Nonfiction Writing

In what could probably be the most ironical ‘irony of silence’, the mighty Western world, in the face of the Quranic assault against its Christian faith in the mosques, madrasas and mohallahs that too on its own soil, had come to adopt the mute mode! Not only that, the redoubtable Pope of the day, in the Supreme seat of the Catholic power, whose predecessors ushered in the crusades against Mohammedans to recover their Holy Lands in Middle East, remains a mute spectator even as Islamist immigrants have been aggressively asserting their faith all over Europe these days.

Just for the uninitiated, here are a few samples of the Quranic assaults against the Christians, and Jews as well, from Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Quran.   

 “They indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say: Who then can do aught against Allah, if He had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth? Allah’s is the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them. He createth what He will. And Allah is Able to do all things.” 

“They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no God save the One God. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.” 

“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”   

“They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them.”

And ominously, “All they who disbelieve and deny our revelations, such are rightful owners of hell.”

“We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve because they ascribe unto Allah partners, for which no warrant hath been revealed. Their habitation is the Fire, and hapless the abode of the wrong-doers.”

Besides, Jehovah, in His Islamic avatar as Allah, was no kinder either to the Jews, His Chosen People:

“The likeness of those who are entrusted with the Law of Moses, yet apply it not, is as the likeness of the ass carrying books. Wretched is the likeness of folk who deny the revelations of Allah. And Allah guideth not wrong doing folk.”  

“Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful.”

“But they will never long for it because of all that their own hands have sent before, and Allah is Aware of evil-doers.”

“Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Lo! the death from which ye shrink will surely meet you, and afterward ye will be returned unto the Knower of the invisible and the visible, and He will tell you what ye used to do.”

However, it is another matter that having all along castigated the Christians for having made Jesus and Mary partners to Allah, Muhammad, in Quran’s ninth sura that proclaims the immunity from obligation towards the idolaters, had himself partnered Allah by way of “Freedom from obligation (is proclaimed) from Allah and His messenger toward those of the idolaters with whom ye made a treaty”! Surely, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Be that as it may, the evangelists, who lay great store on the Christian path of salvation and prowl all over the planet earth to snare the so-called heathens into the fold of Jesus, fail on their very own Christian turf to silence the mullahs and maulvis, who ridicule their faith. Though this may appear strange, actually it is easy to comprehend for wittingly or unwittingly, Muhammad, with the following Quranic links, had ensured that any criticism of Islam by the Jews and the Christians would undermine their own faith thus:

“Lo! We did reveal The Torah, wherein is guidance and a light, by which the Prophets who surrendered (unto Allah) judged the Jews, and the rabbis and the priests (judged) by such of Allah’s Scripture as they were bidden to observe, and thereunto were they witnesses. So fear not mankind, but fear Me. And barter not My revelations for a little gain. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are disbelievers.” 

“And We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, confirming that which was (revealed) before him, and We bestowed on him the Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah – a guidance and an admonition unto those who ward off (evil).”

“Say: O People of the Scripture! Ye have naught (of guidance) till ye observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto you from your Lord. That which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them. But grieve not for the disbelieving folk.”

So, as disputing the Quran would tantamount to debunking the Torah and the Gospel, more so as the nature of their God is the same, as under, so to say, Muhammad’s one-upmanship had pushed his Semitic cousins and the Gentile converts into a catch-22 situation, much before Joseph Heller came up with it.   

“And We prescribed for them therein: The life for the life, and the eye for the eye, and the nose for the nose, and the ear for the ear, and the tooth for the tooth, and for wounds retaliation. But whoso forgoeth it (in the way of charity) it shall be expiation for him. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are wrong-doers.”  

It’s thus a theological silence prevails in the evangelical world to its own detriment what with the Western Christians in numbers are embracing Islam that is regardless of its terror tag.

However, when it comes to Hindus, they suffer from the bliss of ignorance, for somehow (God knows how!) they have come to assume that the precepts of all religions could not be but noble, never mind the ignoble practices of some of their followers. But in effect, they, sans the Semitic exclusivist religious baggage, are the best placed to engage with Islam that has become a scourge of humanity by way of impressing upon the ummah that while the Mecca suras make Quran the noblest of scriptures, its egregious Medina suras, meant to serve Muhammad’s mundane mission, not Musalman’s spiritual needs, being period, should be treated as such.

