Tag: Hinduism

Are you a Hindu Atheist? God have mercy on you

With the rise of atheists in secular societies, an important question is: should atheists read theology?

If you are a knowledge seeker, but have intentionally shunted out reading of theology due to being an atheist, I would definitely recommend reviewing such a decision. I’ve seen voracious readers say, “I’ve read so many books, what’s next? There are no more good books in my wish list, but don’t recommend theology because I am an atheist.” Read it; you will thank me later. It is analogous to travelling the world to get more perspectives. Just like travelling to Vietnam doesn’t make you Vietnamese, reading theology does not make you religious. In fact, if you are into the study of patterns, you will like these concepts. It will definitely feel like taking the brain to the gym, and it will positively impact your performance in other walks of life.

I don’t believe in one “personal god”, so that makes me an atheist, but I still believe that the “idea of religion” is a worthy human pursuit. When humans encountered things that were deterministic, they put them in science books, and when they encountered something abstract and philosophical, they put it in theological books. Every civilization has tried to approach this question of existence in its own way and in that process they “figured out” something and penned down their thoughts in such a way that the benefits of that high philosophy could trickle down to the masses without having to do deep study, hence the regimented prayer timings and other ceremonies. Religion is a culture’s answer to the philosophical questions that man faces. It’s literally an encyclopedia written by our ancestors while trying to juggle with the nature of existence. In that sense, I would give some credit to every religion for attempting to explain it in its own way. In addition to the metaphysical aspects, the Abrahamic religions have a political aspect of materialistic self-preservation and propagation that makes these religions lethal towards other groups, unlike Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, which are pure theologies and have pure philosophy (Shruti) and separated political aspects, like in Chanakya Neeti and Manu Smriti. What makes Hinduism even better is that it is a crowdsourced repository of information which keeps getting edited with new data every time our civilization progresses.

I remember Subramanian Swamy saying Hindus congregate at festivals like Kumbh, but they don’t realize that the real benefit of congregation is to create a sense of unity and show the strength of our civilization, and whatever spiritual benefit you get is just a trickle-down effect. It’s not because the rivers, gods and temples emanate magic that you go there; you go there to represent yourself as a part of a large civilization. One for all and all for one.

Doval has said, “Old religion used to say, if you don’t believe in God, you are an atheist; new religion says, if you don’t believe in yourself, you are an atheist.” Understand the deeper meaning of this on a practical level. You are an individual, you have individual interests. You are also a part of a group and you have collective interests. The bigger the group, the stronger position it has in any negotiation, the stronger it is, the more dividends it yields for the group, and by proxy, the more dividends trickle down to you as an individual. Even if you are an atheist, your individual interests are intertwined with how well the group does. No matter how loudly you scream that you are an atheist, when you are walking in a Muslim locality, for them, you are just another kafir and you will be given the same treatment that is meted out to other Hindus. In that case, you don’t have a choice of stepping out. Now that you are sure that you will anyway be made to pay the price of being part of a group, then why not make sure you also gain the dividends of being a part of that group? The group becomes stronger when you are a part of it, and you become stronger when you are a part of the group; this might in fact reduce the chances of you facing attrition in the first place. Being an atheist is the worst bargain you can make for yourself. You get all the cons of being a kafir and no pros. No matter whether you are atheist or not, you have to foot the bill. If you are a practical atheist who believes in hard logic, then I hope you see how bad this logic of atheism is. When you say that you are an atheist, you aren’t really signing yourself out of the group, you are only signing out of the benefits of the group.

Even if you don’t want to go to temples and chant prayers, go to Kumbh, Akshardham, Jagannath Puri and witness your civilization alive and ticking. Don’t chant mantras but do read high philosophy. It will definitely make you a better person. Don’t confuse deterministic science with indeterminate philosophy. When existential crisis hits, even the best of scientists commit suicide. Both science and philosophy have a place in Hinduism. You need both to live a wholesome life. Atheism is for those Abrahamic religions which have a history of persecution of scientists by the Church and clergy. Hinduism never antagonized science; it has always assimilated it.

