Hinduzion

There has not, to my knowledge at least, been any systematic understanding of Judaism or Zionism, from a Hindu perspective. Indeed the scrutiny of other creeds was itself something quite recent, dating from the 19th century great neo-Vedic reformer, Swami Dayananada. The analysis of other religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, is of quite recent duration, from the last decades of the 20th century, and that of Marxism only seriously looked at from the 1950s. The main reason in all this is that Judaism was never a threat to Hindus, unlike more aggressive ideologies which have not had their venomous fangs against Vedic civilisation blunted yet. For this reason the studies undertaken by Hindu scholars from India, even when it analyses the books of the Bible, the concept of monotheism, and the idea of having prophets, has far less relevance to Judaism. Some of the western scholars featured here, due to wider knowledge have been able to make the distinction stand out more. So perhaps until that is done, this work is one of the few which tries to analyse this perspective, even if a deeper study is not possible at this stage. Because Jews never enacted holy wars, never coveted material possessions, never sought mass conversion, never attempted to conquer territory, and never committed other atrocities on Hindus, the existence of this small minority on the sacred soil of Bharata bothered nobody. In the debates of Shankacharya with the Buddhists, the attempt of some Bhakti saints to synthesise Hinduism and Islam in the face of naked terror from the fanatic Sufi preachers and their imperialist backers, and with Dayananda’s lambasting of both missionaries and the corrupt superstitious practices of his own Hindu brethren, we find no examination of Judaism as a belief system in its own right. That in itself should make any Hindu who fully appreciates his Vedic heritage to understand that this creed was different from others that claimed to be monotheistic, as well as harbingers of a golden age. It should also make Jews ask why there was no conflict between what on the surface at least, appears to be polar opposites in religious belief and cultural norms.