[More on the Islamic ethos in Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife, a free ebook in the public domain, including this site- https://g.co/kgs/18bpdY]

Exhibiting an abnormal Abrahamic unity, the Christians and the Muslims, at odds with each other, the world over, combine themselves to jointly undermine the Sanatana dharma, aka Hinduism, in the Hindu-majority India. However, there’s nothing intriguing about that for both seek to expand their exclusivist religious footprints in the fertile fields of the populous republic with a political system that willy-nilly facilitates proselytization like nowhere else. Hence, so as to devise appropriate devices to tackle this Semitic menace that their chequered history makes them to suffer, even after their so-called independence, Hindus of the day need to delve into the cultish credos of these dogmatic faiths; especially given their unfettered demographic growths have cancerous consequences to the Indian body politic, in the not-so-distant future.

To start with, for both these desert faiths, it’s an article of faith that their mutually exclusivist dogmas, with intolerant streaks inherent to them, have universal applicability with unquestionable divinity – while Jesus asserted that “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned”, the Azan affirms that “There is none worthy of worship except Allah”. That’s not all, for the Christians, the Hindus are heathens, needing to be redeemed as their deities are fake, deserve to be ditched. What’s worse, for the Muslims, they are infidels, condemned to die at their hands, and their females, the legitimate sexual targets, all for the glory of Allah, no less, which fallacy, lo, the Muslim women take to their hearts! Thus, the demographic growth, more so of the Muslim kind, has a psychopathic dimension to it that is detrimental, even to the free speech, the foundation of, the once Hindu-achieved, human excellence, now sought to be throttled by the Islamic fanaticism - gustakh-e-nabi ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda (disrespect Muhammad and get beheaded).  So, it should be really scary to imagine the horrific effects of the cancerous growth of these converted characters, who tend to despise their ancestral culture and become implacably hostile to its ancient people, to mindlessly uphold the delusional traits of these dogmatic faiths.

All the same, the goody-goody Hindus condescend to descend to these misfits, more so to the Islamic variety, attributing their religious bigotry as well as their social aggression to their lack of literacy and their economic backwardness, never mind their highly educated fidayeen and the well-heeled terrorists unerringly belie the falsity of their fantasy. But yet, these very Hindus look the other way as, of late, the Indian corporate portals have become the frontiers of love jihad to coerce the Hindu women into converting, what with the female faithful pimping for their male co-religionists. So, the scourge of these religious conversions is not so much about the depletion of the Hindu ranks but about the increment of the demented characters that already have become formidable. But strangely, the Hindu Islamapologists are not perturbed, at least not yet, neither by the converts’ calculated demographic spread nor by their hateful behavioural patterns, and, as can be seen, there is a habit, and history, to that.

Well, Alberuni in his Tarikh al-Hind, written around 1030 CE, noted that "The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs". That the Hindus then should have gloated about themselves in like fashion that too in the wake of Ghazani’s sack of Somnath, not to speak of Qasim’s conquest of the Sind, as early as 712 CE, which was 102 years after Muhammad had firmed up Islam, belies their delusional mindset that has been persistently prevalent ever since in its profusion! It is another matter though that none of the Hindu kings ever ventured to reclaim the Sind for their Hindustan, like the Christians, who around the same time, had initiated the Reconquista to liberate Spain from the clutches of the same Musalmans. If anything, it is the telling difference between the Hindus and the followers of the Semitic faiths that proved fatal to India over the centuries. Why, even now, there’s no dearth of the woolly Hindus, who assert that the Semitic conversion sprees pose no threat to the Sanatana Dharma for, after all, it survived the Islamic Mogul Rule and the Christian British Raj, together lasting over a millennium, never mind at the end of it all, they were forced to part with one fourth of their ancestral land for a homeland for Muslims, evocatively named Pakistan.

Be that as it may, the cruel joke of India’s partition, based on Jinnah’s assertion that “Hindus and Muslims were two distinct nations with separate religions, cultures, and values” was that, out of 95 million Muslims at that time, 35 million of them that is over one-third, staid put in India, owing in no small measure to the Muslim-minded Nehru’s Machiavellian goading, to become his dynastic vote-bank by way of their innate communal outlook. Needless to say, making good of the Islamic leeway provided to them by Nehru and his dynastic successors, in what was supposedly Hindu India after the partition, they have been ever at increasing their numbers, exponentially that is, to become some fourteen percent by now that is more than the partition-inducing thirteen percent. Though for all practical purposes, the Ghazwa-e-Hind of an Islamic dream may forever remain a pipe dream for them and the hoped-for second partition, is a geographically untenable proposition, yet in time, the Muslim demand could be to declare the de facto Muslim mohalls into de jure Islamic areas, with sharia and all, within the boundaries of the Secular India. And given the Mullah-nurtured kafir hatred the Quran inculcates in them, who knows, their jihadi zeal may, at length, turn these into Gaza strips to kill the Hindu infidels in the adjoining habitats, a la Israeli Oct 7.

