Victimhood: Self-defeatist mindset

"Offstumped " does a very good dissection of Arun Shourie's article  on looking at Gandhi's and Tilak's interpretation of Gita.  

The following stand by Offstumped on Shourie's view is what I believe in strongly too:

Mr. Shourie then goes on to lament the twin evils that imperil the fabric of our society - aggresive proselytism and Jihadist Terrorist, but in doing so he unwittingly adopts the second "Progressive Liberal" template of "Victimhood".

There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have been exclusivist — each has insisted that it alone is true — and aggressive. The Indic religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism — have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources — organised missionaries, money, the state — to proselytise and to convert?

Offstumped must once again respectfully disagree with Mr. Shourie when he succumbs to the emotional weakness of victimhood.

 

By viewing the Hindu way of life from the western monotheistic template of religion we suffer paranoia and anger while failing to see that what appears on the outside as a weakness is an inherent strength.

 

You sir miss the point on how we survived 4000 years of civilization while many have perished in the sands of time.  It survives not because of a central controlling authority or proselytising agency - Pontificate or Caliphate. Its a decentralized faith. It can morph and evolve and transform itself in a million ways. It survives because of this inherent strength. It is like how species surive through the process of Natural Evolution.

 

If today there is a perceived threat it is not primarily because of the monotheistic faiths but because of our intellectual atrophy in not recognizing this inherent strength. We have attempted to monotheize this way of life in our knee-jerk response to the perceived threats from the monotheistic faiths