Hindutva

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'Proud to be from an RSS family'-Sunitha Williams</b>
9/28/2007 12:00:20 AM  Media Input
AHMEDABAD: NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said while addressing a Rotary Club function in Ahmedabad in the presence of her father:

<b> "When I landed up in Naval academy I had to adjust to military discipline. The RSS culture of discipline in our family came in handy for me at that stage since my father had been associated with the RSS."</b>

While addressing a meet under the aeges of the Ahmedabad Managament Association she also spoke on Ram Setu. She said :

“I took pictures of the bridge between India and Sri Lanka from the space station".

Sunita Williams, whose father Dr. Deepak Pandya hails from Gujarat, arrived in Ahmedabad last week on a week-long visit to India.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

How to bring about a revolution in the mind of the Hindu?


That is what the Yanks label
as the “64,000 dollars question.”


1. Is a revolution required to secure Hindu Dharma?

2. My Take:

Yes, revolution is necessary, but it must be initiated in the mind of the Hindu, as a start.

Only about 15% of the Hindus are real-Hindus, committed to the defense of Hindu-Dharma. The rest, about 85% of the Hindus, are Phoney-Liberal to one degree or another. They are suffering from a Cognitive-Disorder of some kind. It is a Hindu variety of the Stockholm-Syndrome, in which the Hindu feels sympathy, for the barbaric creeds who have brutalized and tyrannized the Hindu for centuries, committing wholesale slaughter and plunder of the Hindu for centuries.

3. These Phoneys (Phoney-Liberal Hindus) fail to perceive that, predators are planning on bringing a much larger haul of Hindu-Harvest of souls, to their barbaric camp, using terror, treachery, wholesale rape, pillage and plunder of the Hindu. They are determined to make the Hindu kiss the dust.

These Phonies can never steel their hearts, for the fight that lies ahead, against the predatory forces.

4. How to bring about a revolution in the mind of the Hindu?

That is what the Yanks label as the “64,000 dollars question.”

Surinder Paul Attri

[acharya]

RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE
Bridging the divide
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/di...ory_id=10015201

Nov 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
The world's most religious country is still battling with its demons

ON THE face of it, Praveen Togadia is just the sort of Indian the modernising Jawaharlal Nehru might have been proud of. Urbane and sophisticated, he is a cancer surgeon, with more than 10,000 operations to his credit. He hails from Gujarat, one of India's more go-ahead states, currently run by his friend, Narendra Modi, perhaps the most free-market-oriented of the state leaders.

Yet Mr Togadia is also the international general secretary of something Nehru would have abhorred—the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), one of the three main bodies of the Hindutva (Hinduness) movement. Mr Togadia drifted away from medicine towards politics because he became convinced that Hinduism, like Judaism, was a persecuted faith, especially by Muslims. He has played a leading role in the campaign to rebuild a temple at Ayodhya, the birthplace of Ram, one of Hinduism's great trinity of gods. In 1992 Hindu activists tore down a mosque built there by a Muslim ruler.
British Library Bridge-building Ram

For Mr Togadia, the crucial difference is that “we [Hindus] believe in peaceful co-existence; Islam does not.” But his definition of peaceful co-existence would be queried by India's 150m Muslims, especially those in Gujarat. The state is still haunted by the riots of 2002, which began after a train carrying Hindu activists on their way back from Ayodhya caught fire in a Muslim neighbourhood, and Muslims were blamed for the dozens of deaths. In the ensuing pogrom, 2,000 people died.

In Gujarat's state capital, Ahmedabad, many Muslims are now stuck in an eastern ghetto known as Little Pakistan. “Ayesha”, a widow housed in a gloomy resettlement complex, recalls how her family ill-advisedly took sanctuary in a local leader's house, only for her Hindu neighbours to force their way in, “stabbing, hacking and burning”. There was so little left of Ayesha's husband and one of her daughters that she had trouble getting death certificates for them. Many of the mob were wearing Hindutva gear—saffron headbands, or the khaki shorts favoured by those who take part in the movement's early-morning physical jerks.

The place is more peaceful now. “Farah”, a middle-class lawyer who was also forced to retreat to Little Pakistan, calls Mr Togadia “a fanatic”, but she thinks most Muslims have given in: “They are too scared and poor to get anything.” Although Mr Modi's reputation has suffered (he was refused a visa to visit America in 2005), he should get re-elected comfortably later this year.

Ayesha and her friends already worry that the election will be a pretext for more violence. But ghettoisation has radicalised the women in the resettlement complex. They go to the mosque more often and talk approvingly of Osama bin Laden. The otherwise mild Ayesha also praises Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader “who died for Islam”, and wishes a horrible death on Mr Modi and his friends.
City of religious dins

Mr Togadia has survived several assassination attempts. He is now concentrating on trying to stop the (mainly secular) Congress party blowing a hole in a holy bridge, supposedly built by Ram, that links India to Sri Lanka. Congress says that the bridge, which is mainly underwater but visible from the air, is really just a ridge blocking shipping. So far, two people have been killed in demonstrations. Sonia Gandhi, Congress's leader, has already ordered a retreat by her party—though not before Mr Modi had weighed in, asking pointedly what Italians knew about Ram (Mrs Gandhi is an Italian Catholic).

Today's India is a test-tube for religious politics. The birthplace of four big religions (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism), it has remained religious even as it has modernised. It was founded in the throes of a religious conflict—partition between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. And religion informs three different political conflicts: the external one with Pakistan; an internal one between the Hindu majority and the sizeable Muslim minority; and a rip-roaring debate about religion in the public square.

India has had three big wars with Pakistan (in 1947, 1965 and 1971) and one minor one in 1999. The wars were not explicitly about religion but about the disputed territory of Kashmir and, in 1971, the independence of what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. But religion is crucial to Kashmir, because Pakistan claims that the mainly Muslim state was ceded to India unlawfully by its Hindu maharajah. And some in the Hindutva movement think the real territorial crime is the existence of Pakistan itself. Hinduism, they claim, is the religion of “Hindustan”, the whole subcontinent. Maps in Hindutva offices have a habit of missing out the Pakistani border.

At the moment India's relationship with Pakistan is relatively peaceful, partly because Pakistan is not in a state to be unpeaceful with anybody. But both sides now have nuclear weapons. And Hindus persistently worry that Indian Muslims are a fifth column. One Hindu nationalist, Prafull Goradia, suggests that Indian Muslims should be forced to take an oath of loyalty (though he would rather Muslims of all sorts moved to Arabia).
Pluralist, in principle

An uneasy relationship with Pakistan was perhaps inevitable; but what would have distressed Nehru particularly is the prominent role played by religion in domestic politics. India's constitution writers tried to get round this in two ways. The first was to embrace pluralism. The new country would be “a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic...Pluralism is the keystone of Indian culture and religious tolerance is the bedrock of Indian secularism.” The second was to go out of their way to provide protection for the (generally poor) Muslim minority.

Many Hindus would add that India was also born with a third force for tolerance: Hinduism. As a religion with countless gods and many sacred texts, it does not lend itself to extremism: there are no rules for governments to enforce.

How did things go wrong? The short answer is that many Hindus, like Mr Togadia, came to see India's “secularism” as a code for favouritism towards Muslims—especially by Nehru's Congress party (which until recently most Muslims voted for). Muslims are allowed to live by their own family law and enjoy plenty of positive discrimination, including subsidies to fly to Mecca. There was also a change in Hinduism: the more mystical strain, Vedanta, which preaches the unity of all religions, was challenged by the stauncher Hindutva message. Vedanta Hindus stayed with Congress; Hindutva ones moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Much of Hindutva is officially dedicated to social welfare—especially the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world's biggest voluntary movement. Every day several million RSS members meet at some 50,000 shakhas (or meetings) to discuss the meaning of life and go through their stretching exercises. But Hindutva also has a clear political message centred on three issues: a federal ban on the slaughter of cattle; the introduction of a “uniform personal code” (which is itself code for getting rid of a separate family law for Muslims); and rebuilding Hindu temples, especially Ayodhya.

Politics has proved both exhilarating and depressing for the Hindutva movement. The BJP, which swept to power six years after the mosque at Ayodhya was destroyed, has firmly established itself as the party of the aspiring middle classes. The RSS wields enormous power on the right of Indian politics. It has also broadened its arguments, couching them in non-religious terms. Cows, for instance, need to be kept alive for their milk (a “white revolution”, they argue), not just because they are sacred. Ram's bridge to Sri Lanka is essential as a bulwark against tsunamis.
<span style='color:red'>
Yet none of Hindutva's main goals has been met.</span> Although most of India's states ban the slaughter of cows, there is no central-government ban; the Ayodhya temple remains unbuilt; the uniform code unpassed. For this many Hindu nationalists blame the BJP; but the truth is that, having never won more than 26% of the vote, it has had to rely on coalition partners, who, like most of the country, are less militant. When they think about it, many Hindus would like a temple built at Ayodhya. But they tend not to think about it, and are appalled at the violence the dispute has spawned.
<span style='color:red'>
Especially in its frustrations, Hindutva resembles America's religious right. The sprawling offices of the RSS in Delhi are strangely similar in spirit to the Focus on the Family campus in Colorado Springs. Neither organisation is overtly political: the RSS's motto is “United Hindus, capable India” and most of its energy is plainly taken up with social welfare (just as Focus does indeed focus on families). But just like the Christians in Colorado, the Hindus at the RSS are obsessed by politics—and feel just as let down by the BJP as Focus does by the Republicans.</span>

Comparison has started between apples and oranges. The loss of Indus valley civilization for Hindus is painful and is not even mentioned.

