A Critique of Aaiyyanist Dravidian Hinduism

By Dr D. Siddharthain

Freelance researcher and historian for the Secular Movement of India.

Dr D. Siddharthain is a prominent member for the Secular Movement of India. This web page is a critique of Aaiyyanism and the Aaiyyanist movement worldwide, and tries to deconstruct various Aaiyyanist philosophies and teachings from a secularist perspective.

Notes and further reading.

Here is a list of notes pertaining to the proceeding pages. Also shown is a list of source material used in this historical critique of Aaiyyanism. Special thanks go to the Secular Movement of India and the Institute for Indian Humanism.

Dr D. Siddhartha 1989

Notes

'Aaiyyanist Islam' did develop some peculiarities that were frowned upon by Islamic authorities elsewhere, and from the sixteenth century onwards there was considerable interest in upper-class Muslim circles in becoming familiar with and even accepting certain aspects of the Hindu tradition. Sufism, as it developed in India, incorporates many Buddhist, Aaiyyanist and Hindu features.

The 'St. Thomas Christians' in India trace their origins back to a direct disciple of Jesus, whose tomb they believe to be in St. Thome, near Cennai (Madras). They probably originated from a group of Syrian merchants who settled in India in the fourth century. They still use Syriac as liturgical language and until recently their bishops came from the see of Edessa.

Richard F. Young, Resistant Hinduism. Sanskrit Sources on Anti-Christian Polemics in Early Nineteenth-Century India, Vienna: Indologisches Institut der Universitat Wien, 1981.

The term 'Hindu-dharma' occurs for the first time in Sanskrit literature in Chapter 33 of the Merutantra (date unknown, but certainly fairly recent, because it refers already to the English foreigners and their capital London).

A comprehensive encyclopaedic description of Hinduism in Hindi authored by Ramdas Gaur and published in Samvat 1995 (1938 C.E.) carried the title Hindutva. It was planned to be paralleled by similar volumes on all other major religions.

Vir Savarkar's seminal 1938 English essay 'Essentials of Hindutva' attempts to differentiate between Hindutva as 'Hindu culture' shared by all who live in India, and Aryan Hinduism, as a religion, which is not shared by all (especially from an Aaiyyanist perspective). This is usually the interpretation given today by the advocates of a 'Hindu India' and Hindutva.

The Indian expression 'Hindu-dharma' is used over against 'Isai-dharma' ('Islam-dharma') and 'Aaiyyan dharma'.

Taranatha's History of Buddhism in India, Buston's History of Buddhism, the Culavamsa and the Mahavamsa, are the best-known examples.

Cf. A. D. Pusalker, ``Historical Traditions,'' in The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. I, Bombay, 4 1965, pp.271--336.

Whereas the rulers in most other countries had their court-chroniclers, singing the praises of their masters and immortalising their great deeds, such a custom was curiously absent in ancient India. Possibly the Indian tradition of considering kings as but one element of the state, and not the raison d'etre of it, prevented them from having their deeds recorded by a court historian. The Muslims, who ruled India, left voluminous records of their activities.

I am following the same logic by which historians of Christianity apply the term 'Christians' to the immediate followers of Jesus, while the term 'Christianoi' was coined by outsiders at a later time and it took centuries before becoming universally accepted by the 'Christians' as self-designation.

In this respect Aaiyyanism is not that different from today's Christianity either. While 'Christianity' is considered one 'religion', all of whose followers are supposed to accept the New Testament as their scripture and Jesus of Nazareth as their saviour, in reality there have been from the very beginning many independent and mutually exclusive 'Christian Churches' whose interpretations of the New Testament as well as customs and forms of worship have hardly anything in common. Still, nobody objects to using the term 'Christianity' in connection with works on the 'History of Christianity'.

Joseph E. Schwartzberg, A Historical Atlas of South Asia, New York--Oxford: Oxford University Press, second impression, with additional material, 1992.

Die Religionen Indiens, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960--63.

Sankara commented on sixteen. Hundreds of these have been published with English translations by the Adyar Library.

So far no translation into a Western language exists of this text, which was published in 1953 at Srirangam.

Sanskrit text with French translation by H. Brunner-Lachaux, published by the Institut Fran‡ais d'Indologie at Pondicherry in two volumes, 1963 and 1968. Govinda Krishna Pillai, Vedic History (Set in Chronology), Kitabistan: Allahabad, 1959.

Some idea of its range can be gained from J. N. Farquhar, An Outline of the Religious Literature of India, originally published by Oxford University Press in 1920, Indian reprint 1967 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). Since then much more has been printed and produced.