Islam and Christianity vs Sanatan Dharma: Expansionism vs mutual respect and harmony

For many millenia, India was the world's leader - in science, economy, standard of living, philosophy and much more. We traded in high value goods with the world, and seekers of deep knowledge came to India, to study in our universities. The Romans have been known to worry about half their treasury being emptied in trade with India. We were the world's leader in metallurgy, textiles, handicraft, medicine, and so much more.

To the uninitiated, Christianity began over two thousand years ago, and the west was christian lands. But reality is quite different. While the Romans and Greeks had intertwined Polytheistic religions, Europe above Italy was mostly following Norse pantheon. Rome was the first to accept Christianity, with emperor Augustus, but this did not help Christianity become the accepted faith of all Europeans. In fact, a large part of Europe was forced to accept Christianity by Charlemaigne, the founder of the Carolingian dynasty of France.

Since its inception, Christianity has been an expansionist doctrine, and has aimed to destroy native cultures and practices by vilifying them, or simply forcing itself upon defeated people. Today, proselytism most works with stealth tactics, sabotaging and infiltrating the religious practices and institutions of native peoples, and vilifying their social and religious icons. When a population loses faith in its own way of life, Christian evangelists swoop in and convert them to Christianity en masse. This is a business, controlled by the Vatican.

An uglier but less polished version of the same expansionist doctrine is Islam. The doctrine of Islam is outright political, and divides the world into Dar-ul-harb and Dar-ul-Islam, telling its followers to expand the rule of Islam worldwide, by all means possible. In the initial centuries, the Islamic empire was organised as a Caliphate, but later, the Caliph became their religious figurehead, and like the pope, he gave orders to the Islamic rulers for conquest. Their conquest has never stopped, and only changed tactics after the discovery of oil in the Middle East.

In contrast to these expansionist doctrines, all native religions have been devised for the natives. No native religion gave the mandate to force the people of a state defeated by a devotee king to be made to worship the gods of the invader, anywhere in the world.

In India, Sanatan Dharma has not just been the religion we believe in, but our culture and our way of life as well. As the Islamist invaders penetrated deep into India, burned our libraries, destroyed our universities and killed uncounted millions in the name of Islam, we lost the vast guiding force that kept our society vibrant and strong against invaders, and became decadent and backward. metropolitan centers became just cities, cities became towns, and smaller settlements became basically a bunch of houses huddled together, forgetting the rules of building, the arts and sculpture slowly but steadily declining, simply because people feared any ostentatious display of wealth, lest they get robbed. The only reason Indians did not capitulate like Iranians to the swords of Islam completely, was the decentralized character of the organisation of Hinduism. Unlike the western neighbors, in India, our faith begins with a family deity, then the local deity, and then come the major centers of religious discourse or worship.

So when the large centers where our intellectual leadership was trained and certified were burned down, people still had the local leadership and family traditions intact. This is what allowed us to bear the hardships for centuries, yet only a very few gave up on their family traditions.

Christian evangelists did not come to India in large waves till the later part of the medieval ages. While some claim that minor lineages of Christians have been in Kashmir and Kerala since ancient times, the major push for Christian evangelism did not come till the British East India company had conquered large parts of India. While the company was against it, the missionaries concocted tales of imaginary barbarian practices involving human sacrifice to convince the British parliament to allow them to work in India.

Christian missionaries recognised the glue that held together our cultural integrity, and started campaigning against everything Hindus looked up to, and exploiting the fault lines that had developed because of the corruption of Dharma under Islamist rule.

Both Islam and Christianity are committed to their cause of conquering the world, and Hinduism stands in front of them as the biggest hindrance.

This makes it imperative for Hindus to learn about their scripture and traditions, and be ready to give deep rooted answers to evangelists of both these proselytizing creeds. Even more so, it is necessary for Hindus to learn about the texts of these doctrines, to unravel them in front of those who denounce the path of Sanatan Dharma.