Had Nehru been a Nationalist, 

Or If Modi were the First One 

Mistaking it as some sort of an accolade by one of Modi’s so-called ‘andh bhakts’, the skeptics shouldn’t skip this for his mere presence in the subtitle.  Whatever, as a matter of fact, the historical facts vindicate his choice for this hypothetical venture, rather than that of Netaji Bose or Sardar Patel. It’s true, contrary to propaganda, Netaji caused the British-exist from India, confirmed by none other than Clement Atlee, the one who led them out. But given the turbulence of that time, he was not destined to become Azad Hind’s first prime minister. As for Patel, the people’s choice for the premier position, instead of shouldering the nation at its most critical juncture, he catered to maverick Gandhi’s wicked whim, to put its fate in the ill-equipped hands of the fallible Nehru. So, that makes Modi, who proved himself as a nationalist to the core, in thoughts, words and deeds, as the right choice to man this piece, more so, as he just overtook Nehru’s uninterrupted stint as the country’s elected prime minister.

It is pertinent to note that in his 15 Aug 1947 midnight ‘Tryst with Destiny’ address to India’s constituent assembly, Nehru had stated at the very outset - “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”. Well, for all intents and purposes, if it’s not an exhibition of his utter lack of ambition to lead India to its once-held preeminent position in the world, what else. Just contrast his limited thinking with Modi’s audacious vision of Vikasit Bharat and his energetic approach to realise that. So, hereunder is India’s hypothetical tryst with destiny, had Nehru been a nationalist, or if Modi were in his position as the first prime minister.  [Emphasis supplied] 

“Dear Bharatiya:

No denying that on this august occasion, though it is tempting to indulge in grandiose posturing, I would rather resort to plain speaking to outline my thoughtful vision for the eternal good of our new Bharat in the making.

I, for one, believe that there is no cause for celebrating our long-denied freedom for which we paid the price of partition, of our precious land. Besides, I dare say that we cannot remain oblivious to the fact that the spirit of our people, the soul of our karma bhoomi, came to be stymied under the alien regimens that lasted for a thousand years. Thus, at this historic juncture, as our resolve should be to lead our once-redoubtable country to the new frontiers of excellence, in the not-so-distant-future that is, so we must reckon this as a substantive moment, not a symbolic event.

Hence, it is incumbent upon us to apply our minds to nation-building, for which, first of all, we must, above all else, imbibe that spirit and induce it in the minds of our people, which Alberuni in 1030 CE characterised thus: "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." Thus, it is the onerous duty of all of us that happen to hold the positions of influence and power at this critical time, to reinvigorate that sense of pride in our people, with a resplendent past, distant though. So, let us all strive to create the Bharat Varsha of Swami Vivekananda’s dreams in which his Sanatani, garv se kaho hum hindu hai (proudly proclaim that we’re Hindus), refrain is on every lip.

No mistaking that for this ancient land has historically been the Hindustan, and if anything, with the creation of Pakistan for the Muslims, the India today is unequivocally Hindu, by its composition, culture, custom and character. Thus, for some delusionary applause from within and without, I see no point in singing paeans to the mythical ganga-jamni tehjeeb, which, anyway, the partition on the Hindu-Muslim fissures made fallacious. So, in the national interest, what is needed is a hard talk to deal with the ugly reality of the faith-driven Muslim disaffection of the Hindus, conceitedly called kafirs. Strangely though, having whole-heartedly subscribed to the Muslim League’s two nation theory, based on the premise of “Hindus and Muslims were two distinct nations with separate religions, cultures, and values”, over a third of the enthusiastic believers of the same, chose to remain in the Hindu India! Is it mere hypocrisy?    

Whatever, it should not be lost on them that Hindus, having been forced to cede one-fourth of their land for a Muslim homeland, did not insist upon their repatriation to it but instead, hosted them in their midst. If anything, that Hindu gesture alone, in the normal human course, is cause enough for these Muslims to rescind their separatist mindset to become the emotional ingredient of our national character. But the hitch, as pinpointed by my erudite brother, Dr. BR Ambedkar, is that “Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin”, and I’m certain that he would love to be proved wrong on both counts. More so, as the onus is on the Muslims to become worthy of the Hindu magnanimity, it pays them to realize that the prejudices of their alien faith render them into square pegs in the round holes of Bharat that is India. And for that, it’s essential for them to understand that the inimical content of their faith, shaped by the alien tribal mores of the dark ages, has become redundant in these altered times, more so in the multi-religious societies like ours.

