‘Buddhism with its exaggerated emphasis on quiescence & the quiescent virtue of self-abnegation, its unwise creation of a separate class of quiescents & illuminati, its sharp distinction between monks & laymen implying the infinite inferiority of the latter, its all too facile admission of men to the higher life and its relegation of worldly action to the lowest importance possible stands at the opposite pole from the gospel of Srikrishna and has had the very effect he deprecates; it has been the author of confusion and the destroyer of the peoples.

Under its influence half the nation moved in the direction of spiritual passivity & negation, the other by a natural reaction plunged deep into a splendid but enervating materialism. As a result our race lost three parts of its ancient heroic manhood, its grasp on the world, its magnificently ordered polity and its noble social fabric.

It is by clinging to a few spars from the wreck that we have managed to perpetuate our existence, and this we owe to the overthrow of Buddhism by Shankaracharya. But Hinduism has never been able to shake off the deep impress of the religion it vanquished; and therefore though it has managed to survive, it has not succeeded in recovering its old vitalising force.

The practical disappearance of the Kshatriya caste (for those who now claim that origin seem to be with a few exceptions Vratya Kshatriyas, Kshatriyas who have fallen from the pure practice and complete temperament of their caste) has operated in the same direction.

The Kshatriyas were the proper depositaries of the gospel of action. But when the Kshatriyas disappeared or became degraded, the Brahmins remained the sole interpreters of the Bhagavadgita, and they, being the highest caste or temperament and their thoughts therefore naturally turned to knowledge and the final end of being, bearing moreover still the stamp of Buddhism in their minds, have dwelt mainly on that in the Gita which deals with the element of quiescence.

Time, however, in its revolution is turning back on itself and there are signs that if Hinduism is to last and we are not to plunge into the vortex of scientific atheism and the breakdown of moral ideals which is engulfing Europe, it must survive as the religion for which Vedanta, Sankhya &Yoga combined to lay the foundations, which Srikrishna announced & which Vyasa formulated.

– Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings.

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Imagine an India where after hundreds of years of dogged resistance the Hindus fail to rise again. Imagine the end of the fourteenth century – a Delhi laid waste by the invasions of Timur and the horrors that lay in his wake. Imagine no renaissance of the warrior clans in Rajasthan under Rana Kumbha and the raising of the tower of victory. Imagine no resurgence in the south under the inspirational leadership of the Sangama brothers to create the golden empire of Vijaynagar. Imagine no hosts of fearless Sadhus and Saints traversing the subcontinent spreading the message of dharma and bhakti.

Imagine there was no empire of the Gajapati kings in Orrisa or the Ahoms in Assam giving the Mughals a resounding defeat in 1671. Imagine a land beaten down by the forces of Islamic Imperialism after centuries of struggle and bloodshed eventually falling by the 1400’s to the Crescent banner of the Arabs and Turks. Is it so hard to imagine ?

 Then look back upon history and see the rise of the Sassanian Empire in Persia – the inheritors of the Parthians who faced the might of the Roman Empire at its peak defeating the legions under Marcus Crassus – the same Sassans under their Emperor Shapur who defeated the Roman Emperor Valerian at the Battle of Edessa in 260 CE and after capturing him  used him as a footstool for the remainder of his captivity.

The Sassans who faced the Byzantines in perpetual conflict and turned Zoarasterism into a state religion.The rise of the Arabic Islamic Caliphate put an end to the once mighty Sassanids – from 633 CE to the final elimination of their remnants by the Ninth Century – the imposition of the Jizya, the submission of the majority non Muslims to dhimmi status led the eventual collapse of the ancient religion of Zoroaster with their scattered remnants fleeing from persecution to India.

Further west, the once all encompassing Hellenic culture which produced Socrates, Aristotle, Democritus, Plato and many others fell to the missionary zeal of early Christianity. The Byzantines became the vanguard of the Eastern Church and soon the great library of Alexandria fell together with the Oracle of Delphi and the destruction of the Sybylline books. the ancient lands of Egypt, West Asia and Greece were Christianised by the fifth century of the Common Era and the banning of the practice of ‘Pagan’ religions and the smashing of their temples led to an almost total Christianisation of the region by the early sixth century CE.

