The Bharatiya - Identity, Vision, Agenda, Proposition

[RajeshA]

The Hindutvavadi, the Hinduist and the Hindu (Cont.)

Cross-posting from the "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Sorry for the long post!

Good Prince banished, wife kidnapped, kidnapper pursued and killed, wife returns, kingdom restored..

For Hindutva, what is important is this:

Good Prince (of some Rajya in Bharat) banished, wife kidnapped, kidnapper pursued and killed, wife returns, kingdom restored.

So not only did the Brits corner English speaking Hindus into accepting a religion, they have also pushed Hindus into asking if irrational things (Like Monkey Tail throne, or Monkey carrying mountain) should be accepted or not.

Everyone reading Ramayana and Mahabharata would see different things, which are important to him. Most Hindus consider Ramayana to be Itihas, with the samantics "Thus it happened" and thus Satya!

However as I see it, Satya does not mean "literalism"!

Speaking for myself, my thought process about this episode would be
"Shri Hanuman transported a whole lot of herbs over a long distance in a short time as he could not discern which herb was the appropriate one to administer to Shri Lakshman for healing his wound"!

"Mountain" can be a misunderstanding of the semantics of the word, an error in transmission, an embellishment, an exaggeration, or have some cultural significance, or it too could be the truth, I don't know, and things that I don't know, one can speculate on it, but there just isn't sufficient data or evidence to determine what exactly was the case, and whatever theory people come up with, it would remain an interesting theory, and nothing more. But since in the text, we read "mountain" that is how I would advocate its further use, because "mountain" semantics has become part of our traditional culture.

Quoting Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

Deism , derived from the Latin word deus meaning "god") combines a rejection of religious knowledge as a source of authority with the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator of the universe. Deism gained prominence among intellectuals during the Age of Enlightenment – especially in Britain, France, Germany and the United States – who, raised as Christians, believed in one god but became disenchanted with organized religion and notions such as the Trinity, Biblical inerrancy and the supernatural interpretation of events such as miracles. Included in those influenced by its ideas were leaders of the American and French Revolutions.

This is the direction from which the British approached Hindu knowledge and tradition. Under these rules, it is necessary to have monotheistic religion (which is deemed "universal") but with no "miracles" or "revelations" or anything that cannot be explained by the current standards of what they called "rationality"

http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/word/deism

DEISM, n. [L. God.] The doctrine or creed of a deist; the belief or system of religious opinions of those who acknowledge the existence of one God, but deny revelation: or deism is the belief in natural religion only, or those truths, in doctrine and practice, which man is to discover by the light of reason, independent and exclusive of any revelation from God. Hence deism implies infidelity or a disbelief in the divine origin of the scriptures.

So not only did the Brits corner English speaking Hindus into accepting a religion, they have also pushed Hindus into asking if irrational things (Like Monkey Tail throne, or Monkey carrying mountain) should be accepted or not.

Hindus ideally should have the sense to understand that some parts of out itihaas are not there to appeal to western deistic ideas of rationality, but as timeless lessons and therefore become irrational nonsense if you fail to take the lesson and start looking for "rational" explanations in "modern science" about how monkey carried mountain for one herb.

If you look at the Mahabharata, the story of gambling and losing everything is "rational and credible". It could be dubbed "history". The story of house of lac designed to burn the Pandavas is rational and "credible" and could be called "history" But then a lesson on the value of worship when all else seems lost, when one's near and dear one's cannot or will not help you - ie. Draupadi's unending garments while she was bing disrobed. This story is "irrational" and would have to be discarded and "not history and unnecessary" And the other entire chapter on the meaning of dharma that I mentioned earlier, where 4 Pandavas lie dead at a lake shore while Yudishthira answers questions on Dharma would be an "irrational story" that should be discarded. Cannot be history. Requires miracles.

Deists in the west did it for reasons steeped in their own history. We need to work with our history and not take cues from them as too many Hindus, both secular and Hindutva-vadis seem to be doing. This may actually be the appeal of western universalism

shiv saar,

I think there is a fundamental difference in the thinking and motivation of Europeans, who came up with Deism, and Bharatiyas, which leads to two different outcomes.

Here we return to our discussion on Religion and Sanskriti.

For true Christians, it is imperative to believe in the Bible, in the Word of God, and to have faith in that. That is the foundation of Church, of Religion. Without that faith, everything collapses. Bible or Qu'ran are efforts of self-appointed Emissaries and their groupies to make a case for God and their own representation of Him on Earth, by glorifying His power, by terrifying the believer into submission, by suggesting models in response to existential questions and by claiming representational authority by presenting genealogical lines and showing miracles! In short, it is a sales pitch based on gullibility.

There is no ethical imperative in Christianity to perpetuate tradition, preserve culture, understand underlying philosophy, live by noble ethics autonomous of those given by God, or even to seek knowledge! All that is irrelevant!

We make the mistake that the basis of our faith and associated action/behavior is the same as that in Christianity or in Religion in general!

Religion is analogous to a Slide in the hot Sun. Faith is a pair of thick trousers. If you wearing those, then you would slide smoothly and the hot metal of the slide would not burn your butt and legs. If you lose faith, then the religion may not remain that appealing.

Sanskriti is more like a whole amusement park! You can try whatever suits you - you can ride Itihas, Darśanams, Śruti, Ishwarvadi Bhakti, Pooja, Paath, Saṃskāra, Yoga, Tapa, Dharma, Virya, Shilpkala, Nritya, Natak, Saṃskṛtam, whatever you feel like! And everything is somehow interconnected like in an amusement park! The Darśanams keep our Faith rooted in Logic and Rationality by presenting the appropriate perspective.

We are a Sanskriti, and not a Religion, and thus we are not Fragile!

If we were to make Western Universalism as the Subject observing us as an Object, then we lose all our independence of thought. In fact even if we try to hide ourselves from the gaze of the Subject, then the Subject still sees us as hiding ourselves. That is where our insecurity comes from.

Our insecurity does not come from researching our texts for their historicity, but from having the West as the Subject.

Sure there are Hindu "Chauvinists" who like to take our Itihas literally in every aspect and respond to Macaulayist poking by making extraordinary claims. Their fault is that in order to respond, they accept and use Western categories and vocabulary, and thus sound irrational in that framework. Before answering a query made in a Western semantic framework, a Hindu would perhaps have to make several changes to Western semantics, in order to explain his thinking to them. But considering the rhetorical nature of such an exchange, often that effort is not made and as such responses end up being ridiculous and sounding "irrational". It is in this case that Rajiv Malhotra's suggestion of having Sanskrit Non-translatables makes sense.

And just like our Sanskriti is a whole amusement park, so too is our Itihas.

Yes of course is our Itihas for "Adhyatmic Jñāna", but those speaking in favor of restricting our Itihas only to spiritual knowledge are in some ways also acting according to Exclusivist paradigm. Itihas's purpose is only for "Adhyatma" and don't dare consider it as history or anything else!

This is where I find Balu's advice to Hindutva not to look at our Itihasic characters as historic people. It is presumptuous, and it is arrogant!

No Hindutvavadi is telling Balu, he should not read Ramayana or Mahabharata, solely for his Adhyatmic fulfillment. But he thinks Hindutvavadis are a bunch of people too obsessed with responding to Western poking about our historicity! He may be telling the Mouse it shouldn't move when the Scientist pokes him with a stick, for then the Scientist would go away! But in this scheme, the Scientist remains the Scientist and the Mouse remains the Mouse! The Subject remains the Subject and the Object remains the Object! The only difference that one has made is that the Scientist would jot down in his lab notes, that the Mouse refused to move due to some sense of pride and feigned ignorance of the provoking stick.

Trying to restrict Itihas only to "Adhyatmic Jñāna" is asking the Mouse to remain still when poked, so as to deny the Scientist the joy of seeing the Mouse react to his provocation. Should the Mouse then chew up his own legs, just so that it denies the Scientist the satisfaction of seeing it moving? "Na rahega baans, na bajegi baansuri"? This way the Mouse can perhaps additionally prove that it did not move because it had no legs, so that the Scientist then doesn't know why the Mouse did not move? All this keeps us in the cage of Western Universalism!

Balu's advice to Hindutvavadis does not change the West as a reference frame, but rather only perpetuates it. {My advice to the Mouse would be to bite the Scientist's finger really deep and then take notes on how much blood comes out!}

It is in the nature of the beast, that Itihas would continue to mean many things to different people, and there is no need to criticize one or the other, as long as the one treating the texts retains a sympathetic disposition towards our Sanskriti.

Just as an example, I accept Nilesh's dating of Rama's birth - Nov 29. 12240. For me that is plausible! There are other Hindus who suggest the date to be 1.2 million years ago, during the Treta Yuga! Fine, that is what they believe in, what their framework of beliefs and assumptions suggests to them! I have no problem with that.

Balu should know that for Hindutvavadis, the focus is a very different one than what he represents.

Itihas for Hindutva is that what keeps Sanskriti rooted to our Rāṣṭra.

The Hinduist stream of thought seems to be trying to uproot our Sanskriti from its geography, i.e. Bharat, and trying to make it an exportable commodity, something that one can put in a suitcase and take along to Amreeka, and forget that its roots lie in India. That is Hinduists are helping the West digest our Sanskriti. The Hinduists would make the case that everything in our Sanskriti, all our texts are basically non-historical in nature, for "Adhyatmic" purposes only.

The Hindutvavadi stream of thought tries to bind our Sanskriti to our Rāṣṭra through the sacred geography, and by keeping Itihas as something that happened in the sacred geography of Bharat, as Bharat's past. Hindutvavad does not reject the exportability of Āryatva Sanskriti, but we do insist on a copyleft license like say the Apache License II with a Notice text file referring to the Bharatiya sacred geography!

The Hinduists however wish to ignore the geography and to discard any Notice Text. The West which seems now to support Hinduists, may want in the future to do away with the copyleft licensing as well and set up a Hindu Holy See which would start telling Hindus all over the world what is the right path in Hinduism.

So I am against this "Adhyatmic" movement which tries to bury the sacred geography of "Āryatva Sanskriti"!

In many ways it looks not much different than the AIT.

First the British appropriated Aryan epithet for themselves from the Hindus, then they called the Dravidians some black mass of heathendom and then telling them that North Indian Brahmins considered them inferior due to the Aryan roots, so to avoid this "discrimination", the Dravidians should better convert to Christianity, and forget Hindi/Sanskrit.

Here the West may be appropriating Hindu epithet for themselves from the Hindus, by first calling Hindu Nationalists some names like irrational chauvinists, and then telling them that the British Colonialists, Macaulayists, Seculars derided them in the past, so to avoid this "ridicule" the Hindus should better convert to "Adhyatmic Hinduism", and forget history/geography.

Here is what you wrote in the first post

Hindu history is more one of geography and culture. The geography is intrinsic to Hindu history.

and subsequently

It is the geography that I was speaking of when I mentioned the Ramayana and Mahabharata, not a claim that the stories are 100% true and consistent. It is the place-names of the Ramayana and Mahabharata that are so significant. Have you read detailed versions recently? They may be made up stories. But those made up stories speak of a common culture across a geographic region and the stories exist in some form or other across that region. That is why I made a point about history and geography being taken separately or together. History without reference to geography is meaningless. ignoring geography in the literary and cultural memes of a people is equally a sign of illiteracy and denial of history.

This is generally what I too can concur with, except perhaps the "They may be made up stories." part.

Yes the main focus is the geography for Hindutvavadis, much less the timing, or the technological claims.

[RajeshA]

Image Problems of the Hindu

Cross-posting from the "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Indeed, a wider recognition of this ancestral greatness would solve a number of contemporary problems Hinduism faces. Separatism, the phenomenon that Hindu sects declare that they are non-Hindu and back-project that they never have been Hindus, is largely due to the bad reputation of Hinduism. Nobody wants to stay on a sinking ship (especially not the rats, the true nature of most defectors). Hinduism is slandered as “caste, wholly caste and nothing but caste”, and when at all it is admitted to be something else on top, it must be widow self-immolation, child marriage, dowry murders, nowadays the rapes that make headlines, and other human rights violations. Moreover, it is seen as superstitious, incoherent, flaky, and worst of all, weak. Hinduism has an intensely bad image, and that is why the Jains, Buddhists, Lingayats, Sikhs, Arya Samajis, Ramakrishna Mission and others insist that they are not Hindus, while another category of malcontents defect by converting to Christianity or Islam.

Koenraad Elst does make some good points, but some points do go under later in his commentary.

