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Civilisation is a precarious thing- A time to reflect on decline of Hindu Civilisation

Author: Vijay Kapoor

I would like to present the following statistical table extracted from The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P.Huntington, Chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Huntington's book has been lauded by the likes of Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and is frequently quoted in such Journals as Foreign Affairs.

On page 86 in his book, Prof. Huntington presents a table showing "Share of World Manufacturing Output by Civilization" which he extracted from the Journal of European Economic History. For the sake of comparison, I have highlighted the figures for India and Western Europe.

In the year 1750 India's share of global output was one-fourth or almost as much as the U.S.A. share of output in the present day world economy. In that year (1750), India's wealth exceeded by one-third the wealth of the whole of Europe west of Russia. Bear in mind that the 1750 output figure for India was after seven centuries of plundering of the country by Greeks, Mongols, Arabs and Moguls. In the year 998 A.D. Ghazni had invaded and looted India more than 17 times including the holiest temples from where he robbed tons of gold.

1750: The starting year of the above statistical table is 250 years after Vasco da Gama had landed in Calicut. The Portuguese, French and British were well established in South India for 250 years and were fighting amongst themselves on the Indian soil to determine who had a better claim on India's wealth.

It is disheartening to see that during the 150 years between 1750 A.D. and 1900 A.D. India's output declined from 24.5% to 1.7% while the West's output surged from 18.2% to 77.4%. In 150 years, India had gone from being one of the wealthiest nations in the world to being one of the poorest, while the British surged from a speck to become a world power!

Bemoaning the decline of Hindu Civilization, one of the great historians and philosophers of the 20th century, Will Durant writes in his book The Story of Civilization, Our Oriental Heritage "The Muhammadan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious this, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. The Hindus had allowed their strength to be wasted."

It is noteworthy that in the 1930s when Will Durant compiled his book, he did not have the benefit of European economic research and Harvard scholarly analysis of comparative world output. Had he quantified the accomplishments of Hindu Civilization, it is likely he would have added that the British squeeze on India did greater harm in 200 years than the Mohammedans could do in 750 years of blood letting. Islamic methods were brutal in massive killings of Hindus but starting with the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1560 - 1605) they started recycling India's wealth within India since the Mughals had lost their base across the Khyber Pass.

The only civilization which did not invade any other civilization:

In the annals of 2000 years of recorded world history from 1000 B.C to 1000 A.D - Hindu Civilization is the only civilization, which prospered without raping any other civilization. But that is the old glory. The Key question is why Hindu Civilization let itself go to ruins with the emergence of Islam and Christianity?

I reject conventional wisdom that Hindu India declined due to internal conflicts: It does not take a great depth of historical research to find that both Islamic and Christian Civilizations were in mortal combat amongst themselves. This is precisely the reason that India's wealth exceeded Europe's by a significant margin as late as in 1750, because India used its resources in peaceful pursuits of human productivity. The whole of Europe and the Middle East were a battlefield. In fact European and Islamic countries developed advanced armaments and greater skill in fighting precisely because the battlefield was the core of activity in Christian and Islamic civilizations.

Hindu delusions:

As a metaphor which encapsulates Hindu delusions about other civilizations, I quote below a historical passage taken from The Story of Civilization -

Our Oriental Heritage :

"In 1498 Vasco Da Gama, after a voyage of eleven months from Lisbon, anchored off Calicut. He was well received by the Hindu Raja of Malabar, who gave him a courteous letter to the King of Portugal: "Vasco Da Gama, a nobleman of your household, has visited my Kingdom, and has given me great pleasure. In my Kingdom there is abundance of cinnamon, cloves, pepper and precious stones." His Christian majesty answered by claiming India as a Portuguese colon..." for reasons which the Raja was too dumb to understand. To make matters clearer, Portugal sent a fleet to India, with instructions to spread Christianity and wage war."

