hinduism-by-country

"One small country in the Americas that does have a large Hindu population is Trinidad. I visited the Island in 1996 and saw its Hindu culture, including its several wonderful temples. It is much like being in India. Even Hindu Gods like Shiva and Hanuman have taken their abode there. Later I came in contact with the Trinidad Mahasabha that has produced several good writers on Hinduism that write regular articles on topical matters. They asked me never to forget the overseas Hindus in the Caribbean."

"Apart from such spiritual-cultural unity of India depicted in Sangam poems, there is at least one poem that refers to the political unity of India. This poem, from Puranannuru, speaks of a time when the whole of India ‘from Kanyakumari to Himalayas’ was ruled as one nation, unifying the diverse geographical zones of ‘plateaus, mountains, forests and human habitations’ by kings of the solar dynasty, and identifies Tamil kings as descendants of the solar dynasty."

"Pilgrims from all over India coming to have holy baths at Kanyakumari as well as Rameswaram (Koti) have been mentioned in Sangam literature. Speaking of Himalayas and Kanyakumari in association, is another hallmark of many Sangam poems."

"Another very important feature revealed in Sangam literature is the conception of the unity of the land-mass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. In at least two sources, Tamil kings were praised as having had supremacy amidst all the chieftains who reigned in the land between ‘the Himalayan abode of Gods’ in the north and Kumari in the south and the lands which have the sea as the frontier. The northern limit of this cultural unity is often referred to as the Himalayas. Ganges in floods, as well as ships travelling on the Ganges, is among the scenes depicted in Sangam literature."

"The Aryan-Dravidian or Aryan-Tamil dichotomy envisaged by some scholars may have to be given up since we are unable to come across anything which could be designated as purely Aryan or purely Dravidian in the character of South India of the Sangam Age. In view of this, the Sangam culture has to be looked upon as expressing in a local idiom all the essential features of classical “Hindu” culture."

"It is in the villages of southern India that we must go to see Hindu life at its best, unaffected as it is by Mahommedan conquest or by the influence of Western civilisation."

"The importance of Pandya coins of Vedic sacrifice series lies in the fact that these coins corroborate what we know from Sangam literature about the performance of Vedic sacrifices by a Pandya king of this age."

"The South had been the repository of Vedic learning."

"A knowledge of Sanskrit literature from the Vedic period to the Classical period is essential to understand and appreciate a large number of passages scattered among the poems of Tamil literature."

"There does not exist a single line of Tamil literature written before the Tamils came into contact with, and let us add accepted with genuine appreciation, the Indo-Aryan culture of North Indian origin."

"The Pandyan kings were great champions of the Vedic religion from very early times.... According to the Sinnamanur plates, one of the early Pandyan kings performed a thousand velvi or yagas [Vedic sacrifices].... Though the majority of the Pandyan kings were Saivites, they extended equal patronage to the other faiths ... [and included] invocatory verses to the Hindu Trinity uniformly in all their copper-plate grants. The Pandyas patronised all the six systems or schools of Hinduism.... Their religion was not one of narrow sectarian nature but broad-based with Vedic roots. They were free from linguistic or regional bias and took pride in saying that they considered Tamil and Sanskritic studies as complementary and equally valuable."

"The fact that the literature of the Sangam age refers more to Vedic sacrifices than to temples is a pointer to the popularity of the Vedic cults among the Sangam Tamils."

"For most Greeks India is just another country somewhere far in South-East Asia with exotic customs and arts, curious religions, colourful fabrics and much poverty - and it was invaded in ancient times by Alexander the Great and possibly visited by Pythagoras even earlier. There is a pretty late legend that god Dionusos came from Greece and civilised India and all Far East, even Japan, at c 7000 BCE (Dionusiaka, Nonnus of Alexandria, c 400 CE)."

