A giant awakens?

Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political Ideologies of the Indian Right
By: Swapan Dasgupta (2019)

History tells us of a time when Indian soft powers ruled beyond their lands. Indian (read Hindu) way of living was the only way to live to the East of the land irrigated by the Sindhu Saraswati river systems. The nearest advanced culture to them was the Persians. Now they had an issue pronouncing 'S'. They did not have 'S' in their spoken language but used 'H' in places occupied by 'S'. Hence, the people living around the Sindhu Valley became known as 'Hindus', and their way of living was Hindu.

The perplexing thing is that from an era when the whole world was imitating their culture whilst the rest of the world was in the dark ages, at the time of its independence, it was a nation quite apologetic to its way of life and its history. What gave?

Perhaps it was the repeated invasions and trans-generational traumas with a tinge of Stockholm Syndrome. Still, the bulk of Indians, during their independence from the British colonial masters, had a very low esteem of themselves. They tended to look at other civilisations as superior and scorn upon their own way of living. Maybe because they had missed the bus of the first and second Industrial Revolution and the mercantile type of economy ruled the world, the socialist-minded Prime Minister and his ruling party thought it was pertinent they should be followers, not leaders of the world. They even refused a UN Security Council seat. Government-sanctioned leftist historians reinforced Western false narratives. 

The 1991 Indian general elections must have been a watershed moment in the right-wing movement. Even though they did not win the elections, they sowed their idea of a Ram Rajya (Hindu nation) in the Indian psyche. Their election promises to rebuild the old Ram Mandhir in Ayudhya fascinated the population at large. Just about that time, archaeological excavations revealed that a mosque indeed built atop the site considered the birthplace of the much revered Prince Rama of Ayodhya.

With widespread news of corruption and mismanagement, the 2014 general elections saw the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), headed by the Indian Congress Party, lose to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition headed by BJP. BJP, on its own, secured a majority, surpassing the much-needed 272 seats.

The right-wing Hindu parties have always been in the bad books of the Indians. Ever since Godse, a Hindu nationalist, assassinated MK Gandhi, RSS, the social arm of BJP, and other Hindu parties have been painted with the same brush. The anglophilic apologists and leftist historians have created a centre stage for a dichotomy of anglophile 'intellectual elites' versus homegrown saffron politics.

In the late 1960s, Congress weakened, and a wave of anti-Westernisation swept through the nation. The public was uncomfortable with the outward display of modernity and the intellectual move towards the West. They started reminiscing about the alternative intellectual ecosystem initiated by Hindu nationalist bulwarks like Tilak, Aurobindo, Savarkar and more. The new BJP-RSS combo was not anti-Western and anti-technological development but would use technology to improve administration quality.

After much deliberation, Modi was put forward as the PM material for the 2014 election. His economic success story in Gujarat worked in his favour. The naysayers, including the Western media, were rapacious in putting him as the villain in the 2002 racial riots. The foreign press went on a rant that he was bad news for Indian harmony. His visa to the US, UK and EU was denied as he was deemed too controversial.

Tired of the Nehru-Gandhi dynastic brand of politics with ineffective leaders in the Nehru's descendants, in 2014, NDA with BJP as the majority was voted in to rule the biggest democracy in the world. The going on till the time of writing of the book, at the end of BJP's first term, has been anything but smooth sailing. Quickly, many day-to-day issues can be made out to be big deals, even though the general public is not too bothered by them. The politicians and their desire to create a mountain out of a molehill are the root of the problem. After all, historically, India has a reputation for embracing all cultures, including Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity and more. They had played host to many refugees.

A simple recital of a national independence hymn like Vande Mataram can become a national issue. Muslim leaders refuse to allow their people to chant this old anthem as it is considered not secular. Cow protection on one side and insistence on beef-eating as a birthright without compromise is another thorn in the Hindu-Muslim relationship. Even though the Indian Constitution bans cow slaughtering, occasional skirmishes and lynching continue. This is not a new problem. Even in 1966, Sadhus demonstrated in front of the Parliament to criminalise cow slaughtering unsuccessfully.

