Cognitive dissonance or simply double standards lie at the edifice of post modern feminist discourse. It becomes even more apparent when this framework is applied without any careful thought to the Indian context because whites did not design the system for non-western, non-Abrahamic audience. Even careful mental gymnastics on the part of Indian feminists cannot clarify its vague incoherent framework and comes out in the open to haunt feminists in the abortion vs female foeticide debate.
One of the problems with feminist discourse is its malicious attempt at obscuring the true implications of the buzz words it uses. The phrase “bodily autonomy” or “My Body My Choice” is another such attempt. On the surface it sounds like something any sane person would endorse- the right to choose what to do with one’s own body. But well-meaning individuals fail to account for the fact that humans are bags of flesh littered with emotions. They are not driven by logic but by fear, longing and other primal urges. Simple pheromones can alter human behaviour. For this reason, it is important for humans to be guided less by their emotions and more by the structure and order provided by the shastras.
In the abortion debate, the foremost thing to consider is the definition of life. Leftists will argue that the child inside of you is not a human but a clump of cells. Other degenerate liberals will call it a parasite, the justification being that such terminology is supported by Science. This is an obfuscation since scientific terminology is not strictly scientific but inherently philosophical. By extending the principles of “parasitism” – a newly born baby is also a parasite, unable to function on its own, a life form which relies on its parents for sustenance. In a very similar sense, the old, the infirm and even unemployed are also parasites since they are forced to leech off on their kith and kin or the society they are in. Would it be humane to simply murder one’s parents once they reach an age where they may be “scientifically” considered a burden? Left liberals would have you believe that the people who have raised you, tended to you while you were ill and comforted you when you were afraid are burdens for you to rid of. Marxist literature exhorts men to cut familial ties, consider women tools and destroy social bonds to further their revolution. Destroying the institution of the family will achieve the total annihilation, since married men commit less crime. Feminism destroyed the Roman Empire, and even a bachelor tax couldn’t get men to enter the institution of marriage willingly.
Before going any further, it is important to provide a metaphysical definition of what is “alive”. The fact remains that there is no scientific way to discuss what is alive since there is no way to determine what death is. Bruce Charlton discusses it here; reproduced for your benefit:
For example, I heard the top British doctor-expert on coma and other “near-death” states, assert that we should not think of death as an event, but rather as a process. So there was no “moment of death” but only a period of time on one side of which was life, and the other death. The implication was that some people are stuck in this process for very long periods – maybe years.
He was responding to the fact that various definitions of death may conflict – cessation of the heart, activity in various parts of the brain, responsivity of the pupils, decomposition of internal organs such as the pancreas and adrenal – these signs do not co-occur simultaneously, and may be dissociated in some situations; plus of course they are, to some degree, reversible – so death cannot be conclusively pronounced until there are several or all of these signs in place for some length of time.
A simple solution to this conundrum can be stated thus:
If a human one is alive due to the sustenance drawn from its environment, a foetus is alive similarly.
Now that we have established that a foetus is alive, the topic of abortion shifts from “should women have bodily autonomy” to “should women have the right to murder their own young”.
Pro-abortionists are not truly trying to help women. They degrade them further by introducing the seemingly innocuous idea of free love, the idea that there are no consequences to casual sex. Of course women who have premarital sex tend to get divorced more, are more depressed, more disease ridden and less happy but leftists only like science when it comes to bashing the religious, they do not actually engage in the scientific method.
One defence of this cold-blooded murder is that a woman may not be financially well equipped to bring a child into this world. It suffices to say, that no one would calmly explain to a woman with a 3-year-old, that since times are tough it may be financially prudent to lop off the child’s head and dispose off the body quietly.
This is not an argument for a total ban on abortions. Life which is the product of rape or medical condition can be made an exception. The shastras endorse allowing abortion when the life of the mother is threatened. For all other cases, it is important for the civilized to restrain their carnal urges.
It is important to follow through with the consequences of allowing the right to kill one’s own young based on certain conditions. Consider this: If a condition x exists to allow for abortion other than the two I have mentioned above, then it follows that we may use this condition to allow for abortion according to preference of gender. Females are financial burdens more so than men, because of the costs associated with raising a girl. And this is a universal phenomenon. In India and other eastern societies it is even more pronounced because men are supposed to man up and take care of their old parents while daughters have no such social responsibility. It follows from this that feminists must necessarily support the perpetuation of female foeticide.
These conclusions are self-evident, requiring only a small amount of reasoning. Most feminists in India do not have the intellectual fortitude to follow through with their own logic for which they can be labelled as Morons among leftists. It is important to note that the Moron is only used as a tool by the Evil for the destruction of Hindu society. It is incumbent upon the right thinking Hindu to discuss these ideas being forced down the collective throat of Hindu society by the media before our children are murdered under the guise of “women’s rights”.
The author blogs at khatvaanga and tweets at @PaganTrad.
Motherhood is one of the biggest and most wonderful gifts of nature to women. But in the modern economy, when women are increasingly joining the workforce, it has taken a backstage and has become only one aspect of the multifaceted lifestyle of a modern woman. Even after the advance of modern medicine, women still have to take considerable time off from work to fulfil their motherhood duties. So in such a situation, the question arises: who should pay for the cost of motherhood, or pregnancy to be precise?
There is a story doing the rounds in the media where a girl was fired from her job when she asked for leave on medical grounds over and above the maternity leave that she had planned, due to complications during her pregnancy. It is a delicate issue and many people will react emotionally without looking at the whole picture. It is an expected reaction as traditional Indians still associate high value with motherhood, although it is increasingly disparaged as a worthless exercise by liberals.
It is a very broad topic of discussion and has a very profound impact on the future of the nation, so it is essential to distil the case down to who benefits from a new child. Only when we know who is the ultimate beneficiary can we decide who should bear the cost of pregnancy.
The decision to have a child is a private decision. Given how parents these days plan the time and number of children they want to have, it is almost a no-brainer to associate this decision with the parents. Since couples decide to have or not have a child, it means they are the sole beneficiaries from this decision, at least when they make the decision. Although a nation benefits from having a young population, most couples do not take it into account when making this decision. Since they hardly think of the nation or society during this decision-making, we will ignore this issue until the end before briefly touching on the ramifications.
So, if a decision accrues private benefits, who should pay the cost? It is very simple if the case were made for buying a sports car. One does not ask his or her employer to gift them a sports car if he or she likes the car. Also, the employer gains no benefit from the employee having a sports car. A happy employee working hard is a side benefit, but there is no direct relation. Similarly, couples usually do not ask their employers if and when they can have a child, nor do employers gain any private benefit from their employees having children.
This implies that the decision to have a child is a private decision and parents should take this into account before going forward with it. If this requires a woman to be out of work for a long and significant amount of time, it is not the duty of the firm to pay for her maternity leave while she does not work for the firm. There are two intertwined issues at play here which are often ignored. Firstly, small firms do not have enough working capital and often scrape through with their daily payments. The increased cost of an unproductive employee, if a pregnant woman takes maternity leave for three months, makes it difficult for many firms to survive. Also, it is morally wrong to expect the firm to pay for a private decision of its employee. Of course, if the firm is happy to pay for the pregnancy of its female employees, it should do it, but it cannot or should not be enforced by the state. Secondly, if the state decides to enforce compulsory maternity leave with benefits, it leads to the next problem, which is discrimination. If a small firm knows that its female employee will become pregnant and thus become unproductive for the firm in the future and it cannot fire her, the firm will just stop hiring young females. So the idea to correct one problem will lead to another problem.
Since the Indian economy still depends significantly on the contribution of small and marginal firms, transferring the cost of the private decision of having a child onto the firm will have very bad consequences for the growth of new and young firms. But this also opens questions of discrimination in social policy. What about women who do not work and are stay-at-home mothers? Or women who work in contractual or small jobs, where firms are not forced to pay for maternity leave? The last set of women will not get the benefit of transferring the cost of their private decisions onto anyone else. So from a fairness perspective, why should a small section of middle-class women get subsidized by private firms for getting pregnant, while poorer women, also more vulnerable and needy, who work in the unorganized sector or don’t work at all, do not get any benefits?
So who should bear the cost of having children? The cost of bearing children has been borne by the family throughout history and that is how it should be. The parents bear the future cost of bringing up their children, so why should it be different during the pregnancy period? Of course, firms can allow women to rejoin the workforce once they have fulfilled their maternal duties, but it is unfair to expect them to foot the bill for private decisions of individuals. It is daylight robbery if the state relinquishes its duty and passes on the tax to firms for its moral obligations.
This brings us to the last point in this debate. While individuals and parents usually ignore the public benefits of having children, the state can very well understand such benefits. Not only does a young generation keep a healthy demographic and contribute future taxpayers, but new people also contribute new ideas. Parents might not always recognize this value, but a nation values future citizens. This is the reason that although feminists lambast motherhood in the West, their governments still try to subsidize maternity. Some countries like France, which pay high maternity benefits, have been able to maintain decent demography despite their young women increasingly trying to opt out of motherhood. But India is not a rich country and can hardly afford the cost of such benefits when it cannot even feed everyone. So, what is the way forward? India should inculcate the value of the family system in its citizens and shut down the propaganda against a big population, as most Indian states are already below replacement-level fertility, i.e. 2.1 children per woman. Putting emphasis on the family system will allow women to take help not only from their husbands but also from extended family during times of maternity, thus decreasing economic and emotional pressure. On top of that, government should decrease the cost of raising children by spending money on building healthcare infrastructure and repealing laws like RTE which have increased the cost of education, thus increasing the cost of having children. But before that, government should stop burdening young firms which are the growth engine of the economy and are needed for generating future jobs and income.
In the pious month of Ramadan, the world is witnessing the violent side of a religion which is known as the “religion of peace”. The violence has transcended the boundaries of nations to manifest itself in Orlando, Turkey, Bangladesh and numerous other such places. When the world was recovering from the shock of the Orlando shooting, Turkey felt another tremor of Islamic violence, and the recent ones were in Bangladesh and Iraq. The ubiquitous thing about all these terror attacks is the motivation for such acts and the response of world leaders after the violence. It’s no surprise that Islam is the driving force for these acts of violence in the month of Ramadan, as sacrificing oneself for the cause of Jihad and killing infidels will yield a better place in heaven. Liberal media are always careful after the incident not to link it with Islam, although the terrorist will chant Allahu Akbar after killing people or declare his allegiance to ISIS publicly. The reporting starts with the mighty phrase “Terrorism has no religion” and ends with the even mightier phrase “Islam is a religion of peace.” But it’s difficult to conceal the truth for too long. Even if the truth is concealed for a longer time, it won’t ensure that the truth has died. Truth will surface one day for sure.