1. worst of all, weak: this is the perfect boxing in: if you show strength, then we will deride you as extremist, intolerant, genocidal, etc. and if you practice Gandhigiri, then we will start calling you weak and meek. Koenraad Elst did not go further into how to break out of the box. Definitely the pall of secularism and degeneration of traditional Hindu institutions of Kshatriyata may have contributed to a certain weakening, but the weakness lies in the control of the narrative. Hindu can show Kshatriyata without any remorse or hesitation, if the narrative of the conflict is absolutely in favor of Dharmic wrath over Adharma. Groups of Hindus do enter into conflict with other groups, but mainstream Hindus cringe at that due to the pall of Secularism. The Hindu is very much in the same position as Arjuna, unwilling to fight and instead of bonds of blood that Arjuna had with the Kauravas, here we have responsibilities as a tolerant secular Indian. There is no Krishna to paint the opposite side as total Adharma, and even castigate elders like Bhishma Pitamah, Guru Dronacharya, and others as supportive of Adharma and thus Adharma. It is Secularism which has spread this pall of greyness over the ethical duty of the Hindu. And just like Arjuna, the Hindu is weak today! Only ethical clarity can remove this pall! And there where the Secularists leave off, the Hinduists take up from there turning our Sanskriti, our Itihas into some Ahinsātmak-Ādhyātmik Manthan and purging all the Vīrya out of our Itihas.
2. superstitious: This again is a consequence of a propaganda defeat which Hindus are bound to get as long as we say "Hinduism" is a "Religion", because under Religion, all the beliefs of everybody would be accumulated, and all practices of various groups would be projected onto this megalith called "Hinduism Religion" and thus something of which all its followers partake of, either as guilt, or as embarrassment, or as inconsistency. If there are some low "superstitious" beliefs in some group in India, then that becomes the burden of all Hindus, and if some Hindus eat beef in some part, then it becomes a inconsistency of all of Hinduism! Yes, people are allowed to be superstitious. They may be carrying some age-old practice which made sense at some time in the past, and thus they carry some knowledge of the past. Yes people can be superstitious and their practices may not make sense looked at superficially. That is the whole point of plurality. But plurality and Religion don't really go together, and that is why we should not call ourselves a Religion but rather a Sanskriti.
3. flaky: Again, structurally speaking, this becomes a problem when we see ourselves as a Religion. A Religion flakes. A Sanskriti expands. A religion is bound by identity and group belonging, and as such the Religion structure encourages various groups to assert their identity and sharply mark its contours viz-a-viz another. In our Sanskriti, every Panth presents its Moksha Marga and its exposition of the Common Dharma. However Religion-based contouring and demarcation is causing the unnatural pseudo-flaking that should not and need not be there.
4. incoherent: Partly the incoherence comes from understanding Hinduism as a Religion, because a Religion is expected to be coherent. If we consider ourselves as a Sanskriti, then the incoherence vanishes, because that is just plurality of views. The real incoherence however comes on the ethical and political side of the equation, the Dharma. Who really is there in India to articulate Hindu Dharma? By disfiguring our Sanskriti with Dharma to mean simply some Ahinsātmak-Ādhyātmik Manthan called "Hinduism", the only place left was for pandits, and sants promising spiritual fulfillment, astrological predictions, and material blessings! There was nobody left to speak on what should be the Dharma of the Hindus, regarding socio-political ethics for today's world! RSS has tried to fill this space, but existing under a secular authoritarianism and a hostile media, there is only so much they could do. So everything has become individual and reactive!

[RajeshA]

Gadhimai in Nepal

Social Media is ablaze about the sacrificing of 5000 buffalos!

Published on Nov 28, 2014
By Sara Malm
Nepal's killing fields: FIVE THOUSAND buffalo lie slaughtered at the beginning of Hindu ceremony which sees up to 300,000 animals killed to bring worshippers good luck: Daily Mail UK



I personally find it a disgusting practice and contrary to my values, and I find that it would also be against Dharma.

But basically the message is that if this happens somewhere, let's say in Gadhimai, Nepal, and the temple and "festival" is devoted to the Goddess Gadhimai, then the ceremony becomes a part of Hinduism Religion, and thus every Hindu belonging to Hinduism Religion should feel shame at this gruesome massacre, because it is a portrayal of the culture and values which Hinduism represent.

Now this is what happens when one declares that there is something called Hinduism and it is a Religion. Then all sorts of practices within Bharat get projected into Hinduism and from Hinduism to every person who calls himself Hindu!

However Hinduism is a manufactured Religion, and that too by the British, and in fact there are no Religions originating from Indian Civilization.

What we have is Ārya Sanskriti and some deplorable practices where people have misunderstood the Ārya Dharma. Of course Dharma needs to be explained to the people so that they can correct themselves.

However there is no reason that any Ārya needs to feel ashamed that this practice is a reflection of "Hinduism", something which is an alien understanding of us, or is a reflection of Āryatva, which is the goal of our Sanskriti, and by which we define ourselves. Just as the talk of Satan in the Bible does not make Bible a Book of Evil, same way such a Gadhimai sacrificial practice within the region of Āryavarta, does not make Āryatva Sanskriti less noble.

This is not a practice which demands "Reform of Hinduism Religion", because there is no Hinduism Religion, that requires reforming. This is a practice which demands attention by the leaders of the Āryavarta, leaders of Bharat, so that this practice can be deprecated.

The only shame that Bharatiya Āryas may bear is that they have not attended to this Adharmic practice in their region of influence, but they should not feel ashamed that this practice somehow is a reflection of their value system.

On social media, I have seen some Hindus even trying to justify this practice calling it our own and others should not criticize it. They are "owning" this practice. Why? They think that others have no right to criticize Hindu practices. But who said anything about this being a Hindu practice. It is just a practice of a certain place where Ārya Dharma has not yet won over the people. There is no need to be protective. Nor is there any need to feel ashamed.

Don't fall into the Religion trap!

Perhaps it may be worth thinking why it is the British who are leading the movement against this practice and why they are so eager to call it "Hindu".

[harbans]

^ This is the exact trap that terminology gets us into. Truth is the Temple in Gadhmai has only a stone for breaking of coconuts. Some 200 years ago an imprisoned feudal had a dream that his problems will be over if he sacrificed his cattle to the Goddess. He instructed that and it became a tradition. We will never know how much his "vision" was influenced by sacrifices like Eid quite common in the region, but in no way this is a Dharmic tradition. Sacrifice in Tamas is considered a sin by almost all accounts without exceptions. But for those who have generalized "Hindu" to mean every religious ideology in the subcontinent minus Muslims minus Xtians minus Sikhs minus Jains minus Buddhists and now seeing/ reading this Vaishnavs, many Shaivite, Dvait, Advait and dozens of other groups will be tempted to not call themselves Hindu any more. Hence the present understanding of "Hindu" is a trap few see. What will be left after all the minus's will be exactly what the Xtian/ Muslim/ Western propaganda warned us about and what Shiv notes as in his first post:

typically a figure wearing shorts, a hastily smeared tilak (a messy patch of vermilion on the forehead), sometimes with orange flag or robes - with his fist raised and mouth open ostensibly calling for the killing of all people dubbed as non Hindu. In these days of photoshop the Hindutva-vadi of "Hindu nationalist" image shows dead people or burning buildings in the background or the massacred buffaloes and goats of Gadhamai

{Blue italics mine)

If you go through SM its more a saga of OK you Abrahmics do it also so do we, thus subtly equating Abrahmic religious barbarity with our core Dharmic ethic. This is a trap and the faster we realize it and with more uniformity condemn and not equate it to the real fundamentals of sacrifice that have been in practice for millenia the better. THe gravity of the damage this causes in perception is that people equate Hinduism with as cruel violence as far as mass religious sacrifice goes with the Abrahmic ones. Should it matter if others feel so? No it shouldn;t if the sacrifice really symbolized what we are. But it doesn't. And many don't want to be associated with a "Hinduism" that includes this Adharmic barbarity. Approval of this tamsic activity only leads to breaking the Hindu samaj not enhancing it. The vocal movement denouncing these acts unfortunately is not coming so much from hindu samaj itself but from the secular establishment that does more damage.

[member_20317]

It needs to be clarified that Bali of the male Buffalo, male goats, males basically even of self is ok. Oxes and cows are not. Bali is quite common in the Himalayan belt esp. wherever Mata is the ruling deity or Mahadev is the protector. I think there are places in south India also and Rajasthan where Bali are still practiced. Bali are already pushed outside the normal practice in most places and gradually with the passage of time the remaining too would be forgotten. And yes a cull of disproportionate scale should certainly be out of practice. But then if it is the truth then it is. Not that proportionate scale Bali should remain. But just be careful for what you ask for. If you deny a Bali something equally demanding has to be given (not necessarily involving blood and gore but demanding nonetheless).

I was about to put a smilie but then realized its the Bharatiya thread.

[harbans]

People who did these kind of Tamsic sacrifices were what foreigners labelled with some truth as "outcastes' of Hindu society. Shunned. Then at some point Hindu samaj claimed them and now they say hey how shameful this is part of Hinduism and hey why don't you put pressure on them to stop this (ineffect treat them as "outcastes").

[member_20317]

Sacrifices of passion and Rajas. Terrible does not mean fear-inducing. Slick and suave often qualifies as fearful. Jaane do. Or if you insist then try it yourself and perhaps you may change your views. Perhaps only because you equally likely may not.

But yes Rajas should remain under control in homes, villages, settlements.

[RajeshA]

ravi_g ji,

If "बलिदान माँगती माँ", then we can perhaps provide the bali of some Jihadis and Chinese intruders we catch on the border. BSF can donate these Jihadis/Chinese to such temples and Gadhimai and others, as a service provider.

[RajeshA]

If anybody has information about where meat from Gadhimai buffalo sacrifices is sold, please do post!

[RajeshA]

Misunderstanding on Nature of Religion (Cont.)

Hinduism – At a Loss for Words!

The number of times it is claimed that Hinduism does not have a name for something is nothing less than striking.

Let us begin with the claim that Hinduism does not have a word for itself. A. L. Basham writes:

There are probably over 300 million Hindus in the world, most of them in India, but also many in other parts of Asia, and in Africa and the West Indies. Though they form one of the largest and most important groups of the world, their faith is indefinable in a few words. It is possible to define the Christian or Muslim as the man who attempts to follow what he believes to be the teachings of Christ or Muhammad respectively, but Hinduism had no such single founder. Some modern sociologists have defined Christians and Muslims as those who consider themselves as such, but a similar definition cannot be applied to Hindus, for probably most of them have never even heard the word Hindu, and have no name for their religion. It was once said that anyone might be considered a Hindu who respected the Brāhman and his cow, and maintained the rules of caste, but his definition would exclude many of the most earnest of modern Hindus, as well as a number of unorthodox Hindu groups of earlier times. We can perhaps best briefly describe a Hindu as a man who chiefly bases his beliefs and way of life on the complex system of faith and practice which has grown up organically in the Indian sub-continent over a period of at least three millennia.

One is in vain search of a religion, but that is not the architecture of our system.

We have a word for our system: it is Āryatva. It is not a Religion. It is a Civilization (Āryatva Sabhyata). It is a Culture (Āryatva Sanskriti). It is a Geography (Āryāvarta).

This itself is not bound to our civilization-nation (Bhāratīya Rāṣṭra).

Then comes the claim that the Hindu does not have a word for religion:

In classical India – again if we exclude personal religion, or religiousness, there is no word for our concept. In the threefold trivarga of mundane life, the realm of human behavior is classified into those actions that one does for the sheer enjoyment of them (kāma), those that are means to some end (artha), and those that are duties (dharma). The last of these, dharma, ranging in its reference from propriety to public law, from temple ritual to caste obligations, and much more, has on occasion been proffered by moderns as a term signifying systematic religion for Hindus. It does include a good deal of what the modern Western student regards so, as normative ideals and as sociological pattern; though it includes also a certain amount of matter that falls outside such a concept.[ii]

Problem is not that one cannot find an appropriate word for religion in Indic language. Problem has always been that one has not been able to differentiate between own system and that proposed by the others. If one knows what Religion is, and this is my feature list for Religion, then it becomes easy to find some word for it.

So here is a proposal: Religion == Dēva-Dūta-Dāsatva (देव-दूत-दासत्व)

It is of course a different matter, that the Dēva may indeed not be one.

