https://m.thewire.in/article/religion/syncretism-adi-shankara-teachings
The WIRE
Everyone should read the Op-Ed piece above. It is balm for the troubled soul.
It is always good indeed to hear calming words spread by apostles of peace (peace be upon them, wherever and whoever they are!) … such as this “veteran journalist” writing in THE WIRE who attempts to be one. No one can deny him the credit for portraying the Hindu ethos in such glorious, magnanimous light….
The incident narrated in the article happened in 1949 … It was a time in India’s history when the wounds of Partition had not yet healed . Hindu spiritual leaders like the Sankaracharya were expected to and therefore did rise to occasion to do their own little bit, and their very best, to try and heal those wounds with the pious balm of all their talk of social and communal amity and harmony. It was truly the crying need of the hour then. The anecdote described in the article is an example of many such peace apostolic efforts taken by Hindu religious leaders of those times. God bless them all.
Almost 75 years later today the climate in the country has changed. No one can, of course, ever say that religious and communal peace, amity and harmony are not anymore the need of the present hour in our country. Our need for them today is of the same urgency as that felt by the Sankaracharya in 1949…. perhaps even more. Yet, the grim question that both the Majority and Minorities in India face today is “peace, amity and harmony” on what terms ? Whose terms? And under what conditions? Alas, no Sankaracharya or Mullah or Mufti has answers for such questions.
In 1947, the country underwent the trauma of the physical partition of the geography of India. Fifty years later, a whole generation of young Indians like us have been almost daily witnesses to the partition of our country which although far less bloody — thank God! — than the earlier one, is just as painful and grievous, if not more. It is the partition of the internal psychology of India. The “veteran journalist” in the WIRE calls it “tormenting of the minorities”. His WIRE article lays the blame on India’s psychotic illness squarely on the Majority.
Well… there are several Hindu religious and spiritual leaders today in India (including at least one of the 5 Sankaracharyas!) of almost equal stature as HH Sri Chandrasekhara Bharathi, who think otherwise. They openly express more often than not that there is right across India unmistakable signs and instances of “tormenting of the majority” too…
Just the other day, for example, in Tamil Nadu, this news report surfaced : “Waqf Board claims ownership of entire village, locals face difficulties selling their own land”:
The above example is reported to be only the tip of an iceberg … Across the country there are hundreds more of cases of “tormenting of the Majority” with one conservative estimate of lands unlawfully held by WAQFs being put at c.₹.1.2 lac crores.
The reclaiming of their temples by the Majority in the country — such as Ayodhya, Kasi and Mathura—- is being portrayed by “veteran journalists” of the press like the WIRE as “tormenting of the minorities”. What else does the WIRE, the great apostle of peace, expect the Majority to do other than to try and reclaim its past and lost heritage? Does the veteran journalist want the Majority to gift away its temples and temple-lands to the Waqf council of India? Would that magically cease the “torment of the minorities”?
The charming anecdote narrated by the veteran journalist is about how the Sankaracharya upbraided his followers for taking needless umbrage over an imagined slight to their religious sentiment caused by a young mosque-goer seen gloating that the procession of the Sankaracharya was made to maintain humble silence and solemnity as it passed by the mosque. There is no question the Sankaracharya was being exceptionally magnanimous and he was right indeed to scold his disciples for suggesting that the minority community should be taught a lesson by taking out another raucous, boisterous procession past the same mosque later the following day. The Acharya fumed at his acolytes for their mean-spiritedness in wanting to needlessly provoke and “torment the minority” through such retaliation.
While I’m certainly filled with admiration for the large-heartedness of the Sankaracharya, I cannot however help asking myself why the minorities of India cannot understand that true magnanimity on which “amity, peace and harmony” rest is a 2-way street and that it takes 2 hands to applaud an act of forbearance and self-restraint? Which is why I cannot also stop wondering if THE WIRE would show yet again it’s apostolic zeal and maybe hire anther “veteran journalist” to pen yet another op-ED piece in its columns where some anecdote is dredged out of history wherein a principal Mufti or Imam of India (preferably from the Deobandi school) happens to openly chide his religious flock for making a public spectacle of themselves in praying en masse on busy public roads, bus and train termini and other thoroughfares of the cities of India … Or for having megaphone-loudspeakers blaring out their prayers from muezzin towers in the wee hours of the morning ….. In other words, an Imam of the same stature and large-heartedness of a Sankaracharya, chastising his followers for needlessly “tormenting the majority”….
Sudarshan Madabushi