WITH the prescience that philosophers share with out-of-office politicians, a hundred years ago, a leading Indian scholar analysed the combustible demography of India. In 1923, Dr Radhakrishnan wrote in his two-volume survey of Indian Philosophy: “India even today is mainly Hindu.” Describing the Epic Period, which spanned roughly 600 BC to 200 AD, he wrote: “The fortunes of the Hindus [however] became more and more linked with those of the non-Hindus.” Amongst these, he included Buddhists, Jains, Saivites and Vaishnavites — the sons of India’s soil. Muslims, of course, had yet to come.
It is a lengthy tome to read, and even more difficult to digest. I chewed on it as a student in the 1960s, but gave up before reaching the end of the second volume. I returned to it recently to seek answers to the Hindu-Muslim experiments at religious coexistence since the arrival of Muslims in the subcontinent, and especially since PM Narendra Modi’s determination to expel them.
India’s traditional hospitality is proverbial, but it does not extend to religious strangers. Over the centuries, Buddhists have quit India for gentler climes. Today, Buddhism has over 520 million followers, of whom only 8m are left in India (Lord Buddha’s birthplace) to follow in his........