The following is taken from a book by Sita Ram Goel ( Hindu temples & what happened to them Volume 2), that perfectly explains the reasons behind the poisoning of our minds against the Brahmins & Hinduism in general thanks to the British. The passage is a just a small part of the entire chapter which is good eye opener if you are really into Indian history like I am.
The new imperialism had three faces - Christian, British, and Communist. It was far more competent than Islamic imperialism in terms of both means and methods. But the deadliest weapon it wielded was a new type of scholarship which it used in progressive stages for disarming the Hindus ideologically.
This scholarship was a many-splendoured mansion - Anthropology, Sociology, Historiography, Linguistics, Comparative Religion, Indology, German Idealism, French Positivism, British Utilitarianism, Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and the rest. It had some fascinating facets. Its essential theme, however, was only a variation on the Christian missionary lore in as much as it believed and had proved to its own satisfaction that the white man’s world was the centre of the universe, that the white man’s civilization was the highest achievement in human history, and that the white man had to shoulder the heavy burden of civilizing the rest of mankind which was seen as wallowing in varying stages of barbarism. But simply because this scholarship had surfaced in the same area and at the same time as Modern Science, it had come to pretend that it also shared the scientific spirit. Marxism-Leninism was the culmination of this masquerade.
This is not the occasion to go into details of how the latter-day imperialism mobilized this scholarship for mounting an unprecedented assault on the Hindu intellectual elite. What we are concerned with in the present context is the portrait of Hindus and Hinduism which this scholarship proceeded to paint. The salient features of the portrait which emerged at the end of the operation were as follows:
We have presented in simple and straight language the lore which Christian, British and Communist imperialists came to sell with varying degrees of sophistication, in a large number of tomes, treatises, and articles in learned journals published by prestigious publishing houses such as the Oxford University Press. In any case, by now the so-called Dalit Movement is retailing this lore in the way we have summarized it, without being questioned by any of its highbrow hawkers.1. The old and the most sacred scripture of the Hindus, the Rigveda, provides impeccable evidence that a race of blood-thirsty barbarians, who worshipped equally blood-thirsty gods and who styled themselves as Aryans, invaded this country in the second millenium BC, slaughtered or enslaved all those natives who could not escape to the far South or forests and mountain fastnesses in the North, and settled down to live on the fat of this fertile land for all time to come.
2. With a view to perpetuate their stranglehold on the country and its native people, the Aryans created a caste system in which they themselves constituted the higher castes - BrãhmaNas, KSatriyas, and Vaišyas- while they reduced the conquered populace to the status of Šûdras and outcaste untouchables.
3. At the same time, the Aryans concoted a priestcraft, presided over by the wily Brahmins and couched in the complex Sanskrit literature, in order to legitimize and safeguard the caste system.
4. Whatever veneer of culture the Aryans managed to acquire, was borrowed by them from the native people whom the Sanskrit literature had shamelessly described as Dãsas, Dasyus, Asuras, Nãgas, RãkSasas, and the rest.
5. That veneer of culture also took no time to come off when, at a subsequent stage, the custodians of Brahminism destroyed the shrines and slaughtered the saints of Buddhism and Jainism, simply because these rationalist and humanitarian religions questioned the iniquities and cruelties of the caste system and pleaded for a just and equalitarian social order.
6. But as the people’s protest against the primitive superstitions, the puerile priestcraft, and the cruel caste system of Brahminism continued to grow, Brahminism disguised itself in a number of new-sounding cults- Šaivism, Šãktism, VaiSNavism, etc.-and concocted a new series of Sanskrit literature - the PurãNas and the Dharmašãstras - in order to hoodwink the people and ensure the continuity of the caste system, with the crafty Brahmins sitting at its top and cornering unequal privileges as well as rich profits.
7. Thus the essence of Brahminism alias Hinduism has been, and remains, the economically exploitative, socially oppressive, and culturally moribund caste system, no matter how many heaven-tearing philosophies it stocks in its shop in order to hide the fraud.
8. Hinduism alias Brahminism has continued, and will continue, to suppress, or sidetrack, or subvert by means of its sly syncretism, every single idea, religious or secular, which threatens the caste system and the domination of the deceitful Brahmins.
9. Speaking scientifically and in a historical perspective, Hindus proper are only the high castes in the present-day “Hindu society”, and describing the rest of the people as Hindus is a dirty swindle.
10. Hindus alias the high caste descendants of the Aryan invaders have joined, and will continue to join, hands with any and every reactionary ideology and force - feudalism, capitalism, colonialism, American imperialism, etc. - in order to safeguared the caste system and its own stranglehold on the toiling masses of India.
The word “Hindu” was thus not only robbed of all the pride and prestige it had acquired over the past several centuries, but also made synonymous with foreign invaders who had committed no end to crimes against the native people. The word no more designated the vast majority of this country’s population; on the contrary, it became the hallmark of a small minority which had conspired to masquerade as the majority. The Buddhists, the Jains, the Sikhs, and the Animists (new name for those subscribing to tribal religions) were taken out of the fold of Hinduism at one fell sweep. Finally, the “Dravidian South” was given a call to revolt against everything associated with the word “Hindu” - religion, culture, language, etc.
This was the lore which was taught in school and college textbooks of an educational system which had been designed and was being controlled by the British establishment and the Christian missions. This was the lore which was given the pride of place in Communist pamphlets and periodicals which started to proliferate from the ‘twenties of this century onwards. And this was the lore by mouthing which a section in the Indian National Congress started strutting around as “progressive”, “radical”, “revolutionary”, "socialist", and the rest. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru became the leader of this section after a brief visit to the Soviet Union in 1927. And he started fancying himself as a great historian when his Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India, which revelled in this lore, were hailed as classics by the prestigious press in this country and abroad.
Meanwhile, Muslim historians of the Marxist schools had polished up a subsidiary thesis. Their main purpose was to salvage Islam from its blood-soaked history, and present the medieval Muslim rule in India as a native dispensation. Mohammad Habib of the Aligarh Muslim University came out with the thesis that the Islamic invaders had destroyed Hindu temples not in obedience to the tenets of Islam but out of their lust for loot. This thesis was lapped up immediately by Pandit Nehru and his progressive host in the Congress. Pandit Sunderlal picked up the hint and painted Islam and the medieval Muslim rule in glorious colours. The finishing touches were given by M.N. Roy who propounded that Islam had come to India for completing the social revolution which Buddhism had started but failed to accomplish because Brahminism had responded with fire and sword.
But the word “Hindu” had not yet become a dirty word. It still covered the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs except for some separatist fringes which had imbibed the monothestic theology of the Muslim-Christian combine or the Leftist lore. Stalwarts of Hindu re-awakening - Swami Dayananda, Bankim Chandra, Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo - had seen through the Christian and the British game and given a strong lead which had not yet been exhausted.
The word “Hindu” started being brought into contempt on some scale in the truncated Hindu homeland with the rise of Pandit Nehru to supreme power in the post-independence period. He was a combined spokesman of all imperialist ideologies which had visited this country in the past - Islamic, Christian, British, and Communist. Small wonder that he placed the Ministry of Education in the hands of a Muslim-Marxist combine headed by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Christian missions were given full facilities to educate the Hindus, and convert as many of them as they could manage. The missionary apparatus started building itself anew, after a period of panic experienced by it when the British Raj was drawing to its end.
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