Hindus of India (An Old and Rare Book)

About the Book The Hindu civilization is one of the oldest. Of the contemporary cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East there is no trace, barring some scattered relics of their past. The Sumerians, Semites, Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians, Elamites, Greeks, Romans, are all gone for good, burried deep under the layers of time. The Hindu religion and culture had to be dynamic to have survived. even withstood the assaults of Islam and Christianity.

This culture took millenniums in the making; it has in its ambit the time honoured great thoughts that flowered on this subcontinent. It produced people of towering achievements, great emperors and philosophers, warriors and men of sciences, arts and literature, leaders in religion and state craft, some amongst the greatest that ever walked this earth. The second millennium, however, saw its gradual decline, till by the middle of the nineteenth century, its people, having earlier drifted from a scientific temper and unity of purpose, fell, from affluence and the place amongst the world leaders in trade and commerce, and were captured by the British, almost to a man, and were plundered to abject penury. Yet the essentials of the civilization remained intact. What enabled it to withstand the ravages of time were the stolid patience of its people, its culture, the religion and its philosophy, and even the caste system.

About the Author Brigadier Jagdev Singh graduated in civil engineering from the Punjab University, Lahore, now in Pakistan, in 1947 and in 1948 he was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. He is a graduate of the Defence Services Staff College and has held important staff and command appointments during his service. He was an engineer regimental commander in the Chhamb Jauraian sector during the 1965 war with Pakistan. During the 1971 war he was the chief engineer of the force that took Dacca, now the capital of Bangladesh, and was awarded the ATI VASHISHT SEVA MEDAL. He retired from the Army in 1979. He is the author of Dismemberment of Pakistan, a book published in 1988, about the history of the rift between the eastern and the western wings of the original Pakistan and the role played by India and its army in liberating the eastern wing and bringing about Bangladesh.

During the course of his service, and subsequently, Brigadier Singh has travelled extensively throughout the length and the breadth of the country and has interacted with various groups, sects, tribes, castes that constitute the Hindus of today.

Preface Hindus of India are a remarkable phenomenon, if not the most remarkable social growth in the history of the human race. Their digion and culture have defied time. No other civilization has had such a tenacity to its credit. They are a multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual people, and even though its constituents have had some differences in their religious and cultural concepts, these have not generated any significant tensions.

Generally the Hindus are not inclined to use religion for mutual political or financial benefit. It has no in-built political element and has seldom served as a rallying point for any cause other than the cause of religion. Its concern is wholly and solely with guiding its followers along, the path which, it believes, secures for them happiness in this world and in the hereafter, and while doing this its emphasis is on personal experience, on mature and sagacious reasoning, and not on blind faith, for the belief is that the mind has a cosmic dimension and an infinite capacity to comprehend. This is not a faith that coerces its followers to follow any set of tenets, for it has no tenets as such, only guiding lines which, according to it, if followed with sincerity and persistence, lead to the 'experience and, eventually, to emancipation. It does not believe in proselytization, and for this reason, while missionaries of other religions go about constantly seeking conversions to their faiths so as to secure a dout in the running of the affairs of the state, the approach of the Hindu missionary is totally concerned with the affairs of the religion. He believes that the religion is an individual's personal affair and must remain so if it has to serve its purpose. An important thought of the Hindus, in which, possibly, the majority of them believe, lays stress on truth and non-violence.

**Contents and Sample Pages**