Books of the Bhagavad Gita

(CHAKRA) International Gita Society launched it’s a month long program—31 days of Science and Spirituality for the Bhagavad Gita on Gita Jayanti Day “December 5, 20110.” The program was aimed to connect youths to understand the Bhagavad Gita for daily life and to remember world known great Yogis, scientists, philosophers, and literates. Around 500,000 youths joined this program through social media network such as Facebook and Google Plus. The campaign started with an acknowledgement of a world Guru— Swami Vivekananda, and a great Yogi— Shri Guru Ji (2nd President of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)’s contribution in awakening millions of people of Sanatan Dharma. Participants were also briefed about scientist such as Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Father of Atom Bomb), philosopher like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and a great political leader Mahatma Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita’s role in shaping their lives.

Along with this campaign, a worldwide Bhagavad Gita essay competition was also held by IGS. Jaime Murphy of the United States was declared as a winner of the competition. This program concluded on January 5 by paying tribute to great Hindi literate Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan (Father of a legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan). Dr. Bachchan translated the Bhagavad Gita in Avadhi to make it music friendly and popular like Ramayana in 1954. However, this great work is remained unknown and unnoticed by most of Bhagavad Gita readers.

The IGS was founded by Dr. Ramanananda Prasad, Retired U.S.Navy Official and Professor of San Jose State University in 1984. It is a registered, non-profit, tax-exempt, spiritual institution in the US. It has its branches in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Europe, and South American countries.

Shirdi Sai Baba

Sai Baba is revered by several notable Hindu religious leaders. Some of his disciples became famous as spiritual figures and saints, such as Mhalsapati, a priest of Kandoba temple in Shridi, Upasni Maharaj, Saint Bidkar Maharaj, Saint Gangagir, Saint Jankidas Maharaj, and Sati Godavari Mataji.

The Shirdi Sai Baba movement began in the 19th century, while he was living in Shirdi. A local Khandoba priest – Mhalsapati Nagre – is believed to have been his first devotee. In the 19th century Sai Baba’s followers were only a small group of Shirdi inhabitants and a few people from other parts of India. The movement started developing in the 20th century, with Sai Baba’s message reaching the whole of India. During his life, Hindus worshiped him with Hindu rituals and Muslims considered him to be a saint. In the last years of Sai Baba’s life, Christians and Zoroastrians started joining the Shirdi Sai Baba movement.
Shirdi is among the major Hindu places of pilgrimage. The first Sai Baba temple is situated at Bhivpuri, Karjat. The Sai Baba Mandir (Hindu temple) in Shirdi is visited by around twenty thousand pilgrims a day and during religious festivals this number can reach up to a hundred thousand. Shirdi Sai Baba is especially revered and worshiped in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat.

The Shirdi Sai movement has spread to the Caribbean and to countries such as the United States, Australia, Dubai, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Shirdi Sai Baba movement is one of the main Hindu religious movements in English-speaking countries.

Youth protesting for human rights treatment of Kashmiri (Hindu) Pandits who were pushed out of Kashmir by Islamic extremists

By Abhaya Shanker Dube

Note: The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the writer only. The writer is a Hindu who wishes no ill will upon any community. The writer would also like to express his sincere sympathy towards the victims of communal/targeted violence (in all of its forms) and would also like to express unlimited condemnation towards those who indulge in communal/targeted violence. The author is a student and follower of restorative justice. Also note that the terms ‘bill’ and ‘act’ (as used in definitions) are sometimes used interchangeably.

India’s secular fabric is at risk. Despite the small and yet-to-be materialized and executed victory of Indians in the fight to pass the Jan Lokpal bill (anti-corruption ombudsman), there is one truly disturbing bill that the Hindu community must watch out for. The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence bill (the bill) is getting closer to being passed. The bill is well-intentioned in name only. In this paper, I seek to raise the issues of unfairness and ambiguity – as this proposed bill is littered with such faults. If one is to read the bill line-by-line, then one finds that the bill is completely one-sided. I present a humble attempt to dissect the key concerns of Hindus regarding this bill.

Problematic Definitions & Institutions

The bill defines those who are victimized as:

the ‘group’ where group means a religious or linguistic minority, in any State in the Union of India, or Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the meaning of clauses (24) and    (25) of Article 366 of the Constitution of India.

What is one to take away from this definition? The way it reads, the bill is simply stating that communal and targeted violence is only perpetrated by a majority community upon a minority community. A member or members of a majority community can never be victims! If identical offences were committed by minority groups against the majority, then they would not be deemed offences according to this bill. In addition, the definition of ‘group’ in its current form opens the door to many different interpretations of who all are eligible. Is communal violence a one-sided affair? Aren’t their retaliatory actions perpetrated as well? Isn’t it possible that minority groups may also instigate and perpetrate communal and targeted violence towards other groups?

Let us go deeper into the analysis by defining the term ‘victim’ as per the bill:

a ‘victim’ means any person belonging to a group as defined under this Act, who has suffered  physical, mental, psychological or monetary harm or harm to his or her property as a result of the     commission of any offence under this Act, and includes his or her relatives, legal guardian and legal heirs, wherever appropriate.

Once again, this definition further enhances my suspicion that this bill limits the scope of victimhood to members of minority communities only. A perfect example of how there is an anti-majority bias in this bill is found in Clause 7 which states that a person is said to commit a sexual assault offence against a person belonging to a ‘group’ by virtue of that person’s membership of a group. This clearly implies that a sexual assault is only considered an offence under this bill if it is perpetrated by a member of the majority community. How is this fair? What about the reverse situation? The Clause in its present form is a slap in the face to all victims of sexual assault as it ranks the level of severity based on the community/group that the victim belongs to. Sexual assault is an inhuman act which cannot be taken lightly.

Another concern that I have is that the bill aims to form a new level of redundant and wasteful bureaucracy which will grab away law and order powers from the States. The bill aims to set up the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (a seven member panel) to exercise the powers and perform the functions assigned to it under this bill. The composition of the authority is defined by the bill below:

The National Authority shall consist of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chair-person and five other Members. Provided that, at all times, not less than four Members, including the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson, shall belong to a group as defined under this Act. Provided further that, at all times, there shall be – 1. One Member belonging to Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes; 2. Four women, whether Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson or Member.

On top of the National Authority, a State Authority will be set up in each state. The size and composition of the State Authority will perfectly mirror the National Authority. The potential risks of having the new National and State Authorities will be discussed in the section on risks.

Criticisms of this bill have come from many directions. One of the leading voices has been Arun Jaitley of the BJP. Jaitley has argued: “law and order are squarely in the hands of the State”. Then why must a Central Government agency handle a State’s law and order issues? Doesn’t that compromise and usurp the jurisdictional privileges of the state? What message are we sending to State governments regarding communal violence? That they are incompetent and are not qualified or honest enough to handle the problem? The Central government cannot become too powerful. That is a recipe for disaster. History has taught us how an overly powerful center can have very negative and destructive consequences.

Double Standards?

If we talk of communal and targeted violence and justice for victims, then our dear and unfortunate Kashmiri Pandits/Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs are not guaranteed safety by this bill. The bill extends to the whole of India. But it will only extend to the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) if the State grants consent to the Central government. Many may argue that since J&K has special status in India, that it goes without saying that this bill would be voluntary for the State. However, it is also very convenient that the only State which has such an option is also a Hindu minority State.

While reading numerous articles regarding this bill, I came across a truly disturbing double standard. When faced with the question of how this bill would treat a situation in which a Muslim group were to attack a Hindu group (where Hindus are in minority), Justice M S Liberhan (of Ayodhya Commission fame) replies “the law can be amended later to accommodate them (the Hindus)”. Why can’t this bill accommodate Hindus to begin with? Why must Hindus be victimized first and then be granted the right to be accommodated by this bill? Does anyone remember J&K and what happened there? We’ve already had our Hindu brethren victimized in places where they were in minority. We do not even need a legal precedent in order to strengthen the case for having Hindus accommodated in this bill. Yet, our legislators would prefer their tyrannical bill as it is. What message is the Central government sending to India’s Hindu population? Also, just imagine hypothetically how horrible a scenario we could have if J&K’s government decides not to enforce the bill in its jurisdiction and sponsors violence against its Hindu minority! What safety net is there for the Kashmiri Hindus? I can only see vulnerability and the mouths of Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, and other terrorist groups watering.

Risks

I certainly believe that the imposition of this bill may create many risks. I’ve already discussed how this bill does not accommodate Hindus. However, in the event of communal or targeted violence perpetrated by members of the majority community, would the perpetrators have the right to a fair and unbiased trial? The way I read the bill suggests that the seven-person National and State Authorities will be predominantly composed of women and members of the ‘groups’ as defined in this bill. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having women or members of the ‘groups’ as the authorities in this bureaucracy, but one may argue that this creates a serious judgment bias. How can we guarantee the neutrality and fairness of judgment of these members of the panel? There is not a single line in this bill which discusses this area of concern.

