Braking Bharat’s Breakup

The other day, Narendra Modi has vowed to free India from its ghulami manasikata (colonial mindset / slavish mentality) by 2035, but given his own manasikata that could be well-nigh impossible, as essayed in my On Semitic Upswing ‘n Hindu Downturn. Whatever, his assertion that exorcizing Macaulay’s ghost would be the panacea for India’s educational and cultural ills is farfetched for its Christian community is its torchbearer. Besides, having guarded itself against Macaulay-effect in the British Raj itself, its madrasa-rooted ummah is largely unaffected by it. So, truth to tell, it is only the Macaulayzed Hindu populace that is stymied by the colonial mindset and afflicted with a slavish mentality. So, in effect, though India is culturally incongruous, it has become politically correct to ignore it and secularly incorrect to admit it. Nevertheless, if and when the Hindus could shed their ghulami manasikata, they may be able to reappraise their country’s partition and visualize the ways and means of their redemption.

While it was the internecine Hindu royal rivalry that gave rise to the Muslim Sultanates in India, it was the eventual decline of the Mughal regime that paved the way for the British colonial rule therein - through the commercial entry of the East India company into its trading arena and then its subsequent political exploitation of the domestic disarray. But for the twisted Hindu destiny, the kalachakra would’ve let them re-erect their Akhand Bharat on the ruins of the Islamic edifices. However, putting its course in the reverse gear, the British made them part with a part of their ancestral land to the Muslims for the latter maintained that they and Hindus constitute two separate nations with fundamentally different religious philosophies, social customs, and traditions etc. Just the same, the then Hindu leadership, under the thrall of Gandhi, the Muslim appeaser nonpareil, was impervious to the old adage that ‘what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’.

It's thus, instead of enforcing the population exchange of the two ‘new nations’, they chose to retain Muslims in millions in what was, and is, legally and morally an exclusive Hindu domain. That is regardless of Dr. BR Ambedkar’s ‘informed’ warning that ‘Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin.” So, making a mockery of India’s partition, having got Pakistan as a homeland all for themselves, yet over forty percent of Muslims staid put in the motherland of the Hindus. But then, how the Quran-unaware Hindus were to know that the Muslim stay back was the playbook move of their political Islam - of first retaining and then expanding the demographic base of the faithful to facilitate its eventual turn into a dar al Islam in its future course.  

If anything, under the secular pretext, the Islamapologic Nehru made matters worse for the Hindus by know toing the Islamic obscurantism and its separatist ethos, bred by its intolerant credo. And that came to stymie the Hindus, who, having been pacified by Gandhi, became hopelessly spineless by then. Well, even as they obstruct the civic life with their deliberate namaz-on-roads, they disrupt Hindu religious processions with malicious stone-pelting. Though they have no compunction in blaring azans through loudspeakers, five times a day, yet they take provocative exception to the occasional sounds of the temple bells in what is essentially a Hindu land, in letter and spirit. Besides, so as to satiate their Islamic thirst for Ghazwa-e-Hind, even as they enlarge their unwieldy families, as if to leave no stone unturned, they resort to Love Jihad to further bring about an Islamic tilt to the Indian demography. So to say, these are but a few of the many Muslim commissions and omissions that the hapless Hindus got accustomed to put up with in the Nehruvian ‘secular’ state of theirs! Whatever, Ambedkar’s words have been validated - “the brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is the brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity.”  

What’s worse, as the Muslim clamor for more Pakistans in India is on the rise, apparently, the clueless Hindus have reconciled to a second partition in time, more or less that is. Be that as it may, some Hindus seem to draw some solace, even vicarious pleasure, at the prospect of Pakistan’s ‘inevitable’ breakup, a case of the Muslim dream turning sour. If anything, this is but the gleeful side of the ghulami manasikata that has long resigned to its Islamic fate. That Modi-sarkar is belatedly contemplating to constitute a demographic commission bears testimony to the sedentary state of affairs but not the brisk return of the Sanatana manasikata, articulated by Lord Parashurama - agratas chaturō vēdān / prushtash saran dhanō / idam  kshātram idam brahmana / sepādapi sarā dapi.  (Spar at not a Vedic soul / Armed to the teeth as well / Brain ’n brawn as thus combined / Curse I might or subdue thee). However, by reacquiring their ‘age-old’ vision, Hindus can clearly discern the brand-new socio-political developments in the world. Why, at long last, the Christian West, having woken up to the inimical Islamic reality, is in the process of tackling the menace of Muslim immigrants. More significantly, it should not be lost on the ‘Sanatana manasikata’ Hindus that the world is coming round to acquiesce to the Russian invasion of its ethnic provinces in its neighboring Ukraine.

