Eid Mubarak!
I’m writing this article on the eve of Eid. Two weeks after the Modi 2.0 government was installed in India.
When the election results came out on May 23 I was baffled. How come a government which put India through enormous pain through its anti-people policies like Demonetisation which killed over 200 people and destroying small scale industries with job loss for millions, ignoring of farmer’s distress which killed over 300,000 farmers through suicide, divisive policies which divided India on religious, ethnic and linguistic lines, painful Good and Services Tax (GST) which put small traders under severe stress, can come back to power?
Several theories were floated. Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) tampering, the willful support of Election Commission of India for the ruling regime, money power, mass media support, fake news….All these must have played a part. However, none of these arguments are convincing.
Then why? How?
I believe the RSS project of Hindu Rashtra is reaping rich dividends for their loyal work for over nine decades. RSS or Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh has about 60,000 branches across India and its ideology is to make India into a Hindu Rashtra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political wing of RSS.
RSS openly challenges the constitution of India and wants to make Manusmriti (Manu’s code) as the constitution of India. Manusmriti dehumanizes everyone except the upper castes, including women of all castes.
RSS ideologue Golwalkar wrote in his book “Bunch of Thoughts”
“The most important and effective step will be to bury deep for good all talk of a federal structure of our country’s Constitution, to sweep away the existence of all ‘autonomous’ or semi-autonomous ‘states’ within the one state viz., Bharat and proclaim ‘One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive’ with no trace of fragmentational, regional, sectarian, linguistic or other types of pride being given a scope for playing havoc with our integrated harmony. Let the Constitution be re-examined and re-drafted, so as to establish this Unitary form of Government and thus effectively disprove the mischievous propaganda indulged in by the British and so unwittingly imbibed by the present leaders, about our being just a juxtaposition of so many distinct ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nationalities’ happening to live side by side and grouped together by the accident of geographical contiguity and one uniform supreme foreign domination.”
Golwalker also wrote in his book “We or our nationhood defined”,
“From the standpoint sanctioned by the experience of shrewd nations, the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of Hindu nation i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this land and its age long traditions, but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, for less any preferential treatment, not even the citizen’s rights.”
This is actually happening NOW. A de facto HINDU RASHTRA is here. Whether it will stay or not is OUR choice.
By the way who are the Indians? The name India is derived from Indus river, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi which translates as “The people of the Indus”. Actually it was the colonial westerners gave the name “India” to the subcontinent. There is no historical evidence that India belongs to Hindus.
Tony Joseph in his path breaking book “Early Indians” proved that India is a land of migrants. All Indians are migrants. The earliest civilization, “The Indus Valley civilization” was kick started by West Asian migrants. All others, including the Aryan Hindus are migrants. India in its millennia old history has accepted migrants from all parts of the world and absorbed religion, culture and languages. This is this history that RSS and BJP want to rub aside.
India is a land of varied cultures. Originator of great religions like Budhism and Jainism and Sikhism. A great number of Indians adopted Islam, making it the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. Indian constitution has recognized 22 official languages. Thousands of other languages are being spoken by, from a few thousand to many millions. RSS and BJP want to rub it all away. Their motto is ‘’HINDU, HINDI, HINDUSTAN’’.
This kind of monolithic culture is the foundation of the Hindu Rashtra envisioned by the RSS ideologues. It seems like decades long hard work by RSS is coming to fruition. Unless we step up!
Only way to keep India as we know it is to celebrate the cultural, linguistic, religious diversity of India. That’s the only way we can undermine the Hindu Rashtra project by the RSS. If we cannot do it we can say good bye to India and welcome HINDUSTAN.
So, once again I say Eid Mubarak. Let’s celebrate each other’s festivals more than ours. That’s the only way we can save India from falling into a fascist, Hindu theocratic, failed state.
Binu Mathew is the Editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org
Thanks to the Countercurrents editor for the Eid greetings: Eid Mubarak.
Countercurrents editor writes: “I was baffled.”
I understood he was baffled. And, not only the editor, many were baffled. But some were not baffled.
The editor writes: “Several theories were floated. …However, none of these arguments are convincing.”
I agree. The statement is logical although many don’t agree.
The editor writes: “…reaping rich dividends for their loyal work for over nine decades.”
I agree. It is not only loyal work, it also is organized, well-organized, planned, well-planned work.
And, there are some more things also. Find out those, please. Please, look at the class question — all related aspects of class, which is denied by many posing as progressives. Relying on sects, margins and NGOs cannot bring any thing in mainstream politics. Begin from simple arithmetic. But, what can one do while sectarian calls are reissued proudly, and those calls are given space?
Eid Mubarak to 135 crore people of de facto Hindu rashtra. We are leaving our office to meet friends and celebrate Eid. May a thousand Munshi Premchand’s be born in India to constantly remind us of the eternal short story ‘Idgah’. We have decided to always carry a pocket size copy of the Constitution of India on our person – whose chief architect is Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
Eid Mubarak.
Your spirit is nice.
But how far you go by taking a negative stand? How much distance can you cover by standing on sectarianism? How much can you achieve by moving away from mainstream? Learn from history, please.
It was the British-occupied sub-continent, and a group of persons left this sub-continent. It was their form of resistance. But to resist the colonial rulers, people had to make people’s weak stream stronger, and make it the mainstream. Moving away from mainstream doesn’t help. No part of capital, whether dominant or not, chooses margin. Rather, all parts/factions of capital include margins into the main body.
A very timely article and reassuring too, to the Muslims and Dalits who have become the most vulnerable RSS inspired Hindutva India. As a matter of fact along with Muslims the advent of RSS brand of Hindutva which is quite unique and does not exactly represent what Hinduism stands for, may have made Hindus (Non-Hindutva Hindus) also a minority in India. I personally do not think Modi and his brand of intolerant Hinduntva would last that long. After all, any government that thinks that it can move a society forward by fomenting disharmony among its people must live in a fool’s paradise. It would not take Indians long to realize Modi’s bluff and the danger he and his ilk pose to India. BJP’s rise has been dramic so would be its fall.
Eid Mubarak.
Again, banking on the margin?!
Come clear. What do you mean by “the margin?”
The “margin” is “not the mainstream”.
Enough of wringing our hands over the horrid findings of the postmortem of the election results. Time to remember old Marx’s advice to `change’ the situation, instead of just `interpreting’ it. We’ll have to come down on the streets in mass demonstrations against the fascist regime, to `change’
the submissive mindset of our people who voted for BJP. It will be a long haul. But today, on the occasion of Eid Mubarak, let us all – irrespective of our religious denominations – take the pledge to rid ourselves of the deadly combination of religious hatred, casteist superstitions, nationalist chauvinist sentiments, vulnerability to money and muscle power that led our electorate to vote to power a fascist party. While blaming the EVM s (which are indeed blame-worthy), let’s also
remember Julius Caesar’s words from Shakespeare: “The fault , dear Brutus is not in our stars (the modern EVMs perhaps ?) / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Can we change ourselves ?
Sumanta Banerjee
Sumanta da, sorry for my interference. I, from Bangladesh, shouldn’t interfere to this level with election issue of India, and I am not touching the issue. I am trying to keep me limited only with the issue of people. So, I am making a reply to your comment on people:
Your comment says: “the submissive mindset of our people”.
I disagree, people’s mindset is not submissive. I quote from your comment, where you have cited Shakespeare: The fault is “in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
If you like to identify people’s mindset in that way on the basis of a certain voting pattern, then you have also to identify those people’s mindset, who have not followed that pattern. Thus you will find a certain portion’s mindset is not submissive. Thus, it cannot be said “our people’s”; and in that case, you have to say, if you like to identify in your way, “a part of our people’s mindset …”, although I don’t agree to identify any portion of people in a negative way. The argument I made above is for an example. There are basic issues related to conclusion due to that mindset and basis of that mindset.
Blaming means burying your head in the sand and refusing to accept the reality. Accept that your narration of last 70 years is no more attractive to well informed by social media. Earlier a few media houses controlled the flow of information and shaped the opinions suitable for the elites. But the internet revolution has busted the monopoly on ideology and exposed for what it is – a totally discredited and bankrupt. The biggest folly is you think Hindu rashtra is other side of the coin of Abrahamic religions. It is not! Try to remove your blinkers, prejudices and think beyond your stereo types. Your mental blocks are the only thing worth fighting against. We have had enough of the joke of Muslims and Christian fanatics parroting about secularism.
We had some 55 years of Congress. We had emergency imposed for late Mrs Gandhi to hold on to power. We had decades of profligate spending on programs of dubious merit and worse implementation record.
We were a country where customary religious, cultural and social symbols of majority were scoffed at as being backward and 1500 year old religious practices of a minority community, please take leave of your senses, upheld in our country as symbols of progressive thought.
We were the first to denounce works like Satanic verses, uphold practice like triple talas, change the decision of Supreme Court awarding maintenance to a divorced woman. All these acts were progressive and never discussed by our western educated media who would find such practices okay, even if majority of Islamic world had stopped supporting such practices.
Democracy was not killed when we denied the right to equality of women of minority community under triple talaq when only a man could end a marriage.
Democracy however dies when we start talking about a Uniform Civil Code. Democracy also dies when prominent actors and personalities start saying on cue that they feel threatened and start returning awards.
There is one good explanation to all these cries of murder of democracy. Whenever Congress is out of power for a measly 5 years and starts getting withdrawal symptoms from lack of ability to dip its hand into public coffers and looting them, democracy starts coming under danger
This kind of articles are not new. The editor has not taken any pain in finding the facts of RSS or the opposition debacle before writing this article at all. It seems Binu Mathew has pulled out one such article from the archives. What a waste of opportunity.