Hindus ‘n Hebrews – Contrasting Parallels (A Case for Hindu Rashtra)

Desa-mante matti-kaadoi, desa-mante manushu-loi (nation is not (its) soil, nation is but (its) people), wrote Gurajada Appa Rao, a noted Telugu playwright and poet, and Hindus and Hebrews, aka Jews, validate him, though differently.   

True, all peoples and nations have their unique attributes but few, if any, had such travails and tribulations as Hindus and Hebrews as peoples, and India and Isreal as nations, remarkably with peculiar parallels and compelling contrasts. 

So to say, more than any, it is the aftermath of India’s independence and Isreal’s formation that highlights the lack of Hindu hindsight and the expansive Jewish foresight. The Hindus made their part of the sundered land, a no-man’s land, in effect a dar al-harb (abode of war) for the unobligated Musalmans that stayed back in their millions. The Hebrews, on the other hand, turned the reacquired part of their promised land into a Jewish State, despite its considerable Arab Muslim habitation. While an exhaustive study of the contrasting parallels of the Hindus and the Hebrews, indeed, India and Israel, is a tome in the waiting (maybe a joint venture), this piece is but a prelude to set its tone.  

Much before Moses led the Jews to their promised land of Israel, the Devas enabled Hindus to make Bharat, their karma Bhoomi. Maybe by divine design to make them proportional to their populations, the former was shaped a tiny enclave, and the latter a subcontinent (Bharata Khanda). In Bharat, while its rishis and munis evolved the Sanatana dharma, aka Hinduism, the acharyas and gurukuls made it the seat of learning, visited by the seekers from all nations. Likewise, the chosen ‘Jewish’ people, nursed their promised land to shape its heritage, that’s narrated in the Torah, needing no repetition.

However, as if to prove that good things do not last forever, both these ancient people, in historical course, fell on bad times, first the chosen ones, and later, the blessed ones. 

Being among the oldest non-proselytizing entities, they had to survive the proselytizing onslaught, from within and without: Hinduism from Buddha’s revolt, reform if you please, tumultuous Islamic assaults and the insidious Christian intrusions. Likewise, Judaism from Jesus’ rebellion, clothed in the Sermon, Muhammad’s personal animosity, crystalized as Islamic  hatred, not to speak of the despicable anti-Semitism of the Christian world.   

In case of Jews, first, it was the Assyrians that drove some of the them out of their land, and then the Babylonians, not only destroyed their First Temple in Jerusalem but also exiled many of them. Even their subsequent resettlement that Cyrus the Great facilitated came to naught as the Romans destroyed the Second Temple they rebuilt, and what’s worse, accentuated their diaspora, resulting in their dispersal all over. Well, that’s the price the Jews had to pay for the lack of geographic depth that still puts them on their toes in their regained State of Isreal. 

As regards the Hindus, their first brush with the Islamic invasions was in the outlier Sindh that Muhammad ibn al-Qasim subdued at the dawn of the eighth century, and his brief foray thereafter into Gujarat to loot its famed Somnath shrine. However, it was three hundred years later that they had their first dish of Islmic savagery, served by ‘marauder’ Mahmud Ghazni in the sacking of the refurbished Somnath. Call it the Hindu misfortune or its cultural resilience, the cycle of Islamic destructions and Sanatana reconstructions continued, over centuries, at Somnath  (five each); the in situ marvel is built, post-independence. 

Whatever, had Hindus developed shatrubodh (enemy awareness) after Ghazni’s buthshikhani (idol breaking) in Somnath, maybe there would never have been even an Islamic chapter in the Indian history.  Though badly mauled by Prithviraj Chauhan in the First Battle of Tarain, as Muhammad Ghori returned for the second one, a year later, had the fellow Hindu rulers joined hands with the former, the latter could not have established the Delhi Sultanate, the harbinger of India’s Islamic rule. Needless to say, it was a horrendous five-hundred-year medieval period for the Hindus thereafter that only ended after Aurangzeb’s vicious reign came to an end, and that hastened the decline and the downfall of the Mughal Empire.   

However, whereas the Jewish physical toll the anti-Semitism took in the Christian world by way of pogroms, exacerbated by the holocaust of six million of them, is  rightly remembered by the perpetrators, as a means of atonement of their sin; the Muslim slaughter of medieval Hindus was pushed under the carpet of collective consciousness of the world. That is even after American historian Will Durant in his book The Story of Civilization affirmed that the medieval Muslim conquest of India was "probably the bloodiest story in history", with varying genocidal estimates between eighty to hundred million dead, not to speak of the unspeakable atrocities against women. It’s as if the Hindu lives do not matter, even to the ‘civilized’ minds. 

