India is probably only country of its scale which has resisted the forces of religious conversions and still maintained the multi faith Sanatana Dharma still intact.
The motivation for this blog came from 3 completely different places
One, when I was listening to a podcast on North East India and the insurgency and so on, I heard from Col Honi Bakshi who was all praise for Church for in someway taming the tribals and sort of making them "civilized". On the other hand was Rami Niranjan Desai who saw the flaws in Nehruvian method of allowing missionaries and church to enter the remote areas.
Second was the chat with Google Gemini about Russia and how it remained such a vast country and it turned out one of the reason was conversion of people to Orthodox Christianity and imposing Russian language by one of the Czars.
Lastly while discussing the same with my now Sophomore (High School) daughter she said, religious conversions are a part of state building. Essentially boils down to, if I can control what you do in your private life with such thing as god and religion then I have better ability to keep the population under control and more conformed to speak.
All these turned some of the belief's that were installed in us on its head, example Aurangzeb was just not a pious muslim who wanted everyone to see path of Allah but also a clever state builder who saw that leaving factions of Hindu alone will eventually ruin his vast empire or the same with Shivaji who believed if he cowed down to Aurangazeb then Hindu as a culture and its values will be destroyed. Same is true for Christianity and power of church and to large extent Europe and America.
I am not denying the fact that some people are motivated enough and see themselves as apostles and want people to convert to their sect but same time when it becomes a well funded and strategic process it is more than just pure religious zeal.
I started the blog quoting how India has time and again honored diversity, a very beautiful example of it comes to mind. I have always wondered how come Buddhism which originated in India and powerful backing from kings like Ashoka the great didn't survive in India as much as it did in neighboring countries and the answer probably lies in the land itself which thrives on diversity and multi culturalism.