Thankfully though, the Hindus are becoming increasingly alive to the overtly Muslim and the covertly Christian demographic overturns around them as reflected in the recent constitution of the ‘High-Level Committee on Demographic Change’, HLCDC for short, by the Modi-sarkar, to comprehensively assess the ‘abnormal population shifts caused by illegal immigration and other unnatural causes.’ But the moot point is how things have been allowed to come to this pass, and the answer lies, as seen above, in the Hindu lacking of Shatrubodh (enemy awareness), which concept is slowly gaining the ‘right’ ground now. That is despite Chandmal Chopra’s 1985 Writ Petition to the Calcutta High Court seeking a ban on the Quran for its vile ayats on kafirs, in the wake of which Sita Ram Goel came up with his  book, Calcutta Quran Petition, a year later. That this author self-published Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A critical appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity ‘n more) in 2003, with seemingly none such in between, tells the Islam-naive story of the Hindu Semitic-unawareness.

Needless to say, the Quran Petition was dismissed then and same would be the case at any time in the future, unless India becomes a ‘dictatorial China’, politically, economically and militarily, to un-Islamize the Indian Muslims, as is the case with the Uyghur Muslims, without a whimper of a protest from the Islamic world. Whatever, it is true that since late sixties, assorted anti-conversion laws have been in force in various non-Congress ruled Indian states to restrict religious conversions carried out through ‘force, fraud, or inducement’, but to no avail as evidenced by the need to constitute the said high-level committee now. Nevertheless, it is seldom appreciated that religious propagation, read religious conversion, which the Indian Constitution naively treats as the citizens’ fundamental right, as detailed in the author’s article, Incongruities in Indian Constitution, per se, is a constitutional fraud perpetrated on the gullible Hindus.

Thus, it should be not lost on any that the Indian Constitution, crafted by the Macaulay-educated babus of that era and adopted by the politically correct netas, engaged in chasing the Gandhian mirage of Hindu-Muslim bhaichara in India’s ganga-jamni desert, is a cruel double whammy on the long-denied natives. That’s not all, even as the Hindu-apathetic Nehru laid its philosophical foundation, its ‘architect’, Dr. BR Ambedkar, who swore not to die as a Hindu, and indeed passed away as a converted Buddhist, built the tome that set the anti-Sanatana tone, which for long fell on the deaf Hindu ears. Now that the pro-Semitic constitutional tune is becoming increasingly irritable to the jaag utha (woken up) Hindus, by the year 2047, it may as well be the case of the good riddance of this bad rubbish, giving cause for India to celebrate its hundredth-year of independence then as Vikasit Bharat, in the true sense that is.

However, as the Semitic cancer has already reached the second stage, ably aided by the constitutional provisions and largely abetted by the Nehruvian policies, it is imperative that it should be adequately cured at this stage, without further delay at that, to prevent it from growing into the incurable fourth stage.

Here’s a prospective prescription for the same.

Rx

Diagnosed Semitic Stage II cancer in Indian body politic.

Recommended procedures for its containment and cure.

I) Preventive measures

In propagating one’s religion, faith or creed, the following actions are deemed contrary to ‘public order, morality and health’, paramount in the constitution, and as such are treated as criminal acts punishable with due imprisonment and an appropriate fine as well as life-long prohibition of the violators from indulging in any form of religious propagation/activity whatsoever.

i) Promoting one’s god, prophet, seer as the only valid god, prophet, seer, and picturing the gods, goddesses, dieters of other religions, faiths, creeds, customs as false, fake or inferior for denouncing or demeaning the latter.

ii) Positioning one’s religion, faith, covenant, creed, custom, convention as the only divinely true one and that the other religions, faiths, covenants, creeds, customs and conventions are false, fake or inferior.  

iii) Asserting that one’s religion, faith, covenant, beliefs, customs, and conventions as superior to those of the others that lack the divine sanction / approval or are irrational.

iv) Highlighting only the palliative aspects of one’s religion, faith, covenant, custom and conventions, all the while hiding the regressive and obscurantic features and characteristics of the same in ways to make the prospective converts perceive that the other side of the fence is greener.

v) Luring the others into one’s religion or faith by theologically picturing the same as caste-free, contrary to its widespread prevalence among its converted peoples in the Indian social setting.

vi) Seducing the socially, educationally and economically weaker sections of people as well as the emotionally vulnerable ones, of other religions, faiths and communities, to enter into one’s religion or faith with financial inducements, fake promises, alleged miracles and such dubious tactics.