So, why not India, at some point, invade Pakistan to resettle its Muslim misfits as Muhajir fits therein, a sort of homegoing to their forebear’s designated destination. Besides, as a goodwill gesture, it can let Pakistan keep its Azad Kashmir, however, augmented by the Muslims of the Valley, in part-fulfillment of the ardent wishes of both. Needless to say, given that this military exercise would be meant, not to usurp Pakistani territory, but to belatedly implement the Indian Independence Act 1947 (of the ‘once’ Great Britain) in letter and spirit, the Muslim-harassed free world should have no objection to it. Well, when it comes to Bangladesh, maybe, it falls in line to take India’s Bengali Muslims, not to speak of its illegal emigrants, or else. However, as a humanitarian gesture, India can let those Muslims, who have crossed their reproductive age, to remain within its borders, but with no family visits of their kith and kin from without.

So, with Sanatana manasikata, Hindus need to make Bharat ‘armed to the teeth’ and wait for the opportune moment to strike, real and well. That’s not all, to prevent a Christian encore, it has to constitutionally bar evangelism in any form to enable Hindus live in their Bharat, freed of any Semitic menace. Now, it is up to Modi and those that follow him to act for fortune favors the brave while fate lets the cowards dig their own graves.

 

 

 

 

    

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Demographic Dynamics of Indian Democracy

If the body of a nation is formed by its people, its democratic soul gets shaped by its voters. However, in its nascent stages, it was not the case for the lesser souls were unfranchised, robbing it of its egalitarian ethos. But has the later-day all-adult franchise helped it acquire its representative character? Not necessarily, as the elaborate democratic exercise in India (a continuing civilization of over five millennia), involving a complex mix of over 990 million electorate, of regional and ethnic diversity (28 states and 8 union territories; 705 scheduled  tribes and 2,000 ethnic groups), religious and linguistic variations (six religions in the main and scores of tribal traditions; 121 languages and 19,000 mother tongues/dialects) besides social and economic disparities not to speak of the mindboggling caste divisions (3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes) across the regions, indicates.

Even though democracy, in any form, is a number game everywhere, its Indian version is numerically enormous, demographically divisive and politically fragmented like nowhere else. Even then, the competing political outfits spare no efforts to woo the electorate to the polling stations in what is arguably the most daunting of the daunting political exertions in the democratic world. It’s as if to prove itself equal to this herculean democratic task, the electoral apparatus of the state pulls out all the stops to maximise the franchise by way of its voter-friendly, state-of-the-art election process. But yet, some one-third, or so, of the rural and around half of the urban electorate invariably stays away from the periodic polls, characterised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the ‘festivals of democracy’. However, on the face of it, it may seem that nothing could be amiss in this sort of sub-par electoral show for the voting patterns of the absentee voters would have been in political consonance with the collective electoral will of the participative millions.

Nonetheless, a closer look at those who choose to vote and those who prefer to abstain would reveal that which the sizeable electoral numbers fail to bring to the fore - the demographic dynamics of the Indian democracy. In one of the many ironies of the Indian republic, even though the Muslim ummah far outstrips every Hindu caste group there is and the Christian converts (counting the closet characters) outnumber each of the Hindu sub-castes, yet both are prioritised as minorities in its ‘secular’ set-up! So, to put things demographic in the prevailing democratic order, one has to juxtapose the nearly unified 15% Muslim and 5% Christian mandate with around 80% caste-ridden Hindu franchise that the sub-castes and the tribals fracture further.  

More to the point, even as the bulk of the absentee voters happen to hail from the Hindu electorate, the Muslims and the Christians, given their religio-political attitudes, queue up to vote against the proponents of Hindutva, namely the advocates of the Hindu cultural renaissance, read Bharatiya Janata Party and its political associates. It’s thus, in India’s multi-party democracy that entails multi-cornered electoral contests, any one of the relatively populous caste groups, in cohorts with the one-fifth Muslim-Christian voters-combine, can become a dominant political force in a given region. What’s worse, making a mockery of the democratic level playing field, such an unhealthy political nexus can come up trumps at the hustings in conducive states by co-opting a few of the ‘one-or-two percent’ caste groups to the detriment of the rest of the populace, as exemplified by the infamous Muslim-Yadav combine in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.  

That happenstance is owing to the fact that in the rural electoral arenas, it is the socially dominant castes and the politically affiliated voters that turn up most at the polling stations to protect their social clout or to retain their political hedge, and/or both, in their respective domains. However, on the contrary, numerous miniscule castes and various sub-castes, with no socio-political turf of their own, and left to fend for themselves by the competing political outfits for the same reason, constitute the bulk of the rural electoral absentees. But when it comes to the urban electorates, their diverse socio-economic compositions render them unamenable for any large-scale rural-type caste consolidations, and that partly explains the abysmally low urban voter turnouts. Besides, as the urbanites are largely salaried or self-employed, ineligible subjects of the state’s politically expedient beneficial schemes, they fail to become the objects of the political wooing. It’s thus, besides being unaffected by the electoral outcomes, as they remain unsolicited by the political parties, they tend to give a short shrift to the polling process, and bring democratic disrepute to their adopted constituencies.  

