INDONESIA’S HINDU LEGACY By Prakash Nanda from Bali udayindia.in/english/content_03august2013/cover-story.html A Muslim, that too the President of the world’s largest Muslim country, chanting Hindu verses and participating in a Hindu ritual may sound strange to our “secularists”, who find the national song of the country – “Vande Mataram”—communal Such is the state of secularism in India that an Indian Prime Minister, and that too belonging to a party which is often described as “Hindu nationalist”, could have done it. The Prime Minister was Atal Behari Vajpayee. The year was 2003. In Indonesian island of Bali to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, Vajpayee literally broke the heart of the then Balinese Governor Dewa Made Bertha that India was a secular state and that it was not possible for India to promote the Hindu religion in Bali, more than 90 per cent of whose population is Hindu. What was the Governor asking for? He just wanted Indian government’s help in reviving the rich historical and cultural ties between the peoples of India and Bali so that the Balinese would not lose touch with India and that their religious and cultural practices would not lose meaning. But Vajpayee was not convinced as he was more concerned about the likely fallouts of any sympathetic response to the Governor’s plea in India. And as expected, he got a very good press on his return to the country, with leading Indian “secularists” lauding his “Bali wisdom”. I was reminded of this “unpleasant episode” by a “proud Hindu” (who declared himself to be a “proud Indonesian” at the same time) of Bali, where I had gone to attend the three-day (June 15-17) “Second World Hindu Summit” (WHS). However, in sharp contrast to what Vajpayee did (and I am sure any other Indian Prime Minister would have done the same), just see what Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a proud Muslim leading the world’s most populous Muslim country (205 million, constituting 12.7 per cent of the world’s Muslims) did on June 15. He formally inaugurated the Hindu summit, along with the 35th Bali Arts Festival. He began his inaugural speech by remembering “Allah” as a true Muslim, but spent the next half an hour by extolling the virtues of Hinduism, greeting the Hindu saints from all over the world present on the occasion, and most important, reciting wellknown Sanskrit “shlokas”, including the Gayatri Mantra, and ending his speech by uttering “Om Shanti, Om Shanti, Om Shanti”. A Muslim, that too the President of the world’s largest Muslim country, chanting Hindu verses and participating in a Hindu ritual may sound strange to our “secularists”, who find the national song of the country—“Vande Mataram”—communal, not to talk of their protests against Yogic exercises in schools, lighting lamps and breaking coconuts at the government functions. But that was exactly what President Yudhoyono did at Bali on that day. In fact, inaugurating the essentially Hindu Bali festival has become an annual duty for him ever since he became the country’s President in 2004. And this was the second year in succession that he inaugurated the opening Hindu Summit, which also is going to be an annual feature henceforth.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 19:23:12 +0000