After terror incidents, people of the world who are not Muslims look at moderate Muslims in the hope that they’ll condemn the act of violence. Another demand from people is reformation of Islam, and it too comes from people who do not follow Islamic theology. But there is nothing like moderate Muslims and reformation of Islam is an impossible task for anyone to do.
If you analyse the reactions of moderate Muslims after terror attacks, the reactions follow a similar pattern and continuity in thought worldwide. First of all, they distance themselves from the act of terror. The next step will be to call it a “hate crime”, an “act of a few misguided people”, or a “random event of violence”, as there is an enormous amount of violence in this world. In reality, all these words are nothing but convenient lies to mislead the world and conceal the truth. Hate is an irrational feeling which arises in someone’s mind without any profound basis. However, any terrorist attack is not irrational. Terrorists make a conscious choice which is advocated by their scriptures in order to wipe out kafirs or infidels. Their acts have well-calculated end results, a religiously sanctioned guideline and a rational choice based on their own morality. Another lie which they tell is labelling them “misguided people”. They’re not misguided at all. They are being guided by the supreme scripture of their religion in the words of Prophet Muhammad, who is the perfect human being ever born. The act of terrorism is a political choice with political implications to convert the whole world into the land of Allah. A random act of violence has different characteristics from a terror attack. Random criminals neither shout Allahu Akbar nor kill people just because they can’t recite verses from the Quran. Thus moderate Muslims are among the biggest liars who act to conceal the truth from the world.
Their next argument is to hypothesize that such crimes are not allowed by Islam. But a simple look at Islamic history suggests a completely different narrative. Beginning from the battle of Badr to the recent attack in Bangladesh, it only shows that such crimes are allowed by Islam and its scripture. The Quran contains more than 100 verses which clearly command war against non-believers and either conversion or killing. In the same breath, moderate Muslims try to defend Islamic theology and profess that Prophet Muhammad never sanctioned all these acts of crime. This is another blatant lie. The life events and acts of Prophet Muhammad reveal that he was a vile man who always resorted to violence throughout his life. He slaughtered more than 600 Jews after the Battle of the Trench. There are similar countless examples from the life of Muhammad. Now, there arise some serious questions.
What’s more important for moderate Muslims: to defend their religion or look for remedies for terrorism? Their reactions only reveal that all they want is that Islam should be free from any kind of blame irrespective of how violent it is. Moderate Muslims don’t want to get labelled as moderate ones. Sarfaraz Manzoor writes in The Guardian in his article, “Can we drop the term ‘moderate Muslim’? It’s meaningless”: “This is about more than politeness and semantics. The language matters because if ordinary Muslims feel they are being divided into camps, into ‘good’ (moderates) and ‘bad’ (non-moderates), then any statements made by politicians will be heard with great scepticism, especially if for many Muslims ‘moderate’ has come somehow to mean more secular.” Moderate Muslims try their best to shield the Prophet from any kind of attack and always hail him as the most perfect man. If they keep praising such a violent person, then any change in reality is only a dream. In Islam, a true Muslim can only be one who follows the Quran word for word and tries to imitate the Sunnah of the Prophet. Moderate Muslims know this fact quite well. Deep down, they know that the people carrying out terrorist attacks are doing all these things to be perfect Muslims. According to Islamic theology, they can’t be questioned. In this dilemma, moderate Muslims also realise that the word “moderate” makes them feel less religious than people who don’t call themselves moderate. They don’t want to get labelled as moderate, but they’re doing so now because this is best in their interests under the current politically correct regime.
In such a situation, moderate Muslims feel that the word “moderate” is already creating a division among Muslims by labelling half of them as moderate or right and the other half as wrong. To balance things in this dilemma, they take the above-mentioned approaches to fulfil the aspirations of their own community and liberals of the world who hail them. However, moderate Muslims are well aware of their goals and the goal of Islam. They become happy inside that these terrorist attacks are only helping their religion to expand. And there should be no objection for them. After all, Islam is a military cult which wants to expand its horizon. Around 1,400 years of Islamic history is testimony to the success of the violent approach. As long as Islam is gaining success as a military cult, moderate Muslims are less bothered about the methods. The goal of moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims is in sync with each other, i.e. expansion of Dar-ul-Harb. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS is exactly the same and their methods differ only slightly during the beginning phase. In the later phase, the method of moderate and extremist Muslims to convert the whole world into the land of Allah will be the same. ISIS reminds moderate Muslims about the glorious time of the Caliphate when a larger chunk of Europe, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan countries were under Islamic control. They have no objection when another person is trying to establish the Caliphate which was uprooted in the last century. Moderate Muslims are reactive elements but lack the catalyst or favourable conditions to react. Iran is the best example of how quickly moderate Muslims became extremists when they got the catalyst and favourable conditions to react.
We will now look at the prospects of reformation in Islam and the Quran, which is the ultimate source of all the violence. Reformation in the Quran means either erasing the satanic verses from it or changing it completely. Neither of these is permitted by Islam. Allah states in the Quran in Surat al-Hijr, verse 9: “Indeed, it is We who sent down the Quran and indeed, We will be its guardian.” It means that Allah will protect the Quran from any change or error. In another verse, Muhammad says, “How can you improve something which is perfect? You can’t change the Quran.” The clue which these two verses give is that it’s impossible to change the Quran as long as someone has faith in Islamic theology and the Prophet. All that the Prophet allows Muslims is to reinterpret it. But interpretation and reinterpretation have serious limitations. How will you reinterpret “Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” in a peaceful and non-violent way? It’s foolish to think so.
The only way to change the Quran is to get rid of Muhammad and the Quran. But you can’t do so because you have no authority to do so. You can’t be bigger than the Prophet and the Quran because Muhammad said that he was the last Prophet. As soon as someone tries to challenge this convention, it will be labelled blasphemous and the reward will be death. Prominent and mainstream Muslim voices confirm that Islam doesn’t need reformation. Mehdi Hasan, presenter of Al Jazeera English, writes in The Guardian, “Why Islam doesn’t need reformation”: “The truth is that Islam has already had its own ‘Reformation’ of sorts.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an atheist who was advocating reforms in Islam, was rebuked by Muslims in hard-hitting words. The Quran is a closed door and you can only bang your head against it. There are not even genuine voices coming from Islam for reformation or dropping the violent parts of the Quran. For the sake of argument, to say that the violent part of the Quran should be left out has no basis. Someone else will ask why that part should be left out to embrace another part. Which authority sanctioned this? There will be no answer. Thus the moderate Muslim is a myth and reformation in Islam or the Quran is a far-fetched dream which will never become reality.
The last article in this series discussed the anti-poor arguments used by the Indian left to oppose GMO adoption, but similar paranoia is also present on the Indian right wing. This article will show why the paranoia of the Right wingers against GMOs is unwarranted.
Given that majority of the materials on the internet and that larger media is very biased against GMOs, it is not surprising that many on the right wing in India have also digested this propaganda. GMO crops seem to have done the seemingly impossible task of uniting the pro-Hindu, pro-development, pro-progress camp of Modi/BJP supporters with the pro-intellectual dishonesty, pro-poverty, anti-science, pro-misery communists of India. While props can be given for the non partisan nature of their opposition to GMO crops, it still doesn’t make their stance any less wrong. The most important problem against the GMO crops the Right wing in India has is that it is not a Swadesi product and they have been brainwashed into believing that GMO crops are bad for the country as it is being introduced by foreign corporations. This is not true and as explained in the previous article, GMO is not about Monsanto and a Swadeshi GMO company can equally rise up and serve the market. The only condition for this it that GMO companies are allowed to spring up in India. Eventually, Indians would absorb the technology and set up their own GMO tech conglomerates pretty quickly, just like they did with Micromax, Hero motor corp etc.
Second but most important allegation the naturalists in the right wing camp have against the GMO crops is that it is unnatural and hence is unsafe and bad. But this is scientifically inaccurate and reeks of mysticism the right wing is usually associated with. Despite the massive efforts by the online RW intellectual community to wash away the negative connotation that right wing is anti-science, these vocal minorities within right wing are desperate to prove them wrong. Their opposition to GMO crops is eerily similar to the bible thumping idiots of the western countries who oppose Stem cell research because “how dare the unwashed masses play with God’s creation?” and how “only god engineered natural products are good and man made products are bad”. This stance of the vocal minority of the RW opposition to GMO crops is not even valid if one looks at the history of agriculture. None of the crops which are cultivated in the world are ” pure “, like the naturalists in the anti-GMO camo believe.
Just like how humans domesticated dogs, pigs and cattle from wild wolves and boars, the present day agricultural crops are domesticated versions of wild cereals. Dogs and wolves belong to the same species-Canis Lupus but no one would think that they are the same species by looking at them nor would anyone think that dogs were genetically selected(engineered) variety of wolves. This is because many humans today are used to the idea of dogs being around them and have no idea that the dogs we see today are carefully selected pro-human wolf breeds when humans first started their primitive societies. While wolves were natural enemies of man and hence actively avoided man and fought him, certain wolves were much less anti-human and followed him around as the remains of man’s hunt was an easy source of food for them. Such breeds of wolves were taken up by men and carefully bred for their pro-human characteristic in such a way that after thousands of generations, such wolves became dogs and natural allies of man. This was a two way relationship as humans were good at killing prey while dogs were good at spotting prey and thus the relationship gave survival advantage to both and hence both prospered. The point being, even Man’s best friend is a product of genetic selection over a vast period time and if we go by the naturalist argument that humans should not use genetic selection or engineering, we should get rid of dogs, cereal, pulses etc because most of the cereals we use are products of careful selection and hence unnatural.
And technically speaking, natural does not equate to good nor does artificial equate to bad. This is a fundamentalist stance on issues with no basis on reality. For instance, humans neither have the furs to survive in the Arctic nor the uric acid adaptation that reptiles have to survive the deserts but humans have colonised both regions of the world. The way they did it is not by chanting naturalist mantra and hoping that cold or heat does not get us but by using the tools we have to engineer our safe spots and create our own shelters. This is what humans do to survive and this is what made them the dominant species on the planet. If humans ancestors were as dogmatic and fundamentalist in their natural-artificial debate, they would not have even left the caves. Actually they would not have even made it to the caves from the trees. So its pretty hypocritical, to write, think and believe about how GMO crops are anti-natural and hence bad, while living in a house built by man using artificial engineering, growing crops which were selected by man for their value and not really natural by any means, using computers and mobiles which are not natural and still complain that GMO crops are bad because they are not natural.
Another problem with this natural-unnatural argument is that there are many poisons in the world which are natural from snake poisons to poisonous plants like fox glove, datura etc. Since the naturalistic argument against GMOs is that it is artificial and hence it is bad, doesn’t that mean we should only look to things which are natural? Does that mean that only naturally occurring goods should be used? Is that even a valid argument to make from iphones and PCs? Or for that matter, is there any reason to think natural substances like foxglove, datura , scorpion sting, snake poison can be consumed without any deleterious effect?