So be it, but when the Jews were forced out of their hearth and home, as some of them came to them, the Hindus welcomed them with open arms, making them feel at home ever after. Not Just that, during the World War I,  fighting on the Israeli soil to liberate its Haifa from the Ottomans, scores of Hindu soldiers laid down their lives. (It goes to the credit of the Jewish people that they have not forgotten these Hindu gestures). So to say, it’s but a demonstration of their innate fighting spirit that never waned, for some of their kings were unceasing in causing military headaches to the Islamic invaders. Even in the British Raj, though the enervated princelings acquiesced to the throne, free-spirited from all sections, more so the tribals, tended to indulge in insurgencies against the colonial masters, throughout India’s length and breadth that is, for years on.   

Nevertheless, whereas the Islamic invaders upset the Indian social order of yore, the British colonizers undermined the Hindu minds to their eternal detriment. 

It was Lord Macaulay that established a cult of deracinated Hindus as “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” that rules the roost even eight decades after British had left the Indian shores for good, that was after looting whatever they could. (I too was a decedent member for long). Surely, his legacy can lay claim to prophethood. So be it, but as if to leave an inviolable mark of their colonial rule, the British partitioned India to carve out Pakistan, as a homeland for the intransigent Musalmans. It’s another matter though that having insisted that they cannot live with the Hindus, the raison d'être of partition, yet 80% of them stayed put in the 80% land allotted to the Hindus that is Bharat. But in stark contrast, the very British allotted 55% of the contested land to 33% Jews, leaving the Muslim majority with their minority share. However, owing to their religious-hate-driven military misadventure, the Muslims lost more of their meagre land as spoils of wars to Isreal. Why, the Jews know their enemy well, and it shows. 

It's thus, they came to define their new State of Isreal as ‘Jewish and Democratic’,  though governed by secular laws, but without a written constitution. It’s another matter that even if Moses’ Laws were enforced, the Abrahamic Arabs would have more than welcomed them but unlike Musalmans, the Jews had long since moved away from their untenable mores of yore. What is more, as if to keep their nascent nation in a wait and watch mode, they had evolved the concept of Basic Law. And for their part, the Arab Israelis, privy to the Jewish resolve to not to let anyone mess up with their promised land, not only fell in line but also fall at the front along with their Jewish mates. Whatever, the Jews, who are privy to the Islamic credos more than any, understand the consequences of a constitution that enables the Muslims to perceive Isreal as a dar-al-harb for what it is, the abode of war for the Musalmans. Hence, "the realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People” formed the Basic Law, adopted by the Knesset in 2018, true, 2018. 

Juxtaposing it, the Hindus gave themselves a hotchpotch constitution that declared India as a sovereign democratic republic, however, governed by communal laws in civil matters, mostly Sharia-compliant at that! That’s not all, it granted freedom of religious propagation (read Christian and Muslim proselytization) that too in the immediate wake of the country’s partition on religious lines. What a memory! So, in other words, it’s nothing but an instrument of Hindu hara-kiri; yet that they think no end of it speaks for their intellectual bankruptcy. Think that their progenitors wore Upanishadic wisdom on their sleeves and Kautilya gave them Artha Sastra  that, anyway, has been collecting dust for long! 

So, by design or by default, the Indian constitution was designed for the unfettered growth of the Semitic faiths of Christianity and Islam in India and their adherents too have not been found wanting in making the best of its provisions that serve as their proselyting tools. Well, at this rate, given their secular foolhardy, the Hindus, over time, by way of curing the Muslim headache they themselves bought for Bharat, could be conceding Islamic States in Assam, Bengal and Keralam, and part with part of their land in other parts of it as Sharia-compliant Autonomous Muslim Areas, a could be Islamic innovation. But would the Christians lag behind in demanding their share of the Hindu spoils. Why should they, as they already have most of the Seven Sisters in the Northeast under their Christian belt. 

If that were not to be Bharat’s scary future, how the common Hindu-Hebrew fate came to be forked into differing India, Israeli destinies thus, is the subject that should engage the former for timely redressal. 

While the unquestioning faith in Jehovah keeps the Jews united in the Judaic fold, the unshakeable belief in their promised destiny makes them persevere no end, and that at once affords them the feeling of oneness and a sense of purpose. It’s thus, in spite of the unceasing pogroms against them all over Europe, they kept intact their hope of returning to their promised land. Thus, it was this resolve to make it a reality that gave rise to Zionism, a political and nationalist movement with the goal of establishing and supporting a Jewish  national homeland in Palestine. Indeed, Israel came into being, nine months after India became independent, and  the rest is history - of the Jewish resolve to live for and die for every inch of their hard-fought land, and of the Hindu ineffectiveness in not retaining even India’s unfair share, resulting in the further loss of over 50k sqkm land to its enemies, not counting Gilgit-Baltistan.  

