Bhagavad Gita and Modern Problems

Talk given by Sri.S. Gurumurthy at the International Seminar on Thiruvananthapuram 7-10 Dec 2000.
Parasparam Bhavayantah

Never before have I felt so uncomfortable before an audience. The reason why I am called to speak before you is not that the organizers felt that I am scholarly enough to make a presentation on Gita. But because the challenge of Globalization has given rise to the Swadeshi response in this country with which I am associated.

So, the idea of globalization, or the challenge of globalization how it has sought forth as Indian response and its intimate relationship with the soul of this nation - that has a lot to do with the Bhagavad Gita. The Indian soul is not related to a particular script or a book or a particular author. The Indian soul is a continuous evolution, in which as many scholar presented from this platform for the last few days the Gita occupies the central place or the most compact definition of the thrust of the Indian soul.

I am concerned with the more intimate problem, the more finite problems of the day. The pressure of the finite drives you to the infinite. And the abstractness of the infinite throws you back to the finite. - Its a pendulum. I seek refuge in the infinite. But possibly I deem it my karma to handle the finite. So as I handle the present day problems to the best of my abilities and try to share my thinking, I subtly draw inspiration from the source of the infinite thought contained in the Gita.

If you look at the present world, globalization is the latest manifestation of how the world has been moving in the last 500 years. If you look at the journey where we started and look at where we have reached, it is largely a Protestant Christian construct. The western world - is the world today. The legitimate world is the western world and globalization as understood today is a western thrust & the present west is a Protestant Christian construct. And the journey was a very instructive and informative journey. All the problems faced in the world where opened up by the journey. Whether it is economic or political or environmental problem, or problem of war and peace, you will find the issues unfolding from the last 500 years as the causes. And the present day globalization is presented as a platform for the upliftment of the world, the development of the world and this is the main line establishment thinking almost accepted by world leaders, almost without question 5 years ago though there may be some kind of question mark hanging around the kind of conclusion they reached about a decade ago.

Globalization has a certain definition and the are certain assumption underlying that. It is standing on certain pillars. The present day assumption of globalization is that the experience of the WEST in the BEST and it can be experimented on the REST. This is substance, the basic fundamental of globalisation. There are 3 basic philosophical as well as economic implication of globalisation. ? First it is based on exploitation of nature. I am not talking purely from the environmental point of view, it has certainly altered the relation between men & nature and legitimized that alteration. ? Second, it is based on Individual liberty & freedom. There are all very basic & profound concepts & even we talk about it. We agree with it, but we have to understand what this individual freedom or liberty mean. ? And the last, but not a very dismissable item survival of the fittest.

These are 3 pillars of globalization as it is understood today. But before we get into the mechanics of globalization & its impact on the world, on us particularly is anything global wrong? We should not get caught in the semantics to deceive the idea of global exchange. Global exchanges are valuable for human program. For the very program of the society, comparative experience, relative or sharable experience with other countries is a process of graduation. And so global exchange, global trade global understanding, global harmony are an integral part of human program.

But the globalization that we are talking about has nothing to do with any of these things. So we should not confuse ourselves between global trade & globalization even in economics. Globalization is a far more intense continuation of IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM and it is the THRUST of the WEST against the REST. This, we must clearly understand because this is not something which is concealed. It is something which is set out as an agenda. Whether you look at Francis Yukuhama who wrote that book "End of History & Last Men" or even "Samuel Huntington who said "well, others are inferior but we have to live with them". The WEST in the BEST - they know what is good, not only for themselves but also for others. But unfortunately, others will live like this, you can't help it. So the 'superior' civilization of the west, in order to avoid bloody clashes at the ground level will have to live with other civilization which are inferior & this he called harmony of civilizations. So the idea is very clear - the thrust is what THEY consider as 'Superior'. And this has its more focused manifestation in economics. This is not the whole, but is a somewhat hazy definition of globalisation, as I understand it. Is there are any alternative to it?.

The alternative to an agreeing globalization is not an Ashoka or Buddha. You look at Ashoka, you are reminded of not Krishna, but Arjuna. You look at the two wars - the Kalinga and the Kurukshethra. All that Arjuna perceived & apprehended before the war, Asoka experienced after the war. None of Arjuna's arguments question, apprehensions, feelings, which he demonstrably employs to Srikrishna, could be dismissed. "For the sake of a chair, you want me commit all there sin?. "And this is precisely the question that hits Asoka after the Kalinga War. But a Krishna was there to clarify the confused mind of Arjuna. Arjuna's questions in the first chapter were not reflective of his clarity. They were products of his confusion. And Krishna had to carry him through 18 chapters to clear his mind. You will be amazed that the last question that Arjuna raised is that "I am confused So I surrender to you. Please tell me what I should do". In the 18th Chapter, the last sloka also says "I am willing to do whatever you want", but in between. In Gita the surrender of Arjuna was complete even before Krishna started the lectures to Arjuna. By why is it that Krishna did not say immediately after Arjuna surrendered in the second chapter "come on take the weapon & flight the war"?. Because a confused mind cannot do it. So he had to remove the cobwebs in Arjuna's mind; clear his mind and as result of this conviction will come the valour and the courage to fight the war. It is not simply that - look at the evolution of Arjuna's mind, how Krishna makes him evolve - he attacks his lower ego - "People will call you impotent. If you are running away from war, you will incur infamy ". He appeals to his lower instincts. Then he slowly upgrades him. He teaches him different yoga. He teaches him detachment. He slowly upgrades him. He brings him to a state of self inquiry and finally grants him freedom of action. It is in the 63rd Sloka in the last chapter, Krishna says, "Now you do whatever you want to do". That means the idea of freedom is not based on the number of people who deserve it, but on the quality of people who deserve it.

So when we talk of the freedom of an individual & when the present paradigm of west - whether you call it globalization, liberalism or democracy- the freedom which is implicit in it are of two opposite folds. One is freedom from pleasure & another is the freedom to enjoy. There are of two different dimension. The whole world - the globalization the current economic policies, the global trade, the model for development is based on the right & the freedom to enjoy. It has not come out of suspension. It has come out of a tradition.

If you look at the Abrahamic tradition there, enjoyment of the world is theologically sanctified. God has created the whole world for the enjoyment man & so there no restraint on ones enjoyment. And when this theological guarantee is there naturally the result of it is competition. Who will enjoy more? Who will posses more?. That is how it is an admitted intellectual position among the socio-economic writers of the west. - That the present day development plant whether you call it consumerism or competition or global trade or specialization capitalism - the components of which the present day glob is made off is drawn from Christian ethics. So it has a theological sanctions. It is part of the spiritual progress of the west obtained through Protestant Christianity. This is a big challenge. This is a challenge to the west also. It is definitely a challenge for us. What is it that we can do? or should do? to formulate our responses.

That's why I said the response cannot come from Asoka. It can come only from Krishna. Krishna clarified Arjuna's mind, lend conviction to him & made him fight battle. In contrast, look at Asoka. Many of us wrongly interpret Asoka as a FOLLOWER of BUDDHA. He was not a follower of Buddha. Asoka copied Buddha. Buddha left the chair. He left the kingdom. He ceased to be a king. And so the dharma of the ruler did not attach to him. But Asoka instead on being a king and also be a Buddha. So the confusion of the Indian society is directly drawn from the Asokan Ethics. I am glad that Mr. Gautier- he is here today - he wrote an article recently on briefly as him intellect would enable him to do. And I may not be able to do justice in the same way. I certainly site that article (ref to the article by Francois Gautier in NIE on Buddhism,).

Buddhism- the cause of India's Downfall

The intellectual confusion in India in because of Asoka. And you look at the seular Indian state.Asoka was the only king in India who declared a state religion - never before, never after any king declared a state religion. Chathrapati Shivaji ruled as a Hindu King. But hinduism was not the state religion. Ashoke ruled in the name of a faith. And Asoka is the symbol of secular India. You know why - he was the least objectionable person. The most acceptable king would not become the respectable symbol in India. It is the least objectionable. Symbol which has been accepted. This is the intellectual confusion in India.

So the answer to the challenge of globalization has to come from Krishna. The reformed Arjuna was able to take the challenge. The challenge had in fact come from within. It was not from outside Every one know his qualities, his competence, his valour - but the challenge came from within. It came in the form of confusion. And this is precisely where the Indian society is.

When Sri Parameswaranji undertook this exercise of this Gita Sibhiram, I was there the day the whole exercise commenced in Kaalady. We never thought - atleast I never thought- that this could become some kind of a movement. But when it did become a movement, & when it manifested in an international conference like this, when a serious audience - as Mr. Kireet Joshi said- was sitting & discussing such profound issues & problems, as contrasted with the leaders of this country trivializing the whole country and themselves (the parliamentary discussion or rather thamasa was going on regarding Ayodhya dispute), We can understand what Gita holds forth. And Gita is, the vanguard of our challenge to globalization. I have no doubt about it. If you go a little further & look at two or there essential differences between globalization as it is understood today and the alternatives Gita has to present, or as a challenge - in this competitive world, it is survival of the fittest and might is right. It is not only that it has been accepted as something which has to be accepted recklessly, but it is something which is presented as the 'legitimate proposition. "Yes, This is how the world not only will be, but should be".

In contrast Bhagavad Giita says "Parithraanaya Sadhunam". The word sadhu here does not mean sannyasis:. It is those who cannot match the vice & the wit of the world. Those who cannot take care of themselves in this world on a run. It is they whose protection is Dharma. And it is not that they have a right to be protected. You have a duty to protect them. This is not a duty of the government the political system or of the leaders, it is the duty of everybody. Dharma is shared by everybody, not the rules alone who is responsible for Dharma. So for the Survival of the Fittest" the Gita alternative is "Parithraanaya Saddhunam".

So there is a diametrically inverse relationship between globalisation and dharma. The present day glob represents , in core, adharma. And on man's relation with nature, Gita's principle is very clear. "Parasparam Bhavayantah". It is a complementary relationship. In order for us to exist, nature has to exist. We protect nature, nature protects us. And this is the platform on which this whole civilization has continued without disturbance and in perfect harmony with nature for thousands of years.

A disruption has occurred. Disruption has occurred not in the way of living, but in our mind. There in initiate relation between the way you think and the way you live. The object of your life decides your lifestyle. Your lifestyle decides your habits. The habits decide your needs. So, once the object of life is disturbed, once confusion occurs in the aim or purpose of life, it will have a cascading effect downstream, and the distortion that we see, with our Ganga polluted, with Jamuna ceasing to exist, Cauvery refusing to flow. There are 75,000 lakes in Tamil Nadu. - 75000 lakes. Only 39,000 exist. In the last 150 years we have lost half of them. And out of this 39,000 less than half is functional.

So, the distortion in where we are going has resulted in distortion at the ground level. Man's relation with nature has been disturbed. And Gita says "you protect the water & it'll protect you, you protect the tree and it 'll protect you,".-Now one environmental movement says-and there is a slide show-there is one eco-feminist movement in America which has produced enormously valuable literature. And eco-feminism traces why women are being treated this way in the western society, and they zero in on the Christian philosophy-theology-as the reason for it!

