Don8217;t defile us

How could they defile Christian graves on our soil? How can any of us enduresuch wickedness in modern India? These are the ways of barbari...

How could they defile Christian graves on our soil? How can any of us enduresuch wickedness in modern India? These are the ways of barbarian invaders inmedieval times, whose holy book told them to go smash graven images. Whydon8217;t Hindus remember that here faith is a reason to create beauty, notdestroy it. Above all, this is a faith that is supposed to mind its ownbusiness. That is the unwritten Hindu covenant with God, a covenant found insome fairly gristly stories that co-exist with High Philosophy.

So it is not a Hindu8217;s concern if others worship Yahweh or Elohi, a maledeity who appoints Moses his prophet but comes to kill him at night becausehe has not circumcised his son. A deity who is appeased only when Zipporahseizes a flint, cuts her baby and flings his foreskin down. It is not aHindu8217;s concern if the greatest hero in the Hebrew Bible, King David, doesnothing to punish his son Amnon for raping his daughter Tamar.

It is no skin off a Hindu8217;s nose if Lot offers his two virgin daughters tobe gang-raped by the Sodomites to buy protection for the two male angelssheltering in his house. Or if Jephtah sacrifices his only child Seila toElohi, after his victory over the Ammonites. And why must a Hindu care ifNaomi tells her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth to sleep with a rich clansman,Boaz, so that she may benefit by a levirate marriage like the chadar ofNorth India by which a younger brother weds the elder8217;s widow? Or condemnthe Gibeah Outrage, in which a man gave his wife to a mob to save himself,and then dismembered her to spark off a tribal war of attrition? Perhapssuch stories were hidden political propaganda against King Saul by theDavidists?

The fact is, be it the Vedas or the Bible, or the dead traditions of thegoddess Ashtoreth, everybody has a right to their stories, which their ownpeople must question. It is both unseemly and rude for one faith to decrythe other. We are too uncomfortably alike, underneath: if Hindus substitutecoconuts for human heads in sacrifice, Christ is ceremonially eaten withwafer and wine in Christian ritual with the words, quot;This is my body andthis, my bloodquot;.

Thus it is that all our old patriarchal faiths have dark, terrifying sidesthat their adherents systematically try to sanitise, because such storiesdid not suit later world views and self images. But each scripture is adetailed map of the human heart with all its twists and turns throughsunshine and shadow. If, like Sartre, we have a quot;God-sized holequot; in us,which makes us desperate to fill it anyhow, we can understand the drive ofthe People of the Book to convert unbelievers8217; to their point of view, tomake fast, bind and secure. However, since the rules of the world havechanged and Hindus are a political entity now as unpleasant as any Semitictribal configuration or colonial empire, perhaps it is best for allconcerned that conversions are not attempted here by anybody on anybody.

As for those who voluntarily choose to convert, surely that is their ownbusiness, too, as Hindus8217; must realise. Defiling the graves of the dead isnot the right way to tell non-Hindus to lay off and mind their own business.Freedom of choice is the living essence of being Hindu, even if it isSanatana Dharma itself being rejected.

The Isa Upanishad 6 rams the point home further:Yas tu sarvani bhutaniatmany evanu pashyati Sarva bhuteshu chaatmanam tato na vijugupasteyAnd he who sees all beings in his own self and his own self in all beings,he does not feel any revulsion, because this is the way he thinks! Heshrinks from nothing, because he sees the One Self in others. So what isleft to hate?