Misguided Hindu Secularism
By: Venkat Lakshminarayan
April 01, 2005
We Hindus are very objective people. We do not like any irregularities in our dealings. We want everything to be "clean", legal and correct. Gandhi and Nehru are our mentors. But we always go to some one else to settle our disputes ignoring the fact that the "some one else" will have different value beliefs than our own. Naturally when the settlement comes out it is never to our satisfaction and we quarrel about it. How can we ever be content?
I remember the story that I heard as a child. Two crows find a cake. Being good Hindu crows, they agree to divide it equally between them. Of course, they wanted the shares to be precisely equal. Unsure of their ability to do this by themselves, they go to a monkey with a balance. After hearing out the crows the monkey casually splits the cake into two pieces and places them in the balance. The balance tips as one piece is slightly heavier than the other. The monkey takes a bite out of the heavier piece and places it back in the balance. Now the other piece is heavier, the balance tips the other way, and therefore, the monkey takes a bite out of that piece. You guessed the rest of the story. The crows went home hungry and became bitter enemies.
Is this a familiar theme?
Being a good and fair minded Hindu, Gandhi let Mountbatten and British to divide the country into two pieces. Jinnah could not care less about the fairness as long as he got his fiefdom. The other Hindu, Nehru (though he took pride in claiming that he was not) went to United Nations to solve the Kashmir cake. We all know how they turned out. Those mistakes have cost us enormously and continue to bleed our economy and security to this day.
Every society, whether it is Christian, Muslim, European, American, Chinese or Arab, has internal quarrels but they close ranks in the event of an external attack. Hindus not only continue their quarreling under external attack but they also ask the enemy to settle the quarrels for them. Our secularist intellectual elite had to approach the US Government to declare the Gujarat Chief Minister Modi to be a "persona non grata" How unfortunate! We are a democratic country and we can exercise our opinions in our elections and have our own intellectual discourse. Instead our secularists approached US Government to settle our quarrels. If anyone suggesting the settlement of the dispute within our system is branded as a fascist.
Notably the Indian academic elite living in the US who went on a battle to prevent Modi from speaking are the same people who will defend the right of David Duke to carry on with his hateful speeches. These people never once lobbied the US Government in the matters related to the security or economic well being of India. On issues like Kashmir, Indo-Pakistani relationship and the role of India at the United Nations they never lifted a finger to promote the Indian cause even when it was the right cause.
Suddenly they were all coming out of the woodwork like pests to lobby against Modi`s visa. Christians and Muslims have their own agenda. The Christians, regardless of their political leanings, are out to destroy anyone who they see as an impediment to their proselytizing. The Islamists are out to get as much political mileage. Our Hindu brethren among these so called intellectual elite are seemingly ashamed of their own culture and heritage. They are trying to hide their own Brownness by disenfranchising any other Brown man with different view point speaking his mind. In their view the freedom of expression is to be denied to anyone who disagrees with their point of view.
Old man Mcaulay is chuckling in his grave as he is beyond his belief that the Indians could be so fooled.
Venkat Lakshminarayan
April 01, 2005
We Hindus are very objective people. We do not like any irregularities in our dealings. We want everything to be "clean", legal and correct. Gandhi and Nehru are our mentors. But we always go to some one else to settle our disputes ignoring the fact that the "some one else" will have different value beliefs than our own. Naturally when the settlement comes out it is never to our satisfaction and we quarrel about it. How can we ever be content?
I remember the story that I heard as a child. Two crows find a cake. Being good Hindu crows, they agree to divide it equally between them. Of course, they wanted the shares to be precisely equal. Unsure of their ability to do this by themselves, they go to a monkey with a balance. After hearing out the crows the monkey casually splits the cake into two pieces and places them in the balance. The balance tips as one piece is slightly heavier than the other. The monkey takes a bite out of the heavier piece and places it back in the balance. Now the other piece is heavier, the balance tips the other way, and therefore, the monkey takes a bite out of that piece. You guessed the rest of the story. The crows went home hungry and became bitter enemies.
Is this a familiar theme?
Being a good and fair minded Hindu, Gandhi let Mountbatten and British to divide the country into two pieces. Jinnah could not care less about the fairness as long as he got his fiefdom. The other Hindu, Nehru (though he took pride in claiming that he was not) went to United Nations to solve the Kashmir cake. We all know how they turned out. Those mistakes have cost us enormously and continue to bleed our economy and security to this day.
Every society, whether it is Christian, Muslim, European, American, Chinese or Arab, has internal quarrels but they close ranks in the event of an external attack. Hindus not only continue their quarreling under external attack but they also ask the enemy to settle the quarrels for them. Our secularist intellectual elite had to approach the US Government to declare the Gujarat Chief Minister Modi to be a "persona non grata" How unfortunate! We are a democratic country and we can exercise our opinions in our elections and have our own intellectual discourse. Instead our secularists approached US Government to settle our quarrels. If anyone suggesting the settlement of the dispute within our system is branded as a fascist.
Notably the Indian academic elite living in the US who went on a battle to prevent Modi from speaking are the same people who will defend the right of David Duke to carry on with his hateful speeches. These people never once lobbied the US Government in the matters related to the security or economic well being of India. On issues like Kashmir, Indo-Pakistani relationship and the role of India at the United Nations they never lifted a finger to promote the Indian cause even when it was the right cause.
Suddenly they were all coming out of the woodwork like pests to lobby against Modi`s visa. Christians and Muslims have their own agenda. The Christians, regardless of their political leanings, are out to destroy anyone who they see as an impediment to their proselytizing. The Islamists are out to get as much political mileage. Our Hindu brethren among these so called intellectual elite are seemingly ashamed of their own culture and heritage. They are trying to hide their own Brownness by disenfranchising any other Brown man with different view point speaking his mind. In their view the freedom of expression is to be denied to anyone who disagrees with their point of view.
Old man Mcaulay is chuckling in his grave as he is beyond his belief that the Indians could be so fooled.
Venkat Lakshminarayan
1 Comments:
Beautifully written, cannot be more aptly put. As Rajeev Srinivasan says in one of his articles, he calls the Indian Intellectuals as the ''perverted intelligentsia''. They are not just perverted, they are also stupid and foolish, completely unaware of the greatness that is HINDUSTAN.
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