Every time there is new terrorist attack the deniers and Islam apologists go in hyperdrive to prove that it cannot be justified using Quran and it is few miscreants who misunderstand and over-interpret some verses which call for Jihad. It is actually Jihad against oneself and purification of soul rather than Jihad against the Kafir which motivates the pious Muslim. But being a Muslim is more of a product of social conditioning than theology. It’s unlikely that after hearing a scholarly seminary’s rebuttal of the Quran’s alleged misinterpretation, a Muslim will suddenly go “Holy shit! So, I’ve been following the wrong commandments? Let me immediately give up hostility towards the kafirs and become an enlightened individual”. If you listen to Tarek Fateh, 80% Muslims haven’t even read the Quran. So making theological arguments is not going to derail the average Islamist from his pursuits. Denying terrorists and suicide bombers the right to call themselves true Muslims is stupidity at best and Taqiya at worst.
The claim of being misinterpreted itself is false. There is ample objective and unequivocal mainstream endorsement in the religious texts for the kind of ethos that Muslim societies espouse all over the world. Not for nothing has it turned into a monolith of anti-kafir hysteria despite spanning from one corner of the world to the other and despite having sway over people of different ethnic background and languages.
Take for example the claim that blasphemy laws don’t have their genesis in the Quran. But they do! There is a mention in the Quran where a woman disagrees with Mohammad and he sends killers to get her assassinated. Although it is possible that some sort of moderate preachers are propped by the intel agencies of some western countries as a part of their anti-radicalization counter-narrative drive, and maybe they should be allowed to promote a lie if there is a hope that at least a few Muslims might fall for it, but let’s not kid ourselves by believing that it is actually true.
Some commentators criticize later-day Islamic scholars and make it look like the corruption of ideology crept in fairly recently, but in reality it started immediately after the death of Mohammad. The Ummah was inherited by four of Muhammad’s most devout followers: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali. At the same time, the Muslims form Medina were going to elect their own leader. Abu Bakr gate crashed the party, convinced the Medina folks to call off their election, persuaded Umar to forsake his claim to Muhammad’s legacy and became the leader of the people. Leader was a vague term at that time since he had inherited the flock of people from Muhammad, but Abu Bakr himself wasn’t a prophet, nor was he a king. So for the sake of unity of the Bedouin Muslim tribes, they created a new political position called Caliph. The rights and responsibilities of this Caliph were made up as time passed, taking guidance from various instances of Muhammad’s life. Of course, not everyone was pleased with Abu Bakr’s ascension, especially the followers of Ali. The sectarian war has been going on ever since. So anyone telling that the sectarianism and political Islam is a recent phenomenon or a perversion is a blatant lie. It is the mainstream Islam.
What generates this exclusivism and tribalism in Muslims. Take a look at the video below to understand:
The Muslims in this clip have everything in common with the native Japanese, the only difference being their religion. The drastic difference of demeanour is apparent for everyone to see. The violent behaviour is consistent with the behaviour of their jihadi brothers in all corners of the world. What’s their excuse for their extremism in Japan? Do you remember anyone demolishing any Babri Masjid in Japan? This is the exclusivism and victimhood at play and instances like Babri are just a scapegoat used in grand scheme of things.
Fact of the matter is that Islam is a political ideology to subjugate men. It has never been about seeking knowledge and self-improvement. So giving Muslims more knowledge of the Quran is not going to help in any constructive way. It has never been about correct interpretation of Islam as the ideology leaves it open for the right leader to come and instil the feelings of hatred against kafir. It is like sitting on a tinderbox and expecting it to not catch fire. If someone tries to reform himself, he is immediately declared an apostate and hounded by the community. Thus making the escape velocity to get out of this madness called Islam very high.
Japanese have once again proved their pragmatism and national mettle. Japanese courts dismissed a plea asking the Japanese police to stop profiling Muslims in their country, on grounds of national security and national interests. Is it any wonder that Japanese society could rebuild and rearm into the third most powerful economy in the world in mere three decades of being nuked and defeated in World War II? They have again shown courage and honour by putting their own security and national interest before nonsensical post-modernist political correctness — and have defied the Muslim apologetics.
Law enforcement mostly ignored the case. One of the few public statements they made came at a United Nations human rights committee hearing on the matter in 2014. An official from the National Police Agency said “details of information-gathering activities to prevent future terrorism could not be disclosed,” but that “police collected information according to the law.” Some have defended the surveillance of Muslims, including Naofumi Miyasaka, a professor at the National Defense Academy of Japan. He describes the data leak as “the biggest failure in the history of Japan’s counter-terrorism” because it would have hurt the ability of law enforcement to gather intelligence on potential threats through “mutual trust and cooperation between police and informants.”