When Vasco da Gamma landed in India, Portugal and Spain were in the grip of the Inquisition burning Jews and Muslims alive who did not follow the Pope's edicts. Obviously, the Maharaja of Malabar did not know Portuguese credentials but nevertheless he persisted in calling Vasco da Gama a 'noble man' and extended to him hospitality fit for equal royalties. The Malabar King did not wake up to the reality even after getting a nasty reply from the Portuguese King!

The significance of the warm greetings sent to the Portuguese King by the Raja of Malabar was not so much his 'peculiar' conduct but it is based on the Hindu cultural value of Atithi satkar (to treat strangers as honored guests). Vedic verse ekam sat bahudha vadanti - Rigveda 1.164.46 (Truth is One but wise call it by different names) further helped to reinforce King's benign disposition towards the Portuguese Christian crusaders. However profound the truth of this verse, its effect has been to render Hindu civilization akin to the three monkeys who do not see, hear or speak evil even when evil dances around them.

Blinding themselves by their own piety, believing in their own noble thoughts and deeds, Hindus have consoled themselves that the God will reward them for their ‘good deeds’ Hindus put themselves in a stupor singing Ramdhun - Ishwar Allah tero nam without bothering to see if other co-religionist believes in what you are singing for common good. Hindus are blind to the fact that for Christians and Muslims, it is sinful to equate their Christ or Mohammed to Ram or Krishna or Ishwara. The word "mono" in monotheistic religious (Christian, Jews and Muslim) means just that - a single truth which renders all others Infidels, heathens and sinners.

At present, if in the major Western countries we do not see such a harsh attitude, it is only because a majority of Western countries have adapted secular and democratic constitutions after suffering for centuries their self-inflicted internecine religious persecutions. Whenever, you step out of secular and democratic mode of governance in the West, you step into fanatical hatred and carnage inflicted by the likes of Hitler and Stalin and in present times methods pursued by Irish Nationalists and by different factions in the Balkans and in most of the Islamic Middle-East.

In India we are bordered on the West by Pakistan, a theocracy and beyond Pakistan for another 3000 miles to the West every country is Islamic and non-democratic until you reach Europe. The historical landscape for India looking west was not much different a thousand years ago than what you see happening in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan today. By the very nature of their 'mono' faith, advocating a single strand of belief, shias and sunnis, would fight amongst themselves to the point of exhaustion, but in the process they become great fighting forces.

If amidst the brutalities of intra - warfare, they find a soft target and especially if under their common Koranic passage such a target can be designated as a territory of infidels, the full fury of barbarism would be redirected to such a target, both as a strategy as well as to dig in new and abundant resources from a peaceful civilization. Had Hindu civilization been strong a thousand years ago to inflict defeat on Ghazni, the Islamic forces would have been crushed between the Christian crusaders from the West and the wall of strength from India. However, Hindu India, living in their own self enlightenment philosophical mode never studied Islamic paradigm and presumed that the same human value system is practiced by other civilizations. The utter ignorance of Hindus about the culture and the value system of their adversaries was the root cause of the downfall of Hindu Civilization.

Painfully, I have to say that today; we Hindus are no wiser than we were a thousand years ago. The eerie scenario surrounding India today is just about the duplicate copy of what was happening in that part of the world at the turn of the first millennium. Afghan, Iranian and Iraqi soldiers are battle hardened even if killing each other. It is the same barbarian skill they would use if their resources get directed towards India. To combat the adversaries from across Pakistan borders, are Hindus going to replay in 21st century the benign attitude of Prithvi Raj and resignation to fate by the Pujaris of Som Nath Temple?

Hindus’ best defense is to know the paradigm of other civilizations: It is ignorance, what you do not know, which kills you. Ignorance can never be a bliss. Self image of Hindus acting as three monkeys - shutting eyes, ears and mouth would lead us to another great fall. Our scriptures are Vedas - knowledge. To survive and thrive, Hindus have to expand atma-vidya self-knowledge to include knowing cultures and value systems of other Civilizations. In historical footnotes, scholars may write barbarians overwhelmed an advanced civilization, however, do we want such an epitaph for Hindu civilization?