Image Source:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/thumbnails/atheism_big.png

November 29, 2016
Vigilantism of GauRakshaks- lies peddled by media

Every once in a while, cow protection and associated vigilantism makes news in the national media. It is not difficult to guess that any time Hindu ideals and beliefs are up on stake, the national media and so called leftist intelligentsia tries every text book trick to denigrate their traditions.

But all this drama, arguments and counter-arguments, is noise and makes it hard to focus on underlying reasons for vigilantism. To understand the real problem afflicting Bharat, one needs to go deeper and understand. India is a weak state which likes to legislate new laws every other day but which are difficult to enforce.

Lets talk about simple case of stealing. Have you ever tried to register a case with the police for normal theft? Police is usually disinclined to catch thieves and would hardly pay any attention to solve such crimes. So, what happens once in a while? Every once in a while people catch some thief red-handed and give a nice thrashing to make an example out of it. Is it civilized way of dealing with petty thieves? Probably not. What does it points towards? It points toward a weak state which loves to legislate but cannot enforce law.

With this information, now go back to the case of cow protection. Most states in India have cow protection laws which like other laws do not get enforced properly. Cow protection vigilantism is no good. But if the state does not enforce law, those who are emotionally involved will take some action given the state has itself enacted the law but does not want to enforce it.

Cow vigilantism is just another face of state failure. Better enforcement of cow protection should bring down cow vigilantism because people would not have to enforce cow protection themselves, and not increase vigilantism as claimed by the liars in the media.

And don’t forget that the usual suspects will try to divert the attention towards food habits and oppression of dalits and club them with Muslims, but that does not even lie at the heart of this matter. For now, cow protection is part of legislation and hence it is duty of the state to religiously enforce it. All concerned citizens should think about how to improve the public service delivery. Cow vigilantes signify a deeper malaise afflicting the Indian state.

Image Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/22/africa/mundari-tribe-cattle-photography/index.html

August 2, 2016
Casteism and Hinduism are like oil and water

Caste is like “Brahmastra” or nuclear weapon in the hands of Marxists which sends every Hindu on the defensive in case they try to dominate any debate. But caste is not mentioned in any Hindu religious texts anywhere and varna system is not the same as caste system. The current caste system as we now know it was a विकृति (degeneration) introduced into our system by foreign invaders. This process was much more extensive and spanned a long duration of time which can only be understood by studying history. So, how to get off the hook next time when you get entangled regarding caste system with a Marxist/Chrislamist? The first is to not let them associate caste with varna system to justify it through Hinduism and second, read a bit of history on how castes system got frozen over time. It is important to know some examples to emphasize the second point.

For example- the Chamar (Mahar) caste was created by the Mughals to humiliate the dispossessed Hindus in the society who couldn’t pay Jaziya tax. The rich Hindus who could pay the tax were left alone but the poor ones were ill treated, even after converting to Islam they had secondary status and were made to live in ghettos (this is why you will find leather tanning places like Dharavi are still ghetto communities). They were made to slaughter cows and tan leather, just to make them dissociate from their earlier traditions of cow worship. There were many such castes created then. The British came and codified it and made it even worse.

In the late 1800s (or you can say few years before 1900), the British introduced a law to make it compulsory for everyone to write their caste in every government document like school admission, banking etc. That started the use of caste as a political tool of identification, organization and basically to support their divide-and-rule politics.

When encountered with this problem of ‘caste system’, especially if challenged by Marxists, don’t try to defend it, otherwise you will fall right into the trap of Chrislamists. Understand that they don’t give a damn about any explanation. They have managed to conflate the caste system with the varna system mentioned in the Vedas by lose associations, allusions and innuendo. Just state that Caste and Varna are not the same, because that’s what the truth is. Making half baked arguments about economic system allow Chrislamists to create a strawman to beat Hindus with. So don’t step into that trap. The caste system was in fact a transposition of the inherently discriminatory British class system due to their inherent biases. They are to blame for it, it is not something that Hindus should get defensive about.

The Hindu Varna system was fluid until it was corrupted by outsiders. Remember, we were enslaved for 1000 years. This settles everything:

Also and more importantly, if caste system is Hindu thing, then how does it exist in Christianity and Muslim, even after conversion? Are these so called perfect religions not able to wash away the imperfections even after converting evil Hindus to their religion? There are separate Churches/Mosques for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. Well, if it exists in all religions then it is orthogonal to Hinduism and has nothing to do with it. One can’t claim it to be derived from Hindu theology. It is a societal problem caused due to slavery of 1000 years and consequent obfuscations.