Many of you may be aware till the seventh century there was a debate in the Christian church, as to whether women should be regarded as human beings at all or not. And they trace their entire problem to the Christian theological propositions and said that. "We are being treated in the same way as a tree, or an animal or generally the nature is being treated, and so we are equal to flesh & so we will not eat flesh". The thrust of ecofeminist movement in US is vegetarian and that is for a theological reason. Why I am commenting on this is that the entire environmental, ecological problems of the west is not a mere incidental result of economic development, or technological devices that have come into play in the last 500 years, but there is a clear theological sanction behind this, which we often fail to note.

The third point is the right of an individual this is a very important issue. And I'll take 2-3 minutes to explain what is its impact on the day to day life, on the society. The right of an individual has seeped thro' communities, localities, even families in the west. This right in Aasuric. This is right to enjoy. This is freedom to enjoy. And Not freedom from enjoyment. So when we talk of individual freedom, it is not the freedom of Bhagavad Gita

As a result of this, today in America or other western countries, you see the enormous amount of social security cost which is being incurred, to take care of people who are ordinarily taken care of by families, by communities, by social grouping - 1/3 the GDP in America is spend for this purpose; Nearly half in many European countries. And in India, and generally in the East, the family shares this responsibility. It is considered to be their sacred duty. A son's sacred duty to take care of his parents, to marry off sisters, to educate them, to take care of even their surroundings, to take care of animals, to take care of trees, to take care of neighbors. This is part of the overall living style, living ethics. This cannot be legislated. There is so legislation in India asking the son to take care of their parents. But this in one duty discharged unfailingly by all children, and see the enormous amount of responsibility taken off the shoulder of the government.

In fact when I was talking to a leading economist who had come to advice India, I asked him "which is the most privatized economy in the world?", he said Guru, "I cannot understand what you are trying to drive". I said, "Which is the most important public function in the west which can never be privatized?." You can privatize a company, an Airlines- because there are assets. They have properties. So, there may be people willing to buy them. But can you ever privatize the social security cost, which is a liability of the western government? Can you privatize the responsibility to take care of parents? An unemployed Son or a daughter is an unemployed citizen not a son or a daughter. There is no relationship between brother & brother in the matter of money -there could be some other relationship.

This enormous amount of public responsibility has been transferred from the society, from the family, from the community to the state, by the marketisation of the society on the insistence of the idea of freedom in the most distorted fashion. If the Indian society is functional, it is because it has chosen to follow & it will follow Gita and not the market economics of the west.

And the last point is civilizational clashes. It is not directly part of globalisation but it is the unmentioned part . There is jihad, there is crusade. And there is dharma yuddha. And many people try to interpret that Hinduism is also as violent because it also speaks of dharma yudha. But see the contrast. The pandavas & the kauravas seek Krishna's help. Krishna says "Come on, take my army or take me without arms". There is freedom to join either side. And Krishna says "You have to fight was without hatred". Hatred is not the driving force of that battle. Everybody have a choice. Never can such wave be compared to a jihad or a crusade. And today's civilizational clashes are not based on the principle on which mahabharatha was fought, or the principles expounded by Krishna -it is because of jihad and crusade - Hindus must have clarity on this.

The Hindu intellectualism is so weak today, that people like Mr Gautier & Mr Michel Danino have to come to ones rescue (claps from audience). Its not a very happy scene. The Hindu society must assert itself. It has so much in it to demonstrate to the world. And if Gita is understood & Krishna is internalized, the Hindu society can not only face the challenge of globalisation but can make it rest on entirely different propositions & formulae.

Thank You

Fundamentals of Hindutva and The Concept of Hindustan

by Dr. Subramanian Swamy
The Hindu Renaissance

Hindustan, conceptually is a nation of Hindus and those others in the nation who accept with pride that their ancestors are Hindus. The identity of an “Indian” follows as an easy corollary as one who is a Hindu or one who proudly acknowledges that his ancestors are of Hindu faith. Even today most nations abroad refer to India as Hindustan [e.g., Yindu guo in Chinese, Hind in Arabic]. Only in our country we go by the English garbled variation India of Hindustan. Parsis, Jews, Syrian Christians come in a special category of Hindustan’s religious minority, as those who were welcomed by Hindus since they came to Hindustan seeking refuge from persecution in their own lands abroad, and who willingly accepted to abide by, and adopt cultural customs of Hindus. All these minorities however had inter-married with Hindus over the last millennium and a half, and hence have a claim to the nation’s Hindu civilization by ancestry. From the Hindustan identity flows the fundamentals of Hindu-ness or Hindutva as the cultural parameters of the Hindustan society.

Why the need to discuss?

Why is it important after sixty years, since the British imperialists were driven out, that we need to discuss today the concept of our identity and the fundamentals of Hindutva? This need arises because of the misfortune of the almost uninterrupted rule of Jawaharlal Nehru[17 years] and Indira Gandhi[16 years], and their cheap imitators in office since 1947.

The concept of Hindutva and the ancient Hindu foundation of the nation were demeaned during their tenure, and those who dared to advocate it were ostracized by the government. The nation was not allowed by these imposters to find its feet after a thousand years of debasement of, and brutality against Hindu religion, by a vulgarization of Hindustan’s true and glorious history in textbooks that were prescribed by the Congress governments. That debasement continues today under the present government.

Over the last two millenniums, Hindu religion had been subjected to threats several times from other religious groups, but these threats had been met, the challenges faced and overcome sometime actively as by the Vijayanagaram and Mahratta kingdoms or passively as in the Freedom Struggle. Well before the birth of Christianity and Islam, Hindu religion had been once intellectually dethroned by Hinayana Buddhism. But Adi Sankaracharya rethroned Hinduism through his famous shastrathas[religious debate] and caused a renaissance in Buddhism itself, which then came to be known as Mahayana Buddhism, conceptually in complete harmony with, if not indistinguishable from, Hindu theology.

In South India, the azhwars and nayanmars also through shastrathas repositioned Hinduism after absorbing Jainism and Buddhism. Since then the Hindu dharmacharyas have always been looked up to, when Hindu society faced a threat or crisis, for guidance to meet the challenge to the Hindu religion. Today, we again need the revered acharyas to show us the way. Hence the formation of the ‘Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha’ under the guidance of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati of Arsha Vidyalaya and the Tirupati Declaration of July 2006 are of vital importance for the future renaissance of the nation.

Hindu ethos provided for sanctuary and home to those of other faiths fleeing from their countries due to religious persecution. As I stated earlier, Parsis, Jews and Syrian Christians are among those religious groups who had sought refuge in India, and survived because the Hindus looked after them. These three religious communities have had and have today a disproportionate share in power and wealth in Indian society, but Hindus have no resentment about it. These minorities had come to India in search of peace and found safe haven in the midst of Hindu society.

Parsis migrated elsewhere in the world too, but disappeared as a community in those countries. Jews have openly acknowledged that India as the only country where they were not persecuted. Syrian Christians too are today completely integrated into India. Even early Arab Muslim travelers who came peacefully to settle in Kerala were taken into Hindu families, and hence called Mapillai[meaning son-inlaw-- Moplah in English]. That is a fundamental of Hindutva, the ethos of compassion and co-option that is unparalleled in world history.

However, militant Islam and later crusading Christianity came to India, and aggressively challenged Hinduism. They seized power in sequence and established their own state in India. But despite state patronage to the ensuing onslaught, plunder and victimisation, those of Hindu faith could not be decimated, and Hinduism remained the theology of the vast Indian majority. This was passive resistance of Hindus, much before Mahatma Gandhi came of the scene. Defiant Hindus suffered persecution and economic deprivation during Islamic and Christian reigns, such as through differential taxation[e.g., jezia and zamindari land revenue appropriation] and plain brutality, but Hindus by and large refused to capitulate and convert.

Even after almost a thousand years of such targeting by Muslims and Christian rulers, undivided India in 1947 was more than 75 percent Hindu. This was partly because of the victorious Vijayanagaram, the Sikh reign, and Mahratta kingdoms, and later the Freedom Movement, each inspired by sanyasis such Sringeri Shankaracharya, Swami Ramdas, Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekanada and Sri Aurobindo, who by their preaching about the Hindu identity and Hindutva ensured that the flame of Hindu defiance never dimmed. It was also due to individual defiance of Hindus such as of Rana Pratap, Rani Jhansi, Rani Bennur, Kattaboman and Netaji Subhas Bose.

These icons are admired not because they led us to victory [in fact they were defeated or killed], or had found out a safe compromise[they did not], but because of their courage of conviction in the face of huge odds not to submit to tyranny. That courageous defiance is also is part of Hindutva. But those who capitulated like Raja Man Singh or Jai Chand or Pudukottai Raja in order to live in pomp and grandeur are despised today by the people. Hindutva means: resist by passive non-violent resistance if possible, otherwise by vigorous aggressive action if necessary. Hindutva means never to submit, never to compromise with evil.

In 1947, temporal power was defacto restored to the Hindu majority. But the Indian state formally adopted secularism, which concept however was never properly defined or debated. For example, it left vague what modern Indian’s connection was with the nation’s Hindu past and legacy. In the name of secularism, it was taboo for a public servant even to break a coconut or light a oil lamp to inaugurate an official function on the ground that religious symbols must not invade public life.

Such orthodoxy was promoted by Jawarharlal Nehru and his Leftist advisers. But the government took over supervision of temples, legislated on Hindu personal laws, appropriated temple revenues and regulated religious festivals, but kept aloof from the Muslim and Christian religious affairs. The secularism principle was foisted on the Hindu masses without making him understand why they had to abide by such legislation but not the Muslims and Christians. It made a mockery of Article 14 of the Constitution on equality before law.

As a result, the renaissance that had begun in the late nineteenth century to redefine the Hindu identity [in contemporary terms and on norms valid in a pluralistic society] was aborted by the confusion thus created in Hindu minds by Nehruism. Electoral politics further confounded the issues arising out of secularism, and hence the Indian society became gradually and increasingly fragmented in outlook and of confused perspective. Hindu society became divided by caste that became increasingly mutually antagonistic.

Attempts were made through falsification in history texts adopted for curriculum in the education system to disconnect and disinherit the contemporary Indian from the past glory of Hindu India. The intrinsic Hindu unity has been sought to be undone by legitimizing such bogus concepts as Aryan-Dravidian racial divide theory, or that India as a concept never existed till the British imperialists invented it, or that Indians have always been ruled by invaders from abroad.

There is no such word as Aryan in Sanskrit literature [closest is ‘arya’ meaning honourable person, and not community] or Dravidian [Adi Sankara had in his shasthrath with Mandana Mishra at Varanasi, called himself as a ‘Dravida shishu’ that is a child of where three oceans meet, i.e. south India]. The racial divide theory was a deliberate distortion by British imperialists, and propagated by their witting and unwitting mental Indian slave academicians on the hapless students in educational institutions.

Incidentally, the Aryan-Dravidian myth has now been exploded by modern research on DNA of Indians conducted by Professor C. Panse of Newton, Mass. USA and other scholars. In light of such new research, the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC] in it’s October 6, 2005 service completely debunked the Aryan—Dravidian race theory in stating that: “The theory was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas” [www.bbc.co.uk, religion & ethics homepage, Thursday, 6/10/05].