This type of argument has become distressingly common these days with massive propaganda for organic foods and against the use of fertilizers and pesticides. There is no evidence to suggest that organic food is better for health than ones produced by fertilizers and pesticides even though the organic food is supposed to be glorious natural phenomena. What’s worse these people associate any chemical with bad and throw out big chemical names around as if it is bad. One should remember how easy it is to be manipulated into believing something is bad by looking the Dihydrogen Monoxide hoax where an Australian member of Parliament recommended action against dihydrogen monoxide, which causes cancer, kills 100% of the people who consume it and is present in almost all of the food items consumed today, only for the dihydrogen monoxide to turn out to be chemical name of “water”.
The propaganda against the GMO crops and the allegations of poisoning the soil by fertilizers is not any different. The fertilizers used today have lead to an increase in yields and there is no evidence to link their use to any human ailment today. It is unscientific and retarded to say that since urea is bad for human health, using urea to raise crops is bad for human health as well. Plants take up urea as it has nitrogen and use them to fix nitrogen easier than they otherwise could and hence give a better and faster yield. By the time humans consume it, the urea inside plants is not really urea but rather proteins and other compounds where the nitrogen in urea is fixed. Since humans, at least the normal ones, are not going to consume loads and loads of soil per se and only eat the food grown on the soil, they are not going to be poisoned by the urea used to fertilize the plants. This is a huge topic in and of itself and is better left for its own article but the point is any such paranoia should be viewed with suspicion. This is not to say all chemicals are good either, as DDT used for insecticide had some negative effects but then again, it had proven health consequences and was subsequently banned giving valid argument. The use or restriction of use of the chemicals should be fact and research based and not based on the paranoid delusions driven by half-baked theories.
Another problem the typical right winger has with GMO crops is that it is is using genetic manipulations per se and hence it is bad. This is again a paranoid stand which is driven by ignorance more than anything else. The truth of the matter is, genetic engineering is not per se bad and has been in application outside GMO crops for a very long time now, including for mass public consumption without the public even knowing it and it is pathetic to even point this out. For instance, many people in India (and indeed the rest of the world ) don’t know that the life saving hormone insulin used today is actually produced by recombinant DNA technology. In the past the insulin came from dead pigs and cows but now, modern advances in genetics have made it so that pure insulin is manufactured from genetic engineering. The previous bovine or swine insulin had tremendous health risks and numerous problems including evnentual development of tolerance against it. But, by using recombinant DNA technology, the genes for insulin production are spliced into the DNA of bacteria and then such bacteria is allowed to grow in artificial medium and when the genes of insulin production gets translated, insulin is produced which is then harvested from bacterial cultures. So the average insulin user in the world is using bacterial products, from genetic engineering to stay alive. If we are to go by the paranoia against genetic engineering, we should ban recombinant human insulin as well because any kind of genetic engineering is bad.
The example of insulin is but only a small benefit of potential genetic engineering. Some of the most promising aspects of genetic engineering are cure for cancer and genetic diseases like haemophilia, Huntington’s chorea, Thalassemia etc. Curing such diseases involve repairing the DNA defects in genetic diseases with proper DNA so that the child does not have to die early due to lack of proper gene. One of the methods to do it is by the use of DNA agents for transferring DNA into the cells of the diseased infant. Since cells number in trillions, the feasible ways to do it is limited and one of the methods is to use viruses to infect the diseased cells and hence deliver the repaired DNA to them. The viruses in question are Adeno virus, which causes cancer in some cases, Retro virus- the same virus family which causes AIDS, bacteriophages which cause certain bacteria to be virulent etc. Should such genetic research be stopped because it uses such dangerous vectors, because the average spectator has no idea that the viruses are used only after their generic material for causing diseases are already spliced out and hence are harmless?
So the blind fear-mongering that genetic engineering per se is bad and causes destruction is just stupidity and ignorance passing off as caution. While it is true that nobody should be forced to use products they don’t like or want, it is dangerous to prevent people, who do want a new product, from getting it just because of the ignorance and arrogance of the group which doesn’t want to use it. The fear-mongering is sometimes so bad that they throw around unscientific accusations that the GMO crops will end up being mixed with normal crops. This is not scientifically accurate. There has been no demonstrable study which shows that it is possible. It is in some ways inconsistent with the leftist claim that GMO crops cannot be cultivated without the seeds given by corporations, because if the GMO crops can’t grow by themselves, how are they going to pollinate and pollute normal crops? So some people are going to always oppose GMO clutching to one of the sides of this argument-if GMO seeds are not recultivable they would cite that corporations are exploiting farmers. On the other hand, if firms allow regermination of seeds, they will cry about how GMO crops are cross-pollinating other normal crops. As you can see, you can never win an argument against such people who want to win in both cases.
Also, another very important aspect which people have almost missed in the GMO debate is the progress on genetic research. Profits from GMO industry will feed back again into general genetic research and thus improving the whole field over time. This would help in finding cures for many of the currently untreatable diseases. By saying no to GMO we are not only restricting access of technology to poor farmers, who might have no problem in adopting it, but are also jeopardizing future research on very important issues. The Bible retards can continue blocking “Stem cell” and other genetic research citing creationism but this should not stop the rational Indians to not understand the benefits of this technology.
Many Indians don’t know that India has the largest area under cultivation for any country in the world(see above table), while also having the largest time window for cultivation but its food production does not reflect this abundance. The biggest reason for low per hectare yields of Indian agriculture is the lack of farm modernity. Since most farmers are marginal in India and have very small land holdings, their ability to use high yield techniques is very limited since many modern techniques have high initial cost associated with them. So the introduction of GMO crops can help offset at least some of the negatives with Indian agriculture today. Some GMO crops can be genetically modified to use less water and withstand droughts which can help in expanding the areas under cultivation in India, to even places which would otherwise be non-cultivable. GMO crops can be genetically engineered to produce Vitamin A or other such micro-nutrients within them which can help in preventing vitamin deficiency and the resulting blindnesses in poor Indian children. When the country is malnourished to the tune of 50%, it is a cruel joke to prevent potential technologies which would increase the yield and quality of agriculture. If the uninformed middle class and top elites and scaremongering lunatics on the left are so threatened by things they don’t know, they are free to not adopt GMO crops and can actively avoid them by demanding to label GMO products explicitly like the current green vegetarian mark on food packets. But they should stop burdening the already impoverished, malnourished poor children of India, who would stand to benefit immensely from food fortification and better quality food produced by GMO crops, just for the sake of their ideology and paranoia.
The recent decision by the Government to allow GMO crops to be manufactured and researched in India has predictably angered the brainless leftist communist zombies in the country. The left opposes GMO under the garb of opposing corporatisation of the farming industry in the west and the socialist zombies in India, lacking the brain of their own as usual, have copied the western template to build momentum against GMO here in India. However, it is frightening to see that even the right wing Indians, who are usually more rational and make informed choices, also seem to have taken up and internalised the propaganda against GMO crops and oppose it out of paranoia against the western products and labelled GMO as part of Videshi colonisation. The overwhelming majority of the materials on the internet is against the use of GMO crops and is usually based on half-educated, paranoid and pseudo-scientific drivel with no basis of reality whatsoever. Read about some of the common misconceptions about GMO here.
Why the left opposes GMO?
The most important reason the communist zombies oppose the introduction of GMO crops is that it is just another form of foreign imperialism and as per their intellectual leanings, any form of foreign investment, except those that directly fund the communist anti-development elements in the country like Naxals, anti-Kudandkulam protesters, anti-Narmada Dam protesters etc, is bad for the country whether or not such position reflects reality. Of course, much like any socialist stance on pretty much any topic, this does not reflect reality and one can clearly see the lies when logically analysing the issue.
Next and equally baseless allegation that the left makes against GMO is that it will lead to destruction of alternative non-GMO crops and GMO corporations will monopolize the crop and seed market. This is again far removed from reality because the ultimate decision on what seed to use is again going to lie with the farmers. This myth is so prevalent today that it goes completely unchallenged in most TV debates and commentaries on this issue. But this is simply not true as having IPR does not mean people are forced to use a product if it is not beneficial. No matter how many GMO crops are introduced into the market, the ultimate decision on whether or not to use them is going to be with farmers and not the corporate heads of the GMO crops. No one has the power to force GMO crops on the farmers as Indian markets are still fairly free and the government democratic and neither is run by reality denying socialist zombies to force farmers into using the crops they really don’t want to grow themselves. Yes, advertisements can entice farmers to adopt a new technology but they won’t stick with the new technology unless it benefits them more compared to the older variety of crops.
So how will it work on the ground? If the farmers in India find that the extra yields from GMO crops are very good and give high profits clearly offsetting the extra initial down payment in the form of buying GMO seeds, then they will plant GMO crops in larger numbers next crop cycle and the word of mouth would result in even larger numbers of farmers adopting GMO crops to increase their yields. If the GMO crops prove to be nothing but hot air and do not lead to increase in yield to justify the higher cost of GMO seeds, then the farmers would just stop buying the high cost seeds and go back to the traditional seeds for cultivation, because they are smart and have a brain unlike the socialist zombies who lack common sense. So, the destruction of alternate and better non-GMO varieties by GMO crops hardly makes any sense.
As such, without any government or socialist intervention, the GMO crops would find their place in the society and market through simple profit and loss arithmetic. The best example for such adoption is Gujarat. When rest of India decided to say no to BT cotton, ably brainwashed by the anti-GMO activists about the evils of corporate BT seeds, the then Gujarat government under the then CM and current PM Modi openly adopted BT cotton. It was one of the reasons why a semi-desert state like Gujarat was so successful in out producing Maharashtra, the traditional leader in cotton production.
The worst allegation by the communist intellectuals against GMO crops is that it is anti-poor. This is particularly pathetic allegation to make because by denying a chance to cultivate GMO crops, which have the potential to even be engineered to fight poor rainfall and poor irrigation, the leftists deny the right of poor farmers to cultivate right crop varieties that suit their climatic and soil condition to maximise their profits. It is disgusting to see that the same fake intellectuals go on mainstream TV and claim as champions of farmers after denying their right to modern technology in the name of opposing corporations. Normal people should ask themselves is allowing poor farmers to starve and condemning them to perpetual poverty by denying them access to modern technology , one of which is GMO crops, really a good thing for India and poor Indian farmers, all because of the buzzword of anti-corporatisation created by the braindead communist elite?