The concept of Brahma (and other gods in our texts) in Hinduism is not to be taken literally as a magic being which does magic. It is merely a metaphor to serve as a vehicle to convey an abstract idea to the reader. What you call ‘ocean’ in English is referred to as Varuna in Sanskrit. Both of them allude to the same entity, which is the ocean, but by anthropomorphizing it, it allows the story teller to convey more complicated concepts in a poetic and fine tuned manner which appeals to human imagination because nothing can be more complicated than human behaviour. Giving human attributes to natural phenomena, allows the story teller to add finer nuances, the complexity of which can only be matched by the complexity of human behaviour. It allows the building up of abstract concepts on top of one another to blossom into a more comprehensive philosophical idea.

For example, if someone says Varuna had a fight with Pashupatinath (god of forests), it doesn’t literally mean that two magic beings fought a WWF match. It is probably trying to tell you that there was a tsunami which engulfed a forest. This is merely a mode of communication. If you have seen Life Of Pi, he says it in the end “I told you two stories, one where my ship sunk and I was rescued by fishermen, other where I was stranded with a tiger on a magical island with meerkats and both the stories narrate the same incident; I just replaced the human characters with animals, that doesn’t make my story false. So, which one is the better story?” and the guy says “the one with the animals; that’s the better story”. Same is the nature of religion.

The stories are not to be taken literally, there is a certain essence it is trying to convey, which one should seek. The reason they have been compiled in the form of stories is because it becomes easy for one generation to propagate the wisdom enshrined in them to the next generation in a non-dogmatic fashion. When Hindus pray to gods, it’s not that they think some magic is coming out of the statue, it is the idea which the god represents in the narrative which they are praying. Basically, we don’t pray to idols, we pray to ideals. For example Ram is called Purushottam (the perfect man with a balanced world view), so people pray/aspire to those qualities by proxy of praying to the god. The idol and temple is only there to help ordinary people concentrate and to keep the stories/wisdom alive so that it can be passed on to the next generation (think of it like a museum). Those who have better concentration need not pray to gods and can simply make themselves useful to the society through karma (doing your duties, doctor, engineer, soldier, teacher etc).

Now coming back to Varnas. The Varna system was merely an observation of the four types of human tendencies based on their level of participation in society. These tendencies exist in all humans in all societies. There are some who are lazy and some who are altruists, some who are willing to give their life for the country, and some who will steal and murder. The Varna system is merely an observation of how humans behave. It is not a codified system and it says that everyone is born Shudra, but then everyone has to elevate themselves according to their potential. So basically if basically there are 4 kids in a house and one kid cracks IIT and other doesn’t study and fails even 10th class, then the first kid gets more respect and the failed kid gets less respect in society, even though they were born equal. What the Varna system says is that the respect you get will be proportional to how useful you are to the society. If you contribute more (like soldier dying for the country), you get more respect, if you simply slack off then don’t expect any respect. It is not that Brahma created the system, that is how humans are. Brahma is just a metaphor for the universe. So when someone says Brahma made 4 Varnas what they are poetically trying to say is “there are 4 kinds of tendencies in the universe”.
How come there is never any record of such people anywhere on this earth other than some parts of India?

There is, but it is simply known by different names so it doesn’t register in our brain as a ‘Hindu’ thing. There are many religions born out of the same ethos which Hinduism espouses, these religions were spread by Hindu philosophers to other lands, over time the wisdom got translated in native languages (Chinese, Indonesian etc) so they refer to those concepts with different names in their own language. Check this :

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“The path”, “the way” are basically Chinese terms for what we call Dharma in Sanskrit. There is a near complete interchangeability between all their concepts with ours, with, of course, Chinese names. What we call the Varna here, the other Asian countries refer to as the family honour code. If you do good then earn more goodwill and respect for your your clan (kula/ gotra/ varna), that is why Chinese and Japanese men would want to die in war, to add to the Karma points of their kula (clan). Yin and Yang correlate to good Karma and bad Karma.