Their great rivalry with the Sassanids of Persian was partly predicated upon religious rivalry between the church and advocates of the fire temples of Zoaraster. Both were however eclipsed by the rise the Islamic Caliphate. With remarkable energy and speed the once glorious Sassanids fell into oblivion and the Imperial cult of Zoarasterianism was reduced within generations to the a few scattered remnants far from the scenes of their once exalted status.

Within a few hundred years and the decline of the Byzantines in the face of determined Arab followed by Turk incursions the majority of the region converted to Islam and in a few generations became amongst the most fanatical votaries of their new faith.

In the vast open regions of Central Asia lay the fabled Silk Route. Mighty Empires rose and fell and the wild horse borne archers of the steppes were feared for the skill and ruthlessness. Over all ruled the benign image of the Buddha – the quintessential image of peace and serenity created a curious dichotomy between the  nomadic tribesmen and the practitioners of non violence.

The great statues of Bamiyan, the organised and missionary activities of the Sangha led to whole masses of the population becoming Buddhists under the tutelage of the monks vestiges of which we can still see in the societies of Burma, Sri Lanka and Tibet. The grant empire of the Kushans which lay straddled across the Silk route saw the Emperors venerating the Buddha and facilitating his message acorss the face of the known world.

In 634 the Battle of Talas heralded the defeat of the Chinese empire by the Arabs and gradual Arab penetration and Islamisation of the region. Within a few centuries the Buddhists were fleeing eastward and towards India – those that remained saw the graven images of ‘But’ being flung to the ground and trampled underfoot as the advocates of the desert faith called the faithful to prayer. Today hardly an echo of the ancient faith of Buddhism remains in the region which can be most clearly seen in the once Buddhist stronghold of Afghanistan.

An Arab invasion stormed into Sindh in 666 CE before a determined Hindu coalition under the legendary Bappa Rawal defeated them in the Battle of Rajasthan in 738 CE bringing to an end the eastward expansion of the Caliphate, much like the westward expansion being stopped at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel in 732 CE.

The aforesaid conversion of Central Asia led the incursions of the Turk tribes westward to fight the Crusaders and further to the east towards the fabled land of India. Centuries of resistance were eventually overcome and the kings of the frontiers known as the Hindu Shahis fell.A veritable tide of bloodshed that had few parallels in history followed. Into this cauldron of bloodletting the multi ethnic and multi religious region of South Asia was subjected to an orgy of violence and hatred that beggars few comparisons in history. Echoes of this carnage can be seen in the endless wanderings and sufferings of the ‘Gypsies’ around the world as they fled fleeing from India to escape the horrors.

The ancient seats of learning of Nalanda and Taxila were razed to the ground and the monks massacred in the sacred premises where students from across three continents would come to learn. Stupas, Temples and Holy sites were leveled to the ground or converted into mosques. Swathes of people bereft of their political and spiritual leadership were converted to the faith of the invaders.

The Buddhists seemed to be particularity susceptible in this case with their population bereft of guidance following the destruction of the stupas and the slaying of the monks. The once widespread religion of the Jains were whittled down to a handful of secretive and hidden trading clans where it remains today. It is thought that the obliteration of the materialist and atheistic Carvakas is dated from this time.

The Hindus ensured however – the resistance following the Battle of Tarain in 1192 confounded the invader. The genocidal forces of monotheistic fervour was confronted with implacable resistance – the resistance continued from the towns, to the deserts, to the forests and far into the mountains. And so amidst the raging wars and the collapse of the medieval Indian civilisation the Turkic forces suffered terrible losses.

And so Muhammed Ghori was slain by Hindu rebels in Punjab, and so Raziya Sultan was killed in revenge by the Hindus in Mewat and so tens and thousand gave their lives in a furious attempt to resist forced conversion, enslavement and submission  – And so just decades after the Battle of Tarain the nascent Sultanate in Delhi was close to collapse – According to the historian, Firishta it was the constant immigration of Muslims into India that kept their momentum up – the endless cycle of war and resistance claimed the lives of so many Arab, Turk and Persian warriors that a constant flow of migration was required to maintain the forces of Jihad in the land of the Pagans. And just as Rome and Greece fell to Christianity in the early part of the millennium and the Near East , Persia and Central Asia went under the banner of Islam it was expected that India too would inevitably fall.

