The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [75]
The most striking example of Hinduism’s absorptive powers is the way it incorporated Buddhism. Buddha was born on the Indian subcontinent, and Buddhism was founded in India, but there are virtually no Buddhists in the country today. This is not a consequence of persecution. In fact, the opposite. Hinduism so fully absorbed the message of Buddhism that it simply enveloped the creed. Now, if you want to find Buddhists, you must go thousands of miles from where it was founded, to Korea, Indonesia, and Japan.
The Bengali writer Nirad Chaudhuri was driven to exasperation by Hinduism’s complexity. “The more one studies the details of the religion the more bewildering does it seem,” he wrote. “It is not simply that one cannot form a clear-cut intellectual idea of the whole complex, it is not possible even to come away with a coherent emotional reaction.”8 Hinduism is not really a “religion” in the Abrahamic sense of the word but a loose philosophy, one that has no answers but merely questions. The only clear guiding principle is ambiguity. If there is a central verse in Hinduism’s most important text, the Rig Veda, it is the Creation Hymn. It reads, in part,
Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation came, when or where!
Even gods came after creation’s day,
Who really knows, who can truly say
When and how did creation start?
Did He do it? Or did He not?
Only He, up there, knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He.
Compare that with the certainties of the Book of Genesis.
So what does all of this mean for the real world? Hindus are deeply practical. They can easily find an accommodation with the outside reality. Indian businessmen—who are still largely Hindu—can thrive in almost any atmosphere that allows for trade and commerce. Whether in America, Africa, or East Asia, Indian merchants have prospered in any country they live in. As long as they can place a small idol somewhere in their home for worship or meditation, their own sense of Hinduism is fulfilled. As with Buddhism, Hinduism promotes tolerance of differences but also absorption of them. Islam in India has been altered through its contact with Hinduism, becoming less Abrahamic and more spiritual. Indian Muslims worship saints and shrines, celebrate music and art, and have a more practical outlook on life than many of their coreligionists abroad. While the rise of Islamic fundamentalism over the last few decades has pushed Islam in India backward, as it has everywhere, there are still broader societal forces pulling it along with the Indian mainstream. That may explain the remarkable statistic (which may prove to be an exaggeration) that though there are 150 million Muslims in India who watched the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, not one Indian Muslim has been found to be affiliated with Al Qaeda.
And what of foreign policy? It is clear that Indians are fundamentally more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than many Westerners, certainly than Anglo-Americans. Indians are not likely to view foreign policy as a crusade or to see the conversion of others to democracy as a paramount national aspiration. The Hindu mind-set is to live and let live. So, Indians are also averse to public and binding commitments of the country’s basic orientation. India will be uncomfortable with a designation as America’s “chief ally” in Asia or as part of a new “special relationship.” This discomfort with stark and explicit definitions of friend and foe might be an Asian trait. NATO might have been the perfect alliance for a group of Western countries—a formal alliance against Soviet expansionism,