<b>
Meanwhile, the Hindutva movement has set off a counter-reaction. Secular members of the Congress party, who privately admit that they may have indulged Muslims too much, adamantly defend secularism in public. Muslims too are on their guard. One Muslim politician says he would get into trouble if he visited a Hindu temple.</b> The minority, he says, will always be insecure—especially if that minority used to rule India. Asked whether religion will ever leave Indian politics, he shrugs his shoulders. “That was the dream—but it did not work out that way.”

[shamu]

<!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Nov 2 2007, 10:46 PM-->QUOTE(acharya @ Nov 2 2007, 10:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE
Bridging the divide
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/di...ory_id=10015201

Nov 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
The world's most religious country is still battling with its demons
Muslims were blamed for the dozens of deaths. In the ensuing pogrom, 2,000 people died.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can gues who has supplied the data

More:

They show the picture of Maha Vishnu's Anathashayanam and call it.....
<img src='http://www.economist.com/images/20071103/4407SR15.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
<b>Bridge-building Ram</b>

[Guest]

Surinder Paul Attri is a moron who regurgitates the same thing over and over again with the words rearranged.

[Guest]

''Yet none of Hindutva's main goals has been met. Although most of India's states ban the slaughter of cows, there is no central-government ban; the Ayodhya temple remains unbuilt; the uniform code unpassed. For this many Hindu nationalists blame the BJP; but the truth is that, having never won more than 26% of the vote, it has had to rely on coalition partners, who, like most of the country, are less militant. When they think about it, many Hindus would like a temple built at Ayodhya. But they tend not to think about it, and are appalled at the violence the dispute has spawned.''
The above is a very currect assessment of the situation.In the near future, despite sporadic movement by the Hindus , no much progress is expected in the direction of making India a Hindu Rashtra. Toaday itself, there is a announcement that the Huj Subsidy will continue in such a manner that no additional burden befall upon the members of the minority community.It is nothinng special of the Congress party, the same is the situation in all the politicla parties.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Economist wrote:
There was also a change in Hinduism: the more mystical strain, Vedanta, which preaches the unity of all religions, was challenged by the stauncher Hindutva message. Vedanta Hindus stayed with Congress; Hindutva ones moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

So apparently Hindus in India are divided into two distinct groups known as "Vedanta Hindus" and "Hindutva Hindus", with the former owing allegiance to Congress(I) and the latter to BJP! Rolling Eyes

Whether this is once again down to an inferior journalist attempting to force-fit his limited knowledge onto the facts, or whether it is deliberate psy-ops, one can never really tell!


What the author is referring to is social engineering. The author is hiding the real information. Using media and encouraging terrorism in the heartland of India for 30 years they have spawned a Hindu nationalism which they think that they can mold. The notion of a nationalism which was developed during the independence movement is completely negated.

The author with this article (and more similar articles to follow) is trying to create an image change and create differences between vedanta and regular Hinduism. The connection to different political parties is also an attempt to steer political sociology in India in a particular way they want.

Indian elite if they are smart will see through these games and social management to create political groups. West have done sufficient social research and image creation that they feel they are in a position to mold and create image and political social groups in India according to their interest.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-Ravish+Nov 2 2007, 05:52 PM-->QUOTE(Ravish @ Nov 2 2007, 05:52 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->''Yet none of Hindutva's main goals has been met. Although most of India's states ban the slaughter of cows, there is no central-government ban; the Ayodhya temple remains unbuilt; the uniform code unpassed. For this many Hindu nationalists blame the BJP; but the truth is that, having never won more than 26% of the vote, it has had to rely on coalition partners, who, like most of the country, are less militant. When they think about it, many Hindus would like a temple built at Ayodhya. But they tend not to think about it, and are appalled at the violence the dispute has spawned.''

The above is a very currect assessment of the situation.In the near future, despite sporadic movement by the Hindus , no much progress is expected in the direction of making India a Hindu Rashtra. Toaday itself, there is a announcement that the Huj Subsidy will continue in such a manner that no additional burden befall upon the members of the minority community.It is nothinng special of the Congress  party, the same is the situation in all the politicla parties.
[right][snapback]74849[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Indians are seeing the world changing in the last 30 years from a liberal world to a world full of intolerance, bigotry and violence. In a such a state there is a call to protect your society, culture and provide stability. That is the only reason for the change in the people and call for traditions.

If the world had not turned out what it is NOW then there would not be any demand.
It is as simple as that. GLOBALIZATION has contributed to violence and intolerance.
It has affected Indians also and this shows up in such places such as Gujarat.

[Guest]

>><i><b>GLOBALIZATION</b> has contributed to violence and intolerance.</i>

Divide & Rule on a grand scale..a global scale.

This is important to bring new areas under a predominantly anglo ruling clique influence most famously characterized by Bilderberg/TC/CFR. The idea is to pit muslims against Christians, keep Christians in dark about Hindus and spread disproportionate psy-ops about caste/discrimination/daleeets in western media. No on trusts each other and no one knows each other. Use the distrust and lack of faith to spread own agenda.

[acharya]

A deep shade of saffron
Pankaj Vohra, Hindustan Times
November 04, 2007


The future of top BJP leaders could depend on the outcome of the high-level RSS meeting currently being held in Dharvar in Karnataka, and which is expected to end on November 7, a day before Leader of the Opposition, LK Advani, celebrates his 80th birthday. What will be worth watching is whether Advani will get the Sangh’s endorsement as the political party’s prime ministerial candidate in the next parliamentary poll. Or, will this again be postponed due to the Sangh leadership’s indecisiveness, which has already become a cause of worry for the parivar and could have a bearing on the RSS’s future?

The conclave is being attended by prant pracharaks and shetriya pracharaks, many of whom had objected to Advani’s statement on Mohammad Ali Jinnah during his visit to Pakistan in 2005. It is being speculated whether the RSS will accept the leadership of a person who is yet to render any unconditional regret for, or even withdraw, the statements that had led to his ouster as the BJP president in December 2005.

The question is, if the RSS endorses his leadership, what impact will it have on the future of the Sangh, which has showcased itself as the flag-bearer of the Hindutva ideology and proclaims itself to be a cultural outfit? Cadres appear to be worried that any attempt to compromise on ideology could very well spell the Sangh’s end. As things stand today, the Sangh has been helplessly watching as acute factionalism in the BJP dilutes the very essence of the doctrine on which the party had been founded initially. Therefore, at this stage, if ‘Jinnahwad’, as Advani’s position on the subject is being termed, triumphs, the script for the final chapter of the Sangh could have very well been written. To describe Jinnah, who precipitated the division of the country, as a secularist is the anti-thesis of everything that the Sangh parivar has believed.

The RSS’s dilemma is acute since the Sangh’s image has been on the decline for the last decade or so, and its failure to attract youngsters into its fold has become a cause of concern. Though on paper, say in a place like Delhi, there are 1,500 shakhas held every morning, in reality, it may not even be one-third this number. The successive defeat of ABVP candidates at the hands of the NSUI in DUSU polls is attributed to the decline of the RSS’s influence in the city. This is primarily because the BJP compromised on the basic tenets of Hindutva to remain in power, giving up on issues like the uniform civil code, abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir and the resolve to construct the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

RSS cadres are also pinning their hopes on Sarkaryavah Mohan Bhagwat, a man committed to ideology, to bail them out of the mess created because of conflicts within the parivar. It is being speculated that the ailing Sarsanghchalak, K Sudarshan, may finally pave the way for Bhagwat to succeed him as the RSS supremo and thus end these conflicts. In fact, the change could even come during the present conclave.

Even Bhagwat’s opponents within the parivar, who are in a minority, concede that it is inevitable that he will take over. So, their focus is instead on the person who will succeed him in the number two position as sarkaryavah. The three possible contenders are all joint general secretaries. Madan Das Devi is close to the Advani camp, Suresh Soni coordinates the RSS-BJP affairs and Suresh Joshi looks after other organisational aspects. If Bhagwat’s current position goes to anyone but Devi, it may have an adverse impact on Advani’s future as the BJP’s top-most leader, given that Atal Bihari Vajpayee is suffering from poor health.

With Bhagwat as the RSS head, the outfit’s focus may also shift from its current emphasis on the power game being played by the BJP to the overall commitment of the parivar towards ideology. This shift will be considered by Sangh hardliners as the revival of Golwalkar’s thesis.

Golwalkar had advocated that in order to transform society, the Sangh should work towards changing individuals through ideology. But his successors, Bala Saheb Deoras and Rajinder Singh, said that power should become the instrument for change in society and for individuals to move towards Hindutva. Yet, six-and-half years of power experienced of the BJP proved beyond doubt that this thesis was faulty. In the process, the BJP had even moved away from the basics of Hindutva, leading to the parivar’s overall decline. This could be arrested once Bhagwat takes over.

The Sangh has, over the past year or so, been distancing itself from the BJP after being repeatedly castigated by senior leaders like Advani for interfering in the party’s day-to-day affairs. Matters have come to a stage where the RSS has not endorsed Narendra Modi’s leadership in Gujarat, asking its cadres to support whoever they wish to in the upcoming polls.

This could have a bearing on the outcome of the polls, where Modi and his supporters may find it difficult to overcome a spirited challenge from the Congress and its allies.

The RSS’s strategy seems to be to give the Sangh and its constituents a younger and ideologically-sound leadership. In this context, the words of the late DB Thengdi, who was overlooked for the RSS chief’s position to help pro-Vajpayee elements gain control, is being cited. Thengdi, commenting on Mahatma Gandhi’s remarks that if he had strength, he would not have allowed the Partition to take place, had stated that in future, the nation’s leadership should always be young and strong and not old and infirm.

The next few days could be decisive for the future of the Sangh parivar. Between us.

