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Tag: Hindu

  • Hindus vs Marxist narrative: battle of survival for Hindus

    Hindus vs Marxist narrative: battle of survival for Hindus contextual illustration
    Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.

    The debate about derogatory representation of Hindu faith in Californian schools is making big news and has taken SM by storm. As usual, Hindus in India are up in arms and feeling hurt on how could those racist Americans treat Hindu civilization with such contempt. But it is not what the Americans teach in the US that is a problem — it is what the Hindus learn in India that is a problem, as it is creating a society disconnected from its roots.

    This makes us vulnerable on the world stage because we ourselves have failed to teach the right history to our generations. It’s not the superficial edits in California textbooks that threaten us. We are a nation of 1.3 billion and would hardly get affected by small events in the US. But what history do we teach our kids? It’s some Marxist mumbo-jumbo about how we got independence through non-violence in 1947 and everyone lived happily ever after. All real revolutionaries like Tilak, Bose and Savarkar who actually fought and won us our independence are shown as extremists. This is done with great foresight to intellectually disarm us. So Americans can do whatever they want in their country — it’s the American influence on Indian curriculum that should bother us. Unfortunately BJP hasn’t taken any steps to amend our faulty syllabus so whenever a foreign power tries to twist our history, it makes our people more vulnerable to subterfuge.

    Hindu groups always protest against foreign narrative, but they also have some blame to share because they have failed to come up with their own narrative. They just oppose what they think is wrong, while not spelling out what they think is right. Imagine, if the US as a nation and the evangelists as a religious group have so much tenacity to spend time and money and allot research scholars to create a narrative about India (which is suitable to them) then why weren’t we able to do it for ourselves even seven decades after independence? Those who don’t have a legitimate cause to research about India are going ahead with it and those who do are simply satisfied with signing online petitions and writing angry tweets. How come Russia, China, Saudi Arabia never face this problem which India so frequently faces? It has been in our cultural DNA to not document historic facts and weave them into a coherent narrative. We are happy with the “sabh chalta hai” attitude so someone else comes and messes it up. We all want to piggyback on Rajiv Malhotra now rather than building upon serious scholarships in other fields. We have been colonized once for the same reason, but we still didn’t learn anything.

    This is not just about the past — this complacency is a cultural trait that transcends a large portion of our history. And we are doing it even for our recent history. Compare the number of books, documentaries and movies that Hollywood made about World War II and the Holocaust. Now compare that to how many movies we made about the wars we fought and won after independence in 1948, 1965, 1971, 1999. It is in our nature to not document facts and to not propagate our own narrative. This is why foreigners take the liberty to do it for us, and when they do, they do it in a manner which suits their agenda. Why are we surprised?

    There’s still time. We should build a coherent narrative about civilizational nationalism — not the ‘unity in diversity’ platitude. Trash the nation-state narrative and build a civilizational narrative and include it in our school curriculum such that the historic narrative is not lost. India wasn’t born in 1947 — we are a civilization. The unity in diversity narrative implies that we are essentially different people who have come together in a confederation loosely bound by a political idea, and not by common civilizational values. By corollary this implies that if a certain group were to lose faith in this idea then they can walk out of the alliance any time — like in 1947. This introduces a fault line right in the core ‘Idea of India’ and makes us perpetually vulnerable to needling from hostile forces. These core facts should be added to the constitution itself and frozen in time so that no government can dare to fiddle with our syllabus in the future for political gains. Once this is done, we don’t have to worry about what foreign schools teach about us i.e. Bharat.

    Written by Navnit Kundu. Originally published April 6, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.

  • AOL-NGT feud: Economic libertarians will sell-out culture

    AOL-NGT feud: Economic libertarians will sell-out culture contextual illustration
    Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.

    The recent controversy on Art of Living event called World Culture Festival can be added to the bucket list of attempts to shower controversy on each and every Hindu event. It is a plain and simple case of media and leftist hitjob to challenge this event on environmental grounds when NGT stays quiet on grave environmental issues. The Yamuna bed was not only used to construct a big DTC bus depot during the last Commonwealth games but also hosts the Yamuna Bank metro station — not to forget the large number of illegal squatters on its floodplain. Given such huge transgressions, it is difficult to comprehend how a temporary event could have caused irreparable damage.

    A large section of Yamuna floodbank is captured by land sharks right under the nose of NGT, which finally woke up from slumber but it was too late and the damage was done. WCF like event is not planned in a day and must have requested permission much before the inauguration, so it is highly unlikely that environmental considerations were not scrutinised beforehand. Since the issue came into highlight right before its inauguration, it gives a clear indication of ill-will on the part of NGT.