Secondly, a truly major risk that I see from this bill is that it may provide terrorist and secessionist groups (like the Naxals) with ample scope to operate their businesses under the shelter and auspices of this bill. It is worth mentioning that Sundeep Waslekar (President, Strategic Foresight Group) wrote a fine article on Forbes India (August 2011) which neatly laid out the misconceptions about terrorist groups and their abilities. Waslekar argues that terrorist groups are very well organized, politically savvy, and are shrewd business people. They are always looking for new revenue sources and the way I see it, communal and targeted violence is the next source of growth for them (given that this bill may soon pass). The consequences of terrorist infiltration in to communal issues can be absolutely devastating for the future ofIndia. The worst part is that this bill provides loopholes for these trouble creators to operate and not even be pursued.

Lastly, the secular fabric of India will be ravaged by this bill. I do not foresee future communal harmony in the light of such a backward, anti-progressive, and draconian bill. Heaven forbid that another large-scale act of communal/targeted violence was to occur after the successful passing of this bill. Every step of the process of seeking justice would create even more conflict and carnage. Just the thought of what we may have in store for us is a scary one. I can go on to list many more risks and criticisms about this bill but what is important is to focus on the fact that the bill exhibits inequality and unfairness – both of which go against the very nature of law.

A Sincere Appeal

I want to make some concluding remarks which may or may not sit well with some. This bill reeks of political and judicial revenge against the majority Hindu community of India, post-Gujarat riots. Laws should not be made in order to take revenge on certain groups. Also, retributive justice is a vicious cycle. Restorative justice gives us a chance to try and live together and heal each other’s wounds. Why can’t our legislators in India understand this? India has more laws than it can handle and enforce. The goal of all legislators should be to help enforce the laws that exist and amend them when need be. Simply adding one more level of bureaucracy will not prove to be a solution for the communal and targeted violence problem of India.

I do not seek to influence the thinking of others and so I urge you all to read the draft bill and its numerous criticisms from a wide spectrum of community groups. Formulate your own opinions about this bill and fight to either support this bill, negotiate fair amendments, or fight to have it dismissed. It is the civic duty of all Indians, and all Hindus to be responsible citizens of the land. It is also a civic duty of all Hindu NRIs to lobby from wherever they are to pressure the Indian government to legislate responsibly.

We live in the 21^st century and we pride ourselves as hailing from the world’s largest secular democracy. But I argue that this democracy is becoming a draconian and anti-progressive system of hyper-appeasement and inter-caste/inter-community retribution. This bill will usurp the powers of the States and it will create a wasteful new layer of bureaucracy to an already over-burdened judicial system. This anti-communal violence bill will only create more unrest and resentment between the various communities of India as it considers communal violence as an act perpetrated only by a majority community on a minority community. It will also incentivize terrorists, Naxalites, and corrupt politicians to infiltrate minority groups in order to stir up trouble. Where a terrorist attack may kill some people and strike fear in others, a pre-meditated communal violence incitement can have larger, longer-lasting collateral damage. We can’t give the enemies of India this golden opportunity!

CasteWatch UK - Davinder Prasad (aka David Prasad) and Sinna Mani

By Ranbir Singh (HHR)

On 2 July 2011 Castewatch held another of its typical hatefests in Coventry . Ostensibly designed as always to discuss caste discrimination in Britain , it once again degenerated into the usual fulminations against the evils of Hinduism and Hindus. This is why Hindus are only welcome at such events if they “know their place” and avoid indulging in the twin evils of talking and speaking too much. It is therefore fortunate that Castewatch have had the stupidity to brazenly advertise the anti-Hindu views of this very Neo nazi skinhead rally style conference on their own website at: http://www.castewatchuk.org/CasteWatchUK-Conference-Report-2nd-July-2011.pdf

Sinna Mani (President of BOPIO and ex-Mayor of Lewisham) stated the following in his speech at the CasteWatchUK Conference July 2nd, 2011.

“We do not have to follow the bogus gurus. Most of the Hindu Gurus are bogus charlatans and they have no spirituality. Hinduism cannot provide the kind of spirituality required by equality of opportunities. Hinduism is a religion of inequality. Everything you do is Dharma or Karma, it is all bullshit. This is no disrespect to my Hindu friends sitting here.

I am a Hindu myself & I read Bhagwad Gita. Hindu literature is full of wisdom and it is the oldest religion in the world. But our brothers and sisters who departed from Hinduism, be they Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or Buddhists, they did for a good reason.

Perhaps by the time you read this they would have taken it down or removed the offending portions, as is the case when hate groups get exposed. Now one first gets an indication of how things are going when Baroness Flather blames Hindu Forum and Hindu Council as being organisations formed by upper caste Hindus. This is normal in a discourse which seeks to rubbish the Hindu voice in order to suffocate it at source, and is commonly done by Indians who are only Hindu name but use the Hindu label when it suits them. We find this even more with the speech by Sinna Mani, president of the BOPIO (British Organisation of People of Indian Origin). In an utterly racist diatribe Mani said caste was embedded in the DNA of every single Indian. His eugenics was complimented by a crass racial mythology in which he claimed Brahmins had pleaded with Alexander the Great no to dismantle the caste system when he conquered India . But the Macedonian conqueror had never actually done any of this and historical records are clear that he was actually defeated in his attempts to subdue the entire subcontinent.

Yet this is of little concern to Mr. Mani who fulminates against “Hindu Right Wing organisations” and the “stupidity of the Brahmin caste”. If Castewatch and its minions in the anti-Hindu Axis of Hate are so adamant that caste is equivalent or parallel to race, then surely Mr. Mani is himself guilty of the most disgusting racist comments? Would his anti-Brahmin rhetoric not itself fall foul of the very casteist legislation which Castewatch is trying to get enacted in Britain ? After all white people have every right to take action under laws prohibiting racial discrimination and many do. Race hatred is race hatred. Caste hatred is caste hatred, something which Castewatch appears to have conveniently forgotten. But then as Orwell reminded us in Animal Farm some animals are more equal than others in a totalitarian system which stifles free discussion, liberty of conscience and respect for the rights of the individual.

Mani claims no disrespect for his Hindu so-called friends .Now Mr. Mani brazenly argues that “Hinduism is a religion of inequality” and indeed “it is all bullshit”. The language of the gutter has now reached seemingly respectful organisations. But here we have it. The problem is not caste discrimination. The problem is Hinduism. Mani’s confession that he himself is a Hindu parallels the anti-Semitism harboured by nineteenth century Germans of Jewish origin such as Marx and Lasalle, a self-hatred of the most destructive type. For Mani, Hinduism is full of fake gurus who mislead the people. On the other hand Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism offer equality and for that reason whole sections of Hindus have gone over to those faiths.

Of course we are confronted here with the rather inconvenient fact that actual equality does not exist in those faiths in practice. It also does not exist in theory of one looks at the respective sacred texts and the cultural milieu from which they emerged, rather than just taking selective verses at random to harmonise with political correctness. Mani deal with this by denouncing the genocide by the Sri Lankan government against Tamils as being perpetrated by Sinhalese who were not real Buddhists. This again is part of the anti-Hindu discourse. When atrocities are done by Hindus, notably caste discrimination, the blame if firmly laid at the feet of Hinduism. But when Buddhists or others act in like manner, the blame is laid at human frailties and failings, not the supposedly perfect religion.

Later on Sinna Mani elaborates further on his anti-Hindu thesis. He claims that Hindus in Britain are trying to scare the whites and also makes sinister ideas of how it is perfectly legitimate to discriminate against Hindus if they belong to the ‘wrong’ caste. Only those deemed Dalits should be protected by anti-caste legislation. This is not equality at all. In fact is not discrimination itself? When the Race Discrimination Act was passed in 1968 it was to outlaw discrimination. In America civil rights was exactly that, civil rights for all. These were not measures taken against or to punish white people but to offer the same equality to everyone, irrespective of racial background as it should be in a civilised and democratic society. But Mani is so infected with anti-Hindu hatred that he openly boasts how he does not want equality but instead the very same special privileges he purports to be denied at present. And he wants the British government to help him do this! In fighting caste discrimination surely the last thing needed is inverted racism, casteism and the noxious fumes of those determined to introduce Third World politics and nepotism into a developed country.

Mani’s anti-Hindu hatred and racism is of course enhanced by others present. Nelam Khamba a “Hindu delegate” who appeared to play a role similar to A South African black homeland leader under apartheid, said that caste events were racist, equivalent to whites only events. Would she therefore also agree that Mr. Mani’s anti-Brahmin poison coated rhetoric was racist? Reena Jessiah disgustingly links the whole Hindu ethos to anti-Semitism in her poem which is an almost exact replica of that by Pastor Martin Niemoller who was incarcerated by the Nazis for speaking out against them – even though he initially hailed Hitler as a German messiah and felt Jews had too much power. Rena Annobil then recites a poem in which she claims the existence of the barbaric “Aryan” race.

