Every great culture and civilization has a clear concept of its self identity. This definition is not rigid and can change with times, but it is perilous for any civilization to not know ‘who they are’, at any given time in history. The logic behind this is similar to the logic behind borders. They are necessary to protect what is at the core of one’s country, nation or civilization. Similarly those nations who do not have a clear concept of their own identity may soon find their sovereignty and their identity usurped and invaded by others.
That is why every great culture and civilization keeps thinking about its identity from time to time. In recent times, Samuel Huntington one of the greatest political analysts of the modern times wrote ‘Who Are We?’ defining what the core identity of America is. He came up with the answer of White, Anglo-Saxon, Christian as the identity that modern America still has and which is at the core of its values and historical evolution.
Similarly, India has always had a very clear definition of what it was. Indian seers and scholars have always thought about the identity of India, though they have termed it differently under different names and characteristics during different times. The Vedas give us an idea of what India is and what an ideal person is supposed to do, and thus in essence they give us our identity.
When Buddhism became popular in India, there were many debates and many branches of Hindu philosophy, like Nyaya-Vaisheshika specifically dealt with the questions that Buddhists posed. The reason that the saints and scholars of ancient India devoted their lives to debating with the Buddhists, to decide what constitutes the core of India’s identity shows that even in that hoary age, the question of India’s identity was a burning one and we kept thinking and updating ourselves on it.
The same tradition can be seen down the ages, through the medieval times. In the modern times, from Tilak to Savarkar, to Dayanand Saraswati and to Anirban and Ram Swarup, we have been debating over the national identity and what constitutes the core values of Sanatana Dharma and the Hindu identity.
Unlike the Prophetic Monotheistic cultures, we have never let ourselves frozen in time. We do not define ourselves from the standard of 1st century CE or 7th century CE. On the other hand, there are some universal values, some core ideas that constitute the very soul of our identity and they have remained unchanged through many thousands of years that the Indian civilization has been flourishing.
Thus while we avoid getting fossilized in time like the nations of the Middle East, we also refuse to let go of the very attempt of arriving at a core idea of our national identity. Modern Europe has gone down the lane of the identity confusion and we can see the results very clearly. In the absence of any clear idea of what Europe is, it is being invaded by alien cultures which threaten the very existence of Europe.
Being open to change does not mean the ‘anything goes’ approach. Sanatana Dharma had struck the fine balance between changing with the times and keeping up the universal values, values which are valid beyond time and space.
This effort to constantly define and redefine our identity got lost somewhere in the 20th century. An integral part of ‘what we are’ is also to know ‘what we are not’. Ever since the Buddhists first challenged some of the Vedic ideals, we have never refrained from defining what we are not either. We lost this faculty only recently in the modern times.
It was Gandhi’s refusal to criticize the enemies of our civilization which led to a muddling of our self identity. In the post-Gandhian world of Nehruvian dystopia, unwilling to define ourselves and to define our enemies, we also started getting muddled about our self identity.
We need this churning right now. We need to decide who is Hindu. If we don’t others will define it for us, and it will be done expressly for obliterating our identity and existence.
