by BS Murthy
It is this mindset of the umma that impels them to hate Modi, the spearhead of Hindu nationalism, nevermind he had economically uplifted the whole lot of their poor brethren in Gujarat as its head, and as India's mukhiya has been striving to improve their economic lot, nationwide that is, like none else before him did in real terms. Thus,
it's no wonder that his well-meaning initiative to block M uslim males' easy divorce route through the obnoxious triple talak to emancipate umma's other half was perceived by the former as his interference in matters of their faith. If anything, his aggressive military posturing against Pakistan's evil design of bleeding India with thousand cuts with Islamic terrorism, exemplified by the Indian Army's across-the-border surgical strike, and moreso, the Indian Air Force's Balakot bombing deep inside its territory, both against terrorist camps, were not taken kindly by India's M usalmans, owing needless to say, their pan-lslamic affinity to India's enemy besides the blow it dealt to the Muslim martial pride.
Juxtaposing the sulking of the M usalmans, Modi's military outreach into the Pakistani terrain enabled the limping Hindu nationalists to walk with a spring in their step, and as it was in that setting the 2019 parliamentary polls were held, the rejuvenated Hindu nationalist sentiment ensured him a second term in office. What's more, as if goading him to complete Hindustan's unfinished agendas, India's Hindus gave him 302 additional hands in the Lok Sabha. Needless to say, Indian umma tried its best to spoil the Hindu party by resorting to 'tactical voting' against the BJP, which might have prompted him to add sab ka vishwds (trust of all) to his earlier sab ka sdth, sab ka vikds political mantra. Even this reconciliatory gesture, that too from a position of strength, while having had no impact on India's bigoted umma, it only managed to ruffle the hardcore Hindu feathers; some falling between two stools. Why, the 'secular' media that plays no mean a part in alienating the umma from the BJP yet ticks it off for not giving its party ticket even to a single Musalman in the elections. It's as if the M usalmans are exempt from life's 'give and take' norm, and that's what the Islamapologists believe.
Be that as it may, aided by Amit Shah, his capable and committed second in command, Modi cajoled India's Parliament to resort to doing the unthinkable - abolish the obnoxious triple talak besides abrogating the 'temporary' Art 370 of the Indian Constitution, which enabled Kashmir's M usalmans to plough their separatist furrow, apparently made 'permanent' by India's M uslim appeasement politics. While the Hindus saw in this their moment of reckoning, for India's Musalmans, who have gained in numbers (demographically doubled in percentage terms and aiming at 60cr figure in the next 30yrs as articulated by some of their guiding heads) and whence in confidence to dictate political terms to the Hindus, it was nothing short of a double whammy. Even before they could gather their religio-political wits, India's Supreme Court ruled in favour of their hated Hindu litigants in the vexed Ram Janmabhomi-Babri Masjid land dispute, and it didn't stop at that.
Well, India's Apex Court thought it's time it entered the Islamic 'No Go' zone to take a closer constitutional look at the demeaning practice of nikah halala, and the moulvis are awaiting the outcome with fingers crossed in an impotent rage that is. That divorced M uslim couples, even the likes of the celluloid giants, Kamal Amrohi and M eena Kumari, choose to endure the humiliation of nikah halala, which is nothing but the involved woman's one-night stand with a male stranger, possibly a mullah, for their reunion, even in this age and time, speaks volumes about the power of moulvis derived from umma's blind belief in the sharia. If not, what prevents such couples from approaching a marriage registrar, instead of going to a kazi, for the facilitation of their blissful 'civil' reunion that is after their fateful separation? But what's the idea of the nikah halala in the Muhammadan law? Approached logically, it's but a mundane measure meant to restrain hasty divorces in the umma rather than a divine diktat, made out as such for better effect, but then thinking is a four-letter word in the Islamic thesaurus.