However, for the Hindus, the Sanatana ethos of ekam sadviprā bahudhā vadanti (what is right is One only, describe it wise variedly) is no sticking glue to hang on regardless. If anything, the pristine varnashrama dharma that in the later-days degenerated into the caste conundrum, has come to irrevocably divide the Hindu socially, and became detrimental to it in every which way. Besides, Bharat’s varied regionality with distinctive languages and sub-cultures, in spite of its Hindu homogeneity, deprives it of an emotional coherence, rendering it into a sort of nation of nations. Thus, unlike the Hebrews, the Hindus have no like passion for their karma Bhoomi; maybe, its subcontinental vastness also makes it psychologically unwieldy for physical possessiveness. 

Be that as it may, if the fate of a nation is the state of its politics, the mettle of its leaders is the spirit of its people. So, it was no coincidence that Ben-Gurion came to lead the Zionist insurgency against the British in Mandatory Palestine and Gandhi became the fountainhead of the Hindu passivity, at home with peaceful protests, dubbed satyagraha (just anger). That was despite Netaji Bose revealing the revolutionary path to oust the British. Not just that; Ben-Gurion, for over thirteen years, helped the nascent Israel acquire the character of the Jewish State, but the self-serving Gandhi thrust Nehru, his weakness, upon India, brushing aside Patel the capable, to govern its destiny. And what Nehru did for nearly seventeen years, speaks as much about him as the Hindus, for they rooted for him with their votes, in poll after poll. Just to illustrate: having shunned Israel’s hand, running after Islamic grooms, he suffered no qualms in making India its mistress, when in Chinese distress. It’s a shame that his legacy became India’s foreign policy until Modi and Bibi accorded it legitimacy. 

So, what now for Hindus, and India? 

Before all else, they should learn to ignore the western validations of them and their desi endeavours.  

“No country but India and no religion but Hinduism could have given birth to a Gandhi,” so proclaimed London Times, the day after his death. Then, “Oh, India, dare to be worthy of your Gandhi,” pontified Pearl S. Buck, adding that he said, “Resist to the very end, but without violence. Of violence the world is sick.” Really! It’s rich, given her own country’s domestic history, not to speak of its  warmongering foreign policy. Obviously, her advice was not meant for fellow Americans. So, it’s about time Hindus realized that the western praises of Gandhi are but ruses to keep the Hindu minds in pacifist mode even as they clamour for Dismantling Global Hindutva!

Likewise, the left-libs that romanticise Che Guevara, confine Netaji Bose on the margins of revolution, and with a purpose that our Macaulay-putra fail to grasp. Why, it’s not hard to see that Satyajit Ray is celebrated in the racist west as much for his cinematic worth as for his popularization of Hindu poverty. Oh, the Booker books tell their own story. So also, the Pulitzer Prizes, Magsaysay Awards and such.

The one thing Hindus should learn from Jews is to do what is right for their nation regardless of what others think of them, which is their real strength.

But in the Hindu majority ‘secular’ India, supposedly Bharat, the shoe is on the Muslim foot, notwithstanding the left-Islamist contra propaganda that anyway the living Hindu experience belies. If anything, Hindus prove that the peculiar strength of Islam is the indifference of those it seeks to destroy. Just the same, as the purpose of this piece is not about debunking the falsities of the detractors but to alert the indifferent Hindus, there is no detailing the same that is anyway evident to the discerning. 

However, it is seldom appreciated by the Hindus (for the lack of shatrubodh) that the Muslim religious conditioning lies in nursing the twin aspirations of ‘all religion is for Allah’ and all the world is for Islam (dar al-Islam). Besides, it’s an article of faith for them in that wherever they are in minority,  dae al-harb, they should strive to make it dar al-Islam, Ghazwa-e-Hind in India’s case. Given that the Indian constitution has enough and more to nurse their Islamic hope and provides ample scope besides, for fulfilling their dar al-Islam aspirations, they have no reason not to be religiously aggressive in pursuit of the same. So, the remedy for India’s Muslim problem lies in removing that Islamic hope from its midst, like Israel did in its State, by turning Bharat into a Hindu Rashtra.  

Anyway, for the doubters, by way of an analogy, what Art 370 was doing in Jammu & Kashmir was effectively nursing the Muslim hopes of separation from India. But once it was revoked, it dawned on the Kashmiris that with it gone was the scope for their azadi, for all times to come. And that altered the Muslim behavioural pattern, if not forged an emotional bond with Bharat, that, anyway,  Islam would never allow to happen. But what really matters from the national perspective is that they have started behaving themselves, more or less that is. Thus, wiser by the Kashmiri experience, if Bharat were to declare itself as a Hindu Rashtra, ruled by raja dharma, then that would usher in Rama Rajya, a synonym for fairness.