That’s not all as political dynasties, false poll-eve promises, endemic mis-governance, pandemic mal-administration and unabashed corruption that came to characterise the Indian democratic order have given raise to widespread public apathy and attendant voter cynicism. So, such of those have come to see the periodic poll process as a futile exercise of choosing between a Tweedledum of a Gog cabal and a Tweedledee of the Magog gang. Not that all of them have no axe to grind, it’s just that they don’t have a grinding stone for that. But still, by not being a part any of the self-serving caste groups, they, with their cumulative votes, would be able to make a qualitative difference to the collective franchise. Hence, it is imperative to impress upon them that as their self-interest is entwined with the national interest, they must back only those political forces that are wedded to the nation’s good. However, though this holistic dictum is applicable to one and all, it is better spread among the poll-shy electorate, in every conceivable manner, by the well-meaning individuals, social entities and political outfits.

Now that Narendra Modi has managed to rekindle vande mataram’s nationalist flame, singed by Jawaharlal Nehru at the outset, it is left for social servers such as Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh and political forces like Bharatiya Janata Party to take the lead in bringing the nation back on the patriotic path so as to put its voters on the right political track. No denying that given India’s putrid political state and its tattered moral fabric, it is no mean a task, but the need of the nation is that all its patriots must apply their minds to come up with ideas that could facilitate the same.  Needless to say, the ways of convincing the rural folks and the urban dwellers about the ill effects of caste politics on the nation and by extension on themselves would necessarily vary – personal interactions with the former and mass communication with the latter – the message being the same – Better our Bharat, better you are; so better vote to better Bharat.

 

 

 

 

     

 

 Basic Structure of the Indian Constitution - The Case of a Square Peg in the Round Hole

When Hindustan was partitioned on the basis of the Hindu-Muslim religious divide, pragmatism would have demanded, as proposed by Dr. BR Ambedkar, the latter-day architect of the Indian Constitution, to affect population exchange on communal lines between the successor countries, India and Pakistan. More so, as Ambedkar backed his proposition with the exposition of the Islamic ethos and the Muslim psyche thus: “The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is the brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity. The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-government because 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.”

However, the largely Islamapoloic Hindu leadership at that critical juncture of its newfound freedom not only paid a deaf ear to Ambedkar’s Islamic warnings but also let Nehru the numero uno to bend over backwards to ensure that the bulk of the Muslims staid put in India to buttress its secular image. And sadly by the time Ambedkar sat down to formulate India’s Constitution, he himself had paid no heed to his own forebodings for he granted freedom to propagate religion as Indians’ fundamental right in its Part III – 25 thus: “Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion - 1. Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion”, which the Supreme Court later inferred as its inviolable Basic Structure.

Unfortunately for Bharat that is India, Nehru, who characterized himself as ‘English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident’, had held sway over the Indian polity then, and it was as if he wanted to make Muslims feel more at home in India than even in Pakistan their New Holy Land. What is worse, such was his hold over the psyche of the overwhelming Hindu majority that he succeeded in building a national narrative that in Muslim pleasing lay the soul of Indian secularism. However, it is seldom appreciated that whereas the Hindu sanatana dharma is of a social construct that is amenable for evolution, the Semitic social connect, more so of the Islamic kind, based on religious bond is made rigid by unwavering faith. So, while the right to practice religion enabled the dalit Hindus to gain entry into the thereto out of reach temples, the right to propagate their faith gave the legal protection to the Muslims and the Christians alike to poach into the tenuous Hindu religious arena of the tribal people and the scheduled castes. It’s thus, owing to the suicidal freedom of religious propagation, demographically speaking that is, the 9% or so of the post-partition India’s Muslim population has since swelled to 18% or more and if the harvest of around 10% crypto-Christian souls is accounted for, one can get the picture of the perilous state of the Indian demography, which, given the exclusivist and supremacist credo of the Semitic faiths, if left unaddressed, could lead to another partition down the wretched line of the Indian history.

Hence, as Supreme Court’s Basic Structure surmise, the case of a square peg in the round hole, is nothing but a Doctrine of Division that is bound to undermine India’s post-partition integrity, hope that WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA through our elected representatives would suitably amend the constitution meant for the Utopian Republic of India that is detrimental to our SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC before it is beyond redemption.

 

        

Bhagwat De-squeeze of Hindu Caste-Squeeze 

Addressing a gathering at Ravidas Jayanti in Mumbai recently, Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as cited in the Organiser, dateline Feb 6, 2023, has said  -  “To our Creator, we are equal. There is no caste or sect. If some pundits citing scriptures are talking about caste-based discrimination, then it is false. .. We are confused in the whirlpool of the concept of caste and caste hierarchy. This confusion has to be removed.”

As a corollary, it can be said that without saying as much, Dr. Bhagwat had debunked the diabolical chātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ (v13, ch4) and such divisive verses from the eminently egalitarian Gita that were blue-penciled in the author’s Bhagvad-Gita Treatise of Self-help sans 110 inane interpolations, published way back in 2003. Be that as it may, before the veracity of the Sangh Pramukh’s “If some pundits citing scriptures are talking about caste-based discrimination, then it is false” averment is examined; it is imperative to delve into the cynical Dalit and Shudra Cards in play to affect the Double Hindu Squeeze.   