Whatever, when Amit Shah got the parliament enact the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 too to redress the predicaments of the persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Janis, Christians and Parsis, of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who had fled earlier to
India, while the umma thought enough was enough, the 'secular' politicians 'on the retreat' saw the natural omission of Musalmans in the list as Allah's unnatural blessing upon them. Raising the bogey of a Hindu theocratic state 'in the making', thereby threatening the very idea of secular India, as envisioned by the founding fathers, whatever that may mean, the M uslim appeasing parties vied with each other in egging the umma to create mayhem across the length and breadth of the country against the 'discriminatory act'.
Apparently, this cynical recourse taken by the 'secular' parties, dubbed 'sickular' by the nationalists, was primarily borne out of their compulsive competition for the 'determining' M uslim votes in their respective areas of influence. Beside, as a corollary, this divisive strategy was clearly a ploy to destabilize the Hindu voter-tilt towards the BJP by alarming the status quoist Hindus to the frightful consequences of rubbing the sensitive umma on its wrong side. The media, still smarting from their failure, in spite of its all-out efforts, to stop the Modi juggernaut in reaching the portals of power, not once, but twice, saw in the unwarranted Muslim rage the warrant to vent out its accumulated frustrations. And it is only to be expected that Rajiv's 'brokers of power and influence', who have been at gaming the system all along, but felt cheated by M odi for he made his ministers and bureaucrats alike not to touch them with a barge pole, would pitch in to up the ante, and naturally they did with gusto.
Needless to say, this turn of events only suited the ideologically driven left-liberals and Islamapologists, who have been disdainful of India's governance by the so-called Hindu 'fundamentalists'. If anything, the rise of the Islamic radicalism in the theocratic Muslim countries that became the breeding grounds for terrorism has come in handy for them to make a red-herring out of Hindu nationalism. So went their argument that any revival of the Hindu fundamentalism, as if there was one in Arya Varta's long history, would likewise pave the way for a Pakistani India, with like consequences. Why should the Christian-funded NGOs that mushroomed in India, under Sonia's watch and ward, whose evangelical reach M odi had curbed by clipping their illegal economic wings lag behind? Joining the anti-M odi bandwagon, while they lamented in the Indian media that secular India has become a Hindu Rdshtra; their godfathers in the west used their clout with the western religious watchdogs as well as its media to go one step further to damn M odi's Hindu theocratic state.
It's thus all these, who kept mum over the unceasing ant-national rants by some Indian M usalmans such as Bharat tere tukde honge, Insha Allah Insha Allah (M ay Allah break up India) and pro-terrorist slogans like terd kdtil zindd hai, Afzal ham sharmindd hai
We're ashamed Afzal (the hanged mastermind of 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament) that your killers (read India's Supreme Court Judges) are still alive
readily took umbrage when the Hindu anger vented itself in counter sloganeering, desh ke gad'aron ko, goli mdro sdlonko (kill the quislings).
Surely, all seem to be grudging the Hindus for having stopped following Mahatma Gandhi's advice given to them in that prayer meeting on April 6, 1947, New Delhi, cited in the Collective Works of M ahatma Gandhi, Vol. 94, SI. 243, pages 248/249.
"We should dispassionately think where we are drifting. Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear death.
Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we
shall be ushering in a new India. The Concluding verses of the second chapter of the Gita describe how a godfearing man should live.
I would exhort you to read and understand those verses and ponder over their meaning. You will then realize what our ideal is and how far short of it we are today. Our independence is at our threshold and it is our duty to ask ourselves whether we are fit to have it and sustain it."
While all this sounds music to the umma, surely Hindus must realize that Gandhi was as much a Moodhatma as a Mahatma and the political bhajan to him is better downplayed. By the way, the concluding verses of the Gita as stated by Gandhi describe how a man, not necessarily god-fearing one, should live, and not how to die 'bravely' when killed by the M usalmans. And to put Gandhi's twisted record straight, here are some relevant verses of the Gita's second chapter.
1
Thus spoke Sanjaya:
In pity Krishna Addressed Arjuna,
Bogged in sorrow With tears profuse.
2
Thus spoke the Lord:
Oh, what affliction At thisjuncture!
Wholly un-Aryan Unholy as well!!
3
M ind-set impotent that unnerves Strengthen thou for fight on hand.
31
Being a warrior dharma thine That thee fight with all thy might.
32
For martyrs of unsought wars Ever open are heavenly gates.
33
If thee back out from duty Imperil thou thy own dharma And that earns thee infamy.
34
What for lead a dishonored life Why leave legend dubious behind!
35
Amiss be taken thine intent Treat thee coward thy friends 'n foes.
36
Count on thou thy detractors Besmirch they thy character,
Damned be thine obituary By their campaign of slander.
37
If slain, heaven; alive, it's reign
Resolve to fight with right intent.
38
Shed thy sentiment, guilt unhinge
Eye not gain as wage thou war.
39
It's this knowledge that liberates
And helps thee act, with no restraint.
The above verses are excerpted from the author's free ebook, Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of self-help, sans 110 verses interpolated in the version in vogue.
Well, well, Gandhi, Krishna in Gita taught man how to live in equanimity and how to face death with dignity but not how to die 'bravely' when killed by the Musalmans. M aybe the Lord would have left that to Gandhi, and anyway M uhammad was yet to be born then.
That earlier in 2015, the western media, based on a 'sole' but sad lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq by Hindu cow vigilantes, had dubbed India as Lynchistan betrays its Christian disdain for Hinduism, nevermind its intellectual breadth and philosophical depth. And ironically, the Christian Islamapologists, who don't shy away from exhibiting their Hindu allergy, fail to see that M usalmans from the Islamic nations, once colonized by them, have begun to Islamize their own countries now! Given the pace at which the 'fastest growing religion' is growing in Europe and in the Americas, it may not be long before their progeny would be cursing their forebears for failing to Christianize their erstwhile Musalman colonies. That would also be when the much maligned Hindus gleefully watch the bikinis on the beaches giving way to burkas, even as the 'believing' beards grow longer and longer in the Christian lands. But more to the point, as Islam nips the inquiring mind in the bud, in time, the superiority of the western thought would be a thing of the past, as is the case with the once advanced cultures of Egypt, Persia and Mesopotamia.
But the irony of it all is that the Western media that sees no oddity in the Christian democracies in the areas of their dominance and looks the other way as the murderous dar al-lslams of the M uslim world persecute their minorities, Xians not excluded, cannot countenance even a single Hindu Rdshtra on this vast planet though Nepal has long since ceased to be a Hindu kingdom. But the Hindu intelligentsias, who fail to see though this Christian hypocrisy, lend voice to their anti-Hindu tunes to the irritating ears of the Indian nationalists. The so-called human rights commissions that take the public floggings, amputations, stoning to death and beheadings in the dar al-lslams in true sharia spirit cry hoarse when it comes to India's measures to curb the Pakistansponsored terrorism in its Kashmir valley. That the current Head of the UN-HRC hails from Saudi Arabia that treats its fair sex as some subhuman species speaks for the farce that is human rights.
What about China that is nonchalantly contemptuous of human rights? Though Napoleon Bonaparte stated that it's a 'sleeping giant not to be woken up', the U.S. in pursuit of cheap labour for higher profits did just that by shifting its manufacturing base to its shores only to transform it into an economic powerhouse in double-quick time. Hence, it's not long before China has begun flexing its economic muscles and flaunting its military ware with a hegemonistic air to cock a snook at the world to its discomfort. Thus, when China, fed up with the spiraling separatist tendencies in its Uyghur M usalmans, began de-lslamizing them by means fair and foul, while umma plunged into a stunned silence, the world of human rights, Indian sickulars not excluding, didn't even
raise a murmur in protest; and think of the deafening noise they together made over one Akhlaq's lynching!
It's time for the rest of the world to prevail upon the umma by stating in no uncertain terms that it pays the M usalmans to realise that their hate for the 'others 1 stems from the inimical M edina suras that were solely meant to further their M essenger's political agenda but not to serve their mundane needs and thus are to be treated as 'period 1 so that the benign Mecca ayats could make Islam the religion of peace for universal good. And for their part, the M usalmans should realize that their Islamic craziness, sooner than later, is bound to wear the others' patience thin, whereby prompting them to borrow the Chinese Hammer to drive 'good sense' into their bigoted heads. In all this, there is another Chinese lesson for the Hindu nationalists in that as the world regards only the economic clout from which flows the military might, so as to reach the zenith, India has to re-metamorphose itself into the 'land of the upright' from its current state as a 'nation of cheats'.
So be it, but meanwhile a closer look at India would reveal how the fear of the Hindu theocratic state, on the Pakistani model, is unfounded to say the least. True, the Islamic fundamentalism would usher in theocratic states in many Muslim countries owing to the religious fervour of the faithful for the adoption of the oppressive sharia and other depressive laws that Islam enjoins them to abide by. But when it comes to Hinduism, there is no exclusivist credo governing its consciousness that holds sway over the Hindu masses to make them crave for that to be made the credo of Hindustan, to its detriment. On the contrary, whatever positivity the Islamic and the Xian presence in Hindustan might have had on its 'composite' culture was offset by the male chauvinism infused by the former and the sexual prudery induced by the latter in the egalitarian Hindu ethos (exemplified in the Upanishads) with a no-nonsense sexual credo (exhibited in its temple architecture). However, Hinduism has traditionally nursed a self-correcting mechanism, which, from time to time, has produced reformative movements to eradicate the social ills that insensibly crept into the day-to-day Hindu life, such as the scourge of untouchability, sati, child marriage, and widow quarantine.
Why the Encyclopedia Britannica describes "Hindutva (’Hindu-ness 1 ), as an ideology that sought to define Indian culture in terms of Hindu values" and India's Apex Court had ruled that "Ordinarily, Hindutva is understood as a way of life or a state of mind and is not to be equated with or understood as religious Hindu fundamentalism ...''. However, it can be said that their lordships erred in assuming that there is something called Hindu fundamentalism, religious or cultural, for the Concise Oxford Dictionary states that "fundamentalism is strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion, esp. Islam." Even those blind to sndtana dharma's unequivocal inclusive ethos exemplified by,
ekam sad viprah bahudha vadanti, agnim yamam matarisvanam ahuh.
Referred by seers as Agni, Yama,
and M atarishvan is all but One, should be able to see the political diversity of the Indian sub-nationalism, rooted in vernacular affiliations, would provide enough hurdles, and more, for the alleged fundamentalists to rally Indians towards the Hindu theocratic state. Moreover, in Arya Varta's long history, save Aurangzeb's brief Muslim theocratic interregnum in its Hindustani era that too in parts, which the leftist historians push under their secular carpets, there never was a theocratic state in its bosom. It is as it was, as it is and as it would be, for the very concept of theocracy is alien to the Hindu ethos, steeped in the tradition of liberalism from inception, exemplified by the Rama Rajya. Any unbiased analysis of the present day Hindu social structure and its religious practices will point out to the fact that a Hindu theocratic state is incomprehensible even conceptually; leave alone the possibility of it ever becoming an Indian politico-religious reality.
Whatever, when the unabated agitation of India's M usalmans against the Citizenship Amendment Act coupled with the media berating has seemingly put Modi-Shah combine on the back foot, the God-mad Tablighi Jamdt scored a self-goal into the novel corona virus net, and if anything the abrasive M uslimness in the face of the stupendous crisis shifted the centre of the news. Besides, the Hindu outrage against the Muslim insensitivity has tilted the game of perception against the umma for the worse, maybe irrevocably. On the other hand, while M odi's handling of the pandemic in India won him universal applause, his countrymen, at his behest, not only heeded his call for a janta curfew but also joined him to clap for the corona warriors with conchs 'n drum beats on one occasion and lit diyas, candles 'n torches at another time. That subsequently India bore its prolonged lockdown without a murmur speaks volumes about its trust in M odi that may stand him in good stead in times to come.