Next comes the claim that Hinduism does not have a word for caste:

The Hindus have not any name for the caste institution, which seems to them part of the order of nature. It is almost impossible for a Hindu to regard himself otherwise than as a member of some particular caste, or species of Hindu mankind. Everybody else who disregards Hindu dharma is an ‘outer barbarian’ (mlechchha) no matter how exalted his worldly rank or how vast his wealth may be. The proper Sanskrit and vernacular term for ‘a caste’ is jāti (jāt), ‘species’, although, as noted above, the members of a jāti are not necessarily descended from a common ancestor. Indeed, as a matter of fact, they are rarely, if ever, so descended. Their special caste rules make their community in effect a distinct species, whoever their ancestors may have been. [iii]

Perhaps one can agree that Caste or rather Casta is something sanctioned by the Catholic Church, especially through their Iberian Monarchies, which perhaps they too inherited from the Muslims in Spain.

It has nothing to do with India. So there is no need to go looking for something in India, that is not there.

Finally we learn that Hinduism does not have a word for ‘conversion.’

The diffusion of Vaiṣṇavite and Śaivite ideas outside India is enough to show that Hinduism, too, was a missionary religion; at a very early date a Hinduist movement took root in the Hellenistic world and penetrated as far as Egypt. The decline of Hinduism after the Moselm period must not be allowed to obscure this fact. The old lawgivers say that to be a Hindu, or, more exactly, to belong to one of the three Āryan classes, means to have been born in a certain area of Hindustan, the Āryāvarta (or homeland of a the Āryas); but this assertion need not be taken literally. Hinduism long ago advanced beyond the limits assigned to it by the laws of Manu, by means of conquest or peaceful absorption, by marriage, and by adoption. Hinduism has not a word to express the process of conversion so frequently referred to in Buddhist and Jaina apologetics, books written by the converted for those to be converted; but passages can be cited from the Mahabharata which show that people of low caste, enemies and foreigners who were received into the Hindu fold. Many people wanted to raise their status and to be admitted to the Ārya society; others fell away from it through marriage outside its ranks and by transgressions and misfortunes. A passage of Patañjali attests that the Śakas and the Yavanas could perform sacrifices and accept food from an Ārya without contaminating it. The fact is that Hinduism is a way of life, a mode of thought, that becomes second nature. It is not so much its practices that are important, for they can be dispensed with; not is it the Church, since it has no priesthood, or at least no sacerdotal hierarchy. The important thing is to accept certain fundamental conceptions, to acknowledge a certain ‘spirituality’, a term much abused in current parlance. For many Hindus it would be quite legitimate to take Jesus as iṣṭadevatā, without even regarding him as an avatāra, so long as Indian tradition were acknowledged.[iv]

If we couple this with the fact that those who take to Hinduism in the West do not to admit to doing so, we have the spectacle of countless unacknowledging people converting people anonymously though a nameless process, to a religion which does not even have a name.

The reason one doesn't find "conversion" in "Hinduism" as such is that because one is looking for an "conversion" which does not exist in a religion "Hinduism" which does not exist. "Conversion" means an oath of allegiance to the supposed representatives of the supposed emissary of a supposed God. There is no such thing to find. If "Hinduism" were a Religion, we probably would have had it, but we are not one, so we don't have it.

Indeed we have a different mission - not to sway others to pledge their allegiance to some system offered by us, but rather to go out and teach people how to be noble.

That mission is called "Krivanto Vishwam Aryam".

[RajeshA]

Misunderstanding on Nature of Religion (Cont.)

Cross-posting from "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

would it be wrong to say that the non-religion spiritual Hinduism can get a lot of people to accept its premise worldwide
(exhibit - it got to proselytize even among the Egyptians in ancient times and a lot of the contemporary western world accepts the Hindu practices like Yoga oblivious of the fact that it is claimed under the religious Hinduism).

For a second, let's try to think outside the category of "Hinduism", "Hinduism is a Religion".

Even the use of 'Sanātana Dharma' can be misleading because it is often used instead of "Hinduism", but otherwise everything else is kept the same, i.e. one retains the architecture of Religion.

The main thing about our system is not the "religiosity", "piety", "ritualism" or "spirituality". The main thing is ethics. Whatever one has which one considers as part of 'Sanātana Dharma', be it the Vedas, Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishadas, Puranas, Itihas, Dharmaśāstras, etc. all have only one purpose - the exposition of Dharma, the Ārya System of Meta-Ethics.

Every thing else is a by-product including spiritualism.

So when we expound "Krivanto Vishwam Aryam", our primary goal is to bring to others Dharma, but that requires a complete Sanskriti as syllabus.

But then a bunch of determined Islamists can easily roll the party up.

Since Hindus have suffered under Brits and EJs too so I guess there should be no difficulty for them either, to wind up the spiritual Hinduism.

Now problem then becomes even more complex for me. Now I would need to understand why both Hindus and Abrahmics then claim that Hindus are a separate religion. I can understand your proposition getting applied to Hindus that they do not have a religion quotient and are only hoodwinked by western universalists into believing that they are a religion. But how can the Abrahmics and Seculars be convinced about this as a fact - that Hindus should not be hated/feared because they are not a religion. Should be presume that they do not understand this because they too are mislead into believing that. I hope we can use the word belief because if its merely a clash of opinions then any and all sides should be amenable to change of opinions. There being no point in losing lives for an opinion poll.

Other Religion is not the main enemy of some Religion like Christianity or Islam, and in fact one sees them cooperating. Their main enemy is a different system of thinking which makes them redundant, unable to exert political sway over others, unable to herd their flock according to their whims.

That is what Dharma does. Anybody steeped in Dharma (and I don't mean by that either piety, religiosity, ritualism or spirituality) would just show them the middle-finger.

The issue is not to win their approval by rejecting the label "religion" for Hinduism, but rather to challenge them to a serious debate on Dharma vs Religion.

1) Hindus are merely colonized into believing that they are a religion. Because Abrahmics claimed Hindus constitute a religion and kicked us around on the basis of that belief and as a reaction we Hindus ended up taking up a defensive position and ended up as a religion too, probably losing our essential spiritualism in the process.

Basically correct, but spiritualism is all a distraction about what we represent as a Civilization. It is a major part but not the core.

2) Hinduism is essentially a spiritual experience implying that a political party should not claim to be representing the interests of Hindus as a religious group. Furthermore Hindus should not ideally be voting on the basis of such a proposition. Spiritual people should ideally take up resolution of their differences in formal mechanisms like courts, university departments and especially through ballot in favour of good candidates and not a suitable party. No place for any militarism except in the form of statutorily regulated facilities like NCC again ideally in mixed religious groups.

Hinduism is a useless misnomer, and we should get rid of it. The Hindu Identity is not a product of "Hinduism", but a product of spirited resistance to domination of foreign imperialist predatory ideologies and powers over Bharat, i.e. Hindutva.

One cannot get more political than calling oneself Hindu!

The Hindu should avail of each and every avenue to push back the Abrahamist takeover of India.

3) There are mechanisms in place to address the problems of Hindus if at all they are forced into a position where they have grievances that can be understood as having a religious dimension to it.

Biggest grievance of the Hindus is that Bharat is not ruled by Dharma anymore but has been severely compromised by Adharmic forces. Control and management of temples is a secondary issue and far lower down in importance.

4) The spiritualism of Hinduism gets vitiated by taking up a position that brings out Hinduism as a religion.

No. Spiritualism of "Hinduism" is in fact the only thing that gets endorsed, when one uses Hinduism as a Religion, because due to the lack of other organs which usually a Religion has to assert its hard power, "Hinduism" has none, and hence only spiritualism is left, and is the one thing that is often pushed by Westerners, Seculars and Hinduists.

5) Dharma and spiritualism are same and spiritualism is not religion hence Dharma cannot both be religion and spiritualism at the same time as that would amount to a contradiction.

Spiritualism one could refer to perhaps using the word Yoga, or rather a subset of it, consisting of Jnāna Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Dhyāna Yoga. Yoga is the science of awakening the Ātman. Dharma is more like the ethics of an awakened Ātman.

[RajeshA]

Misunderstanding on Nature of Religion (Cont.)

On more than a few occasions, Rajiv Malhotra has highlighted the digestion of Buddhism and "Hinduism" that is taking place in the West - Yoga, Meditation, etc.

Now I've heard some Westerners arguing that there is nothing in Yoga or Meditation which really binds it to "Hinduism", and as such everybody including Christians should be allowed to partake in that, i.e. at one level rejecting any Bharatiya claims to it as well as arguing in favor of digestion of these by Western society. Yes Rajiv Malhotra has tried to make a case that Christianity and Yoga do not go together due to a mismatch at a metaphysical level.

However because Rajiv Malhotra more or less uses the predefined architecture of Religion, especially for Hinduism, he has some difficulty putting his message across.

"Hinduism" as a Religion is an arbitrary mash up of concepts, like pushing a square peg through a round hole. So anybody, i.e. anybody with a fair access to academic control and media resources, can throw in all sorts of bad-reputation issues into the "Hinduism"-Religion pot like Gadhimai, caste, Suttee and take out any goody-goody things they find in the pot. Since this is an arbitrary act in a manufactured pot of "Hinduism", there is really nobody to take ownership of what belongs in the false pot and what does not!

How can anybody claim that Yoga belongs in "Hinduism" when we as confused sheep run here and there trying to define what is in Hinduism and what is not, or start crying wolf when we see violations of our arbitrarily cooked up Hinduism. There are who knows how many different definitions of "Hinduism" out there put out often by well-meaning Hindus, and pissed on often by Christianists, Westerners and their Macaulayist sepoys.

What we get is "Hinduism" Noise!

I think Pakistanis have a better chance finding "Pakistaniyat ka matlab kya hai" than Hindus being able to force-fit our Sanskriti into "Hinduism"!

And despite his meta-physical insights into our Dharmic tradition, Rajiv Malhotra too seems lost on how he can convince his Western audience that they do not have a right to Yoga unless they acknowledge its real purpose. He is lost because he is working with the architecture of "Hinduism as a Religion" on par with other Religions.

In "Being Different" he tried to formulate the differences between Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions, but he tried to do that showing how both are different kind of "Religion" Groups. He ended up showing only morphological differences.

So the problem is two fold:

1. We seem to not be able to assert our ownership over our cultural products.
2. We seem to be bombarded with negative propaganda about who we are.

And the reason is that "Hinduism" as it is, as it is understood as a Religion, is inadequate to define us and to protect our inheritance.

So what is it that can indeed protect our inheritance! That can only be "Āryatva Sanskriti". Let's pit the issue as 'Āryatva Sanskriti' vs Religion. Then the whole fog clears.

'Āryatva Sanskriti' says that any cultural product - Yoga, Meditation, Ayurveda, etc. is a product, indeed a component of 'Āryatva Sanskriti' and it has a very particular raison d'être in supporting the whole 'Āryatva Architecture' whose goal is Dharma.

So the issue can be formulated as equivalent of a copyrights issue, as a terms of use issue, as a license issue. And then there is a case of meta-physical and philosophical disharmony that this cut and paste of Sanskritic components into Religion bring with it.

[RajeshA]

The Hindutvavadi, the Hinduist and the Hindu (Cont.)

Cross-posting from the "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Following are some posts that I found by searching on "anger" and "shame" in this thread.

Link

But Hindus were not eliminated. We Hindus tend to be very proud of this, but that is a mistake. What has been done is to create a sense of self hate in us. Our secularists are a part of the self haters, but even Hindutvavadis are part of the problem. They are not self haters, but they are aggrieved and angry people who do not have the words and means to express why these accusations are wrong. And it is expressions of anger that cause them to be accused of being violence prone.

Hindutva vadis may not be self haters, but they are just as hurt and ashamed about what was said about our past. In order to climb out of this deep sense of shame Hindus desperately try to deny and fight against all the accusations made

Link

I also dislike the Hindutva attitude of explanations emerging from a deep sense of hurt and anger and complete ignorance of how words and meanings with a European Christian context were used to smear us. We have learned no new words and we are trying to use the same words to turn the tables round. Its like knowing only the words "bad" and "stupid" that have been used to describe us, and then trying to wrestle with those words to say how we were good and smart and how the words "bad" and "stupid" actually mean good and smart in our dictionary. We need an increased vocabulary and an increased desire to use our own words (like dharma and itihaasa) and explain them in language that does not use the old words like religion and history.

Our inability to reframe the problem in a universally comprehensible language has led to a secular vs hindutva fight. It is not because the seculars are stupid and Hindutva vadis are clever. Both unfortunately are emerging from their mental colonization with different views but both are totally ignorant of what it was that caused them to develop this deep sense of shame. It was an original Hindu inability to express himself to a racist sceptical British ruler in his terms. But at least now we can express ourselves right - but we need to do our homework for that, and not come up with inane excuses or denials.

