History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.23

v7.c96.s1.23

Hinduism is a combination of many systems and religious ideologies including Vedic ritualism, Vedāntic thought, Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism, Śāktism and primeval cults, adapted to the requirements of different types of men and communities with great disparities of intellectual and spiritual attainments. There were only a few matters that would be said to have bound most of the Hindus to each other, viz the doctrine of Karma and Punarjanma, the unifying influence of the vast and venerated Sanskrit literature that gradually enriched the regional languages, the veneration in which the Vedas were held by all Hindus as the final authority in religious matters, though only a small minority could learn and understand them, the geographical unity of the country from the Himālaya to Cape Comorin emphasized by the Purāṇas and by the pilgrimages to holy places from Mānasa lake and Badrinath to Rāmeśvara. These few elements, however, were not enough to neutralize the causes that militated against effective unity amongst all Hindus. Most of the *ācāryas* and saints laid too much emphasis on other-worldliness and Vedānta and did not lay equal or greater emphasis on or recognize the importance of active and thorough performance of people's duties to themselves, to their families, and to society, the result being that many people, whether fit or unfit, tried to become otherworldly and did not actively pursue worldly values with righteousness. Another cause of disunity and downfall was the great disparity between the high metaphysical teaching of the whole world being one and the treatment meted out to lower classes and untouchables, owing to ideas of exclusiveness, of purity and pollution by touch &c. The education of the masses was greatly neglected²⁶⁰⁷ and the higher classes did not seriously mind who ruled the country as long as their life was not much disturbed. The great patriot and revolutionary Savarkar, hammered on seven fetters by which Hindu society was bound for centuries, viz. untouchability, prohibitions of several kinds viz sea travel, of mutual dining among the hundreds of castes and subcastes, of intercaste marriages, of Veda study against several castes, prohibition against following certain occupations and prohibition against re-admission to Hinduism of people that were converted to other religious faiths by force, fraud or ignorance.