"The status of Indology in Greece is almost non-existent. There is a Department of Hindi in Athens University but nothing more. Few people attend - and those mainly to learn Hindi for commercial and other financial reasons. I think much of the cost is covered by the Indian government. Very few people are interested in Indian culture beyond modern music and dancing and going on tours and holidays to various places in India, or the dinners and very occasional presentations of music and dancing organised by an Indo-Hellenic Society. I myself gave three public lectures every year for several consecutive years on affinities between Greek and Indic cultures (yoga, religion, philosophy, epics, the arts, etc) but, in fact, few people attended and not once anybody from the Indian Embassy or from the University or from the Indo-Hellenic Society. Frankly, the Indian Embassy has never shown interest in promoting the traditional Indian culture. I doubt this will change."

"Another magnificent bronze of Shiva, from Por Loboeuk, suggests the wealth of metal art that once must have existed III Cambodia (Kamboja) at the height of its power."

"One of the most interesting pieces of all is a fragmentary bronze bust, from the western Mebon, of the God Vishnu lying asleep on the ocean of non-being. Head and shoulders and the two right arms survive. It shows the extraordinary, delicate integrity and subtle total convexity of surface, which these sculptors could achieve by modeling. Eyebrows, moustache and eyes seem to have been inlaid, perhaps with gold, silver or precious tone, though the inlay is gone and only the sockets remain. This was one of the world's great sculptures."

"The genius of the artists of that age was for re lief. Indeed one might say that Angkor Wat is a repertory of some of the most magnificent relief art that the world has ever seen. The open colonnaded gallery on the first storey contains over a mile of such works, six feet high. The main sources for the relief subject matter are the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as legends of Vishnu and his incarnation Krishna. The wars of classical legend, in which incarnations of the various persons of the Hindu deity triumph at length over demonic adversaries. The artists' skill is everywhere apparent."

"The sculptures of Indian icons produced in Cambodia during the 6th to the 8th centuries A.D. are masterpieces, monumental, subtle, highly sophisticated, mature in style and unrivalled for sheer beauty ...."

"A very influential work was the Assamese Ramayana by Madhava Kandali, a Brahmin also known as Kaviraja Kandali. It was composed in the fourteenth century at the behest of the Kachari king Shrimahamanikya. It was in five kandas and was an adaption and condensation of Valmiki’s work. It was completed in its present form of seven kandas by Shankaradeva, the great Assamese saint and poet, and his disciple Madhavadeva, who added the Bala and Uttara Kandas. Shankaradeva also wrote a play, the Rama Vijaya, on Rama's marriage and his humbling of Parashurama (Smith 1995: 27- Several other works were written in the following centuries like the Lava Kusara Yuddha, the Sitara Banabasa, the Katha Ramayana and the Nagaksa Yuddha (Smith 1995: 29-30)."

"The first Ramayana to be translated into a regional language from the main Sanskrit Ramayana, among the north Indian languages, is Madhav Kandali’s Saptakanda Ramayana in Assamese. This was carried out in the 14th century. Madhava Kandali created his work under the patronage of Raja Mahamanikya, the Kachari king whose kingdom was situated in the present-day district of Nagaon. Acknowledging Madhava Kandali’s literary prowess, Mahapurusha Sri Sankardeva later commented thus ‘Seeking Rama in the works of my unchal- lenged predecessor, I felt like the rabbit running away in fear seeing the elephant’s dung’."

"Assam’s sociocultural fabric is agog with stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Right from Sadiya, Manipur and Liqabali (near Silapathar) in Arunachal Pradesh to the land of Dimarajya (now known as the NC Hills), Tezpur or Sonitpur, many places in the entire region are associated with various ancient tales of Indic civilization and reli- gion. The Kamakhya temple and several other temples dedicated to Durga, Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna are scattered in the north-eastern region, and many festivals celebrated in their honour have been glorifying and sustaining those cultural memories for generations."

"In seventh century Cambodia, Khmer citations attested to the popularity of the Ramayana. An inscription declared that a certain Somasharman presented “the Ramayana, the Purana, and the complete Bharata” to a temple."