It is not as if Castewatch’s own petty fascist leader is unaware of all this. It happened under his very nose. Indeed Davinder (David) Prasad himself then goes on record to fulminate against the “Hindu Lobby” and “right wing Hindu groups” that are meddling with the government. With all the ignorance and bigotry demonstrated it is amazing how much an organisation such as Castewatch, which we must remember claims to be actually fighting discrimination and prejudice, has in common with backward thinking communities in America who to this day cannot accept a black president and take refuge in the defeated civil war flag of the Confederacy.

Indeed how long is before Castewatch decide to hold their rallies in a cow pasture in front of a gigantic burning wooden cross? After all by excluding Hindus from even having a voice at their meetings, to which everyone else is welcomed with open arms and sinister grins, they have certainly covered up the reality of caste discrimination in Britain with white sheets, reserving for themselves two poked eye holes through which they can spy on the reality and keep the truth to themselves while denying it to others. That is the nature of the Castewatch Klan.

For Britain the ramifications for listening to such hate groups is more disturbing. While hatred by any other community is at least acknowledged , with regard to Hindus it is ignored or even encouraged. It is strange that while HHR has always offered to openly discuss the issues of caste, Davinder (David) Prasad has constantly fumbled and made excuses to escape from this while inviting every other faith community to put their ideas forward and fanning the flames of anti-Hindu hatred, just as he fans the flames of the cross which he burns in his front garden. Indeed he even called HHR “the opposition” at his Klan meeting in 2009, just because we are Hindus. And that is the crux of the matter. There is no Hindu Lobby in the UK enforcing caste. Indeed it is groups like Castewatch which are foisting and entrenching a caste identity onto others. That explains their constant reluctance to discuss the matter openly and constantly shift positions, with the only constant in this being a virulent hatred of anything Hindu.

By contrast Hindu organisations feel it best to keep their heads down and emphasise exhaustively how law abiding they are, how much contribution they have made to the economy, and their preponderance in the professions. They do not realise the danger posed by extremist groups such as Castewatch inciting hatred against Hindus and Hinduism by stereotyping them.

The international ramifications of extremist groups such as Castewatch is even more ominous. Backed by powerful and incredibly intolerant Christian fundamentalist groups the UK Caste Lobby has proven to be a useful tool in missionary machinations keen to spread their failed beliefs in India , while simultaneously squeezing Hindus out of the public space in Britain especially on discussions involving caste. If Mr. Mani claims people leave Hinduism for other faiths because of inherent inequality in that religion how would he explain the massive decline in church attendance and membership until what was once a Christian continent? This is not even at its worst in Britain where Christianity is increasingly the faith of a dying off elderly population.

The demographic implosion is even more pronounced on the continent. For example in Finland the established Lutheran church holds sway over a mere two percent of the population. In Estonia people have left Christianity in droves to seek spiritual solace in ancient pagan beliefs.

Yet India is a prime target with a conversion policy that uses all its financial muscle power to equate that country with having servitude equivalent to the very trans-Atlantic slavery which Bible believing Christians so eagerly participated in. Caste is said to be modern slavery and only the mass conversion of India to Christianity and annihilation of Hindu beliefs (and sometimes people, a blind eye being turned to Hindus exterminated and ethnically cleaned by Baptist terrorists in Nagaland and Mizoram) will solve India ’s backwardness. India is said to have apartheid and hence the missionary lobby and its useful idiots like Castewatch have in their ranks people who openly say that the rising

Asian power should be boycotted, as was South Africa under minority rule.

This does not bode well for either India or Britain . For India it will mean lack of investment and hence development which will lift that country’s millions out of dire poverty through job creation, literacy and expansion of the economy. For Britain the consequences are perhaps more severe. Castewatch and its missionary backers can only temporarily delay the rise of the new India . Britain can either listen to such hate groups and stay on the sidelines or play a proactive role in not just being part of India ’s rise but helping with the mutual exchange of knowledge, ideas, and trade. As the recent economic crises in western economies have shown Britain cannot rely on the near bankruptcy of its important trading partners in the form of Europe and America : and it is only a matter of time before China ’s debt levels mean it can no longer be the world’s supreme creditor. Therefore if Britain ’s government listens to the Axis of Anti-Hindu Hate, it remain blissfully ignorant as other nations help themselves handsomely to the opportunities awarded to them in India . In the long-term it is British jobs, living standards and influence in the world that will suffer.

We therefore ignore hate groups such as Castewatch to our peril. While Hindus may be their primary target the hatred they unleash cannot be contained and will ultimately destroy the very democratic and pluralist values from which all communities in Britain benefit. It would be naïve then to simply assume that individual rights, liberty, conscience and mutual respect are treasures valued by all. As long as even a vocal minority yearn for Caesars and Napoleons, these demagogues of hate will always arise to lead them.

Sangh Parivar

By Dr Koenraad Elst

“An RSS man”, that is how the Indian media and the Western South Asia scholars label anyone known as or suspected of standing up for Hindu interests. In fact, there have always been Hindu activists outside the RSS Sangh, working as individuals or in smaller organizations. Today, the modernization of Indian society and especially the spread of the internet has facilitated the mushroom growth of new forms and networks of Hindu activism.

Most supposed experts refuse to see the existence of Hindu activism outside the Sangh and instead reduce any Hindu sign of life to “Hindutva” (thus incidentally flattering the Sangh). One reason is purely political: in the struggle against Hindu activism as a whole, it is simply more useful to extend all prevalent criticism of the Sangh, e.g. that it murdered Mahatma Gandhi or committed “genocide” in Gujarat 2002, to any and every form of Hindu resistance. It implies that if you hear a Hindu complain about, say, Christian missionary demonization of Hinduism, you must stop him for he is about to commit murder if not genocide. In the Indian media, this kind of innuendo is frequent enough.

The main reason, however, seems to be that India-watchers have settled for a conspiratorial explanation of the existence of Hindu activism. In their construction, you first have the Sangh, or its historic core, then you get Sangh propaganda, and as a result of this, you get a belief among large numbers of Hindus that they are suffering various injustices, historical and contemporary. This is the dominant paradigm in Hindutva studies: a Hindutva conspiracy has created for itself a large constituency by means of mendacious propaganda.

The existence of multiple independent sources of Hindu activism makes this Hindutva conspiracy theory harder to sustain. It becomes more likely that they had independently noticed a really existing state of affairs, which then aroused their indignation.

For example, in numerous media and academic accounts, the Ayodhya controversy is introduced with the explanation: “Hindu nationalists claim that the Babri mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple”, or something to that effect. While the Hindu nationalists do indeed assert as much, the formulation falsely insinuates that this “claim” is of the Hindu nationalists’ making. In fact, that “claim” has been made in all the historic sources that speak out on the matter: Muslim, Hindu and European. Before the controversy became politically important in the 1980s, it was accepted by all competent authorities, e.g. the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. So, the temple vandalization scenario was not a piece of propaganda deliberately floated to plant false consciousness in the minds of the Hindu masses. It had very solid historic credentials, and consequently, divergent people with no mutual organizational connection or common ideological allegiance could independently act upon it.

For another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the Indian state imposes some and tolerates other injustices against the Hindus, can simply be verified. Thus, when I asked Hindu activists of any stripe in the 1990s what motivated them, practically everyone of them would mention the constitutional exception for the non-Hindu majority state of Jammu & Kashmir (and likewise Nagaland and Mizoram) and the related expulsion of the near-total Hindu community from Kashmir in 1990. Well, has this expulsion taken place or not? From most Western studies of Hindu nationalism, you wouldn’t learn about it, and yet, the answer is that it really has. Moreover, no Indian or Kashmiri government has seriously attempted to resettle the expelled Hindus in their homeland. One need not be duped by a Hindutva conspiracy to notice this fact as well as the injustice of this fact. Consequently, non-Sangh Hindus as well as Sanghis have spoken out against this injustice. If the Sangh had not existed, Hindus would still speak out against this injustice.

When the Pope came to India in 1999, the Indian media loudly denounced as “Hindutva paranoia” the assertion that the Church was out to destroy the Indian religions by converting their adherents to Christianity. But of course it is official Church doctrine that only Christians are saved and that out of charity, all Pagans must be converted. Having gone through the Catholic school system myself, that is what I learned from the horse’s mouth. And when the Pope finally opened his mouth in Delhi, he said in so many words that the Church was in Asia in order to “reap a rich harvest of faith”, modern Church parlance for the harvesting of Pagan souls. He merely restated a generally known fact, one from which any Hindu could draw his own conclusions without anyhow being compromised with “Hindutva paranoia”.

For yet another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the absence of a Common Civil Code amounts to “pseudo-secularism”, or indeed to a simple absence of secularism in the Personal Law dimension of the Indian state, would have to be acknowledged as more than just a Hindutva claim. It is something that Hindus of all kinds including those hostile to the Sangh, and people of all denominations, can see. Indeed, were it not for the widespread assumption that anything coming from the RSS-BJP must be “Hindu fundamentalist” or “Hindu fascist”, all international observers would readily concede this point. By definition, a secular state is one that has laws applying to its citizens regardless of their religion. The usual insistence that “Hindu nationalists want to abolish secularism” and its implication that the Indian state is indeed secular, cannot stand scrutiny on this score. But admitting this much would upset the entire conceptual framework of Hindutva studies.

