At the intellectual level, Hindus will son be able to breathe freely. They will be able to rediscover and reformulate the numerous valuable expressio… - Koenraad Elst

Upadhyaya had the merit of coining the phrase “Integral Humanism”, which in a nutshell says everything Dharmic politics should be. It would still be a good thing if the BJP today would highlight “Integral Humanism” as its real ideological commitment, instead of weasel terms like “Nationalism”. Call it “Dharma” for Indians and people with a vivid Indian connection, “Integral Humanism” for foreign consumption or in English-language media.

Nazism itself, for all its anti-Semitic rhetoric, very much fitted into the Semitic tradition. As Girilal Jain has convincingly argued, Nazism was an extreme realization of the 19th century secular nationalism in Europe. This secular nationalism was in its general attitude towards mankind a direct heir to the Semitic legacy carried into Europe by Christianity. There is a straight lineage from Moses' Chosen People to Hitler's Herrenvolk (superior people). The radical division of mankind into the chosen insiders and the lost outsiders is very much present in this secular nationalism.... If we look at the basic points in the Nazi programme, we do not find anything there that can be traced to Germanic Paganism. ... Authoritarian political thought has nothing whatsoever to do with the Germanic tribal organization, which was largely democratic, with an elected king and a regular all-tribe assembly meeting. It had more to do with the secular organization of the Roman empire (which model had loomed large over the European polity all through the Christian period), which has also influenced the Church organization. ... The Nazi kind of nationalism was also of the Semitic kind. Rather than seeing the nation as one step on the ladder in the organizational hierarchy, below civilization and humanity, and above regional, tribal and family units, it denied this gradedness. Instead, it divided the world in outsiders and insiders, thus in principle opposing itself to the rest of the world, and imposed uniformity on the nation, discouraging all subnational groupings. Again, this exclusivistic and uniformist nationalism is opposed to the Pagan outlook...The dominance of monotheism has strongly promoted that single most essential trait of the monotheistic mind : simplistic crudeness. ... Their only concept of unity is to raze everything flat, then there will be no more difference and disunity, so that will be the realization of unity, equality etc.

The Buddha made his own version of Hinduism, as any Hindu Guru is entitled to, and as arch-Hindus like the Vedic Seer Dirghatamas before him or the philosopher Shankara after him have also done. But he never broke away from any existing religion. On the contrary, when he was asked near the end of his life what the secrets of a stable society are, he mentioned among other things the continued respect for the existing sages, pilgrimages and (by definition pre-Buddhist) sacred places.