12-09-2006, 11:13 PM
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<b>Indian secularism triumphs again </b>
Last week Indian secularism demanded its periodic obeisance from the faithful and got it. Secular Indian polity rubbed the Hindu nose in the dirt yet again and installed the statue of the known Hindu-hater EV Ramaswamy Naicker 'Periyar' in front of the majestic Rajagopuram of the hoary Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam, Tiruchy, insulting Hindu bhaktas and making a mockery of Hindu religious sensibilities. But that's Indian secularism for you and that's Indian polity.
In the polite circles of Indian polity, Periyar the Hindu-hater is referred to as a 'rationalist' or a 'reformist', euphemisms both for anti-Hindu paranoia. Periyar had declared and so had his political heirs Annadurai and Karunanidhi after him, that the Dravidian movement would have attained its ultimate victory the day Bhagwan Sriranganatha (SriMahavishnu) at Srirangam and Bhagwan SriChidambaranatha at Chidambaram are blown apart and their temples razed to the ground with canons. This Hindu-hating sentiment is on record and a proud slogan among Dravidian politicians.
Periyar was an iconoclast not just in the literary sense but literally. He and his followers have not only publicly broken to pieces innumerable Hindu murtis, I have myself seen at the age of six, a procession in Chennai of Periyar's acolytes dancing in front of the murti of Ganesha adorned with shoes and slippers. That terrible image is still fresh in my mind. The latest outrage in Srirangam has its origins in 1973 when permission for the statue was granted by the Srirangam Municipal Council to the 'Suyamaridai Kazhagam', an off-shoot of Periyar's political party, the Dravida Kazhagam.
'Suyamaridai' may be translated as 'self-respect' and it follows that the atheist Dravidian polity exemplified by the DMK which was then the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, considered installing the statue of the Hindu-hating Periyar in front of the revered Srirangam temple as a reaffirming gesture of self-respect for the atheists.
Such affront to Hindu religious sentiments has been the hallmark of Nehruvian secularism. I am told by authentic sources that a fifty foot long sculpture of a naked woman stands right in front of a Devi temple on the Thiruvananthapuram beach. Not too far away stands a Church and a mosque too but Hindu-hating Nehruvian secularism demands that the sculpture of the nude woman be erected not anywhere else in Thiruvananthapuram and not anywhere else on the beach but only in front of the Hindu temple. Indian polity has displayed appalling taste in the choice of names that adorn our streets and avenues and Delhi, befitting its stature as the nation's capital leads the rest of the country in immortalizing the memory of successive Muslim and European colonial marauders and invaders.
Planting the nude woman before the Devi temple or Periyar in front of the Srirangam temple is only a continuation of the Nehruvian secular, anti-Hindu tradition in Indian polity which has permitted Churches and Christian prayer houses in Tamil Nadu, in numbers totally disproportionate to the total Christian population in the state or the country, to come up within sneezing distance of Hindu temples big and small. In other parts of India this blighted polity has allowed mosques to come up on the sites of vandalized Hindu temples or close to standing Hindu temples and mathams as humiliating symbols of Hindu powerlessness to control the content and character of public spaces.
Public spaces are indicative of both national character and polity and therefore while the developed nations of the West permit structures that reflect their token gesture to liberalism and pluralism, such structures are never permitted to come up in numbers that affront the religious and cultural sensibilities of the majority White/Christian populace. This is just as true of Islamic nations which do not subscribe even to this tokenism. India's peculiarly skewered 'secular' polity has in its fold of adherents not just the internationally supported and funded, well-organized and aggressive Christian and Muslim communities but also Dravidians, Marxists and de-racinated Hindus; and India's public spaces reflect the gargantuan appetite of this anti-Hindu coalition's demand for continuing Hindu pounds of flesh.
The most telling example of public spaces defining national character is Seoul. South Korea is the first Asian victim of the Vatican's declared intention to plant the church in Asia in the third millennium. South Korea not till long ago was a Buddhist nation. Not anymore. In 1900 less than one percent of South Korea's population was Christian. By 1970 the Christian population had risen to 18.26% but in 1990 South Korea's Christian population was a staggering 40 percent. The twenty kilometer stretch between the heart of Seoul city and the airport is today dotted with towering churches on the right and left, once again completely disproportionate to the percentage of Christian population or the total numbers of the congregation that assemble in these churches. These imposing churches are not so much religious structures as political intent signaling dominance, subjugation and conquest.
This perversion of the content and character of the public spaces in Seoul is a brutal reminder to the peaceful and non-aggressive Buddhist peoples of South Korea of the cancerous nature of unchecked Christian evangelical missionary activity which is eating away at the Buddhist body of South Korea. Soon the Buddhist soul of the nation will also be dead. A frighteningly similar situation is unfolding in the temple town of Tirupati which lies at the foothills of the Tirumala hills. Innumerable churches have mushroomed in this town in recent times where the total population of Tirupati municipality including the outgrowth is 2,32,930 (two lakhs, thirty-two thousand nine hundred and thirty) of which Christians number only 2348, barely one percent of the population. There is little doubt that the effrontery with which these churches have been built has been facilitated by India's secular polity.
Churches and Christian prayer houses, mosques and madarasas, nude women and Periyar compete with Aurangazeb and Warren Hastings, Humayun and Mountbatten to occupy pride of place in the country's public spaces. India's Nehruvian secularism is alive and thriving, warped sense of history and all.