Whereas the Muslim Sufis were the first to breach the caste fault lines to spread Islam into the Hindu hinterland that eventually led to its partition on religious grounds, in due course, more so in the truncated India, the Christian Evangelists too reinvigorated themselves to poach the leftover Dalit souls into their salvation fold with an eye on future religious dividends. But yet, for too long, the hindsight-less Hindus have been keeping a blind eye to the unbridled Muslim proliferation through procreation and infiltration on one hand and on the other the Christian expansionism through fraudulent conversions of its slighted souls.

However, as the Semitic demographic waters began to rise to their nose-level, the Hindus have realized, belatedly though, that it was the Dalit apathy towards their scriptural discrimination that came in handy for the Abrahamites to wean the embittered away from their tenuous Hindu folds into their respective faiths. So, the nonplussed Hindus began to assuage the aggrieved Dalits by downplaying the underlying caste-discrimination with ingenious propositions such as the Hindu varna is not to be seen in caste colours for to start with all are Shudras at birth and it is guna (nature) that makes one a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya, Shudra et al etc. Needless to say, this half-hearted attempt that is insincere at best failed to cut the caste ice and the evangelicals of the alien faiths continued to fish in the Hindu troubled waters to augment their Semitic numbers, catalyzed by the cynical Nehruvian political strategy of unifying the Abrahamic votes on religious grounds and fragmenting the Hindu franchise on the caste lines.

It was this Double Hindu Squeeze affected by the Dalit and Shudra Cards which enabled the Nehruvian forces to retain their political dominance in the post-colonial India for over six decades that was till Narendra Modi managed to unify some sections of the Shudras under his party’s Hindutva flag in 2014 only to add more such in 2019. What with the Hindu consolidation leading to the 2024 hustings is ever on the raise, the unraveled Nehruvians, driven by their craving for power, stoked up the Shudra flames of Ramcharitamanas in the hope of regaining their caste traction in the country’s political arena. Maybe, Dr. Bhagwat’s assertion supra is primarily meant to douse the Shudra political fire but if only carried forward, it has an immense potential to set the Hindu polity on its reformist course like none else before. It could be precisely for this reason that the Indian media, moulded in the Nehruvian ecosystem, by and large, has chosen not to transmit his revolutionary idea to the public though only recently it went out of its way to publicize his ‘Why look for shivling in every mosque’ advice to the Hindus that was in the wake of the developments in Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque.

Whatever, the Sarsanghchalak’s statement should be viewed in the light of the hypocritical explanations meant to downplay the vicious caste system, the hollowness of which was exposed in the author’s Inane Interpolations in Bhagvad-Gita (An Invocation for their Revocation) that is briefly dealt as under.

It would be apparent to any observant individual that the fake caste punditry began with the insertion of the verse 13 in Purusha Sukta (10.7.90.1-16) of the Rig Veda, the foremost of the four Vedas, thus:  

V13: From His face (or the mouth) came the brahmanas. From His two arms came the rajanya (the kshatriyas). From His two thighs came the vaishyas. From His two feet came the shudras.

However, this interpolation as can be seen under is in juxtaposition to the original template of creation expostulated in,

V14: From His mind was born the moon. From His two eyes was born the sun. From His mouth were born Indra and Agni. From His breath was born the air.

V15: From (His) navel was produced the antariksha (the space between the earth and the heavens). Dyuloka (or heaven) came into existence from His head. The bhumi (the earth) evolved out of His feet, and deek (or spacial directions) from His ears. Similarly (the demigods) produced the worlds (too).

Thus, having disoriented the Vedic egalitarianism with caste discrimination, the pundits went on to pollute the Manu Smriti, an otherwise resplendent legal manual, if anything with caste toxicity, as elaborated in the author’s essay On Bashing Manu Smriti, Or Flogging A Dead Horse Riding a Blind Ass. Of course, the pollution started with the incorporation of the Purusha Sukta invention as 1.31 in the said Smriti is out of the context, as is evident below.

1.28. But to whatever course of action the Lord at first appointed each (kind of beings), that alone it has spontaneously adopted in each succeeding creation.

1.29. Whatever he assigned to each at the (first) creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or sin, truth or falsehood, that clung (afterwards) spontaneously to it.

1.30. As at the change of the seasons each season of its own accord assumes its distinctive marks, even so corporeal beings (resume in new births) their (appointed) course of action.

1.31. But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds he caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet.

1.32. Dividing his own body, the Lord became half male and half female; with that (female) he produce.

But Bhagwat’s mischievous pundits would have been well-aware that their hitjob would not be complete without putting their self-serving words into Lord Krishna’s mouth in Bhagvad-Gita never mind He declared in ch.9, v 29, ‘None I favour, slight I none / Devout Mine all gain Me true’. So they, inserted the infamous v13, ch 4, ‘chātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ / tasya kartāram api māṁ viddhyakartāram avyayam’, which incongruously means that ‘It is I who engineered the division of men into four varna (castes) based on their guna (innate nature) and karma (earthly duties) but yet although I am the creator of this system, know me to be the non-doer and eternal.