Anyone desiring to uphold the dominant construction of Hindu nationalism, viz. the Hindutva conspiracy paradigm, logically has an interest in denying or minimizing the existence of independent non-Sangh Hindu activism. But the facts on the ground show increasingly that concerned Hindus are emancipating themselves from this identification of their own work with Hindutva.

Some of these start from philosophies different from the nationalistic RSS narrative, others are not ideologically different but want to provide an alternative mode of action to complement or replace an RSS working-style in which they have become disappointed. For indeed, the BJP election defeats in 2004 and 2009 and the steady decline in RSS shakha attendance since 1998 highlight a longer-standing disappointment in Hindu revivalist circles with the Sangh Parivar and its version of Hindu nationalism. The media construed the BJP defeats as “proof that the Indian masses are turning away from Hindu nationalism”, when in reality, the former BJP voters have only turned their backs on the betrayers of Hindu nationalism. This disappointment continues to be nurtured by Sangh displays of incompetence, such as the failed textbook rewriting initiatives in India 2000-04 and California 2005-09; and acts of “treason” such as the NDA government’s passivity regarding the Ayodhya temple and the Kashmiri refugees, or its permission of foreign media ownership. Far from abolishing the Hajj subsidies, a financially marginal but highly symbolic instance of “Muslim appeasement”, the Vajpayee government actually increased the Hajj subsidy (hence the nickname given him by his Hindu critics, “Hajpayee”). On each of its distinctive old campaign themes, they had acted just like non-BJP governments had done before and have done since.

As former swayamsevak Shrikant Talageri argued in 2000 already, the BJP has proven that “more foreign agency, anti-nationalism and injustice are possible in India in the name of Hinduism and Hindutva than in the name of Islam and Christianity or Secularism and Leftism. And more dangerous since it is cloaked in the garb of Nationalism”. Talageri notes that this government policy was rooted in long-standing RSS mores, viz. a radical non-interest in Indian culture as such, in Indian wildlife, environment, handicrafts etc. (see the RSS’s Western uniform and marching band music), and a mindless reliance on slogans and rumours rather than on serious analysis and principled ideology. While the RSS undoubtedly started out as politically nationalist, its occasional self-description as “cultural nationalism” implies a claim on cultural awareness that proves hollow.

The RSS has never abandoned the working style introduced by its founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who had been formed by the Revolutionary movement and adopted its secretiveness, discouraging written communication in favour of personal communication through travelling office-bearers. A lot of physical locomotion is a status symbol in the RSS hierarchy, but motion is not action. The numerous RSS self-praise brochures boast about mass campaigns with millions marching, but these have rarely translated into the realization of their stated goals. Thus, the anti-cow-slaughter campaign of the late 1960s achieved nothing, and the Ayodhya campaign in spite of its unprecedented magnitude has not realized the construction of the projected temple even twenty years later. Though it is part of Hindutva culture to deny failure (vide the way the California Hindu parents tried to present the disappointing court verdict in the textbook case as a victory), inevitably at least some people had to draw the logical conclusion from these failures and try something new.

This disillusionment with the Sangh is triggering the emergence of new independent centres of Hindu activism. Between such non-Sangh foci in India and similar-minded NRI initiatives, there is little structural connection except for exchanges on internet forums: the loose network is their more modern alternative to the organizational rigidity typical of the Sangh.

It must be stated at this point that there has always been a wide array of Hindu activism outside of the Sangh, though often overlapping with the Sangh’s work, and at any rate not standing in the way of cooperation or friendly personal relations. In my experience, Western observers who have started believing their own shrill rhetoric of “Hindu fascism” tend to be surprised and shocked and indignant when they see apolitical Hindu dignitaries, praised in East and West for their spiritual qualities and leadership, interact on a friendly basis with the Sangh. Thus, when RSS Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiyya) visited the Netherlands, he first of all went to see the Maharshi Mahesh Yogi in his castle in Vlodrop, to the consternation of reporters for the New Age media, who had lapped up horror stories about the RSS. Likewise, Edward Luce in his book In Spite of the Gods, notes the close cooperation between peacenik celebrity guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the RSS as if it were a dirty secret and a blot on the Guru’s name.

One reason for the Sangh’s respectability among the Hindu masses, though you might not know of it if you only read the expert studies on Hindutva, is its massive presence in social and relief work. After an earthquake, Sangh relief workers are the first to arrive in the disaster area. That doesn’s prove anything about its politics, and could be likened to the motivated social and relief work of the Christian Missions or the Hamas; but at least it ought to be noticed and reported. It helps explain why most criticisms of the Sangh among Hindus are restrained by an acknowledgment of its undeniable merits. But now it is dawning upon an increasing number of Hindu activists that all this charity is no substitute for ideological clarity. Therefore, while they may maintain contact with the Sangh, their initiatives and inspiration are clearly separate and distinct from the Sangh and its ideological line. Many Hindu activists who criticize the Sangh accept the intention of Sangh workers to serve Hindu society, and leave them to pursue this goal by their own lights. Also, sometimes they cannot bypass the relative omnipresence of the Sangh network. And finally, there is no definitive reason why Sangh workers shouldn’t be amenable to developing their understanding beyond the elementary level inculcated by the Sangh.

Some Hindu activists, however, have totally given up on the Sangh. Thus, when Muslim groups pressured the Jammu & Kashmir government into reneging on its promise to provide facilities for Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath in 2008, local Hindus in Jammu organised a non-violent protest campaign but purposely kept the Sangh at arm’s length. They feared that the RSS with its penchant for control would take the movement over, then with its equally typical craving for certificates of good conduct would abandon and dissolve the campaign in an attempt to prove its “secularism” and “reasonableness”. In the event, the Amarnath campaign, in contrast with so many Sangh campaigns, was successful: the original plan for pilgrim facilities was implemented overruling the Muslim objections.

The most pressing occasion for Hindu self-organization cocnsists in threats to their physical security. For quite a while groups have been sprouting here and there that promised to fill the void allegedly created by the Sangh’s insufficient militancy. During the Khalistani terror campaign, Hindus in Panjab started a local “Shiv Sena”, disappointed in the way the RSS failed to react in kind when its cadres were targeted for murder by the Khalistanis.

On internet forums, you frequently hear Hindus fumble that “if Muslims can get away with terrorism, why don’t we take to the gun, and the bomb?” Thus, a Delhi-based group calling itself the Aryavrt Government and a related outfit called Abhinava Bharat (after an armed revolutionary group in the independence struggle) does advocate paying the enemy back in the same coin. On its website its request for donations is strengthened with this warning: “Else keep ready for your doom. Remember! Whoever you are, you won’t be able to save your properties, women, motherland, Vedic culture & even your infants. Choice is yours, whether you stick to dreaded usurper Democracy & get eradicated or survive with your rights upon your property, freedom of faith & life with dignity?”

Mostly this is impotent rage by middle-class Hindus who have never seen or touched a gun, but of course the possibility exists that some young lads may act upon it. It has been alleged that the Malegaon bomb attacks in 2006 were committed by such an ad hoc Hindu terrorist group.

However, these rare cases of erratic and counterproductive Hindu violence should not obscure the actual need for self-protection in areas where Hindus are indeed prey for anti-Hindu mobs and militias, such as the Bengal border, where illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are trying to push out the Hindu villagers. That is where one sane and disciplined Hindu group for self-protection has come into being: the Hindu Samhati, founded in February 2008 by Tapan Ghosh. Until November 2007, and ever since graduating in Physics and spending three months in jail as a pro-democracy activist during the Emergency, he had been an RSS whole-timer for 31 years. But not seeing the desired results from RSS work, who started out on his own and soon attarcted a following.The group’s thrid anniversary celebration was attened by 14,000 people. It can already claim many successes on its local scale, such as protecting young couples where one of the partners is a Muslim joining a Hindu family, or ensuring the safety of Hindu festivals, which had become difficult to celebrate due to increasing Muslim harassment.

The one name towering over the whole field of non-Sangh Hindu activism is that of historian and publisher Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003), Gandhian then Marxist in his young days, later anti-Communist and finally reborn Hindu. In 1957 he stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the embryonic Swatantra Party (with whose founder Minoo Masani he cooperated in anti-Communist activism) on a Jana Sangh ticket for the Khajuraho seat. He subsequently contributed some articles to the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, until the RSS leadership intervened to have him expelled from its pages for being too unkind to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The stated reason was that if Nehru were ever murdered, criticism of Nehru in their own pages would cause them to get the blame. In the 1980s Goel was re-invited to contribute, until he was again expelled, this time for being too unkind to Islam. (It is routinely assumed that the RSS preaches hatred of Islam; but I award my bottom dollar to anyone who can show me an instance from the editorials of Organiser. And I will award it again for an authentic quotation from a Sangh leader that is more anti-Muslim than the revered Dr. Ambedkar’s book Pakistan or the Partition of India.) As a book author and publisher, he also had to deal with the Sangh, e.g. when he had to straighten out the BJP’s initially very muddled White Paper on Ayodhya. So, it is not as if he boycotted the Sangh, in spite of their treatment of him.