Compare this to the present-day supposedly nationalistic government of BJP, which has banned various sites which expose Islam and its Jihad and the real side of Muslims from Indian viewers. For example, the Department of Telecommunications has blocked the site islam-watch.org for hurting Muslim feelings — i.e. for exposing Muslim society and Muslims for what they really are on the inside. Indians should learn from the Japanese on what nationalism looks like. What BJP advocates is not nationalism but Baniaism and mercantile sellout of national and Hindu interests under the garb of development. It is high time that BJP stops fooling Hindus around with mere sloganeering and “Jumlebaazi.”
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.
The myth of “Peaceful Indian Muslim” is carefully nurtured and sustained by the fake secularism practised in India. Whenever there is an attempt by anyone to uncover this veil, there are liberals who come up with fancy theories like Islamophobia to prevent the enlightenment of Muslim masses. What can be more sad than even a well-read, intelligent person feeling that telling this truth amounts to “making Muslims feel persecuted.” Well, if a person holds wrong ideas he needs to be confronted one day or the other. Would you also say that arresting rapists is incorrect because it amounts to singling them out? As a civilized society there is a red line that no one is allowed to cross. Gloating over the massacre of kafirs is not a civilized idea to espouse, and people need to confront those who do it instead of finding excuses.
Unless Indian history textbooks tell their students about the atrocities perpetuated by Muslims on Dharmics, they will continue to look at that atrocious period as their “glorious past” — and the more they romanticize it, the more difficult they will find it to come to terms with contemporary realities. It is THIS dissonance which leads to terrorism. The killing of Hindus by Muslim invaders was not a glorious act and those who romanticize it are not civilized people.
So how to fight against this ideological terrorism? The answer is education — and not just school education but political education of the masses. The idea should be propagated on all information channels until it becomes common parlance. The reason Muslims take to terrorism is because they feel they lived a glorious past where they could kill Hindus, in contrast to the lacklustre life they are living now where they have to abide by the rules of the land instead of being rulers. Unless there is a concerted effort to challenge and defeat this idea, India will always face an existential threat from Muslims. Admission of Muslim atrocities should become the mainstream quintessential Indian thought. There are so many museums in Germany and Japan depicting the atrocities committed by their ancestors on innocent people. Every year Hollywood comes out with half a dozen movies showing how bad the Holocaust was. This is the template that India should follow. There should be museums depicting the atrocities instead of making Bollywood movies and books that eulogize Akbar and Tipu Sultan.
What ordinary Indians want is not something extraordinary. They simply want closure similar to the one that Germans and Japanese got when they admitted their mistakes. You can sing a thousand songs in the praise of moderate Indian Muslims, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The very fact that Hindus aren’t allowed to claim Ram Mandir is a testimony to the fact that Indian Muslims don’t adhere to a more evolved and tolerant form of Islam. Ram Janmabhoomi is to Hindus what Mecca is to Muslims — there can be no negotiation on this. Hindus have already forgotten the demolition of 40,000 temples by Muslims, but if they cannot budge on even one temple then there is no chance for reconciliation. If a case is being made that Indian Muslims are more reconciliatory in nature, where is the evidence?
Celebrating that Indian Muslims are better than the rest of their ilk is a relative and subjective benchmark. From time to time we must ask ourselves whether this “relatively good” is “good enough.” A woman journalist in Mumbai was hounded into exile by the same peaceful Muslims for reposting the Charlie Hebdo cartoon while reporting about it. Now, this act might be committed by a group of 5,000 people but the thought process is not an outlier. Same goes for the thousands — 15,000 people — who thronged the funeral of their “martyr” Yakoob Memon.
The deeper you go into the rabbit hole of Muslim extremist nexus, sooner or later you will realize that it is mainstream Islam — not a fringe, not a sect, not a twisted individual — but mainstream Islam which is responsible for all problems. One can draw artificial lines to separate them into moderates and extremists virtually speaking, but the crux of the matter is that until you are willing to admit that an ideology which at its core preaches that “everyone who disagrees with us is an enemy,” this problem will never be solved.
Like the Afghan intel chief Amarullah Saleh once said: “You will keep killing the guys in the outer circle for years and patting yourself on the back but the problem won’t be solved until you have the resolve to confront the guys in the inner circle who are running the show.” He was taunting the US for killing low-level commanders in Afghanistan but not confronting Saudi Arabia. Fake seculars are doing the same by drawing a dichotomy between gun-wielding terrorists and non-gun-wielding “peaceful chaps.” Terrorism is not about weapons — it is about ideology.