But the reality defied the lessons of history – by the 1500’s the majority of the subcontinent was under the rule of the resurgent Hindus – the teachings of the wandering Saints combined with the fervour of an undefeated dharma was only brought to a tenuous compromise by the Mughal emperor Akbar with his rejection of formal Islam.

This compromise was shattered by the return of fanaticism under the iconoclastic rule of Aurangzeb and amidst the shattered remains of the Mughals rose again the Rajputs of western India, the Gurkhas in the far northern hill, the Ahoms in the jungles and forests of the east, the Jaats in the plains of Hindustan and above all the rise of the Maratha Empire from Shivaji the Great to the conquests of Baji Rao from 1720-1740.

E Keane characterised the finality of this resurgence culminating in the rise of the Maratha warlord Mahadji Sindhia as the Hindu reconquest of India – This reconquest was only stopped by the entry of the colonial powers and after a desperate struggle culminating in the bloody rising of 1857 British control was established over the subcontinent. Since independence 90 nears thereafter has seen the creation of a fast rising economic and military power of modern day India adjoining a militarised state of Pakistan veering on the edge of a collapse into medieval theocracy.

Now imagine once again the alternative – Imagine an India where Islam had emerged triumphant – imagine 1.2 billion more adherents to Islam in a single stroke increasing the worlds population of Islam to almost 40% of the total – Imagine how history would have changed – how fanatical hordes pouring from the shores and borders of South Asia into China – into South East Asia, across the shores into Africa. Imagine a war on terror with no end.

Imagine also a world with no yoga, with no spirituality, with no selfless teachers reaching out across the globe, with no Ayurveda, with no Mahatma Gandhi, no Swami Vivekananda , with no link to the ancient past which has all but been obliterated from the majority of the globe.

Think then of the sacrifices made for the sake of Dharma- think of the millions who gave their lives over the blood soaked centuries  think of the determined and relentless resistance provided generation after generation rising with arms and faith again and again – think of how the history of the world would have changed had the Hindus failed.

Charles Martel is called the saviour of Europe following the Battle of Tours but how many today remember the Battle of Rajasthan, Raja Bhoja, Shivaji, Baji Rao and countless others – Remember the struggle that has convulsed South Asia and the Hindus for a thousand years and the rise once again into the modern world of an ancient civilisation undefeated and undaunted.

Also Read : The Myth of “1000 Years of Hindu Slavery”

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Buddhism in modern India

In India, all kinds of invention, somewhat logically connected to this status of separate religion, were then added. Especially the Ambedkarite movement, springing from the conversion of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar in 1956, was very driven in retro-actively producing an anti-Hindu programme for the Buddha. Conversion itself, not just the embracing of a new tradition (which any Hindu is free to do, all while staying a Hindu) but the renouncing of one’s previous religion, as the Hindu-born politician Ambedkar did, is a typically Christian concept.

The model event was the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis, possibly in 496, who “burned what he had worshipped and worshipped what he had burnt”. (Let it pass for now that the Christian chroniclers slandered their victims by positing a false symmetry: the Heathens hadn’t been in the business of destroying Christian symbols.)

So, in his understanding of the history of Bauddha Dharma (Buddhism), Ambedkar was less than reliable, in spite of his sterling contributions regarding the history of Islam and some parts of the history of caste. But where he was a bit right and a bit mistaken, his later followers have gone all the way and made nothing but a gross caricature of history, and especially about the place of Buddhism in Hindu history.

The Ambedkarite worldview has ultimately only radicalized the moderately anti-Hindu version of the reigning Nehruvians. Under Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, Buddhism was turned into the unofficial state religion of India, adopting the “lion pillar” of the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka as state symbol and putting the 24-spoked Cakravarti wheel in the national flag. Essentially, Nehru’s knowledge of Indian history was limited to two spiritual figures, viz. the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, and three political leaders: Ashoka, Akbar and himself.