It is all right for a country to be ruled by Christian, Islamic or even Jewish ideologies. However, it seems Hinduism is not compatible with modern democracy. So says the rest of the world. The colonial masters even thought it was pertinent to emphasise in the Constitution that India is a secular country. In the mind of the right-wing Hindu politicians, Sanathana Dharma is secular. In the eyes of the world, Hindutva is a bad word, implying combative fundamentalism. In reality, it just denotes Hinduness.

In the understanding of the right-wing Hindu leaders, a Hindu is someone born in India, with the cultures of India, bowing to the nation of India. So, in their understanding, a Muslim or a Christian is a Hindu. It is wrong, say a Muslim to have allegiance with their religion and show reverence to an external force whilst turning his back to Bharat.

The book tries to clear many misconceptions started by the colonial masters and the subsequent Anglophile Congress leaders who just held the helm on their behalf. They try to allay the misinformation that RSS and BJP are anti-intellectuals or are lacking intellectual depth. They try to break the mould of slave mentality among the citizens and rewrite the distorted Indian history penned previously by leftist historians to maintain the hegemony of the colonial masters over their subject. 

A good read. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Because of bad leftists' publicity?

The RSS: Roadmaps 21st Century
Sunil Ambekar

Imagine a time 20 years ago. We were all fed with a single narrative. The government-controlled media or media barons churned out cable news will tell us 'the truth'. There was no counter-narrative to argue this. The world accepted this one version. The fringe publishment that aired an alternative perspective of the event is labelled a rabble-rouser and scorned. Now with the availability of all the information at our disposal, we are still unsure of many things. For every piece of news churned, there is an immediate contradictory explanation just to shoot it down at its inception, making us none the wiser.

I have always been given the impression that RSS is terrible news. My brother-in-law, who spent much of his formative years in India, and his wife, an Indian citizen who gave up her citizenship for her newfound love and land, Malaysia, have no qualms that RSS is synonymous with bigotry and fanaticism. Any piece of news from RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; National Volunteer Organisation) is immediately labelled propaganda and untrue. Yet another family member who has found employment in Malaysia has nothing nice to say about RSS. To him, the RSS management cherry-picked delinquents and academically weak students to do their dirty job in the name of religion.

My schoolmate, who probably had his long-lost ancestors coming from India, believes Muslims are selectively persecuted in India. He himself is a Muslim. He is convinced that RSS in India is what Mossad is to Israel, just like the symbiotic relationship between Sein Fenn and the IRA. He is cocksure that RSS is the militant wing of the BJP (like Al-Aqsa martyr Brigades and Fatah). 

But then alternative news tells me otherwise. In the aftermath of any calamity, volunteers of RSS are the first to be at the scene giving moral and humanitarian support. They are so well organised and are said to provide service without much fanfare. Being an NRI, I was naturally conflicted between what I read and what I had heard.

Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar

I thought this book gives a complete account of RSS' genesis, its earlier objectives, and how it evolved in a post-independent India. India was a restless country from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. The rebel yell was heard from all four corners of Bharat. Every third person that one saw was a freedom fighter. Events like the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 further ignited the fire for self-rule.

Against this background, with the shouts of 'Vande Matram' and Lokmanya Tilak's 1906 visit to Nagpur, Maharashtra, a young Keshav Baliram Hedgewar's national interest was piqued. Thilak was labelled 'the Father of Political Unrest'. He made a political life of agitating the British for self-rule. Nagpur, at that time, was a fertile ground for nationalistic activities steeped deep into the Hindu way of life. Keshav went on to read medicine in Calcutta in 1910. Dr Keshav Hedgewar returned to Nagpur in 1915 with a medical degree and a chest full of Indian nationalism after interacting with Bengali revolutionaries. 

