You have initiated and started this Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha with high expectations and lofty goals. What has been its track record and how successful has it been in bringing together the various disparate sections of the Hindu society?

Whatever were the objectives of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha, they have been accomplished. One of the objectives was to bring all of them (the various leaders of the Hindu society) together and we brought them together. It has been done. And we wanted to evolve a common programme for which we will all work together. We discussed and made certain resolutions. Some of them are long-reaching resolutions. They are not immediately subject to fulfillment. The resolutions like getting the Hindu Religious Endowment Board relieved from the hold of the State Government is a commitment the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha has and we are working towards that very vigorously and we will achieve that. Another resolution is we will stem the erosion of values. That is also a continuous one. We also resolved to work against conversions and that too is a long process. And so we are working and the Acharyas are aware of this. We are going to meet again. We are constantly in touch. So it is successful.

The Tamil Nadu Government has announced the repeal of the Anti-forcible Conversion Act. But the opposition to the repeal has been very muted from the Hindu society, particularly from the Acharyas' side. There have not been many big voices of indignation against that.

The repeal of Conversion Act has done more damage than any good; you know the damage is much more than the damage that was there before the introduction of the Act. Therefore what I say is this: Repeal of the Act was a mistake. There may be some reasons but it has done damage to us. It is a tremendous damage. And I have written a letter on behalf of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha to the Chief Minister asking her to take a courageous stand to stem this aggression of conversion. And I consider, as I said before, conversion is violence and this violence has to be stopped. And we have got on even without this Act. Laws were there. Even human rights act is there. Therefore we don't need a new act. But introducion of the Act and then repealing it is not good. It was done to stop mass conversions etc. Fine. But the Act was never acted upon. Lot of cases were reported but no action was taken. And then, the repeal reads as though there is a new sanction for everything. This is not true. Therefore something has to be done by the government to neutralise that kind of a feeling.

But do you really think, Swamiji, conversions could be stopped by laws or with the help of the State? Is it not the duty of the Hindu society at large and the Acharyas to address the problem?

That is one thing. Hindu religion basically is not a converting religion. It does not perpetrate aggression towards any culture, any religion. In fact it has got a certain intrinsic accommodation for other religions to pursue their own forms of prayer, worship etc. and it is not aggressive. It is its own genius, its own culture. It is not aggressive, it won't be aggressive.

So there is no question of getting into any kind of 'competitive religiosity' to counter this violence you are talking about?

No, Hindu Dharma does not allow that. Therefore, there is you on one side, with a non-fighting, non-aggressive, non-violent religious tradition. Then there are two aggressive religious traditions and they are trying to get this non-fighting religious people- they are trying to get their share.

Is it an unequal battle...

In a way, yes. So they are eating into our tradition. We are only defensive. And what you talk about the Hindu fundamentalism and all that is not true. There are no Hindu fundamentalists, there are some Hindus who realize this and therefore they are only asking 'Hey, come on, leave us alone'. Are they fundamentalist? They want themselves to be left alone. That is not fundamentalism. You have got a right to protect yourself. The State is supposed to protect, being secular, all religions. I want the State to be totally secular. And if it has got to be secular it needs to protect all religions, which includes unfortunately Hindu religion also. And the State doesn't have any right, being secular, to manage the properties of Hindu temples and spend crores of rupees in administration of the temple. Therefore, we want everything to be left alone. Be secular. Totally secular means, protect Islam, protect Christianity, Protect Hinduism. PROTECT. All the way, protect all the main traditions- protect them.

Okay, but is not a fact that many practices in Hinduism lend themselves as alibis for these kinds of activities, for poaching and generally criticising Hinduism? As Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha how do you propose to regulate and reform these?

See, a converting person can make use of anything. And, in fact, a responsible religious person should pursue his or her religion and leave other persons alone. If they have problems and if you think you can help them, then help them solve. Or else, just allow them to solve it by themselves. The Acharyas, of course have looked into some of them. Then among the Acharyas there are very orthodox ones, there are people who are not orthodox but they are ready to come out of these orthodoxical big walls and try to do something. So it is a long way. There is a long way to go. But that is our internal problem and we are trying to solve it. We will solve it.

Another bane of the Hindu society, Swamiji, particularly relevant to Acharayas and Gurus is that we see so many charlatans and all kinds of dubious characters going around in the garb of sadhus and vitiating the religious atmosphere. Does not the Acharya Sabha have some kind of a role in keeping the people on their guard, from being exploited by such fakes ...

There are people who have difficulties in conforming to dharma. Rather, they are given to adharma. In the pursuit of adharma they can use anything. They can use religion; they can use religious robes. That doesn't mean that religious people are committing crime. There are people committing crimes and when they commit crimes they use religion also. So it is going on. So, a seemingly religious person need not be totally ethical and an ethical person need not be religious. Again, you can see such persons in all religions, not just among Hindus.