The concept of Cakravarti (“wheel-turner”, universal ruler) was in fact much older than Ashoka, and the 24-spoked wheel can also be read in other senses, e.g. the Sankhya philosophy’s worldview, with the central Purusha/Subject and the 24 elements of Prakrti/Nature. The anglicized Nehru, “India’s last Viceroy”, prided himself on his illiteracy in Hindu culture, so he didn’t know any of this, but was satisfied that these symbols could glorify Ashoka and belittle Hinduism, deemed a separate religion from which Ashoka had broken away by accepting Buddhism.

More broadly, he thought that everything of value in India was a gift of Buddhism (and Islam) to the undeserving Hindus. Thus, the fabled Hindu tolerance was according to him a value borrowed from Buddhism. In reality, the Buddha had been a beneficiary of an already established Hindu tradition of pluralism.

In a Muslim country, he would never have preached his doctrine in peace and comfort for 45 years, but in Hindu society, this was a matter of course. There were some attempts on his life, but they emanated not from “Hindus” but from jealous disciples within his own monastic order.

So, both Nehru and Ambedkar, as well as their followers , believed by implication that at some point in his life, the Hindu-born renunciate Buddha had broken away from Hinduism and adopted a new religion, Buddhism. This notion is now omnipresent, and through school textbooks, most Indians have lapped this up and don’t know any better. However, numerous though they are, none of the believers in this story have ever told us at what moment in his life the Buddha broke way from Hinduism. When did he revolt against it? Very many Indians repeat the Nehruvian account, but so far, never has any of them been able to pinpoint an event in the Buddha’s life which constituted a break with Hinduism.

The term “Hinduism”

Their first line of defence, when put on the spot, is sure to be: “Actually, Hinduism did not yet exist at the time.” So, their position really is: Hinduism did not exist yet, but somehow the Buddha broke away from it. Yeah, the secular position is that he was a miracle-worker.

Let us correct that: the word “Hinduism” did not exist yet. When Darius of the Achaemenid Persians, a near-contemporary of the Buddha, used the word “Hindu”, it was purely in a geographical sense: anyone from inside or beyond the Indus region. When the medieval Muslim invaders brought the term into India, they used it to mean: any Indian except for the Indian Muslims, Christians or Jews. It did not have a specific doctrinal content except “non-Abrahamic”, a negative definition.

It meant every Indian Pagan, including the Brahmins, Buddhists (“clean-shaven Brahmins”), Jains, other ascetics, low-castes, intermediate castes, tribals, and by implication also the as yet unborn Lingayats, Sikhs, Hare Krishnas, Arya Samajis, Ramakrishnaites, secularists and others who nowadays reject the label “Hindu”. This definition was essentially also adopted by VD Savarkar in his book Hindutva (1923) and by the Hindu Marriage Act (1955). By this historical definition, which also has the advantages of primacy and of not being thought up by the wily Brahmins, the Buddha and all his Indian followers are unquestionably Hindus. In that sense, Savarkar was right when he called Ambedkar’s taking refuge in Buddhism “a sure jump into the Hindu fold”.

But the word “Hindu” is a favourite object of manipulation. Thus, secularists say that all kinds of groups (Dravidians, low-castes, Sikhs etc.) are “not Hindu”, yet when Hindus complain of the self-righteousness and aggression of the minorities, secularists laugh at this concern: “How can the Hindus feel threatened? They are more than 80%!” The missionaries call the tribals “not Hindus”, but when the tribals riot against the Christians who have murdered their Swami, we read about “Hindu rioters”. In the Buddha’s case, “Hindu” is often narrowed down to “Vedic” when convenient, then restored to its wider meaning when expedient.

One meaning which the word “Hindu” definitely does not have, and did not have when it was introduced, is “Vedic”. Shankara holds it against Patanjali and the Sankhya school (just like the Buddha) that they don’t bother to cite the Vedas, yet they have a place in every history of Hindu thought. Hinduism includes a lot of elements which have only a thin Vedic veneer, and numerous ones which are not Vedic at all. Scholars say that it consists of a “Great Tradition” and many “Little Traditions”, local cults allowed to subsist under the aegis of the prestigious Vedic line. However, if we want to classify the Buddha in these terms, he should rather be included in the Great Tradition.

Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha was a Kshatriya, a scion of the Solar or Aikshvaku dynasty, a descendant of Manu, a self-described reincarnation of Rama, the son of the Raja (president-for-life) of the Shakya tribe, a member of its Senate, and belonging to the Gautama gotra (roughly “clan”). Though monks are often known by their monastic name, Buddhists prefer to name the Buddha after his descent group, viz. the Shakyamuni, “renunciate of the Shakya tribe”. This tribe was as Hindu as could be, consisting according to its own belief of the progeny of the eldest children of patriarch Manu, who were repudiated at the insistence of his later, younger wife.

The Buddha is not known to have rejected this name, not even at the end of his life when the Shakyas had earned the wrath of king Vidudabha of Kosala and were massacred. The doctrine that he was one in a line of incarnations which also included Rama is not a deceitful Brahmin Puranic invention but was launched by the Buddha himself, who claimed Rama as an earlier incarnation of his. The numerous scholars who like to explain every Hindu idea or custom as “borrowed from Buddhism” could well counter Ambedkar’s rejection of this “Hindu” doctrine by pointing out very aptly that it was “borrowed from Buddhism”.

Career

At 29, he renounced society, but not Hinduism. Indeed, it is a typical thing among Hindus to exit from society, laying off your caste marks including your civil name. The Rg-Veda already describes the Muni-s as having matted hair and going about sky-clad: such are what we now know as Naga Sadhus. Asceticism was a recognized practice in Vedic society long before the Buddha. Yajnavalkya, the Upanishadic originator of the notion of Self, renounced life in society after a successful career as court priest and an equally happy family life with two wives. By leaving his family and renouncing his future in politics, the Buddha followed an existing tradition within Hindu society.

He didn’t practice Vedic rituals anymore, which is normal for a Vedic renunciate (though Zen Buddhists still recite the Heart Sutra in the Vedic fashion, ending with “sowaka”, i.e. svaha). He was a late follower of a movement very much in evidence in the Upanishads, viz. of spurning rituals (Karmakanda) in favour of knowledge (Jnanakanda). After he had done the Hindu thing by going to the forest, he tried several methods, including the techniques he learned from two masters and which did not fully satisfy him,– but nonetheless enough to include them in his own and the Buddhist curriculum.

Among other techniques, he practised Anapanasati, “attention to the breathing process”, the archetypal yoga practice popular in practically all yoga schools till today. For a while he also practised an extreme form of asceticism, still existing in the Hindu sect of Jainism. He exercised his Hindu freedom to join a sect devoted to certain techniques, and later the freedom to leave it, remaining a Hindu at every stage.

He then added a technique of his own, or at least that is what the Buddhist sources tell us, for in the paucity of reliable information, we don’t know for sure that he hadn’t learned the Vipassana (“mindfulness”) technique elsewhere. Unless evidence of the contrary comes to the surface, we assume that he invented this technique all by himself, as a Hindu is free to do. He then achieved Bodhi, the “Awakening”. By his own admission, he was by no means the first to do so. Instead, he had only walked the same path of other Awakened beings before him.

At the bidding of the Vedic gods Brahma and Indra, he left his self-contained state of Awakening and started teaching his way to others. When he “set in motion the wheel of the Law” (Dharma-cakra-pravartana, Chinese Falungong), he gave no indication whatsoever of breaking with an existing system. On the contrary, by his use of existing Vedic and Upanishadic terminology (Arya, “Vedically civilized”; Dharma), he confirmed his Vedic roots and implied that his system was a restoration of the Vedic ideal which had become degenerate. He taught his techniques and his analysis of the human condition to his disciples, promising them to achieve the same Awakening if they practiced these diligently.

Caste

On caste, we find him is full cooperation with existing caste society. Being an elitist, he mainly recruited among the upper castes, with over 40% Brahmins. These would later furnish all the great philosophers who made Buddhism synonymous with conceptual sophistication. Conversely, the Buddhist universities trained well-known non-Buddhist scientists such as the astronomer Aryabhata.