Modern India is portrayed by foreign interests through this curriculum, as a discontinuity in history and as a new entity much as are today’s Greece, Egypt or Iraq. That curriculum is largely intact today. On the contrary efforts are afoot to bolster the disparagement of our past in the new dispensation today. A rudderless India, disconnected from her past has, as a consequence, become a fertile field for religious poachers and neo-imperialists from abroad who paint India as a mosaic of immigrants much like a crowd on a platform in a railway junction. That is, it is clandestinely propagated that India has belonged to those who forcibly occupied it. This is the theme around which the Islamic fundamentalists and fraud Christian crusaders are again at work, much as they were a thousand years ago, but of course in new dispensations, sophistication, and media forms.

Thus the concept of Hindustan, and India’s Hindu foundation implicit in Hindutva, are dangerously under challenge by these forces. Tragically most Hindus today are not even cognizant of it. Hindu patriots thus must meet this challenge by propagating the concept of Hindustan and spreading the knowledge among Hindus of the fundamentals of Hindutva. The challenge today confronting Hindus is however much more difficult to meet than was earlier in history because the forces at work to erode and undermine the Hindu foundation of the nation, unlike before, are unseen, clandestine, pernicious, deceptive but most of all sophisticated and media-savvy.

Tragically therefore, a much more educated and larger numbers of Hindus have been unwittingly co-opted in this sinister conspiracy directed by foreigners who have no love for India and who also see, much as Lord Macaulay saw in the nineteenth century, that the hoary Hindu foundation of India is a stumbling block for the furtherance of their nefarious perfidious game for castrating Hindustan. Adherence to Hinduism is also being sought to be diluted in the name of modernity and this dilution is made a norm of secularism.

Religion, it is advocated, is personal. To be a good Hindu today is conceptually being reduced to just praying, piety, visiting temples, and celebrating religious festivals. The need for a collective Hindu mindset, an essential fundamental of Hindutva, is being ridiculed as chauvinist and retrograde, even fundamentalist. The concept of a corporate Hindu unity and identity however is that of a collective mindset that identifies us with a motherland from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean and it’s glorious past, and the concomitant resolve to defend that vision.

However pious a Hindu becomes, however prosperous Hindu temples become from doting devotees’ offerings, when the nation is in danger it is this collective mindset of the people that matters, and not the piety of the individual in that collective. The sacking of Somnath Temple by Ghazni should serve as a reminder of the validity of this dictum. Hindu society today lacking a cohesive corporate identity, is thus in the process of becoming fragmented, and hence increasingly in disarray. This fission process is on simultaneously with the reality of millions of Hindus who go to temples regularly or walk to Sabarimalai or participate in Kumbh Mela.

When I speak of Hindu unity, I am not taking of piety of Hindus as a community. I am instead referring to the Hindu consciousness, which encompasses the willingness and determination to collectively defend the faith from the erosion that is being induced by the disconnection with our glorious past. What Swami Vivekananda, Bankim Chatterjee, Sri Aurobindo, and Subramania Bharati had achieved by raising Hindu consciousness, has now in the name of Nehruvian secularism been distorted and dissipated over the last six decades.

Even the writings of Dr. Ambedkar, and his oration in the Constituent Assembly for a strong united country have been vulgarized by the Nehruites. In his scholarly paper presented in a 1916 Columbia University seminar [and published in Indian Antiquary, vol. XLI, May 1917 p.81-95] Dr. Ambedkar stated: “ It is the unity of culture that is the basis of homogeneity. Taking this for granted, I venture to say that there is no country that can rival the Indian Peninsula with respect to the unity of its culture. It has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and much more fundamental unity - the indubitable cultural unity that covers the land from end to end”. Ambedkar wrote several such brilliant books, but alas, Nehru and his cohorts so thoroughly frustrated him and isolated him that in the end, bitterness drove him to Buddhism.

Thus, if this degeneration and disconnect are not rectified and repaired by a resolve to unite Hindustanis [Hindus and those others who proudly identify with India’s Hindu past], the Hindu civilization may go into a tail spin and ultimately fade away like other civilizations have for much the same reason. Today the sacrilege of Hindu concepts and hoary institutions, is being carried out not with the crude brutality of a Ghazni or Ghori, but with the sophistication of the constitutional instruments of law.

The desecration of Hindu icons, for example the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt, is being made to look legal, thereby completely confusing the Hindu people, and thus making them unable to recognize the danger, or to realize that Hindus have to unite to defend against the threats to their legacy. We Hindus are under siege today, and we do not know it! That is, what is truly alarming is that Hindu society could be dissembled today without much protest since we have been lulled or lost the capacity to think collectively as Hindus. To resist this siege we first need Hindu unity based on the fundamentals of Hindutva. Let us remember that numbers [of those claiming to be adherents to Hinduism] do not matter in today’s information society. It is the durability and clarity of the Hindu mindset of those who unite that matters in the forging of an instrument to fight this creeping danger.

We Hindus cannot fight against looming and creeping danger, unless we first identify what we have to fight. We cannot effectively respond unless we understand the nature and complexity of the challenge. What makes the task of defending Hinduism much more difficult today is that the oppressors are not obvious marauding entities as were Ghazni, Ghori, or Clive. The means of communication and the supply of funds in the hands of our enemies for camouflaging their evil purposes are multiples of that available in the past.

My contention here today is that Hindus are facing a four dimensional siege and this siege is pernicious, clandestine, deceptive and sophisticated. It requires an enlightened Hindu unity to combat the threats and get the siege lifted. We have to begin by first understanding the content and scope of the four-dimensional siege before we Hindus can unite to battle it.


The clandestine defamation of Hindu symbols and institutions

Making Hindus to lose their self-esteem by disparaging their tradition, which also had been the strategy of British imperialists for the conquest of India, as Lord Macauley made clear on February 2, 1835 in the British Parliament.

“I do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which [backbone] is her spiritual and cultural heritage. And therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”.

That basic strategy of those who want to see a weak and pliant India remains. Only the tactics have changed. Now the target is the Hindu institutions and Hindu icons, and the route is not the creation of a comprador class to subdue the nation, but fostering a psychological milieu to denigrate the heritage and to debunk Hindutva, thereby causing a loss of self esteem and a pride in the nation’s past.


Demographic restructuring of Indian society

People of India who declare in the Census that they are adherents of religions born on Indian soil, that is Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains constituted 84.21 percent of the total Indian population in 2001. In 1941, the proportion adjusted for Partition was 84.44 percent. This figure hides the fact that Hindus resident in undivided Pakistan have migrated to post- Partition India, which is why the share of Hindus and co-religionists have barely reduced since 1941. In the area now called Bangladesh, Hindus were 30 percent in 1941. In 2001 they are less than 8 percent. In Pakistan of today, Hindus were 20 percent in 1941, and less than 2 percent in 2001.

Such religious cleansing has not been noticed by anybody. If the figures are adjusted for this migration, then in the five decades 1951-2001, Hindus have lost more 3 percent points in share of Indian population, while Muslims have increased their share by about 3 percent. What is even more significant is that Hindus have lost 12 percent points since 1881, and the loss in share has begun to accelerate since 1971 partly due to illegal migration from Bangladesh. The continued rise in the share of Muslims and Christians in the total population is a threat to the Hindu foundation of the nation.

We have to find ways and means to meet this threat. Kerala is a state where the Hindu population declined from 69 percent in 1901 to 56 percent in 2001. Muslims are now 25 percent and Christians 19 percent. But Hindus share in agricultural activities has fallen to 24 percent; while for Christians the share has risen to 40 percent. For Muslims it is 33 percent. In commerce and industry too the same proportions obtain, while in foreign employment, Hindus share is just 19 percent, Muslims 49.5 percent and Christians 31.5 percent.

In the land fertile districts of Western UP, from Rampur to Saharanpur, Muslims due to a much higher population growth rate are now 40 percent of the population. Six of the 14 districts of Assam in the northeast are already Muslim majority, and by 2031, all fourteen will be Muslim majority if present trends of differential population growth rate and illegal migration from Bangladesh continue. In northeast India, minus Assam, 45.5 percent of the population is already Christian. Every one of the seven sisters states has a galloping Christian population. Arunachal, which had zero Christian population in 1971, now has over 7 percent.

These two communities today fiercely safeguard their control of institutions spawned on public money besides receiving funds from abroad. Take for example the educational institutions. ‘Jamia Millia Islamia University’ has been reorganized as a central university with liberal government grants. But 88 percent of the faculty is Muslim. American College, Madurai’s faculty is 66 percent Christian. Its junior faculty is 95 percent Christian. Union Christian College at Aluva, Kerala has 83 percent Christian faculty. There are no exceptions. All institutions run by Muslims and Christians have grossly disproportionate share of their religionists.

Differential application of family planning, non-uniform civil code, illegal migration, and induced religious conversion have together created a serious looming crisis for the Hindu character of the nation. We see what Muslim majority will mean to Hindus when we look at the situation in Kashmir. Even if Muslims are in a majority at the municipality level, they begin to oppress the Hindu minority. We can witness this in Thondi in Ramanathapuram and Rasathipuram in Vellore districts, in Mau and Meerut in U.P., and in the Northeast.

We can learn from witnessing how Muslim majority treats minorities or even women of Muslim faith when we look around the world and study Islamic nations. Muslims believe the world is divided as Dar-ul-Islam where Muslims are in a majority and are rulers, and Dar-ul-Harb in which Muslims are in a minority and are entitled by the Koran and Shariat, by hook or crook to transform these countries to Muslim ruled and/or Muslim majority. At present India is viewed as Darul Harab, and unless the Hindu majority compels or persuades the Muslim minority to enter into a contract to live in peace, whence India becomes Dar-ul-Ahad, the Muslim population will always play host to fanatics bent upon creating upheaval in India. That is why I am emphasizing that Muslims in India must declare that their origin and ancestors are Hindus, and that Hindustan is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi.

Christians too have their view of the world as divided between heathens who have to be ‘saved’ by conversion and followers of Jesus Christ. Now with the publication of Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ and revelations about Opus Dei organization, Hindus have to go on high alert about Christian missionaries from abroad. Moreover, patriots concerned with the safeguarding of the Hindu foundation of the nation have to take note that religious entrepreneurs have put conversion to Christian faith on a war footing. In Dallas, Texas, USA, the Global Pastors Network [GPN] held a conference and resolved that over the next fifteen years, the organization will support financially worldwide the construction of five million churches and conversion of one billion persons to Christianity. From India alone, according the Evangelist Pat Robertson the target is 100 million persons. Hence, Hindus are not only under siege, but face a terrible pincer of Islamic fast population growth and illegal migration, in conjunction with Christian money-induced conversion activities.

Therefore, Hindus will have to hang together or ultimately be hanged separately. This is no inflamed psychosis. Not long ago, despite being the overwhelming majority, Hindus had to pay discriminatory taxes to the Muslim and Christian emperors who were ruling India. Lack of unity was the reason, and not poverty. In fact when the onslaught and enslavement took place, India was the richest country in the world. Within 150 years thereafter we were reduced to the poorest in the world. Now if the demographic restructuring described herein goes on unchecked, then the danger becomes several fold than before.