But is there something in the Hindu psyche that makes people susceptible to these kind of characters? Is it because of a basic lack of understanding about religion itself Swamiji? Have benefit-oriented rituals and blind faith clouded a proper understanding?

There are lot of real things. Suppose there are certain rituals that are meant for neutralising certain problems. There is a discipline called astrology that also can help us in some ways. So we have a lot of things. We are a very rich and vast culture. And therefore there will be areas where people are ignorant. In all areas there are people who are ignorant and therefore in all areas there can be exploiters of gullibility.

Swamiji, a Christian is not ignorant of the bible, a Muslim is not ignorant of his Quaran but when you take an average Hindu his ignorance of his religion and scriptures is very very high . How do you account for that Swamiji?

You don't know if every Christian is knowledgeable of his bible or if every Muslim is knowledgeable of his Quaran but then they all hear something about them because it is a congregational religion. So where there is a congregational discipline naturally there can be somebody who can explain and that advantage we don't have. But we have some advantage also, because a Hindu imbibes from his parents in terms of religion and culture and if he wants to know something more he has to go to a teacher. Again the flow is vertical. There is no lateral control. Naturally a temple is unlike a place of assembly, like a church or a mosque where people assemble for prayer. But here a temple is a place of worship; it is an altar of worship. An altar of worship is entirely different from an assembly hall.

It is amazing. And being an altar of worship, anybody can come anytime and offer his or her worship and go away. And certain other temples may have priests and certain other temples may not have priests. You will find in many temples in the North there are no priests. We ourselves are priests; the devotees themselves are priests. That is because of our concept of Isvara. It is complete, we say every form is Isvara's form. And the world is a manifestation of Isvara. Therefore we can invoke Isvara in any form and therefore we have a ritual of worship. They don't have that advantage because the world for them is created by God for your consumption and world is not a manifestation of Isvara. World, for them, is created by God sitting in heaven and he dropped these planets as doughnuts. Therefore this concept being defective, they are the losers. And therefore we should never compare Hindu religious forms to any other form.

The last two decades, politically and socially,has been dominated by debates on Hindutva, communalism, secularism, pseudo secularism and all these kind of jargons. Now, has this debate reached the dead end with the fall of the BJP government at the Centre or do you see it taking a different tone?

They were not really (the BJP) doing the propaganda of Hindutva perhaps properly. Hindutva also is not understood by the one who propagates or by the one who listens to the propaganda. The emphasis has to be recast and redone properly. There is a national culture and it is from this land. It is our Bharatiya culture and people need to respect it. And the one who respects this culture is the one who is a Bharatiya. Therefore, we need to really talk about our bharatiya culture, Bharatiya religion and Bharat as a nation. Not this partial secularism of not protecting the Hindu religion. We need to protect Hindu religion, we need to protect Islam, we need to protect Christianity and for which we should practice real secularism. And therefore the Bharatiya Janata Party should address itself to that secularism.

Every media, every means of propaganda, we need to make use of to tell exactly what is secularism. And every Indian should know this. They need to protect all religions. That means no erosion of Hindu religion. Hindus have to be preserved, Hinduism has to be preserved, and Hindu culture is to be preserved. It will protect him. So allow it to thrive.

All political parties eye what is called the minority vote bank. Is the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank, the dream of many people, is it a pipe dream or a possibility?

Why should we consolidate any one's bank? They are consolidating their own banks. We need not consolidate but we NEED TO KNOW that others are consolidating their votes. And the votes consolidated are used against the people who love their religion, their tradition, their native culture. Therefore, this is the problem.

But BJP during the last two decades rose to political power only because of the so called Hindu consolidation on the Ayodhya issue and various other issues and then...

Not at all. There was no Hindu consolidation at all. They had given us certain hopes. And those hopes we want to realise. It is a Bharatiya party. It has Nationalism. Bharatiya means it has a certain nationalistic heart, which is having a deep reverence, respect for our native culture, which does not mean it is against any other religion. Love for my religion does not amount to hatred for others. Love for your children does not mean you have hatred for other children. But here it is interpreted like that. Love for my religion means hatred for other religion and that is how it is interpreted. Therefore, we need to emphasise. The Bharatiya Janata party gave us a hope that it may represent the cause of native culture, native religious protection over promotion.

There have been, when the BJP was in power and even now, so much talk about the word saffronisation of education... of everything. Now as a person wearing saffron clothes what do you think about the way the word is being used or misused or bandied about?

I wish they saffronise everything. They didn't saffronise anything.(laughs) This is just a slogan, a JNU slogan and they always make slogans, thrive on slogans and they live on slogans. What do you mean by saffronisation? If I chant or people chant their prayers in Sanskrit, is it saffronised? Are non-saffronised people not chanting? WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? This is all usual humbug. 

(Excerpts from interview with Editor T.R.Jawahar, News Today)