[Guest]

Must watch to understand Hindutva- Nationalism
Conversation with Mr. S. Gurumurthy Part - 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqslweUIDLQ&NR=1

[acharya]

Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet - Arun Shourie

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Your Hindutva is no different from Islamic fundamentalism’ — a fashionable statement these days, one that immediately establishes the person’s secular credentials. It is, of course, false, as we shall see in a moment. But there is a grain of potential truth in it — something that does not put Hinduism at par with Islam, but one that should, instead, serve as a warning to all who keep pushing Hindus around. That grain is the fact that every tradition has in it, every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. <b>From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived non-violence and satyagraha, Lokmanya Tilak constructed the case for ferocious response, not excluding violence. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived his ‘true law’, shatham pratyapi satyam, ‘Truth even to the wicked’, the Lokmanya derived his famous maxim, shatham prati shaathyam, ‘Wickedness to the wicked.’</b>

In the great work, Gita Rahasya, that he wrote in the Mandalay prison, the Lokmanya invokes Sri Samartha, ‘Meet boldness with boldness; impertinence by impertinence must be met; villainy by villainy must be met.’ Large-heartedness towards those who are grasping? Forgiveness towards those who are cruel? ‘Even Prahlada, that highest of devotees of the Blessed Lord,’ the Lokmanya recalls, has said, ‘Therefore, my friend, wise men have everywhere mentioned exceptions to the principle of forgiveness.’<b> True, the ordinary rule is that one must not cause harm to others by doing such actions as, if done to oneself, would be harmful. But, the Mahabharata, Tilak says, ‘has made it clear that this rule should not be followed in a society, where there do not exist persons who follow the other religious principle, namely, others should not cause harm to us, which is the corollary from this first principle.’ The counsel of ‘equability’ of the Gita, he says, is bound up with two individuals; that is, it implies reciprocity. ‘Therefore, just as the principle of non-violence is not violated by killing an evil-doer, so also the principle of self-identification [of seeing the same, Eternal Self in all] or of non-enmity, which is observed by saints, is in no way affected by giving condign punishment to evil-doers.’ Does the Supreme Being not Himself declare that He takes incarnations from time to time to protect dharma and destroy evil-doers? Indeed, the one who hesitates to take the retaliatory action that is necessary assists the evil to do their work. ‘And the summary of the entire teaching of the Gita is that: even the most horrible warfare which may be carried on in these circumstances, with an equable frame of mind, is righteous and meritorious.’</b>

Tilak invokes the advice of Bhisma, and then of Yudhisthira, ‘Religion and morality consist in behaving towards others in the same way as they behave towards us; one must behave deceitfully towards deceitful persons, and in a saintly way towards saintly persons.’ Of course, act in a saintly way in the first instance, the Lokmanya counsels. Try to dissuade the evil-doer through persuasion. ‘But if the evilness of the evil-doers is not circumvented by such saintly actions, or, if the counsel of peacefulness and propriety is not acceptable to such evil-doers, then according to the principle kantakenaiva kantakam (that is, “take out a thorn by a thorn”), it becomes necessary to take out by a needle, that is by an iron thorn, if not by an ordinary thorn, that thorn which will not come out with poultices, because under any circumstances, punishing evil-doers in the interests of general welfare, as was done by the Blessed Lord, is the first duty of saints from the point of view of Ethics.’ And the responsibility for the suffering that is caused thereby does not lie with the person who puts the evil out; it lies with the evil-doers. The Lord Himself says, Tilak recalls, ‘I give to them reward in the same manner and to the same extent that they worship Me.’ ‘In the same way,’ he says, ‘no one calls the Judge, who directs the execution of a criminal, the enemy of the criminal...’

Could the variance between two interpretations be greater than is the case between the Lokmanya’s Gita Rahasya and Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga? Yet both constructions are by great and devout Hindus. <b>Are ordinary Hindus nailed to Gandhiji’s rendering? After all, at the end of the Gita, Arjuna does not go off to sit at one of our non-violent dharnas. He goes into blood-soaked battle.</b>

The comforting mistake

The mistake is to assume that the sterner stance is something that has been fomented by this individual or that —in the case of Hindutva, by, say, Veer Savarkar — or by one organisation, say the RSS or the VHP. That is just a comforting mistake — the inference is that once that individual is calumnised, once that organisation is neutralised, ‘the problem’ will be over. Large numbers do not gravitate to this interpretation rather than that merely because an individual or an organisation has advanced it — after all, the interpretations that are available on the shelf far outnumber even the scriptures. They gravitate to the harsher rendering because events convince them that it alone will save them.

It is this tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, a shift that has been going on for 200 years, which is being underestimated. The thousand years of domination and savage oppression by rulers of other religions; domination and oppression which were exercised in the name of and for the glory of and for establishing the sway of those religions, evinced a variety of responses from the Hindus. Armed resistance for centuries... When at last such resistance became totally impossible, the revival of bhakti by the great poets... When public performance even of bhakti became perilous, sullen withdrawal, preserving the tradition by oneself, almost in secrecy: I remember being told in South Goa how families sustained their devotion by painting images of our gods and goddesses inside the tin trunks in which sheets and clothing were kept. The example of individuals: recall how the utter simplicity and manifest aura of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa negated the efforts of the missionaries, how his devotion to the image of the Goddess at Dakshineshwar restored respectability to the idolatry that the missionaries and others were traducing... The magnetism of Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi... Gandhiji’s incontestable greatness and the fact that it was so evidently rooted in his devotion to our religion...

Each of these stemmed much. But over the last 200 years the feeling has also swelled that, invaluable as these responses have been, they have not been enough. They did not prevent the country from being taken over. They did not shield the people from the cruelty of alien rulers. They did not prevent the conversion of millions. They did not prevent the tradition from being calumnised and being thrown on the defensive. They did not in the end save the country from being partitioned — from being partitioned in the name of religion...

<b>There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have been exclusivist — each has insisted that it alone is true — and aggressive. The Indic religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism — have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources — organised missionaries, money, the state — to proselytise and to convert? Nor is this question facing just the Hindus in India today. It is facing the adherents of Indic traditions wherever they are: look at the Hindus in Indonesia and Malaysia; look at the Buddhists in Tibet, now in Thailand too. It is because of this vice, and the realisation born from what had already come to pass that Swami Vivekananda, for instance, while asking the Hindus to retain their Hindu soul, exhorted them to acquire an ‘Islamic body’.</b>

Instigating factors

We can be certain that his counsel will prevail, our secularists notwithstanding,

• The more aggressively the other religions proselytise — look at the fervour with which today the Tablighi Jamaat goes about conversion; look at the organised way in which the missionaries ‘harvest’ our souls;

• The more they use money to increase the harvest — whether it is Saudi money or that of Rome and the American churches;

• The more any of them uses violence to enlarge its sway;

• The more any of them allies itself with and uses the state — whether that of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan — for aggrandisement.

Nor is what others do from outside the only determinant. From within India, three factors in particular will make the acquiring of that Islamic body all the more certain:

• The more biased ‘secularist’ discourse is;

• The more political parties use non-Hindus — Muslims, for instance — as vote banks and the more that non-Hindu group comes to act as one — ‘strategic voting’ and all;

• The more the state of India bends to these exclusivist, aggressive traditions.

<b>It has almost become routine to slight Hindu sentiments — our smart-set do not even notice the slights they administer. Recall the jibe of decades: ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. When, because of those very socialist policies that their kind had swallowed and imposed on the country, our growth was held down to 3-4 per cent, it was dubbed — with much glee — as ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. Today, we are growing at 9 per cent. And, if you are to believe the nonsense in Sachar’s report, the minorities are not growing at all. So, who is responsible for this higher rate of growth? The Hindus! How come no one calls this higher rate of growth ‘the Hindu rate of growth’? Simple: dubbing the low rate as the Hindu one established you to be secular; not acknowledging the higher one as the Hindu rate establishes you to be secular!</b>

Or M.F. Husain. He is a kindly man, and a prodigiously productive artist. There is no warrant at all for disrupting all his exhibitions. I am on the point of sensibilities. <b>His depictions of Hindu goddesses have been in the news: he has painted them in less than skimpy attire. I particularly remember one in which Sita is riding Hanuman’s stiffened tail — of course, she is scarcely clad, but that is the least of it: you need no imagination at all to see what she is rubbing up against that stiffened tail. Well, in the case of an artist, that is just inspiration, say the secularists. OK. The question that arises then is: How come in the seventy-five years Husain has been painting, he has not once felt inspired, not once, to paint the face of the Prophet? It doesn’t have to be in the style in which he has painted the Hindu goddesses. Why not the most beautiful, the most radiant and luminous face that he can imagine? How come he has never felt inspired to paint women revered in Islam, or in his own family, in the same style as the one that propelled his inspiration in regard to Hindu goddesses?

‘In painting the goddesses, he was just honouring them,’ a secular intellectual remarked at a discussion the other day. ‘It was his way of honouring them.’ Fine. It is indeed the case that one of the best ways we can honour someone is to put the one skill we have at the service of the person or deity. But how come that Husain never but never thought of honouring the Prophet by using the same priceless skill, that one ‘talent which is death to hide’?

‘Has Mr Shourie ever visited Khajuraho?,’ a member of the audience asked, the implication being that, as Hindu sculptors had depicted personages naked, what was wrong with Husain depicting the goddesses in the same style. Fine again. But surely, it is no one’s case that the ‘Khajuraho style’ must be confined to Hindu icons. Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam? The reason why an artist desists from depicting the Prophet’s face is none of these convoluted disquisitions on style.