II) Curative methods

In professing and practicing one’s religion, the following are deemed contrary to ‘public order, morality and health’ and hence treated as criminal acts, punishable under the law.

i)  No recitation, preaching, recounting, propagation of such verses or anecdotes from the holy scriptures, religious books, historical accounts that derogate other faiths and inculcate enmity towards the followers of the same, can be undertaken anywhere, even in religious places, under any circumstances whatsoever. 

a) Any violation of the above by ordained priests, religious propagators, social commentators et al, entails imprisonment and fine besides a life-long ban on such to reassume the same or similar religious roles.

ii) No preaching, teaching, lecturing or discoursing, rooted in the religious scriptures, tenets, books or historical accounts in the educational institutions of any denomination that induce disregard, hatred, enmity etc. towards other religions/ faiths or their adherents should be resorted to.

a) Any violation of the above carries due imprisonment and permanent disablement of the involved teacher(s) from such an occupation.

b) Should any such institution continue to indulge in this prohibited practice with different characters, then that facility would be disbanded and the members of its board or committee, would be collectively and severally barred from establishing such or similar outfits to undertake such or similar activities for the rest of their lives.

Note – Seek a second opinion from HLCDC, just in case. 

‘What ails India’ has been the subject matter of the left-lib right-wing tussle for long, what with the cynics chipping in, in between. However, the right-wing assault on the left-lib ‘Idea of India’, facilitated by Narendra Modi’s nationalist rise in the Indian political firmament, has only increased the intensity of the scrimmage. Be that as it may, this is to throw a new ‘right’ light on India’s ‘left’ plight that has been Bharat’s bane, for a fresh look at it.  

In Kitab al-Hind, Al-Biruni had stated that “the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs”, and that was in the 11th century CE. Wasn’t it the current American parallel of yore? But still, by the 20th century, the sangh pariwar, in order to make Hindus feel proud of being Hindus all again, had no option but to come up with the slogan, garv se kaho hum hindu hain. But then, what it was that so adversely affected the Hindu morale that led to the initial decline and the eventual downfall of Bharat that is India is the subject matter of this exercise.   

That the Hindus felt what they felt in the 11th century, despite the 1st century evangelical forays into Malabar by St. Thomas and the 8th century Arab conquest of Sind, in a way, is a giveaway of the cause of India’s plight, past and present – the abject ignorance of the Hindus about the exclusivist ethos of the expansionist Christian and Islamic faiths, and their utter disregard for the perils their followers posed to India’s social harmony, political unity and national integrity. However, given their social ethos of religious amity, this sedate Hindu failure of yore, to grasp the divisive credos of the alien faiths, is understandable, though not anymore. Even so, as the sanatana Hindu non-varnas were socially kept away from Bharat’s varna mainstream, the precedence of Buddhism and Jainism that sought to correct this self-negating social code, were more of reformist offshoots than rebellious branches of the otherwise all-encompassing sanatana dharma that, lo, holds Charvaka’s atheism too in its Hindu fold!

Whatever, given the inadequate growth of these sub-religious trees, as they failed to provide much of a reformist shade to the non-varnas, the practice of their debasement, if not enslavement, persisted in the Hindu social arrangement. Sadly but inevitably, this social wedge became the Achilles heel for the proselytizing Christians and Muslims to pierce through the Hindu body politic. Even so, the Muslims needed the might of their sword and power of patronage and the Christians, the guile of enticement and the guise of charity for their religious headway. However, it is a testimony to the Indian social resilience that together they could only uproot, up to a quarter of its Hindu roots that too in a millennium. Ironically though, it is this intellectual complacency that makes the Hindus the ‘once bitten not twice shy’ kind, showing a blind eye to the unabated conversion of their disgruntled sections into these alien faiths to India’s demographic detriment.         