The Rise of Terrorism Directed at Hindus

If one were to study the terrorism in Kashmir, Manipur, and elsewhere it is apparent that only Hindus are the target. The driving away of the Hindu population from the Kashmir valley by targeted terrorism of Islamic jihadis is the single biggest human rights atrocity since Nazi Germany pogroms against the Jews. Yet it has hardly received noticed in international fora. Why?

Hindu population in Bangladesh has declined from 30 percent to less than 8 percent of the total population by deliberate targeted ethnic cleansing by Islamic fanatics aided and abetted by their government [see Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India’s State of Jammu& Kashmir: A Survey of Human Rights, June 17, 2005; hinduamericanfoundation. Org], and yet there is no outcry. Why?

This is because of the lack of Hindu mindset to retaliate against atrocities against Hindus. When in 1949, anti-Hindu riots took place in East Pakistan, Sardar Patel had declared that if the government there could not control it, then India was quite capable of putting it down for them. Soon after then the riots stopped. Terrorist attacks against India and Hindus in particular are growing because we seem today incapable of retaliating in a manner that it deters future attacks.

According to the well known National Counter terrorism Center, a US government body, in it’s report titled A Chronology of International Terrorism for 2004 states that: “India suffered more significant acts of terrorism than any other country in 2004”, a damning comment. India is suffering on an average about 25 incidents of terrorism a month. India’s Home Ministry in its 2004-05 Annual report to Parliament acknowledges that 29 of the 35 states and union territories are affected by terrorism. Moreover, all India’s neighbours have become hotbeds for anti-Hindu terrorists training.

Because of a lack of Hindu unity and a mindset for deterrent retaliation, terrorists have become encouraged. In 1989, the Indian government released five dreaded terrorists to get back the kidnapped daughter, Rubaiyya, of the then Home Minister. Kashmir terrorists got a huge boost by this capitulation. When the Indian Airlines plane with 339 passengers was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, the government again capitulated and released three of the most dangerous terrorists. Today these three freed terrorists direct the three most murderous terrorist organizations in Kashmir. And yet there is chorus today to give clemency to the terrorist Mohammed Afzal who masterminded the attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001.

Then there is the case of the LTTE, which murdered Rajiv Gandhi. We have made no effort to apprehend the leader of the LTTE who had ordered the assassination. On the contrary, those MPs [of PMK, MDMK, and DMK] who publicly praise that terrorist, and hold the assassination as justified, have become Union Ministers in a coalition led by the widow of Rajiv Gandhi! During the NDA rule on Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s plea, one of the LTTE conspirators ordered to be hanged by the Supreme Court viz., Nalini was given clemency!

Terrorism cannot be fought by appeasement. But that precisely is what the government is doing today. Tragically, innocent Hindus have invariably been the victims of this capitulation. To combat terrorism, there has to be a determination to never to negotiate a settlement with terrorists. Citizens of a country have to be educated that there will be hazards when faced with acts of terrorism, but that the goal of the government will always have to be to hunt down the terrorists and fix them. Only under such a zero tolerance policy towards terrorism, will the ultimate good emerge.

For example in the Indian Airlines hijack case in order not to risk 339 passengers’ lives the government released Mohammed Azhar from jail. But Azhar went to Pakistan after his release and formed the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has since then killed nearly a thousand innocent Hindus and is still continuing to do so. How has the nation gained by the Kandahar capitulation then? Hence the Hindu political leadership must treat the fight against terrorism as a dharmayudh, as a fight to the finish and a religious duty not to negotiate, compromise or capitulate to terrorists. The government must safeguard the nation by adopting a policy of “hot pursuit” of terrorists by chasing them to their sanctuaries no matter in which country they are located.

The Erosion of Moral Authority of Governance

The well-known organization Transparency International has graded about 140 countries according to the corruption levels from least to the most. India appears near the bottom of the list as among the most corrupt. Recently The Mitrokhin Archives II has been published wherein KGB documents have been relied on to conclude that shamefully “India was on sale for KGB bribes”. If India is the one of the most corrupt countries today and purchasable, it is because the core Hindu values of simplicity, sacrifice and abstinence have been systematically downgraded over the years. Wealth obtained by any means has become the criteria for social status.

There was a time in India when persons of learning and simplicity enjoyed the moral authority in society to make even kings bow before them. Not long ago, Mahatma Gandhi and later Jayaprakash Narayan without holding office were here exercising the same moral authority over political leaders. In a very short period, that Hindutva value has evaporated. India is fast becoming “a banana republic” in which everything, a person or policy is available to anyone for a price.

The proposal, now implemented in some states, to have reservation in government employment for Muslims and “Dalit” Christians is one such sell-out. Reservation quotas are strictly for those whom the Hindu society due to degeneration had suppressed or had isolated from the mainstream. But those who were ruling classes in our nation, such as Muslims and Christians, and that too for a total of 1000 years, cannot claim this facility. But some political parties in reckless disregard for equity and history have sold out for bloc votes the national interest by advocating for such a reservation proposal.

In such a situation the nation’s independence and sovereignty slides into danger of being subverted and then rendered impotent. This has happened before in our history, not when the nation was poor but was the richest country in the world. India then was ahead in science, mathematics, art and architecture. And yet because the moral fibre weakened, all was lost. We had to struggle hard to recover our freedom. But by the time we did, we had lost all our wealth and dropped to the bottom of the list of countries in poverty.

In this time of creeping darkness in our society, there are still venerated souls who draw crowds of people who come on their own expense to hear such evolved souls and follow them. These are our Dharmacharyas, many of whom are members of the newly formed Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha. With the RSS and VHP, this Sabha must, just as Rshi Vishwamitra picked his archers and hunters to put an end to asuras and rakshasas, pick a political instrument to cleanse the body politic of the nation.

This however cannot be done without Hindu unity in our democracy, and hence formulating a code of ethics and moral principles is essential for creating a meaningful and purposeful Hindu unity. This code and principles together constitute the fundamentals of Hindutva. The nation looks to this spiritual force today, for guidance in this hour of need. Therefore my call today is first and foremost for the unity of Hindus, a unity based on a mindset that is nurtured and fostered on the fundamentals of Hindutva. This also requires an action plan to fight and lift the siege [see my Hindus Under Siege—The Way Out, Haranand Publishers 2006, for a detailed elaboration]. Only then Hindus can meet the challenge of Christian missionaries and Islamic fundamentalists. I can do no better here than quote Swami Dayananda Sarasvati:

“Faced with militant missionaries,

Hinduism has to show that its plurality and all-encompassing acceptance

are not signs of disparateness or disunity.

For that, a collective voice is needed.”

Non-Hindus can join this Hindustani unity, but first they must agree to adhere to the minimum requirement of recognizing and accepting that their cultural legacy is Hindu, and revere their Hindu origins, that they are as equal before law as any other but no more, and that they will make sacrifices to defend their Hindu legacy just as any good Hindu would his own. In turn then, the Hindu will defend such non-Hindus as they have protected the Parsis and Jews, and take them all as part of the Hindustani parivar.

India can be only for those who swear that Hindustan is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi. Since the task to defeat the nefarious forces ranged today against Hindu society is not going to be easy, we cannot therefore trust those amongst in our midst whose commitment to the motherland is ambivalent or ad hoc, or those who feel no kinship to the Hindu past of the nation. We have partitioned a quarter of Hindustan to enable a homeland for those Muslims, who could not live with Hindus in a democratic framework of equality and fraternity. Hence only those are true children of Bharatmata today who accept that India is their matrubhoomi and karmabhoomi.

I have tried summarizing the above stated concept of Hindustan and the fundamentals of Hindutva in the following axioms of Hindu renaissance:

1. A Hindu, and those others who are proud of their Hindu past and origins, must know the correct history of India. That history which records that Hindus have always been, and are one; that caste is not birth-based and nor immutable. India is a continuum, Sanatana. That ancient Hindus and their descendents have always lived in this area from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, an area called ‘Akhand Hindustan’, and did not come from outside; and that there is no truth in the Aryan-Dravidian race theory. Instead, Hindus went abroad to spread learning and spiritual knowledge.

2. Hindus believe that all religions equally lead to God, but not that all religions are equal in the richness of it’s theological content. Respecting all religions, Hindus expect from others that respect is two-way. If Hindus are to defend the right of others to adhere to one’s own religion, then other religionists have to stand up for Hindus too. Thus, by this criterion, secular attitude as defined till date is a one-way obligation for Hindus, and hence Hindus must reject such a concept because of its implied appeasement. At the same time enlightened Hindus must defend and protect vigorously those non-Hindus who identify with the concept of Hindustan. That is, a nation of Hindus and those whose who accept that their ancestors are Hindus. A vibrant Bharatvarsh of course cannot be home to bigotry and obscurantism since that has never been Hindu tradition or history. But Muslims and Christians shall be part of the Hindustan parivar or family if they accept this truth and revere it.

3. Hindus must prefer to lose everything they possess rather than submit to tyranny or to terrorism. Today those in India who submit to terrorists and hijackers must be vehemently despised as anti-Hindus. They cannot be good Hindus merely because they are pious or go regularly to the temple or good Hindustanis just because they are citizens of India.

4. The Hindu’s must have a mindset to retaliate when attacked. The retaliation must be massive enough to deter future attacks. If terrorists come from training camps in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, Hindus must seek to carpet bomb those training camps, no matter the consequences. Today’s so-called self proclaimed “good” Hindus have failed to avenge or retaliate for the attack on Parliament, Akshardham Mandir, Ayodhya, and even a former Prime Minister’s [Rajiv Gandhi’s] assassination. On the other hand those who defend these assassins and praise the terrorist organization behind them are permitted to be central government Ministers today.

5. All Hindus to qualify as true Hindus must make effort to learn Sanskrit and the Devanagari script in addition to the mother tongue, and pledge that one day in the future, Sanskrit will be India’s link language since all the main Indian languages have large percentage of their vocabulary common with Sanskrit already.

These five axioms if followed will constitute the virat Hindu unity, a bonding that Hindus need to be in a position to confront the challenge that Hindu civilization is facing from Islamic terrorists and fraud Christian missionaries from abroad, who are also aided and abetted from confused Hindus within the country. Without such a virat Hindu unity and the implied mindset, we will be unable to nullify and root out the subversion and erosion that undermine today the Hindu foundation of India. This foundation is what makes India distinctive in the world, and hence we must safeguard this legacy with all the might and moral fibre that we can muster.

In this we can get great moral support from Hindus resident abroad because of their sheer commitment to the motherland. Free from economic constraints, aching for an identity, and well educated, I have seen them organize effectively to challenge the attempts to slander Hindu religious symbols and icon. Overseas Hindustanis have contributed during our Freedom Struggle, the Emergency and in enabling our acharyas to spread the message of the Hindu religion abroad. This has been done without demeaning other religions.

I urge and implore the Acharya Sabha, that since in a democracy the battle is in fighting elections, therefore to resolve to foster a Hindu consciousness that leads to a cohesive vigorous Hindu unity and mindset, so that the Hindustani voter will cast his ballot only for those candidates in an election who will be loyal to a Hindu Agenda drawn up by the Dharmacharyas. The Tirupati Declaration of July 2006 adopted by the acharyas must be electorally translated.

Bharat should be declared a Hindu Republic

Manmohan promoting many nation idea

By J.G. Arora

Though Bharat’s Hindu identity is being hammered and erased bit by bit every day, the Union Government’s affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in September 2007 rejecting the existence of Ram and Ram Sethu de-legitimised Hindu faith itself.

This affidavit is the latest ploy to demolish Hinduism the way other native religions and cultures have been wiped off in the world.

Though the affidavit was withdrawn after protests, it would never have been filed if truncated India i.e. Bharat had been proclaimed a Hindu Republic in 1947 as a logical consequence of India’s partition on religious basis, and creation of Pakistan as demanded by Muslims.

And why should Hindu majority Bharat and Nepal disown their Hindu identity when over a hundred Christian-majority countries are declared as Christian countries and 57 Muslim-majority countries are declared as Islamic countries?

Besides, why cannot Bharat, the birth place of Sanatan Dharma, commonly known as Hinduism, and having Hindu traditions since time immemorial be a Hindu Republic?

No more Pakistans

Pre-1947 situation which created Pakistan is being re-enacted in India through divisive ‘communal budgeting’ and through Sachar Commission and reservation for Muslims in government jobs though such measures are unconstitutional, and also unwarranted after the creation of Pakistan as demanded by Muslims.

To prevent the creation of more Pakistans on Bharat’s soil, one must remember how Muslim League grabbed one-third of Bharat as Pakistan.

Bharat Varsh comprising of entire Indian sub-continent was Hindu land with zero Muslim population till 711 when Muhammad bin Qasim’s Arab army attacked Sindh. Hindus lost Afghanistan in 987, and present day Pakistan and Bangladesh to Muslims in 1947. During the repeated Muslim attacks for a thousand years, Hindus kept on fighting valiantly to defend their Dharma and motherland.

After overthrow of Muslim rule, the British took over India from 1857 to 1947. Muslim League was formed in 1906, and demanded Pakistan for Muslims in 1940.

This is what Muhammad Ali Jinnah said in Lahore on 23rd March, 1940 while demanding Pakistan, a separate country for Muslims, comprising of Muslim majority areas in India:

“Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs, and literatures. ….. and to two different civilisations. Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent, and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.”

Immediately after Muslim League demanded Pakistan and exchange of population, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wrote his book “Thoughts on Pakistan” in 1940 in which he held that creation of Pakistan would act as a ‘settlement’ of Hindu-Muslim conflict, and also held that exchange of Hindu-Muslim population must accompany the creation of Pakistan.

In 1945-46 elections, Muslims voted for creation of Pakistan.

Muslim League kept up the pressure, and in 1947 got a third of Bharat’s land as Pakistan comprising of West Pakistan and East Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan became Bangladesh while West Pakistan remained Pakistan. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are Islamic Republics, and have driven out most of Hindus and Sikhs from their land.

However, most of Indian Muslims who had demanded Pakistan and exchange of population did not go to Pakistan. Rather, the present percentage of Muslim population in India is much higher than that in 1947.

Further, to plant one more Islamic country on Indian soil, Pak-Bangla combine has sent countless terrorists and crores of infiltrators into India.

Despite the Supreme Court’s judgements delivered on July 12, 2005 and December 5, 2006 to deport infiltrators, the government has done nothing in this regard. Rather, more infiltrators are entering India through soft borders every day.

Secular Bharat is being battered and grabbed bit by bit by Pak-Bangla terrorists and infiltrators every day.

Fraudulent ‘secularism’

Logically, on India’s Partition on religious basis and creation of Pakistan for Muslims, Bharat should have been declared a Hindu republic. But surprisingly, Bharat was made a ‘secular’ country. However, in India, ‘secularism’ stands for anti-Hinduism. In secular India, Hinduism is being persistently attacked and demolished.

With each passing day, India is being made more Islamic and more Christian and less Hindu.

Countless Pak-Bangla terrorists and infiltrators bent upon creating one more Muslim country on Bharat’s soil, genocide and eviction of Hindus from Kashmir, global missionary organisations Christianising India, government control over Hindu temples whereas no mosque or church is covered by such control, special privileges to non-Hindus under Article 30, special rights to Muslim majority Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370, de-Hinduisation of education and history and banishment of Sanskrit from education, denigration of Hindus and Hinduism by most of media, and provision of Haj subsidy though none of 57 Islamic countries gives any such subsidy are just a few perversities of secular India.

Similarly, late Pope John Paul II’s outrageous call to convert Asia to Christianity was given in secular India’s capital in 1999.

Moreover, since secular India did not help Hindu Nepal, combined might of Maoists, Christian missionaries and Pakistan’s ISI divested Nepal of its Hindu identity in 2006.

Logical solution

Since sham ‘secularism’ and secular India have been a disaster for Hindus, only the Hindu Bharat can protect Hindus, Hindu Dharma, Hindu heritage, and Hindu identity of Bharat. Besides, since secular India never helps Hindus in distress either in India or abroad, Hindu Bharat would be a source of strength for the Hindus worldwide.

Moreover, only an assertive Hindu Bharat can liberate Hindus from tyranny of fake secularism; and restore Hindus’ fighting spirit and self-esteem. Hindu Bharat will also remove enactments and laws which discriminate against Hindus.

And there should be no apprehension, whatsoever, about Hindu Bharat. Since Hinduism is all embracing, Hindu republic of Bharat will give justice to all and appease none. In Hindu Bharat, there will be one law and one nation; and no distinction of majority and minority, and no discrimination, whatsoever, against any community. And all citizens in this Bharat will have equal rights. Such a Bharat will also dismantle fake-secularism, and liberate the nation from countless terrorists and crores of Pak-Bangla infiltrators.

And Hindu Bharat will remember M.A. Jinnah’s above-mentioned ‘Two Nations’ theory expounded in Lahore in 1940, and take pre-emptive action to prevent creation of more Pakistans on Bharat’s soil.

Justice and equity demand that Bharat should be declared a Hindu Republic. It is a logical, laudable and achievable goal which will boost Hindu morale. Apart from protecting Bharat’s Hindu identity, Hindu Bharat will transform the present imbecile India into an assertive nation. No one can object to a Hindu Bharat when the world has over a hundred Christian and 57 Islamic countries. All pro-Hindu individuals and organisations should join hands to transform India into a Hindu Republic of Bharat by all peaceful, constitutional and lawful means.

And this endeavour will certainly succeed as Atharva Veda proclaims, “Kritam may dakhshine haste, jayo may savya aahitah” (effort is in my right hand, and victory in my left).

(The author is a former Chief Commissioner of Income Tax. His e-mail address is: jgarora@vsnl.net)

A Dharmacharya’s clarion call for a new Hindu Constitution

04/12/2007 00:16:25 By Shri V. Sundaram in News Today.net

Satguru Sivananda Murthy spoke very eloquently at the PS Secondary School Auditorium in Mylapore three weeks ago about the imperative national need for a new Hindu Constitution for India, which takes due note of Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism, Hindu way of life, Hindu culture and Hindu society. During the course of his talk he made it clear that the only thing that the Hindus of India have to fear today is fear itself. Unlike most Hindu Dharmacharyas who choose to remain diplomatically (if not politically!) neutral on the issues of life and death affecting the majority Hindus of India, Satguru Sivananda Murthy is forthright and fearless in his espousal of Hindu causes.

When the people supposed to be great fail to perform the right act in the right time, righteousness declines and unrighteousness ascends. Mahakavi Bharathi in his ‘Paanjali Sabatham’, condemning the silence observed by great Acharyas like Bheeshma and Dhrona when a helpless Draupati was dragged to Kaurava Court and molested, says they all stood like “Pettai Marangal” i.e. dead wood unable to protect the honour of a woman in distress. The great English Statesman and Parliamentarian Edmund Burke (1729-1797) rightly said for all time: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent and do nothing”. This is precisely what is happening in India today. I fully endorse the view of Prof. Sadhu Rangarajan:

“Every time Hindu Dharma has been outraged, the Dharmacharyas have chosen to remain silence spectators not ready to raise their voice against those who, sitting in their highest offices of political power, perpetrate the crime. And the Dharmacharyas have a lame excuse that political happenings are not their look out and Bhagavan is there to take care of the country. They have all to look after only the interests of their own Mutts, Missions, followers and the Ashram properties.”

I was intellectually and emotionally overwhelmed by the moral and spiritual force of the utterances of Satguru Sivananda Murthy on that day. Almost everyone present in the audience felt the same way. Hearing him speak with such passion for Hindu causes, I felt that the Swamiji is only giving a cubic content to the beautiful message of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.

Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita:

“Yadyadaacharati shreshthaha tattadevetaro
jannah Sa yat prmaanam kurute
lokasthatanuvartate”
(Sanskrit Transliteration)

The meaning of the above verse in Sanskrit is this:

“Whatever action a great man performs, common men follow. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues”.

Satguru Sivananda Murthy said that most of us are not happy with what is going on in this country. We are all aware that something is going terribly wrong somewhere in different spheres of our public life—political, administrative, religious and spiritual, cultural and social. Today we are living in a world of aimless and arid Intellectualism where the mind is more active than the heart. In this sadly inhuman situation, we have to meet the restless questioning mind with an impassioned answering mind backed up by a true feeling heart. Basically our understanding of our national problems, our religion and culture must be deep and penetrating—intensely felt by ourselves in such a manner that it becomes a spring board for swift and effective action. We must learn to feel through our minds and think through our hearts.

Whenever some Americans ask me: “Swamiji when do you think the backwardness of India will disappear?” I never hesitate to tell them that India is not backward. Now to make the Americans understand I can’t quote the esoteric verses from the Vedas and the Upanishads because they are irrelevant to them. They seem to be steeped in materialism and materialistic welfare and therefore it becomes necessary for us to counter their arguments through equally shallow materialistic viewpoints. To such materialistic Americans, I would often say: “More than 50,000 Indian Medical Doctors are working in the Universities and Clinics of America. Nearly 250,000 Indian Engineers are working in different branches of service and manufacturing industry in America. India has never imported a single American Doctor or American Engineer. Who is backward? How do you say India is backward?” In other words, crudely materialistic explanation has to meet four-square the materialistic questioning of the West.

The Constitution of India says ‘India that is Bharat’—that is how and where the Indian Constitution starts. Babu Rao Patel, a great nationalist and an independent minded journalist, always used to say “India that was Bharat”. The founding fathers of our Constitution gave a death blow to Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism, Hindu Religion and Hindu Society when in the Preamble to our Constitution they referred to ‘India that is Bharat’. For them, Age-old Bharat, rooted in time-honoured history and holy tradition was a nominal and unspiritual entity. Their artificial and lifeless ‘India’ was a ‘substantive’, ‘political’, ‘pseudo-secular’ and solid electoral votebank entity.

We got our independence on paper on 15 August, 1947. The main questions we should ask in this context are: a) Who got this independence? b) Was it the independence of the British subjected India? c) Was it the independence of ancient India, medieval India, or modern India? One thing is very clear. Men like Jinnah and Nehru displayed a great sense of urgency and anxiety to assume positions of power even without a clear vision of plan or action as to what we would like to do with Pakistan or India of our own after independence from British Rule. The fact of the matter is after independence a portion of the Muslims in India got a separate nation for themselves in Pakistan. The Muslims who chose to stay in India came to enjoy special privileges under the new Constitution. The Hindus of India lost their ancestral Nation in Pakistan, And the Hindus of India, unfortunately, were relegated to the position of second class citizens in their capacity as Non-Muslims or Non-Christians.

Some solid and irrefutable facts of history relating to our freedom struggle cannot be ignored. During the entire period of our struggle for freedom starting from the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 till the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian National scene in 1919 and later during the Gandhian period from 1920 to 1947, the number of people who got killed by the British Government was very much less than the number of Indians (mostly Hindus) who got killed in the first four months of India’s ‘partition’ under Nehru’s maladministration after 15 August, 1947. I was myself an eye witness to the partition riots in Delhi in August, 1947 when thousands of Hindus were killed in the Capital City itself. The untold sufferings of the Hindu refugees who were driven out of Pakistan and who came to squat on the streets of New Delhi and Delhi can never get erased from public thoughts and memories.

In my view, the sad fact is that on 15 August, 1947, Bharat that was India did not get its independence. It continued to be subjected to a New Republic called India. Thus our ancient India was subordinated to this newly created pseudo-secular anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim and pro-Christian Indian Republic. We should realise that India is not ‘Bharat’ but an artificial entity based on a pseudo-secular anti-Hindu philosophy called ‘Indian Constitution’.

In this so called anti-Hindu New Republic, the Muslims and the Christians (State-sponsored minorities!) enjoy special privileges and special rights under Articles 25 to 30 of the Indian Constitution. It has become a routine affair that whenever and wherever the Hindus protest against destruction of their temples by Islamic terrorists, the Government views it as an unprovoked, uncalled for and unjust Hindu fundamentalist reaction! The pseudo-secular mafia of mass media plays a leading stellar role in this dastardly anti-Hindu drama. The foundation for this ‘drama’ was laid by Pundit Nehru when he told Sardar Vallabhai Patel in 1949 to desist from taking any action to rebuild the Somnath Temple which was destroyed by Mohammed of Gazni in the 11th century and later by successive Muslim invaders. In the minds and hearts of Nehru and other Congress Leaders, the glorious heritage of ancient Bharat Varsha and Bharat Bhoomi had no place whatsoever and therefore they went about the task of destruction of Hindu India founded upon Sanatana Dharma with great pseudo-secular finesse and fervour derived from their brief autocratic authority.

We Hindus in majority in India today should come together to drop a new Constitution for Hindustan which creates a new Nation founded upon our ancient traditions of Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism and Hindu way of life. We have to raise ourselves from the present disgraceful condition of second class non-Muslim citizens to the highest status of first class proud Hindu citizens of this ancient land. I call upon all patriotic Hindus—Lawyers, Civil Servants, Educationists and other Professionals—to give a serious thought for drawing up a ‘New Constitution’ for Hindustan which gives the same privilege status to the Hindus in majority as has been given to the Minority Muslims and Minority Christians under the existing pseudo-secular and anti-Hindu present Constitution.

The New Constitution for Hindustan should create a new Hindu Nation-State which will be founded on Hindu ideals; which will conduct its affairs in accordance with Hindu-values; which would work for the all-round resurgence of the Hindus; which will protect Hindu-Interests not only in India but in the whole world; which will represent Hindu culture abroad; which will promote and propagate Hindu ethos in the world; which will create in our younger generations a sense of pride and self-respect in their Hindu Nationality. Such a state we have to establish in our Mother Land. Swami Vivekananda has tirelessly reminded us that the glory of Sanatana Dharma gives us the inspiration and self-confidence that we Hindus are not inferior to any Nation anywhere in the world in any sense. It is our sacred duty to create such a Hindu Nation in the immediate future.

Violation of Human Rights - Need for a Hindu nation

by V SUNDARAM

I

'True human feelings, passions and emotions are indeed the gastric juices of the soul' - Swami Vivekananda.

Patriots Forum in New Delhi and Infinity Foundation (USA) are organizing a one-day long Seminar on 'Violation of Human Rights of Hindu in India' on Tuesday (11 September, 2007) at New Delhi. This subject has been completely ignored by the Pseudo Secular Mafia of Mass Media for too long, and this has led to the build-up of a helpless feeling among members of the majority Hindu Community that they have been reduced to the status of children of a LESSER GOD in their own ancient Homeland. While the 'Secular' political class, mainstream media, the National Human Rights Commission and multiple NGOs are often seen clamouring at the drop of a hat for protection of the Human Rights of Minorities, no tears are shed or any concern ever expressed about the pitiable plight of the members of the shattered and battered majority Hindu Community in different parts of India. The most glaring example relates to the callous disregard of the plight of lakhs of Hindus ethnically cleansed from Jammu and Kashmir with the tacit political consent of the pseudo-secular Government of India and the anti-Hindu Government of Jammu and Kashmir. A similar silent campaign of ethnic cleansing of Hindus (euphemistically called 'Hindi Speaking') living in Assam and certain parts of North East, has also gathered momentum in recent times. No one, however, seems to be bothered about such abominable violation of Hindu Human Rights. There is a longstanding complaint about the misuse of the funds and lands of Hindu temples by Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating avaricious State governments.

We have to only read the daily Newspapers like The Hindu, The New Indian Express, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Deccan Herald, etc. on the one hand and TV Channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today, Times Now, etc on the other to understand how the Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating Pseudo Secular Mafia of Mass Media are hand in glove with the International Mafia controlling the Government of Hindu today in their combined onslaught on the fundamental human rights of Hindus who are in absolute majority in India. The Hindus in India, numbering more than 850 millions, are facing the worst form of Government-sponsored, Government-abetted, Government-financed blatant discrimination, deriving its ideological and political sanction from the Deadly Demon of Secularism rooted in communal vote-bank politics, and resting on two monotheistic faiths "Islam and Christianity" in short Minority Appeasement.

The vicious circle of Government - designed political elimination of Hindus, social debasement of Hindus, cultural devaluation of Hindus, religious decimation of Hindus and above all the national de-recognition of Hindus as the main pith and core of our nation have thus become total and complete. Behind this bizarre and lurid drama of organized political crime, looms large the figure of a super and super-incumbent Catholic lady from Italy, who in her capacity as de facto Indian Prime Minister has a stranglehold on the apparatus of the Indian State. She has absolute contempt for the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution and more so for the poor people of India, deriving her unconstitutional authority from her allegiance to the Pope in Rome whose philosophy is to convert the whole of India into a Christian Nation through an organized programme of what he calls "Massive and unprecedented harvesting of pagan souls".

Against this background, it should be clear that a solid foundation has been laid by the fleeting and unscrupulous political alliance between the anti-Hindu Congress Party and the Communist Parties for letting loose some of the worst and most soul-destroying forms of Hindu discrimination and blatant violations of Hindu Human Rights in an organized manner, in ever-expanding swells on a continuing basis, in the future. They are determined to destroy Hindu Religion, Hindu Culture, Hindu Society in the next decade and thus 'pack off' all the living Hindu Gods of India like Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga, Hanuman, Rama, Krishna, and several other Gods into dead artifacts of history like the dead pagan Gods of Greece and Rome. Many of the routine and known Hindu human rights violations in Pakistan and Bangladesh are being adopted as a matter of deliberate state policy in India as well. Nominal Hindus wielding unbridled political power in India, being totally beholden to Muslims and Christians, especially US Christian multinational business houses, are quietly practicing cultural genocide against the Hindus of India. This is the most diabolical situation Hindus have ever encountered since the fall of Sindh to the Arab invaders in 712 AD. As a matter of high State policy, Hindus are being excluded from educational opportunities under various spurious guises. Their places of worship are being attacked (with the connivance of State security agencies) or gifted to Christian Proselytizers. Hindus are being forced out of their traditional homes within India, with the Government of India and the State Governments, either approving or applauding such events / episodes as delighted spectators. The most dramatic example of this catastrophe of genocide is the extermination and expulsion of Hindus from Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the Pundits of Jammu and Kashmir.

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.

Man does not improvise. The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifices, and devotion. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more with greater intensity and fervour - these are the essential conditions for being a people. One loves in proportion to the sacrifices to which one has consented, and in proportion to the ills that one has suffered. One loves the house that one has built and that one has handed down. The Spartan song - 'We are what you were; we will be what you are' - is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of HINDUTVA today.

The tide of Hindutva was inaugurated in undivided Bengal in the second half of the 19th century by Raj Narain Bose and Nav Gopal Mitra. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee offered the next milestone for those marching on the road of Hindutva when he came out with his beautiful national song of BANDE MATARAM which inspired millions of our countrymen in the days of our struggle for freedom. Swami Vivekananda awakened the Indians and the Western world to the glorious wisdom of Hindutva. Swami Dayananda Saraswathi made us aware of our glorious Vedic heritage. Sri Aurobindo was another sage whose thinking enriched the philosophy of Hindutva. In 1909 he wrote:

A Hindu Nationalism, largely Hindu in its spirit and traditions, because the Hindu made the land and the people and persists, by the greatness of his past, his civilization and his culture, and his invincible virility. The 'Nation Idea' Hindus never had. By this I mean the political idea of the Nation. It is a modern growth. But we had among the Hindus the cultural and spiritual idea of the Nation.

This in my view is the quintessence of Hindutva. Bal Gangadar Tilak, Vir Savarkar, Dr. Hegdewar, Guruji Golwalkar have all built up this great edifice of Hindutva. Hindutva is not a mere word but a history with a great soul. Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction or a part of Hindutva or Hinduness.

Why should Hindus become helpless refugees in their own ancestral HOMELAND? It is my inalienable, indivisible, inexorable and immutable birth right to demand the creation of a Hindu Nation. I am not ashamed or afraid of declaring from the housetop that I am a political Hindu, a cultural Hindu, a spiritual Hindu, an economic Hindu, a nationalist Hindu, an internationalist Hindu and above all a cosmopolitan Hindu. I am forced to assert on these lines because Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Religion, Hindu Society, Hindu culture and Hindu ethos are under the siege of certain lethal international (!) forces, enjoying the full official support of the Government of India today. It will not be too much to say that the whole of India is getting converted into a 'Nazi Land' of pseudo-secularism, with a clearly defined and declared agenda for the decimation and destruction of Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Society and Hindu culture. In Nazi Germany, there was only one criminal gang consisting of one 'Herr' Hitler, one Goebbels, one Goering, one Ribbentrop, one Von Papen, and one Himmler. But in the wretched India of today, we have more than half a dozen similar gangsters in each political party, all united in their collective resolve to destroy all remnants of Sanatana Dharma and Hindu culture in order to gain a few short-term cheap political advantages for themselves.

II

I am in full agreement with Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003), a great 'Intellectual Kshatriya,' when he says that Hindu society is the only significant society in the world today which presents a continuity of cultural existence, consciousness and functioning for countless centuries. Most of the other societies known to human history - East and West, North and South - have suffered a sudden extinction or interruption or undergone a traumatic transformation due to the invasion and victory of some latter day monotheistic ideologies like Christianity, Islam and Communism. The pre-Christian, pre-Islamic and pre-Communist cultural creations and artifacts of these societies are now to be seen or met with only in libraries and museums, thanks to the unremitting labours of archaeologists and antiquarian scholars. Hindu culture can meet the same frightful fate if there is going to be no Hindu society to sustain it. This is the point which is not always remembered even by those who take pride in Hindu culture.

There are many Hindus who cherish the great spiritual heritage of Hinduism and also the scriptures like the Bhagawad Gita and the Upanishads in which this glorious tradition lies enshrined. But they do not cherish with an equal conviction, much less enthusiasm, the Hindu society which has honoured and preserved these traditions and scriptures against the onslaughts of external invaders and alien influences down the ages. Again, there are many Hindu who proclaim with great confidence that Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism can never die. In this context the sharp words of Sita Ram Goel are very relevant:

'This is true in a sense. There will always be individuals in 'Non-Hindu Societies' who will recover the mystique of Sanatana Dharma through their efforts at self-discovery. But 'Sanatana Dharma' will surely suffer an eclipse and no more inform mankind at large with its message, if there is no Hindu society to sustain it.'

There are many Hindu who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography and so on. But all of them fail to notice the fact that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage will die if the Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it.

The sudden death of Hindu society is thus no longer a theoretical possibility or eventuality which is either remote or improbable. This great society is now besieged by the same dark and deadly forces which have overwhelmed and obliterated many ancient societies in World History. Suffering from a loss of its 'élan,' Hindu society has become a house divided within itself. Its beneficiaries seem to be impotent in taking necessary steps for ensuring its survival because they themselves have fallen victims to hostile propaganda emanating from the anti-Hindu forces of Islam, Christianity, Nehruvian Secularism, menacing Marxism, and above all Hindu-baiting Macaulayism. Presiding over all these forces with a determined agenda for destroying all things Hindu, we have the Hindu-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating UPA government in New Delhi under the triangular stranglehold of Roman Catholicism, Pan-Islamism and Communism and wedded to the ideology of 'pseudo-secularism' which is just another convenient political word for Anti-Hinduism.

Hindu society which has survived the onslaught of Islamic marauders and Western freebooters for centuries should indeed be regarded as one of the great wonders of world history. In the normal course, Hindus should have come into their own after 1947 and created a new era of social and cultural renaissance in free Hindu. Thanks to the politically motivated policy of Nehruvian Secularism, Hindus have become third class citizens in our own country. They are no longer the honoured citizens of our land. Like leprosy in British India, a permanent stigma seems to have stuck to the terms 'Hindu' and 'Hinduism' in today's India. They have become terms of abuse in the mouth of that very 'elite' which the dumb Hindu millions have raised to the pinnacle of power and prestige with their own blood, toil, sweat and tears.

I cannot help coming to the conclusion that the Islamic and British invasions of India, though defeated and dispersed, have yet managed to 'crystallize' certain 'residues,' psychological and intellectual, which a battered Hindu society is finding it very difficult to digest. It is now well-known that these 'residues' in the monopoly control of the Congress party are now in active collusion with powerful international forces of Christianity, Islam and Marxism and which are being aided and abetted by the government of India on a scale which an impoverished Hindu Society can never hope to match. Although at loggerheads among themselves till 2004, these residues have forged a 'United Front' which is holding Hindu Society under a Pseudo-Secular siege today. This grave mortal danger is as much promoted 'from within' as 'from without.'

It is against this background it has become necessary for all the Hindus of India, whether living in India or abroad, to become firmly resolved in their collective will to declare to the world: 'We Hindus are a nation.' In 1946 when the Muslim League's demand for partition of India and creation of a separate State of Pakistan were being seriously debated, someone asked M A Jinnah: 'You keep talking of Pakistan. Could you explain what is your concept of this Pakistan? What do you really mean by it?' Jinnah replied: 'Of course. In just five words.' Then Jinnah uttered those five famous words: 'We Muslims are a nation' and he went on to elaborate his thesis of unbridgeable cultural difference between Muslims and Hindus, their incompatibility and the impossibility of co-existence of the Muslims with the Hindus, and so on.

An outstanding intellectual and brilliant scholar who paid a heavy price for his unimpeachable integrity in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to which he belonged, Abhas Chatterjee, wrote a seminal book 'THE CONCEPT OF Hindu NATION' in 1995, a few years before his death.

According to Abhas Chatterjee, our misconception regarding Hindu Nation, Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra has arisen from the fact that we have not tried to comprehend the definition of a Nation. We normally take a nation to stand for a country, a land mass, a specific portion of the globe. But a nation never means a land as such. A nation indicates a group or community of people which has been traditionally living in a particular land, which has its own distinctive culture, and which has an identity separate from other peoples of the world by virtue of the distinctiveness of its culture. The cultural distinctiveness of a nation may be based on its race, or religion, or language, or a combination of some or all of these factors, but all-in-all there has to be a distinct culture which will mark out that nation from peoples belonging to other lands. In the light of this analysis, Abhas Chatterjee, concludes that:

'Once we start looking at things from this point of view, we immediately see not only that we Hindus are a 'Nation unto ourselves, but also we are the oldest surviving NATION on earth.'

We Hindus are not just a religious community like the Hindus and the Christians, but a NATION unto ourselves. The term 'Hindus' is the name of our nationality. We Hindus are a Nation. This is a basic, simple and indisputable truth. Unfortunately, even this simple cardinal truth, most of the Hindus - more particularly the educated Hindus - are unable to appreciate in letter and spirit and this fatal failure lies at the root of all our misconceptions and miseries.

No one can dispute that the traditional homeland of Hindus is the Bharatavarsha. It is a distinct geographical entity. When I say Bharatavarasha in the sense of the Motherland of the Hindus, I do not refer to the boundaries of the truncated India created by Jinnah, and Nehru in 1947, but to those of our traditional homeland which extends continuously from Gandhara to Kamrup and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. This basically has been the concept of Hindu Nationhood or what we call Hindutva or Hindu Rashtra from times immemorial.

We remained subjugated for more than 1000 years when foreign rulers ruled over our country. By barbaric persecution or economic inducements, they compelled certain segments of our nation to abandon their ancestral culture and adopt the culture of those foreign invaders. These segments of our population forgot that the culture they had adopted was a foreign culture, a culture that belonged to another nation and had been forced on them.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) wrote in Bande Mataram on 7 October, 1907: '

This great and ancient Nation was once the fountain of human light, the apex of civilisation, the exemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good government and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of death. Its pride has been trampled into the dust and its glory has departed.'

But subjugation cannot by itself destroy the nationhood of a nation. Nor can the nature of the nation, the basic characteristics and disposition of the nation, get altered or changed by the fact of enslavement. Nations do not get destroyed. We Hindus are a nation just as the Germans are a nation, the Armenians are a nation, the Kurds are a nation, the Jews are a nation. Germany was divided into two after the II World War. But this did not abate their nationhood. Within 50 years, they achieved reunification of their motherland and the nation has been restored to its original character and complexion. Alas!! Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and their political slaves have destroyed the identity of India as an Ancient Hindu Nation. They have created the lifeless and spiritless carcass of an Anti-Hindu Pseudo-Secular Nation.

III

The fact that 'WE HINDUS ARE A NATION' is by no means a new idea. This idea has been with us from the dawn of history. The saint, sage and seer Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) made the most powerful pronouncement of this idea in 1893. In his brief 5-minute first address, Swami Vivekananda declared at the inaugural session of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893: 'I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects'. Then he spoke THREE SENTENCES which were most significant. First, he said: 'I am proud to belong to a RELIGION which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.' In the second sentence he said: 'I am proud to belong to a NATION which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth'. In this context, he cited an example, namely, that when the sacred temple of the Jews was demolished by the Romans, we Hindus gave shelter to the Jewish refugees and took care of them in India. In the third sentence, Swamiji said: 'I am proud to belong to a RELIGION which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnants of the grand Zoroastrian nation'. In these three consecutive sentences, Swami Vivekananda proclaimed his pride of belonging first 'to a religion', then second 'to a nation' and third again 'to a religion'.

It will be clear that Swami Vivekananda used the words 'Religion' and 'Nation' as synonymous terms. No pseudo-secularist in India today can have any doubt about what religion or nation SWAMIJI was talking about and what his perception of nationhood was. Swami Vivekananda was emphatically clear that the essential feature of Hindu Nationhood was the Hindu religion, the 'Sanatana Dharma'. He was only declaring 'We Hindus are a Nation'.

The cardinal fact that 'We Hindus are a Nation' unto ourselves and not just a religious community formed the crucial plank of our first national movement in 1905, viz. the 'Swadeshi Movement' in undivided Bengal. When Bengal was partitioned by Lord Curzon in 1905, the entire society rose up as one MAN with solid determination at a moment of great and unprecedented national upsurge. No one at that time had the slightest doubt that 'We Hindus are a Nation'. That is why in Calcutta city, on the first day of the agitation 50,000 people took a collective oath before Goddess Kali in the Holy Kalighat Temple to the effect that 'we shall throw the British out of our homeland'. The famous historian R.C. Majumdar rightly concluded that he saw no difference in those days between Sanatana Dharma and Indian Nationalism.

When Lord Minto conspired and plotted against the Hindu freedom fighters of Bengal in 1906, he roped in the Muslims under Agah Khan to create the Muslim League in order to divide the country. The era of Muslim appeasement started by Lord Minto, reached its climax in 1920 when Mahatma Gandhi became the Chairman of the Kilafat Movement for the restoration of the Turkish Monarchy and Empire. Thereafter, at every stage in our struggle for freedom, Muslims were appeased by Congress Leaders and Mahatma Gandhi for the next 25 years. The sad fact is that despite this deferential attitude towards the Muslims, the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi miserably failed to convince Mohammed Ali Jinnah about the need for the continued existence of a United India even after the British withdrawal from India. It has to be sadly borne in mind that after 1933, Jinnah was continuously proclaiming 'We Muslims are a Nation' till the birth of Pakistan on 14 August, 1947.

After Indian independence, Jawaharlal Nehru promoted his concept of false nationhood under the label of 'secularism'. According to this concept, all the people who happen to reside on the soil of India form a Nation, whether he follows the culture of this country or not, whether he is loyal to this country or not. It does not matter if the state-aided minorities dismiss the time-honoured culture of this country 'Sanatana Dharma' as abominable and as a path of the Devil. Thus in a mischievous way Nehru turned the concept of 'Nationhood' into a geographic entity and bade good-bye to the established principles of 'Nationhood' founded on emotional and cultural unity and all that it implies. According to this Nehru's notion, Hindus of India in majority have to lose the inheritance of their traditional homeland. Nehru used his transitory political might to propagate this philosophy and this became the corner stone of all his policies and proved disastrous for the Hindus. Tragically for the Hindu Nation, Jawaharlal Nehru shamelessly declared:

'To talk of Hindu culture would injure India's interests. By education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim, and I am a Hindu only by accident of birth. The ideology of Hindu Dharma is completely out of tune with the present times and if it took root in India, it would smash the country to pieces'.

