Some of the effects of Western influence and alien rule are seen even now in some groups. There was persecution of Hindus and destruction of countless Temples and places of worship by alien forces. Many ritualistic practices and understanding of the philosophy and Dharma were lost. Prejudices, infighting and bigotry almost destroyed the moral fiber of the society and the true meaning of our faith. There was infighting within groups and various sects and the teachings of scriptures were almost forgotten while the rituals continued. Simple home prayers and group singing replaced Temple worship and performance of ritualistic Vedic Yajña. Even some of the words and pronunciation of Vedic texts got corrupted by alien culture. Material gains, greed and lack of sense of sacrifice along with poverty and loss of property and family support also played a part in the loss of faith and tradition. The four ashrama dharma as four stages of life were forgotten. The four varna dharma as rules of duties according to ones inborn ability and ambition were given new meanings and our caste problems have almost destroyed the unity.

Our Acharyas and leaders should lead us all in the right path and develop a new Dharma Sastra suitable for our modern times of secular democracies and materialistic societies. We need to establish thousands of weekend schools in all villages, cities and foreign countries to teach the principles, philosophy and practice of our faith in all languages. We have to develop prayers in all world languages for all our children and adults, not just those Vedic schools for creating more priests. We should develop educational programs to teach the Principles of Hindu religion, the Vedas and Agamas to every one and any one who studies the Vedas and Hindu philosophy should be accepted as "Hindu" in the "Upper Caste".

It is time we start a renaissance movement. The feudalistic passage of Varnas and Caste from father to son and all the taboos of inter-marrying and inter-dining must be abolished. We need a new Varna Dharma according to the way it was originally intended and not as practiced now. All the caste system, which is not really of Vedic origin, must be abolished and we must have a new set of "castes" and a new set of four varnas according to one's ambition, education and occupation only and people must be able to change their Varnas.

As we reached the later part of this century we continue to have many of these unwanted qualities and habits confused as our culture. Some of these are brought with us to other countries also. This is the time for renaissance again in our religious history. More than ever before, we now find a need to unify the various segments of our society. We have to educate them all in a composite way of all aspects of our faith, philosophy, rituals and our practice so that we can preserve it for many more generations to come. Fast air travels and movements of population groups from one continent to another have exposed our culture to many other religious groups. Many of our people have to face the proselytizing groups of alien faiths as well as many political, democratic thinking and atheistic and secular ideas.

This makes it all the more important to improve our foundation and spread the knowledge and lift all the divisive cultural habits of our society. We cannot leave it to a natural evolution of our faith any more as we have done in the past. People had more gains in using their time to study and follow other traditions and vocations and did not find any use for practice of Hinduism. There are times when we find a need to fight to preserve our heritage for our future. Many Hindu renaissance movements with the new found interest and resistance to the attacks on our culture is often termed as fundamentalism, and reactionary not only by alien forces and interested outsiders, but also, unfortunately, by some of our own brothers educated in Western culture who want to prove themselves to be more Sattvic than our Sages.

Even though we had stressed Ahimsa as an important Dharma if there was an attack on our selves, our parents, our Guru and our faith, the Hindu community always stood up to uphold their truth and fight for their rights as the Divine duty. Many wars have been fought to protect our mother, father, teacher or our form of worship of "God". From the ancient times in our Puranas, from the ancient period before Mahabharatha war to this century, we have had many wars to uphold the truth and protect the righteous people.

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