Link

When Hindus get angry, the anger is termed the anger of losers who need to suck it up and learn to live with it. But that anger is no substitute for understanding. We have a duty to see Hindus as the British saw us to understand why they damned us, and then expand our vocabulary and expressiveness to point out the gross historic fallacies that have gone mainstream when the British accused Hindus of having no religion, history, laws or ethics.

it is Hindu anger that is dubbed as fundamentalism and angry Hindu nationalists are called fundamentalists. But unless supporters of Hindutva can open their brains to new thought, this is not going to change. i think we can do our country and culture a favour by turning the debate and the cliches upside down. We have an opportunity and we must grab it.

I would like to use the above noted sentiments to make a general criticism, and this is please not to be mistaken as some sort of personal criticism or sign of disrespect.

I would term above category of expressions as the "Menstruating Woman Attack".

Basically the attempt is to project
- emotionality and thus
- lack of balance,
- lack of rationality,
- impotent anger, and
- frustration onto the Hindutvavadi.

Such an accusation allows the other to claim superior rationalism and balance, and based on it to claim that one's arguments are more logical and superior, while the others arguments and responses simply fall apart simply due to their coming from ignorant and unbalanced minds, in this case minds of Hindutvavadis.

Now why am I raking up this aspect of the discussion here? I am because like by umpteen ideological fronts before, I feel even here, unknowingly perhaps, an effort is being made to delegitimize the Hindutvavadi opinion.

Often it is done by some party or the other trying to occupy the middle ground and putting Hindutvavadis down. If Hindus had a problem with Islamic rulers, then British pushed themselves into the equation, and claimed to be neutral arbitrators. If Hindus had a problem with the British, then an assortment of Seculars, Dhimmis, Macaulayists and Marxists with Hindu-sounding-names pushed themselves in between, and claimed to represent us, but ended us putting us down. When Hindus were able to unmask this dirty lot, now it seems a whole lot of Hinduists are pushing themselves in between, claiming to uphold the interests of Hindus, trying to mediate between Seculars and Hindutvavadis, cursing Seculars and calling Hindutvavadis as irrational to earn the confidence of both.

As I have said earlier, Hinduists for me are those who disclaim that "Hinduism", "Sanatana Dharma" is deeply rooted in Bharatvarsha through Itihas and thus through sacred geography, and who treat our Sanskriti as an exportable commodity where they can leave out the label in boldface, "Made in India". Secondly in order to make "Hinduism" more easily exportable, effort is made to dumb it down, chop off the thorns; in order to make "Hinduism" more easily digestible, effort is made to lessen the hotness, the chilli content of "Hinduism", shoo away all those Hindutvavadis who give "Hinduism" a bad name, either through chauvinism, intolerance and violence or by making preposterous statements of nuclear technology in Pracheen Bharat. Thirdly what Hinduists seek is equality with West, respect from West, not ideological or civilizational confrontation, for such a posture may not be liked by those whom they wish to lure with and sell Ādhyātma.

Now the above expressions, I wouldn't necessarily categorize as Hinduist arguments, but the high middle ground is being sought nevertheless to delegitimize Hindutva opinion.

The main reason remains: If one considers one's identity to be based on "Hinduism" or "Sanatana Dharma", the Religion, then Hindutvavad's activities cast a shadow on its antecedents as a tolerant religion from which followers of "Hinduism", the Hinduists like to distance themselves from and seem to have a difficulty to shake Hindutvad's image off.

So Hinduists now have started giving explanations for Hindutvavadis, the same way Moderate Muslims give explanations for the conduct of Taliban: Hindutvavadis are hurt, angry, riven with shame, and so they have become reactionary, but they are still WRONG. How can emotionally charged people be rational and right? And yes, just like Taliban have certain grievances against the West, for West's interventions in the affairs and politics of the Muslim world, so too have Hindutvavadis a certain right to be angry and show impotent anger! BUT their ideology does not mean "Hinduism" is intolerant, just like Taliban's actions does not mean that Islam is any less a Religion of Peace.

Bottomline for others is: Hindutvavadis are WRONG, both in resorting to aggressive postures as well as making "impossible" claims about Pracheen Bharat!

It is not Hindutvavadis that suffer from shame and anger. It is the Hinduists who suffer from shame and anger, shame and anger at their "co-religionists" making irrational statements and by resorting to violence, bringing a bad name to their beloved Religion "Hinduism"! And in whose eyes do Hindutvavadis bring a bad name? In the eyes of the West of course, for that remains the standard of objectivity and modernity for them!

In the future too, there will be a lot of apparently "fantastic" statements that would be made by Hindutvavadis about technological progress in Pracheen Bharat. And the only way others would respond is through ridicule and through their own shame! But the fact is that NOBODY can logically falsify any of the statements that Hindutvavadis make based on a certain reading of our texts. At least in favor of Hindutvadis would be the text, the Śabda as Pramāṇa. In favor of "Rational Modern Man" there is nothing other than theories of historical evolution of mankind based on Christianist and Colonial worldviews. The Hindutvavadi does not need to feel ashamed for any such claims. Yes the Hinduist would run and hide his face and act apologetically for lack of rational thinking of his "co-religionists".

In the future too, there will be many acts of violence committed by Hindutvavadis. If they can make the case these to be against Adharma and Rāṣṭra-Drōha, other Hindutvavadis would feel proud. Yes the Hinduist would again run and hide his face and look ashamed at the apparent intolerance of his "co-religionists".

It is not shame and anger that drives Hindutvavadis, but rather a sense of self, a sense of pride in self. It is not false pride. It is simply pride. And our pride in ourselves is not dependent in how pejoratively others call us. They simply don't have the intellectual caliber and unbiased sense to judge us! The only frustration of Hindutvavadis is with the Secularist grip on media and education in India. Basically the Hindutvavadi is forward-looking, solution-oriented, otherwise one would be seeing similar protests with Hindu rage-boys in India against Britain and West every other day.

It is the Hinduists who are the unhinged lot and feel Western eyes always watching them, whereas it is mostly their own eyes watching themselves through a Western perspective. It is the Hinduists who feel that the West treats them with somewhat disdain, either due to the activities of their "co-religionists", the Hindutvavadis, or because the West has "misunderstood" "Hinduism", perhaps due to failure of Western categories to better capture and appreciate our culture, and it is the job of Hindus to better explain ourselves to the West.

Yes Hindus are always ready to explain ourselves to others, but that is only to raise others to Āryatva, and not to justify ourselves to others. May be right now due to a thousand years of social degradation, even Hindutvavadis may not see the main priority to be to spread Āryatva, as we may be more concerned and preoccupied with protecting and strengthening the core. Should then intellectual Hinduists go around talking Hindutvavadis down as lacking an international perspective and thus being frogs in the well? I think not!

[RajeshA]

Cross-posting a post by shiv from "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Some thoughts:

People will rush towards doing something they like on their own. They will not have to be goaded or forced. For example - joining Facebook. But joining Facebook is a benign, excusable act. Similarly, people in the past have rushed towards sex without responsibility, addictions (to alcohol or drugs) as well as shortcuts to material happiness by stealing, intimidation etc. It is because of the social conflicts that these issues cause that morality has evolved in human societies.

But people do not necessarily enjoy or like "being good", like not telling lies, being charitable, not drinking, remaining faithful to a partner, helping family and bringing up children not stealing etc. Getting people to do things that they don't like is a problem.

Two routes have been taken by human societies (and we have discussed this earlier) to make people behave in ways that go against normal "temptations". One route was the establishment of moral rules, inculcated from childhood so that children grow up into adults with a built in fear or feelings of guilt when they want to steal, cheat or indulge in "anti-social behavior". Moral rules are generally not enforced by punishment. People can and do break moral rules, and morality inculcated in childhood can only reduce the possibility but not eliminate it. Those who are immoral will not get punished unless there is a further layer of "laws" to punish them.

This is where Hinduism differs from Abrahamic religions. For Hindus, moral rules, duties and obligations are taught via stories and histories, epics and legends. People are asked to strive for moral idealism. There are no Hindu laws to punish those who do not conform. For Hindus, the act of making laws to protect morality and social order was left to the individual ruler, or the government. The best rulers were always those who where themselves followers of moral rules and ensured that their people were also given justice by protection of those moral rules, which we call Dharma. This always left open the possibility of a king/ruler who would not or could not protect society from social ills.

What Abrahamic religions did was to try and eliminate the possibility of a king who would not impose morality. This was done by appointing a "permanent King" - a God, whose moral rules were handed down via a Prophet or some such means. But there was no point in appointing such a "God" unles the moral rules could be imposed. That is how religious "laws" came into existence. That is how, in Abrahamic religions, there came to be absolute rules that would invariably invite punishment if they were not followed. It is obvious that anyone who does not like this situation will try and leave the reigion. That is why Christianity and Islam came up with the concept of a law that ensures punishment if you do not join and stay within the religion. These absolute laws that enforced morality/good behavior/conformity were borrowed for the basis of "laws" and "legal systems" of all nations nowadays where "goverment" replaces "God"

It should really be a no brainer to understand that you need absolute laws that force people to follow your rules only when you want to be an absolute dictator. Abrahamic single Gods are positioned exactly like absolute dictators, although no one calls them that. Calling those Gods "dictators" would automatically invite a death sentence. Hinduism is nothing like this

The reason why Hindus are accused of having no "laws" and the accusation that Hindus are "corrupt" is because "Hinduism" is not a religion that imposes absolute laws with punishments meted out by humans for not following those laws. Hindu Dharma calls for everyone to follow those laws, but leaves it up to a particular leader/ruler/government to create mechanisms for following those laws.

It is important to understand these differences because they reflect Indian society and how Indians were seen by Abrahamic societies. When we say "Hinduism is a religion" we have absolutely no idea what "religion" means and what religions set out to do. We all grow up in a Hindu environment in which we have our Hindu dharmic morality which is enforced by Indian laws or by laws of the nation we live in, and we think "hey we are same same with religion". We are not.

Hinduism does not lay down rigid religious laws. Rigid religious laws were necessary to force people to follow those laws. The One God was the king whose law was forced on people (by other people). This is so different from the Hindu set up that it is only deep ignorance that makes us see similarities. We end up doing equal equal between the One monotheistic dictator-God and our concept of "Brahman". That is मूर्खता (moorkhta) at its saddest and most tragic manifestation.

[RajeshA]

What Abrahamic religions did was to try and eliminate the possibility of a king who would not impose morality. This was done by appointing a "permanent King" - a God, whose moral rules were handed down via a Prophet or some such means. But there was no point in appointing such a "God" unles the moral rules could be imposed. That is how religious "laws" came into existence. That is how, in Abrahamic religions, there came to be absolute rules that would invariably invite punishment if they were not followed. It is obvious that anyone who does not like this situation will try and leave the reigion. That is why Christianity and Islam came up with the concept of a law that ensures punishment if you do not join and stay within the religion. These absolute laws that enforced morality/good behavior/conformity were borrowed for the basis of "laws" and "legal systems" of all nations nowadays where "goverment" replaces "God"

It should really be a no brainer to understand that you need absolute laws that force people to follow your rules only when you want to be an absolute dictator. Abrahamic single Gods are positioned exactly like absolute dictators, although no one calls them that. Calling those Gods "dictators" would automatically invite a death sentence. Hinduism is nothing like this

Exactly!

Link

12. Feudalism is the primary or sole philosophical principle. In religion God is modeled on a Feudal Lord projected onto the transcendental plane.

[shiv]

A partial cross post of what ShauryaT posted
http://www.legalservicesindia.com/artic ... 391-1.html

The British while justifying their colonial rule in Indian claimed Indians lacked civilized system of self rule and their presence in this country gave India a sense of justice and rule of law. Many Indians today hold these views in their heart. These views are not only incorrect but they are blatant lies. The British supplanted ancient Indian law and introduced in its place their own system of law. One has to understand that this was not a simple change of laws but was the imposition of a totally alien philosophy, understanding of human nature, belief system, and way of life and concept of polity. This was and is a mismatch. Both Civil as well as Criminal Law administration during British regime is worse and blind observance of which even after independence is more than worse.

There were multiple reasons why British Legal System is not suitable to India,

2.1 Present Legal System had its origins in the dominant philosophy of Britain of those days. It is based on the notion of an Austinian state, where a single monarch or a power had all the power which was indivisible. All powers devolved from top down. That was the structure of the modern nation state that the British were familiar with. So there was centralization of legislative authority and executive authority. Seeing a region with multiple states was itself a shock to them having come from a unitary one. On top of it to have multiple legal systems, where different castes and religions had their own institutions was quite alien to them. So one of the things they tried to bring is certainty and uniformity in the law; certainty and uniformity in the judicial and legal institutions they created. That homogenization itself was a major shock to Indians. The judicial system is one part of the legal system. A legal system would involve all the laws, norms, standards that are laid down to determine what is right or wrong, correct or incorrect. It would also involve all that goes to enforce the legality: that is the Courts, police, jails etc.