Another claim against GMO crops is that these crops come with associated intellectual property rights(IPR)and will be bad for Indian farmers and industry. One can look at the evidence from past where Indian markets allowed foreign players to operate and see if this statement holds any water. For example, when motor bikes were introduced in India by Suzuki, Kawasaki, Honda etc, did it lead to monopoly by any of them? Now the bike industry is filled with Indian manufacturers like TVS, Bajaj motors, Hero as well and they have taken a sizeable share of the market and eliminated the threat of any western monopoly. Or take the case of mobile phones in the Indian market. When the smart phones were introduced in Indian market, the only manufacturers of them were Korean and Japanese companies and one or two American companies but today Micromax has risen up as a valid competitor to these foreign companies, along with several other desi alternatives, again crushing the argument that opening of the market to foreign corporations will lead to monopoly. Or take the case of TV sets some 20 years back before liberalisation of Indian markets. The inky TV sets in India manufactured by Solitaire were awful in quality. Compare how liberalising the markets in the consumer goods led to widespread fall in price of TV sets along with less monopoly and better quality available for the average Indian consumer.
The important point to note here is that none of the Indian companies like Hero, Bajaj, Mocromax, Dish TV etc would have been able to become world class like they are now without actually exposing them to open market and global economy and competition. Another very important example to note is the effect that open markets have had on Indian Pharma industry and how it has grown so big that it is giving American companies nightmares on just hearing the world Indian Pharma, which was not possible before 1991. The same will be the case with GMO crops too, and opening the markets to them will help tremendously in creation of Swadesi GMO corporations and if India plays its cards right, India will become an unquestioned leader of the GMO market in the future, specially given the fact that many ideological stunted clowns around the world have taken an opposition to GMO based on paranoia and hence Indians will face little competition whatsoever in the next big future of the agriculture industry.
The same IPR argument is sometimes twisted by quoting the market power of evil Monsanto which will crush the poor farmers due to high prices it will charge for GMO seeds. Suddenly with the mention of Monsanto, the leftists manage to divert the argument from market based solution to fight against one evil capitalist firm called Monsanto. But market power depends on how open the field is for competition. Given above examples, there is no reason to believe that Indian firms cannot compete with foreigners given that the GMO industry is still in nascent stage and has to see a lot of development. The Pharma industry again serves a good example on how India can move ahead on GMO policy. GoI defied IPR on crucial drugs and helped Indian firms to manufacture cheap generics. The same template can be applied to GMO during early phases till Indian firms grow enough to challenge the western competitors and can produce cheap varieties suited for Indian markets. There is no reason to believe that with a well developed and competitive indigenous GMO market, Indian farmers would not be able to get a better deal than they are getting currently.
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Source: GM plants-Questions and answers, The Royal Society
Many Indians don’t know that India has the largest area under cultivation for any country in the world(see above table), while also having the largest time window for cultivation but its food production does not reflect this abundance. The biggest reason for low per hectare yields of Indian agriculture is the lack of farm modernity. Since most farmers are marginal in India and have very small land holdings, their ability to use high yield techniques is very limited since many modern techniques have high initial cost associated with them. So the introduction of GMO crops can help offset at least some of the negatives with Indian agriculture today. Some GMO crops can be genetically modified to use less water and withstand droughts which can help in expanding the areas under cultivation in India, to even places which would otherwise be non-cultivable. GMO crops can be genetically engineered to produce Vitamin A or other such micro-nutrients within them which can help in preventing vitamin deficiency and the resulting blindnesses in poor Indian children. When the country is malnourished to the tune of 50%, it is a cruel joke to prevent potential technologies which would increase the yield and quality of agriculture. If the uninformed middle class and top elites and scaremongering lunatics on the left are so threatened by things they don’t know, they are free to not adopt GMO crops and can actively avoid them by demanding to label GMO products explicitly like the current green vegetarian mark on food packets. But they should stop burdening the already impoverished, malnourished poor children of India, who would stand to benefit immensely from food fortification and better quality food produced by GMO crops, just for the sake of their ideology and paranoia.
The next article in this series will counter the anti-GMO propaganda digested by those on the Indian Right.
PM Modi recently went to Iran and went over the top praising Sufism for teaching love and brotherhood. Sadly, historical facts completely refute his assertion as Sufism did more damage to native faiths than any other form of Islam by selling the poison called Islam by honey coating it. Sufism was not a real sect but a small cooked up sect which was artificially manufactured to serve as part of Islam’s diplomatic outreach. There was no Sufi emperor in India because there was never a Sufi emperor in the history of humanity. It was simply a propaganda department created to whitewash the brutal image of Islam. Even ‘secular’ Akbar slaughtered 6 lakh Hindus while still being under the influence of Sufi Saint Mounundin Chisti.
Have you ever seen photographs of American soldiers distributing food to poor Afghans? That’s basically what Sufism was- an obfuscation of the invader’s real intent. Do you ever wonder why there is only American empire and puppet nations but no such thing as ‘Kingdom of philanthropy’ anywhere on the planet, despite seeing so many images of American philanthropy? No- but why? Because that would be plain stupid. It is the same with Sufism. It is not real but only an attempt at obscurantism. It was just a medieval way to conduct diplomacy.
Just a few months ago, a popular Sufi announced a reward for the head of Kamlesh Tiwari. If that is love and brotherhood taught by Sufism, then everyone is better off without it. Sufism is nothing but cloak for Wahhabis to be wolf in sheep’s clothing. Below is important historical information on how Sufis accompanied invading armies of Islam in India by Ram Ohri and Purushootam:
Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti of Ajmer had accompanied the army of Shihabuddin Ghori and finally settled down at Ajmer in the year 1233 A.D.
Khawaja Qutubuddin came to Delhi in the year 1236 in the train of Shihabuddin Ghori and stayed on to further the cause of Islam.
Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya of Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin came to Delhi in the year 1335 accompanying a contingent of the Muslim
Sheikh Faridudin came to Pattan (now in Pakistan) in the year 1265.
Additionally, the famous Sufi Shihabuddin Suhrawardy of Baghdad was brought to India for carrying out the missionary work of conversions by Bahauddin Zakariya of Multan several decades after the Hindu ruler had been defeated and his kingdom laid waste after large scale plunder and manslaughter.
The well known authority on Sufism, S.A.A. Rizvi has recorded in his book, ‘A History of Sufism in India’ that Nizamuddin Auliya used to unhesitatingly accept enormous gifts given to him by Khusraw Barwar which implied that the Auliya was unconcerned with the source of the gift, provided it was paid in cash. Yet the Auliya was a firm believer in the need for a Muslim’s unquestioned loyalty and obedience to the Ulema. As reiterated by K.A. Nizami, Auliya used to preach that the unbeliever is the doomed denizen of Hell. In his Khutba he would leave no one in doubt that Allah has created Paradise for the Believers and Hell for the infidels “in order to repay the wicked for what they have done”.
It is claimed in Jawahar-i-Faridi that the Khwaja had dried the two holy lakes of Annasagar and Pansela by the magical heat of Islamic spiritual power. He is even stated to have made the idol of the Hindu temple near Annasagar recite the Kalma. The Khwaja had a burning desire to destroy the rule of the brave Rajput king, Prithiviraj Chauhan, so much so that he ascribed the victory of Muhammad Ghori in the battle of Tarain entirely to his own spiritual prowess and declared that “We have seized Pithaura alive and handed him over to the army of Islam”. [Source: Siyar’l Auliya, cited by Rizvi on page 116 of ‘A History of Sufism in India’].
It was almost a taboo for Sufis, the so-called saints, to accept a Hindu ascending the throne of any kingdom during the heydays of the Muslim rule. In an example narrated by S.A.A. Rizvi on page 37 of his well researched book, The Wonder That Was India (Vol.II, Rupa & Co, 1993, New Delhi) it is pointed out that when the powerful Bengali warrior, King Ganesha captured power in Bengal in the year 1415 A.D.
Ibrahim Shah Sharqi attacked his kingdom at the request of outraged Ulema and numerous Sufis of Bengal. In the ensuing strife, the leading Sufi of Bengal, Nur Qutb-i-Alam, interceded and secured a political agreement to the benefit of the Muslim community and satisfaction of Sufis.
Under dire threat, King Ganesha was forced to abdicate his throne in favour of his 12 year old son, Jadu, who was converted to Islam and proclaimed as Sultan Jalaluddin – to the satisfaction of the Sufi masters. Similarly Sultan Ahmed Shah of Gujarat (1411-42), though a practitioner of Sufi philosophy, was a die hard iconoclast who took delight in destroying temples, as stated in the same tome, by S.A.A. Rizvi. The Sultan also used to force the Rajput chieftains to marry their daughters to him so that they would become outcastes in their own community. And the endgame of the Sultan could as well be that perhaps some of the outcaste Rajputs might then opt to become Muslims.
No Muslim, nor any Sufi, has ever agreed to worship in a Hindu temple, nor make obeisance before the images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Unfortunately due to relentless colonization of the Hindu mind during 1000 years long oppressive Muslim rule, the Hindu masses till date have failed to realize that the so-called Sufi philosophy of religious harmony is a one-way street. This trend of Hindus praying at tombs and dargahs has been nurtured by the strong undercurrent of belief in spiritualism among Hindu masses, even educated classes. That is the crux of the matter.
The west has done an interesting experiment to undermine Islam which a lot of people haven’t realized. They started promoting Muslim pop-culture icons as a means to override the conventional message of political Islam with the hip version of modern Islam. There are youtube channels dedicated to designer Hijabs, halal restaurants, halal make up brands and other cool stuff, which are being promoted behind the scenes by the agencies. It’s basically the promotion of capitalism through other means. Basically, they smartly tried to strip Muslims of their political thought to reduce the idea of being a Muslim to simply appearance.
By promoting these hip Muslim icons like Zidane they are providing a template to Muslim youth to emulate in such a way that being a Muslim is nothing more than simply roaming around in the cosplay of a muslim, while simultaneously installing the western DNA in their brains. It worked fine for a while then it backfired when these same hip icons reverted back to echoing the voices of political Islam.
Compare this:
With this:
Moral of the story is that west is only deluding themselves by thinking that these people will change. The doctrine of ideological subversion or ‘Disha Bhool’ that west is trying doesn’t work on people whose philosophy is like ‘Kutte ki poonch’ i.e. dog’s tail.
West is giving them education, food, electricity, roads, respect and accepting them as their own. But it doesn’t matter to these people, no matter whichever country they have immigrated to, as they will always hold the opinion that the Islamic society which they came from is superior to the one where they are presently living, simply by virtue of being Islamic.
Don’t confuse an ideology’s fate with the number of its current adherents. The Mongols were non-Muslim and yet they led to the spread of Islam because the descendants of Chengiz Khan adopted Islam. Same way, conventionally declared Muslim nations might be under siege but the ideology is spreading itself elsewhere. Check the statistics of adherents who have taken up Islam in the western world. It’s not alarming yet but it’s showing a growing trend as Islam uses pop culture icons to lure liberals to the religion by making it sound hip. It’s not uncommon to see western women embrace it like a fashion statement.
