segments are quite prone to inducements, and missionaries in the garb of educationists, medical treatment teams, and social counselors are experts at nibbling away at our vulnerable spots.

Removing or reducing our own weaknesses shall leave less space for the ‘biased brigade’ to criticize Hindus. To fight them on their own turf, we need serious researchers of the Dr. Vikram Sampath type and presenters like Rajiv Malhotra. The ‘murky brigade’ shall always be back with new toolkits, fresh falsehoods, and half-truths; their game is to ‘discredit’ or defame the pro-Indic scholars. The new trick among academicians to stifle dissenters is to call their work plagiarism. It is an easy cop-out to smear their name in the community without revealing bigoted motives! It happened with Rajiv Malhotra and is playing out with Dr. Vikram Sampath. Since it is a war of the minds, of mind games, of confronting myths and fabricated ‘history’ with irrefutable facts, it needs to be fought in that space itself. As Ms. Ayn Rand wrote half a century back,” In order to win, the rational side of any controversy requires its goals to be understood; it has nothing to hide since reality is its ally. The irrational side has to deceive, confuse, evade, to hide its goals. Fog, murk, and blindness are not the tools of reason; these are the tools of irrationality. Ideas cannot be fought except by means of better ideas. The battle consists, not of opposing, but of exposing; not of denouncing, but of disproving; not of evading, but of boldly proclaiming a full, consistent, and radical alternative.”

Hinduism has often been called a way of living rather than an organized religion in the traditional sense. It is so flexible that it allows an individual to find his set of beliefs without imposing any dogma or thought. In a family, you can have members worshiping different deities without anyone feeling bad; you can even be a non-believer (naastik or atheist) and yet live in peace, without treading on anyone’s toes. You visit a temple, that is your choice; you don’t visit – nobody takes offense. This is the essence of individual freedom of choice! Not without reason has the Sanatan Dharma survived over the last several thousand years; it has survived aggressors, bigots, brigands, and hordes of missionaries in different garbs. Hinduism has never proselytized or induced conversions; it has never been a threat to any other thought or belief process. I am sure it shall come through the current set of challenges by reinventing itself and adapting to the changing scenario.