 |
| Why Hindu Rashtra? |
WHY HINDU RASHTRA ? |
|
|
|
|
Force of National SentimentHow powerful this national sentiment is can be gauged from the fact that the Bailed international ideologies like Islam, Christianity and Communism which aimed at bringing the entire world under one flag by discarding national boundaries, have not been able to wipe out the appeal of nationalism. On the other hand, they themselves have got split and cast into various national moulds. Today the face of Islam is not the same in Turkey, Egypt, Iran or Indonesia. To sustain their separate identities, they have even taken to distinct Islamic creeds. Iran found out a new way of marking itself off from the Arabs by adopting Shia sect. It also gave a new face to Islam in the form of Sufi sect by a synthesis of the old Parsi beliefs with Islam. While Turkey gave a new shape to Islam by attuning it with Western civilization, Indonesian Islam assumed a new content through the influence of Bharatiya culture. The English people created the Protestant form of Christianity by defying the authority of the Pope who symbolised the will to establish the Holy Empire the world over. Similarly. German and Syrian nationalism paved the way for Lutheran and Syrian Churches. Me Dutch, French and Russian nationalisms also displayed their own versions of Christianity.Those who dreamed of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat on the strength of their slogan "workers of the world unite," are now finding their proletariats rigidly confined to their respective national boundaries. Not merely that. The proletariats of Communist countries like Russia, China, Vietnam, Albania are now at daggers drawn with each other. Each considers its own national brand of Communism as authentic and derides all others as revisionist, reactionary, expansionist and so on. The Italian and French communists have even declared the dictatorship of the proletariat as unnecessary and created their own brand, Euro-Communism. Why, Russia itself has only last year changed its constitution giving up its basic postulate of a proletariat state and opting for a state belonging to all people. The communist tide today stands broken up into a hundred fragments by dashing against the rock of nationalism. It is clear that the spirit of nationalism has proved more powerful of its being a more natural expression of man's evolutionary cycle, and as such more basic and deep rooted. The spirit of oneness generated by it is much more intense than that of religion, language, etc. Even Stalin, who had derided God and religion as opium of the masses, felt the impact of its spirit and declared : "Apart from the foregoing (community of language, territory and economic life), one must take into consideration the specific spiritual complexion of the people constituting a nation. Nations differ not only in their conditions of life, but also in spiritual complexion, which manifests itself in peculiarities of national culture." See how identical is this view of so rank an atheist as Stalin and that of a great spiritual luminary as Swami Vivekananda who emphasised: "National union in India must be a gathering of its scattered spiritual forces, a union of those whose hearts beat to the same spiritual tune."
|
|
|
|