Not just that, as if to add the caste salt to the Shudra injury, the pundits (not Lord Krishna for any perceptive reader) having stated in v 41 ch 18 that ‘the duties of the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras—are distributed according to their qualities, in accordance with their guṇas,’ specify that ‘serving through work is the natural duty for those with the qualities of Shudras’ (v 44, ch 18). And what is worse, to tie the Shudras forever to their menial yoke, it is averred that ‘It is better to perform one’s own duty, even imperfectly, rather than indulge in another’s work perfectly for by doing one’s innate work, a person does not incur sin’ (v 46, ch 18) which is nothing but a rehash of v35, ch3, ‘It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in the discharge of one’s duty, than to follow the path of another, which is fraught with danger.’

So, it’s for the Hindus to look beyond their caste boundaries to visualize the improbability of their scriptures demeaning the Shudras and the Dalits among them for the most part they were scripted by them only.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

On Bashing Manu Smriti,

Or Flogging A Dead Horse Riding A Blind Ass 

None knows when Manu Smriti had its last sway, if at all, over the Indian polity but still the Hindu castes that it slighted lazily hold it against the Brahmins that it once exalted, and ominously, the evangelists cynically bash Hinduism with it to lure the former into their Semitic fold. However, this essay is not an exercise to endorse the extinct Smriti per se but an attempt to expose the perceptive vacuity and the intellectual dishonesty, as the case may be, of its debunkers.  

No denying that Manu unambiguously upheld the Brahmanical supremacy albeit with an austere life-style that is self-denying to say the least, and even otherwise which society in history has been egalitarian in its concept and construct. But then, to cite but two examples, what about the Islamic bigotry that negates the kafirs and the White racism that rendered blacks into slavery. Why the Muslims have not been able to shed their ill-founded kafir antipathy even in the multi-cultural settings they happen to live. When was it that the racial segregation in the U.S. trains and buses in the Land of Liberty did end but in 1956! So, on the discriminatory note, the Manuwad decry, a euphemism for ant-Brahminism, is a far cry from the ‘Black Lives Matter’ cry.

Besides, Manu’s detractors tend to smear him by amplifying his restrain-female tunes and muting his woman-exalted notes. But then, what was his Smriti’s woman-denial compared to Sharia’s savagery of the fair sex; for that matter, when it was that woman’s vote began to count in the first full-fledged democracy in the modern world but in 1920! And for the starters, democracy took birth in India that is Bharat of yore.

Be that as it may, there’s no historical evidence that the law of Arya Varta was ever based on the Manu Smriti for it was not mandatory,

8.309. Know that a king who heeds not the rules (of the law), who is an atheist, and rapacious, who does not protect (his subjects, but) devours them, will sink low (after death).

This and the excerpts that follow are derived from ‘The Laws of Manu’ by G. Buhler, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1886, available at the Internet Archive.   

Whatever, a tangible expostulation of Manu Smriti would be in order, and to start with, it’s the King, not the Brahmin, above all,

7.5. Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre;

7.8. Even an infant king must not be despised, (from an idea) that he is a (mere) mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.

Besides, belying the perceived oppression of the so-called lower castes, apparently there were rulers among them, never mind Manu is said to have disregarded them -

4.61. Let him not dwell in a country where the rulers are Sudras, nor in one which is surrounded by unrighteous men, nor in one which has become subject to heretics, nor in one swarming with men of the lowest castes.

Just the same, no denying that the Brahmins, nay the pious among them, were invariably posited on the social pedestal - 

3.212. But if no (sacred) fire (is available), he shall place (the offerings) into the hand of a Brahmana; for Brahmanas who know the sacred texts declare, ’What fire is, even such is a Brahmana’.

But that entailed quite a spiritual rigour,

2.162. A Brahmana should always fear homage as if it were poison; and constantly desire (to suffer) scorn as (he would long for) nectar.

Besides a curtailed material means,

3.109. A Brahmana shall not name his family and (Vedic) gotra in order to obtain a meal; for he who boasts of them for the sake of a meal, is called by the wise a foul feeder (vantasin).  

8.102. Brahmanas who tend cattle, who trade, who are mechanics, actors (or singers), menial servants or usurers, the (judge) shall treat like Sudras.

Nevertheless, the Brahmin-incapacitating Manu dharma was not meant for lesser but freer souls.

4.80. Let him not give to a Sudra advice, nor the remnants (of his meal), nor food offered to the gods; nor let him explain the sacred law (to such a man), nor impose (upon him) a penance.

4.81. For he who explains the sacred law (to a Sudra) or dictates to him a penance, will sink together with that (man) into the hell (called) Asamvrita.

However, in case of transgressions,

5.140. Sudras who live according to the law, shall each month shave (their heads); their mode of purification (shall be) the same as that of Vaisyas, and their food the fragments of an Aryan’s meal.

Now coming to women under Manu’s yoke,

5.147. By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house.

5.148. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.