There is even a Chinese Hanuman called Sun Wukong

[IMG]

Instead of carrying a saffron flag with ‘Hindu Om’ on it, he carries a saffron flag with Chinese alphabets.

The exact same thing applies to Japan. Here is a Japanese Ganesha

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Here’s the Shiv Linga in Japan

[IMG]

Common Terms in Sanskrit/Chinese/Japanese

Archarya – Master Achali Ajari
Dharma – Law FA Ho
Pratima – movement warrior techniques of the Hindu ksatreyas Hsing
Kata
Sunyatapani – Tang-Shou Karate/To De
Dharmahasta Chuan Fe Kempo
Marga – The Way Tao Do
Guhya-Sutra Mi-Ching Mikkyo
Nagarjuna Lung Shu Ryuju/Ryusho/Ryumyo
Mudra – ritual gesture Yin In
Mandala a special zone or area Mantolo Mandara
Vajramukti Ching Kang, Chieh T’o Kongogedastsu
Sangha – congregation or group followers Seng So
Narya – strong or manly Na-Li Nara, Naha
Nata Na-Pa, Na-Ra Nara, Napa, Nafa
Yoga – to yoke Yui Cha Yu Ga”

Link : https://ramanan50.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/bharatwaja-hinduism-gods-in-japan-religion/

Indonesia has its own local flavours of Hinduism whereby their university emblems and currency bears images of Ganesha.

There are similar parallels to Hindu concepts all over the world, with different pseudonyms, that is why it feels as if it exists only in a small part of India. It is actually a universal phenomenon. As for the Varna system in particular, you can find those four types of people even in western societies. The people who are most useful to society are the ones who create the most value, and therefore paid higher salary and get more respect in their society. Their definition of ‘adding value’ has simply been transposed by an economic criteria (instead of a Dharmic/social criteria) but the system of ‘incremental respect’ is the same there.

Saudi Arabia, which is the beacon of the purest form of Islam, considers non-Arab Muslims (like the ones in the subcontinent) to be Hind-Al-Masakeen, which means ‘the lowly slaves of Hind’. How is it that this religion, which claims to be a champion of equality under one God and offers liberation from the allegedly discriminatory Hindu social order, differentiate between two different groups of the same religion? Is that not a caste system in itself? And if it is, why aren’t the liberals raising their voices against it? But we all know why!!

Image credits:

May 20, 2016
Religion or science: porque no los dos?

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.

May 17, 2016
GoI should force missionaries to only convert Muslims
GoI under PM Modi cracked the whip on foreign funding of NGOs last year, which culminated in the orchestrated attack on GoI by local and foreign media through highlighting a non-existent intolerance debate in the country. Fake Church attack stories were planted to tarnish the image of the government. A large number of these NGOs with foreign funding are engaged in subversion activities in India and a significant part of this foreign money is channelled through organizations related to the Church. So fake Church attacks not only generated large donations for them worldwide, but probably also made GoI go softer on the conversion business of the Church. It raises the question whether Hindus can somehow manipulate the Church mafia for their own benefit.

The manipulation in this case means using Church money to fund conversion of Muslims into Christianity. To use this strategy one first needs to ask: why is it better to have Christians than Muslims in India? It is more than evident that Christians are usually much less of a nuisance than Muslims in any neighbourhood. Also, since such conversion will cut into the already present high Muslim population in India, it will divide the population among these two Abrahamics. This will make it slightly easier to handle them instead of just handling Muslims. What makes a few more Christians instead of Muslims even better is the fact that Christians have even lower fertility rates than Hindus and are more affected by the liberal memes of the West. So it would be easier to outbreed them than outbreed the Muslims in the long run. So, it can be established beyond doubt that having a few more Christians at the cost of a few fewer Muslims is a better deal any day.