[Agnimitra]

I am Sanskrit

I am the ghost that refuses to go away.

[RajeshA]

Published on Dec 08, 2014
By Jaideep A Prabhu
Why the idea of India as a 'civilisational' state will simply not fly

There has always seemed to be some resentment among the non-Anglicised nationalists of India at the usage of Western terminology to describe India and her history. Western vocabulary is particular to the European historical experience, the argument ran, and the untranslatability of many core concepts of Indian culture means that India deserves her own frame of reference and cannot merely be a European Other.

One can sympathise with this argument, but unfortunately, little has been done - at least in English - to further substantiate it with data and reasoning.
The complex idea of India. AFP

The complex idea of India. AFP

One term that has become louder as the political fortunes of the allegedly Right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party have swelled is the concept of a "civilisational state." There does not appear to be much theoretical analysis of what this term means except that it is advanced as an alternative to the Western idea of the nation-state. The recent political upheavals around the globe are held as examples of the failure of the nation-state and - as in the case of the wannabe Caliphate - a call for civilisational ties over narrower, national ones.

Furthermore, it is posited that the nation-state paradigm, at least as imagined by Benedict Anderson, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, or Anthony Smith, does not quite hold with India. Finally, the post-modernist trope of the novelty of the nation-state is dragged out - a concept so new and invented can surely not be suited to capture an old civilisation like India?

Unfortunately, many theories emanating from the Right can do with a little subjection to the fires of scholarly debate, particularly from different perspectives. The notion of a civilisational state, for example, is not only terribly flawed but it is also not original. The strength of the idea lies in its ambiguity more than in its merit and, like the other intangible, it is supposed to replace - nation - its supporters rally behind it for they can imbue the label with whatever they want it to mean.

First, the definitional problems of "civilisational state" - when Indian nationalists on the Right of the political spectrum use that term, it is a safe assumption that they imply a state based on Indic culture, or more accurately, dharma. Contrary to popular belief, dharma is not religion; it is a wider set of social practices and customs that have governed life in South and South-east Asia. While dharma may not satisfy a legalistic standard of definition, that is so by design. However, a state is a legalistic entity - how is one to marry an amorphous 'civilisation' with a legalistic 'state'?

More crucially, does this mean that India should have territorial ambitions over other states in South and South-east Asia who are also a part of the same dharmic culture? Is an open-border union like the European Union envisaged by this civilisational Indian state? And if not, what is the basis of the Indian state that is merely one stump of this common dharmic culture?

Second, the idea is certainly not new or unique to India. Civilisational states have had very little success historically. The Greeks, for example, who saw themselves as a civilisation and everyone else as barbarians, were a fragmented and fractious lot that spent more time warring against each other than against common enemies; despite Islam's protestations about an ummah, the fact is that they have never been a united civilisational state. Just like the Greeks, Muslims fought against each other as often as they fought infidel "outsiders."

Christianity also tried its hand at a united civilisational state and even fought an ill-conceived war in the Middle East in the name of their faith. However, it too left little to show for all the effort. More recently, the Ottoman sultans tried to bind his subjects to a common non-Turkic identity but that was also not meant to be.

The one possible exception to this rapidly familiar trend of failed civilisational states is the Roman Empire. However, this too is an imperfect example and there are too many differences between India and Rome to get into here. Rome certainly followed the Greek example of self-barbarian recognition, but what united Romans more than a single, even heterogenous, culture was law and the force of arms. The civic culture of Rome was very different from India's dharmic past though both do qualify as civilisational in a sense.

Third, what does a civilisational state actually mean for quotidian life? What are its policies, what are its values, what are its citizens - or is it subjects? - meant to do to follow its guidance? Unless this is clear, there is little value in discussing alternatives to the West or to the nation-state; one cannot merely be against something, but has to be for something too. It is in the concretisation of this idea of the civilisational state, one suspects, that the difficulties will arise.

For example, Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the foremost scholars of Aristotelian politics and virtue ethics, which he advocates as a healthier mode of being than the modern liberal state. However, the most intractable problem for MacIntyre is that modern society does not reflect ancient Athens. We do not live in city states where the voting population is not more than 100,000 men. Scalability becomes a problem for even what is in many ways an intriguing suggestion. Similarly, even if the political order of ancient India was an exquisite balance of duties, responsibilities, and rights, even if law and order was rarely threatened, that system worked in a different time and may not apply to India today.

Fourth, Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations seems to have had its misprint in the minds of civilisational state theorists. Yet what they hold as examples of civilisational reordering is wishful thinking in the minds of a minuscule minority. The Caliphate, for example, has its enemies among Muslims as well as among infidels; furthermore, many of the groups who have sided with the terrorists have done so for selfish material reasons rather than any spiritual or historical-civilisational awakening.

In the case of Turkey being refused membership in the European Union is similarly misunderstood - though there is no doubt that some in Europe see a religious chasm separating them from Ankara, many raise legitimate concerns about the vast difference between Turkey and Western Europe in terms of social, political, and economic freedoms. Interestingly, despite the accusation that religion factors into decision-making in the EU or in the lives of Europeans, church attendance has been seeing a steady decline over the past fifty years. And not to point out the obvious, but despite the formation of a customs and currency union, European states are still having trouble letting go of their individual national identities. Civilisational statehood, it seems, is a potent political and social force only in the minds of its advocates.

If the advocates of civilisational statism intend to argue for the establishment of India as a Hindu country, they should do so without subterfuge or masking their motives in obfuscation. After all, there is nothing sacrosanct about the Indian state as it is right now and it is indeed true that Western theories of nationalism based on language, religion, and ethnicity fail to adequately describe India. Perhaps those ideas of the nation are inadequate because India is a meta-nation. No matter, these are ideas to be discussed openly and fiercely. But for now, "civilisational state" does not seem to hold water.

Now I am sure there are counter-arguments somewhere!

[Pratyush]

I could not understand what is it that the author is trying to say. Seems to a confused soul.

The only reason why the article was written is that the author had a quota of written words to meet for the month and had nothing else to write about. In order to be paid by the magazine.

[member_20317]

He is saying pitrbhoomi is an invalid concept and India is just a place like connaught place, nehru place, bikaji cama place. He is just doing it in so much english.

Essentially he says we are different but we will nonetheless end up like the Christians and Muslims because .......

This is best treated in the Hindu Nationalism - Pejorative thread.

[Atri]

He is saying pitrbhoomi is an invalid concept and India is just a place like connaught place, nehru place, bikaji cama place. He is just doing it in so much english.

Essentially he says we are different but we will nonetheless end up like the Christians and Muslims because .......

This is best treated in the Hindu Nationalism - Pejorative thread.

thanks for saving my time.

only an Indian origin person with arap/turk/gora tfta four-fathers will say India is not a land of his forefathers. else, pitrubhumi means land of forefathers.

And akhand bhaarat is my pitrubhumi and puNyabhumi.

[Vamsee]

Jaideep A Prabhu is a RW supporter (He is on twitter as well)

[svinayak]

thanks for saving my time.

only an Indian origin person with arap/turk/gora tfta four-fathers will say India is not a land of his forefathers. else, pitrubhumi means land of forefathers.

And akhand bhaarat is my pitrubhumi and puNyabhumi.

With 40 years of the western media and secular social engineering many people have come to believe that the world is actually changing and India will cease to be Bharat and a Hindu civilization.

Perception is a state of mind

[Agnimitra]

It partly depends on how the concept is understood by the public and presented by Hindutva.

"Punyabhoomi" is easier to ratiocinate into the ideology of anyone who loves India as a motherland, irrespective of religion. Only hardcore Islamists who consciously believe they are servants of Arab culture and urheimat will object, and we want that separation.

"Pitrubhoomi" is better not presented in purely racial terms. Rather, the Pitris can be understood in a wider context of transmigration of souls across different civizatuons, races, etc. Connection to Bharatavarsha as pitribhoomi must be accepted in a deeper karmik sense. Racially, Bharata has 3 petals - uttarapatha, dakshinapatha and pragjyotisha, and there has been movement of races outwards and inwards. So we remain race-agnostic in our global village.

Only in this way can India define herself as a civilization core state, rather than a pen in which sheeple of a particular physical type can belong. We must reject, or rather rise above, the Western Westphalian concept of nationhood based on narrow sheep-cattle classification of human brings based on purely external ethno-racial features.

The simplistic formula sometimes presented by Subramanian Swami, for example, is not tenable. His own wife is Parsi, so does that mean that his daughter should reject her Parsi lineage? Unnecessary.

[Atri]

Jaideep A Prabhu is a RW supporter (He is on twitter as well)

hehe. funny. Support to modi means RW? What is "right" about support to modi, is beyond me.

If he calls himself a hindutva-vaadi, he should be asked to know definition of hindutva in first place from the person who coined the term. Hindu is one who considers akhand bhaarat as his pitrubhumi and puNyabhumi. how much more simple and all-encompassing can it get?

I do not follow chaarvaka's path. But chaarvaka was my ancestor. He may not be from my gotra so perhaps not my genetic ancestor, but then so wasn't vishwamitra. So am I going to give up my claim over vishwamitra being "my ancestor"? In immortal words of Sri. Sri Americai Narayanan - Hell no!!

Are we going to reduce ourselves to such ideas? if one proclaims to be a hindutvavaadi, one has to understand what is nation, what is state, what is nation-state, what is dharma and how dharma is not religion just like how raajya is not rashtra.

India is a saanskritik raashtra - i.e. Civilizational Nation (if at all nation is correct translation of raashtra and civilization is correct translation of sanskriti). Nobody asked for state (i.e. govt) to be saanskritik. State (i.e. govt) is contextual. it may derive legacy and legitimacy from Sanskriti, but it is highly present and relevant than sanskriti which is like wall-paper behind.

Savarkar, parivaar all espouse "Saanskritik RaashTravaad" and not "civilizational state-hood". Writer should first read Savarkar and Deendayal Upadhyay and a good sanskrit-mother tongue dictionary.

[Vamsee]

Atri garu,

The way I see it is like this. There are many people who vaguely fall under RW category. Some care only about economic issues, some care only about demographic issues, some worried about pak/terrorism etc and some about Civilizational utkarsh & Dharmic values.

Some may have an overlap of multiple issues.

Even in the above cases, people are not static. I would say that I turned much more "Right" compared to say 10 years ago (when I cared only about economic aspects & was waaay more "secular" )

So... A big tent of RW which will allow everyone to find their own way towards other branches of Hindutva is much better than demanding everyone to adhere to strict ideology

Unless someone is explicitly harming Dharma & Desha, we should let them be & still consider them as beneficial.

Regards,
Vamsee

[Atri]

The simplistic formula sometimes presented by Subramanian Swami, for example, is not tenable. His own wife is Parsi, so does that mean that his daughter should reject her Parsi lineage? Unnecessary.

Swamy states Savarkar's defn, nothing else. India is pitrubhumi of parsis and with Udhvada, its also punyabhumi.

Savarkar did not link hindutva with vote. Swamy did. Hence controversy. As per Swamy's model anypne not acknowledging India as Pitru and punya bhumi will lose voting rights. But I doubt parsis or even indian jew will have problem in saying that. Its only islamists and evangelicals who will cry along with progressive secular hindus.

[Agnimitra]

Swamy states Savarkar's defn, nothing else. India is pitrubhumi of parsis and with Udhvada, its also punyabhumi.

This is an interesting example, considering that their own lands are lost. But even during the massive Macedonian invasion earlier, NW India had experienced a huge influx of Parsi refugees. Even then, Chanakya was conservative about offering permanent asylum. There are various good reasons for saying "no", and various good reasons to say "yes". Another such example would be that of Syrian Christians.

Basically, access to Rashtra should not only mean a verbal declaration of belonging here. Many Islamists would swear by that, especially those millions who are quite proud to say that their ancestors converted out of "casteist" Hinduism into the loving embrace of the Turk, Irani, Afghan and Mughal Ashraf. Some of these can be extremist Islamist, but they will be enraged at any suggestion that they are any less sons of the soil than you or me. So are they a part of the Rashtra? Their 'deen' is Islam (which is fine), but do they consider their 'qaum' to be India?

So the concept of Pitrubhoomi and Punyabhoomi needs to be fleshed out a little. It must have roots in the soil of ideas and of the spirit. It cannot be solely about location of some sacred fetish monument in some time and space, or of ancestry.