Nehru dismissed the Hindus of India as a mere religious community without any cultural traditions going back to the dawn of history. Thus Nehru had total contempt for Hindu religion, for Hindu culture, for Hindu society and above all for the average Hindu.

This alternate concept of perverted 'Nehruvian Nationhood' as opposed to 'Sanatana Dharma', meant State-engineered opposition to the Hindus in all walks of life. ANTAGONISM TO HINDUS EMERGED AS THE CORNER STONE OF STATE POLICY. The ideology of Nehruism came to be lauded, acclaimed, promoted and propagated under the name 'Secularism' till it came to be treated beyond reproach, beyond debate and beyond discussion. In short, all the Hindus of India became second class citizens depending upon the sufferance - even patronage - of the minority. Dressed in brief mortal authority, Nehru's purblind audacity reached its climax when he wrote to Kailash Nath Katju in 1953:

'In practice the individual Hindu is more intolerant and more narrow-minded than almost any person in any other country'.

Thus we have before us two alternate perceptions of our 'Nation' and 'Nationhood'; one of Swami Vivekananda and the other of Jawaharlal Nehru. Swami Vivekananda represented the time-defying sources and forces of truth; Jawaharlal Nehru represented the sources and forces of falsehood, fraud and ignorance based upon communal votebank politics. Swami Vivekananda says that Hindu Dharma is the quintessence of our national life, hold fast to it if you want your country to survive, or else you would be wiped out in three generations. Jawaharlal Nehru, a mere 50 years later, tells us that if the Hindu Dharma thrives, the country will smash to pieces. To quote the telling words of Abhas Chatterjee: '

Swami Vivekananda says that Hindu culture is the life-current of our nation, Jawaharlal Nehru says it would injure the nation even to talk of Hindu culture. One was supremely proud of being a Hindu, the other so ashamed of it that he rejected it as an accident of birth'.

The greatest tragedy in our national life after 1947, much more disastrous than the invasion of India by Muslim Marauders like Timur in 1398, Babar in 1526, Nadir Shah in 1739 and Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1761, has been the invasion of Nehruvian Secularism which started on August 15, 1947 and is still continuing unabated and unchallenged, clothed in the aura of official authority of the Government of India, now institutionalized into a hereditary Nehru family heirloom in perpetuity.

Nehru's viciously political concept of a geographical or composite nation, Nehruism or secularism, whichever way you call it, was nothing but a pernicious anti-Hindu ideology, which came to be lauded, acclaimed, promoted and propagated by most political parties after 1950 and the mafia of mass media in India and abroad, under the name of 'Secularism' till it came to be treated as something beyond any reproach, beyond any public debate and discussion. Nehru and his family used the might of their public offices for three generations to implant this poisonous weed of 'Secularism' in the national psyche. This has led to some disastrous socio-political consequences for the very survival of Hindus, Hindu Culture, Hindu Society, Hindu Religion and above all Sanatana Dharma.

To sum up, after our independence, we were taught to look at the history of Bharatvarsha from a new angle of State-sponsored distorted vision. We were asked to regard Indian history as one of pseudo-secular synthesis. To quote Abhas Chatterjee once again:

'We were asked to overlook the barbaric tyranny that was perpetrated on us in order to force Islam down our throats from 1025 AD till 1707 AD. The horrible persecution, the blunder, the vandalism, and the massacres should all be forgotten. Or we should assume these acts of Islamic compassion to have been the personal aberrations of a few Rulers. In order to project the history of India as a history of synthesis, an imaginary course of events was constructed, viz. that from olden days foreigners kept on coming to India and settling down by and by, so that they kept getting mingled with one another and a new 'Nation' was formed, a new 'Culture' was thus created. So, we don't really have a 'National Culture' of our own but only a 'Hybrid Composite Culture' politically manufactured by the Government.'

IV

Anationalistic and patriotic Hindu of post-independent India, who derives his inspiration and nationalistic idealism from the teachings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal, Bal Gangadar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Vir Savarkar, and such other incomparable patriots, has great difficulty in feeling himself to be a part of the 'imaginary Nation' (a Pseudo Secular Anti-Hindu Nation!!) for which the whole national system today is being operated by the all the Governments in Inda. He is unable to identify himself emotionally with this imaginary, artificial, 'composite' national entity which the Indian State has been representing. An 'enormous gulf' has been created between the 'NATION' and the 'STATE', between the national society and the ruling class. It is this gulf which is causing disintegration and decimation of the national society, organised disappearance of collective consciousness and sensitivity, debasement, debauchment and degeneration of social conscience. It is because of this politically motivated and criminally perpetrated hiatus between a false Nation (Notion!!) and a truly blood-sucking State that there is a continuous proliferation of selfishness, corruption and moral degradation in all walks of our national life today. The larger 'Hindu National Society' has been totally alienated from the State and the national will to boldly face all the problems confronting our nation today has all but vanished.

THUS, I AM OF THE CONSIDERED VIEW THAT THERE IS GROSS VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS OF HINDUS IN INDIA. What are Human Rights? 'Human Rights' mean 'the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.' The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.'

Hindu Human Rights must commonly include the following Cluster of Rights:

• Security rights that prohibit crimes such as murder/enforced involuntary suicide, massacre, torture and rape
  
  
• Liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
  
  
• Political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
  
  
• Due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
  
  
• Equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
  
  
• Welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of, eg, education, paid holidays, and protections against severe poverty and starvation
  
  
• Group rights

Security Rights of Hindus are being denied by the Government and the State. Liberty Rights are being abridged by the anti-Hindu Government on the one hand and denied by the pseudo-secular (in effect anti-Hindu) political parties on the other. Political Rights are being denied by the Government, State and all the political parties acting under the ideological umbrella of 'Perverted Secularism'. Due process rights are being denied by the Judiciary at all levels, acting as self-proclaiming cultural and legal spokesmen for upholding only 'Minority Rights'. Equality rights are being denied by the Government, the State and the Judiciary, diabolically acting together in concert, apart from all the political parties directly involved in a collective conspiracy against the Hindus of India. Welfare rights and Group rights of only the minorities "The Muslims and the Christians" are the concern of the Government and the State. Those of Hindus are irrelevant, anti-national and anti-social - in short, 'Communal'. Thus the Vicious Circle of Denial of Hindu Human Rights is comprehensive, universal, total and all-pervasive.

All these rights are being denied to the Hindus who are in absolute numerical majority in India. I shall prove this thesis by posing some simple and direct questions at the end of this paper.

The significant point that merits attention today is that though we Hindus are a Nation, we are not yet an independent Nation. We are still a subjugated Nation. If we analyze carefully, we can see that the Hindu Nation did not actually gain freedom on August 15, 1947. The Hindus of India only underwent a change of the Master, a change of rulers from Vilayathi Anti-Indian Rulers to Desi Anti-Hindu Rulers. Thanks to the honest commitment of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Muslim Nation of undivided India gained their own geographic space and freedom on 14 August, 1947 but not the battered Hindus of India. The Muslims established their own State in that territory called Pakistan and that State is still conducting its affairs by holding the cultural aspirations, honour and interests of the Muslims of Bharath Varsha also as its responsibility. But Hindus neither gained recognition as a Nation, nor their own State nor control over their National Homeland or destiny.

Thus there is no STATE today, certainly not in India, to protect Hindu interests in the international arena, to raise an effective voice for the Hindus. If Jews are unjustly treated in any part of the world, the State of Israel, supreme representative of an independent Jewish Nation, immediately raises its voice. Our disgusting Prime Minister would spend sleepless nights only for Hanif in Australia and not for the peaceful Hindus who get killed in Afghanistan or the Middle East.

The sole and supreme task before us Hindus now is that we rescue ourselves from the suicidal stranglehold of the alternate anti-Hindu Nation-Perception of Gandhi and Nehru, and awaken National Consciousness in ourselves. We have to develop a clear National Vision. Such a vision should show us that

1. We Hindus are a NATION, not a religious community. Our national identity is Hindu. We would declare the name of our nationality to be Hindu, and no other name would be acceptable to us.
   
   
2. The distinctive feature of our NATION is 'Sanatana Dharma'. We shall not accept any other alien ideology as the heritage of our country. We cannot regard any alien creed as our religion.
   
   
3. Undivided India is our Motherland. Even though parts of India have seceded today, we do not accept this division. Our goal is to reunite the whole of our ancestral Homeland into our Motherland, regardless of all terror and, however long and hard the road may be.
   
   
4. Hindu Culture is our national culture. Hindu Society is our national society. Hindu Art is our national art. Hindu Literature is our national literature. Hindu History is our national history. There is no Muslim Period or British Period in this history; it is only the history of continuous Hindu struggle against Muslim invaders and British colonialists. The struggle against the Perverted Secularists is still continuing. Without victory in this struggle, there is no survival - no survival for Hindus and Sanatana Dharma, no survival for the urge and impulse of the Ages.
   
   
5. People subscribing the theologies of alien religion are minorities in our country, not a part of our nation. We consider these alien ideologies to be enemies of our nation. The goal is to bring our minorities back into our nation.
   
   
6. Sanskrit is our national mother tongue, with its sister languages and many off- springs.
   
   
7. We are still a subjugated, enslaved nation. Perverted Nehru Secularists are not our own people. Their regime is nor our regime. We have to liberate Mother India from their stranglehold and earn our freedom. To secure our freedom, the Hindu Nation has to gain its independence. After securing freedom, we have to set up our own Nation State - The Hindu Nation State. We have to discard the present Indian Constitution and give ourselves a new Constitution of our own rooted in our own national, cultural, spiritual and religious ethos.
   

In order to understand and know the extent to which there is a gross violation of Human Rights of Hindus in India, we have only to pose the following simple questions:

• There are nearly 52 Muslim countries. Which Muslim country provides Haj subsidy?

• Which is the Muslim country where Hindus are extended the same special rights that Muslims are accorded in India?

• Which is the country where the 85% majority craves for the indulgence of the 15 per cent minority under its own Constitution?

• Which is the Muslim country that has a non-Muslim as its President or Vice President or Prime Minister?

• Has any Mullah or Maulvi ever issued a 'fatwa' against the terrorists?

• When Christian and Muslim Schools can teach the Bible and the Quran respectively, why cannot the Hindus teach the Bhagavad Gita or the Ramayana in their schools?

• Why are temple funds spent for the welfare of Muslims and Christians, even when they have all the freedom to spend their money in any way they like only - and only for themselves?

• Why does the Government of India consider Sanskrit as communal and Urdu as secular, Mandir as communal and Masjid as secular, Sadhu as communal and Imam as secular, BJP as communal and Muslim League as secular, Vande Mataram as communal and Allah as secular?

...to be continued.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com