Lest the impression be created that universities are a gift of Buddhism to India, it may be pointed out that the Buddha’s friends Bandhula and Prasenadi (and, according to a speculation, maybe the young Siddhartha himself) had studied at the university of Takshashila, clearly established before there were any Buddhists around to do so. Instead, the Buddhists greatly developed an institution which they had inherited from Hindu society.

The kings and magnates of the eastern Ganga plain treated the Buddha as one of their own (because that is what he was) and gladly patronized his fast-growing monastic order, commanding their servants and subjects to build a network of monasteries for it. He predicted the coming of a future Awakened leader like himself, the Maitreya (“the one practising friendship/charity”), and specified that he would be born in a Brahmin family. When king Prasenadi discovered that his wife was not a Shakya princess but the daughter of the Shakya ruler by a maid-servant, he repudiated her and their son; but his friend the Buddha made him take them back.

Did he achieve this by saying that birth is unimportant, that “caste is bad” or that “caste doesn’t matter”, as the Ambedkarites claim? No, he reminded the king of the old view (then apparently in the process of being replaced with a stricter view) that caste was passed on exclusively in the paternal line. Among hybrids of horses and donkeys, the progeny of a horse stallion and a donkey mare whinnies, like its father, while the progeny of a donkey stallion and a horse mare brays, also like its father. So, in the oldest Upanishad, Satyakama Jabala is accepted by his Brahmins-only teacher because his father is deduced to be a Brahmin, regardless of his mother being a maid-servant. And similarly, king Prasenadi should accept his son as a Kshatriya, even though his mother was not a full-blooded Shakya Kshatriya.

When he died, the elites of eight cities made a successful bid for his ashes on the plea: “We are Kshatriyas, he was a Kshatriya, therefore we have a right to his ashes”. After almost half a century, his disciples didn’t mind being seen in public as still observing caste in a context which was par excellence Buddhist. The reason is that the Buddha in his many teachings never had told them to give up caste, e.g. to give their daughters in marriage to men of other castes. This was perfectly logical: as a man with a spiritual message, the Buddha wanted to lose as little time as possible on social matters. If satisfying your own miserable desires is difficult enough, satisfying the desire for an egalitarian society provides an endless distraction from your spiritual practice.

The Seven Rules

There never was a separate non-Hindu Buddhist society. Most Hindus worship various gods and teachers, adding and sometimes removing one or more pictures or statues to their house altar. This way, there were some lay worshippers of the Buddha, but they were not a society separate from the worshippers of other gods or Awakened masters. This box-type division of society in different sects is another Christian prejudice infused into modern Hindu society by Nehruvian secularism. There were only Hindus, members of Hindu castes, some of whom had a veneration for the Buddha among others.

Buddhist buildings in India often follow the designs of Vedic habitat ecology or Vastu Shastra. Buddhist temple conventions follow an established Hindu pattern. Buddhist mantras, also outside India, follow the pattern of Vedic mantras. When Buddhism spread to China and Japan, Buddhist monks took the Vedic gods (e.g. the twelve Aditya’s) with them and built temples for them. In Japan, every town has a temple for the river-goddess Benzaiten, i.e. “Saraswati Devi”, the goddess Saraswati. She was not introduced there by wily Brahmins, but by Buddhists.

At the fag end of his long life, the Buddha described the seven principles by which a society does not perish (which Sita Ram Goel has given more body in his historical novel Sapta Shila, in Hindi), and among them are included: respecting and maintaining the existing festivals, pilgrimages and rituals; and revering the holy men. These festivals etc. were mainly “Vedic”, of course, like the pilgrimage to the Saraswati which Balaram made in the Mahabharata, or the pilgrimage to the Ganga which the elderly Pandava brothers made. Far from being a revolutionary, the Buddha emphatically outed himself as a conservative, both in social and in religious matters. He was not a rebel or a revolutionary, but wanted the existing customs to continue. The Buddha was every inch a Hindu.

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