Christmas Message

Peace on earth, and goodwill to whom?

A heartfelt “ho ho ho”, and Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates – whatever form that takes… 🎅🏻🎄⛪️

I rarely set foot in churches these days, except to look at the interiors. Yet back in the early 1980s, I attended a Sunday school. My recollections are dim, but I’m sure at this time of year they invoked a general spirit of Christian goodwill. However, looking up the Bible verse I thought I remembered (Luke 2:14), I got a surprise.

While the 17th-century King James Version does say: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”, the New International Version – widely cited in my youth – says something else, proclaiming: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.”

I’m no biblical scholar, but it sounds like this shift reflects a variant in manuscripts, which has now been resolved by the sort of research that academics do on yoga texts (see the summary here). Having reached a consensus on which of these readings is the original, they’ve established that peace and goodwill are reserved for good Christians.

Seeking something jollier, I searched for a hybrid of Christmas and yoga. That yielded this Hindu remix of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The singer is Jeffrey Armstrong, a Canadian billed on his website as “a relationship expert, philosopher, practitioner and teacher of the Vedas”.

The video concludes with an “end screen” linking to a clip titled “I am Hindutva”, featuring Armstrong and several other speakers. The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary translates “Hindutva” as “Hindu qualities” and “Hindu identity”, with a secondary meaning of “Hinduism”.

However, since the early 20th century, it has also stood for ideas equating Hinduness with India, which the activist V. D. Savarkar called the homeland of a “race” that dates back to the ancient Indus Valley. To quote his book Hindutva: “Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because they are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood.”

This appeal to blood and soil infuses modern Hindu nationalism. Since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have “discriminated against religious minorities, especially Muslims,” says Human Rights Watch. Meanwhile, “vilification of Muslims by some BJP leaders” and “police failure to take action against BJP supporters who commit violence” have “emboldened Hindu nationalist groups to attack Muslims and government critics with impunity”.

By contrast, Armstrong’s video associates Hindutva with “living so that all beings will benefit”. Jarring as that sounds, these are complex issues. Militant nationalism started as an effort to expel British colonisers, who on departing partitioned the subcontinent into Hindu and Muslim states, displacing millions and unleashing violence that killed untold numbers. Multiple conflicts continue to fester, especially in Kashmir, fuelling terrorist attacks on India and wars with Pakistan.

The point is nonetheless simple – lofty sentiments about inclusivity (another speaker on the Hindutva video cites the “oneness that unites all those who associate with this land”) bear little relation to facts on the ground. Perhaps it would be clearer to admit the selectivity, as in the line about peace on earth in Luke 2:14.

Hmm, this isn’t exactly an uplifting Christmas missive, but I hope it says more than “Bah! Humbug!” In any case – like that festive misanthrope Ebenezer Scrooge – I’ve had some visitations by ghosts of ancient futures and they’ve shown me a vision of something more cheerful with “trending audio”…

There’s not much to say after that. “And so, as Tiny Tim observed,” to borrow the end of A Christmas Carol, “God Bless Us, Every One!”

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