Source: www.geocities.com
[HPI note: this is a valuable resource recently made available on the web. Other articles of a similiar nature can be read at the same website.]
INDIA, August 6, 1998: Welcoming the recent reexamination of popularly accepted assertions about India’s history, Meenakshi Jain (a historian and professor at Delhi University) points in particular to the widely promulgated idea that early India was never religiously or philosophically cohesive but was just a geographically juxtaposed collection of peoples having highly divergent beliefs. That interpretation of India’s history has given fodder to those who claim that “the modern search for an imagined Hindu identity from the past” is politically and economically motivated, aim barbs at “saffron-tinged” scholars, and decry attempts to reduce “the multiplicity of classical traditions” in the subcontinent to one unitary tradition.
The Veda-centrism of Hinduism has failed to impress such historians. The fact that the seeds of all subsequent philosophic ideas of the Hindus can be found in Vedic literature is routinely overlooked. Diversity is highlighted without comprehension of shared underlying values and assumptions.
For those willing to see, there is ample proof of the coherence of the Hindu tradition. When the study of India was in its infancy, Max Mueller commented on the existence of a national or popular philosophy, a large lake of philosophical thought and language which thinkers could draw upon.
Irrespective of sect, sex, caste, or class, all believed in karma, rebirth, mukti, nirvana. All linked the notion of Maya to that of Brahman. All felt the discovery of cosmic illusion was meaningless unless followed by the quest of absolute Being. All observed the same general principles of ethical conduct. But despite this overwhelming evidence of the existence of a unitary civilization, the themes of domination, suppression, and segregation continue to be presented as the theme songs of Indian history.
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