Why hinduism survived

And yet, very much like the Earth itself, this belief system, Sanatana Dharma as some call it, has prevailed. Let me begin with a near-classic poem by one of Malayalam's Maha Kavis great poets Vallathol Narayana Menon, who was also part of the famous Triumvirate of modern Malayalam poetry, the other two being Kumaran Asan and Ulloor Parameswaran Iyer.

As it happened in classical times, when a great King returns from battle, so must his army and the whole war machine follow him. As the king moves away from the battlefield and towards his palace, he was followed by the whole humanity of his soldiers and the, as also the battle animals and weapons. As he goes further down the road, the massive fallback can be seen thinning bit by retinue bit, square by square and, finally, by the time he reaches the palace, the retreating procession is reduced to a few top generals and the royal bodyguards.

Moving further to the interiors, Ravana had only his close relatives to accompany him into the inner chambers of the royal household. Thus, finally, he approaches the royal bedroom where he was expecting his wife to be waiting for him and in whose arms the mighty king was eager to fall asleep.

Ravana opens the door only to find that even she is missing. The moment of ultimate wisdom dawns on the great king who is also a great scholar and a favourite devotee of Lord Shiva.

At that rare moment of realisation, Ravana could see life as a gradual journey towards the Supreme Being, the Brahma, in the course of which everyone, even the king, had to renounce all of his self — both material and spiritual, his power and glory, his vices and virtues, and even his pride and self-respect until he is left with the only indestructible, the only permanent entity, the soul that which itself must merge in the very end with Brahma, the Universe.

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At first, the new rulers allowed Hindus to practice their religion without interference. But later, Christian missionaries sought to convert and westernize the people Many reformers emerged during the British Period. Hinduism is now the major religion of India.

Migrate to areas with Hindu kings. There was constant migration across the Deccan plains. Hindus, who had been forcibly converted, were brought back to Hinduism. Islamic conduct e. Also stock pile of grain was kept in temples, which were used in emergency. Converting would have meant losing their livelihoods. In honor of the saint he gave his sons the names of Shahji and Sharifji.

While a full study of the religious and social ferment of Maharashtra in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has yet to be made; it seems certain that the new religious life did not take the form of a Hindu revivalism that emphasized the separation of the Hindus from Islam. Antagonism toward Muslims came later, and, as was the case with the Sikhs, had definite antecedents in particular historical events. The creative spiritual and literary movement provided the basis on which the Maratha nation could be built, and its emergence as the great antagonist of Muslim power in India was based on political, not religious, factors.

The evidence from the songs of Namadeva and Tukaram strongly suggests that they were not reacting in any hostile fashion to Islam. For this reaction one must look to Chaitanya and the Vaishnavite movement in Bengal. Chaitanya — of Bengal represents an aspect of the bhakti movement that is very different from that seen in the lives and teachings of Kabir and his successors.

Chaitanya's concern, unlike that of Kabir, was not with bringing people to an understanding of a God beyond all creeds and formulations; it was to exalt the superiority of Krishna over all other deities.

The attitude [[]] of Bengal Vaishnavites toward Islam was the antithesis of the attitude advocated by Kabir and Nanak. Conscious of the appeal being made by Islam, they did not try to reform Hinduism by adopting any of the attractive features of the rival faith. Instead, they emphasized precisely those features, such as devotion to Krishna, which were most antipathetic to the Islamic spirit.

Another difference between Chaitanya's movement and that of Kabir is the attitude toward caste. While it is true that Chaitanya made disciples from all classes, one does not find the same note of condemnation of caste as one does in Kabir. According to some students of the period, this indicates the essential difference between the two aspects of bhakti in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: only where Hinduism was directly influenced by Islam was there evidence of concern for social inequities.

Because of the interest that is attached to such great names as that of Kabir, there is a tendency to think of the movement of interaction between the two faiths as mainly from Islam to Hinduism. This was not true, however, for Muslim society was deeply influenced by its contacts with Hinduism. Some contacts had been made even before Islamic rule was established in India; for example the probable Hindu element in certain forms of Islamic mysticism, and the intellectual interchanges that had taken place after the conquest of Sind in the seventh and eighth centuries.

During the sultanate, changes of a quite different order were apparent. One of these concerns the lives of converts to Islam. Here the important point to keep in mind is that when one sees Hindu practices followed by Indian Muslims, it is not a case of Hindu influence, but simply of incomplete change from the old way of life.

Indian Muslims did not start with orthodox Islam, but began by accepting a few basic features, and only in the course of time, particularly during the last two centuries, have they become more orthodox. The process is less complete in the lower classes, or those groups which, like the Khojas, adopted a somewhat composite form of religion. More than religious beliefs, Indian Islam retained certain characteristic features of Hindu society which, if not religious in themselves, certainly had [[]] been given religious sanction.

One of these was the place given to caste, with converts clinging to some memory of their former status in a hierarchical society, while what may be called Muslim castes developed as Indian Muslims classified themselves as Sayyid, Shaikh, Mughal, or Pathan. This structure was never very rigid; as Bernier commented, anyone who put on a white turban called himself a Mughal.

An old saying makes the same point: "Last year I was a Julaha weaver ; this year a Shaikh; and next year if the harvest be good, I shall be a Sayyid. Muslims in India also adopted the Hindu practices of early marriages and of objection to widow remarriage.

Some social ceremonies connected with births, deaths, and marriages may also be traced to Hindu origin. Some writers think that reverence for pirs, or saints, and their graves, a marked feature of popular Indian Islam, is a carry-over of Hindu practices. This interpretation overlooks the fact, however, that even outside India pirs and their tombs are objects of great attention and veneration.

The main influence of Hinduism on Islam, however, is probably seen not so much in these specific instances as in a general softening of the original attitude of the conquerors, particularly the Turks, in religious matters.