Islamic pop culture liberalism is to the west what Sufism was to India when it was invaded. These are obscurantist tactics being used to market an ideology while shielding the underlying core ideology from criticism. The Sufi saints who came to India existed at the same time when Akbar was slaughtering Hindus, but Hindus couldn’t figure it out because they were mesmerized by the Sufi mystics while being butchered by Ghazi Muslims. Same way the US today is mesmerized by the liberal ideology (same way as Indian liberals are mesmerized by ‘philanthropic’ Christian NGOs). The ideology has metamorphosed into another form (liberalism), buying time for conventional Islam to regroup, organize and grow. Combine the number of converts with the numbers that Muslim immigrants in western countries are contributing by breeding more momins and you have a very grim picture.
Think about why the PM of Britain invites Sri Sri for a spiritual event in his country. Is it out of reverence for Sri Sri? Obviously not. It’s because they are worried about the attrition rate of people leaving Christianity to join Islam given its growing influence. In that context, realpolitik dictates that if the west cannot control the attrition then they would rather let the dissidents move towards Hinduism than Islam, just like Ambedkar asked people to move towards Buddhism instead of Abrahamic faiths. Check this:
It is a fact that Islam is growing rapidly in the West. In the U.S. alone the number of Muslims has risen dramatically, from about 10,000 in 1900 to 3 million or more in 1991 (some authorities say 4.5 million). Most of this growth is due to recent immigration and the high birth rate of Muslims (5 children per family on average), rather than to conversion. Still, the number of those who convert to Islam is significant. In the U.S., the majority are African-American (a third of all Muslims according to most authorities), but there have also been significant numbers of Anglos to convert as well, many of them well-educated.
What is motivating people to turn to Islam? A recent article in Christianity Today reported that in the U.S., the average age of those converting to Islam (31) is about twice that for conversion to Christian faith (age 16). It listed five main reasons given for becoming Muslim: Islam’s doctrine is simple and rational, all believers are equal, it is a practical religion, and lacks a priesthood. These “reasons” merely parrot the arguments Muslim apologists use to propagate Islam.
India too has its own pop culture where Khans are promoted as suave modern Muslims through Bollywood. But every now and then they show their true colours by bashing Hindu traditions and paganism. Given these parallelisms one can easily identify the connection between Muslim pop culture of today with Sufism of the medieval period. Both are equally dangerous as they fool the regular folks by selling peaceful image of Muslims thus lowering their guard against the core ideology of Islam, which wants to convert or obliterate all the kafirs.
Ever since man evolved form animals and gained the ability of imagination, he has always had a sense of wonder and marvel about the complexity of life and everything around him. Religion, was meant to be an abstract wisdom passed on from one generation to their offspring which addressed these issues. Religion is the answer of civilizations to ‘what is the meaning of life/this is how the universe operates’, and being an abstract theory, different civilizations propounded different theories. So, comparing modern science (as we colloquially phrase it) and religion is an apples and oranges proposition. Religion was always meant to be a vehicle to pass on complex metaphysical ideas to next generations through metaphors, stories, comparisons and subjective truths. But it becomes a problem when a civilization’s conceptualization of religion is so narrow that it limits its people in understanding other concepts and starts to create intellectual contradictions.
All these ‘science versus religion’ debates are relevant to the specific set of faiths based on Abrahamic religions and do not apply to open ended Dharmic wisdom. Therefore the inherent contradiction, if any, is a function of the frame of reference of the observer. As a Hindu observer, we find no contradiction between the two. It’s not that there is no difference between a scientist and a religious philosopher but in our case, the ideas which these two professionals propounded weren’t in contradiction with each other, unlike Abrahamic faiths which hounded their scientists for coming up with theories that challenged their deeply held beliefs. ‘The idea of zero’, for example, was resisted tooth and nail by the Church because ‘nothingness’ and ‘infinity’ didn’t fit into their binary belief system, as it does in the eastern Dharmic value system. Also, how you define a scientist is also suspect? Our saints like Sushrut were masters of plastic surgery, as has been documented in detail in Sushrut Samhita, but the subterfuge lies in the way the word ‘scientist’ has been defined by the west to mean post 17th century western scientists. We never had any incidents of our scientists being at odds with religion or religious figures. It’s clear that the debate between science and religion in India was already settled thousands of years ago since both of these were not contradictory concepts, intellectually.
That is why there is a Nataraja statue outside the CERN science laboratory signifying that there is still no contradiction between science and religion.
That is also why when scientists discovered Higgs Boson and named it God’s Particle, no one saw the contradiction. This has always been our way of life as per Advaita Vedanta where the creator and created is one, united only by energy- it is this Shakti we worship as god, hence God Particle.
In ancient India, the philosophical schools of Samkhya and Vaisheshika, from around the 6th–5th century BC, developed theories on light. According to the Samkhya school, light is one of the five fundamental “subtle” elements (tanmatra) out of which emerge the gross elements.
In contrast, the Vaisheshika school gives an atomic theory of the physical world on the non-atomic ground of ether, space and time. (See Indian atomism.) The basic atoms are those of earth (prthivı), water (apas), fire (tejas), and air (vayu), that should not be confused with the ordinary meaning of these terms. These atoms are taken to form binary molecules that combine further to form larger molecules. Motion is defined in terms of the movement of the physical atoms. Light rays are taken to be a stream of high velocity of tejas (fire) atoms. The particles of light can exhibit different characteristics depending on the speed and the arrangements of the tejas atoms. Around the first century BC, the Vishnu Purana refers to sunlight as “the seven rays of the sun”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_optics
The sum total of ‘science’ (physics, electronics and computer science) we know today is merely a fraction of the real deal (quantum Physics). The deeper humanity dives in this quest for knowledge, the more these rigid faith based religions will find themselves at odds with ‘science’ while Hindus will simply glide through it as second nature. The most obvious reason why this is happening is, without mincing words, because the metaphysical hypothesis of the Abrahamic faiths about how the universe operates is completely flawed. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The concepts enshrined under Abrahamic religions were less about elevating the believer’s spiritual understanding and more about being means of political organization aimed towards feudal imperialism. So, the more truth that gets revealed to the collective human race, the more uncomfortable Abrahamics (and crypto-Abrahamic cults like Marxists) will become and you will see more of these religion vs science debates coming out from these groups.
Even the Hindu concept of ‘अहं ब्रह्म अस्मिति’ is actually a constellation of Mandelbrot sets arranged in a particular mathematical formula. Check this fractal, and the fractal constellation below it, is what we call Shiva.
So the claims about Hinduism being a scientific religion isn’t exactly a vague one. The proportions and ratios that our idols, temples, carvings and various other things use are actually consistent with the Golden Ratio (Fibonacci)
The Shri Yantra is based on the Golden Ratio:
People forget that when the Christian west was busy claiming that the earth was flat, we had always been calling it Bhigol, भूगोल, which is a compound word for गोल भूमि (round earth), since eons. Our sages had presented coherent mathematical calculations about the solar system but unfortunately our definition of a ‘scientist’ is so narrow (coat-jacket wearing, usually German Christian) that this doesn’t even register in our brain while debating this issue and we dive into the debate believing the faulty Abrahamic premise that these two sides are not only separate but contradictory, although conventional Hindu wisdom has always said otherwise. Leave alone knowing all the scientific advances made by Hindu sages, but had our people known even this anecdotal trivia, they could have used that in the ‘science versus religion’ debates to drive home the point that Hinduism and science have never been at odds with each other. It is not an ‘either this or that’ issue for Hindus.
Take another example, the names of elements in the Periodic Table have Sanskrit etymology.
Sanskrit and Mendeleevs Periodic Table
Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn in our favour as is evident from the upswing for Hindu ideas. They might not appear to be leading to an immediate conversion of the listener to Hinduism, but, all I can say is that the number of listeners is growing. Indic concepts like Yog, Karma, Pundit have become a natural mainstay of western discourse without any external stimulation or promotion. Although, there is this debate on Hindu ideas and philosophy getting digested by Christian west but reality is much more nuanced than that. If something is the truth, it ultimately spreads, one way or another, with one name or another, without having to have dedicated evangelists on your payroll for marketing purposes.
Take the case of the propagation of Hindu ideas through the movies like Avatar, Life Of Pi. The connotations are hard to miss.
Cameron calls the connection a “subconscious” reference: “I have just loved … the mythology, the entire Hindu pantheon, seems so rich and vivid.” He continued, “I didn’t want to reference the Hindu religion so closely, but the subconscious association was interesting, and I hope I haven’t offended anyone in doing so.”[13] He has stated that he was familiar with a lot of beliefs of the Hindu religion and found it “quite fascinating”.
“What is an Avatar anyway?” James Cameron replied, “It’s an nincarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human’s intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body.”
Explaining the choice of the color blue for the Na’vi, Cameron said “I just like blue. It’s a good color … plus, there’s a connection to the Hindu deities, which I like conceptually.”
Also, take for example the latest movie on Ramanujam, The Man who knew Infinity, again made in Hollywood. They have courteously shown him worshipping Hindu God, an idol (notwithstanding popular cultural touchiness about idolatry) engaged in traditional Puja. Ramanujam is shown explicitly crediting his mathematical genius to his local deity, which is more than enough for a movie that was not sponsored by Hindus. The director had the option to not show it at all, in the classic western fashion, and could have simply redacted those aspects and presented Ramanujam as a secular mathematician, denying him his Hindu identity. Instead, he was shown in his true Hindu form, someone who faced the intolerance of the then contemporary Christian scientists.
Fact of the matter is- if Hindus don’t take ownership of their own legends and tell their stories to the world then someone else will pick them up and narrate with a distortion or claim them as their own. Whether Hindus do it consciously or not, Dharmic ideas will spread and make the global grip of the Abrahamic narrative a little less rigid. And religion vs science debates just provide that right ammo to further expose the disconnect of Abrahamic cults from nature. The inherent contradictions in these religions are sitting there to be exploited, the only question is- will Hindus finally wake up and expose them for the betterment of the world.
Patriarchy has become one of the most common buzzwords used by the feminists to bash anyone they don’t agree with and specially the right wing Hindus in India, even though the latter claim to be rationalists. But does patriarchy really deserve the hate it gets from the feminists? An honest look at history through a neutral lens would tell a different story. Patriarchy is not an evil system designed to exploit women, but it was a system which helped human society build great civilisations.
All civilizations which rose up and became great in history were grounded in patriarchy. So, if one looks at it from an evolutionary point of view, the debate is already settled in favour of patriarchy. It is no coincidence that there is no matriarchal society in the world other than in feminist fiction. Amazons don’t exist in real life because it is impossible for such a society to compete with the patriarchal society. To understand the reason why patriarchy is so ubiquitous across the world and civilisations, one has to look at basic human behaviour and diversity.