    Also, given everything else being equal, finally NGT imposed a Rs. 5 crore environmental penalty. The question is — shouldn’t NGT have imposed this tax much before the event rather than use it as a stick to beat down Sri Sri? After all, neither AOL was building a permanent structure on the flood banks nor planning to stay there forever — unlike in the case of the DTC bus depot post Commonwealth games. The hypocrisy becomes even more intolerable after realising that for all practical purposes, Yamuna just represents a fancy drain now since Delhi hardly thinks twice before dumping its sewage into it. The real course of action should have been to levy an environmental tax on Art of Living depending on the cost to clean up the river post event.

    Having understood the ulterior motives behind this hitjob, it now brings us to understand the support of this event by the supposedly self-proclaimed RW in India. Most of them are actually economic libertarians without much regard for cultural Hindu nationalism. It is in controversies like WCF that the true affiliations of the economic RW come out. This became amply clear by reading a piece by R. Jagannathan in SwarajyaMag — the magazine which carries “Read India Right” on its logo.

    The crux of the argument presented by R. Jagannathan is as follows:

    The annual Haj, where millions of devout Muslims travel from all over the world to congregate in Mecca, is probably the single biggest cause of religion-induced damage in the world in an ecologically sensitive desert zone. Our Kumbh Melas, Ardh Kumbhs and various spiritual congregations in many temples and fairs too do enormous damage. For example, the Hindu ritual of cremating our dead on the banks of the Ganga and immersion of our ashes in various rivers and seas is another factor in this ecological crisis.

    Does this look any different from the leftists who raise the Dalit bogey while talking about any issue under the sky? Here Jagannathan also uses a similar template to mildly bash Hindu rituals by giving a small slap on the wrist of Hajj pilgrims in his first paragraph. This is not much different than PK putting up one or two offending scenes on Muslims and Christians while bashing Hindu rituals in the rest of the movie. By mentioning Muslims and Hajj, this piece too ticks the box to claim neutrality. It becomes amply clear later when the article says:

    It is time to show that same creativity now by converting our cremation and other ceremonies to symbolic events with limited human damage to our rivers and the air.

    It is highly non-scientific to blame cremation ashes as an environmental concern when most of the rivers are polluted by tanneries and other industries which dump massive chemicals into them, making them not only carcinogenic but also depleting precious oxygen content to kill all kinds of flora and fauna. All rivers in India are equally or more polluted than the Ganga, even those that do not have the same spiritual significance and hence no cremation dumping. It would have been sensible for him to ask for better checks and balances such as not dumping half-burned bodies into the river. But he took a typical liberal stand and demanded to change the whole rituals to suit the agenda of the new environmental fundamentalists. There is no reason to not believe that given human intelligence and efforts, the rituals cannot be done in an ecologically sensitive way. Sadly, the fact that rituals nurture a society is beyond the grasp of our self-proclaimed libertarians. The death of Hindu rituals will only mean the death of the civilization. This is very well known by the leftists and hence they carry out such hitjobs to kill the rituals to soften Hindus and de-racinate them — making them easy targets for western propaganda and evangelists. If you analyse carefully, it is the same underlying agenda which runs from the Jallikattu ban to the current controversy. Environmental fundamentalism is a new addition to the list of tricks being employed to kill rituals, and the economic RW is more than a willing accomplice in helping this agenda.

    So what should be the message of Hindu RW to R. Jagannathan and his friends? Thank you guys, we understand the damage done to India by the socialist economic policies of Congress and we like your economic prescriptions. But if there is a clash between economic libertarianism and culture, Hindus will stick to their cultural roots. Economic progress by cutting down the Dharmic roots will be too big a cost for modernity.

    The below picture from Adarsh Liberal perfectly sums up the leftist agenda to de-racinate Hindus — the question is should we now add R. Jagannathan to this list?

    An Adarsh Liberal Hindu Festivals Calendar
    — Adarsh Liberal (@AdarshLiberal), January 13, 2016
    Originally published March 10, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.

  • Why Hindus need to infiltrate mass media

    Editorial illustration for Why Hindus need to infiltrate mass media
    Editorial illustration for “Why Hindus need to infiltrate mass media”.

    One can charge Rajiv Gandhi with the usual stupidity and naivety that is now being associated with the Gandhi-Nehru family, but there is at least one action which should be credited to the then young Prime Minister of India. What did he do that now sets him apart from other Gandhi family members? It was not bringing computers to India as they would have arrived sooner or later. But it was the fact that he allowed screening of Ramayana on Doordarshan in 1987 to help propagate cultural values among Indians. Whether Rajiv Gandhi himself pioneered this Hindu revival is questionable given that his government first appeased Muslims in the Shah Bano case and only later turned to Hindu appeasement.