The reason is simplicity itself: he knows he will be thrashed, and his hands smashed.</b>

Exactly the same holds for politics. How come no one objects when for years a Muslim politician keeps publishing maps of constituencies in which Muslims as Muslims can determine the outcome, and exhorting them to do so? <b>When, not just an individual politician but entire political parties — from the Congress to the Left parties — stir Muslims up as a vote bank. When Muslims start behaving like a vote bank, you can be certain that someone will get the idea that Hindus too should be welded into a vote bank, and eventually they will get welded into one. Why is stoking Muslims ‘secular’ and stoking Hindus ‘communal’?</b>

And yet perverted discourse, even the stratagems of political parties, are but preparation: they prepare the ground for capitulation by the state to groups that are aggressive. And in this the real lunacy is about to be launched, and, with that, the real reaction.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Shambhu]

<span style='color:red'>Time to create a Formidable Hindu Lobby </span>

By: U. Mahesh Prabhu
12/28/2007 9:06:14 AM
Author's Home Page
Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom.

(The author is the Editor-in-Chief of Aseemaa: Journal for National Resurgence.)


‘In a country that prides itself on its religious diversity and its secular constitution, may see the rise of Modi and his pro Hindu agenda as a terrifying chapter of intolerance. They say he is dangerous fire brand and too comfortable inciting the politics of hatred and violence.’ States Sam Dolonick in his article published in the recent issue of ‘The Economist’. Besides holding Narendra Modi solely responsible for the riots of 2002 he also makes the baseless and completely concocted allegation that ‘The RSS was influenced by 1930s German fascism…’ It’s not that he doesn’t acknowledge the unparalleled achievements of Gujarat Chief Minister. In fact he does when he says ‘Modi has attracted more than 20% of the India’s total investment of $69 billion last year’ but he makes a foul attempt of trying to make it irrelevant by adding ‘But despite his achievement, for may of India’s 1.1 billion people – 14 per cent of who are Muslims – Modi will always be defined by the anti-Muslim violence…’

The ‘cause of hate’ against Modi is, frankly speaking, owing to his Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) background, the organization which is today whipping boy of the mainline media and, so called, ‘secular’ organizations. That which ‘The Economist’ says is influenced by the Fascist ideology. Need I say how concocted is this idea, i.e. of RSS being influenced by Fascist? Absolute bunk! RSS is, in fact, in response to the brutal history of Islamic Conquest, that which American Historian Mr. Will Durant called ‘the bloodiest in history’. The current aspersions against the RSS mostly by Media, Congress and Communist followers to the effect that it is a ‘communal organization, most dangerous to the country than even communism’ are a complete travesty of fact.

The Ideology of Hindutva which is propounded by RSS, and followed by Modi, offers a room for all minorities on a condition of their whole hearted submission to the supreme value of the nation in their lives. The nation is a vehicle of universal truths and is not an entity above them. This is no chauvinist nationalism of the kind associated with Mussolini or Hitler. It teaches loyalty and devotion to the national society in the national homeland under the image of the mother. The unity and solidarity of the motherland taught to claim the highest sacrificial devotion from the citizen body. Whoever enters into this spirit of devotion to the nation as a spiritual unity of the land and people are Indians or Hindus in essence. The mental commitment should be final and supreme.
The Muslims and Christians have perfect freedom of worship, so long as they do not destroy and undermine the faith and symbolism of the national society. They should subordinate their exclusive claims for final and sole revelation vis-à-vis the national society. They could bear witness to their faith in life and speech but they should not indulge in any unfair and unspiritual modes of conversions.

The national identity requires that the whole of the national society, including minorities, should share in the best values of the past. They should appreciate national Dharma – the code of ethical principles and ways of life. The cultural history, they should all give their mind and hearts whole-heartedly to an appreciation of the best types. Rama and Krishna may be appreciated by non-Hindus as secular examples while the Hindus will see them as full spiritual exemplars, or avatars. Now considering this ideology, I wonder as to what is so ‘dangerous’ about it, so as to look at it dangerous than communism? I would be delighted if the people who put in such allegation help me to understand.

Be that as it may. Let’s consider the following case: In the late 1980s, Abdul Latif was the underworld king of Gujarat. Later, he became Dawood Ibrahim’s business manager in the state and was one of criminal dons to make what now seems to be the shameless transition from organized crime to terrorism. Latif was also the suspect in the Mumbai blasts case of 1993; the RDX and other explosive devices for that operation landed, remember, on the Gujarat coast. In November 1997, Latif was killed in an encounter with the Ahmadabad police. Many of the Latif’s cohorts were put under watch. One of them was his driver, apparently responsible for, in one daring move, hiding a huge cache of weapons meant for terrorist groups. This was part of the consignment that had arrived before Mumbai blasts of 1993. Latif was under surveillance so his driver had hidden the arms in a well in his (the driver’s) native village near Ujjain. The driver eventually faced over 50 cases including some under the National Security Act; He was arrested at various stages, by the Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh police, but avoided conviction. When not facilitating terror networks, he was engaged in extortion rackets in Rajasthan, acting almost certainly on behalf of others. His principals, the police believe, may be linked to terror funding groups. The Latif’s driver’s name was Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Yes this was the same Sohrabuddin for whose encounter Modi was being scrutinized by his political rivals and the media. ‘A nationalist is being harassed for having exterminated a terrorist!’ by the media that calls itself ‘secular’ and ‘nationalist’. What a pity!!

If you may observe in detail of the propaganda carried on by the Media in Gujarat and in other part of the world, at the same time, you would find that: While Dr. Haneef, a doctor who flew from Glasgow in UK to Australia under mysterious circumstances, and who was arrested by the Australian authorities was given such a terrific support by the media as if they were convinced and simply wanted to convince the world that he wasn’t a terrorist. It may be noted that simply because he was allowed to return to India on benefit of doubt the media almost declared his victory as theirs, before even he was tried in the court of law. Our Prime Minister, Mr. Manmohan Singh, went on record to say that he ‘lost his sleep’ for Haneef. On contrary to this when ethnic Hindus in Malaysia made a peaceful demonstration against the destruction of their temples by pro-Islamic-fundamentalist regime and were sabotaged ruthlessly and put to jail our very own Karunanidhi’s grievances, put forth the Central Government, were simply brushed aside, he was asked to lay off the issue rather ruthlessly. Media made little publicity of the issue. When its a question of Hindus getting unfair treatment in a Muslim majority region, the civil, sophisticated and articulate Muslim intellectuals take refuge in the statement that its a matter concerning a foreign country. But when its a question regarding a cartoon or a fatwa for beheading a writer, they say - we are a global Ummah, anything happening anywhere to Muslims is our common concern! All big lies and a bigger hypocrisy traded in the name of a religion. So much for their hypocrisy! But why is it so?

Let’s go in to a bit detail. When Muslims are in trouble there is a cry of intolerance from the whole of the Islamic world led by the Arabs. The Pope cries foul when there is problem facing Christians. Communists in India are supported by their comrades in China. But why is it that none cries or express even a word of concern when Hindus are in trouble? Today thousands of Kashmiri pundits, who were driven out of their homes by Jihadi Muslims after torturing them and even raping the women, are living as refugees in their own country. No media cares for them. Instead more special privileges are given to the Kashmir as an incentive and they continue to play lame politics of ‘Azad Kashmir’ (read Independent Kashmir) with Indian Government. Our forces who risk their lives are blamed and abused for unproven allegations. Recently, in Kashmir, an Army Jawan was stripped off and made to walk nude in the public for attempting to rape a woman. Is it so? Then why is it that the same people were sitting so silently when those terrorists were killing and raping their people? Why didn’t they ever boycotted them and gave a similar treatment? Why doesn’t a Maulvi, anywhere in India, issue a fatwa against a Jihadi terrorist? No answers.

But that is understandable. The pure hypocrisy, of the Muslim Clergy and Politicians, is the answer. But why is the media sitting mum? Why aren’t they speaking? Have you ever thought of a reason? I did. The reason is because Hindus don’t have a strong Lobby of their own.

If you take the case of Israel, you will find that though it is a small land they continue to live against all odds surrounded by their enemies from all the directions with rightful support of Americans. Americans are under obligation to support Israel because Jews, who also form a majority in Israel, control American Economy. Palestinians though haven’t been anywhere successful to have a worthwhile economy for themselves and having spend six decades in building a legacy of hatred and violence continue to gain ‘sympathy’ and ‘support’ from the Media as a result of the financial expenditure by the Arab Lobby Supported by Arab Nations. When Christians are persecuted in Pakistan Pope cries foul and American along bring in their pressure to put a halt on it. But what is the case with Hindus? Who are they to look for? As Arabs for the Muslims, Vatican for the Christian and Israel for the Jews who is for Hindus? It’s sad but true that Hindus have none to look far. The only Hindu country, Nepal, is today under the clutches of Communists, with its King virtually in exile.

India has, what it is proudly called, a ‘Free Press’ that which is run by private organization without governmental controls. We have series of Television News Channels in various languages. And not a single one ever clarifies its source of income. They never specify who funds them in their websites do they? Yet they have with them millions of dollars. Where did this money come from? You must agree with me that a majority of funding comes from international sources. But why would any organization invest in a media organization? Yes it would be for profitability, if you say it just like that. But there is more than profitability, don’t you think? Every journalist has with him/her an inclination towards the Arab or the American or the European world. Don’t they? Isn’t it possible then that they also subscribe to ideologies of that part of the world? Certainly they will, and beyond doubt.

So if they have with them an ideological inclination then it is very much possible that they would have hardly any chance to criticize those people who are of interest to their principals. So when you have so many Medias everyone is certain to have one kind of the ideology or the other, except Hindu, represented. Thus the only favorite whipping boy available is the RSS and its allied organizations. Isn’t it so? So there you are.

These different lobbies have a phenomenal financial power. The Jews gain their financial power, as said before, through the various business enterprises that are vital for American Economy including the press. Jews are said to be controlling the American Economy virtually. Muslim Lobby led by Arabs gain their financial muscle through petro economy, where billions of dollars are earned by them almost without any efforts and also invested in Global Terrorist endeavors.

Since true journalistic spirits exists hardly anywhere in the modern day, media corporations are exclusively concentrated on financial profitability. Given this it’s not a great deal to make these Lobbies to run the propaganda of their kind in their supported Medias. And given there isn’t any Lobby for the Hindutva faction; they are to be the easy target of such propaganda. Won’t you agree?

This is high time for Hindus to organize an internationally influential Hindu Lobby. Do you think that it is difficult to form one? Certainly not!

Consider this: When NDA government had organized ‘Pravasi Bharatiya Divas’ there were so many Non Resident Indians, most of whom were Hindus who had expressed their interest to be of some use to their land. When, after Pokharan II, India was showered with various international sanctions, let us never forget it was our fellow NRI’s who came to the rescue by subscribing to Yashwanth Sinha’s, then Finance Minister’s, Resurgent India Bonds. Before NDA regime was over India had with it a Foreign Exchange in excess of $100 billion. Doesn’t this portray the willingness of our Diaspora? The only thing that would be needed is desire, first, followed by unrelenting determination.

Simply put ‘Creating a Pro Hindu Lobby is not an option… but a sheer necessity.’

http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/india-usa-blog-column56.htm

[Shambhu]

Now people are putting things in the proper perspective right from the word go...instead of waiting to get asked and then backtracking and re-wording. Shambho khush hua!


<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>With Rajnath comes aggressive Hindutva – BJP is back on track again ready to take on Communists and the Congress Party of Sonia Gandhi </span>
Preetam Sohani
Dec. 23, 2006

Rajnath is the man of 2007. He made it clear that BJP is a reengineered party ready to stage aggressive Hindutva. He has no problems with Vajpayee and Advani as senior advisors in the sidelines. But they were moderates. The opposition parties – the communists and the Congress Party took advantage of their decency and continued to appease Muslims on the surface. The new BJP chief Rajnath Singh wants to make aggressive Hindutva the main issue and wants to start with Ayodhya Temple. Ayodhya is not just about Ram Mandir (temple) but it is all about India’s independece from foreign aggressors.

It is time for Hindus to rise and embrace all Indians – Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews and others. But let us not forget India is India. It is based on ancient Hindu civilization. The seeding of various other religions and cultures in India are the result of aggression that started with Greek Alexander followed by the Mughals from Persia and finally by the European colonists. These aggressors could not convert India into any one single religion although they showed utmost brutality. Eighty percent of the country held on its Hindutva. In Ayodhya at Lord Ram’s birth place, the Muslim aggressors – the alien Mughals built a Mosque but Hindus beta up like slaves continued to worship at the site silently. They were treated as beggars and inhuman by the Muslim and European aggressors but Hindutva survived.

It is time to turn the table. Indian politicians today take advantage by showing favoritism for Muslims – the unfortunate few who were forced by the Mughals to Islam. They are the descendants of their original Hindu ancestors. BJP will expose these communists and Congress party of Sonia Gandhi whose whole strategy is to make India different from original India.

Go and try to build a Hindu temple in Pakistan, America, Netherlands, Japan or China. You will see what kind of obstacle you face. Every country says they support religious freedom but in every country religious majority controls the show. Evangelical Christians in America, the Islamic Mullahs, the orthodox Jews, the Buddhists monks – all have their say in their own respective land. India’s Hindus must have similar say too. India is the only country in the world where religious minorities – the Islamists killed, raped and drove away millions of Hindus form Jammu and Kashmir. The world watched, Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party watched, the Indian communists watched, the Americans watched, the Chinese watches, the Japanese watched – no one did anything about it except forcing India to make friends with a military dictator run Pakistan!

It is time for India to rise up again. It is time for Hindutva. It is time for peaceful reinvention of India – the new India led by Hindutva.

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/14852.asp

[Shambhu]

http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx...eID=2886&SKIN=I

Dear Atheists-Rationalists-Dravidians!
31/01/2007 08:32:25 Rajagopalan Seshadri


An open letter to the Atheists-Rationalists-Dravidians"From "A Proud Hindu"

[Bodhi]

Arun Shourie's awesome series of articles in Indian Express:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:red'>Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet</span>

Your Hindutva is no different from Islamic fundamentalism’ — a fashionable statement these days, one that immediately establishes the person’s secular credentials. It is, of course, false, as we shall see in a moment. But there is a grain of potential truth in it — something that does not put Hinduism at par with Islam, but one that should, instead, serve as a warning to all who keep pushing Hindus around. That grain is the fact that every tradition has in it, every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived non-violence and satyagraha, Lokmanya Tilak constructed the case for ferocious response, not excluding violence. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived his ‘true law’, shatham pratyapi satyam, ‘Truth even to the wicked’, the Lokmanya derived his famous maxim, shatham prati shaathyam, ‘Wickedness to the wicked.’

In the great work, Gita Rahasya, that he wrote in the Mandalay prison, the Lokmanya invokes Sri Samartha, ‘Meet boldness with boldness; impertinence by impertinence must be met; villainy by villainy must be met.’ Large-heartedness towards those who are grasping? Forgiveness towards those who are cruel? ‘Even Prahlada, that highest of devotees of the Blessed Lord,’ the Lokmanya recalls, has said, ‘Therefore, my friend, wise men have everywhere mentioned exceptions to the principle of forgiveness.’ True, the ordinary rule is that one must not cause harm to others by doing such actions as, if done to oneself, would be harmful. But, the Mahabharata, Tilak says, ‘has made it clear that this rule should not be followed in a society, where there do not exist persons who follow the other religious principle, namely, others should not cause harm to us, which is the corollary from this first principle.’ The counsel of ‘equability’ of the Gita, he says, is bound up with two individuals; that is, it implies reciprocity. ‘Therefore, just as the principle of non-violence is not violated by killing an evil-doer, so also the principle of self-identification [of seeing the same, Eternal Self in all] or of non-enmity, which is observed by saints, is in no way affected by giving condign punishment to evil-doers.’ Does the Supreme Being not Himself declare that He takes incarnations from time to time to protect dharma and destroy evil-doers? Indeed, the one who hesitates to take the retaliatory action that is necessary assists the evil to do their work. ‘And the summary of the entire teaching of the Gita is that: even the most horrible warfare which may be carried on in these circumstances, with an equable frame of mind, is righteous and meritorious.’

Tilak invokes the advice of Bhisma, and then of Yudhisthira, ‘Religion and morality consist in behaving towards others in the same way as they behave towards us; one must behave deceitfully towards deceitful persons, and in a saintly way towards saintly persons.’ Of course, act in a saintly way in the first instance, the Lokmanya counsels. Try to dissuade the evil-doer through persuasion. ‘But if the evilness of the evil-doers is not circumvented by such saintly actions, or, if the counsel of peacefulness and propriety is not acceptable to such evil-doers, then according to the principle kantakenaiva kantakam (that is, “take out a thorn by a thorn”), it becomes necessary to take out by a needle, that is by an iron thorn, if not by an ordinary thorn, that thorn which will not come out with poultices, because under any circumstances, punishing evil-doers in the interests of general welfare, as was done by the Blessed Lord, is the first duty of saints from the point of view of Ethics.’ And the responsibility for the suffering that is caused thereby does not lie with the person who puts the evil out; it lies with the evil-doers. The Lord Himself says, Tilak recalls, ‘I give to them reward in the same manner and to the same extent that they worship Me.’ ‘In the same way,’ he says, ‘no one calls the Judge, who directs the execution of a criminal, the enemy of the criminal...’

Could the variance between two interpretations be greater than is the case between the Lokmanya’s Gita Rahasya and Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga? Yet both constructions are by great and devout Hindus. Are ordinary Hindus nailed to Gandhiji’s rendering? After all, at the end of the Gita, Arjuna does not go off to sit at one of our non-violent dharnas. He goes into blood-soaked battle.

The comforting mistake

The mistake is to assume that the sterner stance is something that has been fomented by this individual or that —in the case of Hindutva, by, say, Veer Savarkar — or by one organisation, say the RSS or the VHP. That is just a comforting mistake — the inference is that once that individual is calumnised, once that organisation is neutralised, ‘the problem’ will be over. Large numbers do not gravitate to this interpretation rather than that merely because an individual or an organisation has advanced it — after all, the interpretations that are available on the shelf far outnumber even the scriptures. They gravitate to the harsher rendering because events convince them that it alone will save them.

It is this tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, a shift that has been going on for 200 years, which is being underestimated. The thousand years of domination and savage oppression by rulers of other religions; domination and oppression which were exercised in the name of and for the glory of and for establishing the sway of those religions, evinced a variety of responses from the Hindus. Armed resistance for centuries... When at last such resistance became totally impossible, the revival of bhakti by the great poets... When public performance even of bhakti became perilous, sullen withdrawal, preserving the tradition by oneself, almost in secrecy: I remember being told in South Goa how families sustained their devotion by painting images of our gods and goddesses inside the tin trunks in which sheets and clothing were kept. The example of individuals: recall how the utter simplicity and manifest aura of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa negated the efforts of the missionaries, how his devotion to the image of the Goddess at Dakshineshwar restored respectability to the idolatry that the missionaries and others were traducing... The magnetism of Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi... Gandhiji’s incontestable greatness and the fact that it was so evidently rooted in his devotion to our religion...

Each of these stemmed much. But over the last 200 years the feeling has also swelled that, invaluable as these responses have been, they have not been enough. They did not prevent the country from being taken over. They did not shield the people from the cruelty of alien rulers. They did not prevent the conversion of millions. They did not prevent the tradition from being calumnised and being thrown on the defensive. They did not in the end save the country from being partitioned — from being partitioned in the name of religion...