5.149. She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both (her own and her husband’s) families contemptible.  

No denying that male protectiveness is at odds with women’s lib but then while Manu Smriti, so to say was consigned to flames in the remotest past, the Sharia is still kicking and alive to oppress and suppress the second sex in many parts of the wide world. 

But then what is not conceded is that Manu had valued women more than any at any time in human history,

3.55. Women must be honoured and adorned by their fathers, brothers, husbands, and brothers-in-law, who desire (their own) welfare.

3.56. Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased; but where they are not honoured, no sacred rite yields rewards.

3.57. Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers.

8.28. In like manner care must be taken of barren women (by the King), of those who have no sons, of those whose family is extinct, of wives and widows faithful to their lords, and of women afflicted with diseases.

8.29. A righteous king must punish like thieves those relatives who appropriate the property of such females during their lifetime.

8.364. He who violates an unwilling maiden shall instantly suffer corporal punishment; but a man who enjoys a willing maiden shall not suffer corporal punishment, if (his caste be) the same (as hers).

9.90. Three years let a damsel wait, though she be marriageable; but after that time let her choose for herself a bridegroom (of) equal (caste and rank).

9.91. If, being not given in marriage, she herself seeks a husband, she incurs no guilt, nor (does) he whom she weds.

However, with the rider,

9.92. A maiden who chooses for herself, shall not take with her any ornaments, given by her father or her mother, or her brothers; if she carries them away, it will be theft.

More relevant to our times, mixed with much of chaff is plenty of all-season grain in Manu’s 2,684-mound granary such as -      

4.12. He who desires happiness must strive after a perfectly contented disposition and control himself; for happiness has contentment for its root, the root of unhappiness is the contrary (disposition).

4.137. Let him not despise himself on account of former failures; until death let him seek fortune, nor despair of gaining it.

4.141. Let him not insult those who have redundant limbs or are deficient in limbs, nor those destitute of knowledge, nor very aged men, nor those who have no beauty or wealth, nor those who are of low birth.

4.159. Let him carefully avoid all undertakings (the success of) which depends on others; but let him eagerly pursue that (the accomplishment of) which depends on himself.

4.160. Everything that depends on others (gives) pain, everything that depends on oneself (gives) pleasure; know that this is the short definition of pleasure and pain.

4.161. When the performance of an act gladdens his heart, let him perform it with diligence; but let him avoid the opposite.

5.109. The body is cleansed by water, the internal organ is purified by truthfulness, the individual soul by sacred learning and austerities, the intellect by (true) knowledge.

7.139. Let him not cut up his own root (by levying no taxes), nor the root of other (men) by excessive greed; for by cutting up his own root (or theirs), he makes himself or them wretched.

But the crown of the Smriti is earmarked for justice and justness,

8.17. The only friend who follows men even after death is justice; for everything else is lost at the same time when the body (perishes).

8.18. One quarter of (the guilt of) an unjust (decision) falls on him who committed (the crime), one quarter on the (false) witness, one quarter on all the judges, one quarter on the king.

8.128. A king who punishes those who do not deserve it, and punishes not those who deserve it, brings great infamy on himself and (after death) sinks into hell.

8.129. Let him punish first by (gentle) admonition, afterwards by (harsh) reproof, thirdly by a fine, after that by corporal chastisement.

8.164. That agreement which has been made contrary to the law or to the settled usage (of the virtuous), can have no legal force, though it be established (by proofs).

8.165. A fraudulent mortgage or sale, a fraudulent gift or acceptance, and (any transaction) where he detects fraud, the (judge) shall declare null and void.

However, the moot point is whether or not Manu can be exonerated on the grounds that his   original composition was subsequently fouled by caste prejudices and vested interests, and it seems to be the case.

It all began thus:

1.1. The great sages approached Manu, who was seated with a collected mind, and, having duly worshipped him, spoke as follows:

1.2. ’Deign, divine one, to declare to us precisely and in due order the sacred laws of each of the (four chief) castes (varna) and of the intermediate ones.

1.3. ’For thou, O Lord, alone knowest the purport, (i.e.) the rites, and the knowledge of the soul, (taught) in this whole ordinance of the Self-existent (Svayambhu), which is unknowable and unfathomable.’

1.4. He, whose power is measureless, being thus asked by the high-minded great sages, duly honoured them, and answered, ’Listen!’

1.5. This (universe) existed in the shape of Darkness, unperceived, destitute of distinctive marks, unattainable by reasoning, unknowable, wholly immersed, as it were, in deep sleep.

As would be evident from the following, 1.2 was a later-day interpolation intended to drag the discourse onto the four caste track from 1.31 onwards with many more insertions, albeit intermittently, though fatally.

1.25. Austerity, speech, pleasure, desire, and anger, this whole creation he likewise produced, as he desired to call these beings into existence.

1.28. But to whatever course of action the Lord at first appointed each (kind of beings), that alone it has spontaneously adopted in each succeeding creation.

1.29. Whatever he assigned to each at the (first) creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or sin, truth or falsehood, that clung (afterwards) spontaneously to it.