Now comes the question: why is it beneficial for Hindus to ask or aid Christians to convert Muslims?
1. It is like killing one snake with another. Christians have money and want to harvest more souls, so if they can evangelize Muslims, it reduces their numbers which is better for India in the long run.
1. It takes the heat off Hindutva groups engaged in Ghar Wapsi. This trick can pit one set of Abrahamics against another without hurting the image of Hindus. International and local media, which lose no chance to paint Hindutva organizations as fascists over one Ghar Wapsi incident, cannot do anything if one minority group converts another.
1. If Muslims and Christians fight over it, then Hindus do not lose anything. If Muslims get too violent, they would further erode their image as the Religion of Piece.
Having outlined the benefits of such a strategy, the only remaining piece of this puzzle is how to implement it. Using one set of Abrahamics against the other is not an easy task, especially when they would always gang up against pagans, in this case Hindus. Look below at the flow of foreign funds to NGOs in Kerala. The northern districts are Muslim dominated while the southern districts are Hindu majority. Although all these funds are not related to conversion activity, they still give a rough hint that the prime target for conversion is southern districts like Pathanamthitta with large Hindu populations, as it has received significantly higher foreign funds.

But does this mean Hindus can do nothing and lose their brothers to Christians while the Muslim womb goes into overdrive? The fact is, if GoI is serious it can break this nexus and force the Church to only convert Muslims. How will that work?
1. GoI gives the Church the choice to convert Muslims or shut shop in India. Given they will still prefer to harvest some souls rather than none, they would choose to convert Muslims.
1. Future conversion licences will be based on the performance of these organizations in converting Muslims. If they are found to be engaged in activities of converting Hindus, their licence will be revoked under one pretext or another and their funds will be seized.
1. In return for the services of these missionaries, the state will provide them full protection during this activity, i.e. strict action against Muslims who harass the foot soldiers of the Church engaged in converting Muslims.
Given huge repercussions for not toeing the line of GoI, any Church would prefer to make do with whatever number of souls it can harvest. Also, it is cheaper to hound the Church using sleuths and use its funds rather than force the entire responsibility of Ghar Wapsi on Hindus.

Long-run strategy:
1. First use evangelization and Ghar Wapsi in low-density Muslim areas so that there are low chances of riots.
1. Once the above areas are clear of Muslims, then one can resettle Hindus and converted Christians in high-Muslim-density areas like West Bengal and Western UP.
The above two strategies can be reformed to make them more effective over time. In an ideal scenario, given that Islam and Christianity are majority religions in the world, a sensible GoI could have banned conversion out of Hinduism and forced a one-child policy on Muslims. But since we live in a non-ideal secular world, probably it is the best option to make friends with the lesser enemy in the short run and let them finish each other off.
May 5, 2016
Islamism, individualism and feminism vs Hinduism
Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.

This article is going to be based on SM experiences on our past articles. On the cultural agenda, we have tried to highlight two broad assaults from Islamism and feminism, which come together and make a deadly cocktail for the survival of Hindus in their homeland. The reason these issues get entangled is because in a democracy, more than anything else, numbers matter. You can enforce your agenda if you have numbers — otherwise you can go for a hike. Muslims, though few in numbers compared to Hindus, have excellent organisation skills and have enforced their agenda either through voting or riots. While Islam is still debating polygamy and divorce alimony in India, urban Hindus have adopted liberal memetic themes like individualism and feminism with an open heart.

If Hinduism were facing any one of these problems, there was a good chance to fight back and reverse the damages. But the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that all these forces have attacked India at the same time. On the one hand, Muslims have maintained a higher TFR than Hindus in all regions — as can be seen by their increasing numbers. On the other hand, few Hindus have realized this as a problem due to sickular ideology taught in schools. But even those who have acknowledged it have failed to accept the solutions as they hurt their deep-seated beliefs.

[Image: Population map — 0–4 age cohort, district-wise] pop_0-4 — restored contextual visual.

So, what is the problem? The problem is the decreasing number of Hindus — if not throughout the country then in specific pockets throughout the country. This will have long-lasting impact on governance and culture as democracy will ensure Muslim-dominated elected bodies in the future. So what solution did we suggest? The solution is simple — maintain demographic superiority. How to do that?
1. Increased TFR for Hindus
2. Ghar Wapsi i.e. reconversion
Ghar Wapsi is important but it has an added complication because it depends on luring Muslims back into their original religion. Swami Shraddhanand, the original stalwart who conducted massive Ghar Wapsi in the 1920s, had to pay with his life for his actions. Given the current democratic pressures, it has become even more difficult to go down this route. But still there are ways to do it and this path cannot be rejected completely. This brings us to the first solution — increased TFR.