Yet his judgement of them was merciless. In writing, he diplomatically limited himself to intimating that “in the history of an organization, there comes a point when its original goal gets overshadowed by its concerns for itself”. But when speaking, he was much blunter. In the presence of myself and of prominent witnesses, he said for example: “The RSS is the biggest collection of duffers that ever came together in world history” (1989), “The RSS is leading Hindu society into a trap from which it may not recover” (1994), “Hindu society is doomed unless this RSS-BJP movement perishes” (2003).

Goel’s main criticism of the Sangh concerns its anti-intellectual prejudice, its refusal to analyze hostile ideologies, hence its lapse into emotionalism and erratic policies. Thus, instead of reactive anti-Muslim outbursts after every act of Islamic terrorism, he posits the need for an ideological critique of the Islamic belief system, equipped with all the methods and findings of modern scholarship: “The problem is not Muslims but Islam.” The difference is that those who refuse such critique (and that is the case of the RSS) has no one but the physical Muslim population to vent its anger on whenever another act of Islamic violence occurs. This way, a more incisive deconstruction of Islamic belief translates into less violence against actual Muslims. (The converse is also true: George W. Bush and Tony Blair have spoken out in praise of Islam but killed a great many Muslims.)

Goel and his mentor Ram Swarup (1920-98) took inspiration from the British liberal tradition of Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell, even before rediscovering the Hindu debating tradition of Yajnavalkya and Shankara. For them, free debate was a matter of course. Hindutva organizations, by contrast, in the Sangh as well as some new ones like the Hindu Jagruti Samiti, react to every insulting book or film or painting with calls for a ban, perfectly echoing Islamic organizations demanding a ban on the Danish cartoons or The Satanic Verses. Calls for banning unpalatable opinions stem from an inability to meet the challenge intellectually, which was never Shankara’s problem but is very much the Sangh’s.

Some NRI-PIO organizations created in the 21st century explicitly adopt their line. One is the Hindu Human Rights group in London, founded by a streetwise performing artist, Arjun Malik along with writer Ranbir Singh. His answer to the humourless RSS and its equally humourless secularist critics is to “put the fun back into fundamentalism”. The HHR publishes an on-line paper and occasionally stages demonstrations on matters of Hindu concern, such as human rights in Bangladesh. On the challenge of the Christian missions, it has monitored and promoted scholarly studies, outgrowing the simplistic Hindutva positions current in India and the diaspora, which tend to confuse “Christian” with “white”, as if the world and the Churches hadn’t changed since decolonization. It interacts critically with the official pan-Hindu platforms and with the British multiculturalism authorities. These sometimes solicit its views, knowing that it represents a really existing and growing segment of opinion in the British Hindu community. Typically, the HHR sometimes cooperates with Muslim organizations on matters of common concern, all while staying away from the usual Hindu platitude that “all religions essentially say the same thing”. Human understanding does not require suspension of the mental power of discrimination.

The second similarly inspired initiative in the diaspora is based in Houston. Like the HHR, it also explores contacts with post-Christian spiritual tendencies in Western society and encourages Hindus to transcend the “racism” many of them display vis-à-vis Black, White and East-Asian population they encounter abroad. Quite a few Hindu individuals and local Hindu temple associations in North America also evince or acknowledge some influence from this line of thought.

Ram Swarup’s idea of a common inspiration and interest between all traditional religions, jointly targeted for conversion by the “predatory” religions Christianity and Islam, has also gained a following mainly through Hindu leaders based outside India. Swami Dayananda Saraswati (based in Coimbatore and in Saylorsburg PA) has been building bridges with the Jewish community, culminating in a joint Jerusalem Declaration with the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. It also has penetrated the Sangh in the initiative for cooperation with Native American, Yoruba, Maori and other traditional religionists, the World Council for the Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures founded by US-based pracharak Dr. Yashwant Pathak.

In India too, these ideas have been picked up in independent as well as in Sangh-related centres of Hindu awareness and activism. The influence is palpable in some publications of the Vigil Public Opinion Forum and of the Centre for Policy Studies, both in Chennai. Then again, in India the strictly nationalist viewpoint, with increasing anti-Western overtones, still seems to prevail against the universalistic critique of hostile religions and ideologies as pioneered by Ram Swarup and S.R. Goel. Thus, consider the title of an otherwise well-crafted study of NGO activities and financing by Vigil authors Radha Rajan and Krishan Kak: NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry (2006). Its main stated focus is on anti-national rather than anti-Hindu activities, in the mould of the RSS rhetoric about Babar as a “foreign” (rather than Muslim) invader and Rama as a “national” (rather than a Hindu) hero. In some cases, as in Sandhya Jain’s online medium Vijayvaani, this goes as far as supporting Muslim causes against the West, not too different from the traditional Congressite line exemplified by Nehru’s support to Nasser.

In the case of Hindutva, nationalism is proving to be the last resort of blockheads unable to construe conflicts and power equations in ideological terms. While Christianity has changed race several times in its history (from Levantine to North-African and South-European to North-European to non-white), and while most missionaries in India are now non-white and generally Indian-born, Hindutva polemicists keep on ranting against “white racist Christian missions”. This saves them the trouble of studying the scholarly critique of Biblical truth claims and the challenge of arguing the religious case for Hinduism and against Christianity with fellow Indians who happen to be Christian. One very useful experience of NRIs and PIOs in their non-Indic surroundings is that religious issues exist in their own right, by virtue of the distinctive mores inculcated and the truth claims of religions, and regardless of the ethnic origin of a religion’s followers. The modern identification of Sanatana Dharma with the geographical entity India, explicitly proposed by Hindutva ideologues, is negated by the NRI-PIOs’ experience, where Hindu traditions turn out to remain meaningful even after being severed from their geographical cradle. This makes them more receptive to the universalistic understanding of Hindu tradition as expounded by Goel’s mentor Ram Swarup and by some globe-trotting Gurus.

Most post-Sangh centres of Hindu activism avoid overdoing their quarrel with the Sangh. It just happens to be there, to be very large, and to attract the loyalty of numerous well-meaning fellow-Hindus. Also, its effectiveness in the many local centres of activity is highly dependent upon the individual qualities of the local Sangh workers. So, inter-Hindu infighting among activists is largely avoided. One prozaic reason is that criticism has never had a noticeable effect on the Sangh leadership, another is the common-sense realization that darkness is best fought not by decrying it but by lighting a lamp of your own. Extrapolating from present trends, the future is probably that alternative centres of Hindu activism will grow and prove successful in their respective fields of activity, and that the Sangh will transform itself and correct its course under the impact of their example.

Buddhist temples span across India

By Sandeep Sharma

No less a person than Mahatma Gandhi once estimated that nearly a quarter of Hindus had converted to Islam over the past on thousand years. How true is this statement ?

Hinduism has been associated with the Indian subcontinent since time immemorial. The teachings of the sages of the Vedas emanate from the mists of the past with a chain of Gurus and Saints stretching to the modern day. Amongst the myriad of thoughts coming from this ‘land of saints’ range from the pure stream of Vedanta to the mystical experiences of a Mirabai and to the compassion of Guatam Buddha.

By the dawn of the first millennia CE the Hindu world straddled across the same contiguous region as the Buddhist world. Stretching from the islands of the Indonesian archipelago to the wild regions of Central Asia. The Buddhists with an organized priesthood had ranged furthest with missions to the island of the Indian Ocean and across the Himalayas into China and beyond.

A happy coexistence with little conflict to the point where it was common for people of the same region, tribes and even families to be both Hindu and Buddhist. The kings of the nations under Dharma or Dhamma would donate equally to both religious centres and preachers without distinction.

This however all began to change in the seventh century. The Arab tribes erupted from their desert homes armed with the zeal of a new faith Islam burst into the lands of these ancient faiths. The age old faith of Zoarasterism and Eastern Christianity was almost obliterated within a generation up to and including the venerable Persian lands.

After reaching Sindh a decisive repulse from a coalition of Hindu kings in the battle of Rajasthan in 738 AD the Arabs turned their attention to the north. The Chinese empire was defeated in the Battle of Talas in 751 AD and the field of Central Asia with its patchwork of predominantly Buddhist kingdoms was laid open.

What followed was a relentless pressure of Islamisation which lasted for the next two centuries. In this time with the tides of warfare ever changing the Buddhist kingdoms began to fall one by one.