"The culture of India has been one of the world's most powerful civilizing forces. Countries of the Far East, including China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia owe much of what is best in their own culture to the inspiration of ideas imported from India. The West, too has its own debts. But the members of that circle of civilizations beyond Burma scattered around the Gulf of Siam and the Java Sea, virtually owe their very existence to the creative influences of Indian ideas. No conquest or invasion, no forced conversion imposed upon them. They were adopted because the people saw they were good and that they could use them."

"Whenever any attack on Hinduism threatens, all Nepali Hindus have done was to give in without a fight. A few years ago, the Maoists demanded the abolition of the Sanskrit class in schools, and the course was dropped at once. .... Ever since I first met a Nepali Hindu (at Benares Hindu university in 1989) and he gave me an account of the situation in Nepal, I have been very pessimistic about the future of Hinduism there. Never in the intervening years has even a single news item reached my ear that indicated a counter-trend, it was slowly downhill all along. Bangladeshi infiltrators accumulated, the ISI set up shop, the Christian missionaries lambasted the country's anti-conversion law all while making converts by the thousands..."

"Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold."

"We are deeply troubled by the Taliban’s continual repression of its people. Particularly painful, with its unavoidable connections to history, is the order requiring all Hindus in Afghanistan to wear an identity label ontheir clothing. This is an extension of the Taliban’s policy of religious intolerance and a stark reminder of the exclusionary tactics employed by the Nazis as a precursor to genocide. The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan have adopted a policy that more than 60 years ago spelled the beginning of the end for six million Jews. The Holocaust began with the ostracizing of the Jewish people and their forced separation from society, which can be the only purpose of labeling "others" as outsiders. In Nazi-occupied Europe, the badge of shame was the yellow Star of David worn as a patch. In Afghanistan, the Taliban rulers today are ordering Hindus to wear a similar label to enable Muslims to identify them. This is a clearly a policy founded on intolerance, mistrust and religious hatred. One would hope that we have learned from history. Following the recent desecration ofstatutes in Afghanistan, it has now progressed to marking people. We cannot help but ask, "What comes next?" We call on the international community and all religious leaders to immediately speak out against this practice."

"Like the Nazis before them the Taliban are systematically destroying religious and cultural foundations of minority culture, and then publicly stigmatizing that population."

"Those who think that the Nazi lexicon is embraced only by the extremist Moslems in Afghanistan are not aware of the extreme talk of the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan and Syria where there is a Goebbels-style systematic propaganda campaign against the Jewish People.....The suffering of the Hindus in Afghanistan is a matter of concern for all Jews and all citizens of the world."

"The Taliban's wilful targeting of Afghans who practice the Hindu religion, first by destroying treasured Buddhas, and now by forcing Hindus to distinguish themselves with discriminatory badges, is extremely painful for Jews."

"After the Islamic conquest of Kabul in April 1992, 50,000 Hindus had to flee Afghanistan (with the Indian government unwilling to extend help, and Inder Kumar Gujral denying that the expulsion of Indians had a communal motive)."

"Under Taliban rule, the remaining hundreds of Hindus in Kandahar, who had taken to inconspicuous dress in order not to stand out among their Muslim neighbours, were forced to wear a yellow strip to make themselves recognizable."

"Afghanistan was a full part of the Hindu cradle up till the year 1000, and in political unity with India until Nadir Shah separated it in the 18th century."

"It is related that Amru Lais conferred the governorship of Zabulistan on Fardaghan and sent him there at the head of four thousand horse. There was a large Hindu place of worship in that country, which was called Sakawand, and people used to come on pilgrimage from the most remote parts of Hindustan to the idols of that place. When Fardaghan arrived in Zabulistan he led his army against it, took the temple, broke the idols in pieces and overthrew the idolaters…"

"The first part of South Asia to be cleansed of Hinduism was Afghanistan. The 10 th century saw a life-and-death struggle there between Muslim invaders and the local Hindu population and dynasty. In this case, the replacement was not just religious, of Hindus by Muslims, but also ethnic, viz. of Indo-Aryans by Iranians. The fact of an at least partial physical replacement of the native population by invaders is attested by the linguistic shift. Until then, in much of the present-day Pashtu-speaking region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, an Indo-Aryan Prakrit was spoken (remember how the Sanskrit grammarian Panini was a native of Peshawar). It was replaced with Pashtu, an Iranian language."