Being ruthless and killing people is not the recommended path. It is actually the “head in the sand” syndrome of fake liberals which will lead India into a civil war by not acknowledging the problem. A better way is to give closure on the atrocity issue. Include lessons of anti-Hindu atrocities in history books so that both Hindus and Muslims become aware of it and have a sense of national context instead of building their own personal victimhood narratives. Muslims claim that the Babri incident was wrong, but don’t want to concede that their co-religionist invaders captured and destroyed Hindu temples. This intellectual subversion is unacceptable. There is a need to have a frank discussion where people can put everything on the table so that everyone knows each other’s history and empathizes with the other before pointing fingers.
The more the rights of Hindus the state curtails, the more Hindu anger it will fuel — the eruption of which will lead to incidents of violence, which will lead to further radicalization and polarization on both sides. The constitution mentions secularism; it is about time that Hindus taste it too. Hindus have only been smelling it from afar while Muslims relished the entire cake of secularism.
To put it in short: India needs to take concrete steps to trash the Hindu narrative and Muslim narrative and adopt a common and reconciliatory national narrative which is acceptable to both parties — only then can people find closure and achieve peace. Otherwise these issues will keep flaring up.
There is a beautiful thesis about the fundamental difference between India and Pakistan which can be summarized in one line: “the story of Pakistan is the story of the state of Pakistan, and the story of India is the story of the people of India.” It holds true for the modus operandi of all Muslim states. The moment its citizens ask for some human rights or even basic things like water and schools, the state says “the nation is under threat and you are asking for things? You are not a true Muslim!” That is how Muslim states keep the dreams of their population suppressed. The very definition of a “true Muslim” has been fundamentally crafted in such a way that the individual is supposed to selflessly sacrifice for the survival of the Ummah dream — and because of this feudal definition, the individual will never have any rights for himself. This feudal system will eventually collapse, no doubt about it. But will the Indian state ever tell this real story to Indian Muslims and aid them in bursting this bubble?
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
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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
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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!!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
First use evangelization and Ghar Wapsi in low-density Muslim areas so that there are low chances of riots.
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.
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.
Editorial illustration for “How Phony RW intellectuals will lead Hindus to slaughter”.[Image: Muslim youth kicking Amar Jawan Jyoti] — contextual restoration.
We always say that a picture says a thousand words and is much more powerful than any article. The above picture shows a Muslim youth kicking Amar Jawan Jyoti i.e. the essence and life blood of Indian republic. But Indian intellectuals fail to look and comprehend the story behind such pictures and delude themselves and gullible sheepish Hindus through their intellectual sophistication. The latest addition to this list is R. Jagannath, a self-proclaimed intellectual RW in India. The intellectual wankery and self-delusion touched new levels in his latest article on why India produces so few Jihadis as compared to Europe and how Hinduism is responsible for it. Both the premise and the conclusion in this article are wrong on so many levels:
India does not produce few Jihadis. Just count the number of dead Jihadis in Kashmir and rest of India. If you add the number of silent Jihadis who come out in various riots like Malda and Muzzafarnagar, you can build entire populations of some European countries. Going to Syria is a useless criterion for measuring Indian Jihadi numbers when the Muslims in the sub-continent have more than enough reasons to stay here and capture whole India bits by bits.
Yes, there are no outright conflicts right now between Hindus and Muslims in India but it is just a matter of time before the next round starts when the Muslim population reaches a threshold as seen in various riot prone areas. So, it is not the Hindu genes in sub-continental Muslims which are helping in avoiding this conflict but the pusillanimity of Hindus and their intellectual self-delusion and pretences that is delaying the inevitable to some future date. Jaggy added himself to this same list of self-deluded Hindus churning out theories which will lead Hindus to ultimate slaughter.
Now, lets add another picture to complete the story and further pin-prick this self-delusion bubble of Hindus.
[Image: Map of Mauryan Empire — extent of Hindu civilisation] — contextual restoration.
The above picture shows the extent of Hindu civilization, which has now lost half of its area. And guess what — all those areas went to the peace loving Muslims which carry Hindu gene as proclaimed by R. Jagannath, but have eradicated the last traces of their Hindu ancestry. Actually, he can visit any of his neighbourhood Muslim ghettos and explain to the Muslims there about how they carry Hindu genes. Given the current state of Indian security, it is hard to guarantee that he will come back in one piece as most of the current Muslims both in India and erstwhile Hindu regions like Pakistan and Afghanistan will not take it lightly — they think they have more Arabic blood and have nothing to do with Hindus. He for sure must be aware about the flak that Subramaniam Swamy received by claiming Hindu ancestry of Muslims in India, so it will be better if he drops this experiment and takes our word for it.