The destruction of the monasteries and murders of their priests led to a leaderless Buddhist community being unable to resist the pressures of the Islamic missionaries and soldiers. A stream of refuges and priests began to head for the spiritual homeland of India lending vigour to the infancy of the much acclaimed bhakti movement. By the end of the millennia the Buddhists had almost been wiped of the map of Central Asia to the borders of India and Tibet and the newly Islamised Turk tribes now eyed the vast Indian subcontinent.

Here meeting sterner resistance after a wave of incursions on an around 1000 AD the Turks eventually broke into the subcontinents around 1200AD leading to a tidal wave of bloodletting that has scarce comparison in human history. The Buddhist regions of Afghanistan and Western Punjab fell rapidly to the Islamic crusaders as did the far flung regions of predominantly Buddhist East Bengal. The same story of Central Asia was repeated with the destruction of the great Buddhist centres like at Nalanda and the slaying of their organised priesthood leaving a confused and leaderless populace.

The Hindus however reacted differently. The existence of numerous tribes and clans and religious groupings led to a deficiency in common action. However each region and tribe despite the destruction of many temples and slaughter of holy men managed to maintain its viability. The absence of an organized priesthood and single doctrine foiled the Turk and Afghan attempted to obliterate the Hindu religion. The defeat of a single Hindu clan in a particular region was quickly replaced by another Hindu tribe/warrior community to fill the vacuum almost instantly. After overwhelming the mainly Buddhist regions the Turks found themselves holding certain urban centres in a sea of Hindu resistance.

The burgeoning bhakti movement helped by the headlong demise of Buddhism, though no Buddhist ideas expanded to cover the entire subcontinent in a challenge to the nascent Islamistation in many regions.

The bloodletting continued. The Muslims historian Firishta in his book Tarikh i Farishta talks of tens and thousands of Muslim solders having to immigrate to India each year to cover the losses in the endless wars with the Hindus. The Hindu kings being pushed back by the heavy Turk Cavalry which had defeated the Crusaders of Western Europe adopted tactics to harry and punish Muslim warriors at each and every opportunity. A bloody stalemate was reached in which it began to dawn on the Muslim armies that the Hindus could not be wiped out in the same manner as the Jews, Zoroastrians, Pharsees, and the erstwhile Buddhists of west and South Asia.

What happened was a regeneration of Hindu thought. A reaction based on dogged resistance backed by religious inspiration. The inspiration allowed the Hindus to stop the Arabic Jihad in its tracks after overwhelming all resistance from the border of India to Spain. It foiled the Turks for three hundred years whilst they beat back the combined might of the Europe in the Crusades. The waves of attacks emanating from central Asia were beaten back on numerous occasions and eve after the plundering and penetrative raids of Mahmud Ghaznnavi and two centuries later of Mohammed Ghori the fighting did not end. Indeed whilst the hapless Buddhists of South Asia were almost wiped from the face of the subcontinent with a large number falling under the flag of the ummah the Hindus crucially proved the ability to regenerate.

The open system of worship without a central authority and a defined priest hood or single place of pilgrimage allowed Hinduism to resist, adapt, regenerate and eventually thrive in the face of genocidal attack. The Muslim historians whilst lauding the achievements of their kings in entering and establishing rule in India lamented their failure to convert the land into the land of Islam. Eventually realising the futility of their operations we have the sight of the Mughal emperor , Akbar renouncing traditional Islam and establishing his own Din i Ilahi in line with the syncretic traditions of the people. When his successor broke this tenuous compromise the Empire was broken into pieces with predominantly Hindu warrior lands rising over its ruins and obliterating the Islamic rule. Indeed by the time of the advent of the British the surviving Muslims kings either had folded to the new Hindu revival or ran into the waiting arms of the British Empire for protection.

Buddhism is happily making a return to India, the land of its origin. Pilgrims from East Asia and the Americas now make pious journeys to the land of Buddha’s Birth. It is however a sober reminder to humanity of the need to preserve an ethos of toleration and acceptance and resistance in the face of genocidal terror. It is the lesson of the history of Hinduism.

The truths of conversion are far more complicated than envisaged by modern day self proclaimed scholars. The idea of a mono religious India prior to the Islamic invasions defies historical truth. A multi cultural, multi religious India was assailed by the determined forces of monotheistic jihad. The end of a millennia of attack saw nearly a quarter of the subcontinent embrace the middle eastern faith but the concept that a uniformly Hindu nation became in part Muslim is a falsehood. The very word for ‘idol breaker’ is but shikan – (lit- breaker of the Buddha) a tragic reference to the obliteration of the once widespread Buddhist faith from the lands of its birth and beyond. In contrast – though suffering terrible pain the Hindus resisted, regenerated and in parts expanded showing clearly that the values of Dharma are essential not only for survival but for the very future of mankind

Pseudo Secularism

By Sameer Thakkar

Today, we can find many people who are quick to christen famous Hindu gurus as “dhongis” and “pakhandi”.  Such people generally hold the view that to become a guru all one needs is to chant a few mantras and promote the superstitions. These people think that the millions who follow the advice and teachings of such gurus are “fools” and ignorant of the modern science. Moreover, they not only percieve Hinduism as a mix of cast system, dowry, sati pratha etc but also use these assumptions as a basic elements of their argument to further denigrate their own culture and the ancient knowledge. These are the set of people who have never read even the bhagvad-Gita, the works of the world famous scholar Sri Aurobindo or the testimonials of the famous scientists like Heisenberg, Nicholas Tesla, Albert Einstein etc.

On the contrary, today, if any other Hindu promotes the true aspects of hinduism and tries to clear   the myths and distortions, then such people are quick to term him as ‘illiterate and unscientific’. Moreover, if a Hindu questions the aspects and practices of other religions he is termed as “communal”. A person born in a hindu family who doesn’t even know anything regarding these differentiations created by the abrahamic invaders is often termed as anti-minority if he, from his own conscience and objectivity, questions reservation based on religion and animal killing. If he questions the scams, corruption and anti-nationalism of the ministers in the Congress government which thrives on minority appeasment, then he is termed as “BJP-RSS” activist.

A patriot is one who thinks about his country first. It is the conscience of a person which makes him voice against animal killings and other atrocities. How can any person who raises “pro-India” slogans which can be anti-Congress be confused as or termed deliberately as pro-”BJP-RSS”? Reservation based on religion is a direct abuse to the secularism and animal killings are against animal rights and welfare. How can supporting these causes be called “communal”?

Recently, many pseudo secularists wrote articles against Dr.Subramanyam Swamy’s article on ‘How to wipe out Islamic terror”. Aditya Ramakrishnan wrote, “I am 17 years old. I am not a Muslim. I am not a Christian. I was born a Hindu, but I am against religious fundamentalism of any kind because it breeds distrust and tears apart the social fabric of any country.” Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr wrote, “Many liberals have been outraged by Swamy’s arguments. The maverick — he hates the term and objects to being described as one — politician is no closet Hindu right-winger.”

If Aditya Ramakrishnan and Venkateshwar are so concerned about Dr.Swamy’s statements, then perhaps they should also similarly discuss on the killing of infidels, idolators, jews and christians as openly mentioned in some other scriptures which divides the society between their faith and the rest of the world. The apologists argue that the term “infidel” refers to one who doesn’t believe in God. “La Iaha Ill Allah Muhammudur Rasool Aallah”, God according to Islam is Allah and there is no other name except Allah and one who doesn’t believe in the abrahamic god is called as “atheist”.

Baburnama and Aurangzebnama themselves testify how Babur and Aurangzeb killed infidels and destroyed temples for the sake of Allah and to spread Islam (e.g Baburnama page 232,370,371, 373, 374, 385-388, 527 etc). The same pattern can be seen in the email sent by the Indian Mujahideen on Varanasi terror attacks. But, the pseudo-secularists seem to have a habit of ignoring such patterns but rather argue that “all religions are the same”. If that was the case, then abrahamic invaders would have prayed in the temples instead of demolishing them, Bamiya Buddha statues would have been honoured and animals like goats and cows would have been protected and not killed to appease some God on some festival. Quran itself sees Allah as the ultimate god and Islam as superior. How is it then such pseudo-seculars are the champions in denigrating Hinduism which doesn’t divide the society between hindus and non-hindus, and pioneers in playing a mute audience where secularism and democracy are openly abused? For a muslim, no other name is to be chanted other than Allah and to appease that “God of mercy” a goat is killed on Bakr-Id. Jihad related terrorism is not just local to India but global. Do we find Hindus, Buddhist, Sikhs, Jains etc blowing up mosques or churches all over the world? Why is it then that the Indian history which is full of temple destructions, conversion by hook or crook etc, as stated by the invaders  themselves, is ignored? Why is it that an open discussion and exposition of such verses and testimonies is called “communal”?