Even though feminists claim otherwise, humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Men tend to have stronger muscle mass, stronger body, better spacial orientation and are better suited to the role of soldiers and roles which require hard work and physical effort like toiling under the sun and farming while women have a weaker body and are better at providing care to the young and old. And unlike men, women have the unique ability to give birth to children. No matter how hard feminists and their libtard Hindu cousins try, men can never give birth to children.
This unique place of women to give birth to children made them very valuable to the society and hence they were kept protected under the house and men were left to die fighting for them against the invading barbarians in the post nomad hunter-gatherer society. This was also the reason men were made responsible for working and earning bread because unlike the easy lazy life of modern day, earning bread in those early times meant toiling under the burning sun for several hours. Given the choice between toiling under sun for several hours or taking care of a child at home, the safer choice for women was more than obvious for human ancestors.
Another reason why women were protected under patriarchal society was because of the high mortality rate of then societies. Unlike the present day with massive improvement in health and sanitation, stone age and medieval societies had a poor health infrastructure and hence suffered massive infant mortality problems. On average, only 2-3 children of 8-10 children born to a woman survived. So the only way for the society to even survive and replace themselves was by having enough children. Also, since the old societies barely had anything left over after they had consumed themselves, there was no welfare state back then to take care of the old people. So the only way for social stability and security was to have as many children as possible. If the women had been allowed to work and die in farms and armies like men did, it would have ruined the demographics of their societies beyond sustenance, much like how feminist societies like Germany and Sweden have ruined themselves today with their fertility rate way below replacement level. Is it any wonder that almost all religions of the world revered women for their capability to bear children?
Unsurprisingly feminists and their libtard Hindu cousins also have no problem making it out as if men had all the privileges of the society and had an easy life at the expense of women, who were supposedly made into slaves. However nothing can be farther from the truth. While men did have the privileges like being allowed to go out and serve in the army, it came at the cost of losing their lives. The whole feminist narrative of women being the victims of patriarchy is based on cherry picking the examples of women being relegated to home and comparing it with modern day comforts and asserting that patriarchy was harsh to women because it did not allow women to work. This is patently wrong for two reasons. First, the most important reason being that the ancient times were harsh on everyone, i.e. both men and women, and home was the safest place for a woman at the time to work from. Compare the difficulty of staying home and taking care of children with the toil men had to go through under the sun to bring food to the table. There were no tractors and bulldozers at the time to do the hard work and muscle power was the prime energy source for work. Secondly, women weren’t not allowed to work, at least not in the areas were they were not threatened by barbarians/enemy. The fact of the matter is, unlike the “me me me” modern day feminists and their libtard cousins, women of that time did what was best in their capacity to help their family which at times included working for the family in the family fields. It was not uncommon that women worked in pounding the rice, harvesting of paddy, tea plantations etc in India and do it even today in most of the rural areas to help their families’ survival. So this whole notion that women were oppressed inside the kitchen from start to finish, at least in Indian context is completely false. This is the reason that the “me me me” narcissism of urban feminists has no takers among the rural women and the more intelligent Indian women?
All that Indian feminists are doing is projecting the oppression of women in Islamic/Christian societies and projecting it on the Hindu society and history, being the self hating oikophobic cultural Marxists they are. Ironically enough, they have no problem claiming that Muhammad, who had multiple wives and a 6 year old wife when he was 54 and advocated taking sex slaves among captured populations as a feminist icon. Perhaps it is not so ironic since the goal of the feminists is to make life miserable for all women that they protect the worst misogynistic religion out there i.e. Islam without any shame. Not surprisingly, a lot of feminists convert from vile feminism to Islam after doing mental gymnastics in trying to defend terms like Muslim feminist.
It is even more sad that the sacrifices men made for protecting their children and families by dying in the armies and toiling in the sun is brushed off as privilege by the feminists. They often cite that women were not independent from their men and hence were oppressed but this is again disingenuous as men did not have the same independence either. The truth is, men had different set of privileges to women in the society and the privileges were not unique to men. Women don’t have the same privilege as men in that they weren’t allowed to hold administrative posts. But then again, men never had the privilege to opt out of work and stay at home and eat out of their wife’s hard work either. Such a man was usually seen as a coward and and looked down upon by the society. Also, men were expected to give up their lives in defence of the the society and country and home which women were exempted from. No surprise that whenever there was a calamity, kids and women were the first one to be saved. According to post modern analysis, feminists usually refute it by saying that women were treated at par with property and hence given this special treatment under distress. But seriously, who in their right mind would think of saving their house and car when hunted down by a violent mob or army? It goes completely against the spirit of devotion and love that human ancestors had for their offspring and women-folk, something which the rabid feminists are more than happy to ignore. But in any case privileges were not a black and white issue as the Marxists and their derivatives, feminists try to hammer into young brains today.
If one goes to the rural and poor sections of India, it would not be that uncommon to see women working their backs off to support their families. They usually work multiple jobs to support their family, along with their rickshaw pulling or manual labour husbands to improve their own and their children lives. Has any of them come and complained that life is unfair only for them and not for their husbands like the city feminists of upper middle class and middle class parrot day in and day out? Compare these women who face real hardships, but for whom men would not mind to sacrifice their lives or die, with the urban feminazis, who faced no problems while growing up on their father’s money but claim victimhood because they can’t sleep around or the now famous “house wife job is the most difficult job in the world” whiners of middle class, who claim oppression for doing their own job of taking care of their own house, while their husbands are busy busting their backs, on jobs they usually don’t like, for brining food, clothes and wealth to their wives and children. While one cannot downplay the sacrifices housewives do for their families, the propaganda that only house wives sacrifice for their families and not their husbands creates a toxic atmosphere for the families. How long do you think a family, where there is constant victimisation of one or the other partner instead of appreciation for each other’s sacrifices, would last?
Also, by invoking this highly divisive victimisation of a single gender role vs the other, they turn the problems faced by women into a gender war by disingenuously avoiding the mentioning of the sacrifices made by men and their problems. This is of course very unhealthy for the society as a whole, including its women by blowing up the family structures. Can anyone with a right mind claim that no fault divorce culture of the west, which has created 50% single mothers and lonely cat ladies with massive depression in the west, is good for women? They leave no stone unturned to convert the once glorious and most feminine and natural act of giving birth to children, which brought so much joy, love and fulfilment into an unwanted and thankless “job”. Instead they wish to turn women into boring, mundane, mechanical corporate slaves addicted to depression pills and cats like the feminist women of the west. All of these feminists need to ask themselves- is it also due to patriarchy that women are blessed by nature to have the capability to bear children? Well, why wouldn’t the feminists want to demonize pregnancy and childbirth, after all, they wish to turn all women into men and destroy the femininity of women.
When cornered by logic, Indian feminists also pull out some standard social problems prevalent mostly in pre-independence India to beat down Hindus into submission and guilt. Most of these problems which the feminists claim to be misogynistic are not actually a direct result of women hating or misogyny in Hinduism but rather attempts at trying to protect women from the harsh realities at different points of time in history. Take the instance of Sati. It was certainly a vile practice, but it was done to protect Hindu women from being raped by Muslims and taken as sex slaves after their husbands’ death, a regular practice justified under Quran. Women at that time preferred honourable death to the life of a slave, unlike the western feminists who are more than happy to invite hordes of barbarians in their countries today under the pretext of multiculturalism. Thus many took their own life by jumping into fire instead of giving the Muslim invaders a chance to enslave them. Is it any wonder that the places where Sati was most prevalent were also the areas where the Muslim atrocities were maximum like Bengal and north India and was practically not heard off in Tamil Nadu and South India? And although British banned it finally but it was already non-existent in many northern kingdoms and many Hindus were already trying to reform it.
Or take the example of child marriage. Feminists claim that this is a specific case of misogyny even though this was a practice which affected both boys and girls. The married couples were usually both children and was not an issue of misogyny as the Indian feminists try to portray it. In fact, even this was a result of Muslims fetish for young virgin girls who did not lose any chance to marry them if given a chance. This forced Hindus to save their daughters by marrying them off at a younger age so as to dent the virginity fetish of Islamic hordes. Ironically enough, but not so surprisingly, the same feminists who claim Ram to be a misogynist for testing Sita under pressure of the then society, don’t forget to give feminist halal certificate for a 54 year old man marrying and consummating a 9 year old child.
Is it any wonder that they call Lord Ram, the ideal husband a misogynist while giving the mass murderer a tag of feminist icon? Lord Ram, the ideal husband who had to part with his one and only wife, Mother Sita, under the then prevalent rules of society is the favourite punching bag for all Indian feminists. Did Lord Ram suffer any less than Mother Sita in trying to uphold the laws of the then society given that he was the king or you think patriarchy gave him pain relief against any emotional suffering? Another example, look at how they bash Rakshabandhan, a festival which signifies the brother-sister relationship of men and women while keeping quiet or paying lip service to forced Burqa of Muslim women by trying to prove it as an empowering practise?
But why do feminists rant so much about patriarchy, even though it is pretty obvious that patriarchy is something of a natural order to get the maximum result out of both men and women? Feminism is just an ideological derivative of Marxism and is a part of Cultural Marxism, whose foundations were laid down in the Frankfurt school of economics and philosophy, which propounds an ideology of self-hatred, majority hatred and massive victimhood complex among varying groups based on their identity. According to their philosophy, if a system of society is operated by the majority, in Indian case which means Hindus, then such a system should be bashed as if it is bad to women and society whether or not such a system is good or bad for the happiness and prosperity of everyone. All they care about is the destruction of the culture and they market that destruction as liberation of women in the society in this case of feminism.
Sadly Indian feminists are more than happy to import a failed ideology called feminism into India. Is it any wonder that as soon as the west adopted their “me me me” man hating feminism, the happiness levels of their women have gone down drastically because men do not want to be a part of their life any more thanks to feminists successfully brainwashing women into believing that prices of paper money makes them happier than having children?
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Decreasing women happiness: Stevenson and Wolfers, 2009
The figures from the above paper clearly show a decrease in female happiness and specially the increasing gap between female and male happiness. The post-feminism generation in 2005 is much less happier than the generation of women in 1975. This paper also throws some light on what might have caused it which is shown in the figure below. While male trend has been stagnant for most questions, one can clearly see that females are unhappy about not getting enough time to spend with themselves.
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Source: Stevenson and Wolfers, 2009
In essence, feminists don’t care about women and their happiness. All they care about is their ideology without caring for societal breakdown. Since patriarchy provides a massive source of stability to the society, they hate patriarchy and want to burn it. Hindus with common sense should overcome this blind belief in feminist rhetoric and decide objectively if patriarchy is indeed evil as it is made out to be by the feminists and their media coolies. The cost of societal breakdown is just too huge for them to ignore. Sadly, this view is now gaining ground among de-racinated Indian men, who are increasingly falling for western feminism and do not want to give credit and support to their wives who choose well-being of their children over becoming corporate slaves.