    But Rajiv Gandhi is not important for this article. What is rather important is to understand the role of mass media in defining cultural values. No amount of public education or newspapers had achieved what Ramayana and Mahabharata achieved through one hour telecast every week for a few years. It rekindled a new life in the Hindu soul that was devastated from the slavery of past centuries. Not only did BJP — a non-Muslim-appeasing party — ride to power on this new Hindu renaissance, but it also led to bringing down of Babri Masjid and changing the passive Hindu bania image for some time. It was very well reflected in the opposition by the leftists who were taken aback by the popularity of these serials. The reaction of the then Director General of Doordarshan, Bhaskar Ghose — a leftist — makes it amply clear:

    There was far too much ritual and not nearly enough story. He (Sagar) had used the worst extras he could get, because he was doing it on the cheap.

    — Bhaskar Ghose, then Director General of Doordarshan

    The leftists are masters at propaganda and know very well the importance of rituals in upholding cultural unity. Bhaskar Ghose — the father of Sagarika Ghose — tried every possible way to kill Ramayana halfway, but sadly for him the mass hysteria around Ramayana had grown out of control by then and was untameable by any official writ. The position of these epics in the Hindu psyche was further cemented by Mahabharat, which aired after Ramayana in 1988.

    But why are these events from three decades ago relevant today? They are relevant because even though we have seen the rise of social media, most thoughts are still seeded by the culture as depicted in mass media. The left understands this well and has its foot-soldiers placed in all the high echelons of power. The outrage against appointing Gajendra Chauhan as chairman of FTII (Film and Television Institute) should be seen under this light. Although his appointment like any other appointment can be debated, the high-decibel campaign that was unleashed on him can only be explained by the heartburn of career leftists.

    While Hindus are becoming increasingly assertive of their identity and the rise of Rajiv Malhotra and other scholars has given them the required intellectual firepower to support the Hindu cause, mass-media infiltration is going on at a snail’s pace. Intellectual discourse is very important but one can only disregard the influence of mass media at his own peril. Hindus had assertive scholars like Sitaram Goel and Arun Shourie even during the dark ages of early Congress rule, but Ramayana and Mahabharata played a much bigger role in awakening Hindus and building a consolidated Hindu voting bloc for the first time in India. Intellectual discussion will fail to realise its objectives unless it achieves active domination over mass media.

    The domination of popular culture is not only important from the point of achieving current political objectives but also to create a sense of cultural unity and prepare future leaders. Popular culture created by mass media is the stepping stone towards developing an ecosystem which will then generate the next generation of pro-Hindu intellectuals. The role of Amar Chitra Katha and Panchatantra stories has been paramount in helping many grown-up Hindus to rediscover their roots after being brainwashed by leftist school books for years. The closest current example of such an effort to capture young minds is the animated series Chota Bheem, whose character is partially lifted from Bheem of the Mahabharata. India has an abundant treasure trove of literature to dig into, but the only problem is that this potential for generating popular mass media has not yet been exploited. Also, unlike Abrahamic religions, Hinduism does not sell victimhood and has many positive stories to tell — many superheroes who would give Batman and Superman a run for their money.

    After having understood the benefits of infiltrating mass media, the only analysis that remains is to look at the current state of Hindu representation in mass media. While on the intellectual front one can boast about Rajiv Malhotra as one of the guiding forces, there are hardly any popular figures to recount on the mass media front. There are many right-leaning media personnel but most of them restrict themselves to economic libertarianism without much sympathy for Hindu identity. Zee News has finally started to push an alternate narrative on the news front but it is almost impossible to find pro-Hindu voices in the movie industry.

    Anupam Kher is making a lot of noise lately but he plays by the rules of the left and does not command the same fan following as the Khans. Given the complete dominance of the Khans in Bollywood for the last two decades, does it come as a surprise that Hindus are forced to gulp down the insults to Hindu icons as in PK? The chanting of pro-Azadi slogans in JNU is the manifestation of this loose control that Hindus have had over the Muslim-left dominated popular culture, as amply demonstrated through movies like Haider. Bollywood is often called the national movie industry — but doesn’t it shock you that it hardly brings out any movies that can build national image or cement cultural identity? The stories about our martyrs are on an ignore list while the industry keeps pumping out inane trash glorifying mafias. Also, it is impossible to ignore the demographic damage done by the Khans as they have more or less succeeded in portraying the harmless nice Muslim guy image in popular culture, making girls swoon over Muslim men and become susceptible to love jihad.

    So what is the way forward? Well, burning down theatres showing Haider or boycotting Dangal are only short-term measures. The real way forward is shown by S.S. Rajamouli through his epic Baahubali. There is no other recent movie which has portrayed Hinduism in such glory. Given how well it did on the Hindi box office despite being a Telugu movie clearly shows that people are fed up of watching old midgets sold as heroes by Bollywood. If Hindus need to mainstream their culture and make it cool, they need to get their hands dirty and churn out people of all artistic hues. They need more Rajamoulis as well as more Amish Tripathis. This movement which has been building up unconsciously for too long should be pursued at a much faster pace and given some covert state patronage. There is no reason to stop and get contented just by erasing the left agenda from school books. PM Modi — are you listening?