Presented before the British Parliamentary Delegation, to India by
Swami Dharma Theertha, B.A., LLB., President,.. Hindu Missionary Society, S. N. Sevashram, Big Conjeeveram.
Members of the Delegation,
You have come to study the Indian situation and probably you are thinking that the Hindu-Muslim differences form the crux of the problem. If you think so, you are on the wrong track. The problem at the core is neither Indian nor Hindu-Muslim; it is almost cent per cent Hindu, and unless you grasp this fact you will return just as you came without understanding what the trouble is. I am an ardent Hindu who has lived all his life in humble service and renunciation of all selfish interests. I wish to tell you what and where the main disease is :
The Hindus form roughly 75% of the population of this country; most of the other 25% are descendants of Hindus who escaped from the Hindu fold and sought refuge in Islam, Christianity and other religions. Two sets of people leave Hinduism in a continuous stream: One, the oppressed, persecuted and degraded low castes who form the Nast majority, and the other, those who abandon Hinduism disgusted with its Brahman domination, caste, idolatry and other superstitions. In the latter group are included not only Muslims and Christians but Sikhs, BrahmoSamajists, Arya-Samajists, Buddhists, Atheists, etc. Thus is a few centuries more than 100 millions have left Hinduism. Another 60 million Untouchables (Scheduled Castes) are panting to get out from Hindu slavery by any means. Only their age-long helplessness, illiteracy and Poverty stand in the way. In the heart of the Caste-Hindu community in South India, a dynamic movement called the Dravidian Federation, aiming at secession from Hinduism, is sweeping the masses. So you will see that long, long before any Briton had set his foot on Indian soil a revolt was started against Hinduism which has and is gaining in momentum as the centuries pass. It is the natural, spiritual urge of a living people to get out of the darkness and shackles of mediaevalism to the light and freedom of modern life. The Hindu-Muslim conflict is only one manifestation of this country-wide agony of a deep moral struggle.
Britain has many great achievements to her credit in India. But she has utterly failed to facilitate the emancipation of an ancient people from the throes of the struggle to escape from their bondage to the soulless forms of a dead civilization—the civilization of Brahman worship, idol worship, caste and priestcraft. Hindu .society and Hindu religion as they are to-day are enemies of all progressive forces. They are an object of disgust and fear to all non-Hindus who stand in dread of being engulfed by seething mass of 300 millions of humanity still helplessly drifting towards their own annihilation. All the chief political parties of India are agreed in regard to one thing—their opposition to the Hindu party. The Muslims, the Untouchables, the Christians, the non-Brahmans, the Sikhs, and even the Congress—all are united in their opposition to the Hindu party as such. The differences between the Congress and the Muslim League, the Congress and the Untouchables, the Congress . and the non-Brahman party, are all different expressions of the common aversion of all to Hindu Rule. The .antagonism is not based on any fundamental differences in their political ideologies, but on the inevitable constitution of the Congress as a body dominated by the Caste-Hindus. No non-Hindu, be he a Muslim, Christian or