There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have been exclusivist — each has insisted that it alone is true — and aggressive. The Indic religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism — have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources — organised missionaries, money, the state — to proselytise and to convert? Nor is this question facing just the Hindus in India today. It is facing the adherents of Indic traditions wherever they are: look at the Hindus in Indonesia and Malaysia; look at the Buddhists in Tibet, now in Thailand too. It is because of this vice, and the realisation born from what had already come to pass that Swami Vivekananda, for instance, while asking the Hindus to retain their Hindu soul, exhorted them to acquire an ‘Islamic body’.

Instigating factors

We can be certain that his counsel will prevail, our secularists notwithstanding,

• The more aggressively the other religions proselytise — look at the fervour with which today the Tablighi Jamaat goes about conversion; look at the organised way in which the missionaries ‘harvest’ our souls;

• The more they use money to increase the harvest — whether it is Saudi money or that of Rome and the American churches;

• The more any of them uses violence to enlarge its sway;

• The more any of them allies itself with and uses the state — whether that of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan — for aggrandisement.

Nor is what others do from outside the only determinant. From within India, three factors in particular will make the acquiring of that Islamic body all the more certain:

• The more biased ‘secularist’ discourse is;

• The more political parties use non-Hindus — Muslims, for instance — as vote banks and the more that non-Hindu group comes to act as one — ‘strategic voting’ and all;

• The more the state of India bends to these exclusivist, aggressive traditions.

It has almost become routine to slight Hindu sentiments — our smart-set do not even notice the slights they administer. Recall the jibe of decades: ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. When, because of those very socialist policies that their kind had swallowed and imposed on the country, our growth was held down to 3-4 per cent, it was dubbed — with much glee — as ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. Today, we are growing at 9 per cent. And, if you are to believe the nonsense in Sachar’s report, the minorities are not growing at all. So, who is responsible for this higher rate of growth? The Hindus! How come no one calls this higher rate of growth ‘the Hindu rate of growth’? Simple: dubbing the low rate as the Hindu one established you to be secular; not acknowledging the higher one as the Hindu rate establishes you to be secular!

Or M.F. Husain. He is a kindly man, and a prodigiously productive artist. There is no warrant at all for disrupting all his exhibitions. I am on the point of sensibilities. His depictions of Hindu goddesses have been in the news: he has painted them in less than skimpy attire. I particularly remember one in which Sita is riding Hanuman’s stiffened tail — of course, she is scarcely clad, but that is the least of it: you need no imagination at all to see what she is rubbing up against that stiffened tail. Well, in the case of an artist, that is just inspiration, say the secularists. OK. The question that arises then is: How come in the seventy-five years Husain has been painting, he has not once felt inspired, not once, to paint the face of the Prophet? It doesn’t have to be in the style in which he has painted the Hindu goddesses. Why not the most beautiful, the most radiant and luminous face that he can imagine? How come he has never felt inspired to paint women revered in Islam, or in his own family, in the same style as the one that propelled his inspiration in regard to Hindu goddesses?

‘In painting the goddesses, he was just honouring them,’ a secular intellectual remarked at a discussion the other day. ‘It was his way of honouring them.’ Fine. It is indeed the case that one of the best ways we can honour someone is to put the one skill we have at the service of the person or deity. But how come that Husain never but never thought of honouring the Prophet by using the same priceless skill, that one ‘talent which is death to hide’?

‘Has Mr Shourie ever visited Khajuraho?,’ a member of the audience asked, the implication being that, as Hindu sculptors had depicted personages naked, what was wrong with Husain depicting the goddesses in the same style. Fine again. But surely, it is no one’s case that the ‘Khajuraho style’ must be confined to Hindu icons. Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam? The reason why an artist desists from depicting the Prophet’s face is none of these convoluted disquisitions on style.

The reason is simplicity itself: he knows he will be thrashed, and his hands smashed.

Exactly the same holds for politics. How come no one objects when for years a Muslim politician keeps publishing maps of constituencies in which Muslims as Muslims can determine the outcome, and exhorting them to do so? When, not just an individual politician but entire political parties — from the Congress to the Left parties — stir Muslims up as a vote bank. When Muslims start behaving like a vote bank, you can be certain that someone will get the idea that Hindus too should be welded into a vote bank, and eventually they will get welded into one. Why is stoking Muslims ‘secular’ and stoking Hindus ‘communal’?

And yet perverted discourse, even the stratagems of political parties, are but preparation: they prepare the ground for capitulation by the state to groups that are aggressive. And in this the real lunacy is about to be launched, and, with that, the real reaction.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/254969._.html
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:red'>What more is needed to stoke reaction?</span>

The Task Force on Border Management, one of the four that were set up in the wake of the Kargil War, reported with alarm about the way madrassas had mushroomed along India’s borders. On the basis of information it received from intelligence agencies, it expressed grave concern at the amount of money these madrassas were receiving from foreign sources. It reported that large numbers were being ‘educated’ in these institutions in subjects that did not equip them at all for jobs — other than to become preachers and teachers producing the same type of incendiary unemployables. It expressed the gravest concern at the way the madrassas were reinforcing separateness in those attending them — through the curriculum, through the medium of instruction, through the entire orientation of learning: the latter, the Task Force pointed out, was entirely turned towards Arabia, towards the ‘golden ages’ of Islamic rule. It pointed to the consequences that were certain to flow from ‘the Talibanisation’ of the madrassas. [In spite of what the Task Forces themselves advised, namely that their reports be made public, the reports have been kept secret. Accordingly, I have summarised the observations of the Task Forces in some detail in Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites? Defence imperatives beyond the military, ASA, Delhi, 2005.]

And what does the Sachar Committee recommend? ‘Recognition of the degrees from madrassas for eligibility in competitive examinations such as the civil services, banks, defence services and other such examinations’! It recommends that government use public funds to encourage formation of Muslim NGOs and their activities. It recommends that government provide financial and other support to occupations and areas in which Muslims predominate. It recommends that Muslims be in selection committees, interview panels and boards for public services.

It recommends that a higher proportion of Muslims be inducted in offices that deal with the public — ‘the teaching community, health workers, police personnel, bank employees and so on.’ It recommends ‘provision of ‘equivalence’ to madrassa certificates/degrees for subsequent admissions into institutions of higher level of education.’ It recommends that banks be required to collect and maintain information about their transactions — deposits, advances — separately for Muslims, and that they be required to submit this to the Reserve Bank of India! It recommends that advances be made to Muslims as part of the obligation imposed on banks to give advances to Priority Sectors. It recommends that government give banks incentives to open branches in Muslim concentration areas. It recommends that, instead of being required to report merely ‘Amount Outstanding’, banks be told to report ‘Sanctions or Disbursements to Minorities’. It recommends that financial institutions be required to set up separate funds for training Muslim entrepreneurs, that they be required to set up special micro-credit schemes for Muslims. It recommends that all districts more than a quarter of whose population is Muslim be brought into the prime minister’s 15-point programme.

‘There should be transparency in information about minorities in all activities,’ the Committee declares. ‘It should be made mandatory to publish/furnish information in a prescribed format once in three months and also to post the same on the website of the departments and state governments...’ It recommends that for each programme of government, data be maintained separately about the extent to which Muslims and other minorities are benefiting from it. But it is not enough to keep data separately. Separate schemes must be instituted. It recommends that special and separate Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Central Plan Schemes be launched for ‘minorities with an equitable provision for Muslims.’ It recommends special measures for the promotion and spread of Urdu. It recommends the adoption of ‘alternate admission criteria’ in universities and autonomous colleges: assessment of merit should not be assigned more than 60 per cent out of the total — the remaining 40 per cent should be assigned in accordance with the income of the household, the backwardness of the district, and the backwardness of the caste and occupation of the family. It recommends that grants by the University Grants Commission be linked to ‘the diversity of the student population.’ It recommends that pre-entry qualification for admission to ITIs be scaled down, that ‘eligibility for such programmes should also be extended to the madrassa educated children.’ It recommends that ‘high quality government schools should be set up in all areas of Muslim concentration.’ It recommends that resources and government land be made available for ‘common public spaces’ for adults of — its euphemism — ‘Socio-Religious Categories’ to ‘interact’.

It recommends that incentives to builders, private sector employers, educational institutions be linked to ‘diversity’ of the populations in their sites and enterprises. For this purpose it wants a ‘diversity index’ to be developed for each such activity.

It recommends changes in the way constituencies are delimited. It recommends that where Muslims are elected or selected in numbers less than adequate, ‘a carefully conceived ‘nomination’ procedure’ be worked out ‘to increase the participation of minorities at the grass roots.’

It notes that there already are the Human Rights Commission and the Minorities Commission ‘to look into complaints by the minorities with respect to state action.’ But these are not adequate as the Muslims still feel that they are not getting a fair share. The solution? Here is its recommendation, and a typical passage:

‘It is imperative that if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ notice the touchstone — ‘if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved’ — ‘all efforts should be made by the state to find a mechanism by which these complaints could be attended to expeditiously. This mechanism should operate in a manner which gives full satisfaction to the minorities’, notice again the touchstone — not any external criterion, but ‘full satisfaction to the minorities’ — ‘that any denial of equal opportunities or bias or discrimination in dealing with them, either by a public functionary or any private individual, will immediately be attended to and redress given. Such a mechanism should be accessible to all individuals and institutions desirous to complain that they have received less favourable treatment from any employer or any person on the basis of his/her SRC [Socio-Religious Category] background and gender.’

The responsibility is entirely that of the other. The other must function to the full satisfaction of the Muslims. As long as the Muslims ‘have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ the other is at fault...