However, lest the Muslims should feel singled out on the dogmatic front, we must caution the mistaken Christians that their urge to convert the vulnerable Hindus, ostensibly for their supposed salvation, is grossly injurious to Indian social harmony, national unity and demographic health. So, they would be well-advised to desist from their ill-founded evangelism for unlike the prophet-centric prejudices of their, and the other Semitic faiths, the philosophy of Sanatana dharma has evolved through the ages, by the sages. Whatever, it is a travesty of enlightenment in that these dogmatic Semitic orders, sans philosophy, sworn to outrageous diktats of their intolerant gods, should have at all gained their cultish grounds in our land of the Upanishads. Oh, how they visualized that it’s man, who created gods, not the other way round! It’s another matter though, sadly over time, the Sanatani wisdom gave way to the Hindu superstitions, resulting in India’s intellectual decline.

Be that as it may, we must admit that Hindus have to blame only themselves for the Semitic mess in their midst for they disregarded the Sanatana ethos of Vasudhaiva kutumbakam (holds world all in one household) to denigrate part of their ilk as lesser souls, and, what’ worse, branded some others as untouchables. Sadly, though understandably, that make them all the easy prey of the evangelist poachers, equipped with false religious assertations and fake social postulations. However, wonder why it doesn’t ever dawn on the proselytizers of either dispensation that the manner in which they go about luring the others into their lot, in essence, is a dubious way of spreading, what they propagate as a noble religion, or the God’s straight path, or whatever! However, it goes without saying that before demanding the adherents of the alien faiths to imbibe Bharatiyata, the Hindus themselves must bring their sidelined ilk into the Sanatana fold, in both letter and spirit.

Last but not the least is our onerous task to reweave our tattered moral fabric, which, once, as noted by ancient Chinese pilgrims, was ethically pure in an economically prosperous setting. Why, for that matter, even at the end of the rapacious Islamic regimes, the forerunners to the exploitative British colonial rule, our GDP was over one-fourth of the global one, which sadly stands at a meagre three percent of it now. Just the same, without delving too deep into the myriad causes of our moral decay and the economic decline, suffice it say that as corruption is the source of our social scourge that plagues our country in every which way, it can be affirmed without any contradiction that it is treason by another name. It’s thus, unravelling the well-entrenched graft from independent Bharat can only be our vande mataram in its true sense.

Just the same, the problem with a problem is that until one admits that it exists, one cannot address it, and unless it is addressed, it persists. So, let’s honestly confess the problems our country faces, and sincerely strive to evolve feasible solutions to effectively address the same, collectively that is. Given the impeccable pedigree and innate genius of Bharat, I’m quite certain that our people and their progeny, sooner than later, would scale it to the formidable heights, at which our progenitors once positioned it. So, it is with that conviction, I commend this occasion as the beginning of the end of a millennial eclipse for our nation to regain and retain its resplendence for all times to come. Let’s trust our people for that.

Vande mataram.”

Now, from the hypothetical nationalism, back to the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ of the “Englishman by education, Muslim by culture, and Hindu by birth” Nehru, propped up by Gandhi, lo, for being “the most English among us all”, for the comparative record. It’s no wonder then that in its editorial, ‘India: another tryst with destiny’, The Guardian of England, opined that “Today, 18 May 2014, may well go down in history as the day when Britain finally left India”, and that was the day when its 15th Lok Sabha was dissolved to make way for Narendra Damodardas Modi to be sworn in as its 14^th Prime Minister later, on 26 May 2014.

And for record, the following is the rest of Nehru’s ‘tryst’:

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new -- when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India, and her people, and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history, India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her successes and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike, she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. That responsibility rests upon this assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom, we have endured all the pains of labor, and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over, and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe "every tear from every eye." That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labor and to work, and work hard, to -- to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart.

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom; so is prosperity now; and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.”

Now, the rest is for your contemplation

 

The Secular Cure of India’s Semitic Cancer

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. 

 

• 

A Providential Encounter 

[A poignant story about the villainy of vanity exemplified by the lives of a middle-aged woman and a grey-haired man, involved in a providential encounter.]

Stepping into a sprawling park nearby, Latha headed towards a lonely bench to sit on the horns of a dilemma. Soon, as if they got wind of her morose mood, the monsoon clouds began to engulf the setting sun to sync the environs with her gloomy demeanor.  But yet, unmindful of her bereft state, the charm of her middle-aged form enlivened the surroundings, emanated by the eyes of the beholders. If anything, enhancing that sense of espial, the romantics among them envisioned her maiden frame entwining her man as an ever-eager creeper. All the same, lost in her thoughts, she was oblivious to the goings on around her enchanting presence.

