INDIAN SECULARISM AND ITS PECULARITIES.

Lord Macaulay in Minute of 1835 had expressed: “We must have a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect,” and “Who could deny that a single shelf of good European library is worth the whole native literature of India.” As a result an elite in Indian society was spawned who were educated Hindus who openly denounced Hinduism and said that they were ashamed of their origins. But Swami Vivekananda turned things around when he went to Chicago and he had delivered his famous speech on 11th September 1893 (exactly 108 years before the demolitions of the World Trade Centre, New York) extolling the virtues of Hinduism, the American media of those days wrote,” We send missionaries to Vivekananda’s people. It would be more fitting that they should send missionaries to us.”

Aurobindo Ghosh, the revolutionary Saint of India further clarified that, “When it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanatan Dharma that shall be great. That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion because it is universal religion which embraces all others. If religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and limited purpose. This alone could free the world from its enslavement to materialism and to point out the way towards a dynamic integration of Spirit and Matter and to make life perfect with Divine Perfection.”