A bit about my journey: I grew up in India in the '70's. I was born in a progressive Hindu household which valued education above all else. Secularism was a big deal in India then (it is an even bigger deal now)--its roots were being sown, and those that did the sowing wanted to make sure they went in deep.
In the spirit of this secularism, I was sent to a Catholic school. When the nuns (all Indians, converted to Christianity) ridiculed our Hindu Gods (one woman referred to them as centipedes and spiders, referring to their many symbolic arms), I, along with other Hindu children, learned to grin sheepishly.
I had plenty of occasions to fine-tune this sheepish grin, as we Hindu students were forced to go to Christian chapels, to kneel in pews and pray before a god that was not ours, were ridiculed for wearing the bindi on our foreheads, and punished with beatings for speaking in our Indian languages during recess. Grin we did--the apologetic grin of little Hindus who were told that a gag in our mouth was our rightful due, for weren't we the majority religion in India? We owed it to the minority religions (Christianity and Islam) to both put up and shut up.
I continued to grin my way through very many similar incidents in school and college. Then I came to the U.S. for my Masters and ended up staying in this country. When Americans asked me where I came from and other pariculars relating to my origin, I was quick to answer that I was "born Hindu, but, hey, I am totally secular. I personally believe in nothing, and I accept everything." I truly believed what I said, and took pride in thinking of myself as a modern secular-progressive. Sure, I heard my share of misinformed/ignorant comments about Hinduism, but I grinned my way through these as well.
I kept on top of news from India--and it became harder and harder to keep up my grin: when I heard about Western churches pumping dollars into India to convert Hindus; when I read about the desecration to Hindu temples by Christians in Mangalore and Goa; when I heard first-hand accounts about forced conversions to Isalm; when I saw the statistics about the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir by Muslim militants; when I saw the Western press define Hindu retalitation to these acts as examples of "Hindu terrorism...," and when I saw the Indian press rush to agree with their Western counterparts; when it became clear that politicians in India have defined secularism to mean complete sensitivity to the feelings and sentiments of religious minorities, and an equally complete disregard for the feelings and sensitiments of Hindus...It became painful to grin. But I still persisted in proclaiming to all and sundry: "I am secular. I don't practice my faith. So I don't really care about these things..."
And I would've continued on this path--but for the film Slumdog Millionaire.
What can I say, and how indeed can I describe what I, a self-described secular non-believer, felt, when I saw this film depict barbaric Hindu mobs chase Muslims who were depicted as helpless victims and burn the Muslim hero's mother? Or when the Muslim hero tells the TV anchor of India's version of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? that if the God Rama did not exist, his mother would have been alive? I was shocked to feel an emotion that I later realized was pain, when I saw a shot of a tiny child dressed as the Hindu God Rama, watching Hindus slaughter Muslims in this film. So thorough was British director Danny Boyle's depiction of Muslim victimization at the hands of Hindus that when a week after this film was released, Muslim terrorists slaughtered Hindus and Westerners in Mumbai, one almost felt that the real life events were a cheat. Such is the power of fiction.
Boyle's fiction has been so powerful that not one Western film critic or award committee paused to consider the veracity of his film. Not one voice in the Western media or in the intellectual elite challenged him on his assault on Hinduism. And not too many Hindus came forth to critique him, either--not even in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
I stayed awake many a night after seeing this film and in the wake of the carnage in Mumbai, asking myself what "secularism" meant, and what the price is, for defining oneself as a "secularist."
And here is what I've come up with: If it means allowing everyone the right to practise their faith (or to not practise any faith), I am indeed secular. If it means, on the other hand, that I should put up and shut up with my religion being ridiculed, the Gods of my faith blasphemed, my people proseletyzed and converted by dint of the dollar or the sword, my people persecuted and destroyed for their religious beliefs, then it is my dharma to not scurry into the hidey-hole of "secularism," but to come out and to fight--for my faith and for the respect it richly deserves. I will fight--not with weapons and violence, for that is not the Hindu dharma. I will fight, with fact and reason, with my powers of articulation and persuasion. I will fight tirelessly, and because dharma is on my side, I will prevail.
I feel now an enormous pride to call myself a Hindu. I am the inheritor of nearly 6000 years of a culture and faith that has never invaded any country in the name of religion, that has, for thousands of years, been a beacon of light to people from all sorts of faiths fleeing persecution. Christians and Jews fleeing Islamic persecution in Syria and Persia found a refuge to safely practise their beliefs in Hindustan; Armenians fleeing the turks found safe sanctuary in my motherland. Tibetans fleeing cultural annihilation by the Chinese are finding sanctuary in India today. And it is Hinduism that is the bedrock of India's multi-cultural polyglot democracy. It is high time my faith recives the credit that is its due. And this credit will not be granted by anyone outside the faith--it will have be claimed, by Hindus. We are going to have to teach the world what we are all about, and why our faith is indeed the way to a truly secular, truly accepting world.
So thank you, Slumdog Millionaire. Your attacks on my faith lit my path back to it. You have taught me my dharma.