However, as her mind began muddying her thoughts, she grasped the note she had tucked in her blouse, closer to her heart, and hardly had she pulled it out to review her plan of revenge, a gust of wind snatched it from her hands. Nonplussed though, she readily recovered her wits to pursue that ariel piece for its retrieval before it landed in alien hands. So, not losing sight of that self-incriminating thing, she ran with the wind till that dropped into a secluded portion of the park. Then, holding her breath for a while, she hurried her way into that nuke but upon seeing a semi-gray-haired man engrossed in going through her outpour, missing a heart a beat, she stopped in her tracks. However, gathering her wits in time and having weighed her options - reclamation or abandonment – she headed towards him.

“Excuse me, it’s mine,” she said embarrassedly pointing to her note that he began to pocket.

“How am I to know that it’s yours?” he said questioningly. 

“You know that it’s not yours either,” she said argumentatively.

“True, but what if I were to put this damned idea into the wrong head,” he said without taking his eyes off her.

“I’m Latha,” she said lowering her face

“Have it,” he said handing it over to her.

“Thank you,” she said with a sigh of relief.

‘It’s Okay,’ he said thoughtfully. 

‘Oh, what would he be thinking about me?’ she began to envision, leaving him hurriedly. ‘Whatever it is, what difference does that make for me? But isn’t something more in his stare than mere desire? Whatever it is, probably that could have held him back from befriending me. Could it be contempt for my character? So be it, but how do I care. Oh, no, he’s privy to my plan and could imperil me when the chips are down. What if I seduce him into becoming my accomplice? But looks like he’s too level-headed to get into a vulnerable position to compromise himself. So what, I’ve nothing more to lose by way of trying. Even otherwise, his semi-grey eminence is worth courting.’

Looking back over her shoulders and seeing his stare, she walked towards him.

“Sorry, I forgot to ask your name,” she said upon reaching him.

“Is it the cause of your comeback?” he said with a smirk on his face.

“What else do you think it could be?” she said making it evens stevens.

“So, you’re smart as well,” he said wearing his admiration for her on his sleeve.

“As well as what?” she said teasingly, pleased with herself.

“I’m Mohan,” he said invitingly.

“Thank you, Mr. Mohan, but that’s no reply for my query,” she said coyly.

“Well, but there’s no prelude for that?” he said expectantly.

“May I sit, as a prelude?” she said, slipping out of her slippers.

“Oh, I’m sorry for being unchivalrous,” he said, standing up.

“Maybe you’re overawed,” she said coquettishly as they sat together. 

“Looks like you’re unnerved,” he said for a repartee.

“What rubbish?” she said mawkishly.

“Never mind, I’m no blackmailer,’ he said sincerely.

“Thank you for not making it worse for me,” she said suggestively.

“Now, you’re free to call it quits,” he said tentatively.

“But I’m not done yet,” she said seductively.

“With what?” he said anticipatively.

“I’ve another side of my ‘scandal sheet’ to show you,” she said enticingly. 

“I suppose it’s a fair offer,” he said assuming an attentive posture.

She was barely thirty when her husband, a Major in the Indian Army, laid down his life in a counter-insurgency operation in Kashmir. So as to wholly devote herself to his ageing parents, to whom he was the only child, she gave up her schoolteacher job, and came to lead her life with them in the shadows of the martyr’s memories. However, after their death, in quick succession, to overcome her ennui, she took up teaching all again. That was five years back, when she turned forty.  Soon, as it happened, she was drawn to a twenty something colleague that set up their passionate liaison in which she was on cloud nine all again. But ever since her lover, that was a week back, broke with her to get engaged with a young woman, she has been left gasping in the pit of despair. 

“Why spare your boyfriend and spoil his betrothed?” he said in a manner of knowing the answer.

“I don’t want to lose him to her,” she said resolutely.

“Suppose you make it a perfect murder that’s rare any way, would it insulate him from another dame?” he said questioningly.

“I didn’t delve into all that,” she said confusedly.

“It’s the villainy vanity that failed you to figure it out,” he said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean by that?” she said in half-protest.

“If it were a case of love turned into hatred, you would’ve wanted to see his end but as he snubbed you for her sake, I suppose it’s your vanity that makes her the target of its hurt,” he said in a helpful tone. 

“It’s possible,” she said after some contemplation.

“You’re sensible,” he said in a complimentary manner.

“But still your counselling helps,” she said invitingly. 

“I’m not a psychologist,” he said evasively.

“But you seem so,” she said, and added, “if you care to tell me about yourself, I’m all eager to listen.”

“Evan as deeper thoughts tend to evade the radars of close relationships, how strange it is that our apprenticeship of acquaintance should begin with the exposure of our dark secrets,” he began stoically. “To begin with, though bright, being poor, I was down to earth but when a rich man’s attractive daughter married me for love, so to say, my ego got energized. But it’s her wifely devotion that gave birth to my manly vanity that is besides our smart son, who, in time, became a decorated cop. When we were in search of a suitable bride for him, the Naxals managed to get their nemesis to plunge us into gloom.”

