In its recorded history, Hindu India faced decisive challenges from three major religions – Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.
Buddhism
Gautam Buddha [560-483 BC] came on the scene in India and his organized religious system called Buddhism opposed Hindu beliefs in God, Vedas, caste-system, rituals, and gods, but supported ideas like Karma, Dharma, reincarnation and Moksha. Such protestant ideas spread like wild fire in India, and, with dedicated support from many Indian kings, Buddhism claimed an enormously large number of followers and seemed ready to inundate and take over Hindu India. But, thankfully, the great Shankar Acharya [788-820] came and with his weapon of Vedic Religion in the form of Brahma Sutras, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, he succeeded in pushing back the tsunami-like tide of Buddhism. Before dying at the early age of 32, he traveled all over India and established four monasteries - in the North [Kedarnath], South [Sringeri], East [Jagannath Puri] and West [Dwarka]. These monasteries were meant to act as citadels for the defense of Hinduism. So great was the success of Hindu revivalism that in the 1981 India census report, Buddhists constituted 0.72% of the country’s population.
Islam
After the first challenge coming from Buddhism, the second great challenge to Hinduism came from Islam. Mughals were Muslims and they followed Islam. Babur was India’s first Mughal emperor. He was born in present-day Uzbekistan, and became ruler of Kabul in Afghanistan. From there, he, with approximately seven thousand soldiers, invaded the kingdom of the Lodi Afghans in northern India in 1526 and laid the foundation for the Mughal Empire. He established a dynasty that was to rule India for three centuries. To consolidate their rule, Mughals needed to have a strong base in the vast local population. And so, through tyrannical rule supported by sword and blood, rulers like Aurangzeb drove fear into people and engineered mass conversions of Hindus to Islam. But, as in the case of Shankar Acharya and the Buddhists, saviors came along to again save Hindus and Hinduism. The poets and gurus of the Bhakti movement, through their religious poetry, elevated Shri Raam and Shri Krishna in Hindu worship to resemble the place occupied by Buddha in Buddhist worship, and in so doing, they satisfied the emotional urges of the oppressed masses and inspired hope in their hearts. Some of these poets included Tulsi Das, Soor Das, Guru Nanak, Ramanand, and others. Unfortunately, there was no Shankar Acharya or Dayananda to give an aggressive challenge to these Muslim newcomers. Consequently, the Indian Muslim population during the last thousand years rose from 0 to 172 million according to the 2011 India census. This represents 14.2% of the country’s population. Despite this, historians acknowledge that, despite allurements and persecutions, Hindus have remained an overwhelming majority in India, and this is due in large measure to the influence of the Bhakti saints and their writings.
Christianity
British rule presented the third and latest crisis for Hindus and Hinduism. The British East India Company was formed in 1600, and on August 24, 1608, they landed on Indian soil at the port of Surat, for the purpose of trade. In 1615, seven years later, they received permission through royal Mughal order to establish a factory at Surat under the leadership of Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador of King James I. Following this, the East India Company also got similar permission from the Vijayanagar Empire to set up their second factory in Madras. Subsequently, they fought the Indians for control of Indian lands in several battles, two of which took place in 1757 [called the Battle of Plassey], and another in 1792. In 1857, Indian soldiers engaged in the famous Sepoy Mutiny that historians acknowledge as the first War of Independence for India. The mutiny failed, and in 1858, Company rule ended and the British crown took over the administration of India.
Indian Hindus have always been suspicious of, and so, hostile to, the presence of foreigners on their land. They thought that, like the Mughals, the British also came to demean and pour scorn on their religion, customs and traditions. And, the Christian missionaries, with the Bible in their hand, came to help the British strengthen their empire. Together, they made up an indivisible pair called the advancing British and the proselytizing Christian. India’s untouchables and people of the depressed classes became a sought-after, fertile hunting ground for the missionaries. They had vast funding from foreign sources and massive support services from the British India government to lure local Indians and then proceed in rapidly converting them to Christianity. Soon, a new class of neo-Christian Indians was born. These new local Christians felt more closely related to their foreign-born Christian rulers than to their own poor, underprivileged Hindu countrymen. With their newly acquired upper social class status, they felt a part of the ruling élite and became pillars of the empire.
The British-Christian newcomers represented vitality, energy and a new wave of scientific inventions coupled with new methods of mass production of goods and wealth brought on by the Industrial Revolution of Europe. These foreigners seemed to be heralds of the future world order that swept the innocent, unsuspecting Hindus off their feet, leaving them in awe. It was on this scene that Dayananda Saraswati appeared. It seemed that Shankar Acharya was meant to be born again to save India, for the third time. A mighty Christian wave, comparable to the earlier Muslim and Buddhist waves, would have seriously jeopardized the Hindu majority in the then pre-partitioned India, but the Rishi, with herculean efforts, successfully countered the British-Christian onslaught and consequently halted the tide of mass conversions to Christianity. One shudders to think of the destiny of India and Hinduism minus Dayananda. That, according to India’s 2011 census report, the Christian population is nothing more than 2.3% amounts to the biggest tribute to Dayananda Saraswati and his relentless crusade.
Making Hinduism Competitive
Prior to Dayananda’s coming, Hinduism practiced an extreme form of individualism. Each Rishi sat by himself in his isolated place in either jungle or cave, working for his personal emancipation, with hardly any thought given to the wide world and its general good. And, each Hindu family used to pray at home, and even when going on pilgrimage, would focus on their individual well-being. Rishi Dayananda made Hinduism a religion of congregational worship, either daily or once a week [Sunday], sitting around the Yajña altar, with everyone chanting Vedic verses. The activity was meant to work for the common good of the entire community [Samaj]. In addition, Dayananda vigorously advocated that those who had embraced non-Hindu religions might be reconverted and brought back to their original religion. He, therefore, made Hinduism a proselytizing religion, something unheard of in Hindu history. In so doing, the Rishi took the offensive straight to the doors of both Christianity and Islam and paid them back in their own coin. This reconversion movement, called Shuddhi, gained prominence in Panjab [March, 1877 – July, 1878] and it enabled the process of further stalling the mass exodus of Hindus to other religions.
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