Just the same, Maryam Jameelah in her book, Islam and Orientalism, lamented that “If the Mughal monarchs had assumed their responsibilities as Muslim rulers and organized intensive tabliq or missionary work, the majority of Indians would have embraced Islam and hence the necessity for partition and all the disasters that followed in its wake, never would have arisen.” If only Jameelah had read Al-Biruni, she could have envisaged the haughty hurdles of the Hindu varnas that the Mughal tabliq had to surmount. Besides, as the unceasing tabliq would have entailed a perpetual jihad, probably, the Sultans staid put in their palaces annexed with harems in the limited lands that came under their sway. All the same, they spared no efforts to pluck the low hanging Hindu ‘non-varna’ fruits to substantially fill their Islamic religious baskets.  

Eventually though, signaling the end to the eight-hundred years old partial Muslim rule, Robert Clive planted the British colonial foot in the Battle of Plassey, plotted by Jagat Seth’s avenging ‘financial’ hand at Siraj-ud-Daulah’s  insult of him. Nevertheless, the Nehruvian school curriculum, as if to deprive the Hindu kids of the feel good revenge, made the game-changing event seem an all-Muslim affair with Mir Jaffar as the quisling. Whatever, given the Mughal decline by then, but for this Cliveian twist to the Mughal legacy, it is not inconceivable that the Marathas, Rajputs and the valorous rest would have given a Hindu turn to the Muslim history. Be that as it may, by ending the Muslim influence in India, the British had enabled the Hindus to feel at home in their ancestral land, at long last that is. But all that turned out to be a false start for them as the British Macaulayzed their educational mechanism to uproot generations of Hindus from their sanatana grassroots to upend their cultural legacy from their collective consciousness. Hence, as if to prove that ‘there’s a price to pay for freedom’, history threw the Hindus out of the frying pan into fire. That it affected an encore for them is the irony of India’s history!

Not just that, the British pauperized Bharat by ruining its industry and degrading its economy, from some 24% of the world’s GDP to around 4% of it before they had to leave its shores for their own safety. However, it’s another matter though that the centuries-long Islamic turbulence had earlier brought down the Indian economy by ten notches or so. Even as the British rule impoverished India that hurt all, still the Muslims couldn’t care less for their holy book hath it that “Naught is the life of the world save a pastime and a sport. Better far is the abode of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah). Have ye then no sense?” Not only that, having barred the secular education to their kids for the fear of its intellectual corruption of their irrational belief system, they had confined them to madrasas for further cementing their blind faith in their tiny heads. As ummah is change averse, the Muslim conditions apply even now and maybe into the foreseeable future as well. Thus, it’s no wonder that this inimical feature of the Muslim character has become the cornerstone of the electoral strategy of the cynical politics – Give Muslims their Islam and be done with them.

But then, even as the patriotic fervour began to awake the Hindu nationalism, the Islamic craving for a Muslim homeland started taking its political shape, both anathemas to the British colonial masters. It was then that the much-wronged Hindus needed a visionary leader to guide them to their rightful place under the sun but instead they got the silly but wily Gandhi, who sadly fouled it for them, so to say, for all times to come. However, Muslims found their messiah in Jinnah, who delivered the hoped-for Pakistan to them, so to say, on the Hindu platter of his own ancestors. Surely, Gandhi was erudite enough to know about the Muslim religious obligation to strive for the establishment of an Islamic rule in dar al-harb, which India was, and still is for them. Even then, instead of tackling the ummah on the separatist front, by appeasing the Musalmans in every which way, he naively persisted in his attempts to avert India’s inevitable partition with disastrous consequences. It’s thus, even as he was unequivocal about the Hindu non-violence, he was ambivalent on the Muslim violence, be it Moplah massacres or Swami Shraddhanand’s murder to cite but two examples.

More so, it was Gandhi’s lack of foresight leading up to India’s partition that hurt the Hindus the most, to appreciate which his wooly Hindu-Muslim sadbhavana should be contrasted with Ambedkar’s robust take on the Muslim psyche: “…the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim ibi bene ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin.”  Thus, failing to see the Muslim intent to break India, even after personally witnessing the Direct Action Day’s virulent violence, he remained pigheadedly adamant against India’s inevitable, even necessary partition, albeit with the population exchange on the respective religious grounds, advocated by Sardar Patel, not to speak of Ambedkar. Just the same, as if he had a premonition of the post-partition calamity in the offing, on April 6, 1947 he lectured that “Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives.”