Suggesting a high TFR for Hindus made us run into many criticisms due to the pacified Hindu mindset. Compared to other similar articles, this article received much less sharing on social media. And we guess there are three important reasons behind it:
1. 60 years of brainwashing on the population problem in India
2. Financial difficulty in supporting big families
3. Individualism ranging from feminism to narcissism
“Hum Do Hamare Do” (We 2 Our 2 Children) has made a massive impact on Hindus throughout the country, so much so that any suggestion which goes against it seems ridiculous. Given this brainwashing, even though many Hindus will recognize the Islamic problem, they would still choose not to confront it head on and change their opinion on having more children. This means that a lot of men who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause will ignore the issue because it somehow goes against their fundamental principles — to the extent where some people say they will have two high-quality Dharmic children, as if having a third child is somehow Adharmic!

The second problem arises due to rising living costs across India. This is a problem only as long as Hindus don’t decide to act. Once they come together, child-related costs can be brought down through various measures — supporting extended families, developing community schools and support institutions. More than a hindrance, this can be classified as a logistical problem and should not deter Hindus. The fact is most well-to-do and rich people have very low fertility and they hide behind this argument only to support inaction. So there is more to it than meets the eye.

The third source of criticism comes from rising individualism and its other supporting ideologies, especially feminism. While Muslims are largely immune to feminism, it will take a toll on Hindus by asking their women to forget their collective Dharma. Although some authors have devised smart ways to associate Dharma with the Abrahamic offshoot called feminism, it hardly stands on its feet when analysed properly.

One way in which Hindu feminists support the current low TFR decision of Hindus is by saying that none of our Gods had large numbers of kids, nor are there any explicit guidelines for supporting high fertility among Hindus. But history suggests otherwise — Hindus had hardly been as narcissistic as other pagan civilizations and always had a demographic surplus. This ensured that they did not get trampled down by the horses of Abrahamic faith like other religions and regions. Also, Dharma is not fixed in time and is ever evolving given local conditions. Under democracy — which rewards quantity over quality — it becomes a duty of all sane Hindus to realize and work towards maintaining their demographic superiority to save their cultural heritage.

In the end, when Hindu feminism won’t get any support from individual or collective Dharma, it is natural to fall back on original western feminism and resort to the “my body my choice” argument. While it is true that women bear a significantly larger cost of bearing children, they also get greater glory from them in the end. All Hindu scriptures have glorified great mothers who devoted their children to upholding Dharma. If those mothers had been individualistic, half of their offspring would never have seen the light of day. This also tends to be the ugliest part in this whole debate because as soon as you support high TFR, feminists raise the bogey of misogyny — as according to them only women bear the cost of having kids. Sadly, this level of narcissism is widespread as western liberal constructs have reduced bearing children to a mechanical task instead of a gift of nature celebrated widely in Hinduism through revering different fertility goddesses. So everyone ends up looking at kids as some sort of burden rather than harbingers of love and happiness.

While it makes sense for any leftist or feminist to disregard tradition and cultural preservation as they want to destroy Hinduism, anyone who attaches himself to Hindu ethos would not outright reject the collective Dharma to maintain demographic superiority. As it becomes amply clear in this example, the Abrahamic construct of feminism is irreconcilable once a person realises his collective and individual Dharma — which is maintaining demographic superiority in this case.

Then there is also the question of how one divides his love between himself and future generations. If you put no weight on future generations and whether they carry your traditions and culture, there is nothing stopping you from being individualistic. But as soon as you stop being myopic and develop some attachment to your future generations, it becomes imperative that your actions are aligned with your future goals. The choice thus becomes simple: either have 3–4 kids now who will help maintain Hindu majority, or see your granddaughters walking around in burqa, subjugated by polygamy and stoned for adultery under Sharia. This way the cycle of Abrahamic exclusivism will go full circle — from complete freedom under feminism to no freedom under Islam — with only a small possibility of buying a museum ticket to read about the dead middle path of Hinduism.

Originally published April 5, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.
April 5, 2016