BJP, RSS key to saving culture

WITH reference to the letter “BJP/RSS philosophy cannot be allowed in South Africa” (the POST, April 14-18).

Saber Ahmed Jazbhay and the world have a duty to appreciate that India’s Hindu culture came into existence when the Vedas were composed more than 5 000 years ago.

The Hindu culture also produced texts like the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, which I regard as the most outstanding scriptural texts the world has produced.

People like Mr Jazbhay and others must appreciate that organisations like the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were brought into existence to preserve Hindu culture.

The organisations were also brought into existence to protect Hindu culture from disrespectful, foreign cultures that invaded for reasons of proselytising that, as a scientist of religion, I will never agree with.

If I argue that the Bhagavad Gita is the most outstanding scriptural text the world has produced, it stands to reason that Bhagavan Sri Krishna, who gave us the Gita, must surely be regarded as a teacher whose teachings are the most honest, intelligent and outstandingly spiritual the world has ever been blessed with.

My long-awaited wish to know precisely what teachings foreign invaders took to India has never yielded honest and intelligent answers. I made this point at several national and international conferences on religion but I have never received intelligent responses.

I made the same points in the several books on religion that I have written but know that I will never receive intelligent responses to them. More especially, one expects religious people and scholars to behave in a certain way.

Jazbhay will only succeed in convincing people of his olive branch when their religious thinking rises to that of the 21st-century way of thinking that has been taught by many outstanding Hindu saints and savants.

THILLAY NAIDOO

Durban North