If only Gandhi had a knack for realpolitik, seeing the writing on the Muslim-fractured Indian wall, he should have brought about an equitable religious separation in an amicable manner, which would have saved the catastrophic outcomes of the haphazard partition for Hindus as well as Muslims, more so for the former. But yet, he showed no remorse for his foolhardiness in opposing a planned ‘population exchange based’ partition, but instead had allegedly stated that Hindu and Sikh women should get willingly raped by their Muslim violators. Capping all that, his incalculable harm to India lay in the unilateral anointment of Nehru, the most English of them all (in his own words) as its putative Prime Minister by immorally sidelining the Hindu nationalist Patel, opted by the congress party to lead the nascent nation.

Not just that, with his fast-unto-death stunt later, he coerced the Indian government into releasing to Pakistan its share of the partition funds that is in the midst of their military engagement! Sadly for India, this anti-national stance of Gandhi on his utopian moral ground turned out to be the proverbial last straw on Godse’s patriotic back. Whatever, sensing a godsend opportunity to grind his political axe in Godse’s senseless act, Nehru cleverly dubbed the murder of a maverick as the martyrdom of the Mahatma. But equally cynically, so as to smoothen the way for the Muslim aggrandizement in India, he forged the ant-communal hammer on the anvil of that human tragedy for smothering the resurgent Hindu nationalism. Why, he did proclaim that he was “English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident.”

However, his Muslim affinity, as can be seen from his midnight missive to Padmaja Naidu, wherein he penned his ‘relief’ at the British military action that killed 400 Bihari farmers indulged in a retaliatory Hindu rioting after the Noakhali Muslim carnage, was more cynical than cultural. What is worse, it is an unambiguous giveaway of his anti-Hindu disposition that he was wont to exhibit throughout albeit in the secular garb. Here are a few lines from that ‘insensitive’ letter for all to ponder over:     

‘’.. I learnt that the military had fired on a peasant mob in the rural areas some miles from here, and about 400 had been killed. Normally such a thing would have horrified me. But would you believe it? I was greatly relieved to hear it!”

“And so when the news came that they have been stopped at last in one place and that 400 of them had died, I felt that the balance had been very slightly righted.” 

Oh, bemoan Gandhi for having entrusted the fate of the trusting Hindus to such a cynical person, who was emotionally as well as intellectually anti-Hindu. But then, the crux of India’s plight is that both these crass characters were at chasing the mirages of their false images - Gandhi as an apostle of non-violence and Nehru as the messiah of non-alignment – by turning its interests into a desert of despair, which apparance is seldom appreciated by the wronged Hindus themselves.

No less significant is the start of Nehru’s epochal Tryst with Destiny address to the Indian Constituent Assembly – “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially” – that is an intellectual indicator of not only his limited ambition for the independent India but also his lack of belief in the Hindu potential to reclaim its ancient glory. But, lo, as India’s ill-fate would have it, he happened to helm it for the first seventeen years in its making as an independent nation! However, it’s true that he shaped the ‘temples of modern India’ in the form of giant public sector undertakings and ushered in the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, ostensibly to train their pujaris. Nevertheless, as it turned out, these prized pundits invariably sailed to the American shores for ‘bettering themselves’ and, in time, the Nehruvian temples were turned into white elephants by their ‘socialist’ attendants. That’s not all to the litany of the national, social, moral, material, and political ills that have come to plague India, courtesy his unsavoury legacy, made worse by his daughter Indira and her daughter-in-law Sonia, who lorded over India for long. No denying, there are books and books, about India’s plight, but doubt if any of them pinpoint the root causes of the malady, and what follows is but an attempt at that.

So to say, to enable the Musalmans to feel at home in the Hindu India, for reasons better left for researchers to explore in the future, Nehru had ensured that the Hindus have no cause and effect to feel it is their own country, which  proved to be its double jeopardy. It’s thus, with its caste-centric Hindus lacking nationalist impulse and its Muslim residuals devoid of any sense of belonging to it (recall Ambedkar’s words) forming its demographic triad, with the ‘neither here nor there’ closet Christians, India has become the habitat of varied interest groups but not a unified nation with a unitary purpose. But still, the historic situation was never beyond redemption, if only the Hindus were made to believe that in essence India belonged to them and them only and so it was their bounden duty to make it great again, morally, spiritually, as well as materially, never mind the non-committal minorities, by and large that is. However, his dynastic successors, not content with engineering the caste divisions to fracture the Hindu mandate, had fostered the captive Muslim vote-bank to willy-nilly put India on the demographic path of future partition.  