1.30. As at the change of the seasons each season of its own accord assumes its distinctive marks, even so corporeal beings (resume in new births) their (appointed) course of action.

1.31. But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds he caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet.

And intriguingly, much later in the Smriti it is said,

9.67. That chief of royal sages who formerly possessed the whole world, caused a confusion of the castes (varna), his intellect being destroyed by lust.

However, the true give away of the fouling of the original Smriti that apparently originated before the advent of Atharva veda (1.23) is the mention of Upanishads in it that succeeded the same (6.29)

1.23. But from fire, wind, and the sun he drew forth the threefold eternal Veda, called Rik, Yagus, and Saman, for the due performance of the sacrifice.

6.29. These and other observances must a Brahmana who dwells in the forest diligently practise, and in order to attain complete (union with) the (supreme) Soul, (he must study) the various sacred texts contained in the Upanishads.

So, instead of bashing the Manu Smriti a la flogging the dead horse riding a blind ass, it pays the mankind to discard the redundant chaff to nourish itself on the pristine grain in Manu’s ancient granary.

Fracas of Free Speech 

The irony of the alleged lack of free speech in Modi India lies in the absolute freedom of its uninhibited propagation in its subsidiary media. In so far as the right-wing blowback in the social media, the left-libs fall short on the idiom that ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’. When it comes to the ‘agencies’ knocking at free speakers’ doors, the legal dictum paraphrased as ‘one must go to town with clean hands’ has to be borne in mind by one and all. Be that as it may, it’s not as if it was all hunky-dory in the Nehruvian order of yore that nurtured the Modi-aggrieved of the day, and this is not an essay of its dark shades but an attempt to reach the roots of the self-defeating Hindu mindset, passing through my life and times. 

I was born on 27 Aug 1948 and that means I was conceived after India became free but yet in colonial hangover for by then, the century-old Macaulay method to divest the Hindus from their “false history, false astronomy, false medicine, in company with their false religion” with the right western education so as to ‘form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, - a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’ worked well enough though the Musalmans avoided his ‘Indian education’ like a plague for the fear of Islamic pollution. But let me at the outset vouch for Macaulay’s success for somehow I feel embarrassed to sport tilak, and on occasion when it becomes obligatory, I would be itching to erase it from my forehead as soon as I possibly could. Surely, I should alter my mindset for it is my restrained Hindu rearing in it that makes India’s constrained story.

It’s thus at the dawn of independence, India’s politically dispirited and culturally disoriented Hindus needed a leadership to raise their ancestral spirits in the wake of the calamitous partition of their ancient nation. Sadly though, their continuing ill-fate had ensured that the Gandhi-Nehru duo was at the helm of the transition process to their eternal hurt. Gandhi, who managed to become a false messiah of the Hindus, had professed that “they 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.” So, as if to politically finish off the Hindus, he bestowed the power of the Indian State upon Nehru, who unabashedly claimed “I’m English by education, a Muslim by culture, just born a Hindu by accident” but also conducted himself accordingly.  It’s no wonder then that he anointed Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as India’s education minister as if to redress his fears that post-partition, the Muslim minority in the Hindu majority India would be disadvantaged. Sadly, as Sardar Patel too failed to see the dichotomy of a Muslim education minister in the predominantly Hindu India that too after millennia of alien order, Azad had a decade at his disposal to add on the Muslim modules to the Macaulay minutes to further enervate the Hindu psyche. And that speaks for the naivety of the then Hindu intellect and that which followed for four more Musalmans were given a free rein for nine more years to continue where the wily Maulana had left that is to mould the Hindu minds in the Islamic moulds!  

Thus, what with the plethora of Sultanates not to speak of the Mogul era, it was as if the roller coaster of Indian history was no more than the Islamic rule over medieval India. So as not to make the Hindu kids privy to Islam’s idol-braking ways, the destruction of the Hindu temples by the Ghaznis and the Ghoris was pictured as a case of looting for their riches. When it came to the beginning of the end of the Muslim dominance in the Battle of Plassey, the fall of Siraj ud-Daulah was attributed to the perfidy of Mir Jaffar but not sourced to the revenge of Jagat Seth, whom the brash Nawab had insulted, for that would have made Hindus feel good for having avenged the Musalmans. Well, as for the British Raj, it was all about railways, ports etc. with no word on how it had ruined India’s economy and looted its wealth. It’s thus was drummed into the impressionable Hindu heads that they should not begrudge their Islamic and Christian rulers but must feel beholden to them.

In so far as the freedom struggle went, it was Gandhi all the way with Nehru in tow, never mind, as it transpired later, that it was the prospective rebellion by the Indian men-in-arms, courtesy Netaji’s legacy that made the British retreat in haste. While Azad’s Muslim agenda augmented Nehru’s cynical opposition to Hindu resurgence that both saw as detrimental to the interests of the Indian umma, it was Godse’s foolhardy in slaying the spent force of a Gandhi that gave the latter the political stick to beat Savarkar’s Hindutva with. That my grandfather forewarned me not to be enamoured of the rashtriya swayam-sevak sangh in our remote small town as that would hamper my later-day career prospects would exemplify the Nehruvian hurdles the Hindu nationalism had to contend with.