Discussions and questioning of Quran and Mohammed is prohibited and reservation based on religion or animal killing to appease some God are ignored. Ex-Muslims like Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie were exiled. Whereas, thousands of Hindus and non-hindus keep writing inflammatory speeches against Hinduism and India themselves. “O you who believe, take not the  Jews and the Christians for friends.  They are friends of each other. And  whoever amongst you takes them for  friends he is indeed one of them.  Surely Allåh guides not the unjust  people”. (Quran 5.51).  Clearly, the Jews and christians are not friendly according to Quran and the idolators are “unequal and unclean” (Quran 9.19, 9.28). Nobody is a born genius to know about a “holy name”, if a particular animal is really meant to be killed or if a particular category of people are “inferior or unfriendly”. Some apologists argue that such verses reflect the ancient life when Islam started in Arab. Such a connotation also implies that such ancient practices are not applicable in the case of India, a land where “athiti devo bhava” and ideals of “ahimsa” have been the eternal mantras, the cows are treated as divine and the divine elements of the nature are personified and celebrated in the form of paintings and idols. In general, such ancient practices are not compatible with the modern world where people make idols of different forms and personalities for different reasons.

The Indian law gives death punishment in the rarest of the cases, but can the same be said about Sharia law which is based on Quran? “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger [i.e., Muhammad], and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is:  execution, or  crucifixion, or  the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter. ( Quran 5.33)”

Fight those who believe not in Allåh, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid  that which Allåh and His Messenger  have forbidden, nor follow the  Religion of Truth, out of those who  have been given the Book, until they  pay the tax in acknowledgement of  superiority and they are in a state of  s subjection  (9.29)

In the western world, the studies of comparative religion itself is a subject and history is seen without any bias or filters. But in India, it seems, any discussion of history which includes abrahamic invasion and mughal atrocities or questioning of “minority scriptures” is seen as “communal”.

References :

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_the-paradox-called-subramanian-swamy_1567157

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/comment_dr-subramanian-swamy-i-strongly-disagree-with-you_1566760

http://www.muslim.org/english-quran/ch005-100.pdf

http://www.muslim.org/english-quran/ch009-66.pdf

Full texts os Indian Mujahideen on Varanasi blasts : http://www.freedombulwark.net/voices/257

Babur Nama : http://www.archive.org/download/baburnama017152mbp/baburnama017152mbp.pdf

London, UK- Nick Cohen certainly has Hindus firmly within his sites judging by his latest tirade to appear in The Guardian, entitled The Secret Scandal of Britain’s Caste System. In yet another piece of colonial era propaganda dated from 26 June 2011, Cohen laments as to why the Equality and Human Rights Commission is doing nothing according to him against caste prejudice. Despite the title only a small proportion of his latest diatribe devotes itself to discussing caste which he blames entirely and equivocally on “Hindu creation myths”.

He further laments that when he calls the press office of the EHRC nobody returns his calls which is a bit rich considering that Cohen has constantly refused to debate any of his clear anti-Hindu prejudices with HHR, preferring to take refuge in the narrow-minded comfort zone which evidently gives him so much zest and drive these days. He takes issue with the conjecture, and let us remember that it is only a conjecture based on rather questionable assumptions, that Trevor Phillips is concerned about alienating Hindu Council UK .

He then takes issue with the fact that the aforementioned Hindu organisation said that the problem of caste discrimination was “being manipulated by Christians eager to convert Hindus from their faith.” Well as a matter of fact it is. How about Mr. Cohen takes a good look at these concrete examples:

• CSW (Christian Solidarity Worldwide) is a British based (in)human rights organisation which has had a long history of anti-Hindu hatred. Part of this has been to campaign for the greater rights of Dalits which has in fact been a cover for something more sinister. CSW is partnered with the All India Christian Council and indeed invited the latter’s fuehrer Dr. Joseph D’Souza to address their hatefest in November 2006. For the platform of a church just minutes walk from London Victoria rail station D’Souza said that Hinduism was a disgusting, evil and diabolical faith, “the worst religion in the world”, and that Christians must convert low-caste Hindus before the Muslims got them first. I even took part in a prayer with two rather quaint, yet misguided and pathetic, old ladies to reiterate the fact.
• At the Castewatch hatefest in Coventry in 2009 Moses Parmar from the All India Christian Council said that Britain was in danger of falling under “Hindu supremacy” and that Christians must unite with socialists and communists against the Brahmans. Perhaps Mr. Parmar would like to familiarise himself with Poland’s Solidarity movement, try and see how far his fraternisation with communist dictators gets him in North Korea, or look at the ethics of forging an axis with an ideology which in a comparatively short space of time was responsible for the death of 100 million people as well as the deportation, enslavement and general oppression of millions more.
• In 2009 as the Hindu representative to speak on caste discrimination at CARJ (Catholic Association for Racial Justice) it was interesting to see Hindus described by one speaker as devious, slimy and untrustworthy. Taking issue with this nearly invited a lynching. Yet no such fate befell Bishop John Broadhurst who described Hinduism as worse than Nazism, or a rather smug and unpleasant man who blamed all of India ’s poverty problems on Hinduism. CARJ have never answered any enquiries about this inflaming hatred against the Hindu minority.
• At the Pentecost festival this year in Methodist Central Hall in Westminster there was the screening of India’s Forgotten Women by Rev. Michael Lawson, an Anglican minister who has annihilation of Hinduism as his primary objective in making films such as these. The film was originally screened in Leicester Square at an exorbitant price and with Dharshini David from Sky News pointedly ignoring any awkward questions which did not accord with the prevailing anti-Hindu atmosphere. This time however the screening was free, not that helped attendance very much. It was interesting to hear Lawson candidly admit that every day he prayed for India to turn to Christ and, like Cohen, blame Hindu creation myths for caste. When I pointed out that the New Testament had its own rather embarrassing issue of blaming the Jews as Christ-killers, the mood turned decidedly ugly.

What does Nick Cohen have to say about such examples of anti-Hindu hatred which he not only rides but inflames. If we want to look at caste in creation myths how about he take a good look at the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament where an Israelite is killed by god for touching the Ark of the Covenant. We learn that “the Lord did smite him” because only the priestly castes of Levites and Cohenites had that privilege.

What does Mr. Cohen have to say about the political affiliations of his own paternal grandfather, a Russian Jew who became a communist and thereby conveniently ignored the anti-Semitic Marxist myths such as the Marx’s very own and notorious invective called The Jewish Question? Was Mr. Cohen not aware of this before his apparent volte-face from classic Leftist “useful idiot” anti-American position which he held as late as 2004?

In the Standpoint article of February 2011 Cohen once again uses the late MF Hussain as a martyr to freedom of speech against Hindu extremists who apparently targeted him because he was Muslim.

He then goes on to show gross ignorance of Hindu civilisation in a manner that would make him less enlightened that Rudyard Kipling, Enoch Powell and Viceroy Lord Curzon. Without any evidence he insists that Hindu princes were guilty of sacking Hindu temples and that Hindu gods and goddesses are portrayed as naked in the sculpture of Khajuraho.

In his latest sensationalised outburst Nick Cohen would do well to remember that beyond just aggressive, intolerant and even violent Christian proselytisation as a sugar coating for raising the issue of caste discrimination, the hatecore Christian extremist groups exhibit an older and more sinister mindset. Lawson interviews and praises Dr. Kancha Iliaih, author Why I am not a Hindu. Anyone familiar with Der Sturmer and other crude anti-Semitic propaganda from the Third Reich cannot miss the similarity in imagery with the cover of the aforementioned book. And to cap it all the online magazine Dalit Voice, run by VT Rajshekar, who has been praised by D’Souza in Dalit Freedom, completes the conspiracy circle by denying the Holocaust, praising Hitler, and equating Brahmans with Jews. D’Souza is only just short of regurgitating Mein Kampf himself when he equates Brahmans with the Pharisees who persecuted and killed Jesus.

The scandal here is not of the EHRC and Trevor Phillips refusal to tackle caste, but Nick Cohen’s refusal to tackle his own anti-Hindu prejudices which hark back to the rather less enlightened age of Gunga Din and Jungle Book when the civilising white man came to liberate the idol worshipping inferior “darkie” Hindu masses. But then again what can be expected from someone who claims to have rediscovered his Jewish roots yet pours nothing but scorn on the only civilisation and culture where Jews flourished free from anti-Semitism, and ignores the blatant anti-Jewish hatred of the very organisations and individuals which claim to be fighting caste discrimination.

Once again HHR asks Mr. Cohen to demonstrate his willingness to debate matters openly as he would with any other community. Until then as fellow human beings and citizens we can only pity the ignorance and myopia with which he has deliberately inflicted himself.

Ranbir Singh is a member of HHR

Whenever Hindus try and speak out on any issue they are constantly lambasted as fascist, fundamentalist and pro-caste. This is a speciality of the unholy axis between Christian hatecore groups and Marxists in their joint strategy for blaming all India ’s problems on Hinduism. While to many it would seem strange how hardcore atheists would join hands with obscurantist religious groups there is no doubt that the language employed and the issues raised are the same, indeed repetitively so.