But at long last, as if to give itself a rightful turn to its wrongful history, India had induced its indifferent Hindu electorate to vote out Nehru’s dubious descendants, who have become its nemeses since long, and vote in the nationalist Narendra Modi. Hitting the ground running, Modi had diagnosed India’s true malaise and started curing the same by restoring the Hindu religious virility and infusing Bharat’s cultural pride in the Indian national consciousness. It’s as if, so to say overnight, India has regained its lost Hindu josh on its march towards Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, the veracity of which the Operation Sindoor has validated. By now it is apparent, more than ever, that the Hindus have come to believe that India is theirs to cherish, nourish, and protect against all odds and in every eventuality. What is more heartening is, the Hindus have come to believe that like the Sindoor, Atmanirbhar too is not a one-off thing, but an ongoing endeavour to usher in the Vikasit Bharat after Modi’s heart.

But yet, India has to contend with the nefarious nexus of the intransigent Islamists, obscurantist Muslims and their left-lib cohorts, who leave no stone unturned to impede its progress in every possible way, judicial activism included. So, it is only by defanging this venomous system that Bharat can become vikasit, and hopefully Modi would be able to do that in time so that the present and the future generations of Hindus would be blessed to be able to echo their ancestors’ modified motto, ‘there is no country but theirs, no culture like theirs, no society like theirs, no democracy like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs, no economy like theirs and no military like theirs’.      

🌟 New Release Alert! 🌟

I'm thrilled to announce the release of my latest poetry eBook, "Echoes of the Soul: A Journey Through Time and Emotion" by Oscar J. Starr III. 🌌📖

About the Book: "Echoes of the Soul" is a collection that delves deep into the human experience, capturing the essence of life's most profound moments through evocative verses. Each poem is a reflection of the soul's whispers, resonating with timeless themes of love, loss, joy, and introspection.

Why You'll Love It:
Emotional Depth: Each poem invites readers to explore their innermost feelings, offering a raw and honest portrayal of the human psyche.

Timeless Themes: From the passage of time to the complexities of emotion, this collection speaks to universal experiences that everyone can relate to.

Beautiful Imagery: The cover art itself is a testament to the book's enchanting nature, featuring a mesmerizing blend of cosmic elements and serene landscapes.

Praise for the Author: Oscar J. Starr III, celebrated for the critically acclaimed "The GameChanger Perspective," returns with a unique voice and profound insights that make "Echoes of the Soul" a must-read for poetry enthusiasts and anyone seeking a deeper connection with their own emotions.

Get Your Copy Today: Embark on this poetic journey and let the echoes of the soul guide you through the labyrinth of time and emotion. Available now on Amazon Kindle, with more platforms coming soon!

THE US HAS LOST ITS HEGEMONY OF INTERPRETATION

by Marc Batko <marc1seed@yahoo.com>

With the advent of the Internet, the US has lost its hegemony of interpretation. 

Our allegiance is to the constitution, not to an unaccountable plutocracy or oligarchy with a history of colonialism and imperialism.

In our economy of indebtedness and enrichment. the wrong buildings are built by the wrong people.  We are an untied and divided republic with 10% owning 70% of the wealth and the bottom 50% only 2%.

The American Century is over.  Under the Washington Consensus, deregulation, privatization and liberalized markets were dysfunctional dogmas.  Countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa were devastated.  Under the Investor-State Tribunal agreements of NAFTA and the IMF, corporations like Metalclad could sue states for lost profits while states could not sue corporations.  In around 1999, Metalclad sued Mexico when the incinerator contract was cancelled after the population rose up because of the expected air pollution and health injuries.  Incidentally, Metalclad had never operated an incinerator before!

The times are changing!  China has built 600 schools in Iraq and airports in Africa!

As China has now surpassed the US in gross domestic product (GDP), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China  and South Africa) has passed the G7 in GDP.  Countries can no longer be forced to grow tulips and strawberries for Miami but can grow rice and beans for their own people.

Violence is not only military but also structural, systemic, economic and informational.

The US economy became dysfunctional when speculative investment superseded productive investments, when economic power became unaccountable political power, when the myths of the self-healing market and financial markets returning to equilibrium were made sacrosanct truths and when the Fed injected trillions to keep Wall Street banks alive.  The people are too big to fail, not the banks!

Taxation, affordable housing and bank stability were the first pillars of neoliberalism to collapse (cf. Colin Crouch, "The Surprising Non-death of Neoliberalism").  Most large multinational firms shift their profits to tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Delaware and Wyoming.  Universities contribute to neoliberal dominance by repressing discussion of financial markets, financial products and the tax avoidance industry.