“Oh, what a fateful coincidence!” she exclaimed, interrupting him.

“But as you would see, the effects of it varied widely,” he said as he resumed summarising his life. “Lo, living in my vanity world by then, in my son’s supreme sacrifice, I came to see my service to the nation as his father, furthering my illusion. Sadly, as my wife widowed me five years back, though I could overcome her loss in time, devoid of her adoration, I became a fish out of water. Not for long though as my hand of vanity led me to a poor lass of quality, whom, with my wealthy attentions, I enticed into marrying me. That was three years back, and ever since, people mistook her for my daughter, bolstering my vanity no end.”

At that, he paused even as she was listening wide-eyed.

“It’s thus, given my situation, I failed to fathom her feelings,” he began saying. “It’s only the other day that she made me privy to the villainy of my vanity that has been stymieing her, not so much in my bed but in her life, as she put it. Instead of wooing her with my wealth, had I won her with my affection, she might’ve fallen in love with me, never mind my grey hair. As the familiarity of the well-heeled living began waning the thrill of it, for long, she was yearning for a normal life with a man she loved. Asserting that she could bear it no more, she pleaded for separation from me without any encumbrance, and seeing her plight, as I had no heart to refuse, it didn’t take me long to accede to her request. Whatever, as a recompense, I even offered her enough money to last her life-time that she has flatly refused. So, after she moved out of my place this evening, as a prelude to divorce, I came here to take a serene look at the falsity of my vanity, and you know what followed.”

“Oh, how remarkable,” she said in awe and added, “you make me seem so small.”

“Why spoil me by stoking my vanity,” he said half in jest.

“Well, I will be failing myself if I don’t confess that I came back to you with the idea of seducing you into becoming my partner in crime,” she said shamefacedly.

“Blame it on the villainy of vanity,” he said patting her shoulder assuredly.

At that, pulling out the damning thing from her blouse and having shredded it into tiny pieces, she blew them away from her palm as if driving out vanity from her life itself.

“Will you let me be your life partner?” she said turning to him with an appealing look.

“See, it’s not wise to act on the rebound,” he said sounding caution.

“But isn’t it stupid to lose track of our providential encounter?” she said spiritedly.

“Do you think I’m a stupid?” he said suggestively.

“I would let the time decide,” she said mischievously.

“Who knows what life has in store for us,” he said philosophically.

“Isn’t it said that If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars,” she said in hope, extending her hand.

Then, as if not wanting to lose track of each other, hand in hand, they headed towards the exit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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.

 

 

 

 

     

 

On Pitfalls of Pre-marital Sex 

 When Roopa debunked the puranic tales of cock-pecked wives as perverse male stratagems to enslave women, her mother was truly alarmed.

“These tales of female fidelity have a purpose of their own,” said Janaki to Roopa. “Since nature made men promiscuous, it’s the female loyalty that holds the marriage in the long run, for the benefit of the family and the society as well. These tales have a moral for men as well for they underscore the fact that it’s the wife who sticks through thick and thin with their man and not the lascivious lasses with whom they come to stray.”

As Roopa remained unconvinced and minced no words about the fallacy of the proposition, Janaki realized that old wives tales were no longer a currency with the educated girls. So, she thought it fit to reason it out with her and Chandrika, her unmarried daughters, about the pitfalls of premarital sex and thus closeted with them one evening.

“I think it’s time I talk to you about the proclivities of youth,” Janaki began enigmatically. “To be drawn to boys at your age is but natural and desirable even. It helps the healthy development of your sexuality. Infatuation is the narcotic of the nascent youth, and if only the dosage is right, it could bring in small pleasures that delight. On the other hand, a thoughtless overdose could cripple your womanliness forever. While being friendly with the boys, beware of their attitudes and be aware about your vulnerabilities. They pursue for the final favor doggedly until they are dog-tired. Nature made them that way and for a purpose; female fulfillment is the purpose of male desire. It’s left for you to draw your own premarital lines. Do not get into those situations that might let you part with that for which they court you so fervently. If only you interact with easy virtue, your date could doubt your ability to resist a future seducer. Thus, if you favor your lover in a hurry, you might end up losing him besides that by which men measure women. And that would be enough to put you in a doghouse for life.”

Janaki extracted a promise from Chandrika and Roopa that they wouldn’t indulge in premarital sex.

An excerpt from the author's free ebook, Benign Flame: Saga of Love.

 

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.