Number of words: 292

The origins of our secularism lie in the encounter between the Aryans and the Dravidians at the commencement of our recorded history as a civilization. It is well illustrated in the contrast between the treatment meted out to Eklavya at the expressed later in the same epic over Siva teaching the Pandavas the mystreis of the Bhrahmastra.Eklavya the non-Aryan is excoriated for learning the Aryan art of archery so effectively that the outshines even the disciples of dronacharya. An infuriated Dronacharya teacher of teachersenquires from whom Eklavya learned his skills. Eklavya leads him to a statue he has built of dronacharya as the source of his inspiration. At this dronacharya demads his gurudakshina which eklavya willingly offers to tender dronacharya demands eklavya’s right thumb as his recompense. And eklavya immediatly   slices it off, ending his career as an ace archer and thus saving Aryan honour. Such was the contempt in which the lesser breed was held. 

But when the Pandavas are exiled to the forest, the Dravidian god. Siva appears before them in the guise of a tribal chieftain thus underlining his non-Aryan indentity. He then imparts to Arjuna paragon of the Aryan order, the secret knowledge that eventually enabals good to triumph over evil and injustice to be worsted by justice.

One sesthis in the unfolding of Buddhism and Jainism in the country. They rose as rebel religions out of the womb of Hindu society, spread till they ousted Hinduism as the state itself that Hinduism acquired its final shape only with the advaita of Adi Shankaracharya that the political revival of Hiduism under the Guptas acquired the spiritual momenturm to restore Hinduism as the first religion of the Country.

Excerpted from “Confessions of a secular fundamentalist” by Mani Shankar Aiyar