But the crux of the matter is: can Hindus learn from the follies that they have done in the past ten centuries? The current media ecosystem is against them but it is not a big problem. The big problem is the self-delusion of the so called RW intellectuals who should be thinking about the best interest of Hindus. Sadly, they have failed miserably on this account. It is not the Hindu gene in Indian Muslims, but the shameful or idiotic gene in Hindus, which has helped to avoid the full scale problem for short duration. India has already gone through one partition thanks to the same Hindu gene carrying Muslims and still faces frequent riots in areas with sufficiently high Muslim populations from Kashmir to Kerala. Riots like Malda keep getting added to the list of riots instigated by Muslims. Tiwari and Narang keep getting murdered in broad daylight by Muslim goons and all one gets from intellectual RW Hindus is total dishonesty, which tries to sugar coat the problem and wish it away. Sadly, the world does not work that way and pretending to live in a utopia does not create a utopia.
The need of the hour is to have constant debates on Islam instead of whitewashing its crimes which the Hindu RW is more than happy to do right now. Hindus need to avoid them as they are worse than communists. While communists are at least honest about screwing Hindus, these insidious poisonous intellectuals will lead Hindus like sheep to their slaughter. They will pretend all is well till demographics reach the level of WB or Kerala. Then Hindus getting killed will not make any headlines, the way it hardly creates a flutter post RSS worker deaths in various states. This will finally end like the story of Kashmiri Pandits once Muslims reach 50% of the population i.e. a point of no return. Intellectual masturbation is not going to save other Hindus, like how the intellectual pretensions of the Bengali bhadraloks or the mallus have hardly saved their skins from the Mullahs. Selectively looking at one or two individuals who are harmless while ignoring incidents like Malda and Amar Jawan Jyoti and claiming that Indian Muslims are not Islamists like in the west is intellectual masturbation at its best. So next time when Jaggy styled authors claim about peaceful syncretism of Indian Islam, please remind them about the genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh, which did not happen so far in the past.
Sadly, delusion has been the fatal intellectual flaw of Hindus since the time of first attacks by barbaric Muslim hordes. Time and again they have been let down by their intellectuals, who failed to recognize the true nature of Islam and its adherents, who want complete domination and annihilation of all other beliefs. Buddhists, who bore the maximum brunt of Islamic invasion and got wiped out from large swathes of territory had done better analysis of Islam than the current generation of Hindus. Here is the appraisal of Islam by 11th century Kalachakra Buddhism:
We may summarize the Kalacakra tantra’s perception of Islamic beliefs and practices as follows: from the Buddhist point of view Islam is demonic and perverse, a perfect anti-religion which is the antithesis of Buddhism (daitya-dharma; asura-dharma; atyantddharma; adharma). Islam’s theology of an omnipotent Creator who consigns men to heaven or hell based on their pleasing or displeasing him is classed with the lowest of Indian ideologies. The Islamic belief that ar-Rahman makes his followers cut off their foreskins in order to enter heaven is viewed as exotic and bizarre. The Kalacakra tantra represents Islam as a religion of violence (himsa-dharma) that advocates savage behavior (raudra-karman).
— Kalachakra Tantra, 11th century Buddhist text
It then finally ends with giving prescriptions on how to deal with Islam:
First, the tantra prohibits its own adherents from participating in the barbarian religion. Second, it holds out the possibility of converting the barbarians to Buddhism. Third, it uses the threat of Islam in anti-brahman polemics. Finally, it prophesies a Buddhist holy war against Islam.
— Kalachakra Tantra, 11th century Buddhist text
Does it surprise anyone now that Buddhist Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka have dealt with the Islamic menace with an iron fist while Hindus are still debating on the nature of Islam? This snake oil sold by self-proclaimed RW will not work for too long and common Hindus will have to ultimately face the reality. While these intellectuals will hide in their gated communities and peddle even more Islamic syncretism, it will be the common Hindus who will have to bear the brunt of Islamic rape, loot and pillage. The choice is only theirs: either learn from their past mistakes or let their great grand daughters be raped and killed like during partition or 1971 Bangladesh or Kashmir. Sadly, chanting about the Hindu roots of Indian Muslims would not take them too far as it neither saved their Hindu ancestors nor will save their future generations.
Editorial illustration for “Why freedom of speech (FoS) is important for Hindus?”.
Although the last two Parliament sessions have been a washout for the most important bills, one bill got passed by stealth and did not get much media coverage as it should have. It was the SC/ST act, and it has significant consequences for Freedom of Speech in India. The new offences added to the act include garlanding with footwear, compelling to dispose or carry human or animal carcasses, abusing SCs or STs by caste name in public, attempting to promote feelings of ill-will against SCs or STs, disrespecting any deceased person held in high esteem, and imposing or threatening a social or economic boycott.
Although the law can be thought of as being in good spirit — i.e. preventing criticism of Ambedkar or Kanshi Ram — criticism by one person can be seen as disrespect by another. It’s all a slippery slope from here. Right now the government is throwing people behind bars for calling Mohammed gay due to the threat to social harmony, as shown in the arrest of Kamlesh Tiwari. We see this law would be used as a template to bring other similar laws to further stifle criticism of any form. India is a basket case when it comes to Freedom of Speech. Curbing of free speech is one of the only few times when all parties in India come together.
FoS for one might be hate speech for another. It is a very subjective issue and it leads to only two outcomes — either we have free speech or we don’t. Even in the case of free speech, people have the chance to go to court and file defamation cases if they feel their reputation has been falsely maligned. So in that sense the right is not absolute as character-assassination is not allowed and has an economic penalty. But it cannot and should not apply to historical figures — i.e. dead leaders or prophets. These guys should be open to ridicule as that allows free scrutiny of their actions and puts history in the right perspective.
Now coming to the question of why it is especially important for Hindus to demand absolute freedom of speech in India — and more so, for its interaction with Islam. It will allow people to engage in criticism of Islam which has only been done in closed quarters till now. We already have a hate speech law and we should not be surprised if it gets further modified in the future, putting anyone in jail for criticising the prophet. Those who have read history carefully will know that Islam has been critical of Freedom of Speech for a very long time. The genesis of current hate speech law lies in the riots that followed after the publishing of ‘Rangeela Rasool’ by Arya Samaj in 1927 and the subsequent killing of the book’s publisher. The colonial British government then obliged the Muslims by enacting Section 295(A) and putting further restrictions on free speech. The current demands for the death of Kamlesh Tiwari can be understood better in this historical backdrop.
But why should Hindus stand for Freedom of Speech? It has been part of our culture to debate and no individual — not even the Gods — has been free from our criticism. Also, it forms the core of any modern society and allows bad ideas to be debated and booted out. This same Freedom of Speech is the most important weapon in anyone’s arsenal to expose Islam. Islam is based on absolutes and thus any substantial criticism of the prophet or Quran will bring down the whole religion like a pack of cards. This is the reason that Islam fears Freedom of Speech more than anything else and has an inbuilt mechanism to deal with transgressions — e.g. death for apostasy and ridiculing Mohammed.
Moreover, Freedom of Speech provides Hindus with one more advantage in the context of the western onslaught — it challenges subversive claims. It has been an old Indian tradition to debate and discuss, keep the useful, weed out the useless. When we forcefully close the lid on something deemed offensive, though we may feel jubilant, we foolishly also give our ‘offender’ the upper hand — they then claim victimhood and thus attention, while we get labelled with those choicest of terms like ‘intolerant’, ‘fascists’, etc. The goal should be to challenge claims which are found preposterous, and demolish them with solid proofs and arguments, thereby also exposing the deviousness behind such attempts.
So, should Hindus take offence when Hussain draws naked paintings of Hindu Goddesses? Or take it as a passing rite under Freedom of Speech? We think that Hindus should let it pass as a random event as one painting is not going to define Hinduism nor will it undermine the whole society. In fact it only exposes the vile minds of people who engage in such acts. But this should only be allowed when there is absolute Freedom of Speech — not under a regime where all faux-pas against Hinduism are given a free pass while a single valid criticism against Islam is censored. Since Islam has more to lose from Freedom of Speech, you should not be surprised if you see a few Muslims supporting a ban on cow slaughter in exchange for a ban on discussions regarding regressive practices in Islam.
You would not find any Hindus today who would support Sati or quote Manu Smriti on how to run the society. This implies Hindus are not stuck in the past and are happy to correct their historical mistakes. So, Hindus are not bound to extend their support to people who are still clinging to a 7th century handbook and help suppress Freedom of Speech in this country.
To summarize, laws are not formed in a vacuum and set precedents for future laws. Hindus should be careful against all such small giveaways which will be used as a template to curb Freedom of Speech in the future. Also, since Freedom of Speech is the best weapon to expose the shallowness of Islam, it should be used as the first defence against fanatics.
