RIFLE RANGE BOY: Is it an imagined war or a real one?

Hindu Society Under Siege (1981)
Sita Ram Goel

Hindu culture has a very long history. Its history goes back beyond 2500 BC. Recent astronomical calculations as referred to Valmiki's description of planetary constellations during Lord Rama's date of birth ascertained his birth as 5114 BC. Similarly, Mahabharata's account of Krishna's birth puts his date of delivery as 3228 BC. Suppose the scriptures and old temples were anything to go by, nothing stops us from assuming that Bharat indeed had a highly developed civilisation long before any Western force set foot in the land beyond the Indus Valley.

Being the accommodating hosts and the inquisitive philosophers there were, they embraced all cultures with open arms. In the quest in search of the eternal truth, they accepted other routes towards this end.

Over the generations, the visitors have tried to impress upon the hosts of their superiority and demean India's age-old traditions. According to the author, centuries of colonisation have left India with three groups who are out derailing the peace of the Nation, precisely, the Hindu society which boasts of having people who profess the third most popular religion in the world.

Goel has always been a controversial figure. He had been censored after criticising history and doctrines of Islam. His reprint of his contemporary, Ram Swarup's 'Understanding Islam through Hadis' created a furore got him arrested. He was also outspoken on his criticism of Christianity as well. Pandits like David Crowley and Koenraad Elst, on the other hand, described him as an 'intellectual Kshatriya' possessing unparalleled strong rationalistic point of view that did not compromise the truth for politeness.

In this book, he zeroes on three groups that are out to destroy the harmony of the Nation. Firstly, the most malevolent of these residues is Islamism, the rubble of the Muslim invasion of India that spread over several centuries, that find difficulty in integrating with the rest of the country but takes pride in the purity of its Arab, Persian or Turkish descent. Like Ambedkar, he accused Islam of not being inclusive.

Goel was also outspoken in his criticism of Christianity. He asserted that secularism vilified Hinduism but ended up glorifying Abrahamic traditions. The evangelistic nature of the religion further slandered and ridiculed other belief systems. Free flow of Western wealth is used towards this end. In the North East region of India, the breaking forces have successfully steered them from their ancestral belief and go as far as to demand autonomy from India.

The third modus operandi of the invaders to debase their religion of the land is through what Goel referred to MacCaulayism. This term refers to Thomas Bablay MacCaulay, the Governor-General of India, who in 1830, proposed a significant revision of replacing the preexisting indigenous education system to produce a class of Indians brown of skin but English in taste and temperament. They look down at anything Indian. In their mind, the Indian civilisation is nothing but one with animistic belief, with rudimentary instructions in arithmetic, and reading and writing imparted by semi-educated teachers, mostly to the children of the upper castes. They view the Hindu social system as an oppressive one. In their mind, the Mughal Empire was the pinnacle of India's success. They look at the West for guidance for the flavour of the times.

Goel defines the role of the residues of foreign rule in India vis-a-vis Hindu society in such manner; Islamism as malevolent, Christianism as mischievous, and Macaulayism as mild, though like a slow poison.

Communism, in a way, is an extension of MacCaulayism and a legacy of the British rule. In the 1930s, the Government encouraged Indian freedom fighter to delve in Communists' activities. Communist activities and slogans are hostile to positive nationalism. Positive nationalism is one which draws its inspiration from its own cultural heritage and socio-political traditions. Communists, being atheists, cannot accept metaphysical explanations to the environment around them but demands a physical one.

These four known forces, at different times, find common ground to cooperate in waging psychological warfare against their own common enemy, the Sanatana Dharma.