"The most explicit mentioning of the Afghans appears in Al- Baruni’s Tarikh Al-Hind (eleventh century AD). Here it is said that various tribes of Afghans lived in the mountains in the west of India. Al Baruni adds that they were savage people and he describes them as Hindus."

"It would be nice to say that the Hindus in Bangladesh are prospering but it is the reverse which has happened. There were 28% Hindus in 1941, 10.5% in 1991, and less than 9% today. Pogroms, burning of temples (specially after Ayodhya) have all ensured that the Hindus flee Bangladesh."

"The Comilla riot was followed by various other outbreaks of a similar nature….Consider able bodies of Muhammadans, armed with lathis mustered from time to time and molested the Hindus. As a result there was wide-spread panic among the Hindu minority population in East Bengal…"

"“As far as East Pakistan is concerned, its decision seems to indicate that all non-Muslims will be driven out from there. It is an Islamic state….non-Muslims cannot live there…”"

"“…in view of insecurity of life, property and honour of the minority communities in the eastern wing of Pakistan [present-day Bangladesh] and general denial of all human rights to them, the government of India should, in addition to relaxing restrictions in migration of people belonging to the minority communities from East Pakistan to the Indian Union, also consider steps for enlisting the world opinion.”"

"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of per­secution or the more general sense of being second-class citiz­ens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would disput­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­e their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Mus­lims seek­ing econom­­ic oppor­tunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and inten­sely overc­rowded Banglad­esh cannot offer to the ever-larger num­bers of newcomers on the hous­ing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treat­ment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries. But sec­ularists see it differently, for "unlike the BJP, the Congre­ss (I) views both Hindus and Muslim from Bangladesh as in­filtrat­ors". Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"... The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigrati­on. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destru­ction, desecration and damage inflic­ted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migrat­ion­­­ by the Hindus to India went up"."

"There is no state today, certainly not in India, to protect Hindu interest in the international arena, to raise voice for the Hindus .... In December 1992, no less than 600 Hindu temples were destroyed in Bangladesh, thousands of Hindu homes were burnt down, hundreds of Hindu women were paraded naked on the streets of Bhola town, a number of Hindus were killed, Hindu shops were looted, Hindu deities were desecrated, Hindu girls were dishonoured. But the Government of India remained silent. In Pakistan, 300 temples were destroyed. In Lahore a Minister of Pakistan personally supervised the pulling down of a temple with the help of bulldozers, and several Hindus were murdered. But the Government of India remained silent. No matter how much tyranny, how much injustice is heaped on Hindus anywhere in the world, the State of India is not bothered - this is the essence of Secularism in India."

"Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country, with a significant, if shrinking Hindu minority—about 25-30% at the time of Partition in 1947, and less than 9% in 2003. The textbooks in Bangladesh are not based on an anti-Indian bias as are state sponsored textbooks in Pakistan. The social studies curriculum in Pakistan is premised on creating a national identity that is distinct from India, whereas Bangladeshi textbooks reflect a more pan-South Asian perspective, though Bengal-centric."

