Tharoor summarises what the Brahmins were saying thus: “We respect your truth, the Brahmins were saying, please respect ours.”

The Christian missionaries had no logical way to counter this position which is still projected by all those who have empathy towards Hinduism. But respecting Hinduism would be the last thing on their minds.

The third strain was what happened in Bengal. The missionary propaganda held that because Hindus believed in polytheism, they were, by their definition, an inferior people. This approach did make a handful of prominent people convert to Christianity.

As a counter, some Hindus like Raja Ram Mohan Roy said that Hindus were also monotheist, and hence not really different from Christianity. Roy also made some favourable noises about Jesus Christ.

This made some Christian churches target Roy for conversion.

However, even as he seemed to be deviating from the true plural spirit of Hinduism, he was all the time disputing the merits of Christianity as being superior. He ensured that the ground did not slip under Hinduism, and soon we saw the rise of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whose famous disciple was Swami Vivekananda.

One common factor seen in all these threads is that the Christians realised that the Brahmin was held in high esteem by the people at large, as well as others who had temporal and monetary power.

In effect, people were saying that if Christianity was not good enough for the Brahmins, then it was not good enough for them either. And so the conversion programme failed, even though it had good support from the colonial administration.

It is probably for this reason that the Christian missionaries started to hate the Brahmin, who was coming in the way of their conversion attempts. Even with the backing of the temporal power of a colonial regime, there was little they could actually do to make the Brahmin ineffective in society.

Even as we realise the spiritual power of the Brahmin in Hindu society, we should also realise that the Brahmin was not beholden to those who held temporal power for his sustenance. He depended on the alms provided by the people at large – both rich and poor. And he went to the people seeking alms. He did not wait in his abode for them to come give alms. In this way, his loyalty was to the people, and it is their well-being that was uppermost in his mind.

The Brahmin, therefore, often spoke for the people when he thought some injustice was done to them by those with temporal power. And because of the respect that people had for Brahmins, those with temporal power realised that they could not misuse it. This informal system of checks and balances was what kept society in a state of harmony. No one was afraid of another, and everyone respected each other.

As I had said before, nearly all social movements were started by Brahmins. They were not exclusive in providing leadership, but had a very significant role in starting and nurturing it at the initial stages, while leaders from other social groups were grooming themselves to provide the numbers required as the movement started to grow.

There were two types of social movements – one that was based on the parameters of Hindu civilisation and culture, and another based on the assumptions about society set out by Western thinkers and philosophers. While the latter ideas did have merit in their own home societies, application of the same without inquiring about their worth within Hindu norms, ensured that they did not find sufficiently deep roots in the society to have natural growth.

Even as these Western philosophies were doing the rounds, those Brahmins who offered a different perspective (but not always in opposition) based on the Hindu ethos were also in play. And soon it was the latter that started to be increasingly accepted by the people.

However, in the intellectual space it was the Western philosophies that dominated, in terms of what appeared, through the written word, in books, periodicals, mass media, etc.

For the outsider, who relied on these Westernised (in thinking) Hindus as their interlocutors about what is happening in society, it appeared that the social reforms taking place were not exactly within the civilisational norms of the people at large. An entirely new paradigm seemed to be emerging, which seemed to be premised on moving away from the ancient ethos of Hinduism.

In many ways, the paradigm seemed to be an aversion of much of the core of this ancient ethos. It appeared that the Hindu was ready for another conversion – to socialism and communism.

(In some ways, these two isms were also competing with each other, with socialism not willing to take away personal liberty that communism demanded. But this is an issue for another discussion.)

When it came to a move from the intellectual space to the spaces of the people, a realisation dawned on those propagating the Westernised reform movement that the people were really not with them. Not that they were against them – the people were looking for something that would be more robust than what was being offered to them by the intellectuals. Something that they could relate to on a culturally instinctive basis.

Furthermore, the Westernised reformists had worked out their whole model without really talking to the people or understanding what their needs were or talking to them in an idiom that they could comprehend. In effect, these Westernised reformists were saying: “I know your problems and I know the solution, and I expect you to come and sit at my feet and listen, without questioning what I have to say.”

The reformists rooted in the Hindu ethos went to the people in the manner in which Adi Shankaracharya did, and said: “You have inherent goodness within you. Let us work together to see how we can all be better.” To gather the people together, various methods were used – time-tested methods and simple to organise.

Thus, there would be a satsang which can be explained as follows: the idea behind satsang is that in a favourable environment, where there is the presence of holy people, listening to holy scripture or music, an individual can elevate his mind from one that is worldly towards a higher level of thought. It is said that the satsang constitutes one of the four ways – along with contentment, the spirit of inquiry, and self-control - by which people who are 'drowning' in samsara (repetitive history) can be saved.

In this elevated state, what the holy person speaks about becomes a dialogue which helps the listener bring what he knows at the level of the sub-conscious to the level of consciousness. And this dialogue helps the holy person to know the samaj and its needs.

The Westernised reformer did not see himself as a Brahmin, because his training made him look at this term in negative light.

However, the indigenous reformer had no such qualms of identifying himself as such because the people at large did not see it in negative light.

Hence, just as the Christian missionary saw the Brahmin as an obstacle to his programme, so also the Westernised saw the Brahmin in the same light. And so he too started to hate the Brahmin in the same manner in which the Christian missionary did.

This hatred did not seem to have any effect on the people at large even though the intellectual discourse continues to be in the “Brahmin-is-evil” mode. With the Shri Ram Janmaboomi issue moving to the centre stage of social and political discussion from 1985 onwards, a more explicit expression of one’s Hindu identity emerged.

And, since 1995, with the advent of the Internet, Hindus have been able to force discussions on their perspective as much as the Westernised one. And since the Hindu perspective was rooted in the Hindu cultural ethos, the people at large related to it better. The articulation of this perspective on the Internet helped other Hindus push their points of view in all discussion forums, even those that they were explicitly excluded from.

The “Brahmin is evil” mode is alive only amongst who form part of the ‘Khan Market gang’ all over the world. The dominant discussion, however, has moved away from this mode significantly. While the average Hindu recognises that there is much to be done from within, he is making the changes in a confident way. For him the guide to move forward is provided by what Swami Vivekananda had said: