New Light on India’s Plight
‘What ails India’ has been the subject matter of the left-lib right-wing
tussle for long, what with the cynics chipping in, in between. However, the right-wing
assault on the left-lib ‘Idea of India’, facilitated by Narendra Modi’s nationalist
rise in the Indian political firmament, has only increased the intensity of the
scrimmage. Be that as it may, this is to throw a new ‘right’ light on India’s ‘left’
plight that has been Bharat’s bane, for a fresh look at it.
In Kitab al-Hind, Al-Biruni had stated that “the
Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no
kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs”, and
that was in the 11th century CE. Wasn’t it the current American parallel
of yore? But still, by the 20th century, the sangh pariwar, in order to make
Hindus feel proud of being Hindus all again, had no option but to come up with
the slogan, garv se kaho hum hindu hain.
But then, what it was that so adversely affected the Hindu morale that led to
the initial decline and the eventual downfall of Bharat that is India is the
subject matter of this exercise.
That the Hindus felt what they felt in
the 11th century, despite the 1st century evangelical forays
into Malabar by St. Thomas and the 8th century Arab conquest of
Sind, in a way, is a giveaway of the cause of India’s plight, past and present –
the abject ignorance of the Hindus about the exclusivist ethos of the expansionist
Christian and Islamic faiths, and their utter disregard for the perils their
followers posed to India’s social harmony, political unity and national integrity.
However, given their social ethos of religious amity, this sedate Hindu failure
of yore, to grasp the divisive credos of the alien faiths, is understandable, though
not anymore. Even so, as the sanatana
Hindu non-varnas were socially kept
away from Bharat’s varna mainstream,
the precedence of Buddhism and Jainism that sought to correct this self-negating
social code, were more of reformist offshoots than rebellious branches of the otherwise
all-encompassing sanatana dharma that,
lo, holds Charvaka’s atheism too in its Hindu fold!
Whatever, given the inadequate growth of
these sub-religious trees, as they failed to provide much of a reformist shade
to the non-varnas, the practice of their
debasement, if not enslavement, persisted in the Hindu social arrangement.
Sadly but inevitably, this social wedge became the Achilles heel for the proselytizing
Christians and Muslims to pierce through the Hindu body politic. Even so, the
Muslims needed the might of their sword and power of patronage and the Christians,
the guile of enticement and the guise of charity for their religious headway.
However, it is a testimony to the Indian social resilience that together they could
only uproot, up to a quarter of its Hindu roots that too in a millennium. Ironically
though, it is this intellectual complacency that makes the Hindus the ‘once
bitten not twice shy’ kind, showing a blind eye to the unabated conversion of their
disgruntled sections into these alien faiths to India’s demographic detriment.
Just the same, Maryam Jameelah in her
book, Islam and Orientalism, lamented
that “If the Mughal monarchs had assumed
their responsibilities as Muslim rulers and organized intensive tabliq or missionary work, the
majority of Indians would have embraced Islam and hence the necessity for partition
and all the disasters that followed in its wake, never would have arisen.” If
only Jameelah had read Al-Biruni, she could have envisaged the haughty hurdles
of the Hindu varnas that the Mughal tabliq
had to surmount. Besides, as the unceasing tabliq would have entailed a perpetual
jihad, probably, the Sultans staid
put in their palaces annexed with harems in the limited lands that came under
their sway. All the same, they spared no efforts to pluck the low hanging Hindu
‘non-varna’ fruits to substantially
fill their Islamic religious baskets.
Eventually though, signaling the end to
the eight-hundred years old partial Muslim rule, Robert Clive planted the
British colonial foot in the Battle of Plassey, plotted by Jagat Seth’s avenging
‘financial’ hand at Siraj-ud-Daulah’s insult
of him. Nevertheless, the Nehruvian school curriculum,
as if to deprive the Hindu kids of the feel good revenge, made the game-changing
event seem an all-Muslim affair with Mir Jaffar as the quisling. Whatever, given
the Mughal decline by then, but for this Cliveian twist to the Mughal legacy,
it is not inconceivable that the Marathas, Rajputs and the valorous rest would
have given a Hindu turn to the Muslim history. Be that as it may, by ending the
Muslim influence in India, the British had enabled the Hindus to feel at home
in their ancestral land, at long last that is. But all that turned out to be a
false start for them as the British Macaulayzed their educational mechanism to
uproot generations of Hindus from their sanatana
grassroots to upend their cultural legacy from their collective consciousness. Hence,
as if to prove that ‘there’s a price to pay for freedom’, history threw the Hindus
out of the frying pan into fire. That it affected an encore for them is the
irony of India’s history!
Not just that, the British pauperized Bharat
by ruining its industry and degrading its economy, from some 24% of the
world’s GDP to around 4% of it before they had to leave its shores for their
own safety. However, it’s another matter though that the centuries-long Islamic
turbulence had earlier brought down the Indian economy by ten notches or so. Even
as the British rule impoverished India that hurt all, still the Muslims couldn’t
care less for their holy book hath it that “Naught is the life of the world save a pastime and a sport. Better
far is the abode of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah).
Have ye then no sense?” Not only that, having barred the secular education to their
kids for the fear of its intellectual corruption of their irrational belief
system, they had confined them to madrasas for further cementing their blind faith
in their tiny heads. As ummah is change averse, the Muslim conditions apply
even now and maybe into the foreseeable future as well. Thus, it’s no wonder that this inimical feature of the Muslim character has become
the cornerstone of the electoral strategy of the cynical politics – Give
Muslims their Islam and be done with them.
But
then, even as the patriotic fervour began to awake the Hindu nationalism, the Islamic craving for a Muslim homeland started
taking its political shape, both anathemas to the British colonial masters. It
was then that the much-wronged Hindus needed a visionary leader to guide them
to their rightful place under the sun but instead they got the silly but wily
Gandhi, who sadly fouled it for them, so to say, for all times to come. However,
Muslims found their messiah in Jinnah, who delivered the hoped-for Pakistan to
them, so to say, on the Hindu platter of his own ancestors. Surely, Gandhi was
erudite enough to know about the Muslim religious obligation to strive
for the establishment of an Islamic rule in dar
al-harb, which India was, and still is for them. Even then, instead of tackling
the ummah on the separatist front, by appeasing the Musalmans in every which
way, he naively persisted in his attempts to avert India’s inevitable partition
with disastrous consequences. It’s thus, even as he was unequivocal about the Hindu
non-violence, he was ambivalent on the Muslim violence, be it Moplah massacres
or Swami Shraddhanand’s murder to cite but two examples.
More so, it was Gandhi’s lack of foresight leading up to
India’s partition that hurt the Hindus the most, to appreciate which his wooly
Hindu-Muslim sadbhavana should be
contrasted with Ambedkar’s robust take on the Muslim psyche: “…the allegiance of a Muslim does not
rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he
belongs. To the Muslim ibi bene ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is
the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never
allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his
kith and kin.” Thus, failing to see the Muslim intent to break
India, even after personally witnessing the Direct Action Day’s virulent violence, he remained pigheadedly adamant against India’s inevitable, even
necessary partition, albeit with the population exchange on the respective religious
grounds, advocated by Sardar Patel, not to speak of Ambedkar. Just the same, as
if he had a premonition of the post-partition calamity in the offing, on April 6,
1947 he lectured that “Hindus should not harbour
anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy
them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death
bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be
ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives.”
If only
Gandhi had a knack for realpolitik, seeing
the writing on the Muslim-fractured Indian wall, he should have brought about an
equitable religious separation in an amicable manner, which would have saved the
catastrophic outcomes of the haphazard partition for Hindus as well as Muslims,
more so for the former. But yet, he showed no remorse for his foolhardiness in
opposing a planned ‘population exchange based’ partition, but instead had allegedly
stated that Hindu and Sikh women should get willingly raped by their Muslim
violators. Capping all that, his incalculable harm to India lay in the
unilateral anointment of Nehru, the most English of them all (in his own words)
as its putative Prime Minister by immorally sidelining the Hindu nationalist
Patel, opted by the congress party to lead the nascent nation.
Not just
that, with his fast-unto-death stunt later, he coerced the Indian government into
releasing to Pakistan its share of the partition funds that is in the midst of their
military engagement! Sadly for India, this anti-national stance of Gandhi on his
utopian moral ground turned out to be the proverbial last straw on Godse’s
patriotic back. Whatever, sensing a godsend opportunity to grind his political
axe in Godse’s senseless act, Nehru cleverly dubbed the murder of a maverick as
the martyrdom of the Mahatma. But equally cynically, so as to smoothen the way
for the Muslim aggrandizement in India, he forged the ant-communal hammer on
the anvil of that human tragedy for smothering the resurgent Hindu nationalism.
Why, he did proclaim that he was “English
by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident.”
However,
his Muslim affinity, as can be seen from his midnight missive to Padmaja Naidu,
wherein he penned his ‘relief’ at the British military action that killed 400 Bihari
farmers indulged in a retaliatory Hindu rioting after the Noakhali Muslim carnage,
was more cynical than cultural. What is worse, it is an unambiguous giveaway of
his anti-Hindu disposition that he was wont to exhibit throughout albeit in the
secular garb. Here are a few lines from that ‘insensitive’ letter for all to ponder
over:
‘’.. I learnt
that the military had fired on a peasant mob in the rural areas some miles from
here, and about 400 had been killed. Normally such a thing would have horrified
me. But would you believe it? I was greatly relieved to hear it!”
“And so when
the news came that they have been stopped at last in one place and that 400 of
them had died, I felt that the balance had been very slightly righted.”
Oh, bemoan
Gandhi for having entrusted the fate of the trusting Hindus to such a cynical
person, who was emotionally as well as intellectually anti-Hindu. But then, the
crux of India’s plight is that both these crass characters were at chasing the
mirages of their false images - Gandhi as an apostle of non-violence and Nehru
as the messiah of non-alignment – by turning its interests into a desert of
despair, which apparance is seldom appreciated by the wronged Hindus
themselves.
No less
significant is the start of Nehru’s epochal Tryst
with Destiny address to the Indian Constituent Assembly – “Long years ago, we made a tryst with
destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or
in full measure, but very substantially” – that is an intellectual indicator
of not only his limited ambition for the independent India but also his lack of
belief in the Hindu potential to reclaim its ancient glory. But, lo, as India’s
ill-fate would have it, he happened to helm it for the first seventeen years in
its making as an independent nation! However, it’s true that he shaped the ‘temples
of modern India’ in the form of giant public sector undertakings and ushered in
the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, ostensibly to train their pujaris. Nevertheless, as it turned out,
these prized pundits invariably sailed to the American shores for ‘bettering
themselves’ and, in time, the Nehruvian temples were turned into white
elephants by their ‘socialist’ attendants. That’s not all to the litany of the national,
social, moral, material, and political ills that have come to plague India,
courtesy his unsavoury legacy, made worse by his daughter Indira and her
daughter-in-law Sonia, who lorded over India for long. No denying, there are
books and books, about India’s plight, but doubt if any of them pinpoint the root
causes of the malady, and what follows is but an attempt at that.
So to say, to enable the Musalmans to feel at home in the Hindu
India, for reasons better left for researchers to explore in the future, Nehru had
ensured that the Hindus have no cause and effect to feel it is their own
country, which proved to be its double
jeopardy. It’s thus, with its caste-centric Hindus lacking nationalist impulse
and its Muslim residuals devoid of any sense of belonging to it (recall
Ambedkar’s words) forming its demographic triad, with the ‘neither here nor
there’ closet Christians, India has become the habitat of varied interest
groups but not a unified nation with a unitary purpose. But still, the historic
situation was never beyond redemption, if only the Hindus were made to believe
that in essence India belonged to them and them only and so it was their bounden
duty to make it great again, morally, spiritually, as well as materially, never
mind the non-committal minorities, by and large that is. However, his dynastic successors,
not content with engineering the caste divisions to fracture the Hindu mandate,
had fostered the captive Muslim vote-bank to willy-nilly put India on the demographic
path of future partition.
But at long last, as if to give itself a rightful turn to its
wrongful history, India had induced its indifferent Hindu electorate to vote
out Nehru’s dubious descendants, who have become its nemeses since long, and vote
in the nationalist Narendra Modi. Hitting the ground running, Modi had diagnosed
India’s true malaise and started curing the same by restoring the Hindu religious
virility and infusing Bharat’s cultural pride in the Indian national consciousness.
It’s as if, so to say overnight, India has regained its lost Hindu josh on its march towards Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, the veracity of
which the Operation Sindoor has
validated. By now it is apparent, more than ever, that the Hindus have come to
believe that India is theirs to cherish, nourish, and protect against all odds
and in every eventuality. What is more heartening is, the Hindus have come to
believe that like the Sindoor,
Atmanirbhar too is not a one-off thing, but an ongoing endeavour to usher in
the Vikasit Bharat after Modi’s
heart.
But yet, India has to contend with the nefarious nexus of the
intransigent Islamists, obscurantist Muslims and their left-lib cohorts, who
leave no stone unturned to impede its progress in every possible way, judicial
activism included. So, it is only by defanging
this venomous system that Bharat can become vikasit, and
hopefully Modi would be able to do that in time so that the present and the
future generations of Hindus would be blessed to be able to echo their ancestors’
modified motto, ‘there is no country but theirs, no culture like theirs, no society like
theirs, no democracy like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like
theirs, no economy like theirs and no military like theirs’.
