Hin­duism has not been found­ed by any par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual. It is not the ex­pe­ri­ence of one man, of one prophet or one sav­iour. The ‘vi­sion’ of one man may be an il­lu­sion but when that same ex­pe­ri­ence has been ver­i­fied in the lives of thou­sands of oth­ers, as in Hin­duism, it can­not be log­i­cal­ly in­cor­rect.

Hin­du cul­ture is root­ed in spir­i­tu­al prac­tices, yo­ga, Ayurve­da, the di­verse arts, dance, mu­sic, sculp­ture and ar­chi­tec­ture. So­cial tra­di­tions, dhar­ma, ex­pressed fes­ti­vals, rit­u­als and rev­er­ence for na­ture and an­i­mals, thus form­ing the cor­ner­stone of In­di­an civil­i­sa­tion.

Hin­dus see death as the pass­ing of one’s spir­it in­to an­oth­er new be­ing in a con­tin­u­ous se­ries of birth, death and re­births. Hin­du scrip­tures are ex­pres­sions of the soul. The Vedas, which are the old­est scrip­tures of the world, de­vel­oped a sys­tem of life (Var­na ashram) which evolved the most civilised and tol­er­ant so­ci­ety.

Swa­mi Nir­lip­tanan­da wrote: “When we turn the pages of our scrip­tures, be it the Vedas, the Up­an­ishads, the Pu­ranas, the Ra­mayana, the Ma­hab­hara­ta or the Gi­ta, we al­ways find a spir­it of earnest en­quiry fol­lowed by the most pro­found log­ic and rea­son­ing. In fact, the Gi­ta, which ex­pounds the es­sen­tials of Hin­duism, be­gins with Ar­ju­na’s re­fusal to fol­low the ad­vice of Lord Kr­ish­na.”

Ba­sic to Hin­duism is the sci­en­tif­ic law of cause and ef­fect (kar­ma) ie, a per­son is re­spon­si­ble for their own des­tiny. Hence, there is an in­cen­tive to live a pure and no­ble life. If, how­ev­er, one fails in his/her life to reach the goal, he/she is then giv­en an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty by be­ing born again (rein­car­na­tion).

Thomas Macaulay’s sole pur­pose was the in­tro­duc­tion of Eng­lish ed­u­ca­tion in In­dia, sug­gest­ing it should be made com­pul­so­ry, not mere­ly to in­doc­tri­nate In­di­ans, but to achieve a cul­tur­al trans­mis­sion among the ed­u­cat­ed In­di­ans.

In 1935, Macaulay re­marked, “It is be­lieved, no ex­ag­ger­a­tion to say that all the his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion which has been col­lect­ed from all the books writ­ten in San­skrit lan­guage is less valu­able than that may be found in the most pal­try abridge­ment used at Prepara­to­ry Schools.”

Macaulay at­tempt­ed to de­stroy the In­di­an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem; he di­vert­ed mon­ey for ed­u­ca­tion in Eng­lish. But Hin­duism has trans­formed Macaulay’s weapon in­to an im­por­tant in­stru­ment for trans­port­ing Hin­du cul­ture to Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries of the West­ern world.

The great­ness of Hin­du scrip­tures has been ap­pre­ci­at­ed by promi­nent thinkers in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. Ger­man philoso­pher Arthur Schopen­hauer wrote about the Up­an­ishads: “From every sen­tence deep and sub­lime thoughts arise, and the whole is per­vad­ed by a high and holy and earnest spir­it … In the whole world, there is no study so el­e­vat­ing as that of the Up­an­ishads.”

Al­dous Hux­ley said, “… The Gi­ta is one of the clear­est and most com­pre­hen­sive ex­pres­sions of the peren­ni­al phi­los­o­phy ever to have been made. Hence, it’s en­dear­ing val­ue not on­ly for In­di­ans but for all mankind.”

The Gi­ta has been trans­lat­ed in the im­por­tant lan­guages of the world.

Ac­cord­ing to Hin­du Rishis, the apex of civil­i­sa­tion was in a pe­ri­od called Satya Yu­ga, when man lived by truth. From then, de­vo­lu­tion start­ed, which con­tin­ues to the present day (Kali Yu­ga), which is char­ac­terised by the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of dhar­ma, in­creased ma­te­ri­al­ism, so­ci­etal de­cay, los­ing all faith in the truth.

With­out Hin­du math­e­mat­ics, in par­tic­u­lar the in­ven­tion of the nu­mer­als, and one to nine and the ze­ro, we would still be cave dwellers. Above all these great achieve­ments stands the great lan­guage of the Hin­dus. San­skrit is the lan­guage of the Gods, the mu­sic of the soul, the ve­hi­cle of a great cul­ture and the pride of the Hin­dus.

The Hin­dus made oth­er spec­tac­u­lar achieve­ments in the field of as­tron­o­my, ship­build­ing, clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the an­i­mal king­dom, phi­los­o­phy, so­ci­ol­o­gy, pol­i­tics, the sci­ence of war­fare and in ad­vanc­ing the atom­ic the­o­ry and the the­o­ry of the cre­ation of the uni­verse, which are sup­port­ed by mod­ern sci­ence.

Hin­dus have pro­duced vol­umes of lit­er­ary works full of wis­dom. These works must have tak­en thou­sands of years to com­plete. With­out a sta­ble so­ci­ety, that would not have been pos­si­ble.

To have a sta­ble so­ci­ety, there must have been law-abid­ing and peace­ful cit­i­zens and that re­quires a jus­tice sys­tem, and peo­ple who were sat­is­fied with the eco­nom­ic and oth­er con­di­tions. In­dia had been a pros­per­ous and peace­ful coun­try for thou­sands of years be­fore the ad­vent of var­i­ous in­va­sions.

Swa­mi Vivekanan­da, who preached in the US more than one hun­dred years ago, said, “I am the proud­est man. I am not proud be­cause of my­self. I am proud be­cause of my an­ces­tors. The fur­ther back I go, the proud­er I am.”