So that everyone is put on notice, so that everyone who is the other is forever put to straining himself to satisfy the Muslims, the Committee recommends that a National Data Bank be created and it be mandatory for all departments and agencies to supply information to it to document how their activities are impacting Muslims and other minorities. On top of all this, government should set up an Assessment and Monitoring Authority to evaluate the benefits that are accruing to the minorities from each programme and activity...

This is the programme that every secularist who is in government is demanding that the government implement forthwith. And every secularist outside — the ever-so-secular CPI(M), for instance — is scolding the government for not implementing swiftly enough. What splendid evolution! Not long ago, unless you saw a Muslim as a human being, and not as a Muslim, you were not secular. Now, if you see a Muslim as a human being and not as a Muslim, you are not secular!

Consequences

The first consequence is as inevitable as it is obvious: such pandering whets the appetite. Seeing that governments and parties are competing to pander to them, Muslims see that they are doing so only because their community is acting cohesively, as a vote bank. So, they act even more as a bank of votes.

For the same reason, a competition is ignited within the community: to prove that he is more devoted to the community than his rival, every would-be leader of the community demands more and more from governments and parties. When the concession he demanded has been made, he declares, ‘It is not being implemented’. And he has a ready diagnosis: because implementation, he declares, is in the hands of non-Muslims. Hence, unless Muslims officers are appointed in the financial institutions meant for Muslims... With demand following demand, with secularist upon secularist straining himself to urge the demands, the leader sets about looking for grievances that he can fan. When he can’t find them, he invents them...

Governments make the fatal mistake, or — as happened in the case of the British when they announced separate electorates for Muslims — they play the master-stroke: they proffer an advantage to the community which that community, Muslims in this case, can secure only by being separate — whether this be separate electorates in the case of Lord Minto or separate financial institutions in the case of Manmohan Singh.

The community in its turn begins to assess every proposal, every measure, howsoever secular it may be, against one touchstone alone: ‘What can we extract from this measure for Muslims as Muslims?’How current the description rings that Cantwell Smith gave in his book, Modern Islam in India, published in the 1940s, of the effect that the British stratagem of instituting separate electorates for Muslims had had on the Muslim mind. The separate electorates led Muslims, as they had been designed to lead them, he observed, ‘to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally, look for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power, and express their grievances communally.’ [Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, Second Revised Edition, 1946, reprint, Usha Publications, New Delhi, 1979, p. 216]. Exactly the same consequence will follow from implementing the Sachar proposals — and the reason for that is simple: the essential point about the proposals is the same — that is, the Muslims can obtain them by being separate from the rest of the country.

The reaction cannot but set in. ‘As Muslims are being given all this because they have distanced themselves from the rest of us, why should we cling to them?’ the Hindus are bound to ask. ‘On the contrary, we should learn from them. Governments and political parties are pandering to Muslims because the latter have become a bank of votes. We should knit ourselves into a solid bloc also.’

Do you think they need a Pravin Togadia to tell them this? The genuflections of governments and parties write the lesson on the blackboard. And the abuse hurled by secularists drills it in: by the excellent work that Narendra Modi has done for development, he had already made himself the pre-eminent leader of Gujarat; by the abuse they have hurled at him, the secularists, in particular the media, have enlarged his canvas to the country.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/255484._.html
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><span style='color:red'>The vital difference</span>

So, the first lesson to bear in mind is that every tradition has in it the potential to become extremist. In this sense, our traditions are indeed similar to the Middle Eastern traditions. This similarity should be a warning to governments and parties that keep traducing Hindus, for instance, and pandering to Muslims and the rest just because the latter are aggressive. Everyone learns.

And yet there is a basic, foundational difference — one that points us to what is of inestimable value in Indic traditions; to the priceless pearl that we should preserve, the one that these heedless secularists and the rapacious aggressives do not realise they are pushing Hindus, Buddhists and others to discard. This basic difference is as follows.

When a tradition has the following elements, as each of the three Middle Eastern traditions has, as do the secular traditions of the West — Nazism, Marxism-Leninism — it will invariably be exclusivist, intolerant and aggressive, and it will invariably deploy all means — from propaganda to money to violence:

• Reality is simple;

• It has been revealed to one man;

• He has put it in one Book;

• That Book is inerrant as well as exhaustive: so that whatever is in it is true, that it is true for all time; and that whatever is not in it or is contrary to what is in it, is false or useless or worse;

• But the Book is difficult to understand; hence, you need a guide, an intermediary, a monitor: in a word, the Church, the ulema, or the Party;

• The Book covers, the intermediary must cover every aspect of life: there is no distinction between the private and the public sphere, between the Secular and the Religious, between the State and the Church. These doctrines are totalitarian — in both senses: they insist on governing the totality of life — the Roman Catholic Church’s minatory insistence against contraception, for instance, and the reams and reams of fatwas that deal with even more intimate matters; they are also totalitarian in the sense that what they prescribe on any aspect just must be obeyed;

• The test of piety is adherence to that Book and to the prescriptions of that intermediary — in every sphere of life;

• It is the duty of that intermediary, indeed of every believer to ensure that all come to accept and adhere to The Message — there is only one Message;

• As the Message is the ‘Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth,’ as there is no truth beside it, those who do not accept the Message are cussed; worse, they are thwarting the Will of Allah, or its equivalent — the march of History in Marxism-Leninism;

• Hence, it is the duty of every believer, and even more so of that intermediary to use all means to make them accept the Message, and if, even after being offered the opportunity to accept it, they refuse, to vanquish them all together.

When these elements are present, the tradition will have one singular objective: dominance. It will become an ideology of power, a dogma that rationalises everything in the pursuit of hegemony. The dogma will necessarily gravitate to, among other things, violence.

Contrast those elements with propositions that are central to the Indic traditions:

• Reality is multilayered complexity: both in the sense that there are layers within layers of it, and in the sense of each element mingling into others: the Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh refers to the latter as ‘inter-being’;

• It has not been revealed exclusively to one person: several have glimpsed it;

• They have put down approximate descriptions of that reality as well as hints of how to glimpse it in some books: these are travel guides;

• Perceiving that Truth is an overwhelming, incomparable experience; it is the one joy that lasts. This life gives each of us a unique opportunity to bathe in that effulgence. If we don’t, the loss will be ours — but that is about it: the Truth is not affected; the guides are not falsified;

• It is not just the Book or some singular great figure who can teach us; everything, every event, every relationship can be a teacher guiding us to glimpse the Truth — indeed, our object should be to make everything teach us. The essential points are three: different ways will suit different persons; second, the individual is the one who has to strive — as ‘an island unto himself’; third, the striving, the search is an inner-directed one. It has nothing to do with the state or power or dominance over nature or man;

• In pursuing this inner-directed search, indeed in leading one’s life, the test is not adherence to any of these travel guides, nor obedience to any intermediary, but darshan — the traveller’s own experience: do not mistake the finger pointing to the moon — that is, my teaching — for the moon, the reality, the Buddha counsels.

Every single element in these traditions guides and pulls the believer in the direction that is the exact opposite of the Middle Eastern traditions. Reality is multilayered, hence no description of it is final: tolerance follows as an article of faith. The search is to be an inner-directed one: where, then, is there a case for converting some dar ul harb into some dar ul Islam? The touchstone is not that I am adhering to what some book says or what some person, howsoever worthy, prescribed. The touchstone is my own experience. The consequence of even this single article is immense and radical. The Gita is set in a battlefield. At the end, Arjuna declares that all his doubts are settled. He goes into gory battle. Yet Gandhiji derived non-violence from it. The orthodox berated him. Where do you get the authority to advance such a notion, they demanded. Gandhiji’s answer? From here, his heart. What is written in this book, he says in Anashakti Yoga, is the result of thirty years’ unremitting effort to live the Gita in my life. When Mansur speaks to his experience, he is executed. Within Islam, the Sufis were a beleaguered sect . . .

Putting belief into practice

It is entirely possible, of course, to be earnest about one’s religious beliefs, practices, rituals and not turn to violence or to converting others through allurements or violence. Indeed, we can go further and say that in all traditions, the majority of people in their practice, in their day-to-day life are like each other: each of them has a hard enough time getting through her or his daily struggles to spare time and effort to forcing or even inducing others or even persuading others to his particular way. But when the religion insists that the object is to convert, to ‘harvest souls’ for Jesus, when it declares that all of dar ul harb must be converted into the dar ul Islam; when the religion is a doctrine of dominance, being earnest about one’s religion comes to include as an essential element that the believer assist in spreading that religion, and that he use all means to do so. If a believer does not do so, he is deficient in his belief.

That is why in the hadis, we find the Prophet repeatedly enumerating the boons that accrue to the martyr and his relatives from jihad, from killing and being killed in the cause of Islam. The pre-eminent rewards, of course, accrue to the one who joins in the fighting himself, the Prophet declares in scores of hadis. But even the one who does not do so directly, will be rewarded for every bit of assistance that he gives for the establishment, defence and spread of Islam, the Prophet declares. When a man keeps a horse for the purpose of jihad, ‘tying it with a long tether on a meadow or in a garden... whatever it eats from the area of the meadow or the garden where it is tied will be counted as good deeds for his benefit, and if it should break its rope and jump over one or two hillocks then all its dung and its footmarks will be written as good deeds for him; and if it passes by a river and drinks water from it even though he had no intention of watering it, even then he will get the rewards for its drinking.’ And again, even more generally, ‘If somebody keeps a horse in Allah’s Cause motivated by his belief in His Promise, then he will be rewarded on the Day of Resurrection for what the horse has eaten or drunk and for its dung and urine.’ [Sahih al-Bukhari, 52.44, 49, 105; similarly, Muwatta’ Imam Malik, 951, Mishkat al-Masabih, Book XVIII, Volume II, p. 822. The hadis compilations as well as books on shariah are filled with scores and scores of such exhortations and promises.]