"Large-scale riots in East Pakistan have compelled over two lakh Hindus and other minorities to come over to India. Indians naturally feel incensed by the happenings in East Bengal. To bring the situation under control and to prescribe the right remedy for the situation it is essential that the malady be properly diagnosed. And even in this state of mental agony, the basic values of our national life must never be forgotten. It is our firm conviction that guaranteeing the protection of the life and property of Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan is the responsibility of the Government of India. To take a nice legalistic view about the matter that Hindus in Pakistan are Pakistani nationals would be dangerous and can only result in killings and reprisals in the two countries, in greater or lesser measure. When the Government of India fails to fulfill this obligation towards the minorities in Pakistan, the people understandably become indignant. Our appeal to the people is that this indignation should be directed against the Government and should in no case be given vent to against the Indian Muslims. If the latter thing happens, it only provides the Government with a cloak to cover its own inertia and failure, and an opportunity to malign the people and repress them. So far as the Indian Muslims are concerned, it is our definite view that, like all other citizens, their life and property must be protected in all circumstances. No incident and no logic can justify any compromise with truth in this regard. A state, which cannot guarantee the right of living to its citizens, and citizens who cannot assure safety of their neighbours, would belong to the barbaric age. Freedom and security to every citizen irrespective of his faith has indeed been India’s sacred tradition. We would like to reassure every Indian Muslim in this regard and would wish this message to reach every Hindu home that it is their civic and national duty to ensure the fulfillment of this assurance."

"Using the Babari Masjid-Ramajanmabhumi controversy as a pretext, Muslim mobs went on a rampage all over Bangladesh. They attacked and burnt down Hindu houses and business establishments in many places, murdered some Hindus and inflicted injuries on many others. Hindu temples and monasteries invited their special attention everywhere. Starting on October 29, 1989, the mob fury reached its climax on November 9 and 10 after the Shilanyas ceremony at Ayodhya. Many temples were demolished or burnt down or damaged in various ways. Images of deities were broken and thrown out. Temple priests were beaten up."

"There are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of persecution or the more general sense of being second-class citizens under the Islamic dispensation. Since 1974, Hindus have been crossing the border to India at the rate of 475 per day, or nearly 3 million in 1974-91. (...) According to BJP spokeswoman Sushma Swaraj, there is a remarkable contrast with the policy vis-à-vis genuine refugees: "Religious persecution, abduction, rape and forcible occupation of their lands by the Muslims left the Chakmas with no choice but to leave Bangladesh", yet "while the Congress Government had welcomed Bangladeshi infiltrators for vote-bank politics, Chakmas were being pushed out even though they were victims of religious persecutions.""

"In early 1964, there were bloody riots once more in East Pakistan between the majority and the minorities. The past six, seven years, the Muslims had been pestering the Adibasis .... a stream of refugees had ensued ... a mad anti-Hindu propaganda egged on the Muslims in East Pakistan, also against the Christians. It was the first time that Christians were systematically chase out from there."

"What may cut short all denials of this continued pestering of Hindus in Muslim states, are the resulting migration figures: in 1948, Hindus formed 23% of the population of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), in 1971 the figure was down to 15%, and today it stands at about 8%. No journalist or human rights body goes in to ask the minority Hindus for their opinion about the treatment they get from the Muslim authorities and populations..."

"The large-scale arson of December 1992 occurring in Islamic Bangladesh in the wake of the demolition of the Babri structure at Ayodhya was characterised by gangrapes of thousands of Hindu girls, assaults on Hindu temples, and widespread loot and violence. It had all the marks of a full-fledged jihad."

"Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971, when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because) of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims.... Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of riot victims in India since 1948."

"The very first Hindu grievance is that Hindus are being killed: in Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Kashmir, during bomb attacks... Among lesser-known types of anti-Hindu aggression, note the use of riots, targeted assassinations and minor forms of pestering... The Hindu death toll in post-Independence riots in East Bengal already outnumbers the Muslim death toll in Hindu-Muslim clashes in the whole of South Asia by far. ... All these riot data are, moreover, dwarfed by the East Bengal genocide of 1971. The first Bangladesh Government estimated the number of people killed by the Pakistanis... at three million. (...) Moreover, Western as well as Indian observers notices that the prime target group were Hindus. (...) The Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1950, concluded with Pak Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan amid mass killing of Hindus in East Bengal, prevents the Government of India from any form of interference when Hindus are maltreated in Pakistan and its partial successor state Bangladesh."