It is difficult to remember what has never been learned.  As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herrman explained, filters in the corporate media and politics created "manufactured consent."  Citizens are deluged with stock market reports and business news without any labor news.  Only business-friendly news is emphasized - alongside celebrity news and weather updates!  Structural or systemic analysis of alternatives, market failure or state failure are taboo.  Financial markets are depicted as super-sensitive deer that would race away with truthful reporting!

Tax havens, the tax avoidance industry, stock buybacks (in the double-digit trillions!), micro-second betting (the casino economy) and insider trading are market distortions used by corporations and the super-rich.  Another pernicious myth is that money is a private matter, not a public necessity.  With the three Trump appointees, the US Supreme Court reinforced the "Central Bank economy" by declaring money is speech and corporations are persons (cf. Citizens United decision in 2010).

This world has long been threatened from within by authoritarianism, alienation, false needs and false consciousness (cf. Herbert Marcuse, The One-dimensional Man, 1964).  The one-dimensional society, he warned, is a society of fear and surveillance.  Neither luxury consumption nor security guards bumping into one another are signs of a future-friendly sustainable society!

How do we become subjects?  What do spirituality and liberation mean in hyper-materialistic and hyper-individualistic societies?   Can we learn from the 26 community centers in Vancouver B.C. that could b e a third way beyond the state and the market?  Can we imitate the 4-day work week from Japan and Portugal?  Can we replicate the 3-year rent freeze proposal from the German SPD party?  Can we initiate a Marshall Plan for journalism (organized by progressive foundations and philanthropists, not the state) so the young generation can have creative life-affirming work opportunities and aren't forced to choose between the Amazon assembly line and being Uber-drivers?

Exceptionalism, a corrosive myth contradicting the history of the rise and fall of behemoth empires, turns out to be a blindness so we hardly learn from or applaud other countries.  In the glorified car-tastrophe (cf. Scoop Nisker on KFOG in SF), the car is more than an efficient box but a whole glittering worldview encouraging us to become myopic, xenophobic, ahistorical and apolitical!   Glorify and trust the Everlasting Creator out of nothing, not the penultimate smiling empire supposedly intent on freedom and democracy!

Economics should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination.  As the writer Felix Feistel explained in "The Work Fetish," Germany (and the US) have enough cars and tablets.  Work should be reduced and shared but continues as a fetish and source of identity.  Education is the great transformer, said the iconoclast economist and Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith.

Time for new economic paradigms with qualitative growth, eco-social transformation and reduced working hours  .Qualitative growth means turning from quantitative growth and extraction to expanding education with adult classes, community centers, counseling, intercultural learning and Internet-friendly expansion of journalism.

Concentration of wealth has led to a narrowing of discourse and discussion.  Foreign news agencies have been closed.  The young generation has been consistently ignored as profit maximization has encouraged outsourcing and uncontrolled CEO salaries and bonuses.  The dominant neoliberal myth has insisted CEOs are job creators while workers are only cost-factors.  More jobs were eliminated by robots, computerization and artificial intelligence than were created.  On the quiet, social services were first severely cut in developing countries and then in advanced countries like the US and Germany.

The state is not a business or a Swabian housewife but can become indebted to aid present and future generations. The state should be an active, caring and empowering state, not an activating and punishing state only serving capital.  Social security and Medicare are jewels and progressive achievements that are now irrationally threatened by mean, irresponsible and spiritless Republicans.  In truth, the welfare state is not Bolshevism but a human future.  The state should be measured by how it treats the poorest of the poor.  From the ashes of anti-social greed, selfishness and prejudice, we can create a new world and rejoin the world of nations as a partner, not as a bully!

Imagine an economy for all the people, not only for CEOs and the top 1%!   Profit-making is different than profit-maximizing (cf. Ulrich Thielemann).  Profit-maximizing often becomes an idol that nullifies stakeholders, nature and future generations.  In neoliberalism, profit is the priority while investment falls and public investment disappears or is privatized!  What results is dystopia, mass homelessness (600,000 in the US in November 2023, ghost hotels, ghost condos, and ghost cities!   

The people are too big to fail, not the banks!  The state that made itself poor by giving hundreds of  billions every month since 2000 to Wall Street banks now seems inert and inept in facing the new challenges and transitions!  The homeless are made invisible.  The state steals away from feeding and housing its people while corporations steal away from paying their fair taxes!

Time to learn about community centers, computer-operated light-rail and affordable health care from O Canada, O Japan, O Portugal and O Germany!