Arise Bharat

By: Col. Ajay Kumar ( retd )

The American claim of being a liberal and secular republic collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. Beneath the rhetoric of freedom and pluralism lies a nation still governed by the theology of its founding faith. The United States functions not as a secular state but as a Christian republic cloaked in liberal garb, its institutions and political culture steeped in an unspoken creed that defines who truly belongs. This hypocrisy, between constitutional separation and cultural imposition, has stripped Washington of the moral right to lecture Bharat on religious liberty.

The façade of American secularism cracked wide open when its Vice President publicly expressed hope that his Hindu-raised wife would one day “find Jesus.” This was no private sentiment—it was an act of public theology, merging faith with political posture. When a leader entrusted with upholding the constitution voices his missionary desire on a political stage, it signals the quiet re-emergence of a religious test for public legitimacy. It tells every non-Christian in America that acceptance comes with conversion. For Bharat, this episode is more than irony; it exposes the deep-rooted arrogance of a culture that mistakes its own faith for the universal norm.

This missionary impulse now manifests through digital vigilantism. When Hindu-origin officials like Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel greeted their countrymen on Diwali, they were met not with celebration but with bile: “Seek Jesus,” “Diwali is un-American,” “Move to India.” The vitriol is revealing. It proves that in America’s moral imagination, Hindu identity is foreign and suspect. Citizenship, though secular in law, remains religious in essence. The First Amendment’s promise of free exercise dissolves when the majority’s faith feels threatened by public expressions of Dharma. What America calls liberty is often the freedom to conform.

Bharat, by contrast, never needed a constitutional amendment to affirm tolerance. Its pluralism predates politics. The Vedic truth—Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti, the one Truth spoken in many ways—is not a slogan but the metaphysical foundation of Sanatan Dharma. Here, diversity is not managed; it is worshipped. The world is a family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Unlike Western liberalism, which tolerates difference as an inconvenience to be managed, Dharma sanctifies it as a divine principle. It does not fear the other; it recognises the other as an expression of the same Truth.

Yet America presumes to judge Bharat’s civilizational ethos through instruments like the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Year after year, Washington’s bureaucrats issue ritual condemnations, declaring Bharat “a country of concern.” The irony is monumental. A nation struggling to protect its own minorities, where public displays of non-Christian faith invite online exorcisms, positions itself as the global custodian of religious freedom. New Delhi’s refusal to recognise these reports is not defiance; it is dignity. Bharat knows that these verdicts are political tools, not moral ones, designed to keep the Global South morally subordinate while the West preserves its illusion of virtue.

The roots of this hypocrisy are structural. America’s constitution may forbid a religious test for office, but its culture enforces one. To be viable in national politics, one must genuflect to the Cross. Every president and candidate invokes divine guidance, and every oath ends with “So help me God.” Even the most liberal leaders must profess faith to remain electable. The state may be secular on paper, but the people are bound by the theology of the founders. Christian allegiance remains the invisible prerequisite for moral legitimacy.

This de facto establishment of Christianity is now taking institutional form. The surge of Christian nationalism in recent years has fused racial identity with religious exceptionalism, turning the republic into a pulpit. Conservative states now mandate that schools display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Courts increasingly favour “accommodation” over separation. The American Civil Liberties Union has had to defend Hindu and Jewish parents who object to state-imposed Christianity. The same nation that sermonises about freedom abroad is quietly dismantling it at home.

The numbers reveal the scale of this transformation. Over half of Republican voters identify with Christian nationalist ideals. Among independents, a quarter sympathise with this worldview. Even within the Democratic fold, cultural Christianity dictates the moral vocabulary of public life. In practical terms, this means that a non-Christian candidate for the presidency faces an invisible wall. The U.S. remains democratic in form but theocratic in instinct.

This exposes the deeper philosophical flaw in the Western model of secularism. What the West calls “neutrality” is merely Christian morality stripped of its overt theology. Liberalism was born from Protestant anxieties and remains tethered to them. It manages religion as a private affair, confined within conscience, voluntary association, and ritual modesty. It cannot comprehend faith traditions like Hinduism, where the sacred and civic are intertwined, where the temple and the state are not enemies but expressions of the same cosmic order. When America demands that Bharat emulate its model, it is not offering universal principles but exporting its parochial history.

The civilizational divide runs deeper than politics—it is ontological. For the Abrahamic worldview, truth is exclusive, revealed once and for all. Salvation requires conformity. For Sanatan Dharma, truth is inclusive, discovered endlessly through inner realisation. The former breeds conversion; the latter cultivates coexistence. Where the West sees the infidel, Bharat sees another seeker on a different path. This is why the Dharmic way can host multiple philosophies, even atheism, without feeling threatened. The West tolerates difference as deviation; Bharat celebrates it as divinity.

The United States can no longer disguise its moral decline behind liberal slogans. Its institutions, captured by sectarian fervour, are proving incapable of sustaining the very secularism they proclaim. The digital crusades against Hindu visibility, the political demand for Christian fealty, and the missionary rhetoric at the highest office all reveal a civilisation losing its balance. Its critique of Bharat is not born of moral strength but of civilizational insecurity—a desperate need to preserve the illusion of Western supremacy by painting the other as intolerant.

Bharat’s path forward must therefore be assertive, not apologetic. It should continue to reject biased Western assessments and present its Dharmic pluralism as a higher civilizational model. Bharat must articulate that true freedom of faith lies not in the suppression of belief from public life but in the celebration of all paths as sacred. Its diaspora must no longer bow to conditional acceptance, for Diwali belongs as much to New York as to Varanasi. In the end, the real rift is not between nations but between worldviews: one that seeks salvation through exclusion, and another that finds liberation through unity. America’s Christian nationalism is a mirror of its unresolved history. Bharat’s Sanatan Dharma, by contrast, offers a template for the future—a world where diversity is not a challenge but the divine design itself. The time has come for Bharat to speak not as a student of Western liberalism but as a civilizational teacher, reminding the world that the eternal light of Dharma needs no sermon, only understanding.