Namaste Aware,
To Hindus national identity is very important. India is not just a country to us, it is our matrabhoomi(Motherland) and we worship her by saying Vaande Mataram(Hail to the motherland) The word “Hindu” itself is a geographical identity, and refers to the people of the Indus(Sindhu) Thus it refers the way of life, culture, philosophy and spirituality of India. Thus India and Hinduism are inseparable.
Now why is the identity Hindu so important to be me and why am I proud of it, and why would I actually fight for it. It is important because this is the holy land of our risis, sages and holy saints from the Vedic Risis, to Mahavira, Buddha, Sankara, Guru Nanak. It represents their teachings and we forever acknowledge our debt the holy sages by remembering them and their teachings.
Before I use to call myself spiritual, until I realised that I was not only just spiritual, I had accepted every Hindu doctrine: The law of karma and reincarnation, the law of dharma, the science, philosophy and practice of Yoga. So I decided to give back to this great tradition by becoming a part of it.
Those in the West who respect this tradition have not given back to this tradition. They simply take, take and take from it. They take Vedanta, they take Yoga, they take Ayurveda, but give nothing back to the great religion that invented all of these. You give back by becoming an adherent of that great religion and passing the teachings on and perpetuating the eternal religion.
The Vedic sages said clearly, “Make the whole world Aryan”
This is why the history, philosophy, culture and traditions of India are very important to me. History is especially important, because history is important to understand our heritage. All humans have a right to know this, not just Indians. The people in the world today have a right to know of their noble Aryan heritage and how India was the motherland of all civilisations in the past.
Unfortunately, our history has been distorted by Western scholars(originally Christian scholars) who invented Aryan invasion theory and made our great sages look like savages. Although we have had recorded history going back 10,000 years back to the ending of the last ice age, Western scholars were so prejudiced they declared the beginning of our civilisation in 1200BCE. They sought the latest dates possible for all our important historical figures(Buddha, Mahavira) in order to maintain their Abrahamic history as the oldest and Mesopotamia as the cradle. They mistranslated our great Vedic scripture to add insult to injury. Then when they discovered that our civilisation was indeed older than 1200BCE, when they discovered accidentally the Indus valley civilisation, they made up theories of Aryan/Dravidian wars, because they could not admit the Vedic civilisation went back 10,000 years. Today, the massive archeological evidence which has been unearthed is very clearly showing there was no such thing as Aryan/Dravidian racial dichotomy and the Indus valley civilisation was a vedic one.
This was known even at the time Aryan invasion theory was put forward by Christian missionary scholars. Playfair, a major astronomer and mathematician at the time declared that the astronomical details recorded in the Vedas would place the Vedas no later than 4000BCE. The Christian scholars retorted back him, “The Brahmins back-dated these astronomical details to make them look like they were taken at the time” When German linguists examined the translations rendered by Max Muller, they were horrified as to how bad his translation was and publically criticised his works. Even Max Muller later admitted his Aryan invasion theory was total guess work.
Today, the preponderance of evidence is so clearly showing that Vedic civilisation has a continuous history in India going back 10,000 years, but Western scholars still brush it under the carpet. It is acts like this that are turning Hindus nationalists. We want our history to be told correctly and our rightful place in the world be acknowledged.
We are no different to any other civilisation on this planet which have fought to get their history acknowledged and represented - the Chinese, Africans, Jews, Muslims. The first gesture of goodwill that the West can put forward to win our trust is to admit the distortions they have made on our history and set things right.