In juxtaposition, the Muslim galaxy in the cine field and the musical world not to speak of the worthies in the public life created a communal euphoria, evocatively but falsely called as ganga jamuna tehjeeb, in the rarified Hindu intellectual zone. So, it was a given that the Good Samaritans in the Indian cinema had to be either a Christian or a Musalman and never a Hindu. If the finesses of the Muslim Nawabs graced the silver screen it was the crudity of the Hindu loan sharks that was on show. While the long-buried Hindu social evils got resurrected on the celluloid, the umma’s live religious ills were deliberately kept away from the arc lights. So on and so forth and what with Indira Gandhi too walking in her father’s ideological footsteps, India’s political culture came to be pegged to the Islamapologic pole endorsed by the intellectual class, and that reduced the Hindu right to the electoral fringe.

Nevertheless, madrasas were allowed to take care of the Muslim minds with Allah’s ayats and Muhammad’s exploits to sustain their exclusivist credo that, on and off, had erupted in communal riots. Well the Muslim clerics who hold sway over the umma wouldn’t complain much for it’s a small price to pay to uphold their Islamic exclusivity. At the same time, while the secular politicians felt no need to bridge the communal divide that sustained its Muslim vote-bank, the intelligentsia, as well as the media, Islam-naïve both, were bereft of an idea to address the national debility. So, it’s but natural that the Hindu masses too saw nothing amiss in this secular mess, and thus an all-round silence became the norm amidst the periodic communal mayhem.

But the vexatious rama-janmabhoomi movement picked up momentum to  eventually bring down the Babri structure that 6 Dec 1992, and that brought about a tectonic shift in India’s electoral dynamics to the hurt of the Nehruvian politics. But it was the Godhra-Gujarat communal flare-up that changed things in the long-run, in more ways than one, once and for all. Sensing another Godse moment to push back the surging Hindutva political tide, Sonia’s Congress pulled all stops to castigate the Hindu right and cajole the sulking Musalmans back into its electoral fold, of course aided and abetted by a compromised media that amplified the Muslim victimhood and falsified the Hindu culpability. Besides, notwithstanding the unprovoked Godhra train carnage by the Musalmans (never mind the secular narrative of accidental fire in that S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express on that fateful 27 Feb 2002) as the maulanas took the floor to proclaim that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ and indeed it is Bhagavad-Gita that incites violence, it became apparent that the Hindu intelligentsia had no clue on either count to confront.

So, I set out to find out the role religions play in fomenting human discord and came up with Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A critical Appraisal of Islamic Faith, Indian Polity ‘n More) that I submitted to Popular Prakashan for its perusal. And its rejection slip of 03 Feb 2003 - I enjoyed reading the book. But I suggest you read Dr. Zakaria’s ‘Communal Rage in Secular India’. Your book is a bit Strident and could prove dangerous in the wrong hands (Hindu fundamentalist) – sums up Nehruvian India’s allergy to any Hindu critique of Islam. It’s another matter though that the book has been in the public domain as free e-book ever since, and whether or not it could help Hindus develop an Islamic grasp, its intended purpose, it certainly did not set the fundamentalist Hindus at Muslim throats as feared by the publishers. But come to think of it, though Islam was around in India for over millennia, save Chamupati’s 1924 pamphlet Rangila Rasool and Sita Ram Goel’s 1986 book The Calcutta Quran Petition, which is about Chandmal Chopra’s petition to ban Quran, earlier there were no other Hindu works on and about Islam! And that’s about the Hindu intellectual apathy in free India.  

But the moot point is, even though the Husains, the Aamirs et al, have all along been abusing their artistic freedom to denigrate Hinduism, Popular Prakashan chose to deny me my literary liberty for a critical appraisal of Islam. However, to the chagrin of the Musalmans all that has changed in the Modi era what with the Sanjay Dixits, the Ranganathans of the Hindu world with a Nupur Sharma or two in tow have been quoting the inimical Quranic ayats and reciting the embarrassing Hadithian anecdotes through the electronic media. All the same, as the saying goes, “To understand Islam is to understand Muhammad” the Hindu intellectuals may look around for a book or two so as to acquaint themselves with the character of the man whom every Musalman seeks to imitate, which by the way, is far easier and more fetching than emulating Rama, the Hindu Maryada Purushottama.  

Be that as it may, what’s the intellectual fracas of free speech in Modi era all about? It can be expected that the politicians who lost power and their hangers on their pelf would cry hoarse. It’s also understandable that Musalmans too would be sore over losing their political veto and what’s worse have to bear the ignominy of having to live in a Hindu Raj. It’s also okay for the Christian world to resent their hitherto unhindered evangelical drive has to navigate the anti-conversion hurdle. So, for whatever the Hindu intelligentsia is cribbing about, the Hindu masses, at long last, have begun to feel proud being Hindus. If that’s an objection for those who have no issues with the Islamic republics and the Christian democracies that abound world over, then so be it.