In Defence of a Billion Hindus

Every sixth person on this Planet is a Hindu and Hindus still constitute the overwhelming majority in India - nearly 80 per cent of the population. Humanity needs thus to re-discover the wonder that is Hinduism, the oldest spirituality still in practice in the world. Hindus have been the most tolerant people on this planet, accepting the fact that the Divine manifests Himself or Herself at different times of the history of humanity using different names and different scriptures. This is why Hindus have always welcomed in their midst all the persecuted religious minorities of the world - from the Syrian Christians, the Jews (India is the only country in the world where Jews were never persecuted), from the Parsis to the Tibetans today. In 5,000 years of existence, Hindus have never militarily invaded another country, never tried to impose their religion on others by force or induced conversions, contrary to Islam and Christianity. You cannot find anybody less fundamentalist than a Hindu in the twenty-first century. Yet it has been one-way traffic, as Hindus have been the most persecuted people. In fact, in terms of genocide, there is no greater holocaust than that of the Hindus - it has been estimated than more than a hundred million Hindus have been killed from the Hindu Kush, till today. This book is then about the story of the Hindus, their scriptures, their history, the bloody invasions that they faced over the centuries and the menaces that still threaten their very survival.