Hinduism perhaps is always better lived first, and then understood, like any path of wisdom and spirit. Hinduism is often described as a way of life rather than a religion perhaps, for that reason. We do not begin with a theory or doctrine that we then try to bend the world to conform to. We are, one might say ‘spiritual anarchists’. We are ever evolving, we are ever free…….in our philosophy we have no Others, no reviled category for non-believers. We can be atheists, and Hindu. We can be monotheists and polytheists. But in all our freedom, we do, still have a sense of YOU, Alone, around which we have created all our philosophy, culture, art, science, and indeed civilization too.
Juluri, Rearming Hinduism. Kindle edition
Last summer I read a book that neatly organizes what I have been feeling for over two decades, ever since I left India. Since I grew up in India, as a Hindu, a very middle class, grandchild of Punjabi refugees, I heard more stories about India’s partition and its emotional, economic and social impact, than praising one religion over another. I also never heard a word against Islam in my house – instead I was told that at the time of the partition, while there was much bloodshed, there were also people who risked their life to help their friends, even when India’s division had been rendered enemies. I also heard that a relative of my grandfather’s was left behind during the partition, when he came to visit after two decades, that he had converted to Islam. The story was told as a matter-of-fact with any no malice. Growing up, I myself had Muslim friends and we frequented each other’s homes like family members. But I was asked to name my religion for the first time when I left India. I was also divided into a ‘race’ which many forms designed in the US, often used to gather demographic data, could not clearly identify (Asian vs. Indian).
My first experience of witnessing how Hindus were much more open and respectful of different faiths came when during my first year outside of India, at a prayer held at my house, I offered the ‘puja thali’ to all those present, among who some who were not Hindus. I did it, as a part of courtesy to make it all-inclusive, because for Hindus, there is no proselytization. But the young American woman, who I assumed would be more open, since it is (wrongly) assumed that the west is more open than the east, refused to touch the thali. I understood and respected her decision, as we are taught in Hindu households, even though I had bowed in/to Churches, Mosques and countless Gurudwaras. To her credit, years after the incident, she admitted that she wished that she had engaged in that ritual. What was confusing was that alcohol parties, sporting one night stands, even dabbling in drug abuse was considered a part of growing up, even for the church goers, usually labelled, ‘getting it out of your system’. But, the fact remains that while there is religion, in the west, a degenerate behaviour both sexual and social is considered a part of ‘becoming an adult’. Does that not happen in dharmic countries? Especially since western way of life has been promoted as the universal way of life? Sure, but in a dharmic concept what we have acted on or even thought about cannot be erased by repenting. There is a clear understanding that every thought leaves an impression on our minds, which affects our future decision-making, and as a corollary others around us. For me such self-destructive habits are not against religion, but against dharma—all that upholds a healthy society. To avoid any anti-social, self-destructive activities, including indiscriminate physical intimacy, for us Hindus was not religious but cultural, and accepted social behaviour. One simple word explained it all—DHARMA. Engaging in those activities would destabilize a society by weakening the will power of the young, so we were all self-disciplined, self-regulated. That ideology was so strongly embedded in the Indian psyche that it was accepted as a cultural norm, across all religions in India, even those that believed that the slate of previous deeds could be erased by, repenting and surrendering to God.
Later, came a series of conversations where I was subtly called an idolater. Since, I was not opposed to attending churches and listening to sermons, I often tuned into television sermons, even attended some Sunday sermons in churches with friends. There was always an emphasis on exclusivity of both Christianity and the Church. Being open minded I even wrote articles about finding similarities between Jesus as a Shepherd and Krishna as a Cowherd. In a multi-media class I photo-shopped Krishna as a silent witness to the birth of Jesus. For I had grown up on stories that Jesus was a recent incarnation of Vishnu—again an indication of openness and inclusivity of the Hindu tradition.
But over the last several years I noticed that the campaign for maligning Hinduism has been getting stronger and meticulous, even as it is disguised under the idea of freedom and equality. There was little discussion of Hinduism as the most secular of faiths, since it celebrates both the believers and the non-believers, allows worshipping the divine in all forms, or without a form. Instead, in my encounter all I heard about Hinduism was that it was superstitious, and discriminatory. No links were made between Hinduism in secular fabric of India, or how Hinduism has contributed to the world through yoga, meditation, Ayurveda and mathematics. Instead, some televangelists, in the US, directly went on to say on Diwali, ‘India still lives in the dark, because they have not seen the light of Jesus.’ In 1999, the then Pope in his visit to India stated, ‘I hope Christianity takes root in India like it did in Latin America’, on the day of Diwali—the most sacred of holidays for Hindus. Other than being plain derogatory towards the oldest surviving civilization, it was a speech of aggression.
Two years ago, on the streets of Dublin, I was stopped by a man holding a placard that said, ‘Jesus Loves You!’
‘May I talk to you? He asked in his American accent. I nodded.
He was a kind looking, middle-aged man.
‘Have you felt the presence of Jesus today?’ He started.
Having been a student in the US, I was very familiar with the talk. ‘I know what you are going to say, but I am not the person.’
‘What religion are you?
‘Don’t know what to say, because I have been known to say that I don’t really believe in God. I guess I grew up in a system that does not excommunicate you for saying that, so it works.’
‘Where are you from?’ Since it is hard today for many of us to be identified by the way we look, talk or dress, it’s a question that I am often asked.
‘Oh, well, I grew up in India…but…’
Before I could finish, he said, ‘You must be a Hindu’
Since I was in a rush, I nodded.
‘But Hinduism is really not a religion, I mean it is many religions in one, it is not really one religion….’
Again, all this sounded familiar, and I had gotten in debates and arguments many times before. ‘Look, I have to rush, but if I find the time before I leave, we can chat over tea about your misinformation.’ I chuckled.
‘I’ll pay for the tea’ he said. I add this part here, to acknowledge that when these incidents happen, I acknowledge their humanity and their desire to be kind, no matter how driven by proselytizing.
He also told me that his son-in-law was in India working with a mission, ‘bringing equality in rural areas, and doing the work of God’
As I walked away, I wondered, what made him the authority on a religion that defines itself as Sanatana –without beginning and end. A life-philosophy that has survived the onslaught from religions of the book, communism and colonization for over a millennia! A life-philosophy that considers every grain of sand divine! A thought process that prescribes Karma Yoga, that can be the best anti-corruption tool, as one of the highest philosophies for our modern times.
Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
‘To work you have the right, not to the fruits thereof!’
Who made this man the authority to say that Hinduism is not a religion?
If this seems not enough evidence for the prevailing Hinduphobia, then here is another story. At one of the leading universities in the US, there is an organization, where nice and kind people arrange cheap tours around the US and sometimes as far as Canada and Mexico for foreign students. Sounds friendly and hospitable right? Well, they don’t tell you that often part of the package is ‘staying with a Christian family’ and attending Sunday church sermon. Many of these families are involved in going to ‘heathen countries’, especially India, which remains one of rare countries of unbroken civilization from 10,000 years ago. Still not harmful enough? Since only the word of ‘God’’ is being spread? Well, they actually have pamphlets about all ‘other faiths’ in their office. And the one on Hinduism states that ‘Hindus were colonized by the British, so they have an inferiority complex. And it is very important to uphold ultimate superiority of Jesus when engaging them.’ (paraphrased).
How do these views on Hinduism and as a consequence of India, affect understanding of India as a nation?
Shortly before 9/11, while lamenting US media’s narrow vision in covering democracies around the world, including their neighbouring Canada, when I mentioned barely any coverage was given to the world’s largest democracy, a student responded, ‘With all due respect, we are a republic and won our freedom, but India was ‘given’ its freedom by the British’.
Disturbed by the response, I devoted the rest of the lecture to Hinduism inspired, and Gandhi driven concept of ‘satyagraph’ on the civil rights movement in the US. A Hindu concept, satyagragh means ‘holding on to the truth’, which combined with ‘ahimsa’ remains till this day the most emulated method of civil disobedience and demanding human rights by such noted activists as Martin Luther King, Mandela and movements such Occupy Wall Street.
And to give an idea about the reality of Hinduism, here is another story of relevance, from when I was teaching. A Croatian-Canadian colleague who taught biology asked me very sincerely, ‘What is the Indian position on evolution?’
After looking at my knitted brows she explained, ‘Because when I teach, Indian students are ones without any issue with the idea of evolution.’
‘Oh yeah, that might be due to Hinduism. We have no issues with contradictory statements, the world is filled with those.’ I shrugged ‘both arguments are up for empirical testing’.
So, in that context of experiencing Abrahamic religions, struggling in my heart and conviction of ‘all religions being equal’ as we were taught, facing the reality that Abrahamic religions were not taught to see all religions as equal, living outside of India and constantly being treated as ‘those strange cow worshippers who are good at computers and math’, deeply respecting all faiths, but knowing fully well that there is an undercurrent of discrimination or else why would missionaries run to Asia, especially India to convert, why would new converts to Abrahamic religions refuse walking into a temple, being surprised and humbled by how in a Hindu dominated country we always celebrated Christmas with great pomp and show in every school and even had small Christmas trees at home, and being pained by the memories of those who had no qualms about getting drunk, but could not think of touching a ‘puja thali’ because it went against their faith—Rearming Hinduism, came as a saviour, as a tool for me to understand my own predicament, my own frustration and equipped me with a new pride at being a Hindu.
Rearming Hinduism reminds us of that sensibility that we Hindus have inherited– that wisdom whose worldview is vast enough to accommodate conflicting viewpoints. Because it is that openness, that Hinduism has upheld which allows for gathering information on topics that we may disagree with, contemplate on that information and turn it into knowledge (even if that comes in the form of neti –neti—‘not this, not this’—the process of elimination) and then move on to turn it into an applied form of wisdom in every aspect of life, from rituals for the living and those for the dead, for our regard towards nature or care towards animals, for the love of poetry and pleasure and veneration of renouncing the world.
Rearming Hinduism empowers us to question those whose purpose is to denigrate a philosophy merely because they cannot match or understand its depth and breadth. But more importantly Rearming Hinduism asks Hindus to reclaim their love for the murtis (not idols, as wrongly claimed), puja (not prayer as wrongly equated) and faith in experience of dhyaan (not just meditation) and mantras (Thank God, this one has not been mistranslated even though misunderstood).
Rearming Hinduism asks Hindus to wake up to the wisdom of their tradition that has on many an occasion lit the world with concepts such as Ahimsa (non-violence), and Tvemeva (only you, only one). It further
Authored by Vamsee Juluri, a Professor of Media Studies at University of San Francisco, the book comes at an apt time when Hinduphobia runs high, and unlike the pre-liberalization India, our popular media, often funded by foreign media conglomerates, has abandoned us. The result is a crisis that has not been defined yet, but is evident in a desecration of temples in the US, upholding Nazi rather than Hindu meaning of Swastika, and blaming all ills of contemporary Indian society on Hinduism rather than colonialism, and bland globalization that promotes values without any reference to the local and the national.