If anyone wants to be part of the Indic Rashtra, they must be invested in it wholly. If they only wish to be partially invested in it as a host, in a purely economic sense, then their political and property rights could also be circumscribed.

Even Ambedkar went so far as to say that if an Indian converts to Christianity or Islam, he becomes "denationalized"! Of course, I think that is an extreme Dharmic viewpoint of Ambedkar, but the point is to understand what level they were thinking at.

One could make the idea of the Indian Rashtra integrationist and also clear-cut and missionary in its processes, in our global village.

[Prem]

Interesting point from 14 Minutes onward

[RajeshA]

What is Punyabhumi? An attempt at understanding

Some thoughts by others ...

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s ‘Strategic Agnosticism’: A Compilation of his Socio-Political Philosophy and Worldview: South Asia Institute, Dept of Political Science, Heidelberg University
Author: Siegfried O. Wolf
Published in Jan 2010

Page 11

Another example of Savarkar’s agnosticism is apparent in his use of one of his most critical terms, Punyabhu, or ‘Holyland’²⁸. The definition ‘Holyland’ is the most misunderstood conceptions in Savarkar’s political thoughts on ‘Hindutva’ and leads both his antagonists as well as his promoters towards remarkably wrong perceptions of its meaning. Generally accepted, Punyabhu or Punyabhumi is defined as a country where you earn your ‘religious merits’. But in Savarkar’s particular point of view, he interprets this more in a patriotic way than a religious one. In this context, his sense of patriotism is expressed by his notion of ‘martyrdom’, conceived as heroism and hero-worship. If one deconstructs his attempt to define this term it is possible to find elements that are formulated in a religious as well as a ‘patriotic-cultural’ language. On the one hand, Savarkar describes Punyabhu as ‘the land of [his] prophets and seers, of his godmen and gurus, the land of piety and pilgrimage’ (Savarkar 1999:72) and on the other hand, it is also the land in which ‘every stone [here] has a story of martyrdom to tell! (Savarkar 1999:70). This means that the ‘Holyland’ is where one earns merit through patriotism and not through religious worship. In addition, the notion of Punyabhu implies, or is expressed through the word Sanskriti, the ‘civilisation’ and culture of a nation.

According to Savarkar, civilisation, and culture generally, ‘is the expression of the mind of man’ and ‘the account of what man has made of matter’ (Savarkar 1999:57). In this context, Savarkar proposed, that ‘the story of the civilisation of a nation is the story of its thoughts, its actions and its achievements. Literature and art tell us of its thoughts; history and social institutions of its actions and achievements. In none of these can man remain isolated (Savarkar 1999:58). As such, Sanskriti, the Hindu civilisation and culture ‘is represented in a common history, common heroes, a common literature, common art, a common law and a common jurisprudence, common fairs and festivals, rites and ritualism, ceremonies and sacraments’ (Savarkar 1999:62). Even in this attempt to define the term ‘Holyland’ in an patriotic-cultural sense, it is impossible to exclude the religious connotations of words like rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments. He was aware of this problem and stressed first, that this was an individual’s perception and attitude, and second, that he had not referred ‘to any institution or event or custom in its religious aspect or significance’ but to the common inheritance’ (Savarkar 1999:62) at the national level.

The above-described difficulties in the attempt to detach the term ‘Holyland’ from all conceivable religious connotations results in a continuum of possible interpretations of Savarkar’s Punyabhu. The continuum is characterised by two diametrically opposed benchmarks, or poles. One benchmark could be called the ‘contextual interpretation’ and the other, a ‘literal interpretation’. One of the significant indicators demarcating the different perceptions of ‘Holyland’ is desabhakti, the undivided love for the country. This patriotic love, which makes the country ‘holy’ for some, has to be proved as a kind of loyalty to Hindu society.

The ‘contextual interpretation’ focuses on the notion of patriotism in Savarkar’s definition. According to this, under certain conditions it is possible for ‘non-Hindus’ to claim India as their ‘Holyland’. To do so, it is necessary that they accept and assimilate Sanskriti. It is not required to practice and imbibe all cultural practices but the ‘non-Hindus’ in India ought to have more in common with a Hindu than with an Arab or an Englishman (Savarkar 1999:62f). The desabhakti is proven through ‘skilled participation’ in the cultural habits, rituals and customs of Hindu society.

In contrast, a more narrow ‘literal interpretation’ proclaims that India has to be one’s ‘Holiest land’ or that one’s holiest places had to be located in India. Interpreting Punyabhu in this way involves the a priori exclusion of followers of non indigenous religions like Muslims or Christians. For Christians the ‘holiest places’ like Bethlehem and Rome are abroad in Israel or Italy, and for the Muslims there is Mecca in Saudi Arabia. This interpretation of the religious connotations of Punyabhu disregards Savarkar’s constitutive element of patriotism as an opportunity to prove one’s loyalty. Such a perception has been fuelled by one of Savarkar’s most debated statements: ‘For though Hindusthan to them [Christians and Muslims] is Fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a ‘Holyland’ too. Their ‘Holyland’ is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and God-men, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided’ (Savarkar 1999:70). This supposed suspicion towards the desabhakti of ‘non-Hindus‘ makes a Indian Punyabhu a priori impossible.

In addition to these two extreme interpretations, there is a ‘third approach’, a ‘broader literal interpretation’ that combines both dimensions, the contextual and the literal. This interpretation points to two constitutive indicators in the definition of Punyabhu. Beside the above-mentioned requirement of patriotism, in the sense of desabhakti there is the requirement of having one’s ‘holy places’ in the claimed Punyabhu. This ‘literal’ interpretation finds its expression in the fact that the definition of Punyabhu still depends largely on a religious constituent which refers to the places for significance of one’s own religion. At a broader level it draws the distinction that to constitute a Punyabhu it is adequate to prove that the ‘holy places of importance’ of one’s own religion are located in India. This interpretation stresses the option of including ‘non-Hindus’ in Hindu society by emphasizing the opportunity to demonstrate loyalty through patriotism. Thus a counterbalance is suggested to the entrenched, mistrust of someone whose holiest places are located abroad and the common conclusion that a whole-hearted desabhakti is not possible.

These different interpretations of Savarkar’s Punyabhu draw attention to a ‘soft-corner’ in Savarkar’s approach towards religion, and the implications and difficulties he encountered. It shows too, without doubt, his readiness to utilize religious language for political purposes and as a strategy. As a result, the author reemphasizes that Savarkar’s Punyabhu has its origin in the conviction that it is necessary to use all possible opportunities to mobilize one’s countrymen for political aims and not in the name of any one religious belief. Despite the fact that Savarkar proclaimed his concept of ‘Hindutva’ and Punyabhu as having ‘little to do with agnosticism, or for the matter with, atheism’, Savarkar’s article argues that following such a rational approach towards religion in politics required not only a ‘believing agnosticism’ in the sense of Lederle but a ‘strategic agnosticism’. Only an agnostic would say, ‘some of us are monists, some pantheists; some theists and some atheists. But monotheists or atheists – we are all Hindus and own a common blood’ (Savarkar 1999:56).

Footnote 28

Eminent scholars like Dietmar Rothermund emphasize that the translation of Punyabhumi as ‘Holyland’ is not correct; it has to be translated as a country in which you can earn merit through good deeds. This means good deeds in a worldly and not in a religious sense. Despite the fact that this is also Savarkar’s understanding of this word, he used the term ‘Holyland’ as a direct translation: ‘Punyabhu signifies the meaning expressed by the English term ‘Holyland’ and may be regarded as its synonym’ (Rothermund 2003:n.n.)

[RajeshA]

Hindutva Agenda

Cross-posting from the "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Hindu Nationalism can be viewed as one of the attempts to give the bottoms-up organizations of Hindus the unifying theme. It seeks to do so by going beyond the ancient sense of geography and culture, but by providing a history; and not just any history but an ideological one.

Itihas has always been not just history but a history with a Dharmic (ethical-philosophical) theme running through it, which one can interpret as an "ideological one".

You are however very correct in saying that Hindutva is an attempt to give the bottoms-up organizations of Hindus a unifying theme.

What does this theme constitute:

1. Instill pride among Hindus for our Sanskriti, Sabhyata, Rāṣṭra, Dharma.
2. Reveal the history of dedicated efforts by foreigners and traitors to undermine the above.
3. Explain current and future threats.
4. Deconstruct various inimical ideologies and their ideological attacks as well as various mental afflictions: Islam, Dhimmitude, Christianity, Macaulayism, Colonialism, Marxism, Western Universalism, Yuppyism, Secularism, Suitcase-Hinduism
5. Construct a narrative for a righteous resistance against the above mentioned inimical ideologies and powers
6. Suggest appropriate strategy and tactics how to thwart programs and agendas of various forces and groups pledged to above inimical ideologies
7. Ensure political dispensations in India and various federal bodies facilitating this Hindutva program and Hindutvavadis
8. Return India to complete Ārya domination.
9. Return Akhand Bharat to complete Ārya domination.
10. Return Bharatvarsha to world's cultural leadership status.

[RajeshA]

Curbing Religious Proselytization

Cross-posting a post by muraliravi from the "Modi Sarkar - Policies and implementation [3]" Thread

From a strategic perspective, we have only 2 options. The option of passing a law that bans conversions to abrahamic faiths and allows reconversion to indic faiths is not an option. There is no way to pass such a bill.

So here are the only 2 options

1. Pass a law that bans on all types of conversion/reconversion etc.. I mean i guess they have to say that it is banned only if it forced/induced. Go for this option if you feel that at any point in time in the near future, the rate of conversion will be higher than reconversion. At least to me it looks like that is the case.

2. Amend FCRA to ban foreign funds to NGO's (especially christian NGO's), cut their other sources of funding, ban all missionary visas etc.. Then free temples from govt control. Without foreign aid and support I believe rate of reconversion will be significantly higher than rate of conversion they can do with domestic money.

So the govt has to debate both options in detail and pick one. The 2nd one will be less confrontational and will actually be better in my opinion. Plus it will actually be more effective than option 1. Simply because even if you ban forced conversion, they will still convert and say it was not forced. As long as the money keeps coming in, it really does not help much even if you have an anti conversion law. I mean, the law will help, but not much.

If they can get both options done, thats a real winner, just only one issue, reconversion wont be easy. In congress states, they will keep saying reconversion was forced etc..

[RajeshA]

Curbing Religious Proselytization (Cont.) [2]

2. Amend FCRA to ban foreign funds to NGO's (especially christian NGO's), cut their other sources of funding, ban all missionary visas etc.. Then free temples from govt control. Without foreign aid and support I believe rate of reconversion will be significantly higher than rate of conversion they can do with domestic money.

So the govt has to debate both options in detail and pick one. The 2nd one will be less confrontational and will actually be better in my opinion. Plus it will actually be more effective than option 1.

Indeed: Proposal for a Law for Restricting of Foreign Funding for Religious Purposes in India.

There is however a third way to draft an Anti-Conversion Law.

1) Define Christianity and Islam as the only Religions. Dharmic traditions belong to Āryatva Sanskriti. These are just not Religions. As they say, being "Hindu" is just a "way of life".

2) Conversions are acts applicable only to Religions. All Conversion Activity is banned due to these considerations. This should not be considered against Freedom of Faith.

3) Deconversions are always permitted, and so is Deconversion activity.

[RajeshA]

Dealing with Illegal Immigration (Cont.)

On July 05 2011, I had proposed the following [[url=http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 0#p1122680
The fact that the Hindus in Bangladesh are discriminated is a good excuse to introduce a formal asylum mechanism. Coupled with the threat of forced repatriations, it would encourage many Bangladeshis to simply convert and be allowed to stay in India. In the end, only those would be deported, who do not wish to convert and hence are hard-core Muslims, and hence potentially a danger to India anyway.[/quote]

6) So all in all India would be able to effect a conversion of most of illegal Bangladeshis in India, if India follows these two policies - (a) Asylum for Bangladeshi Hindu/Buddhist minorities; (b) Credible Threat to push back all illegal Bangladeshi migrants from India. If we squeeze the balloon in one place (deportation), the air is bound to move to another place (conversion).

the proposed "Indian Asylum Policy for Bangladeshi Minorities" is primarily a means of giving an incentive to the Bangladeshis already in India to convert, the incentive being the permission to stay in India and prosper.

Even if we start deporting them, it is going to be an administrative and security nightmare to push 15-20 million Bangladeshis back into Bangladesh. Instead we show a credible threat of pushing Bangladeshis back into Bangladesh, and the others would get scared and convert. If we are able to push a couple of hundred thousand Bangladeshis back with sufficient media coverage, the others would seriously start thinking of ways of how to stay. It is here that the Asylum Policy would provide an escape.