By contrast ‘the one who died but did not fight in the way of Allah,’ the Prophet declares, ‘nor did he express any desire (or determination) for jihad, died the death of a hypocrite.’ [Sahih Muslim, 4696.] Again, the Prophet declares, ‘He who dies without having fought or having felt fighting (against the infidels) to be his duty will die guilty of a kind of hypocrisy.’ And yet again, ‘He who does not join the warlike expedition (jihad), or equip a warrior, or look well after a warrior’s family when he is away, will be smitten by Allah with a sudden calamity.’ Hence, commands the Prophet, ‘Use your property, your persons and your tongues in striving against the polytheists.’ [Sunan Abu Dawud, 2496-98.]

Such commands follow ineluctably from the propositions that I listed above. We shut this fact out by two blindfolds. We judge a faith by looking at ‘people like us’ — most of the ones we know are ‘persons like us’, they do not live by such commands, but it is precisely because they are ‘like us’ that they are in our social circle. Unfortunately, the outcome is determined, not by the millions who lead ordinary lives, lives like ours, but by microscopic minorities: to say, ‘But the majority of Muslims did not want Partition’ may be true but is little consolation — that did not save the country from being partitioned. Similarly, to say ‘But millions are living peacefully today, they have not the slightest intention of setting off for jihad’ is true but equally little consolation: the ones who take the propositions seriously and thereby heed the hadis, are the ones who are determining the direction that events are taking.

And the direction that Islam itself is taking. Once they enter the stage, the extremists come to set the standard of fidelity and piety within a community. The tradition metamorphoses in no time: look at the change that has swept Islam in Southeast Asia in just fifteen years.

Second, we often lull ourselves with the thought, ‘But so what if someone wears the scarf or burqa? If they want to send their children to madrasas, what business is it of ours?’ But there is a technology to all this. The ones steering a community make a point of starting with a completely innocuous demand, by inducing believers to adhere to a practice that does not inconvenience non-believers in any way. The headscarf, for instance, or the new piety-statement in lands as far apart as Egypt and Pakistan, the zebibah — the dark, calloused bump that registers on the forehead when it is repeatedly struck or rubbed on the ground during prayers. [For our own neighbourhood, observe the visitors from Pakistan; for Egypt, see, for instance, Michael Slackman, ‘Mark of piety as plain as a bump on the head,’ IHT, December 13, 2007.] Non-believers are not inconvenienced by such signs, and yet the practices go far. They become a device for making the adherent realise that she is not the same as the others, and to make her or him announce that she is not one of the others. Simultaneously, the marks drill into others that the adherents have come to look upon themselves as separate. When the non-believers in turn start treating them as separate, that they are doing so becomes a grievance. And thus another argument is acquired for transiting from separateness to separatism.

Hence, all who are apprehensive of a Hindu reaction should:

• Get to know the non-Indic traditions;

• Shed denial — from denial of what the basic texts of the non-Indic traditions say to denial of the demographic aggression in the Northeast;

• Most important of all, work to ensure a completely fair and an absolutely firm state; and an even-handed discourse.

For their part, the Hindus cannot recline back, confident that the reaction will take care of the current pressures. They too have much to do. In particular, they must

• Awaken to the fact that the danger does not come just from violence and money; it comes as much from the purposive use of the electoral system;

• And so, they must organise themselves for this challenge as much as for others;

• For this, they must vault over internal divisions, in particular the curse of caste;

• Be alert not just to assault by others, but also to perversions from within: the commercialisation of the tradition; its becoming a commerce with deities — ‘Please get me this contract, and I will . . .’; its becoming ostentatious religiosity; persons setting themselves up as the guardians of the tradition, and then using the perch for self-aggrandisement . . .

• Get to know the tradition; and live it.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/255906._.html
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

LEADER ARTICLE: Blame The Middle Class
8 Jan 2008, 0000 hrs IST,Ashis Nandy


Now that the dust has settled over the Gujarat elections, we can afford to defy the pundits and admit that, even if Narendra Modi had lost the last elections, it would not have made much difference to the culture of Gujarat politics. Modi had already done his job. Most of the state's urban middle class would have remained mired in its inane versions of communalism and parochialism and the VHP and the Bajrang Dal would have continued to set the tone of state politics. Forty years of dedicated propaganda does pay dividends, electorally and socially.

The Hindus and the Muslims of the state — once bonded so conspicuously by language, culture and commerce — have met the demands of both V D Savarkar and M A Jinnah. They now face each other as two hostile nations. The handful of Gujarati social and political activists who resist the trend are seen not as dissenters but as treacherous troublemakers who should be silenced by any means, including surveillance, censorship and direct violence. As a result, Gujarati cities, particularly its educational institutions are turning cultural deserts. Gujarat has already disowned the Indian Constitution and the state apparatus has adjusted to the change.

The Congress, the main opposition party, has no effective leader. Nor does it represent any threat to the mainstream politics of Gujarat. The days of grass-roots leaders like Jhinabhai Darji are past and a large section of the party now consists of Hindu nationalists. The national leadership of the party does not have the courage to confront Modi over 2002, given its abominable record of 1984.

The Left is virtually non-existent in Gujarat. Whatever minor presence it once had among intellectuals and trade unionists is now a vague memory. The state has disowned Gandhi, too; Gandhian politics arouses derision in middle-class Gujarat. Except for a few valiant old-timers, Gandhians have made peace with their conscience by withdrawing from the public domain. Gandhi himself has been given a saintly, Hindu nationalist status and shelved. Even the Gujarati translations of his Complete Works have been stealthily distorted to conform to the Hindu nationalist agenda.

Gujarati Muslims too are "adjusting" to their new station. Denied justice and proper compensation, and as second-class citizens in their home state, they have to depend on voluntary efforts and donor agencies. The state's refusal to provide relief has been partly met by voluntary groups having fundamentalist sympathies. They supply aid but insist that the beneficiaries give up Gujarati and take to Urdu, adopt veil, and send their children to madrassas. Events like the desecration of Wali Gujarati's grave have pushed one of India's culturally richest, most diverse, vernacular Islamic traditions to the wall. Future generations will as gratefully acknowledge the sangh parivar's contribution to the growth of radical Islam in India as this generation remembers with gratitude the handsome contribution of Rajiv Gandhi and his cohorts to Sikh militancy.

The secularist dogma of many fighting the sangh parivar has not helped matters. Even those who have benefited from secular lawyers and activists relate to secular ideologies instrumentally. They neither understand them nor respect them. The victims still derive solace from their religions and, when under attack, they cling more passionately to faith. Indeed, shallow ideologies of secularism have simultaneously broken the back of Gandhism and discouraged the emergence of figures like Ali Shariatis, Desmond Tutus and the Dalai Lama — persons who can give suffering a new voice audible to the poor and the powerless and make a creative intervention possible from within worldviews accessible to the people.

Finally, Gujarat's spectacular development has underwritten the de-civilising process. One of the worst-kept secrets of our times is that dramatic development almost always has an authoritarian tail. Post-World War II Asia too has had its love affair with developmental despotism and the censorship, surveillance and thought control that go with it. The East Asian tigers have all been maneaters most of the time. Gujarat has now chosen to join the pack. Development in the state now justifies amorality, abridgement of freedom, and collapse of social ethics.

Is there life after Modi? Is it possible to look beyond the 35 years of rioting that began in 1969 and ended in 2002? Prima facie, the answer is "no". We can only wait for a new generation that will, out of sheer self-interest and tiredness, learn to live with each other. In the meanwhile, we have to wait patiently but not passively to keep values alive, hoping that at some point will come a modicum of remorse and a search for atonement and that ultimately Gujarati traditions will triumph over the culture of the state's urban middle class.

Recovering Gujarat from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class has found in militant religious nationalism a new self- respect and a new virtual identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus, Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have sought salvation in violence. In Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.

The writer is a political psychologist.

[Guest]

To Acharya and other moderators.

Sir many posts in this thread are irrelevant to the discussion of Hindutva. I request you to edit/delete such posts.

#212 Post by a self-hating person.

#213 should be in Islamism thread.

#218 could edited and the words highlighted could be underlined so that the post can be readable.

#219 which tries to paint RSS as a terror organisation like the Hezbollah is obviously dripping with hate towards the hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita and needs to be deleted.

#222 again the points highlighted could be instead underlined to maintain readablity of the post.

#226 Article written by the India and Hindu hating Economist newspaper needs to be deleted. If there are any doubts about the credibility of Economist ask any Bharat Rakshak member they will tell you its true face. Even Manmohan singh has criticized it for blatanly writing articles against India and our economy without any basis.

#240 article written by Ashis Nandy who's brother Pritish Nandy produces films which are financied by groups affailated to congress. So now we have believe a word of congress chamca like Ashis who shamelessly attacks all gujaratis and hindus for democratically electing Narendrabhai Modi.

I would request that the Hindutva thread be used to post articles written by educated and well informed writers rather than congress chamcas like ashis nandy. The articles written by the likes of ashis needed to go into the Gutter thread or some thread named like it.

[Shambhu]

The Renaissance of Hindu Dharma in the New Millenium

http://www.vivekanandagospel.org/Renaissan...HinduDharma.pdf

Good encapsulation of definitions of HIndu Dharma, threats to it, and what is being done..

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE
Bridging the divide
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/...d=10015201

Nov 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
The world's most religious country is still battling with its demons
There was also a change in Hinduism: the more mystical strain, Vedanta, which preaches the unity of all religions, was challenged by the stauncher Hindutva message. Vedanta Hindus stayed with Congress; Hindutva ones moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

This article tries to create a psy ops about Hinduism saying that Hinduism is changing.
Vedanta vs Hindutva difference is bing projected when there is none. This is one form of social engineering