Although directed towards (young) Hindus, the book is clearly a response to the controversy that has surrounded Hindu studies in American academy. Juluri responds to Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History, point by point.
The book is divided into two main sections other than a preface, which reminds the readers of antiquity of Indian civilization, and a conclusion, which gently points at the potential place of India in the world affairs. The first section of the book defines the myths and misconceptions of academia about Hinduism and the second provides an insider’s view.
Each chapter provides a practitioner’s view of Hinduism to main arguments posited by Doniger, even when it establishes that Hindus are enraged at how they have been portrayed by some established scholars of the academy. Juluri argues that a book titled, ‘The Hindus’ not only says very little about how Hindus view the divine, but also distorts Hindus’ understanding of nature. It is as if the book tries to lay down the foundation to denigrate Hinduism.
‘It (the book) conforms to their own preconceived idea that nature is savagely violent, and so, naturally our Vedic ancestors too. –It is set up fundamentally so as to bend the narrative to the rest of Hindu history too, to make it seem like what they think it is rather than what it is really is. This simply is the official story of how Hinduism ‘progresses’ in their view: In the beginning, Hinduism was nothing more than primitive superstitious nature worship, those Vedic cowboys saw fire and called it Agni They feared lightning called it Indra! Fearful of things they did not understand, lacking mathematics, foresight, scientific acumen, and a weather app, perhaps, they sought to control what we know now to be simple natural phenomenon through quaint customs like Vedic chanting and human sacrifice.’
Juluri, Kindle edition. Part I, 5, The Myth of Hindu History
Juluri points out that espousing the now defunct Aryan theory, Doniger’s book speaks from a colonizer’s perspective who wants to undermine a tradition, by labelling it violent until saved by non-natives.
‘Instead of acknowledging the common, persistent Hindu sensibility of God as one, but also known through many names and forms, they try to break up the internal coherence of Hindu thought through a series of funny steps. In what might be better described as the ‘first denial’ rather than the ‘first alliance’ we are told by Doniger that the Vedas are pretty much stories of social oppression coded as gods and ogres. The feeling of devotion, which is what we associated with sacred stories, presumably does not come till the ‘third alliance’, centuries later. We have to wonder then if the people who chanted the same words that inspire devotion in us now felt something radically different simply because the experts say so. Or perhaps this is once again the civilizing fantasy at work; If Hinduism, like any religion at its best, seems to be about love, then it must be a recent development, a gift of redemption from more advanced civilizations.’
Juluri, Kindle edition. Part I, 5, The Myth of Hindu History
The book’s main argument is that scholarship is welcome but not vilification, discourse is encouraged but there must be an attempt to understand how we feel as Hindus. We cannot be asked to suppress our voice in the name of secularism- that only makes us angry, because—we re the ones who invented secularism.
Blaming Christians and Muslims will not save us either. In fact, it is counterproductive and un-Hindu. It is true we maybe fed up with pseudo-secularism. But we cannot forget that we invented secularism in the sense of respect for all faiths long before other lands had even figured out such a thing was possible.
——–
‘I do not become any less Hindu for offering my pranam to Yeshu or his mother, or Allah, or Yahweh or Guru or Buddha or Mahavira. It is our sense of devotion, our cultivated sensibility about what makes a god a god that makes us who we are.’ Juluri, Rearming Hinduism. Kindle edition
The book spoke to me, (as I am sure it will to others like me) who has felt isolated in today’s media driven world of half-baked secularism where contemporary global-mythology is based in non-dharma principles of individual at the expense of collective, secular (divorced from the sacred), at the expense of pluralism immersed in the sacred, and depicting lip-smacking violence as a way of promoting peace.
Points raised by Juluri range from the very title of the book, ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ to misunderstanding of an Indian connection to the monsoons. If most of the bookstores on Hinduism are filled with voices from Doniger and her disciples, then how is a yet another book by her an alternative voice?
Juluri points the reader towards the contradictions within academic theories related to Hinduism—namely there is no such thing as Hinduism, however,
Hinduism is responsible for the caste system; in fact the two are identical. Hinduism is responsible for patriarchy and oppression of women. In fact, Hinduism was full of violence until Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity somehow civilized it. And before we forget, Hinduism isn’t an Indian religion. The Hindus were invaders of India.
Juluri, Rearming Hinduism. Kindle edition, Part I, 1. The Academic Mahasabha
To Doniger’s claims that Hindus associated monsoons with violence Juluri very eloquently asks the reader to see how monsoons have been depicted in the most popular mythology of India—its film industry. Were it something that Indians feared, would we be singing, dancing and romancing in the rains?
The author addresses many misconceptions that the world holds about Hinduism both because of academic untruths and media’s sometimes slight and many times skewed portrayal, and provides scenarios of how a Hindu sees him/herself.
Though written with respect for all, and with an intention of initiating a dialogue among the Hindus themselves, Juluri does not shy away from providing the possible western origins of this ‘Alternative History’, which makes for several passages that can make the reader smile, even as they make a point that has been overlooked so far. Each one of those arguments can be turned into a book.
After all, when Hindu phobia is conquered, and the academy resumes its pursuit of truth, historians might find one day that it wasn’t just the zero and numerals that went West from ancient India, but its many humanistic ideals too. It is surely more than a coincidence that they got over their dark ages and had their Enlightenment just around the time they met us, but we don’t hear much about that at all.
Juluri, Rearming Hinduism. Kindle edition
Rearming Hinduism is free from academic jargon as it is written to awaken pride in Hindus both academic and non-academic which has laid dormant for too long. Juluri has clarified in interviews that the ‘arming’ in this case has to be done of the intellect and the conviction. It is important to mention that in times when every act of taking pride in being a Hindu is associated with being a fundamentalist. The cover of the book is an image of Narsingha with a broken arm from, Hampi. It is, as the book roars, time for Hindus to write their own story.
Although written in simple, almost poetic language, to appeal to the lovers of Hinduism, the book can be used as a supplemental text for Hindu studies, inter-cultural communication and even international business. I personally think that the book will make an excellent gift for young Hindu children entering college. The book would re-arm the young adults as they leave home (or country) and enter a world that is known to be secular but is driven by the religion of profit and self-interest. It is important that the young and old Hindus alike start to assert their identity, even as we are being blamed for ills that we inherited from colonizers and invaders. Juluri makes it clear that the criticism of Hinduism comes under the guise of Hindu extremism –which is a mere tactic to make the practising Hindus feel ashamed.
The attack on Hinduism today comes not from those who openly differ with us on religious grounds, but to a very generous device; they said they are not against Hinduism, but only against Hindu extremism. Most Hindus are against extremism too, and would have probably been happy to agree with them, if only that position had been really against extremism alone. But virtually every book, article, and argument made by the world’s supposedly leading, important, and celebrated intellectuals today says the same thing: in the name of criticizing Hindu extremism, they salvage the entirety of our religion. If they’re not challenged intellectually and culturally, soon our names, gods, goddesses festivals, sacred Scriptures, virtually everything that makes us who we are will be defined by them is something that it is not.
Maybe a day will come when he will feel ashamed to bear our own names again, our worship are all gods and goddesses, freely. Maybe a day will come when Shiva’s trident can be easily interpreted as a weapon, or a Lingabhishekham at temples banned as a primitive act of sexual worship. Maybe a day will even come when even our breathing is deemed oppressive because it is saying ‘soham’ invoking the Swan of Goddess Saraswathi’ the last example might seem extreme, but the fact is that we almost lost a word like ‘Sanksriti’. We might lose a lot more too, if we do not recognize this.’
Juluri, Rearming Hinduism. Kindle edition
And the language of this war against Hindusim, Juluri points out, ‘is cloaked in the very language that guarantees us our rights today, that of freedom, equality, democracy and justice. It maintains one shrill, moribund position: if you are not with us, you are a fundamentalist’ (Juluri, 2014). In fact, any questioning of Hindu ideas, stories, festivals, and philosophy is labelled fundamentalism.
Reading the book was a relief, as if someone had underlined the reasons for my anger and frustration of the years. I often fluctuate between being in love with Hindu Gods and being an agnostic, but no one who does not understand or practice Hinduism should tell me how or what I feel when I bow my head to the Sun or a murti of Shiva.
When I finished the book I thought, if I were to meet anyone now who tells me that Hinduism is not a religion or without any coherence, or a religion of oppression, my very polite response would be, to start with a question ‘But who made you the authority?’ I would also declare proudly, ‘We are a living religion, –and we are growing¨.
And I would definitely, very eloquently recite the following sentence from the book—
Hinduism after all has never been about ‘us or them’, but only about us and them, and that ‘them’ includes not just people of other nations or religions, but also those living beings of different species too.
– The examples above are based on author’s personal experiences. Most of the quotes in the article are taken from Vamsee Juluri’s book Rearming Hinduism.
All civilizations in the world have been patriarchal, but none can be as loathing and dismissive towards women as Islam. It is then only possible with extreme mental gymnastics that one can even get the idea to compare other religions with Islam, stuck in the seventh century, when talking about the position of women in respective religions. The draping of women under a tablecloth called burqa should be more than enough for any sensible person to fold chips and devote an entire life to solving problems faced by women in Islam. But not if you are a cultural Marxist like Barkha Dutt, who has refined this art of mental gymnastics to bring Hindus into every discussion under the sky. Don’t be surprised if next time she links Manuwadi Hinduism with the disappearance of whales in the Pacific.
Sadly, this time on a panel discussion on women in Islam, she was slapped hard by Ayaan Hirsi Ali when she tried her usual gymnastics to divert attention from Islam by talking about misogyny in Hinduism. Here is the slap:
See the extreme contempt this sold-out brown nigger has for Hindu traditions. If one believes Barkha, then a ban on entry of women in a minuscule number of Hindu temples is equivalent to genital mutilation practised in half of the Islamic population. But in this panel discussion there were no takers for her shenanigans and she was quickly shot back down to earth when she tried to divert attention from Islam.
The fact of the matter is that even if India wholeheartedly converts to Christianity or Islam, as most Marxists in India want, they would strictly remain below white masters in the international hierarchy. This tight slap on Barkha should explain that there is no space for sold-outs like her in the world. She is just a useful pawn in the grand scheme of things for Western masters and any self-respecting person would treat her accordingly.
Respect is commanded. Hating yourself and your culture like cultural Marxists is not exactly the best way to get respect, as evidenced by this video, where Ayaan shows absolute contempt for this cultural Marxist. Maybe cultural Marxists should introspect whether being coolies without any self-respect is worth the brownie points they win from white masters.