Without the Asylum Policy, the only escape route would be for the Bangladeshis to create a security danger for India or to influence politics in India to such an extent that we relent. After a couple of thousand deportations, India would again give up. We have to control the response of those Bangladeshis who do not wish to return. Offering them an option of asylum if converted could provide them with what they need, and they will not be forced to do desperate things injurious to India's health or to our Deportation Policy, though conversion too can be considered desperate.

All this only needs a spark, the conversions would take an exponential speed.

3 years later, it has already started!


Published on Dec 12, 2014
By Ratan Mani Lal
Turn Hindu, become Indian? Conversions targeted Bangla migrants: Firspost

The Muslim community in Uttar Pradesh is wary of the aggressive ‘reconversion’ taken up by elements of the Sangh Parivar. It feels it’s primarily a political exercise with eye on the assembly election of 2017. However, the people selected for the 'ghar vapasi' programme is what the community is worried about. Most of the 70 Muslims converted to Hinduism in Agra, they say, are illegal migrants from Bangladesh who could be a security threat to the country. The Sangh Parivar has virtually legalized their presence in India by converting them to Hinduism.

The Agra incident, according to Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangimahali, a noted Muslim cleric, was another example how fundamentalist forces create a wedge between communities. “It is politics of hatred being played out for nefarious purposes,” he said, adding that if the “converts” were indeed illegal immigrants, then it was a serious matter that foreigners were being mainstreamed through the conversion route.
Reuters image.

Reuters image.

Could this be a reversal of the situation in border states like West Bengal, where illegal entrants from across the border are given nationality papers and later used as voters by particular political parties?

Athar Husain of the Centre for Objective Research and Development (CORD) said irrespective of the politics surrounding the incident, it is a blot on the society. “In case the participants are Indian citizens, it speaks volumes about the failure of the state to provide basic necessities to its citizens if some persons are ready to let go of their faith for the promise of a BPL card and a plot of land.”

And if they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, as is being made out in some quarters, it is a pointer to a serious security lapse. “It means that illegal immigrants can be accepted into the mainstream society if they decide to change their faith and accept Hinduism in this manner.” The political grandstanding about going tough on illegal immigrants would appear to be eyewash, he said.

“Any illegal immigrant should first be treated as a foreigner and later as a Muslim or a Hindu. But this incident gives a new twist to the issue –a dangerous alien, may be an ISI agent, could be welcome if he agrees to embrace Hinduism!”

He also insisted that if conversion is to be condemned, then the conversion of poor and downtrodden Hindus, especially Dalits, to Christianity and Dalits, also must be equally condemned.

Farid Abbasi, who runs a communications company, said that apparently it was a ploy to test the socio-political and communal environment in Uttar Praadesh before the 2017 Assembly election. “First it was the love jehad and now it is re-conversion. The attempt obviously is to have a strategy in place that can work for electoral polarization,” he said. But he too felt that if the participants in the Agra campaign were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh then it could lead to a big security lapse.

“Any anti-Indian operative from the neighbouring country can sneak into India and get converted to Hinduism to avoid suspicion. This gives rise to dangerous possibilities,” he said, questioning the indifference of the state government towards the incident.

Many other members of Muslim community also acknowledge that conversion of poor Hindus to Islam is often reported from various districts and that, too, is not correct.

A spokesman of the UP Congress refused to comment on the issue, saying that the party had decided not to offer any reaction since it was a sensitive issue. Refusing to be named, the spokesman, however, felt that it was an unfortunate incident and could be part of the diversionary tactics to shift public attention from the Central government’s failures on all fronts.

Meanwhile, the Akhilesh Yadav government has taken a serious note of the incident and has directed district superintendents of police to ensure that such incidents do not happen again anywhere. However, the accused named in the FIR filed in Agra on Wednesday have not been arrested yet.

A spokesman of the state’s home department said the Director General of Police had sent directives to all the SSPs and SPs to check any such incident from recurring anywhere in the state by putting their local intelligence units on alert. The spokesman also said the government was aware that a large scale conversion campaign had been planned in Aligarh on December 25. “We are gathering all relevant information and will remain watchful that nothing untoward happens,” said the spokesman.

Firangimahali said forced conversion is a crime and stern action must be taken against anyone who organizes this. “Although an FIR has been lodged against the accused, they must be arrested quickly. It is also against the freedom of religious belief that has been guaranteed by our Constitution,” he added.

He felt that there was a sinister design behind choosing December 25 as the date for the next large-scale conversion planned in Aligarh. “On this day the Christians celebrate Christmas all over the world and any such incident in India will send damaging signals to the international community about religious freedom in India,” he said. He urged the Central government to urgently intervene and take measures to stop the proposed event.

[RajeshA]

Hindutva Agenda (Cont.)

Cross-posting from the "Why is "Hindu Nationalism" spoken of in a pejorative sense?" Thread

Hindutva i.e. Hindu Dharma is the Indic resistance to political & military domination of Bharat by foreign imperialistic predatory ideologies and powers and their efforts at overwriting of Bharatiya Sanskriti. It perseveres at preservation and strengthening of Bharatiya Sabhyata, Bharatiya Sanskriti, Bharatiya Rashtra and Rule of Dharma over Bharat!

Mind you, I am not talking about Sanatana Dharma here.

In "We" Guru Golwalkar does not say anything different though perhaps with other words.

Now the above does not per se says, Hindutva is against Muslims and Christians. According to Hindutva they are free to enjoy their privileges as citizens and go about worshiping their deities as they please, but under the above mentioned condition. Only if Muslims and Christians actively pursue the Islamization and Christianization of India, which naturally destroys the Dharmic foundations of India, and recreating a different social order, do they constitute a threat.

Also Hindutva is not just against Islam and Church, but in general against all "foreign imperialistic predatory ideologies and powers" be they Macaulayism, Marxism, Yuppyism, MNC rule, Western Universalism, etc. and these ideologies and processes are not necessarily "Religion" per se.

For Hindutvavadis, all these ideologies, processes are afflictions of the mind, and first and foremost option is to cleanse the mind, perhaps through Ghar Wapsi. Forcing anybody out of India is not necessarily Hindutva's aim, but considering the logic of Partition, one would encourage those who are at the moment inconvenienced through the rise of Hindutva to shift to other parts of Akhand Bharat which have been set up as Psychology Wards & Quarantines.


Let me see if I can explain how I see Hindutvavad's view on reality.

1) Islam, as soon as it gets the upper hand in India, would indulge in heavy scale ISIS/Taliban-type activities. Non-Muslims would be raped, killed, tortured, robbed. It has all happened before and it will happen again, if course of India is left in the hands of the Seculars. This is simply a matter of when and not if. It is not a fear, but more of a certainty. This also isn't the 400% certainty type. It is simply 100% certainty. The evidence in the inevitability of this scenario is more than apparent from daily news.

2) Other powers of the world, especially Western powers, would use every tool in their formidable experience toolbox to neutralize India and our independent civilization. This has happened before, and those willing to open their eyes would see these maneuvers in many places. Rampant Proselytism by the Church in India even as Europe becomes ever more atheist should tickle the alarm clock. China too would try to keep India down out of its own insecurity and greed. This has happened before and will happen again.

This is Hindutva's threat scenario!

Seculars have in fact helped such scenarios become reality as much as possible.

Hinduists who prefer "Pooja-Paath ka Dharma" are somehow more interested in keeping their clothes clean than trying to prevent this scenario. Their thinking goes as far as their own generation, or are content with the evolving secular scenario for India as their progeny may have found "safer" harbors elsewhere in the world. And so I speak of Suitcase-Hinduists.

Ostriches are a group who are thoroughly optimistic or capable of ignoring such issues. Should this topic come up, they would simply change the topic to weather. For them, either the problem would evaporate by itself, e.g. all Muslims get sick of all the violence and convert to Jainism overnight, or somehow somebody else would take care of the problem for them.

May be there are views which do not fit in the above four categories. I would like to hear about such views, and their future projections for India's "religious demography" and inter-"religious" relations.

Hindutva is the guardian over Bharatiyata!

There are different ways to criticize Hindutva. Either one says

1. Bharatiyata is useless, or
2. Bharatiyata does not need a guardian, or
3. Bharatiyata does need a guardian, but has got the wrong guardian, or
4. Bharatiyata's guardian is the right one, but it needs a few changes in its behavior

Various hues of Hindutva critics have taken one or the other position above!

[harbans]

Upholding Dharma is upholding Humanity with a big Stick.
#Think

[RajeshA]

Upholding Dharma is upholding Humanity with a big Stick.
#Think

Upholding Dharma is upholding Humanity with a big Stick and a Torchlight.

[RajeshA]

PK: Why is Hinduism a blot on the idea of India: 5forty3.in Blog
Published on Dec 19, 2014
By Dr. Praveen Patil

Meanwhile an Indian girl falls in love with who else but a Pakistani boy in Belgium – this is an important template for Bollywood to show its proverbial middle finger to all those ‘silly Hindu fanatics’ who harp about LOVE JIHAD, so every right thinking, no strike that, every Left-thinking Indian woman must dutifully fall in Love with a Pakistani guy.

in the Rajkumar Hirani universe Hinduism is totally infested with thievery and nothing but thievery, everything else is merely the figment of Hindu imagination

Then, after every aspect of Hinduism is ridiculed and the audience is sufficiently frustrated with the religion to dash out of the cinema hall and race into the nearest church/masjid to immediately get converted ...

Moral of the story? It’s simple you idiots, all Hindu Godmen, Hindu Gods (and Hindu men for that matter) are thugs and thieves, so in Pakistanis we must trust.

[RajeshA]

The Great Deception of Religion (Cont.)

Blog post

We have often heard the idiom "a wolf in sheep's clothing"!

In fact, it comes from the New Testament, Gospel of Matthews, 7:15. Jesus says, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". A bit ironic for this post.

However the Church has made a move on India and is very aggressive.

Now the question is what exactly is the strategy with which they have incapacitated us and thus empowered themselves to such an aggressive takeover of our people!

Coming back to the wolf!

If the wolves had only come in sheep's clothes, perhaps we might have recognized them by now! But the wolves have played a far more clever trick. The wolves have actually not only put on sheep's clothes, but they have told the sheep that they are wolves too and it is a good thing to be a wolf! So why go through all this trouble? Well if all are wolves, then they can all live together in one big flock or should I say pack, and the real wolves can prey on the real sheep at their pleasure.

Next level of deception is that the Wolves have told the Sheep to saw off their horns, because as "Wolves" they do not need horns. Wolves don't have horns!

But the deception goes further! The real wolves have gone ahead and told the real sheep that they are somehow bad wolves and as such they should look up to them for guidance!

This has sent all the now-hornless sheep into a tailspin in trying to prove that they too are great wolves! But can sheep become wolves? No! They don't have the teeth for being carnivores. In the meantime the wolves are having a party preying on the sheep! The wolves have convinced the sheep that those sheep whom they are preying on are jumping into their mouths of their own volition, out of love, and all because the other sheep are such lousy wolves.

That is the story of Dharmic Panths. They have been told that they are all Religions. Hinduism is a Religion. Buddhism is a Religion. Jainism is a Religion. Sikhism is a Religion. And Christianity and Islam, the two real Religions have put on the clothes of Love and Peace and declared that all are Religions are should live on this Earth and show tolerance for the other. The Christians have demanded Freedom of Religion. The Christians have demanded that the "Sheep", the Dharmic Panths keep their pens open all the time, so that the "Wolf" Christianity can come in and prey at its leisure.

The other wolf, Islam, had only a one layer deception, of "wolf in sheep's clothing". It went to other places as Sufis and traders, and put up outposts, beachheads, which then heralded the arrival of the Islamic hordes. The wolf Islam kept silent, at least as much it could, and bade the time when to strike. It still does so.

In the modern world, the wolf Islam is however satisfied with the deception of the Christians, for the Christians in order to keep the pretense of their deception, had to let in the Wolf Islam into its own land. But Wolf Islam finds in Wolf Christianity a great partner in India, and is happy with how Wolf Christianity has been able to lull the Dharmic Panth Sheep into accepting it as one of its own. Islam profits from this Deception as well. In India the deception is known by the name of Secularism.

The Great Deception of Religion goes so deep that the most proud ones among the Sheep are willing to pretend they are Wolves, and so we will be hunted one by one and digested into the insatiable bellies of the two big bad wolves: Christianity and Islam.

It is time that Hindus say "Hinduism" is not a Religion. It is time that the Buddhists say that "Buddhism" is not a Religion. It is time that the Jains say that Jainism is not a Religion. It is time that Sikhs say that Sikhism is not a Religion!

We are Dharmic Panths. Our goal is not to expand the brotherhood of allegiants, but to bring knowledge to others. And we have a proud history of Kshatriyata. But Kshatriyata is defensive. Kshatriyata is not the predatory impulse of the Wolves.

But Secularism and the Christian-led Western Universalism through their hold over the media are more than eager to suppress, to condemn any Kshatriyata impulse that may rekindle among the Dharmic Panths. They say that "Wolves" (who happen to wearing Sheep's clothing) are not supposed to be violent. They are supposed to be meek. Any aggression on the part of Hindus would then give the "Hindu" Religion a bad name. In any case the Indian State has finished off any Kshatriyata that existed as part and parcel of the Hindu tradition. Our horns are gone! Secularism makes sure that our horns do not grow back!

Any aggression on the part of the Christians anywhere in the world is however not Christian radicalism, but Secular govts. and groups going about their business, independent of their Religion. According to them, there isn't any Christian violence. Per them, there are only "just wars" being fought to ensure democracy, freedom and human rights. So Christians have outsourced the justification of their violent drive to Secular Policy Making. But should Indians react to this cultural invasion and rape of India, then the violence, as per them, is "Hindu nationalism", and it besmirches the whole peaceful message of "Hinduism".

In fact the political base of Christianity, the West, has spawned innumerable predatory animals: Christianity, Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, Liberalism, Post-Modernism, Academic Meritocracy, Entertainment Soft Power, "Freedom" of Media, etc. etc. often all known under the name Western Universalism. Each of these animals can do the bidding of the West, but put up a convincing show that these predatory animals are antagonistic to each other. Each one is a tool.

So what we have from the "Wolf" Christianity is yet another level of deception. Here the Wolf Christianity simply puts on the clothes of a different predatory animal and goes around and kills, and nobody can say, it was Sheep-like Wolf Christianity which did the killing. In fact the Church also makes a credible show of opposition to this violence!

The other Wolf Islam also has a bag full of deceptions. Muslims and the Christians have put together a deception package called "Moderate Muslim". Then they have the very effective answer of shouting "ALERT, ALERT, ISLAMOPHOBIA"! There is the "Root Causes" strategy! There is the Sufi Taqiyya, and they even call themselves "Religion of Peace"! All this is today, just formal positions! Others know that they are big bad wolves. They know that the others know that they are big bad wolves. But the Islamic way is okay with that.

One of the biggest deceptions of Religion, is that it is about God. No. Religion is all politics in the name of God.

Even though deception is the main tool the wolves use, there are some differences as well in the rest of their arsenal. Christians use favor as their teeth. Wolves use fear as their teeth. But both Wolves prey among us!

And we Hindus, we Sheep, are left to justify how it is great to be a good "Wolf", i.e. something that is a Sheep but called a Wolf, but supposed to act like a hornless Sheep.

So what should Hindus do?

1. First, we need to get rid of the semantic monstrosity called "Hinduism", which has been a jar created by the British, with a little banana called "respect" inside and where we as a monkey have put in our hand, clenched it into a fist to grab this "respect" and now we can't get ourselves out of it. Let's call it Sanatan Dharma in the spiritual sense, Bharatiyata in the nationalist sense and Āryatva Sanskriti in the universal sense.
2. Secondly, we should say, that WE ARE NOT A RELIGION. Dharmic Panths have nothing to do with Religion.
3. We should regrow our horns. Kshatriyata should be nurtured again.
4. We should call out who exactly are the Wolves, the Religions, and they are Christianity, Islam, and yes Mormonism too.
5. We have to close off our gates for Religions. No more funding coming in. No more one-sided terror terrifying our people. No more money generated internally through dubious means.
6. All those of us, of Hindus, who have been eaten by the big bad wolves, need to be taken out of the wolves belly, and they should get a Ghar Wapsi.

As long as we Hindus don't distance ourselves from "Religion", we will not be able to fight the "Religions", neither ideologically, nor legally, nor politically, nor tactically.

Let's be clear about one thing.

Predatory Conversions, Sense of Entitlement and Adharmic Inkspots and Ghettos are something unique to Religions, to Christianity and Islam. If we wish to protect our civilization, then it is important we get out of the Great Religion Deception.

No Dharmics can avail of any strength that comes with Religion. Sheep cannot become Wolves. We don't have priests in the temples giving political sermons. We don't have religion-based brotherhoods welded together through Vows of Allegiance like Shahada and Nicene Creed. We don't have books which tell us to go and destroy kill non-believers and destroy their places of worship due to iconoclasm or Shirk. We don't have a single Feudal Lord as our God in whose name we do crusades and jihad.

There is no strength that we Dharmics can derive, if we call ourselves Religion. A Religious identity would not give us the same strength it gives to Christianity and Islam. So let's reject this definition as Religion.

We have an Āryatva Sanskriti, a totally different architecture than that of a Religion. In this Sanskriti, each has his Dharma. And some people have their Dharma to be Kshatriyatas. That is from where we source our military strength.

If we wish to put an end to this cultural invasion, we have to draw the line, and this line has to be drawn with Dharmic Panths and Folk Religions on one side and predatory Religions on the other.

[RajeshA]

Published on Dec 19, 2014
By Sankrant Sanu
Commercial MNCs are checked, so why not religious MNCs?: rediff.com

Anti-conversion laws are needed since thrusting the idea of a competitive battlefield of religion onto India's pluralistic traditions can only lead to greater communal conflict, argues Sankrant Sanu.

The debate on conversion in India has heated up, ironically after a few people were allegedly converted back to Hinduism.

On this Web site, Amberish Diwanji argued that the right to convert to another religion is guaranteed by the United Nations as a human right.

Economist Rupa Subramanya argued for 'a level playing field and free market in religious choice' and that 'Hindu organisations trying to reconvert need to take a leaf from the enormous resources and sophistication deployed by Christian missionary organisations.'

Hardly anyone in India opposes the idea of an individual wishing to worship in the way they want or to change or abandon their ways.

The problem comes when individuals become number counts in a global religious war, being waged throughout the world, backed by powerful institutions, States and non-State actors.

Such a war is being waged on India and, without a strategy to counter it, we will see greatly increased religious conflict in India.

Christianity and Islam have been on a mode of expansion for nearly 1,800 years. This expansion was backed by the resources of powerful States, and continues to be so.

Over this period Christianity conquered Europe first, taking out native Roman pagan, Celtic, and Druidic traditions. Later Islam started and expanded in the Middle East and across the Indian continent, coming into conflict with Christian Europe in its eastward expansion.

Christian European colonisation conquered the Americas and killed off practically all the native traditions and, in many cases, entire native peoples. Africa remains an active battlefield in the religious war between Islam and Christianity.

Up until the early 1970s, Christian countries all the way from Australia to Canada were forcibly removing children from native people to raise them as Christians, killing the transmission of native culture to the next generation.

Survivors speak (external link) of the great psychological damage from the loss of community identity.

Researchers document (external link) 'high rates of social problems, demoralisation, depression, substance abuse, suicide and other mental health problems in many, though not all, Aboriginal communities.' They note 'compelling evidence that the long history of cultural oppression and marginalisation has contributed to the high levels of mental health problems' found in the native communities. Culture, identity and roots are important for the health of people.

The destruction of native peoples and their traditions and the later forcible adoptions were seen by these Christian countries to be 'for their own good'. They were simply rescuing the children from their backward cultures.

This idea comes from the theological doctrines of Christianity, which are equally alive in the conversion missions of today.

Missionary sites aimed at India speak of the 'need to bring Jesus Christ to the starving multitudes who have never heard of Him. They have never heard of His power to save them from the grasp of Satan.'

All the native cultures are thus in the grip of Satan and Christians are here to rescue them. The destruction of the cultures is a small price to pay for bringing 'the Truth, of Jesus, our Savior.'

Often times, social problems in communities were exaggerated and highlighted to justify the 'rescue.'

In India, the argument for external intervention to 'rescue' us has been using the plight of Dalits as a prime excuse. There is no doubt that some communities in India have been mistreated. It is also true that India has put one of the most aggressive affirmative actions programmes for their upliftment.

But these foreign rescuers have their own axe to grind, their 'rescue' does not help.

As Dalit writer Abhinav Singh recently wrote (external link): 'In a single stroke, the whole Dalit-Bahujan Samaj is robbed of its culture, ingenuity, history and spirituality, and de-humanised as people lacking agency who must be rescued.'

Given Christian evangelists' record of 'rescuing' native communities across the globe, one can see why both B R Ambedkar and Abhinav are wary of these benefactors.

While Christianity has largely given up conversion by the sword, at least in visible areas, the conversion mission is now taken up by powerful institutions.

The necessity is both theological and worldly. The business of Christianity is estimated at above $250 billion worldwide, taking its place among the world's largest corporations. An estimated $50 billion goes into the conversion mission annually.

Countries such as Germany, Austria, Sweden still have governments collecting taxes on behalf of the Church, over $13 billion per year in Germany alone (external link). As a result of conquest by Christianity and Islam, Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, are divided into (external link) Christian-majority and Muslim-majority countries.

That leaves India, China and East Asian Buddhist countries. Christian countries allow proselytisation; they are geared up for competitive religion. Islamic countries restrict Christian missionary activity. By Islamic law, leaving Islam carries a severe penalty.

China also restricts missionary activity and has even nationalised the Catholic Church so bishops are not appointed by Rome.

The biggest and softest target is India, which has been at the centre of the 'Joshua Project' aimed at the 10 to 20 parallels, to 'make disciples of all the peoples.'

Native cultures do not see their traditions as a way to convert others, but as a way to honour the ways of their ancestors. This is not a competitive endeavour (external link).

Anti-conversion laws are needed since thrusting the idea of a competitive battlefield of religion onto India's pluralistic traditions can only lead to greater communal conflict.

As a missionary site states: 'Anyone who is familiar with India knows that India has always been a challenge to the Gospel. Hinduism that teaches, "Just as all rivers lead to the ocean, all religions lead to God," dominates the thinking of the masses... Many Hindus revere Jesus as another god. Yet their eyes are blinded to the uniqueness of Christ.'

The goal then of evangelical conversion is to lift the 'blindness' of pluralism to convert into an exclusive belief system.

Indeed, without that no conversion can take place. If it was simply the question of learning from another way, or accepting another way as true, one need not actually be 'converted' to do that.

All conversion is a conversion into exclusivism. It is not complete till the original tradition is repudiated by the convert. It is a harvest of hate of their current traditions.

With the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh responding in kind with its Ghar Vapasi programme, continuing down this path can only lead to religious war in India.

We need a middle path that allows individual freedom, but severely restricts the operation of the international institutional conversion war machine in India.

Rather than an anti-conversion law, we need to regulate converting institutions and their aggressive marketing.

The Churches and NGOs engaged in conversion are comparable to multinational corporations. To protect their power as 'minority institutions' is to be unaware of their worldwide dominance.

As a powerful global MNC, Apple does not need minority protection rights because it has a smaller market share in India. Neither do religious MNCs.

In fact, commercial MNCs would be sued if they deployed the kind of deceptive marketing that the converting MNCs routinely use. India needs to shut down conversion as a dhanda while allowing full freedom to any individual to change their religion.

It is strange that in a country where we restrict even multi-brand retail MNCs from operating, considering their potential harm to local merchants, we hesitate to ban huge religious MNCs with the potential for far greater damage to the social fabric.

It is also ironic that those that speak the loudest against American imperialism and the power of large multinational corporations are silent about imperialism expressed through religious corporations.

To prevent communal polarisation, India needs to put a complete stop to all foreign funding and missionary activity towards conversions. No missionary colleges teaching 'conversion strategies' should be allowed to operate in India.

Missionary organisations can have a Web site with their materials available and anyone wishing to be informed of another religion can find these resources.

Similarly, funding from Saudi Arabia, taking over control of indigenous Islamic institutions and narratives and pushing fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam should be curtailed.

Any attempt to convert in schools, hospitals, and other places of vulnerability should be banned as well as evangelising those below 18. None of this comes in the way of individuals expressing their faith and following their own path.

Foreign organisations work on their own narrow dogmatic agendas and neither understand, nor care about, preserving India's pluralistic ethos that has always allowed diversity and freedom of worship and belief. Their huge resources and clout, combined with support from powerful countries worldwide, allow them to pressure India for their own ends.

India needs to stand firm to protect its social harmony from these institutions while providing freedom to its citizens to follow their own paths without imposing this on others.

Sankrant Sanu is a former Microsoft manager and an IITian. The views expressed are personal.