RELIGION - HINDUISM

From time immemorial, the Sanathana Dharma which is being called Hinduism, is thriving with the daily chores and ablutions that are being done by the learned persons.  The propagation of the learning has been in the form of a teacher oriented schools or Gurukuls in the past and Patashalas in the present times.  The knowledge seekers had been searching for the Guru to learn the scriptures and stayed with the teacher helping the teacher and his wife in daily chores apart from learning the Vedas and various scriptures in the religion. The various conquests by the Arabs, Moghuls, tribes from central Asian places and later the Europeans had more or less killed this practice of the students going in search of a learned teacher to learn the Vedas and scriptures.  With the introduction of McCaulay's system of education some time in early part of twentieth century, the British rulers had driven the last nail on the coffin of this practice.  A few Europeans from different parts of the continent found the Vedas and scriptures quite interesting and took away the palm leaf texts back with them to their countries.  Today, one of the Universities in Germany leads in teaching Sanskrit as one of the languages for getting a degree and even a post graduation and research in Sanskrit studies and subjects related to Vedas and scriptures.

With the resurgence of HInduism, thanks to the efforts of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda and others, the practice of Patashalas came about.  The students were grouped together and the teacher came to the place where the students were grouped to teach the subject he is well versed.  Thus the Veda Patashalas became a place of initial learning itself instead of it being a place of higher learning as it was in vogue earlier.  The above is only an introduction to the subject on hand and not a dissertation on the learning of Veda. 

The Europeans who came to the country in search of trade started supporting their traders with their armies and occupying the areas of their principal places of trade. Thus the European settlements came into being.  The internecine quarrels among the Europeans saw the British emerging as victors and consolidating their hold on many areas. Over a period of time, the British became the rulers of large areas of the country. With the British hold on the country on the ascent, the system that was classifying people based on the profession they were doing, gave way to the system based on birth and the caste system got entrenched in the administrative work of the government.  Therefore, the learning of the Veda and scriptures had become restricted to those who were born in the families of Brahmin.

Though the Shankara Matam and later the Vaishnava Matams and Madhva matams were established for supporting the entire Hindu pantheon, the learned persons to head these seats of learning became the sole property of the people from Brahmin community.  The persons who were well read and learned in all the Vedas, scriptures became the heads of these matams. Most of the followers of these matams were also Brahmin, though a trickle of other Hindus followed these matams and the principal matam head and its teachings.  Thus a clear division had been created with the Hindu Vedic Matams getting identified only with the Brahmins, though the Mat heads espouse that they are for all the HIndus.  In Tamilnadu (TN) a series of places of learning and seats of power were set up by other than Brahmins in the form of Atheenams in TN and similar seats of power came up in other states also to serve the interests of the other Hindus.  Though both the Vedic Matams, and these Atheenams claimed that they represent the greater Hindu Pantheon, the fact remains that there is a clear demarcation among these at least as for the followers are concerned. 

Added to this confusion, as for the state of TN is concerned there was a malicious propaganda by the atheists and their party started from the ashes of the Justice Party.  This propaganda of denouncing theism and castigating the Gods revered by the HIndus resulted in many of the Hindus other than Brahmins straying away from the path of Sanathana Dharma. Even visiting the family temple in the villages was looked down upon by these propagandists. This resulted in many temples staring at ruins and some became archaeological sites or heritages.  Countless temples were left without any proper worship in the temples or any learned person to do the same.

In this background, the missionaries and mullas were running amok to get the people converted to Abrahamic religions promising the gullible people with sops.  The learned persons in Hindu religion could not do much as there was a big void created between them and other HIndus by the continuous chatter of the propagandists. In this scenario, the emergence of people like Satya Sai Baba, Jaggi Vasudev, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Mata Amritanandamayi, Baba Ramdev, and similar countless others is being seen as a welcome relief.  Rajneesh started his ashram at Pune with more focus on the wildly popular open sex (especially in western countries) before going onto preach his brand of Hinduism.  Unfortunately many of his followers were westerners than from India. However, Nithyananda, an intrepid and controversial godman, had been able to attract more people to his brand of teaching and ashram.  

While many may not agree with this, the fact remains that the Vedic matams alone could not have sustained the interests of the other Hindus than brahmins in the Sanathana Dharma.  It require all the above new age Gurus and many more like Nirmal Baba, Asaram Bapu, to sustain the interests of the other Hindus in the Sanathana Dharma.  The westerners, disgruntled with their materialistic world and lives started looking for different things in life than just material pleasure.  A few were able to  get a teacher like Ramana Maharishi to help them out of their predicament. Many became followers of the Swami Bakthi Vedanta, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi etc. Both these built empires abroad with their astute spreading of their brand of Bakthi and Yoga.  However, the trickle to India to find solace from the Gurus here continued and contributed immensely to the wealth of these Gurus and their Ashrams. From Satya Sai Baba to Nithyananda every religious godman became extremely wealthy and built huge edifices.  The sole exception perhaps is Baba Ramdev who branched out into business to build his brand of fast moving consumer goods.  

The accumulation of wealth has brought its own problems to the heads of these ashrams, with a few facing criminal charges, getting arrested and placed behind bars for various offences etc.  However, the fact cannot be denied that but for the emergence of these new age religious godmen, the heads of Vedic Matams in the country alone could not save the Sanathana Dharma.