This is most notable in discussing inequality, which is always associated with caste. India ’s communal problems are always blamed on Hindu extremists who are labelled the heirs to Hitler’s ideology. But how much truth is there in this? Does fascism actually exist in India ? The answer to the second question would always be yes, look at the BJP, VHP and RSS.

However doing that does raise a few problems, not least in that any type of Hindu activism is associated with such groups and thereby labelled fascist. But then what do we mean by fascism? Even if we go by common stereotypes this becomes very problematic in that it is the BJP and such groups which have always urged a pro-Israel foreign policy for India . The Marxist-Christian axis may laugh this off but can they be so dismissive when Hitler loyalists such as Remer took their anti-Semitism to its logical extreme by helping the Nazi admiring regimes of Nasser and Assad, in Egypt and Syria respectively? Also such Hindu groups proudly parade the fact that Jews flourished in India for two millennia with no trace of hostility from the majority community. That hardly makes for harmonious ideology with Mein Kampf.

Fascism is an amorphous term synonymous with extreme right-wing nationalist. But this again entails more problems than it clarifies. In 1944 Nobel prize winning economist FA Hayek traced the roots of fascism and especially Nazism (which he called by its original German name of “national-socialism”) back to the Left, namely Marxist and other socialist theories. The rise of racist, revanchist and ultra-nationalist groups in former communist Europe since 1989 has to a large extent vindicated this view. Hayek’s posthumous prophecy has been most pronounced in Russia where the worst levels of Nazi skinhead racial violence is only a reflection of the crude nationalism exhibited by former hardcore communists.

To this extent Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism has perhaps been the best updated version of Hayek’s analysis. In this we find that so many movements which begin as revolutionary, statist and especially socialist end up being fascist.

So how does this relate to India ? The republic prides itself on being a socialist state. What was the Emergency is it was not an attempted putsch? If one looks into Nehru’s past we find undying love for the USSR . Yet less well known is how India ’s first prime minister was invited to tour the Third Reich and exhibited rather unsavoury anti-Semitic sentiments as well as sympathy for the pro-Nazi elements among Arab nationalism.

As any NRI ( non resident Indian ) would know the country has a mind boggling set of often contradictory bureaucratic hurdles, even if these have eased somewhat. As ‘outsiders’ the NRI is subject to the full iron fist of these various forms, regulations and other soul destroying mechanisms which the right bribe would quickly render irrelevant. But what is rarely brought out is the xenophobic nature of these. When not viewed as money laden milch cows, NRI’s are looked down upon in a similar manner to how nissei (descendants of Japanese immigrants to Brazil ) are treated as social lepers by ultranationalists when they become guest workers in their ancestral homeland of Japan . By hardening caste boundaries through affirmative action quotas, the Indian state has created pseudo-ethnic friction through the application of a racial mythology in which a primeval Aryan race oppressed the natives.

This ideological offal is supported by the Marxist-Christian hatecore axis, who conveniently ignore just where this led to in Rwanda in 1994. In India fascism is exhibited by a host of casteist, Leftist, regionalist and minority religious fundamentalist groups for which the ‘Hindu’ is the common enemy, much as the ‘Jew’ was to organic and romantic nationalists in nineteenth century Europe . The fact that the Hindus may be in a demographic majority makes no difference when one considers how a majority can be the victim of unending hate as blacks were in South Africa for hundreds of years.

India ’s Marxist academics and socialist planning have created the fascist mindset which has led to xenophobia, caste competition, aggressive missionary tactics and the annihilation of Hindus from parts of the country. To understand this one only need to examine how the liberal nationalism and high ideals of the French Revolution led to what many see as the diametric opposite to the Jacobin state: the romantic German nationalism of Fichte, and the organic French nationalism of Charles Maurras.

Goldberg also mentions how we have misunderstood totalitarianism. The image of ‘Big Brother’ always looms large in how such a state would look. But it is now clear that far from being a prophet, Orwell merely reflected the nature of his times. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written as Stalinism was a real threat and unlike Orwell other socialists and liberals, the “useful idiots” as Lenin termed such naïve idealists, would not wake up and smell the coffee.

For example Jean-Paul Sartre was so concerned about the reality of life in the USSR demoralising the proletariat in the capitalist countries, he preferred to avert his gaze until the plight of the Vietnamese boat people made it too obvious that communism really was not creating an earthly paradise. No, the prophet of totalitarianism is a title which should be awarded to Aldous Huxley. Brave New World looks benign with its addictive hedonism, notably recreational sex. But look deeper and what we find is a society of unthinking androids, lack of deep thinking, and no emotional ties of family and friends. Nobody is mourned when they die because nobody misses them. While Orwell was concerned that in his nightmare books would be banned, in Huxley’s teddy-bear vision there is no need to ban books because nobody reads them. How far does Huxley’s vision reflect modern India ? Marxist domination of academia has killed off creative thinking.

This is most obvious in the humanities where Stalinist professors create unthinking clones of themselves and then like the pigs in Animal Farm jump at the first opportunity to gain lucrative relationships with the ‘other side’, in this case the very imperialist capitalist west which they so often denounce, and get plum appointments at institutions where they can find yet more unsuspecting victims to harangue with their unlettered monologue. Hence why India has brought out little that is new in these subjects as the past is regurgitated and vomited with nobody even bothering to clean up the mess. That is why Indians leaving to work aboard are most often in the sciences where one needs to think only straight and logic.

It is fortunate that India did not produce its very own versions of Lysenko to force science into an ideological straightjacket. As India rises from decades of Nehru-Gandhian national socialism, the Huxleyan nightmare looms large.

Look at the majority of bollywood movies or television channels and it is the same repetitive and unimaginative mix of mind destroying hedonism usually involving scantily clad half attempts of burlesque combined with even more laughable attempts to mime cheesy tunes, taken from the latest issue of cellular vomit. Without the liberal and civic values which in western countries have counterbalanced predatory consumerism, India is subjected to a fast paced fantasy world which appeals to the rawest and most destructive forms of sensuality.

This is not inspiration but destructive escapism as India’s elite and those aspiring to join it live in a ‘brave new world’ aloof from the masses, the ‘savages’ from Huxley’s novel. As social structures loosen the former strictures of caste in its place we find not an egalitarian society, but millions of atomised individuals with nothing to buffer between them and the state. In such a potent mix dangerously romantic and organic ideas will create new bonds much tighter than the social structure which is being discarded. In a civilisation that inspired Huxley and others with its deep spirituality, a crude and uncompromising form of hedonism has become the standard reference point.

Nature abhors a vacuum and out of the atomised flotsam and bohemian chattering classes a menacing alternative awaits to take its place. In this atmosphere there is no place for the individual, for creativity, for deep thinking and for the solitude which was necessary for India to produce such great minds as in the past. Only mindless androids, human sheep and faceless characters can hope to succeed in such an environment. This is fascism Indian style and it is the diametric opposite to the values which are found in Hindu Dharma.

Ranbir Singh is a member of the Hindu Human Rights Group – http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/ .

Religious Minorities are constantly ignored and targeted by the Muslim Majority

PAKISTAN – Veerji Kohli, a Hindu activist in Pakistan has been accused of murder after trying to stand up for Hindu rights in Islamabad Pakistan.

Veerji is a well-known human rights activist who particulary focuses on the issues related to bonded labour. Recently, he helped to release a number of children, women and men from the hands of feudal lords in a community where many Kohli families live. He helped to release the men, women and children from a brutal environment where they were being treated unfairly by feudal lords, to do work in unlivable conditions for a next to nothing pay. He has been successful in getting many individuals out of such trouble while helping them to find better positions that are more suitable to their needs.

By taking a stand against the biased attitude of Pakistani police in a rape case of a Hindu girl by the name of Kastoori Kohli, Veerji Kohli has gotten into trouble. He has realized from this incident that taking a stance against a case involving feudal lords has its share of consequences. After being held in custody wrongfully for a few weeks, a high-level inquiry proved Veerji Kohli to be innocent while proving the police officers to be biased thus losing their jobs.

The feudal lords that are involved in the case are members of the local Muslim majority community, Raees Ghani Khan Khosa, and Bachal Khan Khosa who retaliated against Kohli by kidnapping him and keeping him in a dungeon for over four days. After serious pressure from some community members including prominent politicians, senior police officers, journalists and human rights activists, Kohli was released by the feudal lords. However, this did not mean their grudge had repealed.

The feudal lords set Kohli’s car on fire followed by framing him for a murder case that took place in Nagarparkar although Kohli was in Hyderabad at the time of the murder. Using their power and political ties, the Khan Khosa’s pressured the police to issue punishment under section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code. Kohli, was once again in trouble–but now for killing something who he knew nothing about. All this followed from the night he decided to help his fellow community members from working under feudal lords who mistreated them and enslaved them like animals.

Kohli, since has asked his supporters and everyone in Islamabad to support his cause and case, after releasing a report to the public. He has told people to stay strong and continue to fight for human rights and injustices that victimize people in a way they should not be victimized. Regardless of consequences, Kohli still stands by all his decision made and is encouraging others to do what is right.