RSS flag

His idea of disciplining the young mind was through physical activity, traditional martial arts and wrestling. Slowly his group started participating in satyagraha movements and campaigning against social ills. Somewhere around the 1920s, the British managed to introduce the idea of the 'Muslim-Hindu unity' concept. Gandhi, with his Congress Party, parted ways with Hedgewar over Gandhi's support of the Khalifat movement. Some within the Congress Party also opposed Hedgewar's so-called militant-natured activities. RSS was formed in 1925. Its objective at inception was to influence the mind and soul of the Nation to gain independence. Not wanting to fall into the British divide-and-rule trap, the RSS decided to dig deep into the Nation's civilisation to inculcate value readily present into the subcontinent before the invaders wrecked our knowledge and infused theirs. 

After independence, the RSS continues their service to the needy. It promotes the Hindu way of life, fights for social and caste justice, and tries to improve modern familial relationships. Contrary to what they are accused of, RSS is not a misogynistic organisation. They have many prominent female leaders. Even though detractors hurl abuses of religious bigotry, the RSS have many Christian, Muslim and Farsi members and leaders in their fold. 

They must be doing something right for being around for almost a century. The RSS must be relevant for drawing so many non-Hindu members into their fold. Something to ponder.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Back to the driver's seat!

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Ram Swarup

The thought of my simple-minded mother heartbroken over her beloved son's conversion from his birth religion into an Abrahamic religion was deterrent enough for me to maintain the status quo. The vision of her disappearing into the horizon as I am saved by the second coming of Christ at the end of times and the image of her burning in hellfire whilst I, because of my foresightedness in following the Shepard, savouring the sweet nectar of bliss was just too much for me to stomach.  

I cannot blame her for feeling the way she felt. After all, it is her life experience. In her eyes, as the script of Ram Swarup's view suggests, there is no reason to embrace another religion as the Hindu religion has it all. It has been around since the beginning of time. There must be a reason why unlike the other new kids of the block, its philosophy of living in harmony with our inner self, the environment and the cosmos resonates with other Eastern, African, American Indian and other ancient belief systems.

My mother perceived the Abrahamic religions as disruptive, combative and condescending at best. Her childhood encounters reinforced the idea that the nuns that she had met had ulterior motives in their niceties. She had seen families torn apart and marriages disrupted because of the divisive natures of Western belief systems. In her eyes, Hinduism has been and is still able to provide emotional solace and intellectual support to last this lifetime and the ones beyond. Period. 

Ram Swarup is a respected figure. Starting as a freedom fighter, he later was a prolific writer on matters critical against Christianity, Islam and Communism. Through his association with the publication house, Voice of India, he churned out many Hindu revivalist articles. The West sang praises of his scathing articles about communism but was not so complimentary on his views of Abrahamic religions. 

In this book, he asserts that the political differences between tribes, people from different parts of the world were content with their pagan beliefs, living in harmony with Nature with their own set of social mores that kept them going as a society. The Hindu type of faith spread eastwardly as far as Japan and westwardly as far as Central Asia. In fact, the Lithuanian language shares keen similarity to Sanskriti language. The last pagans in the Baltics who were forcefully converted by the Templar Knights had many Hindu deities. In fact, the Africans were not in a dark continent, but, on the contrary, were illuminated with their own advanced philosophy.  The Native Americans, whom the Spaniards looted were not just bison-hunting savages but with their profound way of life. The Aztecs and the Mayan who were systemically infected and forcibly converted to accept Christ at gunpoint had a shared belief system with the Hindus.

The Abrahamic religions need to put their act together. They need to engage in public relation to erase their checked past to rebrand themselves. They should erase the perception, to the non-believers, of a jealous God who is hot on the trail of a recruitment drive. Or perhaps, their past intentions persist, but their modus operandi may have varied. The perception of a heathen is the religions are means to exert power and a modality to squander money.

Ironically, India, a subcontinent that was referred to as the fatherland of mankind, exuding with advanced knowledge and skills has morphed into an ignorant, divided, self-hating society that has forgotten its past glory and needs validation for its own existence.

On a happy note, the author believes that the future is bright as India has reawakened. Even though it was pushed under the wheels of the bus of the Industrial Revolution, it has wriggled itself out to clasp its hands on to the driver's seat. Now, it needs to steer its wheels.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.