Radha Rajan
6th December, 2006
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<b>Indian secularism triumphs again </b>
Last week Indian secularism demanded its periodic obeisance from the faithful and got it. Secular Indian polity rubbed the Hindu nose in the dirt yet again and installed the statue of the known Hindu-hater EV Ramaswamy Naicker 'Periyar' in front of the majestic Rajagopuram of the hoary Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam, Tiruchy, insulting Hindu bhaktas and making a mockery of Hindu religious sensibilities. But that's Indian secularism for you and that's Indian polity.
In the polite circles of Indian polity, Periyar the Hindu-hater is referred to as a 'rationalist' or a 'reformist', euphemisms both for anti-Hindu paranoia. Periyar had declared and so had his political heirs Annadurai and Karunanidhi after him, that the Dravidian movement would have attained its ultimate victory the day Bhagwan Sriranganatha (SriMahavishnu) at Srirangam and Bhagwan SriChidambaranatha at Chidambaram are blown apart and their temples razed to the ground with canons. This Hindu-hating sentiment is on record and a proud slogan among Dravidian politicians.
Periyar was an iconoclast not just in the literary sense but literally. He and his followers have not only publicly broken to pieces innumerable Hindu murtis, I have myself seen at the age of six, a procession in Chennai of Periyar's acolytes dancing in front of the murti of Ganesha adorned with shoes and slippers. That terrible image is still fresh in my mind. The latest outrage in Srirangam has its origins in 1973 when permission for the statue was granted by the Srirangam Municipal Council to the 'Suyamaridai Kazhagam', an off-shoot of Periyar's political party, the Dravida Kazhagam.
'Suyamaridai' may be translated as 'self-respect' and it follows that the atheist Dravidian polity exemplified by the DMK which was then the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, considered installing the statue of the Hindu-hating Periyar in front of the revered Srirangam temple as a reaffirming gesture of self-respect for the atheists.
Such affront to Hindu religious sentiments has been the hallmark of Nehruvian secularism. I am told by authentic sources that a fifty foot long sculpture of a naked woman stands right in front of a Devi temple on the Thiruvananthapuram beach. Not too far away stands a Church and a mosque too but Hindu-hating Nehruvian secularism demands that the sculpture of the nude woman be erected not anywhere else in Thiruvananthapuram and not anywhere else on the beach but only in front of the Hindu temple. Indian polity has displayed appalling taste in the choice of names that adorn our streets and avenues and Delhi, befitting its stature as the nation's capital leads the rest of the country in immortalizing the memory of successive Muslim and European colonial marauders and invaders.
Planting the nude woman before the Devi temple or Periyar in front of the Srirangam temple is only a continuation of the Nehruvian secular, anti-Hindu tradition in Indian polity which has permitted Churches and Christian prayer houses in Tamil Nadu, in numbers totally disproportionate to the total Christian population in the state or the country, to come up within sneezing distance of Hindu temples big and small. In other parts of India this blighted polity has allowed mosques to come up on the sites of vandalized Hindu temples or close to standing Hindu temples and mathams as humiliating symbols of Hindu powerlessness to control the content and character of public spaces.
Public spaces are indicative of both national character and polity and therefore while the developed nations of the West permit structures that reflect their token gesture to liberalism and pluralism, such structures are never permitted to come up in numbers that affront the religious and cultural sensibilities of the majority White/Christian populace. This is just as true of Islamic nations which do not subscribe even to this tokenism. India's peculiarly skewered 'secular' polity has in its fold of adherents not just the internationally supported and funded, well-organized and aggressive Christian and Muslim communities but also Dravidians, Marxists and de-racinated Hindus; and India's public spaces reflect the gargantuan appetite of this anti-Hindu coalition's demand for continuing Hindu pounds of flesh.
The most telling example of public spaces defining national character is Seoul. South Korea is the first Asian victim of the Vatican's declared intention to plant the church in Asia in the third millennium. South Korea not till long ago was a Buddhist nation. Not anymore. In 1900 less than one percent of South Korea's population was Christian. By 1970 the Christian population had risen to 18.26% but in 1990 South Korea's Christian population was a staggering 40 percent. The twenty kilometer stretch between the heart of Seoul city and the airport is today dotted with towering churches on the right and left, once again completely disproportionate to the percentage of Christian population or the total numbers of the congregation that assemble in these churches. These imposing churches are not so much religious structures as political intent signaling dominance, subjugation and conquest.
This perversion of the content and character of the public spaces in Seoul is a brutal reminder to the peaceful and non-aggressive Buddhist peoples of South Korea of the cancerous nature of unchecked Christian evangelical missionary activity which is eating away at the Buddhist body of South Korea. Soon the Buddhist soul of the nation will also be dead. A frighteningly similar situation is unfolding in the temple town of Tirupati which lies at the foothills of the Tirumala hills. Innumerable churches have mushroomed in this town in recent times where the total population of Tirupati municipality including the outgrowth is 2,32,930 (two lakhs, thirty-two thousand nine hundred and thirty) of which Christians number only 2348, barely one percent of the population. There is little doubt that the effrontery with which these churches have been built has been facilitated by India's secular polity.
Churches and Christian prayer houses, mosques and madarasas, nude women and Periyar compete with Aurangazeb and Warren Hastings, Humayun and Mountbatten to occupy pride of place in the country's public spaces. India's Nehruvian secularism is alive and thriving, warped sense of history and all.
Radha Rajan
6th December, 2006
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